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Category Archives: Mind Building
Coronavirus: World in ‘uncharted territory’
The World Health Organization says the virus is “unique” but stresses it can still be contained.
Coronavirus cases in UK could rise ‘significantly’, says PM
Boris Johnson says expansion of the virus is “on the cards” in the UK, as the number of cases rises to 39.
Can light therapy help improve mood in people with concussion?
People with mild traumatic brain injury who are exposed to early morning blue light therapy may experience a decrease in depression and other concussion symptoms, according to a preliminary study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 72nd Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada, April 25 to May 1, 2020.
“Patients with mild traumatic brain injury, like concussion, often develop persistent problems associated with sleep, concentration and depression,” said study author William D. Killgore, Ph.D., from the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson. “Morning blue light exposure has been shown to lead to improved circadian rhythm of the body’s sleep-wake cycle, which is linked to improved sleep, better mood and daytime alertness.”
The double-blind, randomized study involved 35 people with an average age of 26 who had been diagnosed with concussion within the past 18 months. The participants used a tabletop device that shines bright light for 30 minutes each morning for six weeks. Seventeen people received blue light therapy and 18 people received a placebo amber light therapy.
At the beginning and the end of the study, both groups completed tests to measure symptoms of depression and other concussion symptoms, such as headache, fatigue and problems with sleep, memory and concentration.
The study found that the people who received the blue light therapy had lower scores on a test of depression, the Beck Depression Inventory, than the people who received the placebo light therapy. Raw depression scores showed a significant decline in only the blue group. The people in the blue light group improved by 22% on the test of depression, compared to a 4% worsening in mood for the people in the placebo group.
The improvement in depression scores among the people in the blue light group was also linked to improvements in other concussion symptoms such as sleep disturbance, fatigue, concentration, restlessness, and irritability, while there was no such relationship for the people in the placebo group.
“These results reinforce that blue light therapy may be an effective, non-drug treatment for concussion and that improvements in depression may result in improvement in both mental and physical concussion symptoms, and thus quality of life,” said Killgore.
The main limitations of the study were a relatively small sample size and that not every participant had clinical depression, which is a more severe form of depression, so the study may not represent all people with mild traumatic brain injury.
Killgore said, “Limitations notwithstanding, the findings give a promising treatment approach to those suffering from mood disturbances following a concussion.”
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Materials provided by American Academy of Neurology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
The microbes in your mouth, and a reminder to floss and go to the dentist
Most people know that good oral hygiene — brushing, flossing, and regular dental visits — is linked to good health. Colorado State University microbiome researchers offer fresh evidence to support that conventional wisdom, by taking a close look at invisible communities of microbes that live in every mouth.
The oral microbiome – the sum total of microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi, that occupy the human mouth — was the subject of a crowd-sourced, citizen science-driven study by Jessica Metcalf’s research lab at CSU and Nicole Garneau’s research team at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Published in Scientific Reports, the study found, among other things, a correlation between people who did not visit the dentist regularly and increased presence of a pathogen that causes periodontal disease.
For the experiments, carried out by Garneau’s community science team in the Genetics of Taste Lab at the museum, a wide cross-section of museum visitors submitted to a cheek swab and answered simple questions about their demographics, lifestyles and health habits. Microbial DNA sequencing data analyzed by Metcalf’s group revealed, broadly, that oral health habits affect the communities of bacteria in the mouth. The study underscored the need to think about oral health as strongly linked to the health of the entire body.
“Our study also showed that crowdsourcing and using community scientists can be a really good way to get this type of data, without having to use large, case-controlled studies,” said Zach Burcham, a postdoctoral researcher and the paper’s lead author. Senior author Metcalf is an associate professor in the Department of Animal Sciences and a member of CSU’s Microbiome Network.
Cheek swabs
Back in 2015, paper-co-author Garneau and her team trained volunteer citizen scientists to use large swabs to collect cheek cells from museum visitors – a naturally diverse population — who consented to the study. These trained citizen scientists helped collect swabs from 366 individuals — 181 adults and 185 youth aged 8 to 17.
