Give your mind a break

About one in ten Americans practice meditation, and the number seems to be growing. The practice has been around since antiquity, and today the term means different things to different people. It's become an avenue of research looking into its health benefits. According to Wikipedia:

Since the 1960s, meditation has been the focus of increasing scientific research of uneven rigor and quality. In over 1,000 published research studies, various methods of meditation have been linked to changes in metabolism, blood pressure, brain activation, and other bodily processes. Meditation has been used in clinical settings as a method of stress and pain reduction.

A new research report finds that those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress.

M.R.I. brain scans taken before and after the participants’ meditation regimen found increased gray matter in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory. The images also showed a reduction of gray matter in the amygdala, a region connected to anxiety and stress. A control group that did not practice meditation showed no such changes.

Britta Hölzel, a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and the study’s lead author, said the participants practiced mindfulness meditation, a form of meditation that was introduced in the United States in the late 1970s. It traces its roots to ancient Buddhist techniques.

“The main idea is to use different objects to focus one’s attention, and it could be a focus on sensations of breathing, or emotions or thoughts, or observing any type of body sensations,” she said. “But it’s about bringing the mind back to the here and now, as opposed to letting the mind drift.”

Other research: a 2009 study suggests that meditation may reduce blood pressure in patients with coronary heart disease. And a 2007 study found that meditators have longer attention spans.

It makes sense when you consider that from waking to sleeping we are bombarded with artificial sensations and distractions created by other human beings. Which is why simply walking in unstructured nature also contributes to our well-being.

Stand up, live forever

You're reading this sitting down, aren't you? Hope you live long enough to make it to the end. Sitting is one of the worst things we can do for our health. I've written about this before, but here's more:

A new study has found that it is not just the length of time people spend sitting down that can make a difference, but also the number of breaks that they take while sitting at their desk or on their sofa. Plenty of breaks, even if they are as little as one minute, seem to be good for people’s hearts and their waistlines.

The study found that prolonged periods of sedentary time, even in people who also spent some time in moderate-to-vigorous exercise, were associated with worse indicators of cardio-metabolic function and inflammation, such as larger waist circumferences, lower levels of HDL (“good”) cholesterol, higher levels of C-reactive protein (an important marker of inflammation) and triglycerides (blood fats). 

Oh man, that's bad.

However, the study also found that, even in people who spent a long time sitting down, the more breaks they took during this time, the smaller their waists and the lower the levels of C-reactive protein.

Whew! That's good.

“Our research showed that even small changes, which could be as little as standing up for one minute, might help to lower this health risk," says Dr. Genevieve Healy, a research fellow at the School of Population Health, The University of Queensland, Australia.

She should know. Those Aussies are always jumping up to chase a kangaroo.


Here are some of her suggestions:

• Standing up to take phone calls
• Walking to see a colleague rather than phoning or emailing
• Having standing meetings or encouraging regular breaks during meetings for people to stand up
• Centralising things such as rubbish bins and printers so that you need to walk to them
• Taking the stairs instead of the lift where possible. 
• Going to a bathroom on a different level 

By "different level," does she mean metaphysically?

If you have to go to the emergency room

You should know that patience will get you nowhere. Smart Money reports:

As nurses and doctors struggle to look after everyone, sometimes "somebody who doesn't know they're having a heart attack, who thinks they're just having shoulder pain, might not get noticed," says Dr. William Mileski, director of the emergency department at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

In fact, sitting quietly and respectfully could kill you, doctors say. In 2007, 200 emergency physicians nationwide said they knew of patients who died while waiting in the ER for hospital beds, according to the latest figures from the American College of Emergency Physicians. The moral: Speak up if you think the nurse or doctor has misunderstood your symptoms and don't be afraid to ask them to repeat what you said back to you to make sure your message is clear, says Dr. Mileski.

Giving your doctor a heads up before you get to the ER, especially if he or she has privileges at the hospital, might get you through the door quicker. Your doctor might also suggest another hospital that is better equipped to treat you, says May. Or he may make an exception to see you after hours.

