Does exercise keep your brain running?

Moving the body demands a lot from the brain. Exercise activates countless neurons, which generate, receive and interpret repeated, rapid-fire messages from the nervous system, coordinating muscle contractions, vision, balance, organ function and all of the complex interactions of bodily systems that allow you to take one step, then another.
This increase in brain activity naturally increases the brain’s need for nutrients, but until recently, scientists hadn’t fully understood how neurons fuel themselves during exercise. Now a series of animal studies from Japan suggest that the exercising brain has unique methods of keeping itself fueled. What’s more, the finely honed energy balance that occurs in the brain appears to have implications not only for how well the brain functions during exercise, but also for how well our thinking and memory work the rest of the time.
For many years, scientists had believed that the brain, which is a very hungry organ, subsisted only on glucose, or blood sugar, which it absorbed from the passing bloodstream. But about 10 years ago, some neuroscientists found that specialized cells in the brain, known as astrocytes, that act as support cells for neurons actually contained small stores of glycogen, or stored carbohydrates. And glycogen, as it turns out, is critical for the health of cells throughout the brain.
In petri dishes, when neurons, which do not have energy stores of their own, are starved of blood sugar, their neighboring astrocytes undergo a complex physiological process that results in those cells’ stores of glycogen being broken down into a form easily burned by neurons. This substance is released into the space between the cells and the neurons swallow it, maintaining their energy levels.
But while scientists knew that the brain had and could access these energy stores, they had been unable to study when the brain’s stored energy was being used in actual live conditions, outside of petri dishes, because brain glycogen is metabolized or burned away very rapidly after death; it’s gone before it can be measured.
That’s where the Japanese researchers came in. They had developed a new method of using high-powered microwave irradiation to instantly freeze glycogen levels at death, so that the scientists could accurately assess just how much brain glycogen remained in the astrocytes or had recently been used.
In the first of their new experiments, published last year in The Journal of Physiology, scientists at the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Neuroscience at the University of Tsukuba gathered two groups of adult male rats and had one group start a treadmill running program, while the other group sat for the same period of time each day on unmoving treadmills. The researchers’ aim was to determine how much the level of brain glycogen changed during and after exercise.
Using their glycogen detection method, they discovered that prolonged exercise significantly lowered the brain’s stores of energy, and that the losses were especially noticeable in certain areas of the brain, like the frontal cortex and the hippocampus, that are involved in thinking and memory, as well as in the mechanics of moving.
The findings of their subsequent follow-up experiment, however, were even more intriguing and consequential. In that study, which appears in this month’s issue of The Journal of Physiology, the researchers studied animals after a single bout of exercise and also after four weeks of regular, moderate-intensity running.
After the single session on the treadmill, the animals were allowed to rest and feed, and then their brain glycogen levels were studied. The food, it appeared, had gone directly to their heads; their brain levels of glycogen not only had been restored to what they had been before the workout, but had soared past that point, increasing by as much as a 60 percent in the frontal cortex and hippocampus and slightly less in other parts of the brain. The astrocytes had “overcompensated,” resulting in a kind of brain carbo-loading.
The levels, however, had dropped back to normal within about 24 hours.
That was not the case, though, if the animals continued to exercise. In those rats that ran for four weeks, the “supercompensation” became the new normal, with their baseline levels of glycogen showing substantial increases compared with the sedentary animals. The increases were especially notable in, again, those portions of the brain critical to learning and memory formation — the cortex and the hippocampus.
Which is why the findings are potentially so meaningful – and not just for rats.
While a brain with more fuel reserves is potentially a brain that can sustain and direct movement longer, it also “may be a key mechanism underlying exercise-enhanced cognitive function,” says Hideaki Soya, a professor of exercise biochemistry at the University of Tsukuba and senior author of the studies, since supercompensation occurs most strikingly in the parts of the brain that allow us better to think and to remember. As a result, Dr. Soya says, “it is tempting to suggest that increased storage and utility of brain glycogen in the cortex and hippocampus might be involved in the development” of a better, sharper brain.
Given the limits of current technologies, brain glycogen metabolism cannot be studied in people. But even so, the studies’ findings make D.I.Y. brain-fuel supercompensation efforts seem like an attractive possibility. And, according to unpublished data from Dr. Soya’s lab, the process may even be easy.
He and his colleagues have found that “glycogen supercompensation in some brain loci” is “enhanced in rats receiving carbohydrates immediately after exhaustive exercise.” So for people, that might mean that after a run or other exercise that is prolonged or strenuous enough to leave you tired, a bottle of chocolate milk or a banana might be just the thing your brain is needing.

Dieting slows down your body’s metabolism

London: Losing weight is twice as hard as you may think as reducing your calorie intake slows down your metabolism, say scientists.

They said that dieters’ expectations have been too high, and official guidance that cutting 500 calories a day will result in a pound of weight being lost a week is plain wrong, the Daily Mail reported.

But dieters need not worry, as the same experts have created an online calculator that allows would-be slimmers to adjust their expectations and gain a more realistic picture of what they can expect to achieve.

The Body Weight Simulator website – at bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov – estimates how much less that person will have to eat, or how much more exercise they’ll have to do reach their goal.

Official advice in the UK and the U.S. has long been that cutting out 500 calories a day will lead to weight loss of a pound a week.

But the calculation assumes that weight loss is steady and does not take into account that a person’s metabolism slows down as they lose weight, making subsequent pounds harder to shed.
This means weight is twice as hard to shift, the researchers said at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference.

The old system says that cutting 100 calories a day will lead to the loss of 10lb a year. The revised rule predicts just 5lb will be shifted.

Rather than expecting too much, dieters should be patient, said Boyd Swinburn, an obesity expert from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

Advising slimmers not to set their sights on more than a half a pound of weight loss a week, he said: “This is extremely good. This is a marathon not a sprint.”

Poor Sleep Quality Diminishes Cognitive Functioning

Sufficient sleep is essential for optimum cognitive and psychological functioning. Diminished sleep quality is associated with depression and anxiety, but the extent to which poor sleep quality uniquely impacts attention and executive functions independent of the effects of the common underlying features of depression and anxiety requires further exploration. Here 67 healthy young adults were given the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, second edition (MMPI-2), the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and tests of attention and executive functions. Similar to findings from a previous study with healthy community-based older adults (Nebes, Buysse, Halligan, Houck, & Monk, 2009), participants who reported poor sleep quality on the PSQI endorsed significantly greater scores on MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical scales related to depression and anxiety (Cohen's d = 0.77–1.05). In addition, PSQI component scores indexing poor sleep quality, duration, and medication use were associated with diminished attention and executive functions, even after controlling for emotional reactivity or demoralization (rs = 0.21–0.27). These results add to the concurrent validity of the PSQI, and provide further evidence for subtle cognitive decrements related to insufficient sleep even in healthy young adults. Future extension of these findings is necessary with larger samples and clinical comparison groups, and using objective indices of sleep dysfunction such as polysomnography.

No couch potatoes here

Potato is high-fibre vegetable loaded with a rich array of nutrients like vitamins B6 and C, copper, potassium, and manganese

Diet Desk | Madhuri Ruia

The potato is usually synonymous with all things unhealthy —the words fat, starch, carbohydrate come to mind. A couch potato is something no one aspires to be. Yet the humble tuber is a hot favourite in almost all cuisines around the world and is well known as a versatile and tempting vegetable. From batata vada and aloo chat to aloo parantha, aloo gobi and dum aloo, the potato is an integral part of just about any Indian dish. In fact, there is a potato-based favourite dish for every palate. Several top-notch fast food enterprises make a big deal about marketing crispier, tastier potato chips, while others are busy researching the perfect potato to make the tastiest French fries—crisp on the outside, and light and fluffy inside.

