Encouraging Health

Doctors have made an accidental breakthrough that may unlock how memory works, during experimental brain surgery to control the appetite of an obese man.

The memory stimulation, which could potentially pave the way to treat disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, was an unanticipated side-effect of the treatment for obesity.

Electrodes were pushed deep into the man’s brain, in this case to an area called the hypothalmus, thought to control appetite, and stimulated with an electric current.

Instead of suppressing the 30-stone patient’s hunger, the experimental technique of deep brain stimulation (DBS) unlocked vivid memories of an experience 30 years earlier.

The surprising result has raised the possibility of a ‘pacemaker’ for the brain and a pilot study for patients with early Alzheimer’s disease is now under way.

Lead researcher Professor Andres Lozano, of the Toronto Western Hospital, said: “This is a single case that was totally unexpected.

He said that once his team planted the electrodes, memory activity was most intense near a structure called the fornix, a grouping of fibres that carries signals within the limbic system, which is involved in memory and emotions and is situated next to the hypothalmus.

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alzheimers, brain surgery, obesity

alzheimers, brain surgery, obesity

Apples, bananas, and oranges are the most common fruits in both Western and Asian diets, and are important sources of vitamins, minerals, and fiber. A new study in the Journal of Food Science explores the additional health benefits of these fruits and reveals they also protect against neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s Disease.

Researchers at Cornell University investigated the effects of apple, banana, and orange extracts on neuron cells and found that the phenolic phytochemicals of the fruits prevented neurotoxicity on the cells.

Among the three fruits, apples contained the highest content of protective antioxidants, followed by bananas then oranges.

The authors concluded “[their] study demonstrated that antioxidants in the major fresh fruits consumed in the United States and Korea protected neuronal cells from oxidative stress….Additional consumption of fresh fruits such as apple, banana, and orange may be beneficial to improve effects in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.�

Browse Encouraging Health.com for more Alzheimers articles.

alzheimers, fruits

alzheimers, fruits

Not surprisingly, how big around you are at the waist is a good indicator of whether you have too much belly fat.

Although measurements that compare your hip and waist circumference (waist-to-hip ratio) or compare your height and weight (body mass index) are more precise and can be useful for research, your waist size alone can give you a pretty good idea of how much belly fat you have.

For most men, the risk factors for heart disease and other diseases increase with a waist size over 40 inches (102 centimeters).

To accurately measure your waist:

Place a tape measure around your bare abdomen just above your hipbone.
The tape measure should be snug — but not so tight it pushes into your skin.
Check to make sure the tape measure is level all the way around.
Relax, and measure your waist after you breathe out — no sucking in your belly!

What role does exercise play in losing belly fat?

To lose weight — and keep it off — you have to get regular exercise. This means doing something active most days of the week. Most people need at least 30 minutes a day of moderate exercise to stay healthy. But to shed the pounds in the first place, you may need longer periods of activity.

Aerobic exercise such as bicycling, swimming or strenuous yardwork — the kind of exercise that gets you breathing hard and gets your heart rate up — is the best kind of exercise to burn fat.

One great way to get regular aerobic exercise is to walk. Using a pedometer, a simple device that measures how many steps you take, can help you make sure you’re getting enough activity. For many men, walking 10,000 steps a day — plus eating right — is enough to stay at a healthy weight. Men with more weight to lose may need to walk farther. You may need to slowly build up the amount of exercise you get. Once you get the weight off, you may not need to do as much exercise to keep it off. But the more weight you lose, the more activity you’ll need to keep the pounds from coming back.

Can you reduce belly fat with sit-ups?

Sit-ups will make your abdominal muscles stronger, sure. And, you may look thinner by building your abdominal muscles because you can hold in your belly fat better. But strengthening your stomach muscles alone will not specifically reduce belly fat.

There are no particular “spot” exercises that are best at reducing belly fat. But most people do lose belly fat before losing fat in other parts of their body when they get more exercise of any kind.

