New Hampshire Health News Digest

Exercise improves thinking, reduces diabetes risk in overweight children Exercise improves thinking, reduces diabetes risk in overweight children Just three months of daily, vigorous physical activity in overweight children improves their thinking and reduces their diabetes risk, researchers say. Studies of about 200 overweight, inactive children ages 7-11 also showed that a regular exercise program reduces body fat and improves bone density. Is exercise a magic wand that turns them into lean, healthy kids? No. They are still overweight but less so, with less fat, a healthier metabolism and an improved ability to handle life, says Dr. Catherine Davis, clinical health psychologist at the Medical College of Georgia and lead investigator. All study participants learned about healthy nutrition and the benefits of physical activity; one-third also exercised 20 minutes after school and another third exercised for 40 minutes. Children played hard, with running games, hula hoops and jump ropes...

Blue-blocking Glasses To Improve Sleep And ADHD Symptoms Developed Scientists at John Carroll University, working in its Lighting Innovations Institute, have developed an affordable accessory that appears to reduce the symptoms of ADHD. Their discovery also has also been shown to improve sleep patterns among people who have difficulty falling asleep. The John Carroll researchers have created glasses designed to block blue light, therefore altering a person's circadian rhythm, which leads to improvement in ADHD symptoms and sleep disorders. How the Glasses Work The individual puts on the glasses a couple of hours ahead of bedtime, advancing the circadian rhythm. The special glasses block the blue rays that cause a delay in the start of the flow of melatonin, the sleep hormone. Normally, melatonin flow doesn't begin until after the individual goes into darkness. [...] Studies indicate that promoting the earlier release of melatonin results in a marked decline of ADHD symptoms. Be...

This explains your doughnut addiction - Los Angeles Times Researchers have learned that rats overwhelmingly prefer water sweetened with saccharin to cocaine, a finding that demonstrates the addictive potential of sweets. Offering larger doses of cocaine did not alter the rats' preference for saccharin, according to the report. Scientists said the study, presented this week in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, might help explain the rise in human obesity, which has been driven in part by an overconsumption of sugary foods. In the experiment, 43 rats were placed in cages with two levers, one of which delivered an intravenous dose of cocaine and the other a sip of highly sweetened water. At the end of the 15-day trial, 40 of the rats consistently chose saccharin instead of cocaine. When sugar water was substituted for the saccharin solution, the results were the same, researchers said. Further testing the rat sweet tooth, scientists subjected 24 cocaine-...

Noblesville Daily Times - News, Sports, & Weather for Hamilton County, Indiana - Carol Rossetti: Syndrome X: Are you at risk? Since November is National Diabetes Month, I decided I would talk about how you could develop Type II Diabetes, how you can reverse it, and why as a society we are now seeing children as young as 9 developing an over 40 condition. Two of the key players in this life and death drama are glucose known as blood sugar and the hormone insulin. Because of the foods we eat, we are overdosing on these essential elements. Both substances accelerate the aging process. Syndrome X is caused primarily by a diet high in refined carbohydrates such as cereals, muffins, breads, and rolls, pastas, cookies, doughnuts, and sodas. These foods not only elevate your glucose and insulin levels out of sight but they are also non-foods as they do not supply the necessary vitamins, minerals, and amino acids necessary for good health. Historically, Type II Diabetes or Adult-On Set Di...

Democrats party of rich, study finds :: The Washington Times, America's Newspaper Democrats like to define themselves as the party of poor and middle-income Americans, but a new study says they now represent the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts. In a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data, Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, found that the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats. He also found that more than half of the wealthiest households were concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats hold both Senate seats. "If you take the wealthiest one-third of the 435 congressional districts, we found that the Democrats represent about 58 percent of those jurisdictions," Mr. Franc said.

Physical Inactivity Rapidly Induces Insulin Resistance and Microvascular Dysfunction in Healthy Volunteers -- Hamburg et al. 27 (12): 2650 -- Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology Conclusions— Physical inactivity was associated with the development of insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, increased blood pressure, and impaired microvascular function in healthy volunteers. Our findings may provide insight into the pathogenesis of vascular disease in sedentary individuals and emphasize that even short-term physical inactivity may have adverse metabolic and vascular consequences. Physical inactivity is associated with cardiovascular disease. We examined the effect of 5 days of bed rest on insulin resistance and vascular function in healthy subjects. Bed rest induced vascular dysfunction, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, and increased blood pressure. Our findings provide insight into the pathogenesis of vascular disease in sedentary individuals.

Could This Be It...............? - NeuroTalk Communities Breakthrough in Parkinson's gene therapy By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 10:01pm GMT 19/11/2007 Evidence that a breakthrough has been achieved in gene therapy for serious brain diseases has come with the release of the hard evidence that it works in Parkinson's disease. Patients were given injections of billions of copies of genetically altered viruses into parts of the brain The world's first gene therapy for a brain disease brought about significant improvements in the mobility of Parkinson's sufferers. American doctors said it could also herald a landmark in the treatment of other neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's or epilepsy but there was a lingering doubt that the reports by a dozen patients of improvements of up to 65 per cent in mobility could be anecdotal or due to the placebo effect. Today, Prof David Eidelberg of the of The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhas...

