Therapist Unlimited Blog

Those persons who wish to avoid depression when they reach middle age better start eating healthy diet now.
A recent study from the United Kingdom has shown that eating healthy foods such as  high proportion of fruits, vegetables and fish, protects middle aged people against depression compared to a processed food diet containing a high proportion of high fat dairy
food, processed meat, fried food, refined grains and sugar-laden desserts.
The research was made possible through the effort of researchers from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London (UCL), UK and the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), and University of Montpellier, France.
Based on their study, the researchers revealed that much research on diet and depression tends to focus on individual nutrients so they thought they would look at links between overall dietary patterns and depression.
To get the data, the researchers looked at 3,486 participants of average age 57 years (nearly three quarters were men) who were part of the Whitehall II study.
The Whitehall II study was created by co-author and UCL Professor Sir Michael Marmot to investigate links between disease and social class, psychosocial factors and life style. It began by looking at the health of working people, and is now also looking to answer questions about how previous and current circumstances affect health and quality of life in an ageing group of participants.
The data allowed the researchers to identify two dietary patters: a whole food diet and a processed food diet. The whole food diet comprised mainly fresh fruits and vegetables and fish, while the processed diet comprised mainly sweetened desserts, fried foods, high fat
dairy foods, processed meat and refined grains.
To assess depression, the researchers used self-reported data that had been gathered five years after the dietary data using the CES-D scale. CES-D, short for Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale, is a commonly used self-report questionnaire for assessing depression.
It asks a series of multiple choice questions about how the participant has been feeling over the past week, covering topics such as concentration, loss of appetite, worry, how well they have been able to shake off depressive moods, quality of sleep, feelings of
loneliness, self-worth, energy levels, and so on.

 

 

 

To avoid depression in middle age it is time to engage in a healthy diet now.

 

 

 

When they analysed the results and ruled out potential confounders such as age, gender, education, smoking, exercise, and chronic diseases, the researchers found that:
* Participants in the top 33 per cent (top tertile) of the whole food diet pattern, ie whose diet most closely matched the whole food diet, had a 26 per cent lower risk of receiving a CES-D depression assessment five years later (odds ratio 0.74, with 95 per cent probability of this being in the range 0.56 to 0.99) compared to the bottom 33 per cent (bottom tertile), ie whose diet least closely matched the whole food diet.
* In contrast, participants whose diet was high in processed foods had a 58 per cent higher risk of receiving a CES-D depression rating five years later.
The researchers concluded that:
"In middle-aged participants, a processed food dietary pattern is a risk factor for CES-D depression 5 years later, whereas a whole food pattern is protective."
According to BBC News, co-author Dr Archana Singh-Manoux, who works at UCL and INSERM, suggested there was a possibility that the finding could be explained by a lifestyle factor they had not accounted for.
In other words the study does not prove that a processed food diet causes depression: it could be that people destined to become depressed become inclined to eat more processed foods, that there is a yet undiscovered factor behind both.
However, when results as strong as these emerge, and a consistent pattern linking diet and depression is found by several studies, it would tend to suggest that a healthy diet does protect against mental ill health.
The Chief Executive of the UK-based Mental Health Foundation, Dr Andrew McCulloch told the BBC that:
"This study adds to an existing body of solid research that shows the strong links between what we eat and our mental health."
He said major studies like this were crucial in helping us understand more about how diet contributes to mental illness. He said people in the UK were increasingly adopting unhealthy diets, and eating less nutritious and fresh food and more saturated fats and sugars.

 

 

A recent medical study has shown that doing exercises during pregnancy offers huge rewards to mothers wishing to do some breastfeeding for their children.
Based on the study it was discovered that new mothers who are breastfeeding their babies may need more aerobic and resistance exercise in order to combat temporary bone loss caused by calcium depletion.
Cheryl Lovelady, Ph.D., and her research team measured bone mineral density in 20 women four to 20 weeks postpartum and found that those who didn’t exercise lost around 7 percent of their lower-spine bone density in that time period.
"During lactation, women transfer around 200 milligrams of calcium per day from their own stores to their breast milk," Lovelady said. "Calcium is critically linked to bone density and health, and this depletion can result in loss of bone mineral density. When mothers wean their infants, bone mineral density usually returns to normal levels.
We proposed that weight-bearing exercise would minimize bone losses during lactation and decrease the risk of osteoporosis later in life."
Exercise especially strength training can slow bone loss during lactation, the study found.

