A growing body of research has begun to focus on a particular mental limitation having to do with your ability to use a mental trait known as executive function -- thought processes require conscious effort to focus or make decisions.
But executive function draws upon a single resource of limited capacity in the brain. When this resource is exhausted, your mental capacity may be severely hindered. Even unrelated activities that tax the executive function have important lingering effects, and may disrupt your ability to make such an important decision.
These findings have important real world implications. If making choices depletes executive resources, then later decisions might be affected adversely when you are forced to choose with a fatigued brain. Basically, your brain is like a muscle -- when it is depleted, it becomes less effective.
Older people who do endurance exercise training end up with metabolically younger hearts. By at least one metabolic measure, women benefit more than men from the training.
Researchers measured heart metabolism in sedentary older people both at rest and during administration of dobutamine, a drug that makes the heart race as if a person were exercising vigorously. At the start of the study, they found that the hearts of the study subjects didn't increase their uptake of glucose in response to the dobutamine.
But after endurance exercise training involving walking, running or cycling exercises three to five days a week for about an hour per session, the participants' hearts doubled their glucose uptake during high-energy demand, just as younger hearts do.
If heart muscle doesn't take in glucose in response to increased energy needs, it goes into an energy-deprived state, which can raise the risk of heart attack. But if it can increase glucose uptake, the heart is better protected against heart attack and ischemia (low oxygen).
A migraine is more than just a headache; it is intensely painful and has distinct phases. The disorder used to be considered vascular, but recent research has revealed it to be neurological in origin, related to a wave of nerve cell activity that sweeps across the brain.
The root of migraine may reside in brain stem malfunctioning. Debate still swirls about the precise cause of migraine, but new discoveries are already permitting the development of new treatments
At the moment, only a few drugs can prevent migraine, all of them developed for other diseases such as hypertension, depression and epilepsy. But they work in only 50 percent of patients, and even then, only 50 percent of the time, and can also induce a range of potentially serious side effects.
New techniques are now being tested, such as drugs that work by preventing gap junctions, a form of ion channel, from opening, thereby halting the flow of calcium between brain cells.
You don't need to pay $90 for a Wii Fit to track your progress towards good health. The links below contain tons of free applications that will help you succeed. You can log, track, and make healthy decisions from your desktop, or just as easily from a phone.
Lifehacker.org offers ways to track your total health, keep an exercise and health diary, log your on-the-go meals, and get calorie counts before eating. Mapmyrun.com will let you plan your jogging routes with ease. Traineo.com is a website designed to give you the motivation and support to reach your weight loss and fitness goals, and hundredpushups.com offers a six week training program that will put you on your way to completing 100 consecutive push ups!
The head of a prominent cancer research institute has issued an
unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff: Limit cell phone use
because of the possible risk of cancer.
The warning came from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman,
director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Herberman
says his warning is based on early unpublished data. He argues that
people should take action now -- especially when it comes to children.
"Really at the heart of my concern is that we
shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side
of being safe rather than sorry later," Herberman said.
Men who eat an average of half a serving of soy food a day have
lower concentrations of sperm. The association was particularly strong
in men who were overweight or obese.
The largest study yet examining relationship between semen quality
and phytoestrogens in humans founds that men who ate the most soy food
had 41 million sperm per milliliter less than men who did not consume
soy products. The "normal" sperm concentration for men ranges between
80-120 million/ml.
Phytoestrogens are plant compounds that can behave like the hormone estrogen.
Ron Paul discusses the bailout out of the housing industry, and how it really just destroys the dollar and adds enormously to the debt. Also quietly slipped into the bill was the stipulation that ALL credit card transactions must now be reported to the IRS.
Disease which spreads from commercially bred bees to wild bees may be playing a role in the mysterious decline in North American bee populations.
Scientists have been expressing alarm over falling numbers of bees in recent years in North America. Experts warn the bee disappearance eventually could harm agriculture and the food supply.
Canadian researchers studied bumblebees near two large greenhouse operations in southern Ontario. The researchers observed that the commercial bumblebees regularly flew in and out of vents in the sides of the greenhouses, escaping from the facilities. The researchers then devised a mathematical model to predict how disease might spread from this "spillover" of runaway commercial bees to their wild cousins.
