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Category Archives: Mind Building
Health24.com | WATCH: A breathing problem meant this French bulldog pup couldn’t play with other dogs – but a life-saving op fixed that
Updated 01 August 2019
WATCH: A breathing problem meant this French bulldog pup couldn’t play with other dogs – but a life-saving op fixed that
Ten-month-old French bulldog puppy Dory couldn’t run and play with other dogs, due to a breathing problem – but a life-saving operation costing more than R30 000 has fixed that.
Dory the French bulldog puppy had to undergo a life-saving operation after left grasping for breath due to her flat face.
The procedure, which cost more than R30 000, saw her nostrils widened, and tissue removed from inside her airways.
Image credit: PA
How can universities get men to talk about mental health?
Birkbeck’s campaign has seen a growing number of men access counselling. Could it be a blueprint for others?
Health24.com | 5 commonly asked questions about ADHD answered
We all have difficulty concentrating from time to time. But for someone with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), not being able to concentrate or pay attention can affect their ability to function on a daily basis.
ADHD is a chronic developmental neuro-behavioural disorder that can be diagnosed at any stage in life. Symptoms are, however, most prevalent during childhood. Although people with ADHD can lead perfectly normal lives, there are a number of misconceptions about the condition.
While ADHD is largely caused by genetic factors, many people still believe it is caused by bad parenting or poor discipline. Misconceptions like these give ADHD an unnecessary stigma and might even prevent people from obtaining a correct diagnosis and an effective treatment plan.
Here are some commonly asked questions about ADHD:
1. How exactly is ADHD diagnosed?
According to Dr Renata Schoeman, our resident ADHD expert, questionnaires are used in the initial stages to screen potential candidates for ADHD. An accurate diagnosis, however, involves a much more intricate evaluation and comprehensive assessment by a psychiatrist. There is unfortunately no set questionnaire, scale, rating or “computer test”. This is why ADHD can be so tricky to diagnose. If ADHD is suspected, it’s best to consult a licensed psychiatrist with a working knowledge of ADHD.
2. How can ADHD be treated?
The diagnosis of ADHD does not mean that your child’s school career is doomed. There are several ways of managing ADHD, usually a combined approach, carefully tailored to the needs of the patient. ADHD will rarely be successfully managed only by medication. Behavioural therapy can work well in conjunction with medication, but may require the input of another medical professional. This is why treating ADHD is often a team effort.
Many children with ADHD can be taught in a normal environment, but there might be a need for special assistance with homework if the child has complex learning difficulties.
3. What is the difference between ADD and ADHD?
People often use the abbreviations interchangeably, and sometimes it makes no difference. The lines between ADD and ADHD are very blurry and in many cases it’s hard to define them as separate conditions. ADD (attention deficit disorder) is a type of ADHD that doesn’t present the “hyperactive” component involving fidgety movements. However, in 1994, experts decided that ADHD should be used as an umbrella term, even when hyperactivity isn’t present.
4. Is medication always the best option?
There are people who are hesitant to go the medication route for ADHD, but new research has shown that medication is beneficial in most cases. In addition to helping kids calm down and concentrate at school, the research published in The Journal of Adolescent Health also found that the drugs help children avoid many long-term negative consequences associated with ADHD – including depression, substance abuse and even driving problems.
However, it’s important to reiterate that, while medication plays a successful part in treating ADHD, it should always be administered in conjunction with other treatment methods such as behavioural therapy.
5. Ritalin isn’t working for my child. Why?
Ritalin the trade name of the stimulant methylphenidate, and is the most commonly prescribed first line of treatment for ADHD. Ritalin works by increasing the availability of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine, which improves brain activity.
Different formulations and doses are available depending on the severity of the ADHD. While Ritalin is commonly prescribed, it doesn’t mean it is the ideal treatment for everyone with ADHD. It isn’t available over the counter and will only be prescribed by a psychiatrist after an evaluation. If the prescribed Ritalin is not working as it should, you should discuss this with your medical professional. Keep in mind that medications that affect the chemistry of the brain require a trial-and-error approach, which means you have to have patience.
Ask about possible side-effects such as loss of appetite or sleep disturbances. Your medical practitioner should also be able to advise you at what time of the day to administer the medication for the best effect.