Tuber guide: Eat with the skin on.

The fact is that the potato is far from unhealthy. It’s a high-fibre vegetable loaded with a rich array of nutrients like vitamins B6 and C, copper, potassium, and manganese. However, for potatoes to retain these nutrients, they have to be baked in their skin, and not deep fried, which makes them unhealthy. Potatoes with their skins retain their fibre and vitamin C and a medium-sized baked potato is just 100 calories. Deep frying more than doubles the fat calories because the potato absorbs a lot of oil.

Potatoes also contain several health-promoting antioxidants, compounds like carotenoids, flavonoids and caffeic acid, and are a major source of energy. Contrary to popular belief, baked potatoes with skins (jacket potatoes) when not loaded with sour cream or cheese, have a lower glycaemic index because of the fibre available from the skin. Mashed potatoes do not contain fibre and have a higher glycaemic index (GI) of 96 (a GI of 70 or more is considered high, 100g baked potatoes have a GI of approximately 50-76 depending on the quality of the potato). Similarly, deep-fried potatoes have a high GI. Foods with high GI are fattening because they are broken in the body faster than high fibre foods, which make you feel hungry within a couple of hours.

Before cooking potatoes, clean them thoroughly with a brush under running water. Ensure that you choose those that are firm in texture. Discard ones that have a greenish discoloration and have sprouts because this indicates that the potato is old and contains toxins. When potatoes have all their nutrients intact, they are a convenient and tasty health food that can go a long way in improving the health profile of people in many ways.

Benefits of consuming jacket potatoes (100g a day):

• A single baked potato (100g) provides almost 12% of fibre intake of our daily requirement (which should be 25-30g) and acts like a bulking agent to improve digestion and bowel movements.

• It helps you beat stress because it provides 27% of the daily requirement of vitamin B6. Vitamin B6 is required for cellular health and a healthy nervous system.

• It lowers blood homocysteine levels (homocysteine is a toxic by-product of protein metabolism in the body) and maintains a healthy heart. Homocysteine level of less than 10 mmol/l is desirable since a high level can increase the risk of heart disease.

• It can potentially lower blood pressure because it contains a blood pressure lowering compound called kukoamine. However, several smaller servings of potato may be required for this. Diabetic or overweight people can also have potatoes, provided these are the only starch component in the meal instead of chapatti, rice or bread.

• Eat a jacket potato before going to bed; season it with flaxseed oil, salt and chilli powder if you wish. This will improve sleep quality, improve morning energy and mood for the day.

• Jacket potatoes can replace carbohydrates like chapatti and wholewheat bread for those on a weight-loss plan because they are an excellent source of sustained energy. With the skin, potatoes become a more complex food. The skin of the potato and its natural high-fibre content prevents sugar and junk food cravings.

Madhuri Ruia is a nutritionist and Pilates expert. She runs InteGym in Mumbai, which advocates workouts with healthy diets.

Write to Madhuri at dietdesk@livemint.com

Too much TV IS bad for children: The heart attack risk facing young couch potato

Square eyes: Children who watched a large amount of television were found to have narrowed arteries behind the eyes

Lazy: On average, children spent 1.9 hours per day watching TV or playing on their computer

Too much TV IS bad for children: The heart attack risk facing young couch potatoes

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 9:36 AM on 21st April 2011

Children as young as six are risking heart problems in later life because they are allowed to spend too much time watching TV or playing on computers, scientists warn.
A study of 1,492 primary school pupils found that those who spent hours glued to the screen suffered narrowing of blood  vessels in their eyes – an early warning sign of increased  likelihood of heart disease and high blood pressure.
But those who exercised for one hour a day were significantly healthier.


The study was carried out by Dr Bamini Gopinath and a team of researchers at the University of Sydney.
Parents answered a questionnaire detailing the amount of time their children spent watching TV, playing video games, reading and engaging in indoor and outdoor physical activity.
Scientists then took digital photographs of the blood vessels at the back of each child’s eye and calculated their size.
They also measured height, weight, body mass index and  blood pressure.
They found on average, children spent 1.9 hours per day watching TV or playing on their computer and only 36 minutes doing physical activity.
They had an average ‘retinal arteriolar’ narrowing of  2.3 microns.
But those who regularly participated in outdoor physical activity had retinal blood vessels that were 2.2 microns wider.
Dr Gopinath said that ‘replacing one hour a day of screen time with physical activity’ could be enough to stop the effects.

Children under two should not be allowed to watch any TV, experts say.
Older children should watch no more than two hours a day, the researchers at the Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Centre in Seattle said.
Each hour in front of the TV increased a child's chances of attention deficit disorder by 10%, their research in the Pediatrics journal showed.
The study of 1,345 children showed three hours TV a day made children 30% more likely to have the disorder.
Dr Dimitri Christakis at the children's hospital led the study. He said: "The newborn brain develops very rapidly during the first two to three years of life. It's really being wired."
Children who were exposed to the unrealistic levels of stimulation at a young age continued to expect this in later life, leading to difficulty dealing with the slower pace of school and homework, he said.
"TV can cause the developing mind to experience unnatural levels of stimulation," he said.
Rapid
This was made worse by the rapid image change that television makers used to keep young children interested, Dr Christakis added.
Parents were questioned about their children's viewing habits and asked to rate their behaviour at age seven on a scale similar to that used to diagnose attention deficit disorders.
The youngsters who watched the most television were more likely to rank within the top 10% for concentration problems, impulsiveness, restlessness and being easily confused.
Frederick Zimmerman of the University of Washington in Seattle, another of the authors, said it was impossible to say what a "safe" level of TV viewing would be for children between the ages of one and three.

"Each hour has an additional risk. You might say there's no safe level since there's a small but increased risk with each hour," he said.
"Things are a trade-off. Some parents might want to take that risk. We didn't find a safe level in that sense."
Between three and five per cent of children in the US are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.
The researchers admitted there could be problems in the study as the parents' views may not be totally accurate. 

Exercise and longevity-Worth all the sweat - Just why exercise is so good for people is, at last, being understood

