Parents often bend the truth with their children, and feel justified in doing so. Sometimes it’s done to avoid upsetting them, or to handle difficult topics. It’s simply what parents rely on when dealing with their kids.

But, according to a new psychology study led by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore – in collaboration with Canada’s University of Toronto, the United States’ University of California, San Diego, and China’s Zhejiang Normal University – these little lies could be associated with detrimental effects when the child makes it into adulthood.

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology in September this year and had 379 Singaporean young adults answer whether their parents lied to them when they were children, how much they lie to their parents now, and how well they adjust to adulthood challenges. 

Those who reported being lied to as children were more likely to report lying to their parents in their adulthood, and also said they faced greater difficulty in meeting psychological and social challenges. Some adjustment difficulties they noted were conduct problems and the experience of guilt and shame, as well as selfish and manipulative behaviour. 

Parenting by lying – the consequences 

Participants were asked to complete four online questionnaires that centred on the following:

• The first questionnaire asked them to recall if their parents told them lies that related to eating; leaving and/or staying; children’s misbehaviour; and spending money. (Such as: “I did not bring money with me today, we can come back another day.”)
• The second questionnaire asked them to indicate how frequently as adults they lied to their parents.
• The final questionnaire asked them to complete another two questionnaires that measured their self-reported psychosocial maladjustment and tendency to behave selfishly and impulsively.

Based on the findings, the researchers suggest that parenting by lying could place children at a greater risk of developing problems that society frowns upon, such as aggression, rule-breaking and intrusive behaviours.

Common white lies parents resort to

Parent24 reported on a 2017 British survey that asked 2 000 parents if they ever told their kids little lies, and 60% said they do so every day, while 89% felt “white lies” were a necessary part of parenting.    

Some of the top white lies parents tell, according to a compilation by the Mirror, are:

• When the ice cream van plays music it means the ice cream has sold out.
• Mum and dad are not arguing, we’re having a discussion.
• Father Christmas keeps a naughty list.
• Eating carrots will help you see in the dark.

The study’s lead author, Assistant Professor Setoh Peipei from NTU Singapore’s School of Social Sciences said that parenting by lying can seem to save time, especially when the real reasons behind why parents want children to do something are complicated to explain, but that it can have negative consequences.

“When parents tell children that ‘honesty is the best policy’, but display dishonesty by lying, such behaviour can send conflicting messages to their children. Parents’ dishonesty may eventually erode trust and promote dishonesty in children.”

“Our research suggests that parenting by lying is a practice that has negative consequences for children when they grow up.

“Parents should be aware of these potential downstream implications and consider alternatives to lying, such as acknowledging children’s feelings, giving information so children know what to expect, offering choices and problem-solving together, to elicit good behaviour from children.”

The bottom line

On the topic of parents and trustworthiness, ADHD parenting coach Siope Kinikini says that when the time comes for children to learn the truth about white lies, it’s always best to hear the truth from parents. If not, your child could question if there are other things you’re lying to them, or they may feel that it’s okay to lie. 

So, while it is unlikely that every child is going to have psychological issues because of white lies, researchers simply want to make parents aware of the possible consequences of lying to children.

The study is not without its limitations, though, one of them being that relying solely on young adults reporting on their retrospective experience of their parents’ lying. Future studies could explore using additional informants, such as parents, said Setoh.

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Compiled by Zakiyah Ebrahim

Researchers say they have identified a compound in breast milk that combats the growth of infection-causing bacteria in infants.

The compound is called glycerol monolaurate (GML), and the amount of GML in human breast milk is more than 200 times higher than in cow’s milk. Infant formula has no GML, according to the study.

Along with fighting harmful bacteria, GML promotes the growth of beneficial bacteria.

“Our findings demonstrate that high levels of GML are unique to human breast milk and strongly inhibit growth of pathogenic bacteria,” senior author Dr Donald Leung, professor of paediatrics at National Jewish Health in Denver, said in a hospital news release.

High levels of beneficial bacteria

The study found that human breast milk inhibits the growth of the harmful bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis and Clostridium perfringens, but neither cow’s milk nor infant formula had any effect on those bacteria.

Meanwhile, human breast milk did not inhibit the growth of the beneficial bacteria Enterococcus faecilis, and breastfed babies have high levels of beneficial bifidobacteria, lactobacilli and enterococci bacteria, according to the researchers.

They said that when they removed GML from human breast milk, it no longer protected against S. aureus. When they added GML to cow’s milk, it helped protect against harmful bacteria.

“While antibiotics can fight bacterial infections in infants, they kill the beneficial bacteria along with the pathogenic ones,” said study first author Patrick Schlievert, a professor of microbiology and immunology at University of Iowa.