Does age play a role in gaining belly fat?

Men tend to put on more belly fat as they get older. While some men struggle with their weight their whole life, a lot of men start to notice their increasing waistline in their 30s — and gradually put on pounds as the years go by. For many men, the eating and exercise habits that kept them thin in their youth are just not enough to keep the weight off as they get older. The solution? As you get older, you have to change the way you eat and how active you are to stay slim or lose weight.

Look around Encouraging Health for weight loss tips.

weight loss

weight loss

The nation’s largest pediatricians’ group on Monday said ABC should cancel the first episode of a new series because it perpetuates the myth that vaccines can cause autism.

ABC’s new drama, ‘Eli Stone,’ debuts on Thursday. It features British actor Jonny Lee Miller as a prophet-like lawyer who in the opening episode argues in court that a flu vaccine made a child autistic. When it is revealed in court that an executive at the fictional vaccine maker didn’t allow his own child to get the shot, jurors side with the family, giving them a huge award.

The show’s co-creators say they’re not anti-vaccine and would be upset if parents chose not to immunize their children after seeing the show.

But, said Dr. Renee R. Jenkins, president of the influential American Academy of Pediatrics, ‘A television show that perpetuates the myth that vaccines cause autism is the height of reckless irresponsibility on the part of ABC and its parent company, The Walt Disney Co.’

‘If parents watch this program and choose to deny their children immunizations, ABC will share in the responsibility for the suffering and deaths that occur as a result. The consequences of a decline in immunization rates could be devastating to the health of our nation’s children,’ Jenkins said in a statement.

Autism is a complex disorder featuring repetitive behaviors and poor social interaction and communication skills. Scientists generally believe that genetics plays a role in causing the disorder; a theory that a mercury-based preservative once widely used in childhood vaccines is to blame has been repeatedly discounted in scientific studies.

The academy released the text of a letter Jenkins wrote on Friday, addressed to Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group. In the letter, Jenkins writes that many viewers ‘trust the health information presented on fictional television shows, which influences their decisions about health care. ‘

Jenkins noted that erroneous reports in the United Kingdom linking the measles vaccine to autism prompted a decline in vaccination and the worst outbreak of measles in two decades.

Greg Berlanti, a co-creator of the show, said the episode is fictional but designed ‘to participate in what is a national conversation’ about a controversial subject. He said the boy who plays the autistic child has autism, but that the show’s producers have no connection with advocates involved in the autism debate.

‘We would be deeply upset’ if parents opted against vaccination because of the episode, Berlanti said.

Marc Guggenheim, who helped create the show, said the first episode shows how a fictional company covered up a study that raised questions about its product, and that the message is really about ‘the downside of the corporatization of America.’

Have questions about autism? Ask Marcie over on Discussing Autism.

autism, vaccine

autism, vaccine

‘Natural’ mental decline may be related to pollutants absorbed years before

Could it be that the “natural� mental decline that afflicts many older people is related to how much lead they absorbed decades before?

That’s the provocative idea emerging from some recent studies, part of a broader area of new research that suggests some pollutants can cause harm that shows up only years after someone is exposed.

The new work suggests long-ago lead exposure can make an aging person’s brain work as if it’s five years older than it really is. If that’s verified by more research, it means that sharp cuts in environmental lead levels more than 20 years ago didn’t stop its widespread effects.

Long-delayed effects
The notion of long-delayed effects is familiar; tobacco and asbestos, for example, can lead to cancer. But in recent years, scientists are coming to appreciate that exposure to other pollutants in early life also may promote disease much later on.

It certainly makes sense that if a substance destroys brain cells in early life, the brain may cope by drawing on its reserve capacity until it loses still more cells with aging, he said. Only then would symptoms like forgetfulness or tremors appear.

Linda Birnbaum, director of experimental toxicology at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said infant mice exposed to chemicals like PCBs show only very subtle effects in young adulthood. But more dramatic harm in areas like movement and learning appears when they reach old age.

