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Monday, February 9, 2015
Championship Title Boxing from Resorts World Casino to air Live on CBS Sports Network on Saturday, February 14
Blueberries and blood pressure: the newest evidence
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“This tells us that blueberries may improve the health of blood vessels in addition to reducing blood pressure,” said Sarah Johnson, a nutrition and exercise researcher at Florida State University in Tallahassee who led the study.
Past research has suggested that blueberries may help lower blood pressure, the authors write in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Some studies have also indicated that the flavonoids and other healthy plant compounds in blueberries may help to boost nitric oxide, a chemical that affects the cells that line blood vessel walls.
The 48 women in the study were all past menopause, with an average age of 55 and borderline high blood pressure.
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3 low back pain triggers that may not have occurred to you
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Those who are distracted during activities or fatigued also significantly increase their risk of acute low back pain.
“Understanding which risk factors contribute to back pain and controlling exposure to these risks is an important first step in prevention,” explains Associate Professor Manuela Ferreira, Ph.D., with The George Institute for Global Health and Sydney Medical School at The University of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. “Our study is the first to examine brief exposure to a range of modifiable triggers for an acute episode of low back pain.”
For this case-crossover study, researchers recruited 999 participants from 300 primary care clinics in Sydney, Australia, who had an acute low back pain episode between October 2011 and November 2012. Study subjects were asked to report exposure to 12 physical or psychosocial factors in the 96 hours prior to the onset of back pain.
“Understanding which modifiable risk factors lead to low back pain is an important step toward controlling a condition that affects so many worldwide,” concludes A/Prof Ferreira. “Our findings enhance knowledge of low back pain triggers and will assist the development of new prevention programs that can reduce suffering from this potentially disabling condition.”
Follow these topics: Back Pain
Friday, February 6, 2015
Meditation might slow the age-related loss of gray matter in the brain: UCLA
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Since 1970, life expectancy around the world has risen dramatically, with people living more than 10 years longer. That’s the good news. The bad news is that starting when people are in their mid-to-late-20s, the brain begins to wither — its volume and weight begin to decrease. As this occurs, the brain can begin to lose some of its functional abilities.
So although people might be living longer, the years they gain often come with increased risks for mental illness and neurodegenerative disease. Fortunately, a new study shows meditation could be one way to minimize those risks.
Building on their earlier work that suggested people who meditate have less age-related atrophy in the brain’s white matter, a new study by UCLA researchers found that meditation appeared to help preserve the brain’s gray matter, the tissue that contains neurons.
The scientists looked specifically at the association between age and gray matter. They compared 50 people who had mediated for years and 50 who didn’t. People in both groups showed a loss of gray matter as they aged. But the researchers found among those who meditated, the volume of gray matter did not decline as much as it did among those who didn’t.
The article appears in the current online edition of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Dr. Florian Kurth, a co-author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Brain Mapping Center, said the researchers were surprised by the magnitude of the difference.
“We expected rather small and distinct effects located in some of the regions that had previously been associated with meditating,” he said. “Instead, what we actually observed was a widespread effect of meditation that encompassed regions throughout the entire brain.”
As baby boomers have aged and the elderly population has grown, the incidence of cognitive decline and dementia has increased substantially as the brain ages.
“In that light, it seems essential that longer life expectancies do not come at the cost of a reduced quality of life,” said Dr. Eileen Luders, first author and assistant professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “While much research has focused on identifying factors that increase the risk of mental illness and neurodegenerative decline, relatively less attention has been turned to approaches aimed at enhancing cerebral health.”
Each group in the study was made up of 28 men and 22 women ranging in age from 24 to 77. Those who meditated had been doing so for four to 46 years, with an average of 20 years.
The participants’ brains were scanned using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging. Although the researchers found a negative correlation between gray matter and age in both groups of people — suggesting a loss of brain tissue with increasing age — they also found that large parts of the gray matter in the brains of those who meditated seemed to be better preserved, Kurth said.
