Scientists question if wi-fi laptops can damage sperm/BBC News

Scientists are questioning if using wi-fi on a laptop to roam the internet could harm a man's fertility, after lab work suggested ejaculated sperm were significantly damaged after only four hours of exposure.
The benchside tests showed sperm were less able to swim and had changes in the genetic code that they carry.

Experts stress this does not mean the same would occur in a real-life setting and say men should not worry unduly.
But they are recommending more studies.
The preliminary research, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, looked at semen samples from 29 healthy donors.
Each donor sample was separated out into two pots. One of these pots was then stored for four hours next to a laptop that was wirelessly connected to the internet. The other was stored under identical conditions, minus the laptop.
The scientists, from Argentina and the US, suspect that the effect seen is unrelated to the heat kicked out by a laptop, although heat can damage sperm.
Under investigation

The UK's Health Protection Agency has been closely monitoring the safety of wi-fi.
It says people using wi-fi, or those in the proximity of wi-fi equipment, are exposed to the radio signals it emits - and some of the transmitted energy in the signals is absorbed in their bodies.
However, the signals are very low power.
The HPA says there is no consistent evidence to date that exposure to radio signals from wi-fi adversely affects the health of the general population.

UK fertility expert Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: "The study is very well conducted, but we should be cautious about what it may infer about the fertility of men who regularly use laptops with wi-fi on their laps.
"Ejaculated sperm are particularly sensitive to many factors because outside the body they don't have the protection of the other cells, tissues and fluids of the body in which they are stored before ejaculation. Therefore, we cannot infer from this study that because a man might use a laptop with wi-fi on his lap for more than four hours then his sperm will necessarily be damaged and he will be less fertile.
"We need large epidemiological studies to determine this, and to my knowledge these have not yet been performed."

He said men should still be cautious about balancing a laptop on their thighs for hours on end.
"We know from other studies that the bottom of laptops can become incredibly hot and inadvertent testicular heating is a risk factor for poor sperm quality.
"There is a case report of a man who burnt his penis after using a laptop resting on his lap for a long time. Therefore, there are many reasons to try and use a laptop on a table where possible, and this may in itself ameliorate any theoretical concerns about wi-fi."

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An Egg a Day Raises Risk of Diabetes -Researchers

People who eat eggs every day may substantially increase their risk of type 2 diabetes, researchers here said.

Men with the highest level of egg consumption -- at seven or more per week -- were 58% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who did not eat eggs, and women were 77% more likely to become diabetic if they ate at least an egg a day, Luc Djoussé, M.D., D.Sc., of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard, and colleagues reported online in Diabetes Care.

Levels of egg intake above one a week also incrementally increased diabetes risk in both men and women (both P<0.0001 for trend), the researchers said.

Eggs are a major source of dietary cholesterol (about 200 mg per egg) and add about 1.5 g of saturated fat each to the diet, both of which would be expected to increase diabetes risk, they said.
Action Points

    Explain to interested patients that the average one-egg-a-week consumption was not associated with increased diabetes risk.

    Note that eggs may influence glucose metabolism primarily through their effect on cholesterol, although the researchers noted that the observational study could not determine the mechanism.

But each egg also contributes about 0.7 g of polyunsaturated fat, which may confer a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, the researchers noted.

The limited, primarily animal model, evidence for an effect of eggs or dietary cholesterol on glucose metabolism has been inconsistent, they added.

To sort out the effects, the researchers analyzed two large prospective trials that included food frequency questionnaires.

Their analysis included 20,703 male physicians without baseline diabetes from the Physicians' Health Study I (1982-2007) and 36,295 similarly diabetes-free female health professionals from the Women's Health Study (1992-2007).

Both studies were originally designed as randomized trials of vitamin supplementation and aspirin for prevention of heart disease.

Over a mean follow-up of 20.0 years in men and 11.7 years in women, 1,921 men and 2,112 women developed type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes was more common in men and women who reported eating more than the average one egg a week.

After adjustment for traditional diabetes risk factors and compared with no egg consumption at the 95% confidence interval, the hazard ratios for type 2 diabetes in men were:

    9% for less than one egg a week (hazard ratio 1.09, 0.87 to 1.37)
    9% for one egg a week (HR 1.09, 0.88 to 1.34)
    18% for two to four eggs a week (HR 1.18, 0.95 to 1.45)
    46% for five to six eggs per week (HR 1.46, 1.14 to 1.86)
    58% for seven or more eggs each week (HR 1.58, 1.25 to 2.01)

Updating egg consumption with longer follow-up among men strengthened the associations to an almost twofold risk for those in the near daily or higher intake groups (HR 1.77, 95% CI 1.39 to 2.26, and HR 1.99, 95% CI 1.23 to 3.23, respectively).

For women, the multivariate-adjusted risks, also at the 95% confidence interval, compared with no egg intake were:

    6% for less than one egg per week (HR 1.06, 0.92 to 1.22)
    -3% for one egg a week (HR 0.97, 0.83 to 1.12)
    19% for two to four eggs per week (HR 1.19, 1.03 to 1.38)
    18% for five to six eggs a week (HR 1.18, 0.88 to 1.58)
    77% for seven or more per week (HR 1.77, 1.28 to 2.43)

Data on dietary cholesterol available in the female health professional study showed higher diabetes risk with rising dietary cholesterol with hazard ratios increasing to 1.28 (95% CI 1.10 to 1.50) in the highest quintile (P<0.0001 for trend).

Adjustment for dietary cholesterol attenuated the association between diabetes and egg consumption, whereas saturated fat was not associated with type 2 diabetes and did not alter the diabetes-egg link.

The effects did not appear to be limited to those with high carbohydrate diets, hypercholesterolemia, or high body mass index.

However, the researchers acknowledged that the data did not include repeat fasting glucose, fasting insulin, and other biomarkers of glucose metabolism to "comprehensively examine possible physiologic mechanisms."

The observational studies may also have been limited by self-reporting and residual confounding, they noted.

The generalizablity may have been limited as well by the homogeneous, primarily Caucasian health professional population, which may have different behaviors than the general population, Dr. Djoussé's group said.

"Given the societal burden of type 2 diabetes," they concluded, "confirmation of these findings in other populations and exploration of possible underlying biological mechanisms are warranted."

The study was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Reviewed by Dori F. Zaleznik, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston.    

(MedPage Today)

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New evidence links virus to brain cancer

Tilting the scales in an ongoing debate, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found new evidence that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is associated with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the brain cancer that killed Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Tilting the scales in an ongoing debate, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found new evidence that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is associated with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the brain cancer that killed Sen. Edward Kennedy.