The original impetus for the study was to determine whether and to what extent the oral microbiome contributes to how people taste sweet things. In collecting this data, which was also reported in the paper, the researchers noted more significant data points around oral health habits.
To help translate the data, Garneau turned to Metcalf’s team of experts at CSU. Burcham and the microbiome scientists employed sophisticated sequencing and analysis tools to determine which microbes were present in which mouths. Sequencing for the data was performed in collaboration with scientists in Rob Knight’s group at University of California San Diego. A nutrition team from Michigan State University also brought in expertise on the importance of child and maternal relationships to the data analysis.
“Together, we had a dream team for using community science to answer complicated questions about human health and nutrition, using state-of-the-art microbial sequencing and analysis,” Garneau said.
Flossing and regular dental care
The study grouped people who flossed or didn’t floss (almost everyone said they brushed, so that wasn’t a useful data point). Participants who flossed were found to have lower microbial diversity in their mouths than non-flossers. This is most likely due to the physical removal of bacteria that could be causing inflammation or disease.
Adults who had gone to a dentist in the last three months had lower overall microbial diversity in their mouths than those who hadn’t gone in 12 months or longer, and had less of the periodontal disease-causing oral pathogen, Treponema. This, again, was probably due to dental cleaning removing rarer bacterial taxa in the mouth. Youth tended to have had a dental visit more recently than adults.
Youth microbiomes differed among males and females, and by weight. Children considered obese according to their body mass indices had distinct microbiomes as compared to non-obese children. The obese children also tended to have higher levels of Treponema, the same pathogen found in adults who hadn’t been to the dentist in more than a year. In other words, the researchers saw a possible link between childhood obesity and periodontal disease. “This was very interesting to me, that we were able to detect these data in such a general population, with such a variable group of people,” Burcham said.
Other data uncovered: The microbiomes of younger participants, mostly in the 8- to 9-year-old range, had more diversity than those of adults. However, adult microbiomes varied more widely from person to person. The researchers think this is due to the environments and diets of adults being more wide-ranging than children.
They also saw that people who lived in the same household shared similar oral microbiomes.
“When you look at families who live together, you find they share more of those rare taxa, the bacteria that aren’t found as often in higher abundances,” Burcham explained. It was a data point that underscored the relevance of one’s built environment in relationship to the microbial communities in our bodies.
Working on the mouth study was fascinating, albeit outside Burcham’s normal scope; he is usually focused on studying microbial ecology of decomposition.
“I think how our lives are essentially driven by our microbiomes, and affected by our microbiomes, is interesting, no matter what system we’re looking at,” Burcham said.
The study was made possible by a Science Education Partnership Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institutes of Health (Award #R250D021909).
Health24.com | Can men eat their way to a higher sperm count?
Listen up, guys: A healthy diet is good for your brain and heart, and also your sperm, new research suggests.
In a study of more than 2 900 Danish men, median age 19, those whose diet was rich in fish, chicken, vegetables, fruit and water had higher sperm counts than those who ate a “Western” diet rich in pizza, French fries, processed and red meats, snacks, refined grains, sugary beverages and sweets, researchers found.
“Because following a generally healthy diet pattern is a modifiable behaviour, our results suggest the possibility of using dietary intervention as a possible approach to improve sperm quality of men in reproductive age,” said lead study author Feiby Nassan. She’s a postdoctoral research associate at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston.
Sperm count can affect fertility because the lower the count, the lower the chance of getting a partner pregnant. “It may be useful for men’s fertility to follow a generally healthy diet,” Nassan said.
Room for error
For the study, her team compared sperm counts among men who ate a healthy diet; a Western diet; a Danish diet rich in cold processed meats, whole grains, mayonnaise, cold fish, condiments and dairy; and a vegetarian-style diet rich in vegetables, soy milk and eggs, but no red meats or chicken.
Median sperm counts were highest among men who ate a healthy diet (167 million), followed by the vegetarian-style diet (151 million) and the Danish diet (146 million). (Median means half had higher counts, half lower.)
Men who followed a Western diet had the lowest median sperm count (122 million). They also had lower levels of some sex hormones that boost fertility, the investigators found.
Because men self-reported their eating habits, there is room for error and the findings could be skewed, the researchers said.
