Device 'could revolutionise blood pressure monitoring'

A device which can be worn like a watch could revolutionise the way blood pressure is monitored in the next few years, scientists say.

Researchers at the University of Leicester and in Singapore have developed a device to measure pressure in the largest artery in the body.

Evidence shows it gives a much more accurate reading than the arm cuff.

The technology is funded by the Department of Health and backed by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.

It works by a sensor in the watch recording the pulse wave of the artery, which is then fed into a computer together with a traditional blood pressure reading from a cuff.

Scientists are then able to read the pressure close to the heart, from the aorta.

Professor Bryan Williams, from the University of Leicester's department of cardiovascular sciences at Glenfield Hospital, said: "The aorta is millimetres away from the heart and close to the brain and we have always known that pressure here is a bit lower than in the arm.
"Unless we measure the pressure in the aorta we are not getting an appreciation of the risks or benefits of treatment."
He said the device would "change the way blood pressure has been monitored for more than a century" and he expected the technology to be used in specialist centres soon, before being "used much more widely" within five years.
"The beauty of all of this is that it is difficult to argue against the proposition that the pressure near to your heart and brain is likely to be more relevant to your risk of stroke and heart disease than the pressure in your arm," he said.

The traditional blood pressure cuff on the upper arm is known not to give a completely accurate reading

But it was important to ensure the new device was as small as possible to encourage clinicians and patients to use it, he added.
The research work was funded by the Department of Health's National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
The NIHR invested £3.4m, with a further £2.2m of funding coming from the Department of Health, to establish a Biomedical Research Unit at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester.
The university collaborated with the Singapore-based medical device company HealthSTATS International.
Dr Choon Meng Ting, chairman of HealthSTATS, said: "This study has resulted in a very significant translational impact worldwide as it will empower doctors and their patients to monitor their central aortic systolic pressure easily, even in their homes and modify the course of treatment for blood pressure-related ailments."
Mr Lansley said the device was "a great example of how research breakthroughs and innovation can make a real difference to patients' lives".
Judy O'Sullivan, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said previous research had shown that measuring pressure close to the heart was a better indicator of the effectiveness of treatment for high blood pressure than the standard method.
"However, further research is needed before we can be certain of its superiority in the doctor's surgery," she said.

Cholesterol 'does not predict stroke in women'

High levels of cholesterol do not predict the risk of stroke in women, according to researchers in Denmark.

They did detect an increased risk in men, but only when cholesterol was at almost twice the average level.
The report in Annals of Neurology recommends using a different type of fat in the blood, non-fasting triglycerides, to measure the risk.
The Stroke Association said triglyceride tests needed to become routine to reduce the risk of stroke.
A total of 150,000 people have a stroke in the UK each year. Most are ischemic strokes, in which a clot in an artery disrupts the brain's blood supply.
The research followed 13,951 men and women, who took part in the Copenhagen City Heart Study.
During the 33-year study, 837 men and 837 women had strokes.
Poor predictor

They reported that the cholesterol levels in women were not associated with stroke, while there was only an association in men with levels higher than 9mmol/litre. The average in UK men is 5.5.

The researchers at Copenhagen University Hospital said this was "difficult to explain" as LDL, or bad, cholesterol is known to cause atherosclerosis which can block arteries.
They did notice a link, in both men and women, between the risk of stroke and non-fasting triglycerides.
They believe these fats are a marker for "remnant cholesterol" which is left behind when other forms of cholesterol are made.
Dr Peter Coleman, deputy director of research at The Stroke Association said: "Tests for triglyceride levels aren't routinely carried out in the UK unless there is significant concern."
"We know that high levels of fats, such as cholesterol, increase your risk of having a stroke. However, this research shows the importance of measuring the fat triglyceride, as well as cholesterol.
"This study highlights the importance of measuring triglycerides routinely in order to reduce a person's risk of stroke."

desk job is slowly killing you

Even if you exercise, the more hours a day you sit, the greater your risk of early death

................................................................................................................