            One sure giveaway of quack medicine is the claim that a product can treat any ailment. There are, sadly, no panaceas. But some things come close, and exercise is one of them. As doctors never tire of reminding people, exercise protects against a host of illnesses, from heart attacks and dementia to diabetes and infection. How it does so, however, remains surprisingly mysterious. But a paper just published in Nature by Beth Levine of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre and her colleagues sheds some light on the matter.
Dr Levine and her team were testing a theory that exercise works its magic, at least in part, by promoting autophagy. This process, whose name is derived from the Greek for “self-eating”, is a mechanism by which surplus, worn-out or malformed proteins and other cellular components are broken up for scrap and recycled.
To carry out the test, Dr Levine turned to those stalwarts of medical research, genetically modified mice. Her first batch of rodents were tweaked so that their autophagosomes—structures that form around components which have been marked for recycling—glowed green. After these mice had spent half an hour on a treadmill, she found that the number of autophagosomes in their muscles had increased, and it went on increasing until they had been running for 80 minutes.
To find out what, if anything, this exercise-boosted autophagy was doing for mice, the team engineered a second strain that was unable to respond this way. Exercise, in other words, failed to stimulate their recycling mechanism. When this second group of modified mice were tested alongside ordinary ones, they showed less endurance and had less ability to take up sugar from their bloodstreams.
There were longer-term effects, too. In mice, as in people, regular exercise helps prevent diabetes. But when the team fed their second group of modified mice a diet designed to induce diabetes, they found that exercise gave no protection at all.
Dr Levine and her team reckon their results suggest that manipulating autophagy may offer a new approach to treating diabetes. And their research is also suggestive in other ways. Autophagy is a hot topic in medicine, as biologists have come to realise that it helps protect the body from all kinds of ailments.
The virtues of recycling
Autophagy is an ancient mechanism, shared by all eukaryotic organisms (those which, unlike bacteria, keep their DNA in a membrane-bound nucleus within their cells). It probably arose as an adaptation to scarcity of nutrients. Critters that can recycle parts of themselves for fuel are better able to cope with lean times than those that cannot. But over the past couple of decades, autophagy has also been shown to be involved in things as diverse as fighting bacterial infections and slowing the onset of neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases.
Most intriguingly of all, it seems that it can slow the process of ageing. Biologists have known for decades that feeding animals near-starvation diets can boost their lifespans dramatically. Dr Levine was a member of the team which showed that an increased level of autophagy, brought on by the stress of living in a constant state of near-starvation, was the mechanism responsible for this life extension.
The theory is that what are being disposed of in particular are worn-out mitochondria. These structures are a cell’s power-packs. They are where glucose and oxygen react together to release energy. Such reactions, though, often create damaging oxygen-rich molecules called free radicals, which are thought to be one of the driving forces of ageing. Getting rid of wonky mitochondria would reduce free-radical production and might thus slow down ageing.
A few anti-ageing zealots already subsist on near-starvation diets, but Dr Levine’s results suggest a similar effect might be gained in a much more agreeable way, via vigorous exercise. The team’s next step is to test whether boosted autophagy can indeed explain the life-extending effects of exercise. That will take a while. Even in animals as short-lived as mice, she points out, studying ageing is a long-winded process. But she is sufficiently confident about the outcome that she has, in the meantime, bought herself a treadmill.

A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond

IN 1905, at age 55, Sir William Osler, the most influential physician of his era, decided to retire from the medical faculty of Johns Hopkins. In a farewell speech, Osler talked about the link between age and accomplishment: The “effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of 25 and 40 — these 15 golden years of plenty.”
In comparison, he noted, “men above 40 years of age” are useless. As for those over 60, there would be an “incalculable benefit” in “commercial, political and professional life, if, as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.”
Although such views did not prevent the doctor from going on to accept a post at Oxford University, one he retained until his death at age 70, his contention that brainpower, creativity and innovation have an early expiration date was, unfortunately, widely accepted by others. Until recently, neurologists believed that brain cells died off without being replaced. Psychologists affirmed the supposition by maintaining that the ability to learn trudged steadfastly downward through the years.
Of course, certain capabilities fall off as you approach 50. Memories of where you left the keys or parked the car mysteriously vanish. Words suddenly go into hiding as you struggle to remember the guy, you know, in that movie, what was it called? And calculating the tip on your dinner check seems to take longer than it used to.
Yet it is also true that there is no preordained march toward senescence.
Some people are much better than their peers at delaying age-related declines in memory and calculating speed. What researchers want to know is why. Why does your 70-year-old neighbor score half her age on a memory test, while you, at 40, have the memory of a senior citizen? If investigators could better detect what protects one person’s mental strengths or chips away at another’s, then perhaps they could devise a program to halt or reverse decline and even shore up improvements.
As it turns out, one essential element of mental fitness has already been identified. “Education seems to be an elixir that can bring us a healthy body and mind throughout adulthood and even a longer life,” says Margie E. Lachman, a psychologist at Brandeis University who specializes in aging. For those in midlife and beyond, a college degree appears to slow the brain’s aging process by up to a decade, adding a new twist to the cost-benefit analysis of higher education — for young students as well as those thinking about returning to school.
Dr. Lachman is one of the principal investigators for what could be considered the Manhattan Project of middle age, an enormous study titled Midlife in the United States, or Midus. This continuing examination of Americans’ physical and emotional health and habits gained momentum in the 1990s as the first wave of baby boomers were settling into their fifth decade and running up against their own biases against aging. More than 7,000 people 25 to 74 years old were drafted to participate so that middle-agers could be compared with those younger and older. And with a new $21 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, the Midus team is beginning its third round of research this month.
What makes Midus particularly valuable is that researchers can track the same person over a long period, comparing the older self with the younger self to see which capabilities are declining and which are improving. This approach has opened a new peephole into the middle-age brain.
DESPITE continuing emphasis on SAT-type testing, in recent decades researchers have become much more aware of the range of abilities that constitute intellectual muscle. The Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner called his version of this theory “multiple intelligences” in his seminal 1983 book, “Frames of Mind.” “The human mind,” he later explained, “is better thought of as a series of relatively separate faculties, with only loose and non-predictable relations with one another, than as a single, all-purpose machine that performs steadily at a certain horsepower, independent of content and context.”
Many researchers believe that human intelligence or brainpower consists of dozens of assorted cognitive skills, which they commonly divide into two categories. One bunch falls under the heading “fluid intelligence,” the abilities that produce solutions not based on experience, like pattern recognition, working memory and abstract thinking, the kind of intelligence tested on I.Q. examinations. These abilities tend to peak in one’s 20s.
“Crystallized intelligence,” by contrast, generally refers to skills that are acquired through experience and education, like verbal ability, inductive reasoning and judgment. While fluid intelligence is often considered largely a product of genetics, crystallized intelligence is much more dependent on a bouquet of influences, including personality, motivation, opportunity and culture.
To illustrate how crystallized intelligence can operate, Gene D. Cohen, a founder of the field of geriatric psychiatry, related a story about his in-laws from his book “The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain.” The couple, in their 70s, arrived in Washington for a visit during a snowstorm and found themselves stranded by the train station. When they saw a pizzeria across the street, his father-in-law had an idea. The couple went inside, ordered a pizza to be delivered to their daughter’s house, and then asked if they could ride along.
As Cohen explained, one of the brain’s most powerful tools is its ability to quickly scan a vast storehouse of templates for relevant information and past experience to come up with a novel solution to a problem. In this context, the mature brain is especially well equipped, which is probably why we still associate wisdom with age.
Indeed, mental capabilities that depend most heavily on accumulated knowledge and experience, like settling disputes and enlarging one’s vocabulary, clearly get better over time. If you’re looking for someone to manage your financial portfolio, you might be better off with a middle-ager than a fresh young M.B.A.
Richard E. Nisbett, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Michigan, has long argued that when it comes to intelligence, experience can outrun biology. A recent study he wrote with Igor Grossmannon aging and wisdom concluded: “Older people make more use of higher-order reasoning schemes that emphasize the need for multiple perspectives, allow for compromise, and recognize the limits of knowledge.” Most important, they discovered that despite a decline in fluid intelligence, complicated reasoning that relates to people, moral issues or political institutions improved with age.
Dr. Lachman and one of her colleagues at Brandeis, Patricia A. Tun, have been buoyed by the news about crystallized intelligence. But they wanted to know whether anything could be done to halt the seemingly steady decline of fluid intellectual skills through the years. So they devised several quick memory, calculation and reasoning tests that could be easily administered to thousands of the Midus participants. For example: to check verbal memory, they recited 15 common words. After 90 seconds, they asked a subject to list as many of the words as possible.
To test numerical reasoning, they asked participants to discern the pattern in a sequence: What comes next in the series 18, 20, 24, 30, 38? Their team also tested reaction time by evaluating how quickly someone responded to a change in instructions. Here the subject was instructed to say “Go” when the interviewer said “Green,” and “Stop” when she said “Red.” Then the instructions were reversed, requiring the subject to say “Stop” in response to “Green” and “Go” in response to “Red.” At the end of the survey, the researcher once again asked how many of the 15 words the subject could remember.
(For those trying this at home, the answer to the numerical sequence is 48.)
The results varied in expected and unexpected ways. As anticipated, people over 50 performed worse on speed and memory challenges than their younger counterparts. The aging brain was more easily distracted and slower in retrieving information; it had trouble shushing internal chatter and preventing stray thoughts from interfering with concentration. Women tended to do better than men when it came to recalling the list of words, while men were better at picking out number patterns and reacting quickly to changing instructions.
The most consistent results involved education.
All other things being equal, the more years of school a subject had, the better he or she performed on every mental test. Up to age 75, the studies showed, “people with college degrees performed on complex tasks like less-educated individuals who were 10 years younger.”
Education was also associated with a longer life and decreased risk of dementia. “The effects of education are dramatic and long term,” Dr. Lachman says.
To isolate the specific impact of schooling on mental skills, Dr. Lachman and her colleagues tried to control for other likely reasons one person might outshine another — differences in income, parental achievement, gender, physical activity and age. After all, we know that the children of affluent, educated parents have a raft of advantages that could account for greater mental heft down the road. College graduates are able to compound their advantages because they can pour more resources into their minds and bodies.
Still, when Dr. Lachman and Dr. Tun reviewed the results, they were surprised to discover that into middle age and beyond, people could make up for educational disadvantages encountered earlier in life. Everyone in the study who regularly did more to challenge their brains — reading, writing, attending lectures or completing word puzzles — did better on fluid intelligence tests than their counterparts who did less.
And those with the fewest years of schooling showed the largest benefits. Middle-age subjects who had left school early but began working on keeping their minds sharp had substantially better memory and faster calculating skills than those who did not. They responded as well as people up to 10 years younger. In fact, their scores were comparable to college graduates.
“We have shown that those with less education may be able to compensate and look more like those who have higher education by adopting some of the common practices of the highly educated,” Dr. Lachman says.
Regular mental workouts can actually alter the brain’s neural circuits in middle-age and older adults, making regions like the hippocampus, a center for memory and learning, more responsive. Cognitive exercise also helped improve executive functioning, the kind of decision-making ability associated with a mission control center.
In another study, Dr. Lachman showed that adults, particularly men, with low levels of education could also improve mental function by using a computer. Although researchers are not sure why, they speculate that computers required users to switch mental gears more frequently or process information in a new way, which quickened reaction time. (Research on computer use by highly educated adults has produced much more mixed results.)
When the Midus team put their data together, they noticed other similarities among people with the strongest cognitive skills. Senior citizens who performed as well as younger adults in fluid intelligence tended to share four characteristics in addition to having a college degree and regularly engaging in mental workouts: they exercised frequently; they were socially active, frequently seeing friends and family, volunteering or attending meetings; they were better at remaining calm in the face of stress; and they felt more in control of their lives.
Just as money and education often run together, these factors tend to reinforce one another. Adults who call on friends and family for support may be better able to reduce their stress, and reducing their stress may give them sense of control.
Dr. Lachman emphasizes that there is still a lot more research to do before the connections between education and cognitive ability as people age is fully understood. Still, she says: “When young adults think about college, they think about career opportunities and possibly the social benefits. What they don’t realize is college education has long-term benefits well beyond first job and social contacts.” The same could be said for continuing education.
At a time when the prospect of a longer life is shadowed by the fear of mental decline, the possibility that the aging can have some control over their mental fitness is an idea even William Osler would support.