The findings confirm what only a handful of scientists have found, but in a manner that University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health researchers believe enhances the scientific rigor of earlier studies.

The study, published in the advanced online edition (Nov. 16, 2011) of the Journal of Virology, hints for the first time that HCMV may work differently than other cancer-related viruses - possibly by affecting only tumor stem cells, self-renewing cells that keep the tumor growing.

The new research may place HCMV in an expanding group of viruses associated with cancer.

"As many as 15 to 20 percent of all human cancers are caused by viruses, and the number is growing," says HCMV expert Dr. Robert Kalejta, associate professor of oncology at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH). "The viruses may not cause cancer on their own, but they play a critical role in the process."

Among others, human papilloma virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) causes lymphoma and hepatitis C virus (HCV) causes liver cancer.

HCMV's role in GBM has been debated, with many scientists and clinicians remaining skeptical. Oncologist Dr. Charles Cobbs of California Pacific Medical Center has been the main proponent of the theory that HCMV contributes to GBM.

Dr. John Kuo, assistant professor of neurological surgery and human oncology and a cancer stem cell scientist at the School of Medicine and Public Health, was one of the skeptical ones, but he says he's now convinced that HCMV is associated with human GBM specimens.

Still, the association does not prove a causal relationship between HCMV and the development of GBM, he says.

HCMV-infected cell.

"This study may open up a new unexplored area of research for this incurable disease," says Kuo, who is director of the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program at UW Hospital and Clinics. He also coordinates clinical trials as chair of the brain tumor group at the Carbone Cancer Center.

Kuo and colleagues on the UW brain tumor team currently treat GBM patients with the standard regimen of surgery, followed by radiation and chemotherapy. More research is needed before anti-viral drugs against HCMV could be considered for clinical trials, says Kuo, whose group contributed to the Journal of Virology paper.

Two years ago, Kalejta's team added support to Cobb's position when it showed that two HCMV proteins shut down a key protein that restricts tumor growth in general.

"HCMV can also do every one of the things that are generally considered the 10 hallmarks of cancer," says Kalejta, a member of the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, Carbone Cancer Center, Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center and Institute for Molecular Virology at UW-Madison.

The problem with studying HCMV is that the virus is present in a harmless way in almost everyone, so scientists can't ask if HCMV-positive people are more likely to get cancer than people without HCMV.

Kalejta's postdoctoral fellow Dr. Padhma Ranganatan used a standard laboratory test, rather than the ultra-sensitive test Cobb has used, to see if HCMV was present in 75 GBM samples. The UW-Madison researchers also looked to see if the entire virus genome - all of its DNA - rather than just a portion of it was present in the tissues. Finally, they wanted to learn if all cells within the tumor or just some of them were infected.

The analysis showed that HCMV is statistically more likely to be present in GBM sample tissues than in other brain tumor and epileptic brain tissues. The whole virus genome, not a portion of it, was present in GBM samples. And the data suggested that a minority of GBM cells were infected with HCMV.

"We hypothesize that HCMV may be infecting only tumor stem cells, unlike other viruses, which infect every single tumor cell," says Kalejta. "This leads us to predict that HCMV functions by a unique mechanism that no other virus uses."

Kalejta hopes to begin looking for the new mechanism soon. If there is such a mechanism, it could open a new door in cancer biology. It would also convert many more people to the idea that HCMV plays a key role in GBM.

"But I think the tide is now turning on the debate," Kalejta says.

(via Medical Xpress)

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Underweight people at higher post-surgery risk: study

(Reuters) - People who are underweight have a 40 percent higher risk of dying in the first month after surgery than patients who are overweight, according to new research released on Monday.
The findings suggest that body mass index, or BMI, may be useful in predicting which patients are at the greatest risk while recovering from surgery, U.S. researchers reported in the Archives of Surgery.
Prior studies looking at the role of BMI in surgery have been mixed, said George Stukenborg of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who worked on the study.
"Patients with low BMI are at higher risk of death 30 days after surgery," Stukenborg said in a telephone interview.
The researchers used data on nearly 190,000 patients who underwent a variety of surgeries at 183 hospitals between 2005 and 2006.
BMI is calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in meters squared. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people with a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 are normal weight, those with a BMI of 25 to 29.9 are overweight, and those with a BMI of 30 and above are obese.
To look for a link between body weight and the risk of death, they classified patients into five groups or quintiles: people with a BMI of less than 23.1; people with a BMI of 23.1 to less than 26.3; people with a BMI of 26.3 to less than 29.7; people with a BMI of 29.7 to less than 35.3; and people with a BMI of 35.3 or higher.
Overall, 2,245 or 1.7 percent of people in the study died within 30 days of surgery.
"We found patients in the lowest quintile had a 40 percent higher odds of death compared to the mid-range," said Stukenborg, referring to people in the overweight category with BMIs of 26.3 to 29.7.
Even when the researchers adjusted for type of surgery and other risk factors, those with a low BMI still had a greater risk of dying in the first month after surgery compared with plumper surgery patients.
Stukenborg said it is not clear why. The study did not track recent weight loss, so it could be that people who weighed less were sicker to begin with.
"That is a possibility," he said.
Either way, Stukenborg said doctors should consider BMI when they plan surgeries for their patients.
Being overweight or obese carries many other risk, raising chances of heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, arthritis and other conditions. Obesity-related diseases account for nearly 10 percent of medical spending in the United States or an estimated $147 billion a year.

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Study shows left side of brain more active in immoral thinking

Because the brain is so complex, researchers are forced to devise all manner of different types of tests in trying to understand not just how it works, but which parts of it do what. To that end, a diverse group of scientists from several universities across the U.S. got together to work on the problem of which parts of the brain, if any specifically, are involved in analyzing and making moral judgments. To find out, or at least learn more, they devised three experiments meant to test the busyness of the brain, measured by blood flow, to certain regions, when presented with immoral situations. They have published the results of what they found in the journal Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience.
The idea behind all three experiments was to present volunteers with material that is generally believed to be immoral while watching blood flow patterns in their brains using fMRI, as compared to what happens when moral or neutral material is viewed.

In the first study, volunteers were told that they would be engaging in a memory test. They were then shown a series of statements, followed by another series of statements after that. During the second series they were asked to press a button to indicate if the statement they were being shown had been among those shown in the first series. The statements shown were divided into four classes: pathogen related (non-sexually gross stuff), incestuous acts, nonsexual immoral acts and neutral acts.
In the second study, volunteers were shown three types of statements in random order: 50 examples describing acts that most people think of as immoral, 50 statements that most think of as pro-moral (morally good) and 50 statements that most people think of as neutral.
And finally, in the third study, volunteers were shown three types of pictures in random order: immoral, non-moral (negative without morality), and neutral.

