Connecting with nature for just 20 minutes a day can significantly lower your stress, according to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology.
To provide an evidence-based solution, 36 urban dwellers were asked to take a “nature pill”—spend ten minutes or more outside, at least three times a week, over a period of eight weeks.
The researchers measured levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, from saliva samples taken before and after a nature pill, once every two weeks.
The participants could choose the time of day, the duration, and the place, but it had to be during daylight and they had to abstain from social media, internet, phone calls, conversations and reading.
“Our study shows that for the greatest payoff, in terms of efficiently lowering levels of the stress hormone cortisol, you should spend 20 to 30 minutes sitting or walking in a place that provides you with a sense of nature,” the lead author of the study said.
Cortisol levels continued to go down after 30 minutes of nature experience, but at a slower rate.
Sleep mantra to avoid stillbirth
Pregnant women can lower the risk of stillbirth by more than half by sleeping on their side, compared to going to sleep on their back, according to a study published in The Lancet.
The study based on 851 bereaved mothers and 2,257 women with ongoing pregnancy found that pregnant women who went to sleep on their back from 28 weeks of pregnancy increased the risk of stillbirth by 2.6 times, independent of other known risk factors for stillbirth.
Sleeping on both the left and right side was equally safe, and considerably reduced the risk. According to the study, blood flow to the baby is decreased by up to 80 per cent when pregnant women sleep on their back, compared to their side.
“The message, that it is safer for the baby if women from 28 weeks of pregnancy settle to sleep on either side is simple, and can be implemented by pregnant women,” the study concluded.
Memory booster
Using brain stimulation, researchers at Boston University restored the working memory of 70-year-olds’ to that of 20-year-olds.
Working memory is the “workbench of the mind” that we use to temporarily store and manage the information required to execute cognitive tasks. Working memory starts to decline as we get older.
According to the researchers, this decline in working memory can be reversed by stimulating the two brain areas at a specific rhythm, which allows them to communicate better with each other.
The study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, included 42 volunteers aged 20 to 29 and 42 volunteers aged 60 to 76 years. They were asked to perform working memory tasks using a computer simulated test at the onset. The older participants repeated the tests after brain stimulation.
The younger participants significantly outperformed the older participants on the first test. But, after 25 minutes of brain stimulation, the older participants performed at the same level as the 20 year olds.
The effect lasted for at least 50 minutes following the stimulation that the researchers tracked the brain activity for.
The stimulation benefited younger adults, too. When the stimulation was tried on 14 of the young adult participants who performed poorly on the memory tasks, they performed better.
Did you know
A new male contraceptive pill (11-beta-MNTDC) has shown to be safe and effective in a phase one trial. The pill decreased sperm production, while preserving men's libido and not decreasing sexual activity.
Endocrine Society’s annual meeting
The age factor
For people with diabetes, the risk for heart disease and death from heart disease may vary depending on how old they are when they are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The younger they are at diagnosis, the greater the risk.
People who are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes before age 40 (especially women) are more likely to have or die from cardiovascular diseases compared to people of similar age without the disease, according to a Scottish study published in the journal Circulation.
For the study, researchers analysed the data of 318,083 patients with type 2 diabetes and assessed their risk of heart disease, heart attack, stroke, atrial fibrillation and death from cardiovascular causes.
People diagnosed with type 2 diabetes before age 40 had nearly threefold higher risk for cardiovascular mortality and more than fourfold greater risk for heart failure and coronary heart disease.
The additional risks for cardiovascular disease and death declined progressively with increasing age at diagnosis. For people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at age 80 or older, the risk was similar to those of the same age without diabetes.
Dietary supplements may not help
According to a US study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, dietary supplements may not help you live longer.
To study the impact of nutrient intake, both from food and supplements, on mortality, the researchers used data from 30,899 adults aged 20 years or older, who provided information about their dietary supplement use as well as their diet.
More than half the participants used at least one supplement. Vitamins C, D, E, and calcium were the most commonly used supplements.
During 6.1 years of follow up, 3,613 people died, including 945 deaths from cardiovascular diseases and 805 deaths from cancer.
Adequate intake of vitamin A, vitamin K, magnesium, zinc, and copper was associated with a reduction of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, but only when the nutrients came from food. Dietary supplements had no impact on mortality risk.
More important, the study found that taking at least 1,000mg of calcium supplements daily was associated with an increased risk of death from cancer. But no such association was seen for calcium intake from food.
People who took vitamin D supplements, but did not have vitamin D deficiency, also had an increased risk of death from all causes including cancer.
To deal with infections
Wrapping cardiac devices like pacemakers and defibrillators in absorbable, antibiotic-eluting envelopes when implanting can reduce the risk of dangerous infections by 40 per cent.
The Cleveland Clinic-led trial included 6,983 patients, undergoing procedures involving implantable cardiac devices.
All the patients received antibiotics before the procedure to reduce the risk of infections. Half of them were randomly chosen to have their cardiac devices wrapped in an antibiotic envelope.
The envelope is made of an absorbable mesh that is coated with two antibiotics—minocycline and rifampin. The antibiotics are continuously released into the device pocket over a period of seven days. The envelope is fully absorbed in nine weeks.