Your work might harm you, especially if it is a desk job. Experts have stated that sitting for long hours is deadly.
This is for everyone, even for those who exercise regularly. What matters is sitting, it does not matter where you are sitting, school, college, office, watching television or working infront of a computer.
Research is in initial stages but studies state that more hours of sitting could make you fat, you might experience a heart attack or even die.
Elin Ekblom-Bak of the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences in an editorial published this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, suggested that authorities have to work their minds on how they define physical activity to highlight the dangers of sitting.
"After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals," Ekblom-Bak said further adding that genes in the body that regulate the amount of glucose and fat start to shut down.
Spending more time in sitting could prove harmful for those also who exercise regularly.
Tim Armstrong, a physical activity expert at the World Health Organisation, said, "People who exercise every day but still spend a lot of time sitting may get more benefit if that exercise were spread across the day, rather than in a single bout."
Americans spend most of their time sitting whether in car, working or watching television, figures from a US survey in 2003-04 stated.
Experts however said that more needed to be done to figure out how many hours of sitting actually prove harmful.
................................................................................................................

Do you lead an active lifestyle or a sedentary one? The question is simple, but the answer may not be as obvious as you think. Let's say, for example, you're a busy guy who works 60 hours a week at a desk job but who still manages to find time for five 45-minute bouts of exercise. Most experts would label you as active. (Put your body to the test: 10 standards to assess your fitness level.) But Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., has another name for you: couch potato. Perhaps "exercising couch potato" would be more accurate, but Hamilton, a physiologist and professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, would still classify you as sedentary. "People tend to view physical activity on a single continuum," he says. "On the far side, you have a person who exercises a lot; on the other, a person who doesn't exercise at all. However, they're not necessarily polar opposites."

Hamilton's take, which is supported by a growing body of research, is that the amount of time you exercise and the amount of time you spend on your butt are completely separate factors for heart-disease risk. New evidence suggests, in fact, that the more hours a day you sit, the greater your likelihood of dying an earlier death regardless of how much you exercise or how lean you are. That's right: Even a sculpted six-pack can't protect you from your chair.

But it's not just your heart that's at risk from too much sitting; your hips, spine, and shoulders could also suffer. In fact, it's not a leap to say that a chair-potato lifestyle can ruin you from head to toe.

Statistically speaking, we're working out as much as we were 30 years ago. It's just that we're leading more sedentary lives overall. A 2006 University of Minnesota study found that from 1980 to 2000, the percentage of people who reported exercising regularly remained the same—but the amount of time people spent sitting rose by 8 percent.

Now consider how much we sit today compared with, say, 160 years ago. In a clever study, Dutch researchers created a sort of historical theme park and recruited actors to play 1850s Australian settlers for a week. The men did everything from chop wood to forage for food, and the scientists compared their activity levels with those of modern office workers. The result: The actors did the equivalent of walking 3 to 8 miles more a day than the deskbound men. That kind of activity is perhaps even more needed in today's fast-food nation than it was in the 1800s, but not just because it boosts calorie burn. (Tied to the treadmill? Try these seven ways to burn more fat on the belt.)

A 2010 study in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that when healthy men limited their number of footsteps by 85 percent for 2 weeks, they experienced a 17 percent decrease in insulin sensitivity, raising their diabetes risk. "We've done a lot to keep people alive longer, but that doesn't mean we're healthier," says Hamilton.

Today's death rate is about 43 percent lower than it was in 1960, but back then, less than 1 percent of Americans had diabetes and only 13 percent were obese. Compare that with now, when 6 percent are diagnosed with diabetes and 35 percent are obese.

The definition of an active life Make no mistake: "Regularly exercising is not the same as being active," says Peter Katzmarzyk, Ph.D., Hamilton's colleague at Pennington, the nation's leading obesity research center. Katzmarzyk is referring to the difference between official exercise activity, such as running, biking, or lifting weights, and so-called nonexercise activity, like walking to your car, mowing the lawn, or simply standing. "A person may hit the gym every day, but if he's sitting a good deal of the rest of the time, he's probably not leading an overall active life," says Katzmarzyk.

You might dismiss this as scientific semantics, but energy expenditure statistics support Katzmarzyk's notion. In a 2007 report, University of Missouri scientists said that people with the highest levels of nonexercise activity (but little to no actual "exercise") burned significantly more calories a week than those who ran 35 miles a week but accumulated only a moderate amount of nonexercise activity.

"It can be as simple as standing more," Katzmarzyk says. For instance, a "standing" worker—say, a sales clerk at a Banana Republic store—burns about 1,500 calories while on the job; a person behind a desk might expend roughly 1,000 calories. That goes a long way in explaining why people gain 16 pounds, on average, within 8 months of starting sedentary office work, according to a study from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Work your entire body in 15 minutes with these three moves for fast muscle.