The researchers cautioned that they cannot draw a direct, causal connection between meditation and preserving gray matter in the brain. Too many other factors may come into play, including lifestyle choices, personality traits, and genetic brain differences.
“Still, our results are promising,” Luders said. “Hopefully they will stimulate other studies exploring the potential of meditation to better preserve our aging brains and minds. Accumulating scientific evidence that meditation has brain-altering capabilities might ultimately allow for an effective translation from research to practice, not only in the framework of healthy aging but also pathological aging.”
Source
So although people might be living longer, the years they gain often come with increased risks for mental illness and neurodegenerative disease. Fortunately, a new study shows meditation could be one way to minimize those risks.
The scientists looked specifically at the association between age and gray matter. They compared 50 people who had mediated for years and 50 who didn’t. People in both groups showed a loss of gray matter as they aged. But the researchers found among those who meditated, the volume of gray matter did not decline as much as it did among those who didn’t.
The article appears in the current online edition of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
“We expected rather small and distinct effects located in some of the regions that had previously been associated with meditating,” he said. “Instead, what we actually observed was a widespread effect of meditation that encompassed regions throughout the entire brain.”
As baby boomers have aged and the elderly population has grown, the incidence of cognitive decline and dementia has increased substantially as the brain ages.
“In that light, it seems essential that longer life expectancies do not come at the cost of a reduced quality of life,” said Dr. Eileen Luders, first author and assistant professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “While much research has focused on identifying factors that increase the risk of mental illness and neurodegenerative decline, relatively less attention has been turned to approaches aimed at enhancing cerebral health.”
Each group in the study was made up of 28 men and 22 women ranging in age from 24 to 77. Those who meditated had been doing so for four to 46 years, with an average of 20 years.
The participants’ brains were scanned using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging. Although the researchers found a negative correlation between gray matter and age in both groups of people — suggesting a loss of brain tissue with increasing age — they also found that large parts of the gray matter in the brains of those who meditated seemed to be better preserved, Kurth said.
The researchers cautioned that they cannot draw a direct, causal connection between meditation and preserving gray matter in the brain. Too many other factors may come into play, including lifestyle choices, personality traits, and genetic brain differences.
“Still, our results are promising,” Luders said. “Hopefully they will stimulate other studies exploring the potential of meditation to better preserve our aging brains and minds. Accumulating scientific evidence that meditation has brain-altering capabilities might ultimately allow for an effective translation from research to practice, not only in the framework of healthy aging but also pathological aging.”
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The research was supported by the Brain Mapping Medical Research Organization, the Robson Family and Northstar Fund, the Brain Mapping Support Foundation, the Pierson?Lovelace Foundation, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Tamkin Foundation, the William M. and Linda R. Dietel Philanthropic Fund at the Northern Piedmont Community Foundation, the Jennifer Jones?Simon Foundation, the Capital Group Companies Foundation and an Australian Research Council fellowship (120100227). Nicolas Cherbuin of the Australian National University was also an author of the study.Source
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Kids’ exercise guidelines need more focus on brain development
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Most guidelines – including those of the World Health Organization and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – recommend that kids and teens get 60 minutes each day of moderate to vigorous exercise. Many don’t specify what kind, but imply that aerobics should be the focus, with additional “strength training” three times per week.
“These data were developed in the 1950s primarily for adults,” said lead author Dr. Gregory D. Myer of the Division of Sports Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
An hour of aerobic exercise may promote aerobic fitness and muscle strength, but not necessarily motor skill development, socialization or having fun, the authors write.
The preadolescent period is the time when developing brains can best learn and reinforce motor skill control, which will make physical fitness more sustainable later in life, the authors write. More
Drinking green tea before taking supplements may offer protection from toxicity: Penn State
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Researchers gave mice high doses of the green tea polyphenol epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). The dosage was equivalent to the amount of the polyphenol found in some dietary supplements taken by humans.
