It turns out that exercise can do more than slim down your waistline and boost heart health. It might also make what's inside your gut healthier, according to a new study by San Francisco State University.

In this first-of-its-kind study, just published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, recent SF State graduate student Ryan Durk and Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Jimmy Bagley partnered with the SF State Health Equity Research (HER) Lab to test the relationship between gut health and cardiovascular fitness.

Children could be shortening the lifespan of women, according to a new study. But the finding is not down to the stress of motherhood, rather pregnancy might be making women's cells age more rapidly.

A new study by Caled Ryan and Christopher Kuzawa of Northwestern University, Illinois has signalled that the more children a woman has the more she appears to show signs of accelerated aging.

Published this month in the Nature research journal, the study analysed telomeres, the strands on human DNA that eventually degrade with time and contribute to the aging of cells, in more than 3,000 Filipino women between the ages of 20-22.

According to the documented research, it was found that telomere length and health decreased whilst DNA age increased with the number of times a woman has been pregnant. Basically, women who have more children are more likely to have physical traits of someone older than their years.

In recent years, Alzheimer's disease has occasionally been referred to as "type 3" diabetes, though that moniker doesn't make much sense. After all, though they share a problem with insulin, type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, and type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease caused by diet. Instead of another type of diabetes, it's increasingly looking like Alzheimer's is another potential side effect of a sugary, Western-style diet.

In some cases, the path from sugar to Alzheimer's leads through type 2 diabetes, but as a new study and others show, that's not always the case.

A longitudinal study, published Thursday in the journal Diabetologia, followed 5,189 people over 10 years and found that people with high blood sugar had a faster rate of cognitive decline than those with normal blood sugar - whether or not their blood-sugar level technically made them diabetic. In other words, the higher the blood sugar, the faster the cognitive decline.

Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) has only been considered a disease in the last century, but it is actually an ancient disorder. Originally described as a gynecological curiosity, it has evolved into the most common endocrine disorder of young women, involving multiple organ systems. In ancient Greece, the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates (460BC-377BC), described "women whose menstruation is less than three days or is meagre, are robust, with a healthy complexion and a masculine appearance; yet they are not concerned about bearing children nor do they become pregnant". This description of PCOS existed not only in ancient Greece, but is found in ancient medical texts throughout the world.

Soranus of Ephesus (c. 98-138 AD), near modern day Turkey, observed "that the majority of those (women) not menstruating are rather robust, like mannish and sterile women". The renaissance French barber surgeon and obstetrician Ambroise Paré (1510-1590 AD) noted that many infertile women with irregular menses are "stout, or manly women; therefore their voice is loud and bigge, like unto a mans, and they become bearded". It's quite an accurate description from a doctor who can apparently cut your hair, cut your leg off, or deliver children. The Italian scientist Antonio Vallisneri connected these masculinizing features with the abnormal shape of the ovaries into a single disease. He described several young, married infertile peasant women whose ovaries were shiny with a white surface and the size of pigeon eggs

In 1921, Achard and Thiers described a syndrome whose main features included masculinizing features (acne, balding or receding hairline, excessive facial hair) and type 2 diabetes. Further cases in 1928 cemented the link between what is now called PCOS with type 2 diabetes and described in the classic article 'Diabetes of Bearded Women'.

Careful observation had already revealed to these astute clinicians a syndrome whose main features included menstrual irregularities (now known to be anovulatory cycles), infertility, masculine features (hair growth), and stoutness (obesity) with its related type 2 diabetes. The only essential feature they missed from the modern definition of PCOS was the multiple cysts on the ovary, because of the lack of simple non-invasive imaging.

Sadly, for several decades now people who don't know better (and many who do know better but lack scruples) have been breeding domestic dogs with wolves, creating wolfdogs, also called wolf-dog hybrids.

According to Mission: Wolf, a nonprofit wolf educational sanctuary in Colorado, the practice got its start in the 1950s "... with a few well-intentioned people who, being genuinely concerned for the dwindling numbers of wild wolves, wanted to do something to ensure their survival."¹

Unfortunately, the latest conservative estimate is that between 250,000 and 500,000 wolves and wolfdogs are living in captivity in the U.S. And per Mission: Wolf:

"While most will die within a year of their birth, new pups are constantly bred and sold. The wolf-dog business is a lucrative one ... depending on the advertised wolf percentage. New pups are sold to people looking for a guard dog, a family pet, a movie star or a fur source."