After analyzing and normalizing the data, the researchers found that the left hemisphere of the brain showed increased blood flow in response to immoral stimuli throughout all three studies, while the right did not. No such pattern was found for the neutral or pro-moral tests. They also found that while each of the three tests tended to light up specific areas of the left hemisphere in the scanned images, there was also quite a bit of overlap between those participating in the three different studies.
The research team isn’t making any declarations regarding their results other than suggesting that it appears the left side of the brain appears to be more involved in immoral processing than the right. They also suggest the brain might have evolved to work this way to avoid duplication in processing and to increase efficiency.
© 2011 Medical Xpress

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Women more likely to have 'broken heart syndrome'

A woman's heart breaks more easily than a man's

Females are seven to nine times more likely to suffer "broken heart syndrome," when sudden or prolonged stress like an emotional breakup or death causes overwhelming heart failure or heart attack-like symptoms, the first nationwide study of this finds. Usually patients recover with no lasting damage.
The classic case is "a woman who has just lost her husband," said Dr. Mariell Jessup, a University of Pennsylvania heart failure specialist who has treated many such cases.
Cyndy Bizon feared that was happening when her husband, Joel, suffered a massive heart attack in 2005. "May God work through your hands," the Maine woman told the surgeon as her husband was wheeled past her into the operating room. She later collapsed at a nurse's station from "broken heart syndrome" and wound up in coronary care with him. Both survived.

Japanese doctors first recognized this syndrome around 1990 and named it Takotsubo cardiomyopathy; tako tsubo are octopus traps that resemble the unusual pot-like shape of the stricken heart.
It happens when a big shock, even a good one like winning the lottery, triggers a rush of adrenaline and other stress hormones that cause the heart's main pumping chamber to balloon suddenly and not work right. Tests show dramatic changes in rhythm and blood substances typical of a heart attack, but no artery blockages that typically cause one. Most victims recover within weeks, but in rare cases it proves fatal.

Dr. Abhishek Deshmukh of the University of Arkansas had treated some of these cases.
"I was very curious why only women were having this," he said, so he did the first large study of the problem and reported results Wednesday at an American Heart Association conference in Florida.
Using a federal database with about 1,000 hospitals, Deshmukh found 6,229 cases in 2007. Only 671 involved men. After adjusting for high blood pressure, smoking and other factors that can affect heart problems, women seemed 7.5 times more likely to suffer the syndrome than men.

It was three times more common in women over 55 than in younger women. And women younger than 55 were 9.5 times more likely to suffer it than men of that age.
No one knows why, said Dr. Abhiram Prasad, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist who presented other research on this syndrome at the conference.
"It's the only cardiac condition where there's such a female preponderance," he said.
One theory is that hormones play a role. Another is that men have more adrenaline receptors on cells in their hearts than women do, "so maybe men are able to handle stress better" and the chemical surge it releases, Deshmukh said.

Bizon was 57 when her attack occurred; she's now 63. She and her husband are pharmacists and live in Scarborough, Maine.
"I remember grabbing the counter and a black curtain coming down before my eyes," she said in a telephone interview. Her attack was so severe that she went into full cardiac arrest and had to have her heart shocked back into a normal rhythm. Although most such attacks resolve without permanent damage, she later needed to have a defibrillator implanted.
About 1 percent of such cases prove fatal, the new study shows.
"In the old days, we'd say someone was scared to death," said Prasad.
About 10 percent of victims will have a second episode sometime in their lives. And although heart attacks happen more in winter, broken heart syndrome is more common in summer.
Heart Association, http://www.americanheart.org

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Scientists Use Tears to Measure Blood Sugar

Photo: iStockPhoto

For most people living with diabete, numerous -- and painful -- finger pricks are needed to draw blood and monitor blood sugar levels throughout the day.

Now a person's tears might be just as useful in keeping blood sugar in safe ranges, according to a recent study in animals.

The idea of using tears to gauge blood sugar isn't new, but scientists believe they've struck the right balance with an electrochemical sensor that picks up on small chemical changes in tear fluid.

Because blood sugar in tears occurs at levels between 30 and 50 times lower than in blood, previous sensors were not sensitive enough to accurately detect changes in levels. The new test needs roughly 5 microliters of fluid to work with, and the team thinks it can refine the required sample size down to 1 or 2 microliters with time.

In the experiment, scientists tested the new sensor on 12 anesthetized rabbits, taking blood and tear samples from each animal. Then, they compared blood sugar in tears relative to levels in blood. The group learned that the sensor worked for individual rabbits, meaning blood sugar ranges were accurate based on relative readings for that individual.

But there's a catch: Patients don't need to cry to give samples. The needlelike sensor can be gently placed on the surface of the eye to draw the fluid. If used in humans, patients must avoid stimulating the eye to produce tears because doing so skews the reading.

The sensor will likely need to be tested in other animals before making its way to individuals with diabetes. At this time, it's unclear what the technology would cost. Most blood sugar monitors cost between $20 and $100, depending on the type.

Diabetes is characterized by the inability to keep blood sugar levels down naturally through producing a chemical called insulin. Normally, the sugar would be absorbed by the body's cells with the help of insulin. But without it, people with diabetes cannot correctly use these sugars, which requires their bodies to need insulin treatments to prevent the high levels from causing damage to organs and the nervous system.
Approximately 25 million people in the United States have diabetes, and 346 million have it worldwide.

The paper also mentions that using tears to monitor blood sugar might be easier for many diabetes patients who also develop eye conditions that require attention or contact lenses to counter. Perhaps measuring blood sugar with eye fluids would be easier for people who already have a daily eye care regimen.

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Weird/Graham Lord, Man Misdiagnosed With Stomach Cancer, Sues Health District After Stomach Removed

After undergoing rounds of chemotherapy and surgery that removed 80 percent of his stomach, Graham Lord found out he never had stomach cancer.

The 59-year-old is now suing Australia's Central Coast Local Health District, after he said a 2010 post-op evaluation shed light on the false diagnosis.

"I was told that the tissue taken from me during that gastrectomy was examined through the pathology department at Royal North Shore [Hospital] and the lymph nodes that were taken out showed no evidence of cancer," he told the Sunday Telegraph. A second test confirmed the results.

Lord said he has suffered from anxiety and depression as a result of the surgery and can no longer eat sitting down.
"He would be seeking an apology from the hospital in terms of an admission of liability and compensation for his injuries," Anna Walsh, Lord's lawyer, told ABC Sydney.
Walsh told the Sunday Telegraph that a pathologist at Gosford Hospital, where the initial flub occurred, already apologized to Lord.

