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Need to breathe easy, faster? Try yoga Despite the ongoing discipline it takes to master yoga physically and mentally, the practice does offer short-term respiratory benefits, shows a Thai study unveiled at a meeting of the American Physiological Society. Powerful breathing allows the chest wall to expand and get more air to the base of the lungs. This lets more oxygen in, requiring less effort to breathe, according to lead researcher Raoyrin Chanavirut of Khon Kaen University in Thailand. “These findings may benefit people suffering from illnesses that affect breathing, including asthma,” says Chanavirut, who notes that yoga also could help suffers of neuromuscular conditions and those who have had abdominal and thoracic surgery. Fifty-eight study participants practiced five Hatha yoga positions over six weeks during 20-minute sessions, three times a week. (The positions includes cat, tree and camel poses.) A control group avoided exercise and continued with their typical lifestyle habits, according to researchers. Control group individuals didn’t smoke or drink, either. Chanavirut’s research team used a measuring tape to determine the lung capacity before and after the sessions. They measured the sternum, middle and lower chest. Then they used a tool called a spirometer to measure the amount of air a person can blow out in a section, a key indicator of healthy lung functioning, according to research reports. “Volunteers who did yoga over the six-week period significantly improved chest wall expansion at all three measurement points and also showed significantly better forced expiratory volume (blowing out) and forced vital capacity (blowing out after breathing in),” research reports say. Honey has sweet health benefits Honey sates your sweet tooth and heals your physical wounds, according to a study published in the International Journal of Lower Extremity Wounds. In a series of 22 clinical trials involving more than 2,000 injured people, honey proved to have powerful healing and sterilization powers, says study author Dr. Peter Molan of New Zealand’s University of Waikato biological sciences department. Molan compared honey with a variety of other medical wound treatments. Types of wounds treated included superficial burns, postoperative wound infections after abdominal surgery, diabetic wounds and leg ulcers. In many cases, proper healing didn’t begin until honey was applied. Honey acts as an antibacterial solution, clearing infections and blocking the potential for infection later, as the wound heals. Honey removes bad smells related to wound healing, reduces swelling and speeds the healing process. How does honey work? Well, without getting too scientific, it releases a substance that stimulates the process of cell repair and jumpstarts the body’s immune response. “It was found that much better progress with healing occurred when more frequent changes of the dressings were made,” Molan said, noting that changing dressings using honey is less painful than typical treatments because it doesn’t stick to the skin. Oh, our wicked, Western ways Good going, America; our excessive habits are rubbing off on others. China faces a heart disease epidemic, thanks to adopting Western lifestyle and eating habits, reports the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The Chinese population has gone from “undernutrition to overnutrition and from underweight to obesity,” says Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health. Researchers studied 2,334 people ages 60 and up living in Beijing, China, and found that metabolic syndrome is increasingly more common. The syndrome is defined by five risk factors: obesity defined by waist size, high blood pressure, low LDL (good cholesterol), high triglycerides and high blood sugar, Dr. Hu found. “The future burden from cardiovascular disease or other chronic disease in China will be substantial,” says Zhengming Chen of the University of Oxford, who notes that prevention of these risk factors will be key. Don’t believe the cosmetic surgery hype Feeling inadequate because you haven’t gotten the latest in hot, new plastic surgery procedures? Forget about it. Not as many people are getting fringe procedures – such as vaginal rejuvenation and pectoral, buttock or calf implants – as you may think. “These trendy new procedures that are supposedly all the rage around the country simply are not being performed in large numbers,” says Dr. Bruce Cunningham, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. In fact, says the surgeons’ group, here are the 2005 numbers: • Buttock implants 542 • Calf augmentation 337 • Pectoral implants 206 • Vaginal rejuvenation 793 Traditional procedures accounted for a much greater portion of the 1.8 million cosmetic surgeries done in 2005, including 323.605 liposuctions, 298,413 nose reshapings and 230,697 eyelid surgeries, ASPS statistics show. Bet on it: Gambling runs in families Problem gamblers likely come from families with a pathological betting problem, in addition to a host of other issues, including alcoholism, drug using, and antisocial behavior, says a University of Iowa study. “Something is being passed along in these families that increases the person’s likelihood of engaging in impulsive and ultimately self-destructive behavior,” says Dr. Donald Black, a psychiatry professor at the school, noting that gambling disorders have grown over the past 20 years as access to gaming has increased in many forms, including casinos, racetracks, bingo and lotteries. These findings, based on interviews with 31 pathological gamblers, 30 control subjects and first-degree relatives who share 50 percent of their genes (parents, siblings, kids), are the first step to finding a genetic basis for pathological gambling, according to Black. Black’s study found that problem gambling tended to start at around age 34 for men and 39 for women. Even though women start later, their severity of problem gambling grows worse quicker, according to Black. “What we find with pathological gamblers is that they have this uncontrollable urge to gamble,” Black said. “Ideally, it would be nice to discover a drug that would reliably interrupt that urge.” Parenthood is a real downer Being parents provides a one-way ticket to lifelong depression, according to social scientists who found that parents have higher rates of the condition than nonparents. Even empty-nesters, whose kids have grown up and moved on, suffer depression more than nonparents do, likely because they are involved in their adult children’s lives and are concerned about what happens to them, says the study published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, which also included single parents, stepparents and parents with minors at home. “Unlike other major adult social roles in the United States, parenthood does not appear to confer a mental health advantage for individuals,” write researchers Ranae Evenson of Vanderbilt University and Robin Simon of Florida State, referring the positive wellness benefits of marriage and being employed. But among all parents, those with little kids (whether biological, step or adopted) at home were less depressed than other parents. “Young children are in some ways emotionally easier,” Simon says. “Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems.” The news isn’t all bad, though, Simon says. These results are just a wakeup call to review how we approach parenting, such as accepting more help from extended family members and the community. “It’s how we do parenting in this society,” Simon says. “We do it in a very isolated way, and the onus is on us as individuals to get it right. Our successes are our own, but so are our failures. Its emotionally draining.” Kick two bad habits at once: Here’s why Smoking blocks the brain’s ability to recover from alcoholism, according to research published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. In a study of 25 recovering alcoholics, including 14 smokers and 11 nonsmokers, those who smoke showed less improvement in brain function and “neurochemical markers of brain cell health,” according to lead study author Dr. Dieter Meyerhoff, a radiology professor at the University of California, San Francisco. “This study suggests that for better brain recovery, it may be beneficial for alcoholics in early abstinence to stop smoking as well,” Meyerhoff says. |
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