Animal studies also show clear evidence that being exposed to harmful substances in the womb can harm health later on, she said. For example, rodents that encounter PCBs or dioxins before birth are more susceptible to cancer once they grow up.

The researchers estimated each person’s lifetime dose by scanning their shinbones for lead. Then they gave each one a battery of mental ability tests.

In brief, the scientists found that the higher the lifetime lead dose, the poorer the performance across a wide variety of mental functions, like verbal and visual memory and language ability. From low to high dose, the difference in mental functioning was about the equivalent of aging by two to six years.

Scary thought.

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lead exposure, mental decline

lead exposure, mental decline

An experimental helmet which scientists say could reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease within weeks of being used is to be tried out on patients.

The strange-looking headgear - which has to be worn for ten minutes every day - bathes the brain with infra-red light and stimulates the growth of brain cells.

Its creators believe it could reverse the symptoms of dementia - such as memory loss and anxiety - after only four weeks.

Alzheimer’s disease charities last night described the treatment as “potentially life- changing” - but stressed that the research was still at the very early stages.

lead researcher at the University of Sunderland Dr Abdel Ennaceur and Durham University s Dr Paul Chazot are pictured with Dr Gordon Dougal and a prototype cognitive helmet

Around 700,000 Britons have dementia, with around 500,000 suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

The helmet is the creation of Dr Gordon Dougal, a director of Virulite, a medical research company based in County Durham.

It follows a study at the University of Sunderland which found infra-red light can reverse memory loss in mice.

Dr Dougal claims that only ten minutes under the hat a day is enough to have an effect.

“Currently all you can do with dementia is to slow down the rate of decay - this new process will not only stop that rate of decay but partially reverse it,” he said.

Low level infra-red red is thought to stimulate the growth of cells of all types of tissue and encourage their repair. It is able to penetrate the skin and even get through the skull.

“The implications of this research at Sunderland are enormous - so much so that in the future we could be able to affect and change the rate at which our bodies age,” he said.

“We age because our cells lose the desire to regenerate and repair themselves. This ultimately results in cell death and decline of the organ functions - for the brain resulting in memory decay and deterioration in general intellectual performance.

“But what if there was a technology that told the cells to repair themselves and that technology was something as simple as a specific wavelength of light?”

The study at Sunderland found that exposing middle-aged mice to infrared light for six minutes a day for ten days improved their performance in a three-dimensional maze. In the human trials, due to start this summer, the scientists will use levels of infra-red that occur naturally in sunlight.

Neuroscientist Paul Chazot, who helped carry out the research, said: “The results are completely new - this has never been looked at before.”

An Alzheimer’s Society spokesman said: “A treatment that reverses the effects of dementia rather than just temporarily halting its symptoms could change the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people. We look forward to further research to determine whether this technique could help improve cognition in humans.”

See more articles right here on Encouraging Health on Alzheimers!

alzheimers disease, helmet

alzheimers disease, helmet

You’ve been staring at the computer for hours. You’ve worked late all week and have in-laws coming this weekend. Here’s how to identify the source of your headache so you can send it packing.

Perfume

“Strong scents bother me instantly,” says Bethany Hegedus, 35, a writer and receptionist from Brooklyn, New York. She can get a headache from a whiff of Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker or a stroll past a Yankee Candle. Her sense of smell is so acute that she can sniff out whether a co-worker has changed laundry detergents or hand lotions, a degree of sensitivity common among scent-driven headache sufferers. The headaches can be fleeting if exposure is brief — or they can last all day.

Why it hurts: Strong odors may activate the nose’s nerve cells, which stimulate the nerve system associated with head pain. Ironically, the offending scents are often pleasant, says Vincent Martin, M.D., a headache specialist at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.