The research data show that dietary pretreatment with the green tea polyphenol protects mice from liver toxicity caused by subsequent high oral doses of the same compound, explained Josh Lambert, associate professor of food science. He suggested that the research has relevance to people who are taking or are considering taking supplements containing green tea extract.
“We believe this study indicates that those who are chronic green tea consumers would be less sensitive to potential liver toxicity from green-tea-based dietary supplements,” he said. “If you are going to take green tea supplements, drinking green tea for several weeks or months ahead of time may reduce your potential side effects.”
“Drinking green tea rather than taking supplements will allow you to realize the benefits and avoid the risk of liver toxicity,” he said. “The beneficial effects that people have reported as being associated with green tea are the result of dietary consumption rather than the use of supplements. The relative risk of using supplements remains unclear.”
Tea — Camellia sinensis — is rich in catechins, polyphenols that are natural antioxidants. A number of animal studies have shown the preventive effects of green tea polyphenols against obesity. And Lambert pointed out that a recent analysis of 11 human trials with green tea preparations reported a nearly three-pound average body weight loss in intervention groups compared to control groups.
Green tea’s effect on weight loss may be more noticeable if a person exercises. In research published last year, Lambert showed that mice on a high-fat diet that consumed decaffeinated green tea extract and exercised regularly experienced sharp reductions in final body weight and significant improvements in health.
Approximately 34 percent of adults in the United States are classified as obese, Lambert noted, leading to a strong interest in the potential benefits of including green tea and green tea supplements in weight-loss efforts. The liver toxicity research, recently published online in Food and Chemical Toxicology, revealed a unique property of the green tea polyphenol EGCG.
“It appears that EGCG can modulate its own bioavailability and that dietary treatment may reduce the toxic potential of acute high oral doses of EGCG,” said lead researcher Sarah Forester, assistant professor of chemistry, California State University, Bakersfield, a former Penn State postdoctoral fellow.
“These data may partly explain the observed variation in liver toxicity response to dietary supplements containing green tea.”
Some people drink surprisingly large volumes of green tea, according to Lambert, as much as 10-20 cups a day, but liver toxicity has never been reported in that context.
“No person can sit down and drink 16 cups of green tea all at once,” he said. “However if you take a supplement you can get that type of green tea extract dose, so there is some indication that the dosage form has an influence on the potential to cause liver toxicity.”
Source
Youth hockey brain imaging study suggests early marker for concussion damage
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As a pediatric neuropsychiatrist and director of the Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families at the University of Vermont (UVM) College of Medicine, Hudziak believes in the benefits of ice hockey and other sports for kids. Athletic activities help a young person build organizational skills, improve motor and emotional control, reduce anxiety and boost confidence.
Each year, more than 300,000 sports-related concussions (SRC) occur across all sports and all levels in the United States, according to a 2013 “Ice Hockey Summit II” report to which Hudziak and Boston University (BU) School of Medicine’s Ann McKee, M.D., contributed. The report’s authors advised the elimination of head hits from all levels of hockey, a change in body-checking policies and the elimination of fighting in all amateur and professional hockey. “Ice hockey SRC prevalence is high,” the report states. “Hockey players compete at high speeds as they mature, risking injury from intentional and accidental collisions, body checks, illegal on-ice activity and fighting.”
The UVM team used advanced imaging technology and cognitive testing to assess 29 Vermont ice hockey players between ages 14 and 23, some diagnosed with a sports-related concussion. As the severity of the athletes’ concussion symptoms increased, the researchers found, the cortex got thinner in areas where it should be dense at those players’ ages – areas that relate to attention control, memory, and emotion regulation.
What the study indicates for the future health and function of an ice hockey player is unclear. The researchers hope to do further studies, ideally following the brains of these athletes over a couple of decades and factoring for their involvement and time in the sport as well as other influences, such as smoking and alcohol use.
“The concern is that what we are finding may be an early marker of brain damage,” Albaugh says. “Years of playing contact sports and repeatedly getting your head knocked around probably isn’t good for the brain, especially in young children whose brains are still maturing” he adds.
