A few months ago Lopez-Minguez et al. reviewed studies looking at the effect of meal times on obesity and metabolic risk. Their findings are summed up in the following points: skipping breakfast is linked to obesity eating a large breakfast (within 2hrs of waking) decreases the probability of being obese by 50% a late lunch…
Nayak et al. have recently published the findings of their fascinating research into the effects of light on fat metabolism in mice. Animals have adapted to use light in various ways. The most obvious is our sense of sight – it creates images in the brain through the detection of photons by light sensitive proteins…
A study published this month in the journal Menopause looked into the relationships between carbonated soft drink consumption, osteoporosis (hip and lumbar spine) and incidental hip fractures. For almost 12 years Kremer et al. followed over 72,000 postmenopausal women from the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. The results showed no associations between soft drink consumption…
Faraco et al. recently discovered mechanisms by which salt-rich diets can lead to cognitive dysfunction in mice. An increase in dietary salt led to a deficiency of nitric oxide in cerebral blood vessels. As nitric oxide is a vasodilator, the reduced levels resulted in decreased cerebral blood flow. In addition, nitric oxide deficiency causes the…
A recent study by Le Nguyen et al. published in Psychoneuroendocrinology has looked at the effect of loving-kindness meditation on telomore length. Loving-Kindness is a Buddhist meditation that focuses on sending good wishes and kindness to ourselves and others by silently repeating a series of mantras. Telomeres sit at the end of chromosomes and protect…
Meditation can be defined as “a family of mental training practices aimed at monitoring and regulating attention, perception, emotion and physiology” (Fox and Cahn, 2019). As with other forms of learning, meditation has the potential to change the brain (neuroplasticity). Fox and Cahn (2019) reviewed decades of meditation research in a paper entitled “Meditation and…
Research published earlier this month in the European Journal of Nutrition questions the health benefits of the Paleolithic diet. The Paleo diet claims to mimic the diet of our ancestors. It’s high in meat, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds but avoids dairy, legumes and grains. Genoni et al. studied a group of about 100 people…
Genovese et al. recently presented the results of their research at the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology. They implanted mini neurostimulators in 14 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients that had failed to respond to anti-rheumatic medication. In the treatment groups, the vagus nerve was stimulated daily for 12 weeks. The results showed that stimulation of the…
Atherosclerosis is well-known for its role in the development of coronary heart disease and stroke. The vascular occlusion that it causes leads to the infarction of heart and brain tissue. But coronary and cerebral blood vessels are by no means the only vessels that become clogged by atheromatous plaques. In 1993, Kauppila et al., from…
A recent literature review by Yang et al. suggests that high blood cholesterol is a risk factor in the development and progression of tendon pathology. They found that cholesterol levels were directly correlated with the severity of tendon problems. There is evidence that elevated cholesterol levels lead to inflammatory, structural and mechanical changes in tendons…