How Biofeedback Train Your Brain to Think Smarter

You exercise your body in the pursuit of optimal function, but what about your brain? Those looking to get an edge in—and out—of the gym are flexing their minds with neuro feedback. We’re not talking Sudoku puzzles here (though they have their benefits), but neuro feedback—the process of hooking up to an electroencephalogram (EEG) in order to “train” your brain

it sounds a bit sci-fi, but it may dial down your stress level and help you tap into your potential. “Neuro feedback [also commonly called biofeedback] is somewhat like putting the brain on an elliptical machine or a stair stepper in order to exercise certain regulatory functions. For example, the brain can get stuck in an anxious state and neuro feedback training enables it to shift into a calmer state for optimal function. Essentially, you’re aiding the brain’s ability to self-regulate,” says neuro feedback specialist Evelyn Shapero of the Brain fitness Centre in Los Angeles.

The practice has been proven effective for treating serious conditions including depression, PTSD, and ADHD, but in today’s tech-driven world many are now seeking it out to alleviate stress. “If a patient has unreasonable fatigue and insomnia, or unexplained weight gain, I test the adrenals to see if there’s a disharmonic pattern to their cortisol production,” says Eva Cwynar, MD, a Beverly Hills endocrinologist, assistant professor of clinical medicine at UCLA, and author of The Fatigue Solution. “If stress hormones like cortisol are too high or low at the wrong times of the day, or too high throughout the day, it can eventually cause the adrenals to say, ‘I quit.’ Once that happens, the only thing I’ve found to help get the body back in balance is neuro feedback.”

How It Works Even though that balance is achieved gradually, rather than as a quick fix, most people note feeling a difference after their first session. The process, while complex and highly individualized, basically works like this: Non-invasive electrodes are attached to the surface of the scalp to measure brain waves and provide feedback as a specialized software program (often a video game) helps guide the brain into a more desired state through subtle and unconscious corrections until the brain ultimately learns to perform at its best—naturally. Think of it like a high-tech fitness coach, guiding you through exercises and correcting your form until, eventually, you no longer need any assistance.

Try it, however, and you may find it hard to give up. Because neurofeedback enhances the function of both the brain and the central nervous system, it can help you tap into that elusive state of flow, one in which mind and body are seamlessly in sync (without any conscious effort), making it a natural for the sports arena where athletes must perform like finely-tuned machines. Olympic athletes have used it as a training tool and tennis great Novak Djokovic, known for his open-minded approach to diet, health, and training, utilizes it to monitor his stress levels. “If the adrenals aren’t functioning well, your neurotransmitters can be affected and the imbalance can extrapolate to every other hormone in the body, influencing testosterone, thyroid, insulin levels, and more,” says Cwynar. “By recreating balance in the body, neuro feedback helps everything run more smoothly, that is why it helps athletes, too. Your metabolism, your ATP, your mitochondria, everything just functions better.”

Source: freenewspos

Breast Screenings Services Increased in VA

In 2007, Breast Cancer Initiative was started.

In the last five years, services for screening and treatment of breast cancer have been increased in the U. S, but with this the time taken for the treatment also increased at one hospital.

In a study conducted by Baltimore Veteran Affairs (VA) Medical Center, it was found that although the number of mammograms conducted after 2007 increased, yet it took women an extra 18 days for getting the treatment after the diagnose. Since 2007 screening and treatment of breast cancer has been given a priority in the hospitals.

The main objective of this study was to find out that with the rise in number of women receiving screening and treatment in made any kind of impact on the time taken for treatment after the positive diagnosis of the disease.

The survey revealed that before this breast cancer initiative, 33 days was the usual time period between the positive diagnosis and the treatment, however, after the initiative since more women came for the screening, this time period extended to an average of 51 days.

It was found that between year 2002 and 2012, as many as 7,355 mammograms were carried out by the Baltimore VA Medical Center and more than 90% of the total number were performed after 2007.

The survey included all the women turning to VA from the rural medical centers. According to the researchers the time gap could also have increased due to the need of second mammograms as well.

