The Daily Indian

According to the study, which will be published in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), hormonal changes and poor sex life among obese men are related to the degree of obesity and both are improved after gastric bypass surgery.

“Previous studies have found that obesity is correlated to lower sperm count and can be associated with infertility, but we wanted to know if obesity was biologically associated with an unsatisfying sex life, and if so, could it be reversible,” said Dr. Ahmad Hammoud, MD, of the University of Utah and lead author of the study. “Our results show that the answer to both questions may be yes,” he added.

To reach the conclusion, researchers followed 64 men over two years who participated in the Utah Obesity Study, which investigated the two-year morbidity of severely obese men undergoing Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery compared to controls.

Researchers measured weight, BMI (body mass index) and reproductive hormone levels of participants at the beginning of the study and once more two years later. Similarly subjects completed a questionnaire designed to assess the impact of weight on quality of life in obese individuals at the onset of the study and again two years later.

“In our study population, we found that lower testosterone levels and diminished ratings for sexual quality of life were correlated with increased BMI,” said Dr. Hammoud. “Subjects who lost weight through bariatric surgery experienced a reduction in estradiol levels, an increase in testosterone levels and an increase in ratings of sexual quality of life,” the expert added.

People who rely on weights to ease lower backache fare much better than those who choose to jog, according to new research.

The study showed a 60 percent improvement for people with chronic backache who took part in a 16-week exercise programme using dumb bells, barbells etc. Conversely, people who do aerobics like jogging, walking on a treadmill or used an elliptical machine to ease backache only experienced a 12 percent relief, said Robert Kell, assistant professor of exercise physiology at the University of Alberta, Augustana Campus. The resistance-training group showed improvements in pain and function of about 60 percent, while those who took aerobic training experienced only a 12 per cent improvement.

“Any activity that makes you feel better is something you should pursue, but the research indicates that we get better pain management results from resistance training.”

The extra benefits stem from using the whole-body approach required in resistance training, Kell believes. “We tried to strengthen the entire body and by doing that, we decreased the fatigue people felt throughout the day. They were better able to perform their activities of daily living,” he said.

Aerobics training generally works just the lower body, he added. Approximately 80 percent of North Americans suffer from lower back pain at some point in their lifetimes, and for 85 percent of them the pain is chronic. Both types of training did provide other fitness benefits, such as lower body fat, the study showed, said an Alberta release.

The findings are scheduled for publication in early 2009 in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

During the study, the researchers compared 186 pairs of identical twins and found that shedding pounds could age a woman by an average of four years. Lead researcher Dr Bahaman Guyuron says: “The perceived age of an individual is usually attributed to both genetics and environment in various degrees.”

Since the twins’ genetic make-up was identical, the differences in how old they looked could be attributed solely to external factors and lifestyle. To reach that conclusion, researchers calculated the body mass index (BMI) of each twin. An ideal BMI for an adult is between 18.5 and 25. Anyone with a BMI lower than 18.5 is classed as underweight.

“A BMI higher by four points was found to result in a younger appearance of between two to four years in women over 40 years old,” the Telegraph quoted Guyuron as saying.

“The more fat that is preserved in the face, particularly the cheeks, the more you will preserve the facial proportions of youth,” said Rajiv Grover, Consultant Plastic Surgeon and Secretary of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. “Excessive dieting will give a woman a gaunt appearance by leading to volume loss in the midface (cheeks).

“This volume loss can be compounded by yo-yo dieting, where not only do you create volume loss, but also stretching of the facial supporting ligaments due to repeated facial volume gain and volume loss, which causes deeper nose to mouth lines and jowls,” he added.

Other factors that had an effect on ageing were divorce, smoking, drinking and sunbathing.

There is a growing body of evidence to show that an apple a day can keep not just the doctor away, but breast cancer too. Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed invasive cancer and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women in US, said Rui Hai Liu, Cornell University associate professor of food science.

Recently, Liu reported that fresh apple extracts significantly inhibited the size of mammary tumours in rats — and the more extracts they were given, the greater the inhibition.