ABC News

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Stem cells reverse heart damage

A new study says heart damage may be reversible with stem cell therapy without dangerous side effects.

On a June day in 2009, a 39-year-old man named Ken Milles lay on an exam table at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. A month earlier, he'd suffered a massive heart attack that destroyed nearly a third of his heart.

"The most difficult part was the uncertainty," he recalls. "Your heart is 30% damaged, and they tell you this could affect you the rest of your life." He was about to receive an infusion of stem cells, grown from cells taken from his own heart a few weeks earlier. No one had ever tried this before.

About three weeks later, in Kentucky, a patient named Mike Jones underwent a similar procedure at the University of Louisville's Jewish Hospital. Jones suffered from advanced heart failure, the result of a heart attack years earlier. Like Milles, he received an infusion of stem cells, grown from his own heart tissue.

"Once you reach this stage of heart disease, you don't get better," says Dr. Robert Bolli, who oversaw Jones' procedure, explaining what doctors have always believed and taught. "You can go down slowly, or go down quickly, but you're going to go down."

Conventional wisdom took a hit Monday, as Bolli's group and a team from Cedars-Sinai each reported that stem cell therapies were able to reverse heart damage, without dangerous side effects, at least in a small group of patients.

In Bolli's study, published in The Lancet, 16 patients with severe heart failure received a purified batch of cardiac stem cells. Within a year, their heart function markedly improved. The heart's pumping ability can be quantified through the "Left Ventricle Ejection Fraction," a measure of how much blood the heart pumps with each contraction. A patient with an LVEF of less than 40% is considered to suffer severe heart failure. When the study began, Bolli's patients had an average LVEF of 30.3%. Four months after receiving stem cells, it was 38.5%. Among seven patients who were followed for a full year, it improved to an astounding 42.5%. A control group of seven patients, given nothing but standard maintenance medications, showed no improvement at all.

"We were surprised by the magnitude of improvement," says Bolli, who says traditional therapies, such as placing a stent to physically widen the patient's artery, typically make a smaller difference. Prior to treatment, Mike Jones couldn't walk to the restroom without stopping for breath, says Bolli. "Now he can drive a tractor on his farm, even play basketball with his grandchildren. His life was transformed."

At Cedars-Sinai, 17 patients, including Milles, were given stem cells approximately six weeks after suffering a moderate to major heart attack. All had lost enough tissue to put them "at big risk" of future heart failure, according to Dr. Eduardo Marban, the director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, who developed the stem cell procedure used there.

The results were striking. Not only did scar tissue retreat -- shrinking 40% in Ken Milles, and between 30% and 47% in other test subjects -- but the patients actually generated new heart tissue. On average, the stem cell recipients grew the equivalent of 600 million new heart cells, according to Marban, who used MRI imaging to measure changes. By way of perspective, a major heart attack might kill off a billion cells.

"This is unprecedented, the first time anyone has grown living heart muscle," says Marban. "No one else has demonstrated that. It's very gratifying, especially when the conventional teaching has been that the damage is irreversible."

Perhaps even more important, no treated patient in either study suffered a significant health setback.

The twin findings are a boost to the notion that the heart contains the seeds of its own rebirth. For years, doctors believed that heart cells, once destroyed, were gone forever. But in a series of experiments, researchers including Bolli's collaborator, Dr. Piero Anversa, found that the heart contains a type of stem cell that can develop into either heart muscle or blood vessel components -- in essence, whatever the heart requires at a particular point in time. The problem for patients like Mike Jones or Ken Milles is that there simply aren't enough of these repair cells waiting around. The experimental treatments involve removing stem cells through a biopsy, and making millions of copies in a laboratory.

The Bolli/Anversa group and Marban's team both used cardiac stem cells, but Bolli and Anversa "purified" the CSCs, so that more than 90% of the infusion was actual stem cells. Marban, on the other hand, used a mixture of stem cells and other types of cells extracted from the patient's heart. "We've found that the mixture is more potent than any subtype we've been able to isolate," he says. He says the additional cells may help by providing a supportive environment for the stem cells to multiply.

Other scientists, including Dr. Douglas Losordo, have produced improvements in cardiac patients using stem cells derived from bone marrow. "The body contains cells that seem to be pre-programmed for repair," explains Losordo. "The consistent thing about all these approaches is that they're leveraging what seems to be the body's own repair mechanism."
This is unprecedented, the first time anyone has grown living heart muscle.
Dr. Eduardo Marban, Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute

Losordo praised the Lancet paper, and recalls the skepticism that met Anversa's initial claims, a decade ago, that there were stem cells in the adult heart. "Some scientists are always resistant to that type of novelty. You know the saying: First they ignore you, then they attack you and finally they imitate you."

Denis Buxton, who oversees stem cell research at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, calls the new studies "a paradigm shift, harnessing the heart's own regenerative processes." But he says he would like to see more head-to-head comparisons to determine which type of cells are most beneficial.

Questions also remain about timing. Patients who suffer large heart attacks are prone to future damage, in part because the weakened heart tries to compensate by dilating -- swelling -- and by changing shape. In a vicious circle, the changes make the heart a less efficient pump, which leads to more overcompensation, and so on, until the end result is heart failure. Marban's study aimed to treat patients before they could develop heart failure in the first place.

In a third study released Monday, researchers treated patients with severe heart failure with stem cells derived from bone marrow. In a group of 60 patients, those receiving the treatment had fewer heart problems over the course of a year, as well as improved heart function.

A fourth study also used cells derived from bone marrow, but injected them into patients two to three weeks after a heart attack. Previous studies, with the cells given just days afterward, found a modest improvement in heart function. But Monday, the lead researcher, Dr. Dan Simon of UH Case Medical Center, reported that with the three-week delay, patients did not see the same benefit.

With other methods, there may be a larger window of opportunity. At least in initial studies, Losordo's bone marrow treatments helped some patients with long-standing heart problems. Bolli's Lancet paper suggests that CSCs, too, might help patients with advanced disease. "These patients had had heart failure for several years. They were a wreck!" says Bolli. "But we found their stem cells were still very competent." By that, he means the cells were still capable of multiplying and of turning into useful muscle and blood vessel walls.

Marban has an open mind on the timing issue. In fact, one patient from his control group e-mailed after the study was complete, saying he felt terrible and pleading for an infusion of stem cells. At Marban's request, the FDA granted special approval to treat him. "He had a very nice response. That was 14 months after his heart attack. Of course that's just one person, and we need bigger studies," says Marban.