Source: topnews.us

 

Harvard study finds food expiration labels are misleading

Harvard study finds food expiration labels are misleading

Americans throw out billions of pounds of food every year because they falsely believe “sell-by” and “best-before” dates on package labels indicate food safety, researchers have found.

A study published Wednesday by Harvard Law School and the Natural Resources Defense Council found that dates printed on packaged foods, which help retailers cycle through stocked products and allow manufacturers to indicate when a product is at its peak freshness, are inconsistent. They confuse consumers, leading many to throw out food before it actually goes bad.

“The labeling system is aimed at helping consumers understand freshness, but it fails – they think it’s about safety. And (consumers) are wasting money and wasting food because of this misunderstanding,” said co-author Emily Broad Lieb, who led the report from the Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic.

Broad Lieb and NRDC scientist Dana Gunders said that, while labels “appear to be a rational system,” they are essentially meaningless to consumers. Manufacturers often decide on their own how to calculate shelf life and what the dates mean.

As a result, huge amounts of food, not to mention considerable natural resources and labor, go to waste in landfill and taxes, and harm the environment.

A lack of binding federal standards on labeling means the dates are governed by a patchwork of state and local laws.

“It’s like the Wild West,” Gunders said.

The authors recommended that “sell-by” dates be invisible to consumers so they cannot be misinterpreted as safety labels; that a clear, uniform date label system be established; and that “smart labels” that rely on technology to provide food safety information be used more frequently.

David Fikes, a spokesman for the Food Marketing Institute, which represents food retailers and wholesalers, said the group agreed there had to be a clearer way for the consumer to read dates. However, it disagreed the code should be hidden from consumers, because that would make it difficult for store employees to stock shelves.

On Wednesday, Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) released a statement pressing for a consistent federal food dating system.

“Under the current patchwork of state and federal laws, consumers are left in the lurch, forced to decipher the differences between ‘sell-by’ and ‘best if used by,’ and too often food is either thrown out prematurely, or families wind up consuming dangerous or spoiled food,” she said.

Lack of understanding about the labels is not necessarily a health hazard. Researchers said they found no significant difference in incidents of food-borne illness between states such as Massachusetts, which has very strict labeling rules, and others such as New York, which is more lax.

In fact, University of Minnesota food safety scientist Dr. Theodore Labuza, who reviewed the study, said that in his more than 30 years of researching date labels, he was unaware of any outbreaks of illness related to food being kept in the refrigerator or on the shelf past an expiration date, as long as it was stored properly.

“People think the use-by date means either the product is going to die or you’re going to die if you eat it. And it’s just not true. You can’t tie shelf life to a date,” Labuza said.

“If the food looks rotten and smells bad, you should throw it away, but just because it’s past the date on the package, it doesn’t mean it’s unsafe.”

Source: Reuters.com

Mind-Control Parasite Kills Mice’s Fear of Cats Permanently

An infection with a weakened form of the protozoan caused mice to permanently lose their innate fear of catsA fair amount of research has taken place on Toxoplasma gondii, the bizarre parasite that makes mice unafraid of cats, and the latest chapter is a strange one.

 

A new study shows that even a brief infection with a weakened form of the protozoan caused mice to permanently lose their innate fear of cats.

The protozoan is known to cause this change in mice after a lingering infection and after it produces cysts in the mouse brain, according to the study, published online Sept. 18 in the journal PLOS ONE. But until now scientists didn’t know this apparently long-lasting change could occur after only a short infection, and without development of cysts and brain inflammation. The study also showed the change occurred with weakened forms of all three major variants of the protozoa found in North America.

“It is remarkable that even after the infection has been largely or completely cleared, a profound behavioral change persists,” said Wendy Ingram, a study author and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement from PLOS ONE. “Simply having a transient infection resulting in what is potentially a permanent change in host biology may have huge implications for infectious disease medicine.”

Ingram isn’t sure the mechanism involved in the long-term behavior change, though she speculates the parasite may disrupt the smell region of a mouse’s brain, preventing the rodent from detecting cat odor that would trigger the fear. Another possibility is that the parasite directly modifies mouse brain cells that are linked to memory and learning.