Why sitting too much is never a good thing But calories aren't the only problem. In 2009, Katzmarzyk studied the lifestyle habits of more than 17,000 men and women and found that the people who sat for almost the entire day were 54 percent more likely to end up clutching their chests than those who sat for almost none of the time. That's no surprise, of course, except that it didn't matter how much the sitters weighed or how often they exercised. "The evidence that sitting is associated with heart disease is very strong," says Katzmarzyk. "We see it in people who smoke and people who don't. We see it in people who are regular exercisers and those who aren't. Sitting is an independent risk factor."

This isn't actually a new discovery. In a British study published in 1953, scientists examined two groups of workers: bus drivers and trolley conductors. At first glance, the two occupations appeared to be pretty similar. But while the bus drivers were more likely to sit down for their entire day, the trolley conductors were running up and down the stairs and aisles of the double-decker trolleys. As it turned out, the bus drivers were nearly twice as likely to die of heart disease as the conductors were.

A more recent interpretation of that study, published in 2004, found that none of the participants ever exercised. But the two groups did sit for different amounts of time. The analysis revealed that even after the scientists accounted for differences in waist size—an indicator of belly fat—the bus drivers were still more likely to die before the conductors did. So the bus drivers were at higher risk not simply because their sedentary jobs made them resemble Ralph Kramden, but also because all that sitting truly was making them unhealthy.

Hamilton came to call this area of science "inactivity physiology" while he was conducting studies to determine how exercise affects an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase (LPL). Found in humans as well as mice, LPL's main responsibility is to break down fat in the bloodstream to use as energy. If a mouse (or a man) doesn't have this enzyme, or if the enzyme doesn't work in their leg muscles, the fat is stored instead of burned as fuel.

Hamilton discovered that when the rodents were forced to lie down for most of their waking hours, LPL activity in their leg muscles plummeted. But when they simply stood around most of the time, the gene was 10 times more active. That's when he added an exercise session to the lab-rat routine and found that exercise had no effect on LPL. He believes the finding also applies to people.

"Humans sit too much, so you have to treat the problem specifically," says Hamilton. "The cure for too much sitting isn't more exercise. Exercise is good, of course, but the average person could never do enough to counteract the effect of hours and hours of chair time."

If you're chair-bound, perform these seven easy office stretches every 20 minutes.

"We know there's a gene in the body that causes heart disease, but it doesn't respond to exercise no matter how often or how hard you work out," he says. "And yet the activity of the gene becomes worse from sitting—or rather, the complete and utter lack of contractile activity in your muscles. So the more nonexercise activity you do, the more total time you spend on your feet and out of your chair. That's the real cure."

"Your body adapts to what you do most often," says Bill Hartman, P.T., C.S.C.S., a Men's Health advisor and physical therapist in Indianapolis, Indiana. "So if you sit in a chair all day, you'll essentially become better adapted to sitting in a chair." The trouble is, that makes you less adept at standing, walking, running, and jumping, all of which a truly healthy human should be able to do with proficiency. "Older folks have a harder time moving around than younger people do," says Hartman. "That's not simply because of age; it's because what you do consistently from day to day manifests itself over time, for both good and bad."

Inactivity affects more than the heart Do you sit all day at a desk? You're courting muscle stiffness, poor balance and mobility, and lower-back, neck, and hip pain. But to understand why, you'll need a quick primer on fascia, a tough connective tissue that covers all your muscles. While fascia is pliable, it tends to "set" in the position your muscles are in most often. So if you sit most of the time, your fascia adapts to that specific position.

Now think about where your hips and thighs are in relation to your torso while you're sitting. They're bent, which causes the muscles on the front of your thighs, known as hip flexors, to contract slightly, or shorten. The more you sit, the more the fascia will keep your hip flexors shortened. "If you've ever seen a guy walk with a forward lean, it's often because of shortened hip flexors," says Hartman. "The muscles don't stretch as they naturally should. As a result, he's not walking tall and straight because his fascia has adapted more to sitting than standing."

This same effect can be seen in other areas of your body. For instance, if you spend a lot of time with your shoulders and upper back slumped over a keyboard, this eventually becomes your normal posture. "That's not just an issue in terms of how you look; it frequently leads to chronic neck and shoulder pain," says Hartman. Also, people who frequently cross their legs a certain way can experience hip imbalances. "This makes your entire lower body less stable, which decreases your agility and athletic performance and increases your risk for injuries," Hartman says. Add all this up, and a person who sits a lot is less efficient not only at exercising, but also at simply moving from, say, the couch to the refrigerator.