Patricia Cohen is a reporter for The Times and author of “In Our Prime: The Invention of Middle Age,” published this month by Scribner.

Your Attitude is a Choice. I Choose Optimism.

Optimists outperform pessimists on the job by as much as 50 percent. Which do you choose to be?

By Harvey Mackay | Jan 13, 2012

When you wake up every day you have two choices.  You can either be positive or negative;  an optimist or a pessimist.  I choose to be an optimist.  It's all a matter of perspective.
You can whine because you have so much work or be grateful that you are your own boss and in control of your own destiny.  You can complain about your lack of an IT department, or be excited about learning the tech you need to know.  You can grumble about your unengaged employees or do everything in your power to make them succeed.  You get the idea.
Pessimism doesn...t grow your business or even maintain the status quo.  The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities. And the worst part is that their surliness rubs off on others.
You need to be able to look on the bright side of tough situations in order to take risks, and survive both successes and failures.  The sooner you accept the fact that you will have both successes and failures, the easier it will be to get your business and personal life headed in the right direction.
An optimist understands that life can be a bumpy road, but at least it is leading somewhere.  They learn from mistakes and failures, and are not afraid to fail again.  It may not be your fault for being knocked down, but it is certainly your fault for not getting up.
Does success or failure have anything to do with mental attitude? The answer is a resounding, “yes.”
A psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania proved that optimists are more successful than equally talented pessimists in business, education, sports and politics.  Based on his research, Metropolitan Life, the insurance and financial services corporation, developed a test to distinguish between the optimists and pessimists when hiring sales people.  The results of that experiment were phenomenal:  The optimists outsold the pessimists by 20 percent the first year.  During the second year, the difference jumped to 50 percent.  Find me a sales person—or company—that wouldn not beg for those numbers.  I know we would find office space for those optimists at MackayMitchell Envelope Company.
The right attitude coupled with the courage to reach for opportunity is the defining factor for success.  It’s never too late to start early.  Don’t get discouraged just because you haven’t practiced that approach until now.
I am an eternal optimist.  I firmly believe that there is virtually nothing that I can’t do if I set my mind to it, and that's true of everyone.  It helps to be realistic. I know I am never going to pitch in the World Series, but I can be a player/manager of a top-notch company.  I took a big gamble getting my company off the ground, but I’ve never looked back.

Foods That Boost Brain Power

When it comes to boosting-brain power, there are some foods and nutrients that science shows have an edge for keeping adults and kids sharp and fueled for the day. Make sure you've got your bases covered by eating some of these brain-boosting foods every day, using the healthy recipe ideas that follow.

Omega-3-Rich Foods

DHA and EPA, two types of omega-3 fatty acids, are important for brain development and are associated with lower risk of depression and better mood, the expression of emotion and concentration, says Rachael Moeller Gorman in EatingWell Magazine. Omega-3 fatty acids are found mainly in fatty fish like salmon, though they can be made by the body in small amounts from ALA, another type of omega-3 that’s found in plants like flaxseed, walnuts, canola oil and soy. A variety of food, including soymilks and breakfast bars, are now fortified with DHA. Supplements of DHA/EPA made from algae are available. A good target for adults eating about 2,000 calories/day is 900 mg to 2,000 mg/day and for kids who eat about 1,000 calories/day a good target is 400-500 mg/day of omega-3s, says Joe Hibbeln, M.D. Acting Chief, Section on Nutritional Neuroscience at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Here are some easy foods to help you get more omega-3 fats.
1. Wild Salmon
2. Chunk Light Tuna
3. Walnuts

Healthy Carbohydrates

Studies show that fueling the brain with breakfast is important for thinking, acting and learning. This is especially important for kids, since studies show that children who are undernourished perform poorly on cognitive tasks. Research shows that fueling your kids with slower-burning carbohydrates (also called low-glycemic-index foods) like oatmeal, instead of faster-burning, or high-glycemic-index, breakfast foods (like sugary cereals) helps them maintain their concentration and attention throughout the morning. Try to eat these healthy carbohydrates to fuel your brain.
1. Oats or oatmeal
2. Bran cereals
3. Whole-wheat bagels

Iron-Rich Foods

Research shows that being even mildly iron-deficient affects learning, memory and attention. (About 10 percent of young women are anemic because of their monthly loss of iron-rich blood.) Luckily, restoring iron levels to normal also restores cognitive function. Here are some foods that are good sources of iron.
1. Beans
2. Dark leafy greens (kale, chard, spinach)
3. Meat (beef)
4. Chicken or turkey
5. Fish
6. Soy (tofu, edamame/soybeans)

