Golfers live longer

Though it may just seem that way if you happen to be a ‘golf widow/widower!’ I don’t think of Sweden as a golfing nation, but a study conducted by the Karolinska Institutet, and published in the ‘Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports’, has revealed that people who played golf had a 40% lower mortality rate than their equivalent non-golfing counterparts. In real terms that means they can expect to live 5 years longer.

A round of golf means being outside for four or five hours, walking at a fast pace for six to seven kilometres, all of which are things that are known to be good for health. Also, golf is a game people usually play well into their old age so maintain their level of fitness, plus there are other social and psychological aspects to the game that can be of help.

Mental acuity, plus physical exercise and companionship is a very potent cocktail, and, it may seem unfair, but their research also found that golfers with the lowest handicap enjoyed the lowest mortality rates. It seems this is because it takes more playing time to reach a higher level of proficiency in the game, so you are out in the fresh air and exercising for longer. Another good reason to lower your handicap!

Back awareness week

If you have a bad back, you don’t need an awareness week as unfortunately it is ever present in your consciousness. However, we now seem to have special days and weeks that are celebrated that I don’t remember from my dim and distant childhood – was there ever a Grandparent’s Day? This time I am reminding you that it is Back Care Awareness Week from 4 – 10 October 2008 and its theme and focus is ‘staying positive and believing that’you can do it’.

Given that 52% of the population now gets back pain – a 5% increase on last year – a positive attitude seems to be definitely called for. You now have full permission to stow the vacuum cleaner as the most common causes of bad backs apparently are spring cleaning and housework. As Quentin Crisp famously observed ‘There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.’ You may feel that’s a bit extreme but as a principle I could get excited about it.

More worrying is the fact that a recent study found that between 13% and 50% of teenagers have already had episodes of back pain and as many as two in every class of 15-18 year olds experience back pain on a recurrent or chronic basis. It’s apparently a combination of too much time in front of a computer, not enough physical activity and the increasing ‘couch potato’ syndrome. There are many options for the management and prevention of back pain and the earlier you seek help then the better it is. Back pain as well as physically causing immobilization, can cause many people to feel trapped by back pain. Even something simple like getting in or out of a car can become an enormous and painful challenge, so much so, that some people stop doing it and become housebound. This can lead to a downward spiral of pain, depression, lack of self-belief and negative feelings about your ability to lead a normal life. It is a ‘can do’ attitude that the back awareness week wants to promote to counter this.

Personally I am a big fan of chiropractic, particularly McTimoney which is less invasive and bone cracking than the more widely known osteopathic practices. There are plenty of events going on around the country, kicking off with a major exhibition at Olympia. If you would like to now more then visit the website at www.backpain.org.uk

To jab or not to jab

That is indeed the question – particularly in relation to the flu jab which is on offer at this time of year. It’s over three years now since doubt was first cast on the effectiveness of the flu jab, particularly in protecting elderly people. Now it seems that a new study published in the US shows that the 2007-08 flu vaccine was only 44% effective, which made it the worst flu season the worst since 2003-04.

In fairness, flu vaccines are formulated based on health officials’ educated guesses about which strains of the virus are most likely to be circulating in a given year. Three of these strains are picked for inclusion in the vaccine and when they guess correctly, the vaccine is usually between 70 and 90% effective.

Sounds like a bit of a lottery to me, and again going the natural route I prefer to boost my system with a seasonal acupuncture tune up and regular doses of Echinacea and vitamin C – it seems to work for me.

Why men need some weight at middle age

I am not advocating middle aged spread, but being too thin can be a real health risk for men. A study carried out at the University of Oslo on nearly 1,500 men over a 30-year period, has found that men who were relatively thin when young, or who lost weight as they aged, were at increased risk of osteoporosis, the brittle bone disease, when they were in their 70′s.

It’s often believed that it’s only women who are affected by osteoporosis, but this is just not the case. Because it is hard to identify without a bone scan, the first symptom is often an inexplicable bone break. I met one man who had only been diagnosed after his fourth fracture – as he played rugby it was put down to that, but his bones were breaking under very little pressure.

There are treatments available, usually your doctor will suggest drugs such as Fosamax, but excellent results have been seen in women using natural progesterone cream to rebuild bone. Not enough men have used it to say whether it is as effective for them, but it might be worth a try. Remember, your bones are constantly regenerating throughout your life. Old bone is drawn upon to supply instant demands for calcium (osteoclasts) and is replaced by new bone material (osteoblasts) to keep the skeleton strong. As we age, the process of rebuilding becomes less effective, and there is an overall loss of density, and the bones under examination can look almost lace-like when osteoporosis is well advanced.

