Knowledge Update

Sydney, June 2 (IANS) Eating the right amount of fibre from breads, cereals, and fruits can help us avoid disease and disability into old age -- a benchmark of successful ageing, says a study led by an Indian-origin researcher.

Using data compiled from the Blue Mountains Eye Study, a population-based study that examined a cohort of more than 1,600 adults aged 50 years and older for long-term sensory loss risk factors and systemic diseases, the researchers explored the relationship between carbohydrate nutrition and healthy aging.

They found that out of all the factors they examined -- which included a person's total carbohydrate intake, total fibre intake, glycemic index, glycemic load, and sugar intake -- it was the fibre that made the biggest difference to what the researchers termed "successful aging."

Successful ageing was defined as including an absence of disability, depressive symptoms, cognitive impairment, respiratory symptoms, and chronic diseases including cancer, coronary artery disease, and stroke.

"Out of all the variables that we looked at, fiber intake -- which is a type of carbohydrate that the body can't digest -- had the strongest influence," said lead author Bamini Gopinath, Associate Professor at The Westmead Institute for Medical Research in Australia.

The findings were published in the journal The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.

"Essentially, we found that those who had the highest intake of fiber or total fiber actually had an almost 80 percent greater likelihood of living a long and healthy life over a 10-year follow-up. That is, they were less likely to suffer from hypertension, diabetes, dementia, depression, and functional disability," she explained.​

​London, June 1 (IANS) Countering a common perception, a new study has found no evidence of heart damage from long-term endurance training by elite master athletes.

While the media reports with depressing regularity the sudden cardiac death of endurance athletes, Belgium scientists earlier published a study that concluded that repeated bouts of intensive endurance exercise at the elite level may result in the pathological enlargement of the right ventricle, which, according to the article, is associated with potential health hazards including sudden cardiac death.

The publication of the study in European Heart Journal a few years ago was the cause of considerable debate among experts in the medical and sports communities. 

Sports medicine physicians at Saarland University in Germany have now tested the conclusions of that study by examining the hearts of elite master endurance athletes.

The findings of the latest study, published in the journal Circulation, refute the hypothesis proposed by their Belgian colleagues. 

The research team could find no evidence that years of elite-level endurance training causes any long-term damage to the right ventricle. 

The researchers examined 33 elite master athletes (average age: 47) and compared them to a control group of 33 men who were similar in terms of age, size and weight but who had not done any kind of endurance exercise. 

The group of athletes, which included former Olympians as well as previous Ironman participants and champions, have been training at an elite level for around 30 years and still continue to train for an average of about 17 hours a week.

The scientists were able to confirm that the hearts of these athletes, who have been engaged in elite level endurance activities for many years, were, as expected, significantly larger and stronger than those of members of the control group. 

"But we found no evidence of lasting damage, pathological enlargement or functional impairment of either the right or left ventricle in the athletes who had been doing long-term intensive elite-level endurance exercise,” explained one of the researchers Philipp Bohm, who is now working at University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland.​

​New York, May 27 (IANS) If you are facing the situation at home where your little one -- engaged in playing video games on smartphone or watching favourite cartoons on TV -- ignores your call to pick up a glass of water or switch off that AC, you are not alone.

According to the researchers, communication between mother-child is reducing as not just teenagers but even preschoolers hooked to smartphones, video games and television are not listening if asked a question or to do a household chore.

The findings also showed that children of mothers with graduate degrees had less electronic media exposure than kids of mothers with high school degrees or some college courses. 

"The kids whose mothers had advanced degrees often watched educational programmes. In addition, these highly educated mothers were more likely than other mothers to discuss media with their children," said lead study author Nicholas Waters from University of Michigan in the US.

Unlike previous research that has relied on self-reports by parents tracking their children's media usage, the team used enhanced audio equipment to track the home environment of preschoolers as they interacted with parents. 

They examined 44 families and the recordings averaged nearly 10 hours daily. 

The recordings documented the format of media used, duration and communication between the mother and child.

Researchers also examined demographic differences in media use and mother-child communication about media.

"Importantly, children of mothers with less than a graduate degree were exposed to media without any dialogue related to the media content for the vast majority of the time," added study co-author Sarah Domoff. 

This is important, she said, because parents' "active mediation" of television and other types of media may mitigate risks associated with media exposure.

The study was scheduled to be presented at the annual association for psychological science conference in Chicago on May 29.​

​Toronto, May 25 (IANS) Are you turning to artificial sweeteners or other sugar substitutes to lose weight? Although these sweeteners may help obese individuals reduce and cut calories, they may also have negative health effects, a study warns.