“We not only observed that the treated animals had fewer tumours, but the tumours were smaller, less malignant and grew more slowly compared with the tumours in untreated rats,” said Liu, which confirmed the findings of his preliminary study in 2007.
In his latest study, for example, he found that a type of adenocarcinoma — a highly malignant tumour and the main cause of death of breast-cancer patients, as well as of animals with mammary cancer — was evident in 81 percent of tumours in the control animals.

However, it developed in only 57 percent, 50 percent and 23 percent of the rats fed low, middle and high doses of apple extracts (the equivalent of one, three and six apples a day in humans), respectively, during the 24-week study.

“That reflects potent anti-proliferative [rapid decrease] activity,” said Liu. The studies highlight the important role of phytochemicals, known as phenolics or flavonoids, found in apples and other fruits and vegetables. In a study of apple peel, Liu reported on a variety of new phenolic compounds that he discovered that also have “potent antioxidant and anti-proliferative activities” on tumours, said a Cornell release. Recently, Liu’s group also reported the finding that apple phytochemicals inhibit an important inflammation pathway (NFkB) in human breast cancer cells. These findings were published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Individuals from low-income, minority backgrounds with chronic low back pain (CLBP) may be more affected due to disparities in access to treatment.

Although many CLBP patients seek relief from complementary therapies such as yoga, use of these approaches are less common among minorities and individuals with lower incomes or less education.

For the study, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston Medical Center recruited adults with CLBP from two community health centers that serve racially diverse, low-income neighbourhoods of Boston.

They were randomly assigned to either a standardized 12-week series of hatha yoga classes or standard treatment including doctor’s visits and medications.

As part of the trial, the researchers asked participants to report their average pain intensity for the previous week, how their function is limited due to back pain, and how much pain medication they are taking.

The yoga group participated in 12 weekly 75-minute classes that included postures, breathing techniques, and meditation.

Classes were taught by a team of registered yoga teachers and were limited to eight participants. Home practice for 30 minutes daily was strongly encouraged. Participants were provided with an audio CD of the class, a handbook describing and depicting the exercises, a yoga mat, strap, and block. Pain scores for the yoga participants decreased by one-third compared to the control group, which decreased by only 5 percent. Whereas pain medication use in the control group did not change, yoga participants’ use of pain medicines decreased by 80 percent.

It shows that adolescents with parental-set bedtimes of midnight or later were 24 percent more likely to suffer from depression and 20 percent more likely to have suicidal thoughts than those with parental-set bedtimes set for 10 p.m. or earlier.

Those who reported sleeping five or fewer hours per night were 71 percent more likely to suffer from depression and 48 percent more likely to think about committing suicide than those who reported eight hours of sleep.

Also, participants who reported that they “usually get enough sleep” were significantly less likely to suffer from depression and suicidal ideation.

James E. Gangwisch, assistant professor at the Columbia University Medical Centre (CUMC), who led the study, said the results strengthen the argument that short sleep duration could play a role in a person’s history of depression.

“Our results are consistent with the theory that inadequate sleep is a risk factor for depression, working with other risk and protective factors through multiple possible causal pathways to the development of this mood disorder,” said Gangwisch.

“Adequate quality sleep could, therefore, be a preventive measure against depression and a treatment for the disease,” added Gangwisch, according to a CUMC release.

Data were collected from 15,659 adolescents and their parents who had participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a school-based, nationally representative, probability-based sample of US students in grades seven to 12 in 1994 to 1996.

In a report, which appears in ACS Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers have stated that blueberries, one of the richest sources of healthful antioxidants and other so-called phytochemicals , improve memory. They said the study, which involved scientists from the University of Cincinnati, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Canadian department of agriculture, establishes a basis for comprehensive human clinical trials to determine whether blueberries really deserve their growing reputation as a memory enhancer.

Robert Krikorian and colleagues point out that previous studies in laboratory animals suggest that eating blueberries may help boost memory in the aged. In the study, one group of volunteers in their 70s with early memory decline drank the equivalent of 2-2 l/2 cups of a commercially available blueberry juice every day for two months. A control group drank a beverage without blueberry juice.

The blueberry juice group showed significant improvement on learning and memory tests, the scientists say. “These preliminary memory findings are encouraging and suggest that consistent supplementation with blueberries may offer an approach to forestall or mitigate neurodegeneration,” said the report.