During 12 months of follow up, 1.2 per cent of the patients in the control group developed a major infection compared with 0.7 per cent in the envelope group.
There was no increase in complications when the envelope was used. The findings of the clinical trial were published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Smoking trap
While tobacco smoking and the mortality and morbidity attributed to it is declining steadily in western counties, a tobacco epidemic is on the rise in many Asian countries. About half of the world’s male smokers live in China, India and Indonesia.
For the study published in JAMA Network Open, the researchers analysed data from 20 studies that included more than 1 million participants, aged 35 years or older, from China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and India.
While smoking prevalence among men has continued to rise in India and China, it has plateaued in the other four countries. Smoking cessation is also relatively low in India and China.
The mean age at which participants started smoking was 22.8 years and the mean number of cigarettes smoked per day was 16.5 cigarettes for men. Men born in recent years tend to start smoking at a younger age and smoke more cigarettes per day compared to those born earlier.
During a mean follow up of 11.7 years, there were 144,366 deaths; 9,158 deaths were from lung cancer.
Tobacco smoking was associated with 12.5 per cent of total deaths and 56.6 per cent of lung cancer deaths in men born before 1920; 21.1 per cent of total deaths and 66.6 per cent of lung cancer deaths in those born in the 1920s; and 29.3 per cent of total deaths and 68.4 per cent of lung cancer deaths among men born in 1930 or later.
Did you know
Transgender men have more than twice and four times the rate of heart attack as cisgender men and cisgender women, respectively. Transgender women have more than twice the rate of myocardial infarction as cisgender women, but no significant increase in the rate of myocardial infarction compared with cisgender men.
Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes
Mother's age and miscarriage
The risk of miscarriages increases with the mother’s age, previous miscarriages and previous pregnancy complications, according to a Norwegian study published in The BMJ.
To find out the underlying factors contributing to miscarriages, the researchers analysed data from health registers and included all pregnancies in Norway between 2009 and 2013.
There were 421,201 pregnancies during the study period.
The overall miscarriage rate was 12.8 per cent, after accounting for induced abortions.
The risk of miscarriages was strongly related to maternal age. The lowest risk was among women aged 25 to 29 (10 per cent), and then steadily increased with the mother’s age. For women aged 45 years and older, the risk was 54 per cent.
The risk of miscarriage was also greater in women whose previous pregnancy ended in a stillbirth or miscarriage. A woman who had a previous miscarriage had a 50 per cent greater risk of another miscarriage. The risk doubled after two miscarriages and was four times greater after three consecutive miscarriages.
Previous pregnancy complications like preterm delivery and gestational diabetes and an earlier caesarean section also increased the risk of miscarriages.
World’s biggest killer
Poor diet is the biggest killer in the world, accounting for one in five deaths (11 million deaths) globally in 2017.
It is responsible for more deaths than any other risk factor including high blood pressure or smoking, which account for 10.4 million and 8 million deaths per year worldwide, respectively.
For the Global Burden of Disease Study published in the Lancet, researchers analysed dietary intakes across 195 countries between 1990 and 2017, and examined the impact of diet on death and disease from non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes. Bottom of Form Poor diet refers to not just the unhealthy foods that we eat, but also the healthy foods that we do not eat.
Three dietary factors—too much salt, too little whole grains and fruits accounted for more than 50 per cent of diet-related deaths. Other leading risk factors include too little consumption of vegetables, nuts and seeds and high consumption of red meat, processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages, and trans-fatty acids.
About 10 million deaths attributed to diet were from cardiovascular diseases, followed by cancers (913,100 deaths), diabetes (338,700 deaths) and kidney diseases (136,600 deaths).
Poor diet also accounts for 16 per cent of all disability-adjusted life years among adults globally.
Feeling moody? Just smile!
According to a study published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, simply smiling can make you feel happier.
For the study, researchers used data from 138 studies that included more than 11,000 participants from all over the world.
The conclusion? Yes, our emotional feelings are influenced by facial expressions.
“We do not think that people can smile their way to happiness. But, these findings are exciting because they provide a clue about how the mind and the body interact to shape our conscious experience of emotion. We still have a lot to learn about these facial feedback effects, but this meta-analysis put us a little closer to understanding how emotions work,” said the study author.
Did you know
Using e-cigarettes or vaping may be associated with seizures, especially among young adults.
US Food and Drug Administration
Vitamin C can shorten ICU stays
A study published in the journal Nutrients suggests that administering Vitamin C can significantly shorten the length of stay of ICU patients.
To find out how vitamin C impacts the length of ICU stay, the researchers analysed 12 studies that included 1,766 patients and found that vitamin C administration, on average, shortened ICU stays by 7.8 per cent.
In six trials, orally administered vitamin C with an average dose of 2gm per day reduced the length of ICU stay on average by 8.6 per cent.
In three trials in which patients needed mechanical ventilation, vitamin C shortened the duration of mechanical ventilation by 18.2 per cent.
“Given the insignificant cost of vitamin C, even an 8 per cent reduction in ICU stay is worth exploring,” the researchers concluded.
CONTRIBUTOR: SHYLA JOVITHA ABRAHAM