Toxoplasma gondii is found throughout the world and infects a large number of mammals, including humans. However, the protozoan can only reproduce within the bodies of cats, and in mice, the mind-controlling parasite has evidently evolved to make mice unafraid of felines and even, according to some research, sexually attracted to the odor of cat urine; this makes it more likely infected mice will be eaten, and the parasite will make it back into a cat to spawn.

The parasite is found in as many as one-third to one-half of humans, and its presence in the brain has been linked with suicide attempts. It may affect other areas of mental health: One study suggested that people with the parasite scored higher on tests of neuroticism, an emotional or mental trait characterized by high levels of anxiety or insecurity.

Resarchers had the volunteers chew gum, drink a bottle of water, cough or read a section of an article. The participants spent about 40 seconds on each activity.

“Our mouth is an opening into our health — our drinking and eating behaviors shed light on our diet,” said researcher Hao-hua Chu, a computer scientist at National Taiwan University in Taipei. “How frequently we cough also tells us about our health, and how frequently we talk is related to social activity that can be related to health.”

Each of these activities moves teeth in a unique way. When it came to recognizing what a study participant was doing based solely on data from the devices, the system researchers developed was up to 93.8 percent accurate

Source: Live Science.com

Deadly Amoeba in Water Supply Possibly Linked to Hurricane Katrina

Deadly brain eating amoeba inwater may possibly linked to hurricane Katrina

A deadly brain-eating amoeba found in the water supply of a New Orleans suburb could be related to the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina, according to officials from the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed last week that the deadly Naegleria fowleri amoeba has been found in the St. Bernard Parish water supply.

The pathogens were discovered after a 4-year-old boy was infected with the amoeba and died. The Naegleria fowleri thrives in warm freshwater and causes a deadly form of meningitis when inhaled through the nose.

Jake Causey, the chief engineer at the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said the severe drop in population in St. Bernard’s parish immediately after Hurricane Katrina could have affected the water supply. If a majority of a town’s population leaves the area, the water in the water system may remain sitting in pipes longer. As a result the chlorine can dissipate and pathogens can grow.

Before Hurricane Katrina the parish’s population was approximately 67,000, according to the St. Bernard Chamber of Commerce. After the storm, the population dipped below 15,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Jonathan Yoder, an epidemiologist with the Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Disease at the CDC, said anything that could dilute the chlorine used to disinfect the water supply could lead to more pathogens in the system.

Girl, 12, in Critical Condition With Brain-Eating Amoeba

“This organism likes warm water and if it can get in the system and there’s not enough disinfection, it can colonize and it can grow in the system,” said Yoder.

While under-use of the water system due to a population drop could affect the chlorine levels, Yoder said, but he clarified it was too early in the CDC’s investigation to confirm, and it was only speculation at this point that Hurricane Katrina could have affected the water supply.

The parish is currently flushing out the water system with chlorine, and water has been turned off at schools in the area.

This is the first time that the amoebas have been found in the treated water of a U.S. water system.

Early symptoms of a Naegleria infection include a severe frontal headache, fever, nausea and vomiting, according to the CDC. But those can swiftly give way to a stiff neck, seizures, confusion and hallucinations as the amoeba makes its way up through the nasal cavity into the brain.

“After the start of symptoms, the disease progresses rapidly and usually causes death within about five days,” the according to the CDC. “People should seek medical care immediately whenever they develop a sudden onset of fever, headache, stiff neck and vomiting, particularly if they have been in warm freshwater recently.”

Source: abcnews.go.com

 

How ‘smart teeth’ could detect health habits

Artificial teeth that detect when people chew, drink, speak and cough could help people track exactly how much they eat, along with other aspects of their health, researchers say.

In a study, the scientists used dental cement to glue sensors onto the teeth of eight volunteers. The devices were accelerometers that recognized movement in all three dimensions, and were coated with dental resin to keep them safe from saliva. Thin wires connected to the sensors helped collect their data.