Speak up! More advice in the article, and more here.

Eat your berries, dude

Anthocyanins contribute pigmentation to blood oranges.

One in three Americans is said to have high blood pressure, or hypertension. A new study by British and Harvard scientists has found that bioactive compounds in blueberries called anthocyanins offer protection against hypertension. 

Compared with those who do not eat blueberries, those eating at least one serving a week reduce their risk of developing the condition by 10 per cent.

The researchers looked at the diets of 150,000 people.

Dietary information identified tea as the main contributor of flavonoids, with apples, orange juice, blueberries, red wine, and strawberries also providing important amounts. When the researchers looked at the relation between individual subclasses of flavonoids and hypertension, they found that participants consuming the highest amounts of anthocyanins (found mainly in blueberries and strawberries in this US-based population) were eight per cent less likely to be diagnosed with hypertension than those consuming the lowest amounts. The effect was even stronger in participants under 60.

The effect was strongest for blueberry rather than strawberry consumption. I guess the strawberry lobby will be up in arms over this.

More at Wikipedia on the health properties of blueberries and anthocyanins.

Getting enough B12?

It's not a good idea to fixate on one vitamin or supplement, because these things interact with each other. But an article about Vitamin B12 caught my eye.

Apparently a deficiency is rare: about 1 in 1,000 Americans. For the elderly it goes up, however: about 15% of elderly people.

"B12 deficiency is much more common than the textbooks and journal articles say it is," says Alan Pocinki, an internist in Washington D.C.

Here are some things to consider.

Symptoms of low B12 include anemia, depression, dementia, confusion, loss of appetite and balance problems. Long-term deficiency can bring severe anemia, nerve damage and neurological changes that may be irreversible.

The deficiency rate is much higher among people who don't eat meat or dairy products, people with absorption problems, people taking acid-blocking medications and those with Type 2 diabetes who take the drug Metformin.

Several studies have shown that some symptoms of B12 deficiency, particularly early problems with cognitive function, can be apparent even when patients' blood levels are still in the normal range.

A high level of folic acid can mask symptoms of B12 deficiency, and many people are getting more folic acid than they realize. Since 1996, all enriched flour must contain folic acid to reduce the risk of neural-tube defects.

A good thing to discuss with your doctor. More on B12 at Wikipedia, including a list of sources in food. The top five are:

Panfried beef liver
Simmered turkey giblets
Braunschweiger pork liver sausage
Raw pacific oysters
Cooked Alaska king crab
Raw clams

How much of these do you eat?

Come out of your shell, live forever

Researchers are discovering the health value of social relationships, not just feel good value but real physical value.

Social connections influence our long-term health in ways every bit as powerful as adequate sleep, a good diet, and not smoking, doctors at the Harvard Medical School say. 

Conversely, a relative lack of social ties is associated with depression and later-life cognitive decline, as well as with increased mortality. One study, which examined data from more than 309,000 people, found that lack of strong relationships increased the risk of premature death from all causes by 50% — an effect on mortality risk roughly comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and greater than obesity and physical inactivity.


Connecting with others helps relieve harmful levels of stress, which can adversely affect coronary arteries, gut function, insulin regulation, and the immune system. Caring behaviors trigger the release of stress-reducing hormones.

So get out on those ice-covered roads and go see someone!

New gadgets to monitor your aging parents

Here are two of the new devices you can use to remotely watch over a loved one.

Sonamba

For about $200 (plus monitoring fees of about $100 per month), you can buy any number of home monitoring devices that use sensors to alert caregivers if their charge has fallen or might need medical attention, according to Caring.com . But for an additional $349.99, you can upgrade to the Sonamba , which uses sound and motion sensors to monitor all movements, alerting caregivers with periodic text messages like "all is well," or "attention needed."