If you want to avoid it, and there is a family predilection, then these are the factors that contribute most strongly to your losing bone density and strength – whether you are a man or a woman:

* Drinking too many colas as they are high in phosphorus which draws calcium from the bones.

* Not getting enough exercise – you need it to strengthen your bones.

* Eating too much fat from dairy and meat. Vegans and vegetarians have greater bone mass than meat eaters.

* Drinking too much alcohol as it interferes with calcium absorption.

* Excess coffee drinking as a study of nearly 83,000 patients showed a correlation between bone fractures and heavy coffee consumption.

* Smoking has been proven to increase bone loss.

* Some prescription drugs such as cortisone, blood thinners, antacids containing aluminum, chemotherapy, lithium, and certain antibiotics can increase bone loss.

* A junk food diet high in salt and sugar will leach calcium from the bones into the urine.

If you want to know more about the role of natural progesterone, a book I wrote with Dr Shirley Bond will give you more information. You will find details at the www.catalystonline.co.uk website. Plus, new research just presented to the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research is pointing towards compounds that could induce the body to treat itself for osteoporosis with the parathyroid hormone.

It is in the early stages of development, but it would probably involve a series of injections of a form of parathyroid hormone which triggers bone-building. Currently just using parathyroid drugs is extremely expensive – around £4000 a year – but it is hoped that the molecules reported here could be delivered much more cheaply and be more effective at promoting bone building.

A natural face lift

In keeping with helping you avoid the surgeon’s knife, I thought I would remind you that there is an alternative to botox, chemical peels and the trauma of a surgical face lift if you want to go the DIY route to preserve your looks – or even enhance them if you are lucky. Of course it won’t cost you as much – in fact it’s free – but it does require some of your time. This entirely natural facelift will improve circulation, eliminate toxins and reduce stress and tension so you will lookmore relaxed, and the skin will be smoother with more radiance and that helps you look younger.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
You are going to stimulate the acupressure points on the energy meridians of your face by using your fingers to apply firm pressure to each point and the whole thing shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. To eliminate crows’ feet and tone the eye area:

Place your middle fingers on the inside edges of your eyebrows. Apply light pressure going along your eyebrow, round to under the eye, pressing your fingers on the top of your cheekbones. Then continue to the inside corners of your eyes. Repeat in a circular motion around the eyes 30 times.

To soften fine linesand wrinkles around the eyes:

Put your fingers on the outside end of each eyebrow, then trace down until they are parallel with the centre of your eye. Lightly touch these points for three seconds, then release. Repeat 30 times. Now do the same for the points directly under your pupil on the top edge of your cheekbone.

There are also some other points to rejuvenate the rest of your face: For each of these points, again lightly touch them for three seconds and release, repeating 30 times.

* Either side of each nostril, on the face not the nose itself.

* The point between your top lip and nose, and the point between your bottom lip and tip of the chin. Touch both of these at the same time using your index and ring finger.

* Put your finger directly between your eyebrows, then trace up until just before you reach the slight bump in your forehead, about midway to your hairline. Massage this point gently with a circular motion to release tension. It might help to do these actions facing a mirror for the first few times so you can be sure you are pressing in the right place. Ten minutes a day, every day, and you should see results within a few weeks. No before and after photos please, I will be happy to just take your word for it!

Oh Really?!

You know I can’t resist howling at unnecessary research – and here’s another one. Bet you would never have guessed it, but older women, who sleep badly at night have a higher risk factor for falls. Apparently sleeping five or fewer hours a night significantly increased the odds of having two or more falls in any one year by 52%. Good old Katie L.Stone, Ph.D., of the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, and her colleagues have realised that people who sleep badly are more likely to be clumsy, fatigued and pay less attention than those who are razor sharp from a full 8 hours of good sleep. Who would have guessed it?

As all the subjects were over 70 and in nursing homes, I would have thought the study might have also highlighted that the main danger to the elderly from falls is through objects left on the floor or badly positioned furniture. However as Dr. Stone is a consultant for Sepracor – a pharmaceutical company who produce the blockbuster insomnia drug Lunesta, with sales of over $1 billion a year, I can see why she might want to promote an uninterrupted night’s sleep. The research was also part funded by them and five other major pharmaceutical companies.

Brain probes could help alzheimer patients

One of the most lucrative markets these days is for anything that help people lose weight, and much of that research is in the field of appetite suppression – and there is a large pot of gold for anyone who finds one with no side effects. However, a startling by product of such research being done at Toronto Western Hospital in Ontario, Canada, has accidentally discovered a way to trigger vivid memories.

The hero of the piece is an obese man who had volunteered to help scientists as they attempt to find a part of the brain that could suppress the appetite when stimulated electrically.

