Nov 4, 2019

Low blood oxygen increases the chances of premature deaths in children

The study, published in Lancet’s EclinicalMedicine journal, shows that low blood oxygen is common not only in pneumonia, but also in many other conditions.

“Low blood oxygen is particularly common in newborn infants, especially those who are premature or have very difficult births,” said Hamish Graham from Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia.

For the study, Graham worked with colleagues in Nigeria to record the blood oxygen levels of more than 23,000 children admitted to 12 medium-sized hospitals.

“Your blood oxygen level is the amount of oxygen carried by red blood cells from the lungs to the rest of the body — low blood oxygen damages cells and can lead to death,” Graham said.

“Our study found that one in four newborns and one in 10 children in hospitals had low blood oxygen, and these children were eight times more likely to die than those with normal blood oxygen,” Graham added.

The researchers hope the findings would encourage policy makers and healthcare workers in low and middle income countries to increase the use of oxygen measuring tools and oxygen therapy.

“Our modellings suggest that better use of oxygen monitoring and therapy in the 12 highest mortality countries in the world could prevent up to 148,000 child pneumonia deaths annually,” Graham said.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

04.11.2019

Be a good person but don’t waste time to prove it

30 October, 2019

Mothers and newborns in India are healthier now: Study

Community-based health programmes in parts of India, Ethiopia and Nigeria have been successful in improving health care for mothers and newborns, but inequities still exist, says a new study. The study was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ). According to the researchers, underlying inequities in these rural settings mean that more work is needed to reach the poorest families, who bear the greatest burden of maternal and newborn mortality.

“Our findings have both an optimistic and a pessimistic interpretation, in that families from all socio-economic status groups benefited, but inequities have also persisted,” said Indian-origin researcher Tanya Marchant from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK.

To assess the impact of community-based health interventions linked to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, an international team of researchers looked at eight essential maternal and newborn health indicators in rural India, Ethiopia and Nigeria, representing more than 22 million people.

Indicators included antenatal and postnatal care, births in health care facilities, hygienic umbilical cord care, breastfeeding initiation and more. The researchers found some improvements. For example, more women in Ethiopia and Uttar Pradesh, India, had access to maternity care in 2015 than in 2012.

In Gombe, Nigeria, socioeconomic issues as well as the Boko Haram terror threat prevented most women from receiving adequate care, although some positive family behaviour, such as hygienic cord care, showed marked improvement.

Despite this progress, it was striking that in all three settings the number of newborns receiving early postnatal care did not improve.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

30.10.2019

A little progress each day adds up to big results

26 October, 2019

Obesity causes diabetes in women : Study

Obesity poses a higher risk of type 2 diabetes in women, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and chronic kidney disease in men, said a new study from the University of Oxford. “The study shows just how harmful carrying excess weight can be to human health, and that women and men may experience different diseases as a result,” said the study’s first author Jenny Censin.

To identify additional causes of death made worse by obesity, researchers performed an analysis that explores cause-and-effect relationships using genetic data and three measures of obesity from 228,466 women and 195,041 men in the UK Biobank.

Their analysis showed that obesity contributes to a laundry list of health problems including coronary artery disease, type 1 and 2 diabetes, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, chronic liver disease and kidney failure.

While obesity causes type 2 diabetes in both women and men, women experienced a higher risk of type 2 diabetes as compared to men, while men faced a greater risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic kidney disease.

“Given the compelling evidence of harm that arises as a consequence of obesity across a broad range of diseases that result in death, our findings highlight the critical need for public health measures to stem the tide of obesity,” said researcher Michael Holmes, who supervised the work together with researcher Cecilia Lindgren.

Overall, the study found that obesity causes or contributes to the majority of the leading causes of death worldwide that are not linked to the infectious diseases.

The impact of obesity, however, manifests differently in men and women.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

26.10.2019

Your best teacher is your last mistake

14 October, 2019

Indians prefer physical well being over mental: Survey

A majority of Indians, at 75 percent, are preoccupied about their physical wellbeing, over mental wellbeing at 62 percent, a survey by global market research agency Ipsos has found.

The survey, conducted to coincide with the World Mental Health Day, found 64 percent Indians believe that is equally important to have both, physical and mental health.

Indians want a clear shift in the handling and perception of mental illness. As many as 64 percent Indians want the stigma attached with mental health issues to go and they would prefer if it was treated like any other illness. Further, 74 per cent Indians exhort adoption of a more tolerant attitude towards those with mental illness in the society.

The survey also shows a more positive and empathetic change coming about towards those with signs of mental health conditions with 64 percent urban Indians believe seeing a mental health specialist or therapist, as a sign of strength.

“Indians are recognising that being healthy and well is a combination of both, physical and mental wellbeing and both work in tandem. Also mental health issues are like any other illness and it is alright to see a doctor for alleviating symptoms,” says Monica Gangwani, Executive Director & Country Service Line Leader, Healthcare, Ipsos India.