Their findings contribute to research into the consequences of brain injury in other sports, including the brain damage discovered in older professional football players by McKee, a neurology and pathology professor at BU and director of the “brain banks” in various centers of study for the university and the Veterans Administration. Her work was a cornerstone of “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis,” an investigative report by the public television program “Frontline” on the National Football League’s response to players’ brain trauma.
“It just adds to our information base about young athletes playing contact sports,” McKee says of Hudziak’s study. “It’s a first step. It needs to be looked at longitudinally. We need to know if these athletes recover.”
McKee says she wouldn’t necessarily expect the brain changes in young hockey players to lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a serious but uncommon disease that she found prevalent in retired NFL players. Instead, she expects that further study in the ice hockey arena will show that young players’ brains can recover from early blows. Brains have a chance for rehabilitation after injury, she says.
“We’re hopeful that these changes can be reversed,” she says of the cortex thinning observed in Hudziak’s study. “I would look at this as an opportunity to make a difference, and not a cause of irrevocable damage in these players.”
Hudziak and his UVM colleagues would like to help the organizations running professional, collegiate, junior and youth hockey leagues make better decisions about how best to treat players’ head injuries; how and when to return players to the ice after an injury; when to pull them from the sport entirely; and how to prevent injuries from occurring. Players and coaches at the national, college and youth levels of hockey have talked to Hudziak about his findings, he says.
In Hudziak’s study, he and his colleagues cite research indicating “that cerebral concussion accounts for 15 to 22.2 percent of all reported injuries” in hockey.
The key challenges for them, says Hudziak, are that the definition of “concussion” is so slippery and reports of the incidence of concussions are inconsistent. Some people think a concussion happens when someone is hit in the head or gets dizzy; others think a person has to be “knocked out” to have a concussion.
His study focuses on the symptoms recorded after a diagnosed concussion. But Hudziak wonders whether lesser head injuries, what he calls sub-concussive events, could have as many or more consequences for the brain over time as a single major blow.
On the computer in his office, Hudziak shows a video of a professional hockey game during which a player gets body checked. It doesn’t look like a very serious hit, though he’s carried off the ice.
Then, the video reverses to just a few minutes earlier in the game, when that same player collides with another and flips violently backwards, throwing off his helmet before his head hits the ice. That suggests the potential harm inside a person’s skull that can occur from cumulative assault.
As Hudziak puts it, “The sum is greater than the individual parts.”
That player flew into Burlington, Vt. to meet with Hudziak and his team, so they can learn more from his brain.
Ideally, Hudziak says, they want to apply their current study to female and male ice hockey players ages 8 to 14, then to college-age skaters of both genders and finally to retired professional hockey players. They’d like to compare their findings at each age group to nonathletes and to the same groups in soccer – a sport typically involving less-severe head injuries.
“We don’t have any sense that hockey’s going to be worse than soccer,” Hudziak points out.
Already, in a follow-up study, Hudziak’s team has found more evidence of increased problems in the brains of athletes, compared with nonathletes. This work focuses on “hyperintensities,” which look like little bright white spots on a brain image. His research suggests a higher volume of these bright spots may correlate with decreased thickness in the cortex.
“As a general rule of thumb, you’re allowed one of these bright spots every 10 years of your life,” Albaugh says.
So a 50-year-old should have about five of these bright spots. One of the college-age athletes in the study has 18 spots, Albaugh says. Hudziak now has to call some parents to tell them of the “clinically concerning findings” in their children’s brain images.
Hudziak doesn’t want to warn parents to keep their kids out of hockey or other team play. As the founder of the unique Vermont Family-Based Approach, which incorporates all aspects of a child’s life to address emotional and behavioral problems, he prescribes hockey, soccer and other sports to help eliminate behavior, attention and psychological disorders. It is his hope that through brain training and health promotion the brain may recover.
“My goal is not to rid the world of these sports,” Hudziak says. “My goal is to make these sports safer, so that more people can play them.” Source
Follow these topics: Brain Injury, Concussions
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