Image credit: iStock
Health24.com | The Paleo diet could be bad for your heart, study finds
New research suggests that the Paleo diet may be linked to heart disease. The Paleo diet has gained popularity due to the fact that it has been proven to help people lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time.
The diet
The diet, which is based on what humans from the Paleolithic era used to eat, consists of a high amount of fruits, vegetables, meat, nuts and seeds with no whole grains, dairy or legumes.
Although the diet has the potential for weight loss, there are still a number of uncertainties about health as there is not enough research regarding nutrient deficiencies, long-term side-effects and diseases.
Now, a study has found that this diet could pose a massive risk to your heart health due to the fact that the individuals on the diet don’t consume whole grains, a great source of dietary fibre, which helps reduce cardiovascular problems.
The study
The study published in European Journal of Nutrition and led by Angela Genoni, Ph.D., was a joint study with investigators from four institutions in Australia, namely: the School of Medical and Health Sciences and the School of Science, both at Edith Cowan University; the School of Molecular and Life Sciences at Curtin University; PathWest Laboratory Medicine; and CSIRO Health and Biosecurity.
The study worked with a total of 91 participants, 44 who followed Paleo diets and 47 following typical diets that adhered to national dietary recommendations, known as the control group. Over a year, there was a follow-up, where researchers assessed the diets of the patients, collected biological samples and compared the results between the Paleo group and the control group.
In order to ensure accuracy in their results, the investigators then split the Paleo group into two further groups, focusing on their preferences: 22 stricter Paleolithic participants including individuals who ate less than one serving per day of grains and dairy, and pseudo Paleolithic participants including individuals who ate more than one serving of grains and dairy per day.
Findings
Research found that across the Paleo groups, individuals presented heightened blood levels of a compound associated with heart disease, trimethylamine N-oxide. This compound is formed in the gut, and the levels of the compound largely depend on the bacteria that populate the gut.
Lead researcher, Angela Genoni, Ph.D., said, “Many Paleo diet proponents claim the diet is beneficial to gut health, but this research suggests that, when it comes to the production of [trimethylamine N-oxide] in the gut, the Paleo diet could be having an adverse impact in terms of heart health.
Furthermore, she continued to say, “We also found that population of beneficial bacterial species were lower in the Paleolithic groups associated with the reduced carbohydrate intake, which may have consequences for other chronic diseases over the long term.”
Image credit: iStock
Kidney condition detected in minutes by app
Staff who have used the technology for acute kidney injury describe it as a “potential lifesaver”.
Gibbons’ large, long-term territories put them under threat from habitat loss
Wild gibbons living in the peat swamps of southern Borneo require between 20 and 50 hectares of forest territory for each group, making their populations particularly vulnerable to habitat loss, according to a study publishing July 31 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Dr. Susan Cheyne at the Borneo Nature foundation, and colleagues.
Gibbons are highly territorial creatures, whose habitat is threatened by deforestation and wildfires, however, little is known about the size of their territories or how they use the space for feeding and social activities. The researchers monitored four groups of wild Bornean southern gibbons (Hylobates albibarbis) in Sebangau in Borneo, Indonesia between 2010 and 2018, recording the GPS location of the group, as well as observations of the creatures’ behaviour at five-minute intervals from dawn till dusk.
They found that the Gibbons’ territory included a core area of between 21 and 52 hectares where they sleep, socialise, and perform call ‘duets’ to each other, and which they defend fiercely. However, the apes also forage over a larger home range of up to 148 hectares that they share with neighboring groups — the largest home range recorded among Gibbons in the Hylobates genus.
The territories of three of the groups remained approximately the same throughout the 9-year study, but one group was forced to shift their range west when part of their habitat was damaged by forest fires in 2015, which destroyed forests across the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Their large home ranges and territorial behaviour may make Gibbons particularly vulnerable to habitat loss, as they are squeezed into fragments of forest too small to accommodate multiple competing groups.
Dr. Cheyne adds: “Gibbons show high site fidelity for specifoc areas of forest and maintain these territories over many years. Understanding how Gibbons use the forest is critical to their conservation. These data can feed into creating protected areas of suitable size and habitat quality to maintain viable populations of the singing, swinging small apes.”