There's yet another problem with all that sitting. "If you spend too much time in a chair, your glute muscles will actually 'forget' how to fire," says Hartman. This phenomenon is aptly nicknamed "gluteal amnesia." A basic-anatomy reminder: Your glutes, or butt muscles, are your body's largest muscle group. So if they aren't functioning properly, you won't be able to squat or deadlift as much weight, and you won't burn as much fat. After all, muscles burn calories. And that makes your glutes a powerful furnace for fat—a furnace that's probably been switched off if you spend most of the day on your duff.

It gets worse. Weak glutes as well as tight hip flexors cause your pelvis to tilt forward. This puts stress on your lumbar spine, resulting in lower-back pain. It also pushes your belly out, which gives you a protruding gut even if you don't have an ounce of fat. "The changes to your muscles and posture from sitting are so small that you won't notice them at first. But as you reach your 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond, they'll gradually become worse," says Hartman, "and a lot harder to fix."

So what's a desk jockey to do? Hamilton's advice: Think in terms of two spectrums of activity. One represents the activities you do that are considered regular exercise. But another denotes the amount of time you spend sitting versus the time you spend on your feet. "Then every day, make the small choices that will help move you in the right direction on that sitting-versus-standing spectrum," says Hamilton. "Stand while you're talking on the phone. It all adds up, and it all matters."

Of course, there's a problem with all of this: It kills all our lame excuses for not exercising (no time for the gym, fungus on the shower-room floor, a rerun of The Office you haven't seen). Now we have to redefine "workout" to include every waking moment of our days. But there's a big payoff: more of those days to enjoy in the future. So get up off your chair and start nonexercising

Is your laptop cooking your testicles?

Whoever invented the 'laptop' probably didn't worry too much about male reproductive health.

Turns out that sitting with a computer on your lap will crank up the temperature of your nether regions, which could affect sperm quality.

And there is little you can do about it, according to the authors of a study out today in the journal Fertility and Sterility, short of putting your laptop on a desk.

The researchers hooked thermometers to the scrotums of 29 young men who were balancing a laptop on their knees. They found that even with a lap pad under the computer, the men's scrotums overheated quickly.

"Millions and millions of men are using laptops now, especially those in the reproductive age range," said Dr. Yefim Sheynkin, a urologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who led the new study.

"Within 10 or 15 minutes their scrotal temperature is already above what we consider safe, but they don't feel it," he added.

So far, no studies have actually tested how laptops impact men's fertility, said Sheynkin, and there is no bulletproof evidence that it would. But earlier research has shown that warming the scrotum more than one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) is enough to damage sperm.

Under normal circumstances, the testicles' position outside of the body makes sure they stay a few degrees cooler than the inside of the body, which is necessary for sperm production.

"I wouldn't say that if someone starts to use laptops they will become infertile," Sheynkin told Reuters Health. But frequent use might contribute to reproductive problems, he said, because "the scrotum doesn't have time to cool down."

According to the American Urological Association, nearly one in six couples in the US have trouble conceiving a baby, and about half the time the man is at the root of the problem.

Both general health and lifestyle factors such as nutrition and drug use can influence reproductive health.

However, Sheynkin said tight jeans and briefs are generally not considered a risk factor.

"Clothes should not significantly change scrotal temperature, because you are moving around," he said.

To hold a laptop on your knees, however, you need to sit still with your legs closed. After one hour in this position, the researchers found that men's testicle temperature had risen by up to 2.5 C.

A lap pad kept the computer cool and also made sure less heat was transmitted to the skin. But it didn't do much to cool the testicles, and might give "a false sense of security," according to Sheynkin.

"It doesn't matter what pad you use," he said. "You can put a pillow beneath your computer and it still won't protect you."

As it turned out, leg position played a far bigger role. When the men sat with their legs spread wide -- made possible only by placing the computer on a large lap pad -- they could keep their testicles cooler. But it still took less than 30 minutes before they began overheating.

"No matter what you do, even with the legs spread wide apart, the temperature is still going to be higher than what we call safe," said Sheynkin.

Belkin International, Inc., which sells lap pads and other electronics accessories, did not wish to comment on the new findings.

Dr. James F. Smith, a urologist at the University of California, San Francisco, cautioned that a clear impact of laptop use on fertility had still not been shown, and that it probably didn't play a big role.

Still, he added in an e-mail to Reuters Health, heating up the scrotum is likely to be bad for sperm production. He often asks patients that he sees for infertility if they use a laptop and, if so, suggests that they spread their legs periodically or place the computer on a desk.

Dr. Smith said the consequences of continued overheating of the testicles -- so-called scrotal hyperthermia -- probably weren't permanent, but might take months to go away.