Application for patent

“GML is much more selective, fighting only the pathogenic bacteria while allowing beneficial species to thrive. We think GML holds great promise as a potential additive to cow’s milk and infant formula that could promote the health of babies around the world,” Schlievert said in the release.

The study also found that GML inhibits inflammation in epithelial cells, which line the gut and other mucosal surfaces. Inflammation can damage epithelial cells and contribute to increased risk for bacterial and viral infections.

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The researchers have applied for a patent for the use of GML as an additive to cow’s milk and infant formula.

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The findings could explain why being overweight or obese increases asthma risk, researchers say.

Non-invasive brain stimulation is to be trialled for the first time alongside advanced brain imaging techniques in patients who are minimally conscious or in a vegetative state.

Public Health Wales says it is investigating at least 28 possible cases of the virus.

Pain perception is essential for survival, but how much something hurts can sometimes be amplified or suppressed: for example, soldiers who sustain an injury in battle often recall not feeling anything at the time.

A new study published in Cell Reports honed in on the brain circuitry responsible for upgrading or downgrading these pain signals, likening the mechanism to how a home thermostat controls room temperature.

Role of amygdala

Yarimar Carrasquillo, the paper’s senior author and a scientist for the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), told AFP the region responsible was the central amygdala, which according to her work appeared to play a dual role.

Studying mice, Carrasquillo and her colleagues found that the activity in neurons that express protein kinase C-delta amplified pain, while neurons that express somatostatin inhibited the chain of activity in the nerves required to communicate pain.

The central amygdala isn’t completely responsible for pain itself: if it were removed entirely, then “the ‘ouch’ of things, or the protective pain, would remain intact,” said Carrasquillo.

“It seems to be sitting there waiting for something to happen,” for example responding to stress or anxiety that amplifies pain, or being forced to focus on a task that diverts your attention and reduces pain.

Experiencing pain can be a vital warning to seek help, for example in a person experiencing appendicitis or a heart attack.

People who are born with insensitivity to pain, meanwhile, often do not realise the severity of injuries and are at greater risk of early death.

The healthy response

But not all pain is useful. According to a 2012 survey, about 11% of US adults have pain every day and more than 17% have severe levels of pain.

Often this leads to dependence on potent painkillers like opioids, or attempting to self-medicate through counterfeit or illicit drugs which are increasingly laced with deadly fentanyl.

By better understanding the brain mechanisms responsible for pain modulation, researchers hope to eventually find better cures: potentially ones that target only those forms of pain that are “bad” and not useful.

“The healthy response is you get pain, it tells you something is wrong, it heals, and the pain goes away,” said Carrasquillo.

“In chronic pain, that doesn’t happen, the system gets stuck. If we can identify what makes the system gets stuck, then we can reverse it.”

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AFP

New research from Aarhus University shows that ants inhibit at least 14 different plant diseases. The small insects secrete antibiotics from glands in the body. On their legs and body, they also host colonies of bacteria that secrete antibiotics. It is probably these substances that inhibit a number of different diseases and researchers now hope to find biological pesticides that may conquer resistant plant diseases.

Beyonce Knowles’ dad first suspected something was wrong when he noticed a dot of blood that kept appearing on his shirts and bedsheets.

“Imagine a piece of white paper and you took a red pen and just put a dot,” Mathew Knowles told the New York Times. “That’s what it looked like in my T-shirt.”

Knowles scheduled a mammogram in July after he squeezed a nipple and a bit of bloody discharge came out. The diagnosis: stage 1A breast cancer.

Rare cancer in men

Knowles is one of about 2 670 cases of breast cancer that will occur among men in 2019, according to the American Cancer Society. About 500 men die from breast cancer every year.

“Most men who get breast cancer usually present with a mass behind the nipple,” said Dr Hank Schmidt, an associate professor of surgery with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

It’s an extremely rare form of cancer in men, and male breast cancer accounts for just 1% of all breast cancer cases, said Dr Siddhartha Yadav, a haematology-oncology fellow with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Men just don’t have as much breast tissue in which a tumour could grow, Yadav said. They also don’t have high levels of the female hormone oestrogen, which can fuel breast cancer.

“Men just don’t have that kind of exposure,” Yadav said.

About nine out of 10 male patients with breast cancer have oestrogen receptor-positive tumours, making their cancers more sensitive to the smaller levels of oestrogen typically found in men, according to a new review Yadav and colleagues conducted of nearly 11 000 men with breast cancer.

Lumpectomy or mastectomy

Because of this, treatment options for men are largely constrained to those developed for women, Yadav and Schmidt said. Not enough male patients are available to conduct solid clinical trials.

Men with breast cancer typically undergo either a lumpectomy combined with radiation treatment or a full mastectomy, the experts said.

Knowles chose a mastectomy, which he underwent the same month as his diagnosis. Lymph nodes removed at the same time showed that the cancer hadn’t spread elsewhere in his body. He plans to undergo a second mastectomy early next year to reduce his future risk.

