Exercise: Poor air quality apparently affects the running times of women marathoners, according to a study. Higher levels of particles in the air were associated with slower running times for women, while men were not significantly affected. The differences, according to researcher Linsey Marr of Virginia Tech, may be due to the smaller size of women’s tracheas, which makes it easier for certain particles to deposit there and possibly cause irritation. “Although pollution levels in these marathons rarely exceeded national standards for air quality, performance was still affected,” Marr said. Her studies were conducted where major USA marathons are located, such as New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, where pollution tends to be highest. Although the regular person might not be significantly impacted by low-yet-still-acceptable air quality, marathoners typically inhale and exhale about the same amount of air as a sedentary person would over the course of two full days. This means they are exposed to much greater amounts of pollutants than under typical breathing conditions. Interestingly, the performances of female marathoners appeared to only be affected by particulate matter, and not other pollutants like carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen dioxide or sulfur dioxide. The research was published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports & Exercise. more …
Parenting: Time to make some changes, minority mommies. Efforts to prevent childhood obesity should begin far earlier than currently thought – perhaps even before birth for some populations, according to a study. Research that tracked 1,826 women from pregnancy through their children’s first five years of life found that this was a key period for childhood obesity prevention, especially for minority children. “Almost every single risk factor in that period before age 2, including the prenatal period, was disproportionately higher among children,” said Elsie Taveras, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School. Looking at risk factors, researchers found that African-American and Hispanic infants were more likely than their Caucasian counterparts to be born small, gain excess weight after birth, begin eating solid foods before 4 months of age and sleep less. The good news: most of these can be modified by getting updated information, not just “wisdom” handed down through generations. The study was published in the online edition of the journal Pediatrics. more …
Cancer: The plant kingdom heroes continue to surface. According to research done in St. Louis University, the extract from bitter melon – a vegetable commonly used in Indian and Chinese cuisine and medicine – attacks breast cancer cells. The study, published in the March 1 edition of the journal Cancer Research, found that bitter melon extract significantly induced death in breast cancer cells and decreased their growth and spread in vitro by triggering a chain of events that kills the cells and prevents them from multiplying. Bitter melon (shown above) is also often used in India and China as medicine for diabetics due to its ability to lower blood sugar and cholesterol levels. more …
Family Mealtime
Weight: A new national study suggests that preschool-aged children may have a lower risk for obesity if they regularly engage in one or more of three specific activities. These include eating dinner as a family, getting adequate sleep and limiting their weekday television viewing time. The study showed that 4-year-olds living in homes with all three habits had an almost 40% lower prevalence of obesity than did children living in homes that practiced none of these routines. Each routine on its own was associated with lower obesity, and more routines translated to lower obesity, according to the analysis. The study appears online in the journal Pediatrics. While it may be difficult for some families to adhere to these routines regularly, the researchers stated that families with young children may want to consider what it would take for them to have these routines for their child, given the consequences. more …
The latest from the journals when it comes to men and women, in honor of Valentine’s Week.
Communication: There is power in the word “we”. A new study from UC Berkley suggests that spouses who use “we-ness” language are better able to resolve conflicts than those who don’t. The researchers analyzed conversations between 154 couples and found that those who used pronouns such as “we”, “our”, and “us”, behaved more positively toward one another and showed less physiological stress. In contrast, couples who emphasized their separateness by using pronouns such as “I”, “me”, and “you” were found to be less satisfied in their marriages. more …
“Laughing Zebra” by August Jennewein
Emotions: Laughter is a universal language, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, conducted with people from Britain and Namibia, suggests that basic emotions like fear, anger, sadness and amusement are shared by all human beings. Conventional wisdom dictates that, while we all communicate, people from different cultures may not understand the same words, phrases or body language. In spite of this, the researchers discovered that emotions like laughter and anger are easily recognizable despite cultural differences, suggesting that these emotions and their vocalizations are similar across all cultures. Laughter was probably the best recognized among the positive emotions, which should not come as a surprise, as researchers have seen this with other primates such as chimpanzees, and other mammals, too. While previous studies have indicated that smiling is also universal, laughter is special because it symbolizes playfulness, probably one of the first steps in communication between children and their mothers. more …
Blueberries by HLife Photography
Memory: Scientists are reporting the first evidence from human research that blueberries – one of the richest sources of healthful antioxidants and other phytochemicals – improve memory. previous studies in laboratory animals suggest that eating blueberries may help boost memory in the aged, but until now there had been little scientific work aimed at testing the effect of blueberries on memory in people. The research, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found that participants who drank blueberry juice showed significant improvement on learning and memory tests. “These findings are encouraging and suggest that consistent supplementation with blueberries may offer an approach to forestall or mitigate neurodegeneration,” said the authors of the report. more …
Exercise: Regularly practicing yoga may help with inflammation. According to a study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, women who routinely practiced yoga had lower amounts of interleukin-6 (IL-6) in their blood. IL-6 is an important component of the body’s inflammatory response, and reducing inflammation may provide benefits for diseases like stroke, type-2 diabetes, arthritis and other debilitating conditions. The yoga practitioners also showed smaller increases in IL-6 after stressful experiences than did women who were the same age and weight but who did not practice yoga. “Hopefully, this means that people can eventually learn to respond less strongly to stressors in their everyday lives by using yoga and other stress-reducing modalities,” said Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, lead author of the study. “Muscles shorten and tighten over time, mainly because of inactivity. The stretching and exercise that comes with yoga actually increases a person’s flexibility and that, in turn, allows relaxation, which can lower stress,” said Ron Glaser, co-author of the research. more …