The researchers had the volunteers chew gum, drink a bottle of water, cough or read a section of an article. The participants spent about 40 seconds on each activity.

“Our mouth is an opening into our health — our drinking and eating behaviors shed light on our diet,” said researcher Hao-hua Chu, a computer scientist at National Taiwan University in Taipei. “How frequently we cough also tells us about our health, and how frequently we talk is related to social activity that can be related to health.”

Each of these activities moves teeth in a unique way. When it came to recognizing what a study participant was doing based solely on data from the devices, the system researchers developed was up to 93.8 percent accurate

Source: huffingtonpost

2-year-old world’s youngest to have bariatric surgery

A morbidly obese two-year-old has become the youngest person in the world to undergo bariatric surgery.

The parents of the toddler from Saudi Arabia who weighed (73 pounds) and had a Body Mass Index of 41 sought help because he suffered sleep apnea that caused him to stop breathing while asleep.

Two attempts to control his weight by dieting failed said the medics who carried out the bariatric surgery Mohammed Al Mohaidlya, Ahmed Sulimana and Horia Malawib in an article in the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports.

When he first presented to an endocrinologist at 14 months, the toddler weighed (47 pounds) but after dieting for four months his weight increased by (18 pounds).

The doctors from Prince Sultan Military Medical City at Riyadh were unable to ascertain whether the child’s parents stuck to the diet.

By the time the boy was referred to the obesity clinic he weighed (65 pounds) and his obesity had led to sleep apnea and bowing of the legs.

A further attempt at dieting failed and when he reached (73 pounds) doctors decided to perform surgery.

Surgeons carried out a laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy on the boy which involved removing the outer margin of the stomach to restrict food intake, leaving a sleeve of stomach, roughly the size and shape of a banana.

Unlike a lap band, the surgery is not reversible.

“To our knowledge LSG has never been tried in very young age children,” the surgeons say in their report. “We present here probably the first case report of the successful management of a two year old morbidly obese boy.”

Within two months the boy lost 15 per cent of his body weight and two years after the 2010 surgery his weight had fallen from (73 pounds) to (53 pounds) and his BMI of 24 was within the normal range.

Obesity expert adjunct professor Paul Zimmett from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute said the case was “shocking” and “very unusual”.

“It’s rather like the other day when we saw one of our spacecrafts going out of our solar system into the dark regions of space, it’s going into unknown territory,” he said of the case. “We have no idea what effect this may have on the child’s growth and unless he has proper follow up he may suffer vitamin deficiencies.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/09/19/morbidly-obese-2-year-old-world-youngest-to-have-bariatric-surgery/#ixzz2fQDzapE9

 

Mountain Dew Mouth’ Is Destroying Appalachia’s Teeth

Appalachia has a distinct culture of sipping soda constantly throughout the day. “Here in West Virginia, you see people carrying around bottles of Mountain Dew all the time — even at a public health conference,” says public health researcher Dana Singer.

By now, we’ve all heard of the health risks posed by drinking too much soda.

But over in Appalachia, the region that stretches roughly from southern New York state to Alabama, the fight against soda is targeting an altogether different concern: rotted teeth.

Public health advocates say soft drinks are driving the region’s alarmingly high incidence of eroded brown teeth — a phenomenon dubbed “Mountain Dew mouth,” after the region’s favorite drink. They want to tackle the problem with policies, including restricting soda purchases with food stamps (now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and currently in Congress).

“We are using taxpayer dollars to buy soda for the SNAP program, and we are using taxpayer dollars to rip teeth out of people’s heads who can’t afford dental care and are on Medicaid,” says Dana Singer, a research analyst at the Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department in Parkersburg, W.Va., who wants to see stricter regulations on sales of all sugary beverages in the region. “It makes no sense to be paying for these things twice.”

The beverage industry has repeatedly that its products are destroying teeth. But dentists beg to differ.

“I see erosion from the acids in the drinks, and decay from the sugars,” says , a dentist in South Charleston, W.Va. “They go hand in hand many times, and they’re equally bad. I would definitely attribute these problems to drinks.” Both sodas and energy drinks, he says, “are more damaging than food.”