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A voracious Cambrian predator, Cambroraster, is a new species from the Burgess Shale
Palaeontologists at the Royal Ontario Museum and University of Toronto have uncovered fossils of a large new predatory species in half-a-billion-year-old rocks from Kootenay National Park in the Canadian Rockies. This new species has rake-like claws and a pineapple-slice-shaped mouth at the front of an enormous head, and it sheds light on the diversity of the earliest relatives of insects, crabs, spiders, and their kin. The findings were announced July 31, 2019, in a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Reaching up to a foot in length, the new species, named Cambroraster falcatus, comes from the famous 506-million-year-old Burgess Shale. “Its size would have been even more impressive at the time it was alive, as most animals living during the Cambrian Period were smaller than your little finger,” said Joe Moysiuk, a graduate student based at the Royal Ontario Museum who led the study as part of his PhD research in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. Cambroraster was a distant cousin of the iconic Anomalocaris, the top predator living in the seas at that time, but it seems to have been feeding in a radically different way,” continued Moysiuk.
The name Cambroraster refers to the remarkable claws of this animal, which bear a parallel series of outgrowths, looking like forward-directed rakes. “We think Cambroraster may have used these claws to sift through sediment, trapping buried prey in the net-like array of hooked spines,” added Jean-Bernard Caron, Moysiuk’s supervisor and the Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum.
With the interspace between the spines on the claws at typically less than a millimeter, this would have enabled Cambroraster to feed on very small organisms, although larger prey could also likely be captured, and ingested into the circular tooth-lined mouth. This specialized mouth apparatus is the namesake of the extinct group Radiodonta, which includes both Cambroraster and Anomalocaris. Radiodonta is considered to be one of the earliest offshoots of the arthropod lineage (today including all animals with an exoskeleton, a segmented body and jointed limbs).
The second part of the species name falcatus was given in tribute to another of Cambroraster‘s distinctive features: the large shield-like carapace covering its head, which is shaped like the Millennium Falcon spaceship from the Star Wars films. “With its broad head carapace with deep notches accommodating the upward facing eyes, Cambroraster resembles modern living bottom-dwelling animals like horseshoe crabs. This represents a remarkable case of evolutionary convergence in these radiodonts,” Moysiuk explained. Such convergence is likely reflective of a similar environment and mode of life — like modern horseshoe crabs, Cambroraster may have used its carapace to plough through sediment as it fed.
Perhaps even more astonishing is the large number of specimens recovered. “The sheer abundance of this animal is extraordinary,” added Dr. Caron, who is also an Assistant Professor in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto, and the leader of the field expeditions that unearthed the new fossils. “Over the past few summers we found hundreds of specimens, sometimes with dozens of individuals covering single rock slabs.”
Based on over a hundred exceptionally well-preserved fossils now housed at the Museum, researchers were able to reconstruct Cambroraster in unprecedented detail, revealing characteristics that had not been seen before in related species.
“The radiodont fossil record is very sparse; typically, we only find scattered bits and pieces. The large number of parts and unusually complete fossils preserved at the same place are a real coup, as they help us to better understand what these animals looked like and how they lived,” said Dr. Caron. “We are really excited about this discovery. Cambroraster clearly illustrates that predation was a big deal at that time with many kinds of surprising morphological adaptations.”
Fossils from the Cambrian period, particularly from sites like the Burgess Shale, record a dramatic “explosion” of biodiversity at this time, culminating in the evolution of most of the major groups of animals that survive today. But, the story has far more intricacy than a straight line leading from simple ancestors to the vast diversity of modern species. “Far from being primitive, radiodonts show us that at the very outset of complex ecosystems on Earth, early representatives of the arthropod lineage rapidly radiated to play a wide array of ecological roles,” remarked Moysiuk.
The fossils were found at several sites in the Marble Canyon area in Kootenay National Park, British Columbia, which have been discovered by ROM-led field teams since 2012, with some of the key specimens unearthed just last summer. These sites are about 40 kilometers away from the original Burgess Shale fossil site in Yoho National Park that was first discovered in 1909. What is also exciting for researchers is the realization that there is a large new area in northern Kootenay National Park worth scientific exploration, holding the potential for the discovery of many more new species.