For Ken Milles, the procedure itself wasn't painful, but it was unsettling. The biopsy to harvest the stem cells felt "weird," he recalls, as he felt the doctor poking around inside his heart. The infusion, a few weeks later, was harder. The procedure -- basically the same as an angioplasty -- involved stopping blood flow through the damaged artery for three minutes, while the stem cells were infused. "It felt exacfly like I was having a heart attack again," Milles remembers.

Milles had spent the first weeks after his heart attack just lying in bed re-watching his "Sopranos" DVDs, but within a week of the stem cell infusion, he says, "I was reinvigorated." Today he's back at work full time, as an accounting manager at a construction company. He's cut out fast food and shed 50 pounds. His wife and two teenage sons are thrilled.

Denis Buxton says the new papers could prove a milestone. "We don't have anything else to actually regenerate the heart. These stem cell therapies have the possibility of actually reversing damage."

Bolli says he'll have to temper his enthusiasm until he can duplicate the results in larger studies, definitive enough to get stem cell therapy approved as a standard treatment. "If a phase 3 study confirmed this, it would be the biggest advance in cardiology in my lifetime. We would possibly be curing heart failure. It would be a revolution."
(CNN) 

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Women suffer quicker brain damage from alcohol abuse

Women alcoholics suffer damage to the part of their brain that controls moods, impulses and sleep three times faster than their male counterparts, a Swedish study showed Wednesday.

Women suffer a 50-percent reduction in the so-called serotonin function in their brain after four years of excessive drinking, while men show the same amount of damage after 12 years of alcohol abuse, according to the study by researchers at Gothenburg University.
"The impairment is progressing much faster in women," explained Kristina Berglund, who conducted the study with colleagues from the university's Department of Psychology, as well as two researchers at the faculty of Health Sciences, known as the Sahlgrenska Academy.
Serotonin is a brain neurotransmitter that is, among other things, critical to the development and treatment of depression and chronic anxiety.
It also regulates impulse control and our ability to fall asleep and stay awake.
The researchers studied several brain functions of 42 people -- a third of them women -- who admitted to alcohol dependency, along with 28 control subjects.
"We saw that the alcohol dependent individuals had significantly lower serotonin functions," Berglund told AFP.
The women tested said they on average had been drinking the equivalent of about 12 bottles of wine a week for four years, while the men had been drinking the same amount, but for 12 years.
However, "we could see the damage to the serotonin function was equal between men and women," Berglund said.
The results, which are scheduled to be published in the journal of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research in January, had come as a partial surprise to the researchers, she said.
"We were not surprised to find that the serotonin function was impaired in the alcohol-dependent individuals, but we were surprised to see that women were so much more vulnerable, even in the brain," she said.
Ulf Berggren, one of the Sahlgrenska Academy contributors to the study, meanwhile stressed that while the timing was different, men ultimately suffered the same degree of harm to their serotonin function as women.
The study authors acknowledged more research was needed, especially since they had used such a small number of test subjects.
Berglund also said that while the researchers had connected significant serotonin function harm to alcohol abuse, they still needed to look at the psychological impact of the damage.
"We know this function is significantly impaired, but what does this mean? What are the consequences? That's a question that needs answering," she said.

(via AFP)

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Electronic nose aims to sniff out disease

Dr. Ranjan Nanda demonstrates the device at an experimental stage. The electronic nose aims to diagnose tuberculosis without a lab test.

A breathalyzer-like device that aims to detect tuberculosis, pneumonia and lung cancer from someone's breath could help replace time-consuming tests, researchers hope.

The electronic nose received a $950,000 grant from the federally funded Grand Challenges Canada and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Monday, to try to develop the hand-held device for use in the developing world.

"It's almost like a breathalyzer test that the police might use for alcohol," Dr. Peter Singer, CEO of Grand Challenges Canada, said in an interview from New Delhi.

"If they can bring that to the window of your car, what we're trying to do is bring the diagnosis of tuberculosis to the door of the hut in the village where it really needs to reach."

Scientists say electronic noses could also be created for early detection of lung cancer and pneumonia, also based on signature biomarkers of disease detectable in a patient's breath.

Singer called the device a "bold idea" with potentially a big payoff in preventing the 1.7 million deaths from TB each year, mainly in the developing world. Up to 400,000 of them could be saved with better diagnosis, he said.

People may not think about diagnosis as life-saving, Singer said. But if a patient in a village isn’t diagnosed, it is very likely many others will be infected and then die.

For the prototype, someone breathes into the device, which has a little tub at the end to capture the sample, which is then tested.

The battery-powered technology is based on the finding that people with TB have a different biological signature in their breath.

The two-year grant will be use to validate the finding in four centres throughout India.

Dr. Ranjan Nanda of the New Delhi-based International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, one of the lead researchers on the electronic nose project, aims to have a validated prototype by December 2013.

If it works, it could be in use shortly after that, Singer said.

The existng sputum test for TB has challenges, especially for developing countries that may not have facilities or trained lab staff, says Dr. Michael Gardam, an infectious disease specialist with Toronto's University Health Network.

"It's just such a wonderful idea and it's such a simple idea," Gardam said. "The challenge is going to be, at the end of the day, can it jump through all the necessary hoops to actually be something that people can use?"

The development of the device is a collaboration between Nanda's centre and and Next Dimension Technologies in California.

CBC News

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Sitting may boost cancer risk

Sitting for long periods of time may increase cancer risk, say researchers who recommend the avoidance of prolonged sedentary periods and stress the importance of regular exercise.

