Health & WellnessS


Wine n Glass

Is Obamacare driving people to drink? Study suggests yes

Simon Constable
PJ Media
Sat, 28 Apr 2018 14:47 UTC
alcohol
© Christian Charisius/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
Do you want a case of vodka with your ObamaCare this year? Or perhaps a barrel of brandy?

More people do than used to be the case, and it ain't pretty.

Only a few years into Obama's signature healthcare law, also known as the Affordable Care Act, and more Americans have taken to the bottle, according to new research.

"We find relatively robust evidence that the ACA increased risky drinking," states the report, "The Affordable Care Act on Health Behaviors After Three Years," published by the National Bureau of Economic Research earlier this month. The paper was written by researchers from Georgia State University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Kentucky, and Maryland-based analysis firm Impaq International.

The idea behind the research was to look at the impact of the ACA and the expansion of Medicaid on behavior related to future health risks, both those that increased the likelihood of future problems and those that decreased the chance.

For each year of the analysis, which ran from 2011 through 2016, the researchers collected data on more than 300,000 adults aged 19-64 years. That covered the three years before the full implementation of the ObamaCare program and three years after the kickoff date when buying insurance became mandatory.

What they found was that risky drinking behavior was trending downward during the data sample's first three years, which was the before-ObamaCare period. After the ACA was implemented, things changed for the worse.
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Hotdog

How your diet could influence the age of menopause onset


BBC
Tue, 01 May 2018 02:27 UTC
high carb meal
© Getty Images


A diet high in carbs could bring on an earlier menopause, a study suggests.

Eating lots of pasta and rice was associated with reaching menopause one-and-a-half years earlier than the average age of women in the UK of 51.

However, the University of Leeds study of 914 UK women, also found that a diet rich in oily fish and peas and beans may delay natural menopause.

But experts say many other factors, including genes, influence timing of the menopause.

Comment: There is likely a very real connection between the diet and the age at which menopause begins. But this observational study, unfortunately, isn't good for much other than grabbing headlines. It's a very complicated picture, with many contributing factors. Changing to a low-carb diet, ditching the refined sugar, is certainly a good start which will help with overall health, including menopause.

See also:

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Clipboard

Ten harmful hygiene habits to avoid

Dr. Mercola
mercola.com
Mon, 30 Apr 2018 14:20 UTC
showering man
An article featured in Reader's Digest1 called out a number of so-called "healthy" hygiene practices that actually do more harm than good. Given the condensed nature of their commentary and the many misconceptions involved with these particular areas of hygiene, I would like to elaborate on some of them. You are probably aware that many commercial personal care products, such as bubble bath and hand sanitizer, are laced with harmful chemicals that can potentially damage your health.

But, what's your view on brushing your teeth right after a meal, cleaning your ears, douching or exfoliating? Are those widespread practices helping or hurting you? If you're not sure, let's take a closer look at popular hygiene routines that may be wreaking havoc on your health. Below are 10 hygiene habits that do more harm than good.

Harmful Hygiene Habit No. 1: Applying Hand Sanitizer

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Health

Making sense of the activated charcoal craze

Dr. Mercola
mercola.com
Mon, 30 Apr 2018 14:04 UTC
activated charcoal
A London eatery called Coco di Mama is jumping on the charcoal bandwagon with its offer of a charcoal-laced croissant they describe as a "vegan delight." Below is an excerpt from their website:1
"We are so excited to bring you a charcoal-activated vegan croissant! It's quite an unusual looking item, but we can promise you it ... tastes better than it looks. Unlike a regular croissant, there is no butter. The key ingredients are sunflower margarine, soy and barley flour, activated charcoal, sugar and lemon. The alkaline properties of charcoal in the croissant help to detoxify any poisons in your body by neutralizing excess stomach acid."
They go on to suggest this blackened bakery item can help with hangovers and bloating, two claims that are not scientifically founded.2 Activated charcoal aside, the other ingredients in the croissant, such as margarine, soy and sugar - all well-known to damage your health - more than make this menu item and other foods like it not only undesirable, but also something to avoid.

The Guardian suggests this faddish food item is just one of many charcoal-influenced products hitting the market recently. They make mention of "charcoal bagels, ice cream, burger buns, smoothies and pizzas ... plus charcoal toothpaste and face masks."3 Before you join the charcoal craze and rush out to buy any of these products, let's take a closer look at the effects - positive or negative - activated charcoal may have on your health.
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Evil Rays

Italian study links cell phone radiation to brain and heart tumors

Alex Formuzis
Environmental Working Group
Thu, 22 Mar 2018 12:58 UTC
cell phone
© weeksmd.com
Laboratory animals exposed to cellphone radiation developed heart and brain tumors similar to the types seen in some studies of human cellphone users, according to an Italian study published today. EWG said the findings reinforce the need for people, especially children, to exercise caution when using cellphones and other radiation-emitting devices.

The study by the Ramazzini Institute, published in the journal Environmental Research, supports the findings of the federal National Toxicology Program. Last month, the NTP reported that male rats exposed to radio-frequency radiation at levels including those emitted by cellphones had a greater chance of developing malignant brain cancer, and tumors in the heart and other organs.