What to do: Avoid perfumes, strong household cleansers, fragranced soaps and shampoos, and air fresheners. That’s a challenge when just about everything these days is “Clothesline Clean” or “Citrus Fresh,” but Hegedus does her best with unscented laundry detergent and deodorant, and wears no fragrances. At the office, she politely asks colleagues not to wear heavy perfumes. And if all else fails? “I keep a bottle of Excedrin Extra Strength at my desk,” she says.

Weather

Studies show that the headache-prone are especially attuned to changes in barometric pressure, rising temperatures, high humidity, lightning, and cloudy skies. Rebecca Kinney, a 31-year-old librarian from Newton, Massachusetts, calls herself a human barometer. Gray skies and rain on the way trigger excruciating pain. “The headache is usually on one side of my head, and it pulsates, as if someone is drilling into me,” she says.

Why it hurts: The meteorological shifts are thought to trigger chemical and electrical changes in the brain that irritate nerves — sometimes causing fairly dramatic pain. In fact, “50 to 60 percent of migraine patients will identify a weather change as the trigger for their headaches,” Martin says.

What to do: On bad-weather days, Kinney puts an ice compress on her eyes in the morning. “Sometimes I can catch the headache before it gets worse,” she says.

For more health tips and ideas, browse Encouraging Health!

headache

headache

Women on the birth control pill are protected from ovarian cancer, even decades after they stop taking it, scientists said. British researchers found that women taking the pill for 15 years halved their chances of developing ovarian cancer, and that the risk remained low more than 30 years later, though protection weakened over time. The findings were published Friday in The Lancet.

“Not only does the pill prevent pregnancy, but in the long term, you actually get less cancer as well,” said Valerie Beral, the study’s lead author and director of the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University. “It’s a nice bonus.” The study was paid for by Cancer Research UK and Britain’s Medical Research Council.

Beral and colleagues analyzed data from 45 studies worldwide, covering 23,257 women with ovarian cancer, of whom 31 percent were on the pill. They also looked at 87,303 women without ovarian cancer, of whom 37 percent were on the pill.

In both groups, the women on the pill took it for about five years. The researchers found that in rich countries, women taking oral contraceptives for a decade were less likely to develop ovarian cancer. Without the pill, about 12 women per 1,000 are expected to get ovarian cancer before age 75. But that figure dropped to 8 women per 1,000 in those on the pill.

The experts estimated that use of the pill so far has prevented about 200,000 cases of ovarian cancer and 100,000 deaths from the disease. Based on current levels of oral contraceptive usage, they guessed that 30,000 cases could be avoided every year.

But because there is no early test for ovarian cancer, which is often diagnosed late with a bad prognosis, doctors say that the pill’s protective effects against ovarian cancer outweigh the small increased risks of breast and cervical cancer — unless women already have a history of those cancers.

“This is the first medication that we know of to cut ovarian cancer risk,” Beral said. Other measures to protect against ovarian cancer are probably not things women would do unless they had more compelling reasons: having children or getting their tubes tied.

Still, most doctors do not suggest that women take the pill exclusively for its anticancer properties. The pill comes with side effects including risks of blood clots, migraines, and high blood pressure. Those risks are particularly elevated in women in their late 30s and in smokers.

In an editorial in The Lancet, experts called for better access to oral contraceptives, arguing that the drugs should now be available over the counter.

As the pill becomes more common in developing countries, experts estimate that ovarian cancer incidence will fall worldwide. In 2002, the United Nations estimated that 120 million women globally were on the pill, two-thirds of whom were in developing countries.

Browse Encouraging Health for more articles on how you can protect yourself against cancer.

the pill, cancer

the pill, cancer

A new study gives the strongest evidence yet that obesity surgery can cure diabetes.

Patients who had surgery to reduce the size of their stomachs were five times more likely to see their diabetes disappear over the next two years than were patients who had standard diabetes care, according to Australian researchers.

Most of the surgery patients were able to stop taking diabetes drugs and achieve normal blood tests.

“It’s the best therapy for diabetes that we have today, and it’s very low risk,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. John Dixon of Monash University Medical School in Melbourne, Australia.