The research was presented this week at the American Institute for Cancer Research annual conference in Washington.
Sitting time is emerging as a strong candidate for being a cancer risk factor, researchers say.Sitting time is emerging as a strong candidate for being a cancer risk factor, researchers say. Paul Chiasson/Canadian Press
Christine Friedenreich, an epidemiologist at Alberta Health Services, estimated that lack of physical activity is linked to nearly 100,000 cases of breast and colon cancer in the U.S. each year.
Based in part on those findings, the institute is urging people to make time for physical activity and break every hour of sitting with one to two minutes of activity.
Friedenreich's findings from the Alberta Physical Activity and Breast Cancer Prevention trial were also published in the October issue of the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
In the study, 320 women aged 50 to 74 were randomly assigned either to work up to exercising five days a week for at least 45 minutes or else to continue with their usual inactivity.
Friedenreich found differences in a marker of inflammation, known as C-reaction protein, over 12 months for exercisers compared with controls.
Inflammation markers
The study suggested that it isn't just lack of exercise that increases markers of inflammation, but that a sedentary lifestyle does, too.
Research is starting to point to how exercise may lower markers of inflammation, which in turn might lower cancer risk. But the possible links need to be investigated more thoroughly.
"Sitting time is emerging as a strong candidate for being a cancer risk factor in its own right. It seems highly likely that the longer you sit, the higher your risk," said Neville Owen, head of behavioural epidemiology at Australia's Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, who also presented findings at the conference.
"This phenomenon isn't dependent on body weight or how much exercise people do," Owen added in a release.
Owen's study measured waist circumference, insulin resistance and inflammation in adults who wore accelerometers to record their physical activity levels. Taking breaks as short as one minute was tied to lower levels of those biomarkers.
The institute offered these tips to help people fit in more activity:
Set the timer on your computer to remind you every 60 minutes that it's time to step away from your desk and take a short walk down the hall.
"Walk with me." Got a quick thing to discuss with a co-worker? Instead of sending an email, ask him or her to join you for a walk to hash it out on the go.
Keep light hand weights in your office to use while reading email or talking on the phone.
During phone calls and phone meetings, stand up and walk around.
Your office or cubicle wall is all you need for simple activities like stretches, vertical push-ups and leg lifts.
 For a more vigorous activity break, ask your employer to put a punching bag or chin-up bar in your break room.

CBC News

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BPA Exposure In Pregnancy Found To Affect Behavior Issues In Girls

In recent years, scientists have linked bisphenol-A (BPA) to a large swath of health problems, including breast cancer and diabetes. Among the many materials containing BPA are plastic bottles, dental sealants, medical equipment, receipt paper, and the linings of metal food and drink cans.
A new study on potential health effects of the compound used in manufacturing, released online Monday in Pediatrics, suggests exposure to the chemical BPA before birth could affect girls’ behavior at age 3, according to researchers.
Preschool-aged girls whose mothers had relatively high urine levels of BPA during pregnancy scored worse but still within a normal range on behavior measures including depressed behavior, poorer emotional control, inhibition anxiety and hyperactivity than other young girls, reports Lindsey Tanner, AP Medical Writer.
The behavior of boys did not seem to be affected.
BPA, like lead and other toxins, causes the greatest harm before birth, when the fetal brain is developing. “Parents should be concerned about these findings,” pediatrician Philip Landrigan told USA Today Landrigan is a professor at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine and was not involved in the new study.
Dr. Amir Miodovnik, who studies children’s environmental health at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and was also not involved in the study, called the results, “Very preliminary.” He went on to tell Reuters that “Other groups are going to have to replicate these findings to be able to strengthen the implications of this particular study.”
Study author, Joe Braun, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health explains that being exposed to high BPA levels after birth didn’t appear to affect behavior.
“It might be that women who are consuming more processed and packaged foods and more canned foods are also consuming less nutrients that are important for brain development,” he tells Genevra Pittman, writing for Reuters Health.
Still, “There’s a growing body of evidence… that really seems to suggest what you’re exposed to and what happens during gestation can set you up on your life course. The brain begins developing from very, very early in pregnancy. Disruption in development could have lasting effects across childhood and the lifetime.”
Believed to be an “endocrine disruptor,” BPA mimics or interferes with naturally occurring hormones in the body. Canada and the European Union ban its use in baby bottles.
The study was limited to girls, Braun believes, because BPA may interfere with only certain hormones, and boys and girls get exposed to different levels of hormones as they’re developing in-utero.
Additional research is expected and needed to fully understand the health effects of BPA exposure. Clinicians advise those concerned to reduce their BPA exposure by avoiding canned and packaged foods, thermal paper sales receipts, and polycarbonate bottles with the number 7 recycling symbol, Bruce Lanphear of Simon Fraser University writes.

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Pythons' big hearts hold clues for human health

You don't think of pythons as big-hearted toward their fellow creatures. They're better known for the bulge in their bodies after swallowing one of those critters whole. But the snakes' hearts balloon in size, too, as they're digesting _ and now scientists are studying them for clues about

WASHINGTON (AP) — You don't think of pythons as big-hearted toward their fellow creatures. They're better known for the bulge in their bodies after swallowing one of those critters whole.
But the snakes' hearts balloon in size, too, as they're digesting — and now scientists are studying them for clues about human heart health.
The expanded python heart appears remarkably similar to the larger-than-normal hearts of Olympic-caliber athletes. Colorado researchers report they've figured out how the snakes make it happen.
"It's this amazing biology," said Leslie Leinwand, a molecular biologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, whose team reports the findings in Friday's edition of the journal Science. "They're not swelling up. They're building (heart) muscle."
Reptile biologists have long studied the weird digestion of these snakes, especially the huge Burmese pythons that can go nearly a year between meals with no apparent ill effects. When they swallow that next rat or bird — or in some cases deer — something extraordinary happens. Their metabolism ratchets up more than 40-fold, and their organs immediately start growing in size to get the digesting done. The heart alone grows a startling 40 percent or more within three days.
Leinwand, who studies human heart disease, stumbled across that description and saw implications for people. An enlarged human heart usually is caused by chronic high blood pressure or other ailments that leave it flabby and unable to pump well. But months and years of vigorous exercise give some well-conditioned athletes larger, muscular hearts, similar to how python hearts are during digestion.
So Leinwand's team — led by a graduate student who initially was frightened of snakes — ordered a box of pythons and began testing what happens to their hearts.
The first surprise: A digesting python's blood gets so full of fat it looks milky. A type of fat called triglycerides increased 50-fold within a day. In people, high triglyceride levels are very dangerous. But the python heart was burning those fats so rapidly for fuel that they didn't have time to clog anything up, Leinwand said.
The second surprise: A key enzyme that protects the heart from damage increased in python blood right after it ate, while a heart-damaging compound was repressed.
Then the team found that a specific combination of three fatty acids in the blood helped promote the healthy heart growth. If they injected fasting pythons with that mixture, those snakes' hearts grew the same way that a fed python's does.
But did it only work for snakes? Lead researcher Cecilia Riquelme dropped some plasma from a fed python into a lab dish containing the heart cells of rats — and they grew bigger, too. Sure enough, injecting living mice made their hearts grow in an apparently healthy way as well.
Now the question is whether that kind of growth could be spurred in a mammal with heart disease, something Leinwand's team is starting to test in mice with human-like heart trouble. They also want to know how the python heart quickly shrinks back to its original size when digestion's done.
The experiments are "very, very cool indeed," said James Hicks, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine, who has long studied pythons' extreme metabolism and wants to see more such comparisons.
If the same underlying heart signals work in animals as divergent as snakes and mice, "this may reveal a common universal mechanism that can be used for improving cardiac function in all vertebrates, including humans," Hicks wrote in an email. "Only further studies and time will tell, but this paper is very exciting."
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and a Boulder biotechnology company that Leinwand co-founded, Hiberna Corp., that aims to develop drugs based on extreme animal biology.