The Ipsos survey found that views around mental health somewhat disjointed and devoid of clear consensus. About half of Indians polled (52 percent), disagree that increased spending on mental health services is a waste of money. However, 27 percent think it is a wasteful expenditure, while 17 percent were neutral, 3 percent were undecided and 1 percent refused to tender opinion.

As many as 39 percent Indians reject exclusion of someone from public office, on the grounds of mental health history, while 32 percent agree on exclusion, 25 percent were neutral, 3 percent undecided and 1 percent refused an opinion.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

14.10.2019

A negative mind will never give you a positive life

30 September, 2019

New blood test to detect 20 types of cancers developed

A new blood test has shown ability to screen numerous types of cancer with a high degree of accuracy. A trial of the test showed it detected and localised more than 20 types of cancers.

The test, developed by biotechnology company Grail Inc uses next-generation sequencing technology to probe DNA for tiny chemical tags (methylation) that influence whether genes are active or inactive.

When applied to nearly 3,600 blood samples — some from patients with cancer and some from people who had not been diagnosed with cancer at the time of the blood draw — the test successfully picked up a cancer signal from the cancer patient samples, and correctly identified the tissue from where the cancer began (the tissue of origin),” said investigators from Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

The test’s specificity – its ability to return a positive result only when cancer is actually present – was high, as was its ability to pinpoint the organ or tissue of origin, they found.

The new test looks for DNA, which cancer cells shed into the bloodstream when they die.
In contrast to “liquid biopsies,” which detect genetic mutations or other cancer-related alterations in DNA, the technology focuses on modifications to DNA known as methyl groups.

Methyl groups are chemical units that can be attached to DNA, in a process called methylation, to control which genes are “on” and which are “off.” Abnormal patterns of methylation turn out to be, in many cases, more indicative of cancer – and cancer type — than mutations are.

“Our previous work indicated that methylation-based assays outperform traditional DNA-sequencing approaches to detecting multiple forms of cancer in blood samples,” said the study’s lead author Geoffrey Oxnard from Dana-Farber.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

30.09.2019

Replace every negative thought with a positive one

23 September, 2019

Drinking tea will boost your brain function: Research

Researchers have found that regular tea drinkers have better organised brain regions and this is associated with healthy cognitive function as compared to non-tea drinkers.

“Our results offer the first evidence of positive contribution of tea drinking to brain structure, and suggest that drinking tea regularly has a protective effect against age-related decline in brain organisation,” according to a study authored by Feng Lei, Assistant Professor from the National University of Singapore.

Previous researchers have demonstrated that tea intake is beneficial to human health and the positive effects include mood improvement and cardiovascular disease prevention. For the study published in the journal Aging, the research team recruited 36 adults aged 60 and above and gathered data about their health, lifestyle and psychological well-being.

The elderly participants also had to undergo neuropsychological tests and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The study was carried out from 2015 to 2018.

Upon analysing the participants’ cognitive performance and imaging results, the research team found that individuals who consumed either green tea, oolong tea, or black tea at least four times a week for about 25 years had brain regions that were interconnected in a more efficient way. “We have shown in our previous studies that tea drinkers had better cognitive function as compared to non-tea drinkers,” Lei said.

“Our current results relating to brain network indirectly support our previous findings by showing that the positive effects of regular tea drinking are the result of improved brain organisation brought about by preventing disruption to interregional connections,” he added.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

23.09.2019

The limits we have in life are the ones we set for ourselves

16 September, 2019

Smelling lemons makes you feel thinner: Study

Did you know that lemons can not only help you get over a hangover but can also make you feel slimmer. Yes, a new study has established that olfactory and auditory stimuli might change how we perceive our body. For example, people tend to feel thinner and lighter when exposed to the smell of lemon, while they feel heavier and more corpulent when they smell vanilla.

This is one of the ruter Interaction.esults of the investigation recorded in the article ‘As Light As Your Scent: Effects of Smell and Sound on Body Image Perception’, which explores the relation between smell and body shape. The findings were presented at the meeting IFIP Conference on Human-Comp. The research team has demonstrated that the image we have of our own body changes depending on the stimuli we encounter, such as olfactory. Exposure to different smells can make us feel slimmer or more corpulent.

Another sense that influences this is hearing. Through a device adapted to a pair of shoes, developed by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in 2015 in collaboration with University College London and the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, researchers have analysed how our perception of our body changes when the frequency spectrum of steps taken during physical activity was modified in real-time.

“By increasing high frequencies, people feel lighter, happier, walk in a more active way and as a result, they find it easier to exercise,” explains Ana Tajadura-Jimenez, a lecturer in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the UC3M and one of the authors of both investigations.

This technology, based on audio stimulus, that was used successfully both in 2017 to treat people with chronic pain and in 2019 to promote physical activity, is combined with olfactory stimuli in the current investigation to show that both senses combined have a large influence over the perception we have of our body image.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

16.09.2019

Once you need less, you will have more