The model predicted a relatively slow build-up of infection in nearby wild bumblebee populations over weeks or months, leading to an eventual burst of transmission generating an epidemic wave that could affect nearly all of wild bees exposed.
In this interview, Dr. William Grant explains the important role vitamin D plays in your health.
In a tightly controlled dieting experiment, obese people lost an average of just 6 to 10 pounds over two years.
The study was intended to determine which of three types of diets works best. The biggest weight loss happened in the first five months of the diet; low-fat and Mediterranean dieters lost about 10 pounds, and low-carbohydrate dieters lost 14 pounds.
By the end of two years, all the dieters had regained some, but not all, of the lost weight. The low-fat dieters showed a net loss of six pounds, and the Mediterranean and low-carbohydrate dieters both lost about 10 pounds.
The results sound modest, but even the small weight loss had resulted in improvements in cholesterol and other health markers.
Sam Shuster, a consultant dermatologist at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, argues that sun exposure is not the major cause malignant melanoma.
Melanoma is related more to ethnicity, and in 75 percent of cases it occurs on relatively unexposed sites, especially on the feet of Africans. Melanoma occurrence actually decreases with greater sun exposure and can be increased by sunscreens.
There is also good evidence that the reported increase in melanoma incidence is an caused by the incorrect classification of benign naevi as malignant melanomas, which would explain why melanoma mortality has changed little despite the great increase in supposed incidence.
Doctors in England and Wales are being told not to prescribe antibiotics for common coughs and colds. The over-prescription of antibiotics has been linked to the development of "superbugs" that resist treatment.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical says the drugs do little to help cure coughs and colds. Many are caused by viruses, which do not respond to antibiotics.
Guidelines published by the Institute state that doctors should defer prescribing antibiotics immediately for ear infections, sore throats, sinus trouble and coughs and colds in children and adults.
Surreal creatures (who knows how many?) inhabit the oceanic depths. Here are a few of them:
Leafy Sea DragonA leafy sea dragon (phycodurus eques) has long leaf-like protrusions all over its body, serving as camouflage among different types of floating seaweeds or kelp beds. Neither prey nor predators recognize it as a fish.
Umbrella Mouth Gulper EelThe umbrella mouth gulper eel (eurypharynx pelecanoides) can open its "umbrella mouth" to pelican-like proportion, accommodating prey much larger than its size. Plus it can stretch and expand its stomach. The eel itself can be almost one meter in length, but it can swallow and devour something more than 1.5 meters long.
Firefly SquidThe firefly squid (watasenia scintillans), also called the sparkling enope squid, has special deep-blue light producing organs called photophores. By flashing the lights on and off, it can attract prey before trapping it with its tentacles. It's also only cephalopod species which has color vision.
ViperfishThe viperfish (chauliodus sloani) can grow to over half a meter in size. It attracts its prey with luminescent spots running from throat to tail.
Fangtooth, or Ogre FishA Fangtooth (anoplogaster cornuta), or o...
Many are calling for a national consumer boycott against Kellogg Co., the world's leading cereal maker, in an effort to block the use of genetically engineered sugar beets in products ranging from candy and breakfast cereal to bread.
The Internet-based boycott is spreading mostly through Web sites dedicated to organic foods or natural health.
Kellogg doesn't currently use sugar from genetically engineered sugar beets, as the seeds were approved for planting for the first time this spring. But Kellogg spokeswoman Kris Charles said the company likely will use it once it enters the nation's sugar supply.
Washington's largest lobby, the pharmaceutical industry, had a very successful year backed by a record $168 million lobbying effort.
Among the industry's successes were getting two controversial laws extended, and thwarting congressional efforts to restrict media ads for prescription drugs.
The spending represents a 32 percent jump over 2006 numbers, driven in part by a busy legislative calendar dominated by issues critical to the industry. The amount spent by drug interests on federal lobbying in the past decade now exceeds $1 billion.
More than 90 percent of the total was spent by 40 companies and 3 trade groups.
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