Zesty Bean Dip & Chips

Stirring salsa into versatile canned refried beans makes a quick and healthy bean dip. It also works well as a sandwich spread with your favorite vegetables and a sprinkle of cheese

Water and Water-Filled Foods

Staying hydrated keeps your memory sharp, your mood stable and your motivation intact, says Rachael Moeller Gorman in the July/August 2011 issue of EatingWell Magazine. When you’re well-hydrated, you can think through a problem more easily. Researchers hypothesize that not having enough water could reduce oxygen flow to the brain or temporarily shrink neurons—or being thirsty could simply distract you. While your size and activity level affect your fluid requirements, daily water needs for adults range from about 13 cups for men to about 9 cups for women (pregnant women and nursing mothers need slightly more), accounting for an additional 2 1/2 cups of fluids from foods. Daily water needs for kids range by age: kids 1-3 years need 44 ounces a day, 4-8 years need about 57 ounces, boys 9-13 years need 81 ounces, girls 9-13 years need 71 ounces, boys 14-18 need 111 ounces and girls 14-18 need 77 ounces of fluid a day. In addition to offering water with meals, remember that about 20 percent of our fluid intake comes from food.
1. Cucumbers
2. Watermelon
3. Strawberries
4. Salad greens

Watermelon-Blueberry Ice Pops

These were a staff favorite during the development process. The whole blueberries in these pops have the look of watermelon seeds

Calories Trump Protein For Weight Loss

A high-protein diet, without a reduction in calories, isn't a recipe for weight-loss success.

When it comes to keeping off fat, protein sounds to some like a magic bullet.
For decades, people have been making the case that eating a lot more of it, as in the Atkins diet, or lots less of it, will change the body's metabolism, spurring weight loss.
But alas, it ain't so easy.
No matter how much or how little protein they ate, volunteers on a high-calorie diet all gained weight, concludes a study published in the latest issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.
 
The people on the low-protein diet did gain fewer pounds: about 6 pounds over eight weeks compared to about 13 pounds for those on a diet with a normal protein and 14 pounds for the high-protein plan.
Those results might make it look like the low-protein diet works. But, no. "That is not the message!" Dr. George Bray, chief of the division of clinical obesity and metabolism at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Lousiana, says emphatically.
So Shots asked Dr. Bray to explain why low-protein diets don't work. First, he says, the low-protein dieters stored more energy as fat, and lost lean body mass. So even though they gained fewer pounds, their body composition changed for the worse. By contrast, the people eating more protein gained lean body mass, burned more calories at rest, and packed away only half the excess calories as fat.
That increased resting metabolism in the protein-eaters may explain why people who eat protein-rich diets tend to do better at losing weight and keeping it off over the long term, an editorial in the same issue of JAMA points out.
Doctors should think about how to assess a patient's overall "fatness," rather than just weight or body mass index, the editorial concludes. And Bray agrees. "The scale weight that you get isn't a good measure of how your body is responding to diets or overeating," Bray says.
Ultimately, the study participants gained weight not because of the composition of their diet, but because they were eating too much. Bray says: "The secret is calories."
The study had just 25 participants, but they stayed in an inpatient unit for eight weeks, where their food intake and calories burned were precisely measured. They were fed an extra 1,000 calories a day compared to a typical American diet. A tightly controlled situation like this is the gold standard for nutrition studies.
Bray and his colleagues took on this project because earlier studies had suggested that people who ate low-protein or high-protein diets were less metabolically efficient, and extracted fewer calories out of their food. This study proves that's not true, Bray says. And there was no evidence that eating more than 12 to 15 percent of calories in protein slowed weight gain or improved body composition.

Middle-Aged Brains Are Already Past Their Prime

You may want to read this twice if you're older than 45. In fact, you may have to.
That's because your mental abilities are already in decline, according to a study of 7,390 British civil servants just published in BMJ, the British Medical Journal.
For men and women who were between 45 and 49 when first tested, the ability to reason declined 3.6 percent over the next decade, the study found. And the decline was even faster for people in their 50s and 60s, especially men.
Other mental abilities that faded included memory, and so-called verbal fluency, which measures a person's ability to quickly say words in a particular category. However, people's vocabulary didn't change.
Previous studies have found little evidence of cognitive decline until people turn 60. But this study was larger than most earlier efforts and took the unusual step of testing each participant three times over 10 years.
  The results suggest that efforts to head off mental problems late in life need to begin in middle age, the study's authors write at the end of their paper. These efforts should include "aggressive control" of problems such as diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, which are linked to dementia and Alzheimer's disease, they say.
Perhaps, says epidemiologist Francine Grodstein of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who wrote an editorial accompanying the new study. The problem is that "we don't know yet how to prevent the small amounts of decline which begin to happen at younger ages," she says.

Even so, it may well turn out that the same things that affect memory at older ages also make a difference for younger people, Grodstein says. If so, "living a healthy lifestyle (e.g., a good diet, physical activity, etc.) starting at young ages might protect our brains when we're older," she says.
And even if you notice some lapses in memory as you age, there are likely to be other realms of thinking and decision-making where you improve. Barbara Strauch, author of The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind, says people's feeling of well-being is highest when they hit middle age. And some research indicates that older brains are better at solving problems than younger ones.

Why Ice May Be Bad for Sore Muscles

Already, the benches in gym locker rooms and beside basketball courts are filling with 2012’s early casualties, those of us who, goaded by New Year’s resolutions, are exercising a bit too enthusiastically and developing sore muscles. Many of us will then drape ice packs over our aching muscles. But a new review article published this month in the journal Sports Medicine suggests that for sore muscles, ice is not always the panacea that most of us believe it to be and that, in some instances, it can be counterproductive.
For the study, researchers at the University of Ulster and University of Limerick in Ireland reviewed almost three dozen earlier studies of the effects of using ice to combat sore muscles, a practice that many who exercise often employ. Ice is, after all, the “I” in the acronym RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation), which remains the standard first-aid protocol for dealing with a sports-related injury. Icing is also widely used to deal with muscles that twinge but aren’t formally injured. Watch almost any football, basketball or soccer game, at any level, and you’ll likely see many of the players icing body parts during halftime, preparing to return to play.
But there has been surprisingly little science to support the practice. A 2004 review of icing-related studies published to that point concluded that while cold packs did seem to reduce pain in injured tissues, icing’s overall effects on sore muscles had “not been fully elucidated” and far more study was needed.
Last year, a small-scale randomized trial found no discernible benefits from icing leg muscle tears. The cooled muscles did not heal faster or feel less painful than the untreated tissues. But, as the researchers point out, it is difficult to scientifically study icing, since you can’t blind people to whether they are receiving the therapy or a placebo. People generally can tell if their muscles are getting cold or not.
Which leaves the findings of the new review about icing by athletes as the best overview we may have for now. And the findings are not altogether comforting.
The authors write that, in a majority of the studies they looked at, icing was quite effective at numbing soreness. But it also significantly reduced muscle strength and power for up to 15 minutes after the icing had ended. It also tended to lessen fine motor coordination. Some of the reviewed studies found that people experienced impaired limb proprioception, or their sense of where their limb was in space after it had been iced.
The result was frequently, at least in the short term, poorer athletic performance. Volunteers were not able to jump as high, sprint as fast, or throw or strike a ball as well after 20 minutes of icing.
“The current evidence base suggests that the performance of athletes will probably be adversely affected should they return to activity immediately after cooling,” the authors conclude.
Why an ice pack before exercise should depress performance isn’t fully understood, though there are several theories. “The most likely reason is that ice reduces nerve conduction velocity,” said Chris M. Bleakley, a research associate at the University of Ulster who led the study. “Nerve impulses in the muscle slow down.” Cooling, he said, also probably “affects the mechanical properties of the muscle tendon unit,” meaning that the muscles and tendons, which should work together seamlessly, do not.
There’s also the possibility that icing sore muscles may increase the risk of injury, though the studies did not examine this issue directly. If your iced shoulder or legs feel sluggish during a tennis match or run, the authors suggest, you presumably will push harder, even as the iced muscle, being numb, doesn’t alert you to the beginnings of a more severe injury. The risk really applies “to situations where athletes are returning to competition immediately after icing,” like when you apply a cold pack before a run or “ice on the sidelines or at halftime to treat pain and discomfort,” Dr. Bleakley said. That means for most of us, there may be times when it’s fine to ice sore muscles – like after a hard workout or when we experience serious injury — provided we do not jump back into the field.
Most earlier studies have found little benefit from icing after exercise, but also few negative side effects. And if we must resume activity, the negative effects of icing are thankfully short-lived, usually disappearing within about 15 minutes. They also were less severe if the icing time was shortened, Dr. Bleakley says. “Application times of three to five minutes had much less of an adverse effect on performance” than keeping the ice pack in place for 20 minutes or more, he said.
The fundamental lesson of the review is clear. “Ice has many benefits,” Dr. Bleakley says. “It is cheap and remains an excellent method of numbing pain.”
Ice remains an accepted therapy for an acute injury and is popular with many athletes to help them to recover after exercise. But relying on ice to get you back into that senior-league basketball game or onto the running track when you’re already sore is inadvisable. “Athletes should consider that pain is usually a sign that something is wrong with your body,” Dr. Bleakley says. Listen, and stay out of the second half of the senior-league basketball game or skip a day’s run. You have the rest of 2012 to fulfill your resolution.