The Burgess Shale fossil sites are located within Yoho and Kootenay National Parks and are managed by Parks Canada. Parks Canada is proud to work with leading scientific researchers to expand our knowledge and understanding of this key period of earth history and to share these sites with the world through award-winning guided hikes. The Burgess Shale was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 due to its outstanding universal value, and is now part of the larger Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site.
The discovery and study of Cambroraster will be profiled in the upcoming CBC’s The Nature of Things episode “First Animals” airing October 18, 2019 at 9 p.m. and on the free CBC Gem streaming service. These and other Burgess Shale specimens will be showcased in a brand-new gallery at the Royal Ontario Museum, the Willner Madge Gallery of the Dawn of Life, expected to open in 2021. Starting this summer, select specimens of Cambroraster will be put on display in the New Research case within the current temporary Willner Madge Gallery, Dawn of Life Preview exhibition.
Major funding support for the research and field work came from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Discovery Grant #341944), the Royal Ontario Museum, the National Geographic Society (#9475-14), the Swedish Research Council (to Michael Streng), the National Science Foundation (NSF-EAR-1554897) and Pomona College (to Robert R. Gaines). Moysiuk’s PhD research is also supported by an NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGSM).
‘Love hormone’ has stomach-turning effect in starfish
A hormone that is released in our brain when we fall in love also makes starfish turn their stomach inside out to feed, according to a new study from Queen Mary University of London.
Oxytocin, more commonly known as the ‘love hormone’, is important for sexual reproduction in humans, other mammals and even nematode worms, but this study shows that in the common European starfish (Asterias rubens) it is important for feeding.
The findings, published in the journal BMC Biology, could play an important role in controlling the feeding behavior of the crown of thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci), which feeds on coral and is having a devastating impact on the Australian Great Barrier Reef.
Based on this study the researchers know that oxytocin-type molecules have been acting in the nervous systems of animals for over half-a-billion years.
However, the effects on feeding can be very different in different animal types — in starfish oxytocin-type molecules seem to be important for normal feeding to occur whereas studies on mice have revealed that oxytocin inhibits feeding behaviour.
Professor Maurice Elphick, lead author of the study from Queen Mary University of London, said: “Our study has provided important new evidence that oxytocin-type molecules are important and ancient regulators of feeding in animals. So oxytocin is much more than a ‘love hormone’ — perhaps especially for animals like starfish that don’t fall in love!”
Esther Odekunle, formerly a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London, added: “If the ‘love hormone’ plays a role in the feeding behaviour of the crown of thorns starfish, then this research may provide a basis for the development of novel chemical methods to control their appetite for coral.”
To investigate the role of the hormone, the researchers had to inject it into the starfish to see if anything happened.
Within a few minutes the injected starfish started bending their arms and adopted a ‘humped’ posture similar to the posture used when they are feeding. Furthermore, it caused the starfish to evert their stomach out of their mouth.
This was an interesting combination of effects because starfish feed naturally by climbing on top of prey such as mussels or oysters and adopting a rigid humped posture so that they can employ the pulling power of lots of tiny tube feet on the underside of each arm to pull apart the two valves of their prey.
Having created a tiny gap, the starfish then evert their stomach out of their mouth, through the gap and into the body of the prey — where they proceed to digest the soft tissues of the prey into a soup-like mixture, which is then drawn back into the starfish as food.
When all of the prey tissue has been digested the starfish withdraws its stomach back into its mouth, leaving behind an empty shell and moving off to find its next victim.
Professor Elphick said: “What is fascinating is that injecting the hormone in starfish induces what is known as fictive feeding. The starfish are behaving as if they are feeding on a mussel or an oyster but no mussel or oyster is there to be eaten.”
The researchers found that the effect of the hormone is so powerful it made starfish 2-3 times slower at righting themselves when flipped over. This is an important defense behavior in nature as they can be upturned by strong waves.
What they also found was that both the hormone and its receptor are found in many regions of the starfish body — including the central nervous system and the stomach. These findings are consistent with the striking effects of the oxytocin-like molecule on starfish behaviour.
The research was funded by the BBSRC, Leverhulme Trust and Society for Experimental Biology.
The ‘dual stigma’ of alcohol-related brain damage
The condition is poorly understood, under-diagnosed and too often unrecognised, a report says.