 

 

Doing some form of exercises offers huge benefits to pregnant women.

 

Women who combined strength training and aerobic exercise three days a week kept their lower-spine bone mineral density loss to just 4.8 percent highly preferable to the 7-percent loss in the non-exercising group.
In addition, regular weight-bearing exercise has an added benefit for moms trying to shed post-pregnancy weight: the regular exercisers in the study significantly improved their body composition compared to the non-exercisers, lowering their body fat percentage and increasing lean mass, even without dietary intervention. Exercisers increased their one-repetition maximal strength anywhere from 31 to 221 percent.
"Women in our study found themselves overall healthier and stronger after completing the post-partum exercise program, which lasted just 16 weeks," Lovelady said.
"Moreover, implementing this exercise into daily life can help entire families get active and improve their overall health."

 

A popular saying state that the eyes is the windows to the soul.
But recent medical research has shown that eyes is more than just a window for the soul since it can also offer important clues  to your risk of heart disease and stroke.
Researchers of the Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA) are currently doing an extensive study to prove that blood vessels in the retina at the back of the eye reflect changes in blood vessels in other parts of the body, especially the brain, kidneys and heart.
The team of medical experts believed that that blood vessels in the retina can be photographed and the images analysed by a computer to accurately determine a person’s risk of heart attack or stroke cardiovascular diseases that change the appearance of blood vessels in the eye.
Lead CERA researcher, Professor Tien Wong, explained through their study they wish to show that that combining this non-invasive retinal scan with the results from current risk assessment methods will improve precision and reliability in predicting cardiovascular disease.
Wong and his team has taken thousands of eye images and created a program that recognises common features of conditions that cause damage to be seen on the retina.

 

 

Your eyes is not only the window of the soul but also an indicator if a man suffers from a form of heart disease.

 

 

Once a person has symptoms of cardiovascular disease, damage has already been done to the body. So finding and treating high risk people early, even before they have symptoms, could minimise blood vessel damage and potentially avoid heart attack or stroke.
At present, doctors estimate a person’s statistical chance of developing cardiovascular disease by looking at individual factors such as whether they smoke, their family history, weight, blood cholesterol and blood pressure. Once you get symptoms, more extensive and sometimes invasive tests, such as angiogram are needed to confirm the result and assess severity of damage to the arteries of the heart or elsewhere.
Professor Wong said, "Results from the retinal scan would be delivered to GPs for a better picture of their patient’s health.
Dr. Christine Bennett, chair of the MBF Foundation Steering Committee and Bupa Chief Medical Officer*, went on to say, "This early assessment of the likelihood that a person will develop diseases like heart disease, stroke or even type 2 diabetes has the potential to significantly improve quality of life, reduce hospitalisations and the 50,000 deaths each year caused by cardiovascular disease."
Once a person knows their risk they may be able to delay the onset of developing cardiovascular disease by modifying their lifestyle accordingly.
"We know that smoking, too much alcohol, inactivity and poor nutrition are bad for our health but seeing the evidence not with, but in, your own eyes could be the wake-up call that triggers change," Bennett said.
 

If you find yourself more concerned about highly publicized dangers that grab your immediate attention such as terrorist attacks, while forgetting about the more mundane threats such as global warming, you’re not alone.
And you can’t help it because it’s human nature, according to a new study led by University of Colorado at Boulder psychology Professor Leaf Van Boven. That’s because people tend to view their immediate emotions, such as their perceptions
of threats or risks, as more intense and important than their previous emotions.
In one part of the study focusing on terrorist threats, using materials adapted from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Van Boven and his research colleagues presented two scenarios to people in a college laboratory depicting warnings about travelling abroad to two countries.
Participants were then asked to report which country seemed to have greater terrorist threats. Many of them reported that the country they last read about was more dangerous.
"What our study has shown is that when people learn about risks, even in very rapid succession where the information is presented to them in a very clear and vivid way, they still respond more strongly to what is right in front of them," Van Boven said.
With that in mind, Van Boven says one of the take-home messages from the study is that when communicating to the public, people must be mindful of how and when they publicize threats, which is a tall task in the around-the-clock news cycle of today.
"Whatever the threat of the season is can ‘crowd out’ concern about other threats even if those other threats are actually more dangerous," Van Boven said. "Because we are so emotionally influenced when it comes to assessing and reacting to threats, we may ignore very dangerous threats that happen not to be very emotionally arousing."