Comment: What 15 minutes on your cell phone actually does to your brain

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Life Preserver

Reduce inflammation caused by autoimmune diseases with baking soda


sci-news.com
Fri, 27 Apr 2018 14:52 UTC
Baking soda
© Sci-News.comThe new study indicates that oral NaHCO3 activates a splenic anti-inflammatory pathway and provides evidence that the signals that mediate this response are transmitted to the spleen via a novel neuronal-like function of mesothelial cells.
A team of researchers at Augusta University has shown that when rats or healthy people drink a solution of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3), it becomes a trigger for the stomach to make more acid to digest the next meal and for little-studied mesothelial cells sitting on the spleen to tell the fist-sized organ that there's no need to mount a protective immune response. Their results appear in the Journal of Immunology.

"'It's most likely a hamburger not a bacterial infection,' is basically the message," said study senior author Dr. Paul O'Connor, from the Department of Physiology at Augusta University.

Comment: The many uses and benefits of baking soda:

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Beaker

CRISPR/Cas9 silences gene associated with high cholesterol levels through epigenetic regulation


Phys.org
Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
CRISPR/Cas9 epigenetic repression system mice liver
© Charles Gersbach, Duke UniversityHistological sections of liver from control mice treated with saline (left) and the CRISPR/Cas9 epigenetic repression system in which cholesterol levels were lowered (right) show generally normal and healthy tissue.
Biomedical engineers at Duke University have used a CRISPR/Cas9 genetic engineering technique to turn off a gene that regulates cholesterol levels in adult mice, leading to reduced blood cholesterol levels and gene repression lasting for six months after a single treatment.

This marks the first time researchers have delivered CRISPR/Cas9 repressors for targeted therapeutic gene silencing in adult animal models. The study appeared online in Nature Communications on April 26.

The CRISPR/Cas9 system is based on an antiviral defense mechanism in bacteria in which the Cas9 enzyme recognizes the viral DNA sequences of previous infections and cuts up invading DNA during re-infection. Researchers have engineered the CRISPR/Cas9 system to not only locate and cut specific sequences of DNA, but to also turn on or off the expression of targeted genes without making permanent changes to the DNA coding sequence.
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Dollar Gold

Most millionaires expect to still be alive at 100 years of age - survey


RT
Sun, 29 Apr 2018 10:41 UTC
Lord Jacob Rothschild
© Dave Benett / Getty ImagesLord Jacob Rothschild
While the average lifespan in China, the US and the majority of Eastern Europe is now in the late 70s, the rich across the globe are optimistic they will live for a century.

According to UBS Wealth Management, 91 percent of the 5,000 investors it has surveyed are "making financial changes due to increased life expectancy." Each of those polled has at least $1 million in investable assets, with healthcare stocks as their favored investment.

Some 53 percent of the world's wealthy expect to still be alive at 100 years of age.

"The idea of living a century was once confined to science fiction," said the UBS report, titled The Century Club. "But no longer. For the world's wealthy, living a 100-year life is not an outcome they consider a mere possibility. It's one they expect."

The outlooks of the high net-worth individuals varied based on where they were from. In Germany, which is acknowledged to provide residents with some of the world's best healthcare, 76 percent of those surveyed said they expected to become centenarians.
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Heart

Sweet vision: Chocolate could improve poor eyesight, study finds


RT
Sat, 28 Apr 2018 13:43 UTC
Chocolate bars
Good news for those of us who have a sweet tooth - eating dark chocolate could help people with poor eyesight to improve their quality of vision, according to new research in the US.

Scientists from the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas found that antioxidant compounds in chocolate called flavanols gave a slight temporary boost to the eyesight of up to 30 young adults.

The authors of the study, published this month in the Ophthalmology edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, say they will need to test their results against a wider sample size.

A group of 30 were given blind tastings of either 72 percent cocoa dark chocolate or milk chocolate.
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Display

Blue light toxicity: Study finds artificial light, like that emitted by outdoor LEDs and smartphones, linked to some cancers

Mark Lieber
CNN
Fri, 27 Apr 2018 20:41 UTC
LA streetlights LED incandescent
The Sixth Street bridge over the Los Angeles River looks a bit different with old, left, and new streetlights.
Exposure to the kind of blue light emitted by outdoor LEDs, smartphones and tablets may increase your risk of breast or prostate cancer, a new study suggests.

The study, published Monday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, compared previous exposure to artificial lights at night between approximately 2,000 breast or prostate cancer patients and approximately 2,000 controls living in Barcelona and Madrid.

The researchers measured exposure to outdoor artificial light, such as streetlights, using images from the International Space Station and to indoor artificial light using self-reported questionnaires.

Comment: Another way of minimizing exposure to blue light is to wear blue-blocking lenses when using devices or exposing yourself to bright LED light after the sun goes down. But there's a lot more to the use of light in health therapies than simply avoidance of blue light at night, and the picture is much more nuanced than it would first appear.

See also:

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