Dentists have also found that the effects of soda on teeth are strikingly similar to the effects of methamphetamine or crack on teeth, as I in May. Drinking more than a soda a day raises the risk that found in many soft and energy drinks will eat away at your tooth enamel and its pearly white color. To get a sense of what that looks like, check out .

Back in 2009, Priscilla Harris, an associate professor at the Appalachian College of Law, issued the first battle cry in the war against Mountain Dew mouth with a legal brief titled “,” which explores how the drink became ingrained in the region’s culture. Since then, she’s been leading the charge to come up with policies to tackle the problem.

Harris says that dental problems are especially bad because dental care is harder to get in Appalachia, which includes many of the poorest and most remote communities in the country. Many people don’t trust the well water in their homes because of pollution concerns and probably drink more soda because of it, she says. She’s received a from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study the problem.

And there’s another reason why soda mouth is so pervasive in Appalachia, Harris says: the region’s distinct culture of sipping soda constantly throughout the day. Singer adds, “Here in West Virginia, you see people carrying around bottles of Mountain Dew all the time — even at a public health conference.”

The drink is also native to the region. Mountain Dew was, before PepsiCo bought the brand.

“What Mountain Dew has going for it is that it’s high in caffeine and high in sugar,” Harris says, adding, “Students tell us it tastes best, and it’s a habit.”

While Harris says that there aren’t a lot of comprehensive surveys of dental health in Appalachia, signs of a rampant problem are unmistakable: Some 26 percent of preschoolers in the region have tooth decay, and 15 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds have had a tooth extracted because of decay or erosion. That’s according to calculations by Singer, who is working with Harris.

The elderly are affected, too. Some 67 percent of West Virginians age 65 or older have lost six or more teeth owing to tooth decay or gum disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Singer says one of the best opportunities to curb the problem is targeting programs like SNAP, which allows recipients to buy soda. According to a by Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, the federal government is spending $1.7 billion to $2.1 billion on soda purchases through SNAP.

Under current guidelines, any kind of soda of any size can be purchased with SNAP card — even Mountain Dew, which has 170 calories in a single 12-ounce can.

Various states, from Florida to Tennessee, have proposed bills that would restrict the use of SNAP to buy soda, sugary treats or other unhealthful foods. Singer says she would like to see West Virginia and other states in Appalachia try this approach.

Basic education, says Harris, is also needed: “We also just need to let people know that you can drink these drinks safely, but they can also do harm.”

Source: npr.org

Ear Wax From Whales Keeps Record Of Ocean Contaminants

How often do whales clean their ears? Well, never. And so, year after year, their ear wax builds up, layer upon layer. According to a study published Monday, these columns of ear wax contain a record of chemical pollution in the oceans.

The study used the ear wax extracted from the carcass of a blue whale that washed ashore on a California beach back in 2007. Scientists at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History collected the wax from inside the skull of the dead whale and preserved it. The column of wax was almost a foot long.

“It’s kind of got that icky look to it,” says, an environmental scientist at Baylor University who was involved in the study. “It looks kind of like a candle that’s been roughed up a bit. It looks waxy and has got fibers. But it’s pretty rigid — a lot stronger and a lot more stable than one would think.”

There are light and dark layers within the column, each layer corresponding to six months of the whale’s life, Usenko says. Historically the rings have been used to estimate the age of the whale, he says, “very similar to counting tree rings.”

But age is not what Usenko was after. He studies how chemical pollutants like DDT and flame retardants are affecting whales. These pollutants get deposited in fatty tissues, such as whale blubber. And scientists often analyze blubber to see what whales are eating.

But analyzing blubber has a limitation, Usenko says.

“I would only know that organism — that [particular] animal was exposed to those contaminants,” he says. “I wouldn’t know when.”

And so he thought, why not look at ear wax, which is also a fatty material that accumulates toxic chemicals.

Because each layer of wax corresponds to six months of a whale’s life, by working through a plug of wax, Usenko could figure out when the animal was exposed to a particular chemical.

