Positive psychological states have been linked to better health and longevity. It’s believed to be partly due to the effect of positive emotions and moods on behaviour. Nancy Sin and her colleagues from the university of Penn State evaluated 5-year associations between positive affect and health behaviours in patients with coronary heart disease. At baseline, they…
Scarlett McNally, a Consultant Orthopaedic surgeon, and her colleagues have spent 2 years analysing more than 200 separate pieces of research. The effect that regular exercise could have on our health is amazing. Exercise could: prevent type 2 diabetes reduce the risk of getting breast cancer by 25% decrease the risk of bowel cancer by 45% reduce the…
Since 1979 Professor Peter Elwood and his team of researchers from Cardiff University School of Medicine have tracked the lifestyle habits of 2500 men aged 45-59 (at the start of the study). They found that men that followed 5 habits had 70% less chance of developing diabetes, 60% reduced incidents of heart attacks and strokes, 40% fewer cancers,…
The word ‘stress’ has become ubiquitous, but what exactly does it mean? It’s probably in the 1920s that it was first used in its present context. Walter Cannon used it to describe the process where external factors disturbed the body’s natural equilibrium. Around the same time, Hans Selye described stress as the non-specific response of…
Today BBC News published an interesting article on work done by Mathew White from the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter. He recently conducted a study looking into the benefits of green spaces on health and well-being. The findings of a previous study showed that people living in greener urban…
Steven Cole et al. from UCLA have recently shown that having a deep sense of purpose and meaning in life can lead to positive genetic changes such as lowering the levels of inflammatory gene expression and strengthening the expression of antiviral and antibody genes. Theoretically, this could mean that those with a strong sense of…
Last year I wrote an article on hydration, the signs of dehydration and how much water we need to drink each day. We now know how much water to drink but what water is best? I found a great little book called “Healthy Water for a Longer Life” by Martin Fox. It reviews an extensive…
An article in today’s BBC News Health discusses recent research published in Science Translational Medicine. Dr Orfeu Buxton et al. have shown that “prolonged sleep restriction with concurrent circadian disruption alters metabolism and could increase the risk of obesity and diabetes”. This has implications to people performing shift work.
Easter is upon us and as usual, we’re about to indulge in fistfuls of chocolate….so I thought I’d remove the guilt by telling you about some of the potential benefits! Extensive research has shown that the cocoa in chocolate can help: improve arterial blood flow and decrease blood pressure, improve glucose and fat metabolism, and…
A few days ago the Archives of Internal Medicine published the timely results of the effects of sitting on mortality rates. van der Ploeg and her colleagues followed over 220,000 Australians over a 3 year period. The subjects were 45 years or older and sadly 5405 people passed away during the course of the study….