The patients had stomach band surgery, a procedure more common in Australia than in the United States, where gastric bypass surgery, or stomach stapling, predominates.

Obesity is a major risk factor for diabetes, and researchers are furiously pursuing reasons for the link as rates for both climb. What’s known is that excess fat can cause the body’s normal response to insulin to go haywire. Researchers are investigating insulin-regulating hormones released by fat and the role of fatty acids in the blood.

In the Australian study, all the patients were obese and had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes during the past two years. Their average age was 47. Half the patients underwent a type of surgery called laparoscopic gastric banding, where an adjustable silicone cuff is installed around the upper stomach, limiting how much a person can eat.

Both groups lost weight over two years; the surgery patients lost 46 pounds on average, while the standard-care patients lost an average of 3 pounds.

Blood tests showed diabetes remission in 22 of the 29 surgery patients after two years. In the standard-care group, only four of the 26 patients achieved that goal. The patients who lost the most weight were the most likely to eliminate their diabetes.

Both patient groups learned about low-fat, high-fiber diets and were encouraged to exercise. Both groups could meet with a health professional every six weeks for two years.

The death rate for stomach band surgery, which can cost $17,000 to $20,000, is about 1 in 1,000. There were only minor complications in the study. Stomach stapling has a 2 percent death rate and costs $20,000 to $30,000.

In the United States, surgeons perform more than 100,000 obesity surgeries each year.

Diabetes in men can affect testosterone, too.

stomach stapling, diabetes, overweight

stomach stapling, diabetes, overweight

Vaccines aren’t just for kids, but far too few grown-ups are rolling up their sleeves, disappointed federal health officials reported Wednesday.

The numbers of newly vaccinated are surprisingly low, considering how much public attention a trio of new shots - which protect against shingles, whooping cough and cervical cancer - received in recent years.

Yet many seem to have missed, or forgotten, the news: A survey by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases found that aside from the flu, most adults have trouble even naming diseases that they could prevent with a simple inoculation.

“There are not yet very many adults taking full advantage of the great advancements in prevention that have been made in the past few years,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “By skipping vaccination, people are leaving themselves needlessly vulnerable to significant illness, long-term suffering and even death.”

The new CDC report found:

- Only about 2 percent of Americans 60 and older received a vaccine against shingles in its first year of sales. Yet there are more than 1 million new cases of shingles, an excruciating rite of aging, each year. Up to 200,000 shingles sufferers get a particularly bad type of nerve pain that can persist for months or even years. Anyone who ever had chickenpox is at risk, especially once they hit their 60s.

- About 2 percent of adults ages 18 to 64 got a booster shot against whooping cough in the two years since it hit the market. The cough so strong it can break a rib is making a big comeback, because the vaccine given to babies and toddlers starts wearing off by adolescence. Older patients usually recover, but whooping cough can cause weeks of misery. Worse, those people can easily spread the illness to not-yet-vaccinated infants, who are at risk of dying from the bacterial infection, also called pertussis.

The booster was added to another shot long recommended for adults, a combination booster against tetanus and diphtheria. The new triple combo is called “Tdap.”

- About 10 percent of women ages 18 to 26 have received at least one dose of a three-shot series that protects against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, that causes cervical cancer.

Price has to be part of the reason: The shingles shot costs around $150, and the three-shot HPV vaccine about $300, and insurance coverage varies. There’s no national program to guarantee access for adults who can’t afford vaccines as there is for child vaccines.

But cost can’t be the main reason: Adults aren’t taking full advantage of some cheap old standby vaccines, either. CDC found that just 69 percent of seniors get the flu shot; 66 percent have ever had a one-time pneumonia vaccine; and 44 percent had received a tetanus shot in the past 10 years.

If you only get one vaccination shot, be sure it’s for the flu!

vaccination, shingles, HPV, flu, pneumonia, tetanus

vaccination, shingles, HPV, flu, pneumonia, tetanus