Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Social isolation 'increases death risk in older people'
BBC
25 March 2013

Why does being lonely make you ill?
Many in care homes are 'isolated'
Loneliness 'raises cancer risk'

Social isolation is associated with a higher risk of death in older people regardless of whether they consider themselves lonely, research suggests.

A study of 6,500 UK men and women aged over 52 found that being isolated from family and friends was linked with a 26% higher death risk over seven years.

Whether or not participants felt lonely did not alter the impact of social isolation on health.

Age UK says cuts to services for older people are compounding the problem.

It is not the first time that loneliness and social isolation has been linked with poor health.

But researchers wanted to find out if it was the emotional aspect of feeling lonely that was having an impact or the reality of having little social contact.

Those who were socially isolated - that is had little or no contact with friends or family - were more likely to be older and unmarried and have long-standing illnesses limiting their mobility, such as lung disease and arthritis.

People who described themselves as feeling lonely were more likely to be female and have a wider range of health conditions, including depression.

Both social isolation and feeling lonely were associated with a higher chance of death.

This study shows more clearly than before that being lonely and isolated is not only miserable, it is a real health risk”

But after adjusting for factors such as underlying health conditions, only social isolation remained important.

That risk did not change when researchers added in whether or not someone felt lonely in their isolation.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers said they were surprised by their findings.

Study leader Prof Andrew Steptoe, director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care at University College London, said: "Social connections can provide emotional support and warmth which is important but they also provide things like advice, making sure people take their medication and provide support in helping them to do things.

"It would suggest that those practical aspects are quite important for older people's survival.

"There's been such an increase in people living alone. In the last 15 years, the number of 55 to 64-year-olds living alone has increased by 50%.

"And it might be that people in those circumstances aren't looking after themselves so well."

Michelle Mitchell, director general at Age UK, said: "This study shows more clearly than before that being lonely and isolated is not only miserable, it is a real health risk, increasing the risk of early death."

She added that cuts to local authority budget cuts may exacerbate the problem of isolation for many older people.

"Across the country day care centres, often the only regular social life that many older people enjoy, are closing, social care support which can enable older people to leave the house is being cut down to the bare minimum, and too many older people are hidden behind closed doors struggling to cope."

Monday, March 4, 2013

7 walnuts a day deliver health benefits

7 walnuts a day deliver health benefits UPI March 28, 2011 ANAHEIM, Calif., March 28 (UPI) -- Walnuts may be considered the king of nuts for health benefits, with a combination of more healthful and higher quality antioxidants, U.S. researchers say. "Walnuts rank above peanuts, almonds, pecans, pistachios and other nuts," Joe Vinson of the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania said in a statement. "A handful of walnuts contains almost twice as much antioxidants as an equivalent amount of any other commonly consumed nut. But unfortunately, people don't eat a lot of them. This study suggests that consumers should eat more walnuts as part of a healthy diet." Vinson noted that nuts in general have an unusual combination of nutritional benefits. They contain plenty of high-quality protein that can substitute for meat; vitamins and minerals; dietary fiber; and they are dairy- and gluten-free. Vinson said it takes only about seven walnuts a day to get the potential health benefits. Research has found consumption of small amounts of nuts or peanut butter is linked to decreased risk of heart disease, certain kinds of cancer, gallstones, type 2 diabetes and other health problems. Antioxidants in walnuts were two to 15 times as potent as vitamin E -- renowned for its powerful antioxidant effects, which protect the body against damaging natural chemicals involved in causing disease, Vinson says. Read more: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/03/28/7-walnuts-a-day-deliver-health-benefits/UPI-93441301365744/#ixzz2MbvpmK00

Sunday, March 3, 2013

How to change your metabolism: partial fast two days a week

England Develops a Voracious Appetite for a New Diet
By JENNIFER CONLIN
New York Times
March 1, 2013

PHOTO: Dr. Michael Mosley, a co-author of “The Fast Diet,” cooking a frittata of mushrooms and scallions at home last week. He researched the science of the diet and its health benefits by putting himself through a regimen of intermittent

LONDON — Visitors to England right now, be warned. The big topic on people’s minds — from cabdrivers to corporate executives — is not Kate Middleton’s increasingly visible baby bump (though the craze does involve the size of one’s waistline), but rather a best-selling diet book that has sent the British into a fasting frenzy.

“The Fast Diet,” written by Dr. Mosley and Mimi Spencer, has held the No. 1 slot on Amazon’s British site nearly every day since its publication in January.

“The Fast Diet,” published in mid-January in Britain, could do the same in the United States if Americans eat it up. The United States edition arrived last week.

The book has held the No. 1 slot on Amazon’s British site nearly every day since its publication in January, according to Rebecca Nicolson, a founder of Short Books, the independent publishing company behind the sensation. “It is selling,” she said, “like hot cakes,” which coincidentally are something one can actually eat on this revolutionary diet.

With an alluring cover line that reads, “Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer,” the premise of this latest weight-loss regimen — or “slimming” as the British call “dieting” — is intermittent fasting, or what has become known here as the 5:2 diet: five days of eating and drinking whatever you want, dispersed with two days of fasting.