Dr Christine Mullin, chief of fertility at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, reviewed the findings.
Important study to repeat
Mullin said that while many diets improve inflammation, heart and mental health, studies of dietary effects on fertility have been limited.
“It is well known that environmental effects of smoking, radiation, pesticides and heavy metals negatively affect spermatogenesis, but little is known on dietary effects on sperm quality,” she said.
While these findings from Danish men may not apply to other populations, Mullin suggested it would be an important study to repeat in the United States, as the Western diet had the most negative effects on sperm quality.
“If we could emphasise diet not only for women, but also for men in regard to fertility success, then we could improve the disease in a similar fashion that diet has improved cardiac health,” she said.
The report was published online in JAMA Network Open.
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NEXT ON HEALTH24X
Reducing Mental Effort – Part 1
Cognitive load is the mental effort required to complete a task or project.
If you can reduce the average cognitive load of your days, your days will feel easier and less stressful, you can get more done, and you can end your days feeling less fatigued. You’ll also have extra mental resources to apply to your most difficult tasks.
Moreover, with a lower cognitive burden from your routine tasks, you’ll gain some excess mental capacity, which you can use to set and pursue more ambitious goals or tackle major transitions.
When your cognitive load is high, it’s difficult to add more to your plate without feeling overwhelmed. You may feel more stressed, frustrated, or burdened when your cognitive load gets too high. And when you’re dealing with too much pressure, it can made the problem even worse by causing you to fall out of sync with your best habits. Even tasks that you used to handle well begin to pile up, and now you have even more issues to deal with – and a reduced capacity to deal with them.
A good way to unbury yourself from mounting problems and a backlog of to-dos is to reduce the cognitive load you must deal with. Get your mind back to a place where you have excess capacity, and you feel that you can intelligently and reasonably handle everything you’re taking on.
Since this is such an important topic, I’m going to explore it through a series of posts over several days, so we can break this down into bite-sized pieces (which is also a way to reduce cognitive load).
Let’s begin with the most important item:
Cardio Exercise
If you only apply one idea from this series, adding regular cardio exercise to your life would be the most important, perhaps as important as all the other items combined.
The mental benefits of cardio exercise are profound. Think of cardio exercise as garbage collection and optimization for your brain – it rebalances hormones and neurotransmitters, cleans out dead cells, and strengthens existing cells. If you don’t do it, waste products build up and drag you down mentally and emotionally, thereby reducing the cognitive load you can handle. Cardio exercise is a highly effective anti-depressant as well – it’s one of the best mood boosters available.
What many people don’t realize is that cardio exercises the brain too. Your brain must work harder when you exercise to regulate your body’s systems as a faster pace. Your brain cells get a quality workout too, which makes them stronger and more efficient.
Not exercising is roughly equivalent to smoking in terms of the effects on health and longevity. So if you think that quitting smoking is wise, then quitting not-exercising is at least a wise too.
Know that if you’re not exercising, you’re a mental and emotional slug relative to where you could be if you made this an integral part of your life. The mental load you can handle is greatly diminished if you don’t give your brain what it needs to clean and rebalance itself. Give yourself the gift of a sharp, clear, focused mind – and a resilient emotional system that can handle whatever life dishes out.
I’ve long observed that any kind of mental task feels easier when I exercise regularly and more burdensome when I don’t. Whenever I want to make my life mentally and emotionally easier, I look to my exercise habits. When those habits are flowing well, so many other parts of my life flow well too.
Consider that if you’re dealing with a lot of issues across multiple areas of life – social problems, financial problems, business problems, etc – your capacity to intelligently solve any or all of them can be improved by elevating your mind and your mood, and cardio exercise does both beautifully. You could notice significant improvements after just one good workout, and the benefits are cumulative.
The ideal duration is about 45 minutes of cardio, which probably sounds like a lot if you’re not doing it. And if it does sound like a lot, that’s a hint that your cognitive capacity has gone downhill because 45 minutes really isn’t much at all relative to the impressive array of benefits. Ideally you should get to the point where 45 minutes feels normal, worthwhile, and engaging. But any amount is better than zero. If all you can do is a few minutes, then do that, and build up from there.