Nutrition: 4 Vitamins That Strengthen Older Brains

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

Higher blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B, vitamin C, vitamin D and vitamin E are associated with better mental functioning in the elderly, a new study has found.
Researchers measured blood levels of these nutrients in 104 men and women, whose average age was 87. The scientists also performed brain scans to determine brain volume and administered six commonly used tests of mental functioning. The study is in the Jan. 24 issue of Neurology.
After controlling for age, sex, blood pressure, body mass index and other factors, the researchers found that people with the highest blood levels of the four vitamins scored higher on the cognitive tests and had larger brain volume than those with the lowest levels.
Omega-3 levels were linked to better cognitive functioning and to healthier blood vessels in the brain, but not to higher brain volume, which suggests that these beneficial fats may improve cognition by a different means.
Higher blood levels of trans fats, on the other hand, were significantly associated with impaired mental ability and smaller brain volume.
The lead author, Gene L. Bowman, a researcher in neurology at Oregon Health and Science University, said that the study could not determine whether taking supplements of these nutrients would decrease the risk for dementia. But he added: “What’s the harm in eating healthier? Fish, fruits, vegetables all have these nutrients, and staying away from trans fats is one key thing you can do.”

Where Germs Lurk on Planes

It's a common complaint: Fly on a crowded plane and come home with a cold. What's in the air up there?

Airlines are deploying state-of-the-art filtration systems to contain flu and cold viruses from spreading. Scott McCartney joins Lunch Break to discuss how to avoid getting sick while flying. Photo: AP.

Air travelers suffer higher rates of disease infection, research has shown. One study pegged the increased risk for catching a cold as high as 20%. And the holidays are a particularly infectious time of year, with planes packed full of families with all their presents—and all those germs.
Air that is recirculated throughout the cabin is most often blamed. But studies have shown that high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters on most jets today can capture 99.97% of bacterial and virus-carrying particles. That said, when air circulation is shut down, which sometimes happens during long waits on the ground or for short periods when passengers are boarding or exiting, infections can spread like wildfire.

One well-known study in 1979 found that when a plane sat three hours with its engines off and no air circulating, 72% of the 54 people on board got sick within two days. The flu strain they had was traced to one passenger. For that reason, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an advisory in 2003 to airlines saying that passengers should be removed from planes within 30 minutes if there's no air circulation, but compliance isn't mandatory.
Much of the danger comes from the mouths, noses and hands of passengers sitting nearby. The hot zone for exposure is generally two seats beside, in front of and behind you, according to a study in July in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A number of factors increase the odds of bringing home a souvenir cough and runny nose. For one, the environment at 30,000 feet enables easier spread of disease. Air in airplanes is extremely dry, and viruses tend to thrive in low-humidity conditions. When mucous membranes dry out, they are far less effective at blocking infection. High altitudes can tire the body, and fatigue plays a role in making people more susceptible to catching colds, too.
Also, viruses and bacteria can live for hours on some surfaces—some viral particles have been found to be active up to a day in certain places. Tray tables can be contaminated, and seat-back pockets, which get stuffed with used tissues, soiled napkins and trash, can be particularly skuzzy. It's also difficult to know what germs are lurking in an airline's pillows and blankets.
Research has shown how easily disease can spread. Tracing influenza transmission on long-haul flights in 2009 with passengers infected with the H1N1 flu strain, Australian researchers found that 2% passengers had the disease during the flight and 5% came down within a week after landing. Coach-cabin passengers were at a 3.6% increased risk of contracting H1N1 if they sat within two rows of someone who had symptoms in-flight. That increased risk for post-flight disease doubled to 7.7% for passengers seated in a two-seat hot zone.
The epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002-03 suggested a wider exposure zone, however. On one flight studied, one passenger spread a particular strain to someone seated seven rows away, while people seated next to the ill passenger didn't contract the disease.
That said, most people sitting near someone who is ill probably won't get sick. "When you get aboard an aircraft, most of us don't have a say on who we sit next to. But that doesn't doom you to catching the flu," said Mark Gendreau of Boston's Lahey Clinic Medical Center.
In 2005, he was part of a team that published a paper in the Lancet that concluded the perceived risk for travelers was higher than the actual risk, and that's still the case today, he said.
Even so, there are some basic precautions passengers can take to keep coughs away.

Hydrate. Drinking water and keeping nasal passages moist with a saline spray can reduce your risk of infection.
Clean your hands frequently with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. We often infect ourselves, touching mouth, nose or eyes with our own hands that have picked up something.
Use a disinfecting wipe to clean off tray tables before using.
Avoid seat-back pockets.
Open your air vent, and aim it so it passes just in front of your face. Filtered airplane air can help direct airborne contagions away from you.
Change seats if you end up near a cougher, sneezer or someone who looks feverish. That may not be possible on very full flights, but worth a try. One sneeze can produce up to 30,000 droplets that can be propelled as far as six feet.
Raise concerns with the crew if air circulation is shut off for an extended period.
Avoid airline pillows and blankets (if you find them).
"If you take the proper precautions, you should do quite well," said Dr. Gendreau. "In most of us, our immune system does what it was designed to do—protect us from infectious insults."
Hidden Dangers in Security
You think the plane is bad? Security checkpoints harbor a host of hazards as well, researchers say.

Jason Schneider Airport security areas can make it easy to get sick. People are crowded together, and plastic storage bins that hold personal effects are not cleaned after each screening.

People get bunched up in lines, where there is plenty of coughing and sneezing. Shoes are removed and placed with other belongings into plastic security bins, which typically don't get cleaned after they go through the scanner.
A National Academy of Sciences panel is six months into a two-year study that is taking samples at airport areas to try to pinpoint opportunities for infection.
With limited resources, airports and airlines have asked researchers to help figure out where best to target prevention, said Dr. Mark Gendreau of Boston's Lahey Clinic Medical Center who is on the panel.
Check-in kiosks and baggage areas are other prime suspects in addition to security lines, he said.
Corrections & Amplifications
In a 2009 study, coach-cabin passengers were at a 7.7% increased risk of contracting the H1N1 flu strain if they sat within two seats of someone who was infected. A graphic that orginally appeared with this column incorrectly said such passengers were at a 7.5% increased risk.