The Sonamba, which looks like a digital picture frame, is placed somewhere in the house; smaller sensors are placed in other rooms so that the device can theoretically monitor most of a home. Something else experts like: It doesn't require technical expertise on the part of the patient. Although the $549.99 price and the $39 monthly fee are higher than those of many other devices on the market, the Sonamba does have additional bells and whistles — like reminder messages about doctors' appointments and medication routines.

Lifecomm mPERS 
Lifecomm's new mobile personal emergency response system (mPERS) uses cellular network signals to transmit messages to a caregiver in the event of a fall. Just slightly bigger than an iPod Nano, the wearable battery-powered belt clip, watch or necklace has as an embedded GPS (in case help is needed away from home) and a sensor that tracks the number of steps a person takes, along with their activity level. Veer from the norm and the device sends a caregiver alert. It also comes with online support tools where caregivers can sign up for things like low-battery alerts.

The system works well as long as it's in range of a strong cell signal — and there's still no getting around the fact that its owner must remember to wear it to get the high-tech benefits. The company says the device will be "comparable" in price to other systems (Wellcore offers a similar product for $199 with a $49.99 monthly fee).

Tell your doctor if you see a drug ad on TV

You know, the ones that advise you that you should tell your doctor if you suddenly drop dead. The ones that give every disease an acronym: you don't have a bad cough, you have BC.

So what's going on?

Drugs that pharmaceutical companies market most aggressively to physicians and patients tend to offer less benefit and more harm to most patients, two professors of medicine write. Their report finds a clear pattern of physician-focused marketing tactics that ultimately exposed patients to a worsening benefit-to-harm ratio.

"This is not a random occurrence, but rather a repeating, planned scenario in which drugs, discovered with good science for a specific set of patients, are marketed to a larger population as necessary, beneficial and safer than other alternatives," said co-author Dr. Howard Brody, a professor and director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

"Marketers are just doing their jobs. However, the reality is that for most new drugs, safety and efficacy are scientifically proven for only a small subset of patients. It's time for physicians to take a stand and not prescribe them so readily."

Brody and co-author Donald W. Light, a professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, identify marketing strategies that extend a drug's use beyond the proper evidence base. Among them:

Exaggerated safety and efficacy claims -- as many as 140,000 cases of serious coronary disease in the U.S. might have been caused by rofecoxib, a COX-2 inhibitor, that was broadly marketed as safer and more effective than standard nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

"Disease mongering" -- Osteopenia, once considered a non-disease state in patients who had not lost enough bone density to be diagnosed with osteoporosis, has now turned into a disease itself, in hopes of convincing physicians and patients that biphosphonate drug treatment will prevent their "disease" from progressing.

Encouraging unapproved uses -- three of five prescriptions for antipsychotics are for off-label use, even though 75 percent of those prescriptions lack evidence of benefits but expose patients to harm. Recent examples include gabapentin and olanzapine.

"While we looked only at marketing directed toward physicians," Brody said, "direct-to-consumer advertising plays a critical role in driving demand for a drug by patients who fall outside the group that might truly need it, and pressuring physicians to prescribe it more readily."

Got almond milk?

I put almond milk on cereal, because I read somewhere that almonds are good for something. And we keep a big supply of them on hand for munching.

Apparently other people like almond milk as well, even though it costs more than regular milk. The Wall Street Journal reports that it's flying off the shelves.

So is this stuff good for you? Apparently so. Wikipedia has this:

The sweet almond contains about 26% carbohydrates (12% dietary fiber, 6.3% sugars, 0.7% starch and the rest miscellaneous carbohydrates), and may therefore be made into flour for cakes and cookies (biscuits) for low-carbohydrate diets or for patients suffering from diabetes mellitus or any other form of glycosuria.

Almond flour is gluten-free and therefore a popular ingredient in place of wheat flour for gluten-sensitive people and people with wheat allergies and coeliac disease. A standard serving of almond flour, 1 cup, contains 20 grams of carbohydrates, of which 10 g is dietary fibre, for a net of 10 g of carbohydrate per cup. This makes almond flour very desirable for use in cake and bread recipes by people on carbohydrate-restricted diets.