New research supports advice to eat complex carbs and avoid sugar (Vancouver – November 8, 2007) – Eating too much fructose and glucose can turn off the gene that regulates the levels of active testosterone and estrogen in the body, shows a new study in mice and human cell cultures that’s published this month in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. This discovery reinforces public health advice to eat complex carbohydrates and avoid sugar. Table sugar is made of glucose and fructose, while fructose is also commonly used in sweetened beverages, syrups, and low-fat food products. Estimates suggest North Americans consume 33 kg of refined sugar and an additional 20 kg of high fructose corn syrup per person per year. Glucose and fructose are metabolized in the liver. When there’s too much sugar in the diet, the liver converts it to lipid. Using a mouse model and human liver cell cultures, the scientists discovered that the increased production of lipid shut down a gene called SHBG (sex h...

Do Low-Carb Diets Help Diabetes? Small Study Shows Restricting Carbohydrates Reduces Need for Medications By Salynn Boyles WebMD Medical News Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD March 15, 2006 -- Should people with type 2 diabetesdiabetes follow very low carbohydrate diets? The American Diabetes Association (ADA) says "no", but a small study from Sweden suggests such a diet may be one of the best ways to manage the disease and reduce the need for medication. In the study, 16 obese patients with type 2 diabetes followed a calorie- and carbohydrate-restricted diet for 22 months. Most showed continuing improvements in blood sugar that were independent of weight lossweight loss; the average daily dosage of insulin among the 11 insulin-dependent patients was cut in half. "Many people are essentially cured of their [type 2] diabetes by low-carbohydrate diets, but that message is not getting out," says low-carb proponent and biochemistry professor Richard Feinman, PhD, of the SUN...

Stone Age feminism? - The Boston Globe Almost as provocatively, a husband-wife anthropological team has raised the possibility that female derring-do may have contributed to Neanderthals' demise. The University of Arizona's Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner, use archeological evidence to argue that Neanderthal females - unlike Homo sapien women of the Upper Paleolithic period - joined men in hunts at a time when stabbing giant beasts with a sharpish stone affixed to a stick represented the cutting edge of technology. That's courageous, but probably bad practice for a population that never numbered much more than 10,000 individuals. The loss of a few males to a flailing hoof or slashing antler is no big deal, in the long run. But losing females of child-bearing age could bring doom to a hard-pressed species. "All elements of [Neanderthal] society appear to have been involved in the main subsistence pursuit" of hunting large animals, Kuhn said. "There's not...

1 Awesome Gmail tip You Don’t Know about. Seriously. | MakeUseOf.com Just about when I thought I got everything out of Gmail, I discovered my top favorite feature. We have published over 30 tools in Gmail RoundUp 1 and almost 80 tools and tips in Gmail RoundUp 2 but never mentioned anything similar to this one. Tribute for this one goes to my ‘I am not into computers‘ type girlfriend. Let’s say that your email address is ‘GeorgeBush@gmail.com’, basically everything sent to any of the following email addresses will be forwarded to your primary email. * GeorgeBush@gmail.com * G.eorgeBush@gmail.com * Ge.orgeBush@gmail.com … … * GeorgeBus.h@gmail.com * GeorgeBush@googlemail.com * G.eorgeBush@googlemail.com * Ge.orgeBush@googlemail.com … … * GeorgeBus.h@googlemail.com And that’s not all, you can place as many dots as you want, it can be even something like ‘G.e.o.r.g.e.B.u.s.h@gmail.com’ and you’ll still get it on ‘GeorgeBush@gmail.com’ Additional...

New study by Dr. Richard Gearry shows new benefit for low-carb living Although all you ever hear in most media accounts of low-carb diets, especially the Atkins diet, are negative and demeaning comments, the fact is this healthy dietary approach has been showing some truly remarkable health benefits in the research laboratory this year. We've seen that low-carb helps burn more body fat , is effective for treating teenage obesity , has been shown to be a reasonable alternative to a low-fat diet , beats out all other diets for weight loss and health success , and so much more! Now we have another health benefit from livin' la vida low-carb: improves inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) , aka Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Although we saw widespread reporting about this study that alleges the Atkins diet increases the risk of bowel cancer earlier this year, the latest research from New Zealand shows low-carb living IMPROVES bowel health. - Lead researcher Dr. Richar...

Sarah Wang: GET SMART(ER) Concentrate, and Relax If you thought you'd have to spend all day with your nose in a book to get smart, think again. There's evidence that meditation does wonders for the thinker. While studying the brain structure of people who practice Buddhist insight meditation regularly, Massachusetts General Hospital researchers found meditators have thicker brain matter in the area that deals with executive function, which refers to our ability to plan, think abstractly, understand rules and initiate appropriate responses. The study didn't look at whether those with thicker brain matter have higher-functioning brains, says lead study author Sara Lazar, but the team aims to find out. In the meantime, Richard Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, offers plenty of support for meditation. Davidson has long studied the impact of meditation ...

Life Extension Daily News A brain-imaging study of genetically obese rats conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory provides more evidence that dopamine - a brain chemical associated with reward, pleasure, movement, and motivation - plays a role in obesity. The scientists found that genetically obese rats had lower levels of dopamine D2 receptors than lean rats. They also demonstrated that restricting food intake can increase the number of D2 receptors, partially attenuating a normal decline associated with aging. "This research corroborates brain-imaging studies conducted at Brookhaven that found decreased levels of dopamine D2 receptors in obese people compared with normal-weight people," said Brookhaven neuroscientist Panayotis (Peter) Thanos, lead author of the current study, which will be published in the journal Synapse and is now available online. It's not clear whether reduced receptor levels are a cause or consequence of obes...