 

 

 

Be careful with your emotion since it could lead you to astray.

 

 

Human emotions stem from a very old system in the brain, Van Boven says. When it comes to reacting to threats, real or exaggerated, it goes against the grain of thousands of years of evolution to just turn off that emotional reaction. It’s not something most people can do, he said.
"And that’s a problem, because people’s emotions are fundamental to their judgements and decisions in everyday life," Van Boven said. "When people are constantly being bombarded by new threats or things to be fearful of, they can forget about the genuinely big problems, like global warming, which really need to be dealt with on a large scale with public
support."
In today’s 24-hour society, talk radio, the Internet and extensive media coverage of the "threat of the day" only exacerbate the trait of focusing on our immediate emotions, he said.
"One of the things we know about how emotional reactions work is they are not very objective, so people can get outraged or become fearful of what might actually be a relatively minor threat," Van Boven said. "One worry is some people are aware of
these kinds of effects and can use them to manipulate our actions in ways that we may prefer to avoid."
The study, which involved undergraduate students as subjects, was published in the August edition of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Michaela Huber, a doctoral student of psychology and neuroscience at CU-Boulder and Assistant Professor Katherine White of the University of Calgary co-authored the study.
Van Boven said the study would be of particular interest to policymakers.
"If you’re interested in having an informed citizenry you tell people about all the relevant risks, but what our research shows is that is not sufficient because those things still happen in sequence and people will still respond immediately to whatever happens to be in front of them," he said. "In order to make good decisions and craft good policies we need to know how people are going to respond."
 

 

 

A recent medical study has shown that a great number of prostate patients do not anymore need treatment for their medical condition.
In the largest study of its kind, the international team of pathologists studied an initial 4,000 prostate cancer patients over a period of 15 years to further understanding into the natural progression of the disease and how it should be managed.
The research could be used to develop a blood test to distinguish between aggressive and non-aggressive forms of prostate cancer.
Globally, prostate cancer is the fifth most common malignancy and accounts for 13% of male deaths in the UK. Studies have shown that men with non-aggressive prostate cancer can live with the disease untreated for many years, but aggressive cancer requires immediate treatment.
Pathologists found that the presence of a protein, called Hsp-27, in cancer cells was an indicator that the disease will progress and require treatment. The study showed, however, that in more than 60% of cases the protein was not expressed and the cancer could be managed by careful monitoring, rather than with active invention methods, such as drug treatment or surgery.
The protein normally has a positive function in the body, helping healthy cells survive when they are placed under ’stressful’ conditions, such as disease or injury. If the protein is expressed in cancer, however, it can prevent the diseased cells from dying, allowing the cancer to progress. The team, supported by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and in collaboration with scientists in London and New York, found that the protein can be used to predict how the disease will behave and could help doctors advise patients on how the disease could affect their daily lives.

 

 

 

A recent study has shown that prostate cancer do not necessarily need medical treatment.

 

 

Professor Chris Foster, Head of the University’s Division of Pathology, explains: "Cancer of any kind is a very distressing disease and has the ability to impact on every aspect of a person’s life. Chemotherapy and surgery can also have a significant effect on health and wellbeing and that is why it is important that we first understand the biological nature of the disease and how it will behave in each individual patient, before determining if and when a person needs a particular type of treatment.
"By studying the disease in a large number of men throughout the UK and over a long period of time, we have been able to get a more complete picture of how to manage the disease successfully, while limiting the negative impact it can have on a patient’s life. The study also demonstrates the role of modern of Pathology, not only in establishing diagnoses but in determining if the subsequent management of individual patients is biologically appropriate for their particular condition.
"The protein  or biomarker we have identified provides us with a signal that the disease will continue to progress. We know that at the point this marker is expressed, medics need to administer treatment to kill the cancer cells. We have shown that in the majority of cases, however, this marker is not expressed and therefore patients do not necessarily need to go through treatment to lead a normal life."

 

According to a latest research it was discovered that pain in elderly with dementia are often undetected.
The researchers discovered that the elderly who suffer from dementia aren’t able to say when something hurts or is sore.
They may demonstrate their pain through behaviours like rocking or striking out, and we often dismiss these actions as symptoms of the dementia instead of pain, which is usually from a different problem.
The researchers revealed arthritis, diabetic neuropathy, fractures, muscular contractures, bruises, abdominal pain and mouth ulcers are among the list of common ailments that go undetected.