"When interested in maximizing fertility potential," he advised, "minimize harmful exposures, eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly.

Does airplane air really make you sick?

By Harriet Baskas

Every time she boards an airplane, Sheelagh Doyle of New York City worries that the dry, recirculated air onboard will make her sick.

“Most times, when I take a flight over a few hours, I get a cold or chest infection,” she said. “I’ve resorted to hiding under a blanket for long-haul flights trying to avoid it.”

Many travelers who fall ill within a day or two of a recent flight blame the quality of the cabin air. But as it turns out, airplane air is no worse than what you'd encounter in your average office building.

It's that coughing or sneezing seatmate that you need to worry about.

“Airplane air isn’t as bad as most people envision,” said Charles Gerba, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona at Tucson. Gerba, also known as Dr. Germ, studies germs and where they congregate and doesn’t worry much about the air quality on airplanes. “On a trip, it’s more likely that the food you eat and the things you touch will make you sick.”

The air up there Many passengers mistakenly believe that the air in the cabin that they left the gate with is the air they have to breathe for the rest of the trip. “This is not true,” said Boeing spokesperson Bret Jensen.

He blames low humidity for giving airplane air a bad rap. “The overall relative humidity aboard an aluminum airplane is low — around 6 percent — and people become dehydrated on long flights if they don't drink water regularly. This can make people feel different than when they boarded the airplane.”

Modern airplanes do recirculate air, “but don’t let that scare you,” said travel health expert Mark Gendreau, the senior staff physician and vice chair of emergency medicine at Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass.

“Airplanes take about 50 percent of the air collected in the outtake valves of the passenger compartment and mix it with fresh air from outside that gets heated by the engines. That air is then passed through HEPA filters that sterilize it before it’s reintroduced to the passenger cabin.”

Previously, some health experts were concerned that airlines might not service those HEPA filters as often as they should. But Gendreau says both health and economic concerns help insure that airlines do. “If HEPA filters age, they start collecting material. That creates drag and airplanes start burning more fuel. And these days airlines are not interested in wasting fuel.”

Breathe easy It may help you breathe easier next time you fly knowing that air flow is minimized between seat rows and that airplane air is refreshed more often than the air in office buildings.

“You are closer to people in the enclosed space of an airplane than you are in an office building,” Gendreau said. “But something called ‘dilution ventilation’ means that even with microorganisms in an air space, if you have good ventilation, there will be less of a chance of transmission.”

The airborne germs on an airplane to be wary of, say both Gendreau and Gerba, are the ones coming from an ill traveler in a row nearby.

“When someone coughs or sneezes, 20 to 30,000 particles fly out about three feet and settle on nearby surfaces. Those microorganisms can live from several minutes up to 24 hours,” said Gendreau. “If you’re more than six feet away from that person, you don’t have much to fear. It won’t propel far enough.”

But if you touch something that a sick passenger's germs have landed on, you’re at risk.

Watch what you touch Travel health experts say that instead of worrying about the cabin air, travelers should make an effort to avoid touching objects such as airplane toilet seats, soap dispensers, seatbacks, armrests and especially tray tables that can harbor infectious germs. “There are surfaces that everyone touches and you have no idea if a person has sniffles and then walks down the aisle touching the seats and armrests as they go,” said Gendreau.

“We find a lot of flu and cold germs on airplane tray tables,” said environmental biologist Gerba, who takes test swabs during his frequent travels. “And there’s no protocol or government requirement for airlines to clean those between flights.”

And don’t think that all the germs you encounter when traveling are on an airplane. “Think about all the places you can get exposed to an illness from the time you leave home,” said Gendreau. “You park in a garage, take the escalator and touch the hand rest. You touch the buttons on the ATM. You go through the security checkpoint, you buy coffee, you sit on a seat. Any of these surfaces might be contaminated.”   

Get moving To steer clear of germs on airplanes, Gerba suggests trying to avoid sitting next to someone with a cold and even asking to be moved away from a sneezer if there’s an open seat.

If you can’t change your seat, Gendreau said, try turning the air vent above your seat to medium flow and pointing the air current just slightly in front of your face so that germs from those coughing or sneezing nearby are deflected away from you.

He also urges travelers to stay hydrated. “Our nasal passages, our eyes, and the mucous membranes in lips and mouths have enzymes to fight bacteria,” he said. “If you’re dehydrated, those enzymes won’t work well.” Gendreau suggest drinking at least 8 ounces of water for every two hours.