That is one major difference between male and female treatment for breast cancer, according to the review by Yadav and colleagues published in the journal Cancer.

More than seven out of 10 men choose to undergo a full mastectomy for their breast cancer, while in women about two-thirds will choose a breast-sparing lumpectomy, Yadav said.

Even though male breast cancer is rare, most of these cancers appear to be caught at an early stage, Yadav’s review concluded.

Not a lot of breast tissue

About 38% of men are diagnosed at stage one, while about 43% are diagnosed at stage two, the researchers found.

This might be related to the fact that men just don’t have a lot of breast tissue, said Schmidt, who wasn’t involved with the review.

“If there is a tumour, people may be more likely to notice it,” Schmidt explained.

About 44% of male breast cancer patients receive chemotherapy, and 62% with oestrogen receptor-positive tumours get anti-oestrogen therapy, according to the study authors.

“Roughly one-third of men with ER-positive tumours aren’t getting anti-oestrogen therapy,” Yadav said. “That is an area for improvement.”

Screening all men for breast cancer simply wouldn’t be effective, given the disease’s rarity, Yadav said.

Limited number of people

But since genetics appear to play a large role in male breast cancer, it might make sense to screen men who carry BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations or have a family history of breast cancer, Yadav said.

“We could potentially screen that population,” Yadav said. “That would be a very limited number of people.”

Knowles learned that he has a BRCA2 mutation, which is more common among male breast cancer patients. He has urged his daughters to undergo genetic testing as well.

Although it’s pretty well-known that men can develop breast cancer, there’s a stigma that remains, Yadav said.

Yadav related the story of a recent male patient who went in for a mammogram and became embarrassed that he was surrounded by women there for the same screening.

“He felt so uncomfortable that he asked the people at the mammogram place if he could come in after the office closed,” Yadav said.

Removing this stigma could go a long way toward men getting the treatment they need, Yadav said.

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HealthDay

Music may be just what you need to stick with an exercise plan – and picking the right tunes could even improve performance.

Exercise guidelines recommend people get at least two and a half hours of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, each week. For those who don’t love the act of exercising, those totals can seem like a tall order.

But over the last decade, researchers have begun to build the case that music during exercise might just give an edge.

A recent study in the journal Psychology of Sports and Exercise concluded that listening to motivational music during sprint-interval training has the potential to not only improve the participants’ level of enjoyment, but their performance as well.

“People I find who may have trouble staying with an exercise program or who begin one and quit after a month may find this as a method to help them enjoy it,” said Costas Karageorghis, one of the study’s authors. “The real benefit of this type of research is that the more people you can direct toward a healthier lifestyle, the better.”

In the study, the participants’ peak power output and heart rates were higher when listening to motivational music than when listening to podcasts or to no audio. They also rated their post-workout enjoyment higher after listening to music.

Paige Cervantes, a professional trainer based in McKinney, Texas, said the right music affects her health and happiness, even on a tough day in the weight room.

“I know especially on days where I knew I was going to be lifting heavier, I felt my performance would improve when it was harder rock music,” she said. “There was something about that beat and the guitar playing that would just kind of set the mood to where I could lift heavier and almost get to the point of getting a little angry.”

Her choice for those workouts? A little heavy metal.

“That would kind of bring up the fight in me. Bubblegum music doesn’t do much for me when I am trying to lift weights.”

Change your playlist

Karageorghis, a professor of sport and exercise psychology at Brunel University in London, said a good place to start is to look for playlists that feature music starting about 120 beats per minute (bpm), the pace of a brisk walk. Over time, as workouts intensify, the tempo of the music can increase as well, up to about 140 bpm.

“I find people who devote time and energy to creating playlists for their workouts actually enjoy their workout much more than those who just select music randomly,” said Karageorghis, author of the book Applying Music in Exercise and Sport.

“Ideally, if you turn your playlist over every couple of weeks, it will keep it fresh. It will be more stimulating, and you’re likely to derive greater athletic and psychological benefits than if you simply listen to the same playlist over and over.”

But he warned to be wary of the volume.

“In many exercise facilities that I visit, the music is way above 80 decibels,” he said. “If you’re able to maintain a comfortable conversation with the person next to you, the music volume is probably about right.”

His previous research shows even when people exercise beyond comfortable levels, such as at levels higher than 75% of their maximal heart rate, music can put them in a better mood – despite the associated fatigue or exhaustion – than when the workout includes no music.

Those positive effects on mood are important, said Russell Pate, an exercise science professor in the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health. Sticking with a workout routine, he said, depends on a lot of different factors, including support from family and friends.

“But the more positive it is, the greater the likelihood that they’ll choose to do it again tomorrow and the day after that.”

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People should not make health decisions based on genetic tests they do at home, experts warn.