Artificial sweeteners are not digested by the body. However, the recent study suggests that bacteria in the gut may be able to break down artificial sweeteners, resulting in negative health effects. 

Currently, there are many new sugar substitutes that are used in foods and beverages and are marketed as "sugar-free" or "diet," including soft drinks, chewing gum, jellies, baked goods, candy, fruit juice and ice cream and yogurt.

"Our study shows that individuals with obesity who consume artificial sweeteners, particularly aspartame, may have worse glucose management than those who don't take sugar substitutes," said Jennifer Kuk from York University's school of kinesiology and health science in Canada.

For the study published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, data from 2,856 adults from the "Third National Health and Nutrition Survey" (NHANES III) was used. 

Individuals reported their diet over the past 24 hours and were categorised as consumers of artificial sweeteners -- aspartame or saccharin -- or high or low consumers of natural sugars -- sugar or fructose. 

The diabetes risk was measured as the ability to manage blood sugars using an oral glucose tolerance test.

The results showed that those who used artificial sweeteners, particularly aspartame, may have worse glucose management than those who don't take sugar substitutes

"We didn't find this adverse effect in those consuming saccharin or natural sugars," Kuk added.

"We will need to do future studies to determine whether any potentially negative health effects of artificial sweeteners outweigh the benefits for obesity reduction," Kuk stated.

Further investigation is needed to determine if there are any health effects of using these sweeteners, the researchers noted.​

​London, May 26 (IANS) Are you a workaholic? If so, you may be at an increased risk of having psychiatric disorders like anxiety and depression, warns a new study, suggesting that taking work to the extreme may be a sign of deeper psychological or emotional issues.

The findings showed that workaholics are at greater risk of anxiety, depression and disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), -- a chronic condition including attention difficulty, hyperactivity and impulsiveness -- obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) -- excessive thoughts that lead to repetitive behaviours.

"Workaholics scored higher on all the psychiatric symptoms than non-workaholics," said Cecilie Schou Andreassen, researcher and clinical psychologist specialistat the University of Bergen (UiB) in Norway.

Among the study participants, 32.7 percent workaholics met criteria for ADHD in contrast to 12.7 percent non-workaholics.

While 25.6 percent workaholics fulfilled the criteria for OCD, only 8.7 percent among non-workaholics were found at risk.

Anxiety was seen in 33.8 percent workaholics and 11.9 percent in non-workaholics.

8.9 percent people met criteria for depression among workaholics and only 2.6 per cent among non-workaholics.

"Whether this reflects overlapping genetic vulnerabilities, disorders leading to workaholism or, conversely, workaholism causing such disorders, remain uncertain," Andreassen explained

For the study, published in the journal PLOS One, the team examined the associations between workaholism and psychiatric disorders among 16,426 working adults.

The results clearly highlight the importance of further investigating neurobiological deviations related to workaholic behaviour, the researchers concluded.​

​New York, May 24 (IANS) Higher long-term fluctuations in blood pressure readings may be linked to faster declines in brain and cognitive function among older adults, says a study.

"Blood pressure variability might signal blood flow instability, which could lead to the damage of the finer vessels of the body with changes in brain structure and function," said Bo (Bonnie) Qin, lead study author and a postdoctoral scholar at Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Brunswick, New Jersey, US.

"These blood pressure fluctuations may indicate pathological processes such as inflammation and impaired function in the blood vessels themselves," she noted.

For the study, the researchers analysed results from 976 Chinese adults (half women, age 55 and or older) who participated in the China Health and Nutrition Survey over a period of five years. 

Blood pressure variability was calculated from three or four visits to the health professional. Participants also underwent a series of cognitive quizzes such as performing word recall and counting backwards.

Higher visit-to-visit variability in the top number in a blood pressure reading (systolic blood pressure) was associated with a faster decline of cognitive function and verbal memory, the findings showed.

However, higher variability in the bottom number (diastolic blood pressure) was associated with faster decline of cognitive function among adults aged 55 to 64, but not among those aged 65 and older.

The findings appeared in the journal Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.

While physicians tend to focus on average blood pressure readings, the new findings suggest that high variability may be something for physicians to watch for in their patients.

"Controlling blood pressure instability could possibly be a potential strategy in preserving cognitive function among older adults," Qin said.​

​London, May 23 (IANS) Britons are spending almost an entire day in a week online scrolling through social networking site Facebook and watching video streaming service Netflix -- driven mainly by a fear of "missing out" on what friends and colleagues are getting up to, says a study.