Mostly, though, keep your hands clean.

“Airlines do minimal cleaning of the airplanes during the day,” said Gendreau. “So when I travel, after I put my stuff in the overhead bin, I’ll take out my hand sanitizer, put some drops on the tray table and clean it with a tissue. I’ll also clean the seat belt and the armrests and goop up my hands. Then I know my seat area is sanitized.”

And then he sits back, relaxes and takes a deep breath.

Learning a Second Language Protects Against Alzheimer's

Want to protect against the effects of Alzheimer's? Learn another language

That's the takeaway from recent brain research, which shows that bilingual people's brains function better and for longer after developing the disease.
Psychologist Ellen Bialystok and her colleagues at York University in Toronto recently tested about 450 patients who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Half of these patients were bilingual, and half spoke only one language.
While all the patients had similar levels of cognitive impairment, the researchers found that those who were bilingual had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's about four years later, on average, than those who spoke just one language. And the bilingual people reported their symptoms had begun about five years later than those who spoke only one language.
"What we've been able to show is that in these patients… all of whom have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and are all at the same level of impairment, the bilinguals on average are four to five years older — which means that they've been able to cope with the disease," Bialystok said.
She presented her findings today (Feb. 18) here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Some results of this research were published in the Nov. 9, 2010 issue of the journal Neurology.
CT brain scans of the Alzheimer's patients showed that, among patients who are functioning at the same level, those who are bilingual have more advanced brain deterioration than those who spoke just one language. But this difference wasn't apparent from the patients' behaviors, or their abilities to function. The bilingual people acted like monolingual patients whose disease was less advanced.
"Once the disease begins to compromise this region of the brain, bilinguals can continue to function," Bialystok said. "Bilingualism is protecting older adults, even after Alzheimer's disease is beginning to affect cognitive function."
The researchers think this protection stems from brain differences between those speak one language and those who speak more than one. In particular, studies show bilingual people exercise a brain network called the executive control system more. The executive control system involves parts of the prefrontal cortex and other brain areas, and is the basis of our ability to think in complex ways, Bialystok said.
"It's the most important part of your mind," she said. "It controls attention and everything we think of as uniquely human thought."
Bilingual people, the theory goes, constantly have to exercise this brain system to prevent their two languages from interfering with one another. Their brains must sort through multiple options for each word, switch back and forth between the two languages, and keep everything straight.
And all this work seems to confer a cognitive benefit — an ability to cope when the going gets tough and the brain is besieged with a disease such as Alzheimer's.
"It's not that being bilingual prevents the disease," Bialystok told MyHealthNewsDaily. Instead, she explained, it allows those who develop Alzheimer's to deal with it better.
Moreover, other research suggests that these benefits of bilingualism apply not only to those who are raised from birth speaking a second language, but also to people who take up a foreign tongue later in life.
"The evidence that we have is not only with very early bilinguals," said psychologist Teresa Bajo of the University of Granada in Spain, who was not involved in Bialystok's research. "Even late bilinguals use these very same processes so they may have also the very same advantages."

Early baldness doubles risk of prostate cancer

Men who start to lose their hair by age 20 -- a syndrome known as pattern baldness -- are twice as likely to develop prostate cancer later in life, according to a new study.
The findings, published this week in the Annals of Oncology, could help identify men who should be screened early and more often for disease, the researchers said.
Prostate cancer is the commonest non-skin cancer among men worldwide and, after lung tumours, is the second biggest cause of death from cancer among men in the United States and Europe. Most cases occur among men aged in their sixties.
Earlier research has shown that sex hormones called androgens play a key role in the development of both pattern baldness and cancer of the prostate, a walnut-sized gland near the bladder crucial to the male reproductive system.
But the link between the two remained obscure, with at least one study suggesting that premature baldness actually pointed to a reduced risk of cancer.
To probe further, a team of scientists led by Philippe Giraud of Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris asked 669 men -- 338 of whom had a history of prostate cancer -- how bald they were at ages 20, 30 and 40, using standardised images for reference.
Men who did not start to lose their hair until age 30 or 40 showed no increased risk compared to the control group of developing the dreaded disease.
But for those who had early-onset balding -- a condition known to doctors as androgenic alopecia -- at age 20, the risk doubled.
Giraud said balding men should not panic. "The fact that a (young) man is losing his hair does not mean that he will have cancer," he said by telephone.
He also cautioned that the results would need to be verified in follow up studies.
But the findings suggest that premature balding could become a useful marker to help doctors screen for the disease, he said.
"Current prostate screening protocols are very controversial because some worry that systematic screening at 50 years old -- without taking other criteria into account -- will lead to over-treatment," he said.
Many countries have routine screening programmes for men in their middle age.
One of the problems, however, is that the so-called PSA antigen test, now 20 years old, cannot distinguish between low-risk tumours and aggressive lesions that are often fatal.
Antigen levels can also fluctuate according to the individual and may be skewed by prostate inflammation.
One out of two men lose their hair, but of the 50 percent of men who go partially or totally bald, only 10 to 15 percent suffer from androgenic alopecia, Giraud said.
Another study published last year showed that finger patterns could also help identify which men should undergo regular screening.
Men whose index fingers are longer than their ring, or fourth, fingers run a significantly lower risk of prostate cancer, the study found.