A typical fasting day consists of two meals of roughly 250 to 300 calories each, depending on the person’s sex (500 calories for women, 600 for men). Think two eggs and a slice of ham for breakfast, and a plate of steamed fish and vegetables for dinner.

It is not much sustenance, but the secret to weight loss, according to the book, is that even after just a few hours of fasting, the body begins to turn off the fat-storing mechanisms and turn on the fat-burning systems...

We may live longer with moderate exercise than with vigorous exercise

June 6, 2012
Moderation as the Sweet Spot for Exercise
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
New York Times

Moderate exercise may be more beneficial than vigorous workouts.Thor Swift for The New York Times Moderate exercise may be more beneficial than vigorous workouts.

For people who exercise but fret that they really should be working out more, new studies may be soothing. The amount of exercise needed to improve health and longevity, this new science shows, is modest, and more is not necessarily better.

That is the message of the newest and perhaps most compelling of the studies, which was presented on Saturday at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine in San Francisco. For it, researchers at the University of South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health and other institutions combed through the health records of 52,656 American adults who’d undergone physicals between 1971 and 2002 as part of the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study at the Cooper Institute in Dallas. Each participant completed physical testing and activity questionnaires and returned for at least one follow-up visit.

The researchers found that about 27 percent of the participants reported regularly running, although in wildly varying amounts and paces.

The scientists then checked death reports.

Over the course of the study, 2,984 of the participants died. But the incidence was much lower among the group that ran. Those participants had, on average, a 19 percent lower risk of dying from any cause than non-runners.

Notably, in closely parsing the participants’ self-reported activities, the researchers found that running in moderation provided the most benefits.
Those who ran 1 to 20 miles per week at an average pace of about 10 or 11 minutes per mile — in other words, jogging — reduced their risk of dying during the study more effectively than those who didn’t run, those (admittedly few) who ran more than 20 miles a week, and those who typically ran at a pace swifter than seven miles an hour.

“These data certainly support the idea that more running is not needed to produce extra health and mortality benefits,” said Dr. Carl J. Lavie, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation and prevention at the Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans and an author of the study. “If anything,” he continued, “it appears that less running is associated with the best protection from mortality risk. More is not better, and actually, more could be worse.”

His analysis echoes the results of another new examination of activity and mortality, in which Danish scientists used 27 years’ worth of data collected for the continuing Copenhagen City Heart Study. They reported that those Danes who spent one to two and a half hours per week jogging at a “slow or average pace” during the study period had longer life spans than their more sedentary peers and than those who ran at a faster pace.

This decidedly modest amount of exercise led to an increase of, on average, 6.2 years in the life span of male joggers and 5.6 years in women.

“We can say with certainty that regular jogging increases longevity,” Dr. Peter Schnorr, a cardiologist and an author of the study, said in presenting the findings at a clinical meeting organized last month by the European Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation. “The good news is that you don’t actually need to do that much to reap the benefits.”

“The relationship appears much like alcohol intakes,” he continued. “Mortality is lower in people reporting moderate jogging than in non-joggers or those undertaking extreme levels of exercise.”

There’s further confirmation of that idea in the findings of a large study of exercise habits published last year in The Lancet, which showed that among a group of 416,175 Taiwanese adults, 92 minutes a week of moderate exercise, like walking, gentle jogging or cycling, increased life span by about three years and decreased the risk of mortality from any cause by about 14 percent.

In that study, those who embarked on more ambitious exercise programs did gain additional risk reduction, as seems only fair, but the benefits plateaued rapidly. For each further 15 minutes per day of moderate exercise that someone completed beyond the first 92, his or her mortality risk fell, but by only about another 4 percent.

Whether and at what point more exercise becomes counterproductive remains uncertain. “In general, it appears that exercise, like any therapy, results in a bell-shaped curve in terms of response and benefit,” says Dr. James H. O’Keefe, a cardiologist and lead author of a thought-provoking review article published on Monday in Mayo Clinic Proceedings that examines whether extreme amounts of vigorous exercise, particularly running, can harm the heart.

“To date, the data suggests that walking and light jogging are almost uniformly beneficial for health and do increase life span,” Dr. O’Keefe says. “But with more vigorous or prolonged exercise, the benefits can become questionable.

“I’m a fan of distance running,” he adds. “I run. But after about 45 to 60 minutes a day, you reach a point of diminishing returns, and at some point, you risk toxicity.

His advice? The study by Dr. Lavie and his colleagues offers excellent guidelines for safe and effective exercise, Dr. O’Keefe says. “Twenty miles a week or less of jogging at a 10- or 11-minute-mile pace can add years to your life span. That’s very good news.” Indeed it is — especially since that routine happens to replicate almost exactly my own weekly exercise regimen.

“I wouldn’t automatically discourage people from doing more if they really want to” and are not experiencing side effects, like extreme fatigue or repeated injuries, Dr. O’Keefe continued. “But the message from the latest data is that the sweet spot for exercise seems to come with less.”

Gretchen Reynolds is the author of “The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer” (Hudson Street Press, 2012).

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