AP

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Older dads may father kids with lower IQ's

Washington, Oct 4 (ANI): Older fathers are to be blamed for chromosomal abnormalities linked to intellectual disability in children, according to a new study.
Chromosomal abnormalities are caused by copy number variations, or CNVs. These are structural variations resulting in missing, repeated, inverted or misplaced DNA sequences in cells.
They can be inherited or arise anew, and are a common cause of disease.
The research team systematically analysed the prevalence of rare CNVs in almost 3500 people with intellectual disabilities between 2006 and 2010.
They found CNVs, which had arisen anew, as opposed to being inherited, in 227 people, meaning the prevalence was around twice as common in this group as among people with autism and three times as common as among those with asthma.
 Further analysis to determine the parental origin of the CNVs in the 118 people for whom data were available, showed that 90 had come from the father, and that three quarters represented missing DNA sequences.
The researchers then divided people with CNVs into two groups - those with CNVs occurring in regions of the genome with highly repetitive DNA sequences, and those with CNVs occurring in non - repetitive DNA sequences.
 They also compared paternal ages in both groups with those of the people without any intellectual disability.
A significant increase in the father's age was found in the group of CNVs in non-repetitive DNA sequences - which accounted for most CNVs - providing a crucial insight into the understanding of how and why disease - causing CNVs are formed, say the authors.
 The findings also indicate that newly arising CNVs not only originate more often from the father's DNA, but that the father's age has a role, the authors say.
"In conclusion, our data provide for the first time convincing evidence that CNVs in intellectual disability are largely paternal in origin," they add.
The study has been published online in the Journal of Medical Genetics. (ANI)

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Fair-skinned people 'may need to take extra vitamin D supplements'

Pale-skinned people who are prone to sunburn may need to take vitamin D supplements, according to a new research.

The researchers at the Leeds University say that those with very pale skin may be unable to spend enough time in the sun to make the amount of vitamin D the body needs while also avoiding sunburn.

Their study suggests patients with the skin cancer melanoma may in particular need vitamin D supplements.

The researchers, however, cautioned that sunlight and supplements are not the only factors that can determine the level of vitamin D in a person's body.

The study defined the optimal amount of vitamin D required by the body as at least 60nmol/L.

However, at present there is no universally agreed standard definition of an optimal level of vitamin D.

"Fair-skinned individuals who burn easily are not able to make enough vitamin D from sunlight and so may need to take vitamin D supplements," Professor Julia Newton-Bishop, lead author of the study based in the Cancer Research UK Centre at the University of Leeds, said.

"This should be considered for fair-skinned people living in a mild climate like the UK and melanoma patients in particular," she said.

Researchers took the vitamin D levels of around 1,200 people and found that around 730 people had a sub-optimal level.

They found that those with fair-skin had significantly lower levels.

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Aspirin Tied to Risk of Vision Loss

Seniors who take aspirin daily are twice as likely to have late stage macular degeneration, an age-related loss of vision, than people who never take the pain reliever, according to a new study.

The data do not show that aspirin causes vision loss. But the findings, published in Opthalmology, are of concern if aspirin somehow exacerbates the eye disorder, given how many seniors take it daily for heart disease.
"For people who have age-related macular degeneration, it probably isn't wise to recommend taking aspirin," said William Christen of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the study.
Researchers led by Paulus de Jong at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and Academic Medical Center collected health and lifestyle information from nearly 4,700 people over age 65. The study included Norwegian, Estonian, British, French, Italian, Greek and Spanish seniors.
Of the 839 people who took aspirin each day, 36 had an advanced form of the disease called wet macular degeneration -- or about four out of every 100 daily aspirin users.
In comparison, roughly two out of every 100 people who took aspirin less frequently had the same type of macular degeneration.
The wet form of the condition, caused by leaking blood vessels in the eyes, leads to vision loss in the center of the eye's field of vision. The dry form is more common and less severe, although people still suffer visual impairment.
Together, wet and dry macular degeneration make up the leading causes of vision loss among people over age 60, afflicting millions of residents.
The researchers found that aspirin use was not tied to the dry form, nor to earlier stages of the disease.
"I don't think that's surprising," Christen told Reuters health. "I think the effects of aspirin may be different in the early stages of age-related macular degeneration than in the late stages."
De Jong told Reuters Health there has been controversy over the link between cardiovascular disease and macular degeneration.
He wrote in an email that his team had analyzed as "meticulously as possible" whether cardiovascular disease might have influenced the results, and still found that aspirin users -- regardless of their heart health -- are at a greater risk of the more serious type of vision loss.
For people with cardiovascular disease who take aspirin to prevent the condition from worsening, the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks to visual health, he added.
"A healthy eye with full visual capacities is of no use in a dead body," he said.
Larger studies that follow people over time and document their aspirin use and vision will help resolve aspirin's role in macular degeneration, de Jong added.

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Health guide/Balding Remedies