Seniors tend to live longer and enjoy better health if their , regardless of social or economic status.

College students do better on cognitive tests when their dorm windows view natural settings. Children with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have fewer symptoms after outdoor activities in lush environments.

These are only a few of the findings from recent studies that support the idea that nature is essential to the physical, psychological and social well-being of the human animal, said Frances Kuo, professor of natural resources and psychology at University of Illinois(U-I).

Humans living in landscapes that lack trees or other natural features undergo patterns of social, psychological and physical breakdown that are strikingly similar to those observed in other animals that have been deprived of their natural habitat, Kuo said.

“Now, as human societies become more urban, we as scientists are in a position to look at humans in much the same way that those who study animal behaviour have looked at animals in the wild to see the effect of a changing habitat on this species,” said Kuo.

“In animals what you see is increases in aggression, you see disrupted parenting patterns, their social hierarchies are disrupted,” she said. Considerable research has found that violence and aggression are highest in urban settings devoid of trees and grass, for example, said an U-I release.

In a 2001 study of the Robert Taylor Homes (recently demolished), Kuo and her colleague, U-I landscape architecture professor William Sullivan, found that those who lived in housing units with no immediate view of or access to nature reported a greater number of aggressive — including violent — conflicts with partners or children than their peers who lived near trees and grass. Kuo will present her own and other findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

The study led by Cambridge University showed that running triggered the growth of hundreds of thousands of new brain cells in a region that is linked to the formation and recollection of memories.

“We know exercise can be good for healthy brain function, but this work provides us with a mechanism for the effect,” the Telegraph quoted Timothy Bussey, a behavioural neuroscientist at Cambridge and the study’s senior author as telling the Guardian.

During the study, researchers followed two groups of mice, one of which had unlimited access to a running wheel throughout, whey they clocked up an average of 15 miles (24km) a day, while the other mice formed a control group.

The mice were placed in front of a computer screen, which displayed two identical squares side by side.

According to the study, if they nudged the one on the left with their nose they received a sugar pellet reward.

If they nudged the one on the right, they got nothing.

They were then subjected to a memory test where the more they nudged the correct square, the better they scored.

The findings revealed that the running mice scored nearly twice as high as the control group during the memory test.

However, the greatest improvement occurred in the later stages of the experiment, when the two squares were so close they nearly touched.

“At this stage of the experiment, the two memories the mice are forming of the squares are very similar,” Bussey said.

Ten minutes of cycling or jogging can significantly help people quit smoking, according to a new study. The researchers from the University of Exeter have shown that changes in brain activity, triggered by physical exercise, may help reduce cigarette cravings. During the study, ten regular smokers were asked to cycle at a moderate pace for ten minutes, after 15 hours of abstinence from nicotine.

The participants were later showed series of 60 images and changes in brain activity were studied with the help of fMRI scan. Some visuals featured cigarettes and would normally induce cravings in a smoker. On a second occasion, the same group was given an fMRI scan and shown the same series of images without having undertaken exercise.

The study showed that after no exercise the smokers showed heightened activity in response to the images in areas of the brain associated with reward-processing and visual attention. After exercise the same areas of activation were not observed, which reflected a kind of ‘default mode’ in the brain. The smokers also reported lower cravings for cigarettes after exercise compared with when they had been inactive.

Although it is still unclear exactly what caused the difference in brain activity following exercise, the researchers believe that completing exercise raises mood (possibly through increases in dopamine) which reduces the salience or importance of wanting a cigarette.
Another possibility is that exercise causes a shift in blood flow to areas of the brain less involved in anticipation of reward and pleasure generated by smoking images.

“Our findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that exercise can help people give up smoking,” said Kate Janse Van Rensburg, a PhD student at the University of Exeter, lead author on the paper. “This strengthens the argument that moderate exercise could be a viable alternative to many of the pharmaceutical products, such as nicotine patches, for people who want to give up smoking.

“A ten or fifteen minute walk, jog or cycle when times get tough could help a smoker kick the habit. There are of course many other benefits from a more active lifestyle including better fitness, weight loss and improved mood,” she added.