Fighting cancer with fibre-rich food

Eat food like medicine or you may have to consume medicines like food, says Dr Anupama Krishnan


In Ayurveda, cancer can broadly brought under the heading of arbuda — the word means ‘one hundred million’, which points towards the mad multiplication of abnormal cells.

Arbuda is negative reflection of energy, which involves the malfunctioning of the three doshas (namely vata, pita and kapha), the mutation of dhatu (tissue elements accounting for structural entity), the disruption of agni (error in digestion and transformation at the cellular, molecular and metabolic level), and the weakening of vyadhikshamatva (power of the body to resist progression of disease). All these factors collectively lead to the decline of ojus (vital essence of the human body).

Among the preventable and modifiable factors, diet management has a significant role to perform.

Food follies include poor selection, unhealthy combination, faulty processing and storage, poor quantity and faulty consumption (time of the day and season).

*Food selection should be based on the knowledge of one’s constitution, age, season, gender, and status of health.

*One should eat only after the previous meal has been digested.

*One must include the six rasas (sweet, sour, salt, pungent, bitter, astringent) in every meal.

*One must avoid over-eating.

*Incompatible and unhealthy combinations, such as milk and fish, milk and sour fruits, must be avoided.

*Eating in good company and in a clean place is advised.

*One must give due respect to food — avoid talking, laughing or walking when you eat.

*One must abstain from eating when the mind is agitated, distressed, depressed or anxious.

Ayurveda classifies food into:

Sattvik ahara: Food that pleasantly nourishes the body, like broken wheat porridge, whole wheat roti, buttermilk, seasonal fruits.

Rajasik ahara: Food linked to action and restlessness, like fried or spicy food, bitter/sour/ salty/ pungent food, fast food, chillies, alcohol.

Tamasik ahara: Food linked to a state of inertia, negative obstructive energy, lethargy, depression, addiction, extreme action. Such food causes bowel irritation, nausea, and degeneration. Unfortunately the flourishing food patterns of today are rajasik and tamasik, thereby resulting in stress, lack of insight and compassion.

Refined or raw?

On entering a bakery, one is tempted by the goodies made with maida (refined flour), which causes indigestion, heartburn and bloating of the abdomen. Moreover, saturated fats or transfats are used in puffs, cakes and biscuits to give them a long shelf life.

The use of unhealthy oil, reheated oil and deep frying food are harmful cooking practices. So is the excessive reliance on ready-to-eat/ processed food.

Ready-to-eat processed meats are known to contain nitrosamine and ajinomoto, which cause conditions ranging from skin allergy, heartburn, liver trouble, menstrual abnormalities, repeated abortions to cancer.

Parota and chicken curry are seen on almost every dining table at dinner time, when the ideal choice  should be light and easily digestible food. Another favourite meal is rich, spicy biryani followed by ice cream. All such meals can be categorised under virudhaahara (discrepant) foods.

The long-term consumption of such meals weakens the body, causes malfunctioning of the  system and renders the body vulnerable to ailments ranging from fever, indigestion, gastric disorders to obstinate skin disease and cancer.

Dietary do’s and dont’s
The daily consumption of vegetables and fruits is strongly advised. Plant products are cancer-fighting powerhouses as they are rich in fibre.

Fibre helps in moving toxins swiftly out of the gastro intestinal tract. Moreover, fibre reduces the production of fecapentanes, which are bacteria produced by decaying food in the stomach.

For those suffering from hereditary pre-cancerous colorectal polyp, a daily intake of 15 grams of wheat bran is suggested. Wheat bran, whole wheat, beans and legumes are important fibre sources.

Vegetables like carrot, spinach, yellow and dark green leafy vegetables contain beta carotene which neutralises free radicals.