Why are we told always to finish a course of antibiotics?

By Jonathan Crowe

Most of us have at one time or another been prescribed a course of antibiotics by our GP. But how many of us heed the instruction to complete the course – to continue taking the tablets or capsules until none remain? Very often, our strict adherence to the prescription fades in line with our symptoms: the prescription may last for, say, seven days, but we’re often feeling much better after just two or three. So why bother continuing to take the antibiotic? After all, if we’re feeling better, the antibiotic has done its job, right? Well, you may think so. But, in fact, stopping a course of antibiotics early can have potentially lethal consequences. How can that be?
To answer this question, we must travel inside our body to mingle with the bacteria the antibiotics have been prescribed to kill. At face value, all the bacteria in a given population might seem identical. But look a little deeper, and you’ll see subtle differences. And one difference is the way in which they respond to a given antibiotic.
I described in a previous post how antibiotics are designed selectively to attack bacteria rather than causing harm to our own cells, which must necessarily get exposed to the antibiotic as it travels through our body in search for the alien intruder within. But different bacteria, even from within the same population, may respond differently to a particular dose of antibiotic. The ‘weak’ ones may be susceptible to a relatively low dose – they may be killed after just a few days of exposure to the antibiotic; by contrast, others may be much more resilient, and will still be alive after a few days of treatment.
The important point here is that the population as a whole is made up of bacteria exhibiting a range of tolerances – at one end of spectrum, a few real weaklings; at the other, a few really resilient ones. And, in between, we find many average, run-of-the-mill individuals, who can hold out against the antibiotic for so long – but not for very long. (I saw the same kind of distribution within a population when we grew some tomato plants this summer: some were noticeably short, some were unusually tall, but a majority hovered somewhere in between.)
But what’s causing this difference in tolerance? I mentioned in a previous post that each time a genome is copied there’s a chance a mutation (an error) will creep in to one of the genes making up that genome. Well, every time a bacterium reproduces it has to make a copy of its genome to pass on to its offspring – and, every time, there’s a chance an error will creep in. The chances are that the variation in tolerance to antibiotics that we witness in this population of bacteria is due to slight variations in their genomes; it could be that our resilient individuals show this resilience because they picked up mutations not present in their weak or average cousins.
Now, let’s return to our bacterial infection and imagine that we’ve started to take a course of antibiotics. It takes just a day or two to kill the real weaklings. And, in three or four days, even the Mr Averages will start to feel the proverbial heat. At this point, the population as a whole will have gone into noticeable decline, and we may start to feel much better as the number of alien invaders reduces.
But what has actually happened by the three or four day stage? The population as a whole may have shrunk in size – we’ll have rid ourselves of the few real weaklings and the larger number of Mr Averages – but we’ll be left with the few hangers-on at the other end of the spectrum, the real bruisers.
Before we started taking the antibiotics, the antibiotic-resilient bacteria (our ‘bruisers’) were fighting for a share of the available food with all the other members of the population. (It’s important to note that, when I talk of ‘weak’ or ‘resilient’ individuals I’m only referring to their tolerance level to antibiotics, not their ability to scavenge for food, and other aspects of survival in an antibiotic-free world.) In essence, the bruisers were being kept in check by everyone else – they remained in the minority because the whole population, including the weaklings and the Mr Averages, was growing at about the same rate. Now, three or four days in, the bruisers suddenly find themselves with much less competition for food. Imagine going to the buffet table at a wedding with 200 guests, all of whom are vying for a slice of the pie (quite literally), versus going to the same-sized buffet table with the same amount of food at a wedding attended by just 20 guests. At which wedding are you most likely to be able to fill your proverbial boots?
Now let’s consider what happens after day three or four, once the supply of antibiotic has stopped. At this point, remember, there are just a relatively small number of antibiotic-resilient bacteria left, but no weak or average ones. When the resilient bacteria suddenly find themselves the guests at an unexpected banquet – with competition for food gone – they do what bacteria do best: they reproduce. And without the previous competition for food, they can do so rapidly. So, we’ve suddenly gone from a mixed population in which the majority didn’t take kindly to antibiotics and only a few were the bruisers, to one in which virtually everyone is unusually tolerant to antibiotics. And this is where the real danger can lurk.
I mentioned above that the resilient bacteria may exhibit their resilience because they have accumulated more errors in their genomes than their weak or average cousins as successive generations have reproduced. As this resilient population now continues to thrive, it risks accumulating even more errors. And one of those errors could be what it takes to tip the balance from the bacterium being highly-tolerant of the antibiotic to it being completely resistant. You don’t need to be a medical expert to realise that complete resistance to an antibiotic is a really bad thing. If a bacterium has overwhelmed our immune system, and we don’t have an antibiotic to act as a back-up defence system, we have no weapons left to fight with.
If we carry on taking our antibiotics as prescribed, the story ends quite differently: even the resilient bacteria lose the will to live in the end. But we have to keep up the pressure by finishing the course of antibiotics. That way, any resilient individuals don’t get to dominate, and we reduce the risk of one of them picking up a mutation that makes them virtually invincible – but which is potentially lethal for us. In future, you know what you need to do…

Over 40% of cancers due to lifestyle, says review

By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News

Booze, cigarettes and inactivity are collectively bad

Nearly half of cancers diagnosed in the UK each year - over 130,000 in total - are caused by avoidable life choices including smoking, drinking and eating the wrong things, a review reveals.

Tobacco is the biggest culprit, causing 23% of cases in men and 15.6% in women, says the Cancer Research UK report.
Next comes a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables in men's diets, while for women it is being overweight.
The report is published in the British Journal of Cancer.
Its authors claim it is the most comprehensive analysis to date on the subject.
Lead author Prof Max Parkin said: "Many people believe cancer is down to fate or 'in the genes' and that it is the luck of the draw whether they get it.
"Looking at all the evidence, it's clear that around 40% of all cancers are caused by things we mostly have the power to change."
Weighty matters

For men, the best advice appears to be: stop smoking, eat more fruit and veg and cut down on how much alcohol you drink.

For women, again, the reviews says the best advice is to stop smoking, but also watch your weight.
Prof Parkin said: "We didn't expect to find that eating fruit and vegetables would prove to be so important in protecting men against cancer. And among women we didn't expect being overweight to be more of a risk factor than alcohol."
In total, 14 lifestyle and environmental factors, such as where you live and the job you do, combine to cause 134,000 cancers in the UK each year.

Former cancer patient Jackie Gledhill: "My lifestyle had really gone downhill - I did go out for walks but it wasn't enough"

About 100,000 (34%) of the cancers are linked to smoking, diet, alcohol and excess weight.
One in 25 of cancers is linked to a person's job, such as being exposed to chemicals or asbestos.
Some risk factors are well established, such as smoking's link with lung cancer.
But others are less recognised.
For example, for breast cancer, nearly a 10th of the risk comes from being overweight or obese, far outweighing the impact of whether or not the woman breastfeeds or drinks alcohol.
And for oesophageal or gullet cancer, half of the risk comes from eating too little fruit and veg, while only a fifth of the risk is from alcohol, the report shows.
For stomach cancer, a fifth of the risk comes from having too much salt in the diet, data suggests.
Some cancers, like mouth and throat cancer, are caused almost entirely by lifestyle choices.

But others, like gall bladder cancer, are largely unrelated to lifestyle.
The researchers base their calculations on predicted numbers of cases for 18 different types of cancer in 2010, using UK incidence figures for the 15-year period from 1993 to 2007.

