4, December 2014

Intermittent fasting can help cure obesity

A new study has revealed that restricting access to food to 8-12 hours rather than allowing constant access to food may help prevent and even reverse obesity and type 2 diabetes.

According to the study, this time-restricted eating affects the balance of bacteria found in the gut and the researchers also found the occasional "cheat days" on weekends did not undo the benefits of time-restricted eating in mice.

The researchers tested time-restricted feeding in mice under diverse nutritional challenges. In mice fed a variety of high-fat and high-sugar foods, the strategy could help prevent the development of metabolic problems, and the benefits were proportional to the duration of fasting in the animals.

Interestingly, the protective effects were maintained even when the mice were given "cheat days," when time-restricted feeding was temporarily interrupted by allowing the mice free access to food during the weekends, a protocol that would seem particularly relevant to humans. The study was published in the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism.

Source: www.timesofindia.com

04.12.2014

Night lights can wake up breast cancer cells

Sleeping at night with the lights on can not only add to your energy consumption, but also wake up breast cancer cells, a study suggests.

Exposure to light at night, which shuts off night-time production of the hormone melatonin, renders breast cancer completely resistant to tamoxifen, a widely-used breast cancer drug, the findings showed.

"High melatonin levels at night put breast cancer cells to 'sleep' by turning off key growth mechanisms. These cells are vulnerable to tamoxifen. But when the lights are on and melatonin is suppressed, breast cancer cells 'wake up' and ignore tamoxifen," said David Blask from the Tulane University in the US.

The researchers investigated the role of melatonin on the effectiveness of tamoxifen in combating human breast cancer cells implanted in rats.

Melatonin by itself delayed the formation of tumours and significantly slowed their growth but tamoxifen caused a dramatic regression of tumours in animals with either high night-time levels of melatonin during complete darkness or those receiving melatonin supplementation during dim light at night exposure.

These findings have potentially enormous implications for women being treated with tamoxifen and also regularly exposed to light at night due to sleep problems, working night shifts or exposed to light from computer and TV screens.

The study appeared in the journal Cancer Research.

Source: www.timesofindia.com

04.12.2014

You are the only person on earth who can use your ability

Zig Ziglar