 

 

 

The family of elderly suffering from dementia need to be vigilant since studies show the pain suffered by these people often goes undetected.

 

 

The research team explained it is important for those who live or work with persons with dementia to know how to identify when an elderly person is experiencing pain and receive treatment sooner rather than later.
The University of Alberta’s Cary Brown, PhD, has a new tool to help.
She has developed an on-line workshop and toolkit for caregivers, health-care providers, family members and friends of people with dementia.
The researcher from the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine created an evidence-based website with a narrated presentation on pain and dementia, a downloadable resource pack for family members, a downloadable pain log and a facilitator’s toolkit with background material, a planning guide, promotional material and supplemental information for organizations who wish to put on a workshop.

 

 

 

According to a recent medical study music might also help premature infants learn to suckle better and reduce their pain.
Dr. Manoj Kumar, an assistant clinical professor in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry’s
Department of Pediatrics said if confirmed, this would be a simple, low-cost way to help these tiny babies feed on their own faster and move them out of neonatal units sooner.
Kumar said if you can get them to feed earlier then you can save health-care resources.
Kumar added music also appears to reduce infants’ pain during circumcision and some medical procedures.
He explained music is increasingly being played in neonatal units on an informal basis because parents and caregivers have a perception that it’s beneficial for the infants.
Kumar, a clinical epidemiologist who also has training in health economics and several of his colleagues associated with the Alberta Research Centre for Child Health Evidence (ARCHE) in the Pediatrics Department decided to conduct a rigorous, systematic review of medical literature to see what research has shown.
Of 180 studies the U of A team examined, nine randomly controlled trials published between 1989 and 2006 met the review criteria and were included.

 

 

Those who have premature babies try to play music to improve their feeding and reduce pain at the same time.

 

These nine studies were all so different that the review team says it was not possible to reach any definitive conclusion.
But the team did find much "preliminary evidence that music may have beneficial effects in terms of physiological parameters, behavioural states and pain reduction during painful medical procedures."
"Music may also improve oral feeding among premature infants," the U of A researchers say.
In particular, Kumar notes one 2003 U.S. study reported that feeding rates increased significantly with use of a pacifier-activated lullaby (PAL) system in preterm infants who previously were having difficulty in making the transition to oral feeding. This result warrants further investigation, given its potential implications for health-care budgets, he says.
The PAL system consisted of a soother connected to a pressure transducer which was further connected to a tape recorder.
When the baby sucked on the soother, the pressure activated recorded lullabies.
Another high-quality pilot study, conducted in the U.S. in 2001, looked at whether music could help with pain control during circumcision. It found that playing recorded lullabies and nursery rhymes lowered pain levels as measured by the babies’ heart rate and oxygen saturation, and according to established pain scales that measure infants’ behavioural responses.
Moreover, the researchers said the link between late motherhood and longevity could be something that is not inherited. It could be good nutrition or good living, suggesting that if you are a healthier mom you live longer.
With these findings, women who gave birth late are very happy since they will more opportunities to be with their baby despite their old age.

 

A recent research has shown that playing the computer game tetris offers benefits to human brain.
According to the study made by Mind Research Network in Albuquerque brain imaging they conducted shows playing Tetris leads to a thicker cortex and may also increase brain efficiency.
To get the data, the researchers used brain imaging and Tetris to investigate whether practise makes the brain efficient because it increases gray matter.
The research team for 30 minutes a day over a three-month period, 26 adolescent girls played Tetris, a computer game requiring a combination of cognitive skills.
The girls completed both structural and functional MRI scans before and after the three-month practise period, as did girls in the control group who did not play Tetris.
A structural MRI was used to assess cortical thickness, and a functional MRI was used to assess efficient activity.

 

 

It’s time to play tetris since it is beneficial to the brain.

 

The girls who practised showed greater brain efficiency, consistent with earlier studies. Compared to controls, the girls that practised also had a thicker cortex, but not in the same brain areas where efficiency occurred.
Dr. Rex Jung, a co-investigator on the Tetris study and a clinical neuropsychologist revealed one of the most surprising findings of brain research in the last five years was that juggling practise increased gray
matter in the motor areas of the brain.
Jund added they did their tetris study to see if mental practise increased cortical thickness, a sign of more gray matter.
He said if it did, it could be an explanation for why previous studies have shown that mental practise increases brain efficiency.
He added more gray matter in an area could mean that the area would not need to work as hard during Tetris play.
Furthermore, the researchers hope to continue this work with larger, more diverse samples to investigate whether the brain changes we measured revert back when subjects stop playing Tetris.
Similarly, they are interested if the skills learned in Tetris, and the associated brain changes, transfer to other cognitive areas such as working memory, processing speed, or spatial  reasoning.