In men, 6.1% (9,600) of cancer cases were linked to a lack of fruit and vegetables, 4.9% (7,800) to occupation, 4.6% (7,300) to alcohol, 4.1% (6,500) to overweight and obesity and 3.5% (5,500) to excessive sun exposure and sunbeds.

In women, 6.9% (10,800) were linked to overweight and obesity, 3.7% (5,800) to infections such as HPV (which causes most cases of cervical cancer), 3.6% (5,600) to excessive sun exposure and sunbeds, 3.4% (5,300) to lack of fruit and vegetables and 3.3% (5,100) to alcohol.
Dr Rachel Thompson, of the World Cancer Research Fund, said the report added to the "now overwhelmingly strong evidence that our cancer risk is affected by our lifestyles".
Dr Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said leading a healthy lifestyle did not guarantee a person would not get cancer but the study showed "we can significantly stack the odds in our favour".
"If there are things we can do to reduce our risk of cancer we should do as much as we possibly can," he said.
Glyn Berwick, of Penny Brohn Cancer Care, which specialises in offering nutrition and exercise advice, agreed.
"We know from years of experience the positive impact that changing lifetsyles can have."
The president of the Royal College of Physicians, Sir Richard Thompson, said the findings were a wake-up call to the government to take stronger action on public health.
"The rising incidence of preventable cancers shows that the 'carrot' approach of voluntary agreements with industry is not enough to prompt healthy behaviours, and needs to be replaced by the 'stick' approach of legislative solutions," he said
The government said it was intending to begin a consultation on plain packaging by the end of this year.
Diane Abbott, Shadow Public Health Minister, said: "The government is failing on all the main public health issues.
"And the message from Labour, the Tory-led Public Health Committee, campaigners like Jamie Oliver and even some the government's own policy panels is clear: the government's approach to tackling lifestyle-related health problems is completely inadequate."
Public Health Minister Anne Milton said: "We all know that around 23,000 cases of lung cancer could be stopped each year in England if people didn't smoke.
"By making small changes we can cut our risk of serious health problems - give up smoking, watch what you drink, get more exercise and keep an eye on your weight."

Eat Your Green Vegetables: How to Keep Your Intestinal Tract Healthy

Researchers were surprised when they found that mice fed a diet without vegetables for just two weeks were missing important blood cells

If you want to boost your chances of keeping your intestinal tract healthy, consider eating more green vegetables.
Scientists at The Babraham Institute in Cambridge found that green vegetables are the source of a chemical signal that is important to the functioning of the immune system. Green vegetables ensure that intra-epithelial lymphocytes (IELs), a specialized type of white blood cell located in the gut and in the skin, function properly.
Researchers fed healthy mice a purified diet with almost completely no vegetables for two to three weeks. During that time 70 percent of the IELs lining the intestinal tract disappeared. Consequently, the mice were more susceptible to infection and had a more fragile intestinal lining which increased their risk of inflammation -- a surprise to researchers.
"This was surprising, since the new diet contained all other known essential ingredients such as minerals and vitamins," said Marc Veldhoen, senior author of the paper. "I would have expected cells at the surface would play some role in the interaction with the outside world, but such a clear cut interaction with the diet was unexpected. "
IELs comprise a defensive network under the layer of epithelial cells covering both inner and outer body surfaces. They are important for protecting against infection, maintaining a healthy gut, and healing wounds. IELs also help to maintain a healthy balance of "good" and "bad" bacteria and destroy infected cells that may be harmful.
According to Veldhoen and his team of researchers, the number of IELs depend on levels of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), a cell-surface protein which is regulated by a chemical component in cruciferous vegetables -- those from the mustard or cabbage families -- such as cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. In the case of the mice, the loss of the AhR receptor caused a loss of microbes that live on the intestinal surface as well as a change in the composition of the microbes causing the mice to become susceptible to an artificially-induced form of an inflammatory bowel condition.
Dr. Brigitta Stockinger, head of the division of molecular immunology at the National Institute for Medical Research stated: "The food we eat plays a crucial role in influencing our immune system and we have been looking at the intricate biology that determines how cells in our intestines maintain an intrinsic protection against microbes. This study in mice is an important step toward increasing our understanding of how environmental signals shape immune responses at barrier sites such as the intestine."
Some of the characteristics observed in the mice are consistent with certain clinical observations observed in patients with inflammatory bowel disease; however, it is important to note that the results of this study cannot be extrapolated to humans because there may be other factors at work that have not yet been discovered.
Nevertheless, nutrition experts agree that most adults need to eat at least three cups of vegetables a day. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend eating a variety of vegetables with an emphasis on dark-green vegetables, as well as red and orange vegetables.

Foods that boost your immune system

If you don't have good nutrition, you're missing a key weapon against colds and flu. Basics include the famously nutrient-dense leafy greens, berries and nuts. You may be surprised by these six other top immune boosters suggested by Tonia Reinhard, registered dietitian and author of Superfoods, and Joel Fuhrman, M.D., author of Super Immunity. Note: Don't expect immediate results. Fuhrman says you'll need superior nutrition for a few months to see a real effect on your body's defenses.
• Fatty fish: Oily fish such as salmon, tuna and trout are rich in selenium and omega-3 fatty acids (that's the good type of fat that reduces inflammation, increases airflow and protects lungs by increasing the activity of white blood cells that eat up bacteria). "Fatty fish has powerful immune effects and is so important for making the structures and antibodies for the immune system," says Reinhard. Prescription: Eat two servings of fish per week.
• Onions: Onions, leeks, garlic, shallots and scallions contain , not to mention health-promoting flavonoid antioxidants such as quercetin, allicin and anthocyanins, which have anti-inflammatory effects that fight infection and bacteria, says Fuhrman. Prescription: Eat a half-cup daily.
• Mushrooms: Consuming mushrooms regularly stimulates the immune system by increasing the production and activity of white blood cells, which help you fight off infection. Prescription: Eat cooked or lightly steamed, not raw, says Fuhrman.
• Yogurt: "Yogurt, especially Greek yogurt, has active cultures (known as probiotics) which are a friendly bacteria that keeps down the population of pathogens in the GI tract," says Reinhard. Prescription: Eat 8 ounces daily.
• Eggs: "The highest-quality protein of any food, eggs contain the compound choline, which keeps invaders from getting into the body," says Reinhard. "When we keep things from crossing the cell membrane, which causes inflammation, especially in the GI tract, we prevent autoimmune diseases like Crohn's and colitis." Prescription: Eat one egg for breakfast several times a week.
• Beans: A nutritional powerhouse, beans and other legumes are the most nutrient-dense carbohydrate source, says Fuhrman. Rich in zinc, beans increase the production and aggressiveness of white blood cells fighting infection. Prescription: Eat a half-cup twice a week.
• Greens: The most nutrient-dense foods, raw leafy greens contain less than 100 calories per pound, and are packed with nutrients that protect blood vessels, reduce inflammation and neutralize oxidative stress, says Fuhrman. Prescription: Eat a salad every day.
• Berries: Berries are low in sugar and high in nutrients and antioxidants, which reduces inflammation, prevents DNA damage, inhibits tumor angiogenesis and stimulates the body's own antioxidant enzymes, says Fuhrman. Prescription: Eat three fresh fruits daily.
• Nuts: With high levels of healthy fats, nuts are rich in a spectrum of micronutrients including phytosterols, minerals and antioxidants, which provide cardiovascular benefits, weight maintenance and diabetes prevention, says Fuhrman. Nuts are also high in protein and minerals like zinc, selenium and magnesium, which help fight off infection. Prescription: Eat 1 ounce per day.