Getting your heart rate up is important for the neurological benefits, and many exercises can get you there, including weight training (if you do it circuit training style to keep your heart rate up) and yoga (if it’s strenuous enough like vinyasa, power yoga, or hot yoga). Use a heart monitor (like the Apple Watch) to make sure you’re getting into your aerobic range.
While walking is great, it normally doesn’t provide the same neurological benefits unless you walk fast enough (or do lots of hills) to get your heart rate higher.
If your workouts are more rest breaks than activity, the mental benefits may not be so great. Some workouts may actually increase your cognitive load if you have to spend extra effort thinking about the workouts while not gaining much of a mental capacity boost in return.
Since the benefits of exercise are systemic, this is the primary place to begin when you want to increase your mental capacity and reduce mental effort. A clear, stronger, more efficient brain makes so many other parts of life easier and less effortful. You’ll feel like you can handle more than you could before, and problems that used to phase you will finally start getting solved.
If this habit looks difficult, realize that the perceived difficulty is yet another symptom of a flabby brain that isn’t getting enough exercise. This habit only looks too difficult if your mental and emotional capacity has dropped to a level you ought to consider personally unacceptable. It may feel burdensome to raise your standards, but that feeling will pass once you get back in the flow of giving your brain what it needs.
Consider that if you continue the not-exercising habit, your brain will punish you for that habit the rest of your (shorter) life. You won’t feel as good emotionally. You won’t get as much done. You won’t be as confident. And you’ll feel more stressed, confused, and overwhelmed. That’s an awfully high price to pay.
We’ll continue this series tomorrow, so stay tuned. But please do at least one good workout before you read the next part. Your brain needs it.
Health24.com | Sugar-sweetened drinks wreak havoc with cholesterol levels, harming the heart
Sugar-sweetened drinks can play havoc with your cholesterol and triglyceride levels, which increases your risk for heart disease and stroke, a new study finds.
Specifically, drinking more than 12 ounces (approximately 350ml) of sugary sodas or fruit drinks a day may not bode well for your cardiovascular health, researchers say.
“Think before you drink. There is accumulating evidence linking sugar-sweetened beverages to adverse health outcomes, and this message is clear,” said lead researcher Nicola McKeown, a nutritional epidemiologist at the Jean Mayer U.S.D.A. Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston.
According to the researchers, drinks such as sodas, sports drinks and fruit-flavoured drinks are the biggest source of added sugars for Americans.
Diet drinks not so bad
“Efforts and policies aimed at reducing sugar-sweetened beverage intake should continue,” McKeown said. “When it comes to alternative beverages, we need more information about what we are putting into our glasses and how that may make a difference in our health, positively or negatively.”
McKeown and her team found that drinking more than 12 ounces of sugary drinks a day was linked to a 53% higher odds of high triglycerides and a 98% higher odds of low HDL cholesterol (the “good” cholesterol), compared with drinking less.
The findings came from data on nearly 6 000 people who took part in the Offspring and Generation 3 Framingham Heart Study. Participants were followed for more than 12 years between 1991 and 2014.
Neither low-calorie sweetened drinks nor 100% fruit juice was associated with negative changes in cholesterol, the researchers noted.
“That doesn’t mean we would recommend drinking lots of diet soda or fruit juice as an alternative, however, because the research on this is still developing, and for now, it’s inconclusive,” McKeown said.
Breaking the habit
Because so many people rely on diet drinks as an alternative to sugary drinks, the researchers believe that further research is needed to examine whether there is a connection between drinking low-calorie sweetened beverages and unfavourable changes in cholesterol and triglycerides.
“Our results suggest that limiting, or even eliminating, sugar-sweetened drinks may be a good idea for people who want to maintain normal cholesterol and triglycerides levels, especially as they age,” McKeown said.
The report was published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
One dietitian who was not part of the study offered suggestions on how consumers can break their sugary drinks habit.
“Sugar-sweetened beverages taste good, many are caffeinated, and they are convenient – all appealing qualities for many Americans,” said Samantha Heller, a senior clinical nutritionist at New York University Medical Center.