And while it's true that canis lupus (the wolf) and canis lupus familiaris (the domesticated dog) occasionally breed on their own in the wild, it's a rare occurrence. It's also true that dogs share most of their DNA with wolves; however, they've evolved over centuries of domestication to adapt to living with humans. The long process of domestication has permanently altered the behavior, life cycle and physiology of dogs.

What most owners of wolfdog puppies don't realize (and aren't told by breeders) is their pup will very likely only look and act like a domestic dog for the first year or two of life. At around age three, wolfdogs develop into "part-wild, part-domestic, very confused" animals.

A growing body of research suggests that our bodies function optimally when we align our eating patterns with our circadian rhythms.

Nutrition scientists have long debated the best diet for optimal health. But now some experts believe that it's not just what we eat that's critical for good health, but when we eat it.

A growing body of research suggests that our bodies function optimally when we align our eating patterns with our circadian rhythms, the innate 24-hour cycles that tell our bodies when to wake up, when to eat and when to fall asleep. Studies show that chronically disrupting this rhythm - by eating late meals or nibbling on midnight snacks, for example - could be a recipe for weight gain and metabolic trouble.

That is the premise of a new book, "The Circadian Code," by Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute and an expert on circadian rhythms research. Dr. Panda argues that people improve their metabolic health when they eat their meals in a daily 8- to 10-hour window, taking their first bite of food in the morning and their last bite early in the evening.

Today, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a "Food Additives and Child Health" policy statement calling for "urgently needed reforms to the current regulatory process at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for food additives." The policy applies to chemicals deliberately added to food or to food packaging or food processing equipment that get into food. These substances are used to flavor, color, preserve, package, process and store our food, but many never appear among the list of ingredients. AAP's statement calls specifically for the following:

• "Greatly strengthening or replacing the GRAS [Generally Recognized as Safe] determination process;
• Updating the scientific foundation of the FDA's safety assessment program;
• Retesting all previously approved chemicals; and
• Labeling direct additives with limited or no toxicity data."

Electromagnetic radiation from Wi-Fi and cell towers poses a "credible risk" to birds, mammals, insects and plants

There is growing evidence that our addiction to cellphones could be impacting brain functionality and be the cause of stress, anxiety, insomnia and a lack of attention and focus. Now a new report has found that we're not the only living things to be affected by our increasing dependence on wireless technology. Mammals, birds, insects and even plants are likely being harmed by the electromagnetic radiation (EMR) emanating from Wi-Fi, cellphone towers, broadcast transmitters and power lines, according to a new analysis of 97 peer-reviewed studies conducted by EKLIPSE, a biodiversity and ecosystem project funded by the European Union.

There's lots of reasons not to use plastic - but this one might come as a shock.

Chemicals in everyday items, from household cleaners to food packaging, can damage a man's penis - and make it smalller.

Chemicals in plastic containers and household cleaners could make a man's penis SHRINK, experts have warned.

Phthalates, BPA and parabens are to blame for a rise in the number of baby boys being born with genital defects, experts have warned.

Dr Andrew Pask and Dr Mark Green, from the University of Melbourne, said in Australia penis birth defects have doubled in recent years, due to plastic use.

What's the optimal food for your newborn baby? Common sense would tell you that a mother's breast milk is as optimal as infant nutrition could possibly get, yet that fact - indisputable as it may seem - is something that makers of infant formula have spent decades' trying to sweep under the carpet.¹ Following the development of manufactured infant formula, mothers were told breastfeeding was unnecessary.

Formula offered greater freedom for busy moms, and the promotion of the obnoxious idea that breastfeeding in public is shameful fueled the transition, making more moms defer to the bottle rather than their breast. For years, women could even be fined for "public indecency" if caught breastfeeding in public. This year, Utah became the last state to enact laws protecting the rights of breastfeeding mothers by permitting nursing in public.²

Only 28 states provide workplace protection for nursing mothers, however, so many are still forced to pump milk in dingy bathrooms and suffer discrimination for needing time to express milk. In terms of nutrition, moms have, and still are, told there's "no difference" between bottle feeding and breastfeeding, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

There is very little similarity between the two, from a nutritional perspective. Unfortunately, marketing materials have a way of giving mothers the false idea that formula may actually provide better nutrition.