The study, conducted by gadget insurance provider www.row.co.uk, found that Britons spend a whopping 21 hours browsing the internet each week with over six of those solely using Facebook, Mirror.co.uk reported.

British visitors to Facebook spent 850 million hours in March this year. Of the country's 32 million Facebook users, that works out to a massive 26.5 hours per visitor every month, the report added.

"We spend hours scrolling through our timelines and catching up with what’s happening in our friends’ and families’ worlds," Zoe Cairns, founder of ZC Social Media, was quoted as saying by the website. 

“Checking our phone is a new life habit. We have a fear of logging off and missing out with what’s going on,” Cairns added.

The researchers collected data from 2,000 people for the study.

It also revealed that the average Briton spends over nine hours on Google and related services and 7.5 hours on Netflix each month.

The study also revealed that users spent an average of 58 hours 39 minutes each month browsing or using apps on smartphones, compared to 31 hours 19 minutes browsing on laptops and desktop computers.

The majority of internet users said they have happily controlled their finances on the internet.​

​New York, May 23 (IANS) Researchers have developed the first flexible wearable device that has the potential to monitor both biochemical and electric signals in the human body.

The device, which includes a flexible suite of sensors and a small electronic board, is known as the "Chem-Phys" patch and records electrocardiogram (EKG) heart signals and tracks levels of lactate -- a biochemical that is a marker of physical effort -- in real time. 

"One of the overarching goals of our research is to build a wearable tricorder-like device that can measure simultaneously a whole suite of chemical, physical and electrophysiological signals continuously throughout the day," said Patrick Mercier, professor at University of California-San Diego.

The tiny device -- made by screen printing on to a thin, flexible polymer sheet -- can be applied directly to the skin and communicates wirelessly with a phone, smart watch or laptop

The device can also transmit the data from biochemical and electrical signals via Bluetooth.

Combining information about heart rate and lactate -- a first in the field of wearable sensors -- could be especially useful for athletes wanting to improve their performance, the researchers noted. 

The teams' biggest challenge was making sure that signals from the two sensors didn't interfere with each other. 

In the study, detailed in the journal Nature Communications, the "Chem-Phys" patch was tested on three male subjects who wore the device on their chest, near the base of their sternum, while doing 15 to 30 minutes of intense activity on a stationary bike. 

Two of the subjects also wore a commercial wristband heart rate monitor. 

The data collected by the EKG electrodes on the patch closely matched the data collected by the commercial wristband. 

The device can also be helpful for physicians to monitor patients with heart disease.

"The ability to concurrently assess EKG and lactate could also open up some interesting possibilities in preventing and/or managing individuals with heart diseases," explained Kevin Patrick, a physician.

​New York, May 21 (IANS) Just adopting a healthy lifestyle by refraining from drinking alcohol and smoking, maintaining a healthy body weight and exercising regularly can help you keep deadly cancer at bay, new research reaffirms.

About 20-40 percent of cancer cases could potentially be prevented through modifications to adopt a healthy lifestyle, the study found.

A large proportion of cancer cases and deaths can be prevented if people quit smoking, avoided heavy drinking, maintained a body mass index (BMI) between 18.5 and 27.5, and got moderate weekly exercise for at least 150 minutes or vigorous exercise for at least 75 minutes, the study said.

The research, published online in the journal JAMA Oncology, analysed data from two study groups of White individuals to examine the associations between a "healthy lifestyle pattern" and cancer incidence and death.

Mingyang Song and Edward Giovannucci from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, conducted the study that included 89,571 women and 46,399 men.

A "healthy lifestyle pattern" was defined as never or past smoking; no or moderate drinking of alcohol -- one or less drink a day for women, two or less drinks a day for men; BMI of at least 18.5 but lower than 27.5; and weekly aerobic physical activity of at least 150 minutes moderate intensity or 75 minutes vigorous intensity.

Individuals who met all four criteria were considered low risk and everyone else was high risk, the researchers advised.

The results revealed that 16,531 women and 11,731 had a healthy lifestyle pattern (low-risk group) and the remaining 73,040 women and 34,608 men were high risk.

The researcehrs estimated that about 20 percent to 40 percent of cancer cases and about half of cancer deaths could potentially be prevented through modifications to adopt the healthy lifestyle pattern of the low-risk group.

"These findings reinforce the predominate importance of lifestyle factors in determining cancer risk. Therefore, primary prevention should remain a priority for cancer control," the authors noted.​