Flavoured seltzers
“But we cannot keep overlooking the fact that they are unhealthy for us,” she said.
For starters, children shouldn’t be given these drinks, Heller said: “Giving little ones sugary drinks is a sure-fire way to get them hooked on the highly sweet taste.”
For older kids or adults, switching to flavoured seltzers or adding a splash of 100% juice or herbal tea to plain seltzer can quench the craving for bubbles and flavour, Heller said.
“Instead, opt for water, tea, coffee or unsweetened plant-based milks, and if you don’t like the taste of your tap water, try using a filter,” she suggested.
READ | Here’s another warning on soft drinks – and it doesn’t matter if they contain sugar or not, according to a large study
READ | 6 foolproof techniques that will help you stop drinking soft drinks for good
READ | 3 easy ways to reduce your sugar cravings
Image credit: iStock
Faster access to cannabis medicines in UK
Patients should now be able to get treatments in days rather than months, say ministers.
Health24.com | Study puts coronavirus death rate at 1.4% – but expert suggests real number may be lower
The latest tally of almost 1 100 cases of Covid-19 infection from 30 Chinese provinces shows a fatality rate of 1.4% during the early phase of the outbreak.
That’s much higher than the rate seen with the seasonal flu, where only about 0.1% of cases end in death. But it’s far below the mortality rate of recent coronavirus outbreaks like SARS (9 to 10%) or MERS (36%), noted Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Furthermore, the 1.4% figure cited in the new Chinese report, recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is probably higher than the “real” death rate, Fauci added.
That’s because many coronavirus cases are so mild they’re not even being reported, Fauci explained in an editorial he co-wrote in the same issue of the NEJM. Co-authors include Dr. Robert Redfield, who directs the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr Clifford Lane, deputy director of the NIAID.
“If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%,” Fauci and his colleagues explained.
“This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza pandemic [which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%] or a pandemic influenza [similar to those in 1957 and 1968],” the experts wrote.
None of that means that millions of people might not feel miserable for a time as Covid-19 spreads globally. And that spread seems likely from data included in the new Chinese study, which tracked cases up to January 29, Fauci and colleagues said.
Be prepared
The total number of cases globally is now nearly 90 000 and nearly more than 3 000 have died. Sixty cases, most of them coming from people who traveled abroad, have been reported so far in the United States.
But according to the new Chinese study, it’s estimated that every person infected with coronavirus spread the germ at a “basic reproduction number” of 2.2.
“Which means that, on average, each infected person spreads the infection to an additional two persons,” the NEJM editorialists wrote.
Unless that number falls below 1.0, “it is likely that the outbreak will continue to spread,” Fauci and colleagues predicted. They also noted that the coronavirus appears to be at relatively high levels in the mouth and throat even in the very early stages of infection, heightening “concerns about increased infectivity during the period of minimal symptoms.”
The three experts added one more nugget gleaned from the Chinese report: For severe cases, the need for hospitalisation appears within a window of about 9 to 12.5 days after first symptoms. That “delay in progression” might give doctors time to intervene and stop the escalation of an illness, the team said.
Still, the bottom line, according to the experts: “Given the efficiency of transmission as indicated in the current [Chinese] report, we should be prepared for Covid-19 to gain a foothold throughout the world, including the United States.”
They echoed recent advisories from US health officials that spread in the United States would mean that Americans would begin to employ so-called “mitigation strategies.” Those efforts would include standing a safe distance away from obviously sick people, isolating the sick at home or in health care facilities, closing schools and “telecommuting” for work where and when possible.
The new Chinese study was led by Dr N. Zhong, of China’s National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, in Guangdong. It looked at outcomes for 1 100 patients with lab-confirmed Covid-19 who were treated at 552 hospitals in 30 provinces across China, up until January 29.
The study found the average patient was 47, and about 58% were male. About 6% developed disease so severe they required admission to an ICU and/or mechanical ventilation. Fever and cough were the most common symptoms.
“Of note, there were no cases in children younger than 15 years of age,” Fauci and colleagues said. “Either children are less likely to become infected… or their symptoms were so mild that their infection escaped detection.
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