Fruits like pomegranate, gooseberry and grapes have high anti-oxidant concentration. All seasonal fruits and vegetables contain organic compounds that inhibit carcinogens from accessing the target site. They protect the cell memory and prevent faulty metabolism. The phytochemicals present in brightly- coloured fruits and vegetables are immunity boosters and disease fighters.

Whole wheat and brown rice should be bought instead of polished varieties of rice and flour. Spices like garlic, ginger and turmeric are advised because they have proven evidence of cancer resistance.

In Ayurveda, milk and ghee are considered sattvik food items which should be consumed every day.

Indigenous oil should be the prime choice because, logically, the vegetation of a particular region will nourish its inhabitants.

However, use of reheated oil should be discouraged.

Meat consumption should be marginalised. The amount of meat consumed in a day should be equivalent to the size of one’s palm.

Eating fruits like gooseberries and oranges (rich in Vitamin C) is advised for obsessive meat eaters since Vitamin C can neutralise the harmful nitrosamine effect in processed meat to a large extent.

Cooking style should be preferably steaming and low-flame cooking instead of deep frying.

Cause of male baldness discovered

Experts say they have discovered what they believe is the cause of male pattern baldness.

It is not simply a lack of hair, but rather a problem with the new hair that is made.

A manufacturing defect means the hair produced is so small it appears invisible to the naked eye, giving the classic bald spot or receding hairline.

The US team told the Journal of Clinical Investigation the fault lies with the stem cells that make new hair.

It may be possible to 'cure' male baldness by restoring the normal function of these cells, the experts hope.

Ultimately, they hope to be able to develop a cream that could be applied to the scalp to help the stem cells grow normal hair.

Using men undergoing hair transplants as guinea pigs, the University of Pennsylvania team compared hair follicles in bald patches and hairy areas of the scalp.

Although bald areas had the same number of hair-making stem cells as normal scalp, there were fewer of a more mature type, called the progenitor cell.

This difference means that hair follicles in bald patches shrink rather than disappear and the new hairs made are microscopic compared to normal hair.

Dr George Cotsarelis who led the research said: "This implies that there is a problem in the activation of stem cells converting progenitor cells in bald scalp.

"The fact that there are normal numbers of stem cells in bald scalp gives us hope for reactivating those stem cells."

Until now it has been unclear what the exact cause of male pattern baldness is, but experts believe the male hormone testosterone is involved and baldness also tends to run in families.

Blood test for detecting Alzheimer's

A new technique could lead to a blood test for detecting Alzheimer's, a US study claims.

The small trial, published in the journal Cell, used thousands of artificial molecules to "fish" for the disease.
Researchers hope to use this method to diagnose other diseases earlier, including lung and pancreatic cancers.
The Alzheimer's Research Trust said it could result in a new test, but more research was needed.
The technique relies on the immune system's ability to recognise foreign material.
Proteins on viruses and bacteria are recognised as alien so the body produces antibodies, and the same is true for Alzheimer's.
So if you can test for the antibody, you can test for the disease - traditionally, however, this has been very hard to do.

The team at the Florida campus of the Scripps Research Institute took blood samples from six patients with Alzheimer's, six with Parkinson's disease and six healthy individuals.

They then used 15,000 synthetic peptoids (the bait), to "fish" for antibodies.
In this very small sample size, the researchers found two antibodies which identified Alzheimer's sufferers.
Dr Simon Ridley, head of research at the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said: "This very early research poses a new way of testing blood to diagnose Alzheimer's, but much more research must be done.
"We need to know how accurate and sensitive the test is and it also needs to be trialled in larger and more diverse groups of people."
There is still no cure for Alzheimer's, but using early testing could help with finding patients for clinical trials of future treatments.
Dr Ridley believes a test will help: "Detecting Alzheimer's and other dementias early is essential to defeating the condition. We know that treatments for many diseases can be more effective if given early and this is likely to be true for dementia."
Wider applications
The method was also successful in testing mice for a condition similar to multiple sclerosis and the report's authors hope the technique can be used to detect other diseases.
Professor Thomas Kodadek, from the Scripps Research Institute, said: "If this works in Alzheimer's disease, it suggests it is a pretty general platform that may work for a lot of different diseases. Now we need to put it in the hands of disease experts to tackle diseases where early diagnosis is key.
"Of course, this kind of simple diagnostic technology would have the biggest effect in diseases where early detection will have a significant effect on therapy, for example in various cancers."
The researchers are now investigating whether the method works in lung and pancreatic cancers.