Two-thirds of us experience some degree of thinning hair by age 35. Yep, two-thirds by 35! Those in the minority can stop reading now (“McDreamy,” that’s you), but the majority of us must read on and weigh our options carefully. Today’s cosmetically concerned world offers countless solutions to the thinning-hair epidemic. So we need to examine the possibilities and choose the one right for us, individually.
For those fighting thinning hair, here’s a list of balding remedies that just might do the trick.
basic remedies
Some basic remedies exist in the hair-loss battle. These remedies are simple devices that provide low-cost tactics to camouflage your balding pate.
Clever/Strategic haircuts
The easiest solution is simply to work with what you have… left. Depending on the severity of your situation, you can work with a stylist to craft a haircut that works for you and your fading tresses: Longer bangs disguise receding hairlines and longer cuts make hair look fuller. Or, if you dare, go for a clipper cut or a clean shave; honesty is the best policy!
Thickening shampoos
Thickening shampoos line store shelves everywhere, but your best option is brands found at hair salons. (Ask your stylist for recommendations or try Paul Mitchell’s Tea Tree Lemon Sage Thickening Shampoo.) Thickening shampoos utilize natural extracts and chemicals to boost volume, “plump” hair strands and strengthen follicles. The idea is good in theory, but results vary: Some guys will see thicker, more voluminous hair, but for others it’ll be a wash -- literally.
Hair dyes and cover-ups
For thinning hair, the ever-faithful cosmetics industry offers several inventive dyes and cover-ups to create the optical illusion of hair. For instance, one option, Toppik, consists of organic keratin fibers that intertwine with your own hair, making your mane appear full and thick. Similar products exist and can be found easily online. Just remember these options are costly and sometimes obvious; the only person you may end up fooling is yourself.
pharmaceutical options
Only two FDA-approved balding “remedies” exist: Rogaine and Propecia. These medications go beyond cover-up attempts by trying to prevent loss and actually regrowing hair. Both drugs are serious alternatives and should be used in consultation with your doctor, even if one is available over-the-counter.
Rogaine
Since earning its FDA-approval in 1988, Rogaine (minoxidil) has become a household name. At its core, the product is a vasodilator -- a chemical that dilates the smooth muscles in blood vessels -- thus, when applied directly to the scalp, it revitalizes shrunken hair follicles and increases their size, eventually leading to thicker-looking hair and new hair growth. But proven results aside, Rogaine may not be the miracle cure you seek. The average user must apply it twice a day for four months before any results are visible (and results vary). That’s a big time and money investment for potentially miniscule results. On top of that, discontinuation usually leads back to square one within twelve months. And though side effects are generally mild, Rogaine can cause serious conditions like low blood pressure, vision loss, abnormal heart rhythms, and chest pain. Rogaine undoubtedly works for some, but it doesn’t work for all.
Propecia
Propecia (finasteride) earned its FDA pedigree almost ten years after Rogaine. An enzyme inhibitor, Propecia blocks DHT, a chemical that can shrink hair follicles until they’re almost nonexistent. What’s more, the drug has also caused hair to regrow in some cases. Average users saw results in about three months. (And similar to Rogaine, discontinuation leads back to where you started in less than a year.) One of Propecia’s best aspects is that it’s administered as a once-a-day pill. But the flip side is that it’s a prescription, so the price always varies and a prescription can be more difficult to obtain. And last but not least, some potential side effects make Propecia a double-edged sword: They range from decreased sex drive and sperm ejaculation to abdominal pain and impotence. Who needs hair if you can’t have sex?
surgical procedures
The most serious contenders looking for balding remedies opt for surgical procedures. Since the severity of each alternative varies, guys contemplating any of these options should carefully consider the expected outcome, cost and risk associated with each procedure.
Hair transplants
The most invasive surgical option in regards to balding remedied, hair transplants are more effective and less conspicuous than ever before. Today’s procedures are less painful, less expensive and exhibit less scarring but still require several visits to complete, which means an obvious transition period. Transplants operate by grafting tiny follicular units from hair-growing sections of the scalp to problem areas, so the tiny grafts will be visible until the transplant is finished. (Note: Sometimes “plugs” fall out, take three months to grow and are still visible afterward.) Several options exist (mini-grafts, micro-grafts and follicular-unit relocation), so conduct pre-consultation research before making a decision. Hair transplant surgeons and clinics are abound, so begin you’re research here. Should you go this route, a hair transplant could leave you with a much fuller head of hair; but once you’re in this hair club, it’s hard to get out.
Flap procedure
A more radical option, flap procedures are conducted in three phases and consist of surgically moving a flap of hair-growing scalp to a bald area. While the first two phases are minimally evasive, the third requires a section of skin be moved from point A to point B. But once completed, you have naturally growing hair where there was none before. These procedures can be highly effective when performed properly -- again, do your research on the front end -- but they do come with setbacks as well.
For one, there’s nothing subtle about the procedure: You’ll need bandages for a few weeks, and you’ll suddenly have hair once those come off. Also, scarring can occur at both the donor and relocation sites, so you may have new “hairlines” all throughout. Despite the time, cost and pain, flap procedures do provide a realistic solution to bald spots.
Scalp reduction
This one is just what it sounds like! In scalp reductions, bald areas of your scalp are surgically removed, and hair-baring tissue is stretched over these areas to offset the difference. Scalp reductions are usually performed in conjunction with flap procedures, but not always. Choosing this alternative means electing the most serious surgical option, and should only be pursued under the care of a highly reputable surgeon. If the procedure is not done properly, permanent “stretch-back” scars can appear at sites where the incisions were made -- sure, you’ll have less baldness on your head, but you’ll have jagged scarring to go with it.
it was there before
Thinning hair becomes an issue most of us have to face. Some will simply let nature run its course, and others will tackle it head-on. Regardless of which path we choose, we should know that several balding remedies do exist and the best option is always the one that makes us comfortable in our own skin.

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Cell Phones And Cancer

Decades ago, doctors ardently debated whether cigarettes had adverse health effects. Nowadays, cell phones are in the spotlight.

In the never-ending battling between experts trying to determine whether or not cell phones do in fact lead to brain cancer, chalk one up for the “no” category in the latest round.
The Journal of the National Cancer Institute just published a study that tested the effects of cell phone usage on children and adolescents. The study included 1,000 people and compared a control group in good health with a control group of people diagnosed with brain tumors.
The result showed that children who started to use cell phones regularly five years ago were at no greater risk than those who had never used them regularly. In a subset of the study, no increased risk of brain tumors was discovered for brain areas receiving the largest amount of exposure.
That’s good news, but it still comes on the heels of a World Health Organization study that determined cell phones are possibly carcinogenic.
With so much money in the cell phone industry, it looks like straight answers regarding the risks will be hard to come by.

Story Credit  : ASKMen.com

Photo credit: Christopher Macsurak/flickr

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Early to Bed, Early to Rise Keeps Kids Lean, Study Says

Kids who go to bed early and get up early are less likely to become obese than those who do not, according to an Australian study released Friday.
Children who went to bed late and got up late were 1.5 times more likely to become obese than those who went to bed early and got up early, researchers from the University of South Australia found.
Kids who stayed up late were also almost twice as likely to be physically inactive and 2.9 times more likely to sit in front of the TV or play video games for more hours than guidelines recommend.
The study, due to be published in the journal Sleep on Saturday, studied the bedtimes and rising times of 2,200 Australian children aged nine to 16.
"The children who went to bed late and woke up late, and the children who went to bed early and woke up early got virtually the same amount of sleep in total," said co-author Carol Maher.
"Scientists have realized in recent years that children who get less sleep tend to do worse on a variety of health outcomes, including the risk of being overweight and obese. Our study suggests that the timing of sleep is even more important," Maher added.
Maher believes the trend may be down to early risers getting more exercise earlier in the day. She said mornings were more conducive to physical activity than nights, as kids were often distracted with prime-time TV and other sedentary activities in the evening. (FOX NEWS)

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