When the scientists stimulated the hypothalamus, which has been associated with hunger, the man suddenly experienced a vivid memory from 30 years before. It was complete in all details, the people, the place, the colours exactly as if he were back there. While the hypothalamus has not previously been associated with memory, it borders a part of the brain that is known to influence memory and emotion so it seemed like a logical area to explore.

The researchers then implanted a device in his brain that would constantly stimulate that section of the hypothalamus. The device is similar to ones that have been implanted in other parts of the brain to control tremor in Parkinson’s disease.

After three weeks of stimulation at a low level, the man’s performance on two memory tests improved significantly and this leads researchers to hope that they can develop the technique into a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. They are now testing the device to see if it can stem the memory loss that can be such a distressing part of Alzheimer’s disease.

Retrain your brain after stroke

Apparently just walking on a treadmill every day for six months can really help stroke victims regain control of mind and body – even years after their stroke. A German study of stroke victims, half of the whom could walk without assistance with the rest used a cane, a walker, or a wheelchair, has found that using a treadmill not only improved walking speed and fitness, but appeared to rewire their brain circuits. The repetitive walking action seemed to recruit unused brain circuits to take over for those destroyed by the stroke and MRI scans showed greater activity in other parts of the brain too. Stroke patients are typically told to learn to live with their disabilities, and most rehabilitation programmes focus on short-term improvement, ending just a few months after the stroke, so that over time the patients’ improvement plateaus and fitness often wanes. But this study suggests that it’s never too late for the brain and body to recover, the researchers said, noting that patients in the study had significant improvement even nine years after a stroke.

Statins update

A new trial has shown that taking an omega-3 fish oil capsule outperforms a statin drug in reducing mortality and hospital admissions for chronic heart failure.

The results of the recent Italian study were given at the European Society of Cardiology meeting and published online by The Lancet on 31 August 2008. The patients on omega-3 supplements showed a lowered risk of mortality compared to those heart failure patients who received 10 mg/day of a potent statin drug and others given a placebo. The patients given the statin showed no benefit and in fact had the same outcome as taking the placebo.

What this study suggests is that a daily intake of omega-3 fatty acid supplement for close to four years may provide a slight reduction in mortality or hospitalizations for patients with chronic heart failure and that treatment with statins does not appear to be beneficial in patients with chronic heart failure. The American College of Cardiology has predicted that the results would soon be rapidly incorporated into their guidelines on heart failure. This is the second trial to demonstrate benefit for omega-3 in cardiovascular disease: the first trial found that omega-3 reduced the risk of major cardiovascular events following a heart attack whereas the second appears to lower the risk of mortality from heart disease.

If you are concerned about your risk for heart disease and want to take preventive measures, the suggested supplemental daily dose of omega-3 is equivalent to a gram day, taken for at least four years continuously – or seriously increase your intake of sardines and other oily fish!

Genes are the reason for middle aged spread

Staying with the theme of unwanted weight, it seems almost inevitable, middle aged spread is something we associate with getting older and we either accept it or take action to prevent it. Often thought of as being a result of being less active, it now seems that it is a result of the key appetite control cells in the human brain degenerating over time. This causes increased hunger and the potential for putting on weight, but read on and see how you can slow down this process.

Dr Zane Andrews, a neuroendocrinologist with Monash University’s Department of Physiology in Australia, has published his research in Nature magazine which indicates that what you eat has a great effect on how much the cells decay. He found that appetite-suppressing cells are attacked by free radicals after eating, and that the degeneration is more significant following meals rich in carbohydrates and sugars. So a Big Mac with large fries and a coke – for example – is one of the worst offenders as a meal loaded with carbohydrates and sugars attacks the appetite suppressing cells, which in turn creates a cellular imbalance between our need to eat and the message to the brain to stop eating.

WHO IS AT RISK?
People in the age group of 25 to 50 are most at risk because the neurons that tell people in the crucial age range not to over-eat are being killed-off. When the stomach is empty, it triggers the ghrelin hormone that notifies the brain that we are hungry. When we are full, a set of neurons known as POMC’s (which are produced in the hypothalamus) kick in. However, free radicals created naturally in the body attack the POMC neurons and this process causes them to degenerate overt time, and this in turn affects our judgement about when our hunger is satisfied.

Dr Andrews believes that the reduction in the appetite-suppressing cells could be one explanation for the complex condition of adult-onset obesity. Our diets have changed radically over the last 30 years as we now do consume far more sugars and complex carbohydrates than ever before and this has placed so much strain on our bodies that it’s leading to premature cell deterioration. The answer? Cut down on carbohydrates and sugars as much as you can, otherwise that slice of ‘Death by Chocolate’ cake might prove all too apt when applied to your waistline.

« Previous Page — Next Page »