 

 

Contrary to what most people think hookah smoking is as deadly as cigarette puffing recent medical studies has shown.
Brian Primack, M.D., Ed.M., M.S., assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Pitt’s School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "What they don’t realize", revealed hookah smokers are are exposing themselves to many of the same toxic chemicals contained in cigarettes.
A hookah, or waterpipe, is used to inhale tobacco that usually is flavored or sweetened.
The opening of hundreds of hookah cafes in the U.S. over the past decade demonstrates the increasing popularity of hookah smoking.
Primacj said although the aesthetic appeal of the practise suggests that it is not harmful, studies show that hookah tobacco smoke is just as toxic as cigarette smoke and is associated with substantial harm and addictiveness.
For example, one average hookah smoking session exposes the user to 40 times the tar of a single cigarette.
Meanwhile according to a latest study made by the University of Pittsburgh, college students who participate in intramural or club sports are less likely to smoke cigarettes than non-athletes, but are more likely than non-athletes to smoke from a hookah.

 

 

Smoking hookah is as deadly as puffing cigarettes.
 

 

 

To get the data, researchers at Pitt examined survey data from 8,745 college-age individuals who participated in the National College Health Assessment administered by the American College Health Association in 2008, and found that 33 percent of the respondents reported participating in varsity, club and intramural sport in the preceding 12 months.
Overall, 29.5 percent of the total sample reported having smoked from a hookah.
Consistent with what has been reported in the past, all types of athletes were less likely than non-athletes to smoke cigarettes.
Similarly, varsity athletes were 22 percent less likely than non-athletes to have smoked tobacco from a hookah.
However, club and intramural participants were each 15 percent more likely than non-athletes to have smoked tobacco from a hookah.

 

 

Middle-aged white women in the United States had reasons to be careful these days.
This developed after recent data has shown that death rate from unintentional poisoning already triples in the US for these people.
Based on the study made by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Injury Research and Policy it was discovered that white women between 45 and 64 years old experienced a 230 percent increase in the rate of poisoning mortality over the study period.
The data they gathered also showed that white men in this age group experienced an increase of 137 percent.
The researchers also discovered that mortality rates from falls varied widely across age and gender.
The researchers revealed the death rate from falls increased 38 percent for white men and 48 percent for white women 65 and older.
The research team explained mortality rate did not increase significantly for older blacks of either sex.
The researchers said overall, 89 percent of the total increase in unintentional injury deaths in the U.S. between 1999 and 2005 was due to poisoning among those 15 to 64 years old and falls among those 45 and older, which increased by about 11,200 and 6,600, respectively.

 

 

 

Middle-aged women need to be careful since they are prone to unintentional poisoning.

 

 

 

Study co-author Susan P. Baker, MPH, a professor with the Bloomberg School’s Center for Injury Research and Policy said the large increases in the number of deaths attributable to poisoning and falls underscore the need for more research on the specific circumstances involved.
Baker added that while we don’t know the cause behind the recent increase in falls mortality, it appears that the increase in poisonings is largely due to prescription drugs.
She said national prevention efforts are needed to control the abuse of prescription drugs and limit access.
She added prescriptions for opioid analgesics to address pain have increased dramatically in the past decade, and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that prescription drugs have replaced illegal drugs such as cocaine as the most prominent substances in fatal drug overdoses.
In addition to falls and poisonings, four other leading causes of intentional injury deaths were identified for subsequent analyses: suffocation, drowning, fire/burns and motor vehicle crashes. Suffocation rates generally decreased or had no significant change, but they greatly increased in white children less than one year old.
Drowning rates increased among white men 65 and older and among white middle-aged women, but decreased in black males 5 to 24 years old, black females 5 to14 years old, and whites females 15 to 24 years.
Mortality from fires and burns decreased the most.
The rate of dying due to a motorcycle crash more than doubled in Hispanic males 15 to 24 years and in white males ages 45 to 64 years.