In this case, Usenko and his colleagues found that the whale had been exposed to worrisome pollutants throughout its lifetime.

He says the high levels of DDT surprised him.

“It’s been 30-plus years since we’ve stopped using this compound,” he says, “but to still see it showing up at such high concentrations — one of the dominant chemicals we see — was surprising.”

Usenko and his team also determined that “a significant percentage of the exposure occurred in the first, early stages of the animal’s life,” when it was still nursing, and perhaps especially vulnerable. At that point, the pollutants came from the mother, through her milk, the scientist says.

Usenko says he can’t tell just from looking at the wax whether these chemicals are hurting the development of young blue whales. He studied only one animal, and the ear wax alone can’t reveal whether the chemicals caused harm.

But the ear wax also contained a record of fluctuations in stress hormones throughout the animal’s life. And that, in combination with the chemical pollution data, may in the future provide better insight into the potential impacts of these chemicals on whales, Usenko says.

His appear in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But he needs more data, he says, so he has requested that scientists start collecting ear wax from dead beached whales the world over and mail the samples to him.

Source: npr news

Medical school program trains doctors for the future of medicine

Health care in America has changed drastically over the last decade – but the way doctors are trained has been the same for over 100 years. Now, some of the nation’s top medical schools are revamping their programs.

“Probably the single biggest reason was trying to prepare students for what health care was going to be like in a decade,” Dr. Charles Lockwood, dean of The Ohio State University (OSU) College of Medicine told FoxNews.com. “Because if you think the last 10 years have been quite a change, really when we begin to be able to sequence people’s entire DNA, and identify every conceivable illness that they’re going to have, and begin to design prevention along those lines ― it’s going to require a very different mindset for docs.”

Typically, medical students spend their first two years of medical school hitting the books, but at OSU’s College of Medicine, they’re trained as medical assistants in the first six weeks, and within eight weeks, they are seeing patients as health coaches.

“Working with patients in a service-type fashion early on in the curriculum is extremely valuable to the students ― it keeps them grounded in why they came to medical school,” Dr. Daniel Clinchot, vice dean for education at OSU’s College of Medicine said of the school’s new Lead. Serve. Inspire program. “Having your patient population that you work with over the course of 18 months is very unique, and I think really is inspiring for many of our students.”

Historically, American medicine has always centered around doctors, but a growing shift in health care delivery has put more emphasis on ensuring quality outcomes for patients.

“You have to do a lot more teaching of patients, you have to explain their illness, you have to explain all the options available for their therapy, you have to spend a lot of time talking about prevention,” said Lockwood. “Communication skills are something that are going to be critically important for the future doc, and that’s not something we’ve emphasized before in medical education.”

Advances in technology and a focus on prevention are just two of the health care changes that helped shape the new Lead. Serve. Inspire curriculum. All incoming medical students are given iPads and classes are available as traditional lectures, podcasts and e-learning modules.

In a state-of-the-art clinical skills center on campus, students can practice virtual laparoscopy and robotic procedures. And there are four critical care simulation bays with life-like mannequins that can mimic human illnesses and medical emergencies. From a control room outside the simulation area, instructors create scenarios that test the students’ ability to treat patients under pressure in the emergency room, operating room, trauma center and labor and delivery wing.

“I think the best thing about the simulations is that it helps you practice in a lower-stress environments than when you’re actually working with patients,” Shannon Emerick, a medical student at OSU’s College of Medicine, said. “You can kind of get the jitters out, and by pretending these are real patients, you can make sure you have everything straight by the time you’re working with actual people.”

Learning the business of health care is also at the core of the Lead. Serve. Inspire program. Health care economics classes are built into the curriculum, and students also have the option to minor in business or take time off to get their MBA to help them prepare to run a successful practice in the future.

“It’s crucial that they understand the cost of health care,” said Lockwood. “Every test that they order, they need to understand exactly what that costs, every imaging procedure, every test that they do has a cost, and they need to understand what it is, and is it absolutely necessary or is there another way to get that information?”

Source: Fox News