Almonds are a rich source of vitamin E, containing 24 mg per 100 g. They are also rich in monounsaturated fat, one of the two "good" fats responsible for lowering LDL cholesterol. A controlled trial showed that 73g of almonds in the daily diet reduced LDL cholesterol by as much as 9.4%, reduced the LDL:HDL ratio by 12.0%, and increased HDL-cholesterol (i.e., the good cholesterol) by 4.6%.

How much is 73 grams? The average weight of an almond is 1.2 grams so in 40 grams there would be 33.33 almonds.

Miracles and wonders

A new chip to sequence DNA.

Every day brings some fascinating new discovery in medicine:

Bifocal and progressive lenses suck. They're old tech. Like, Benjamin Franklin old. PixelOptics take a more 21st century approach—liquid crystal lenses that adjust their focus in a fraction of a second, for differing focuses when you need them. All that's required to shift the glasses—which can be fitted into any design of frame—is a tap to their touch-sensitive side. A simple electrical impulse changes the liquid crystal, instantly—enabling or disabling a shapeshifting reading zone in the lenses. Or, for an I-can't-believe-I'm-this-impressed-by-glasses moment, slide your finger along the side of the specs to active a tiny gyroscope that'll adjust the focus as you move your head.

Ion Torrent, which last month began selling a sequencer it calls the Personal Genome Machine. While most sequencers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and are at least the size of small refrigerators, this machine sells for just under $50,000 and is the size of a largish desktop printer.  While not intended for the general public, the machine could expand the use of DNA sequencing from specialized centers to smaller university and industrial labs, and into hospitals and doctors’ offices, helping make DNA sequencing a standard part of medical practice.

Scientists from Imperial College London are developing technology that could ultimately sequence a person's genome in mere minutes, at a fraction of the cost of current commercial techniques. The research suggests that scientists could eventually sequence an entire genome in a single lab procedure, whereas at present it can only be sequenced after being broken into pieces in a highly complex and time-consuming process.

A team of scientists led by Melissa Rolls, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University, has peered inside neurons to discover an unexpected process that is required for regeneration after severe neuron injury. "We hope that by showing how microtubules -- a key part of neuron infrastructure -- are built in healthy neurons and rebuilt in response to injury, our study might provide insights for future researchers who are developing drug therapies for patients with nerve disease or damage," Rolls said.

New research suggests it may be possible for people with type 1 diabetes to grow their own insulin-producing cells -- an advancement that could lead to a cure for this form of diabetes. Researchers were able to take cells from men’s testicular tissue, isolate stem cells, and turn them into insulin-secreting islet cells. These islet cells were then re-injected into mice with diabetes. And it worked.

Here come the changes in your health care

New taxes on drug makers, lower prescription-drug costs for seniors and restrictions on tax-free medical spending accounts are among a slate of health-law provisions that kicked in Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Medicare recipients who fall into a prescription-drug coverage gap known as the "doughnut hole" may reap the biggest windfall of the law in 2011. Enrollees whose total drug costs for the year fall between $2,840 and $6,448 will get a 50% discount on branded prescriptions. That's compared with a $250 rebate the law gave them in 2010 to offset the cost of paying for those drugs entirely out of pocket. The seniors' group AARP estimates more than three million people fall into the doughnut hole each year.

The cost of drug coverage, however, will go up for some seniors. Medicare beneficiaries with annual incomes above $85,000 for individuals and $170,000 for couples will get a smaller government subsidy for Medicare Part D prescription-drug coverage.

Also under the law, about 20 preventive health services, including colorectal cancer screenings, mammograms and smoking cessation services, will be free for people on Medicare.

Consumers will no longer be able to use their flexible spending accounts—tax-free funds set aside for medical costs—to pay for most over-the-counter items unless they are purchased with a prescription.

Stay tuned.