olive oil Healthy fat may repair failing hearts

Oleate, a common dietary fat found in olive oil, may help restore proper metabolism of fuel that gets disturbed in case of heart failure, a study suggests.

“This gives more proof to the idea that consuming healthy fats like oleate can have a significantly positive effect on cardiac health even after the disease has begun,” said senior study author E. Douglas Lewandowski from the University of Illinois – Chicago, US.

Failing hearts are unable to properly process or store the fats they use for fuel, which are contained within tiny droplets called lipid bodies in heart muscle cells.

The inability to use fats, the heart’s primary fuel source, causes the muscle to become starved of energy.

Fats, not metabolised by the heart, break down into toxic intermediary by-products that further contribute to heart disease.

In addition to balancing fat metabolism and reducing toxic by-products in hyper-trophic hearts, oleate also restored the activation of several genes for enzymes that metabolise fat, the findings of the study showed.

“These genes are often suppressed in hyper-trophic hearts,” Lewandowski added.

“The fact that we can restore beneficial gene expression, as well as more balanced fat metabolism, plus reduce toxic fat metabolites, just by supplying hearts with oleate – a common dietary fat – is a very exciting finding,” Lewandowski pointed out.

For the study, the researchers looked at how healthy and failing rat hearts reacted to being supplied with either oleate or palmitate, a fat associated with the Western diet and found in dairy products, animal fats and palm oil.

When the researchers perfused failing rat hearts with oleate they saw an immediate improvement in how the hearts contracted and pumped blood.

The findings were reported in the journal Circulation.

Kids living in megacities likelier to risk brain damage from air pollution

A new study has recently revealed that kids living in megacities are more prone to brain damage from air pollution.

Researchers from University of Montana revealed that children living in megacities are at increased risk for brain inflammation and neurodegenerative changes, including Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.

The study found when air particulate matter and their components such as metals are inhaled or swallowed, they pass through damaged barriers, including respiratory, gastrointestinal and the blood-brain barriers and can result in long-lasting harmful effects.

Researchers compared 58 serum and cerebrospinal fluid samples from a control group living in a low-pollution city and matched them by age, gender, socioeconomic status, education and education levels achieved by their parents to 81 children living in Mexico City.

The results found that the children living in Mexico City had significantly higher serum and cerebrospinal fluid levels of autoantibodies against key tight-junction and neural proteins, as well as combustion-related metals.

The breakdown of the blood-brain barrier and the presence of autoantibodies to important brain proteins would contribute to the neuroinflammation observed in urban children and raises the question of what role air pollution plays in a 400 percent increase of MS cases in Mexico City, making it one of the main diagnoses for neurology referrals.

Once there's a breakdown in the blood-brain barrier, not only would particulate matter enter the body but it also opens the door to harmful neurotoxins, bacteria and viruses.

While the study focused on children living in Mexico City, others living in cities where there are alarming levels of air pollution such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia-Wilmington, New York City, Salt Lake City, hicago, Tokyo, Mumbai, New Delhi or Shanghai, among others, also face major health risks. In the U.S. alone, 200 million people live in areas where pollutants such as ozone and fine particulate matter exceed the standards. (ANI)

According to Study Dietary Supplements May Cause Liver Damage

Dietary supplements have grown remarkably popular in the last few years. They may help with weight-management but their side effects remain highly debatable. According to a new study published in the journal Hepatology, liver damage caused by herbals and dietary supplements have increased from 7 percent to almost 20 percent in the United States in the last 10 years.

Dr. Victor Navarro from Einstein Medical Centre in Philadelphia said, "While many Americans believe supplements to be safe, government require less safety evidence to market products than what is required for conventional pharmaceuticals. With less stringent oversight for herbals and dietary supplements, there is greater potential for harmful consequences including life-threatening conditions."

The new study examined 839 patients in the federally supported Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network who had liver damage between 2004 and 2013. Forty-five cases were caused by bodybuilding supplements, 85 by non- body-building supplements and 709 by medications.
Liver injury due to non-bodybuilding supplements is most severe when compared with injury due to body-building supplements or conventional medications. It may even require the need for transplantation and can also be fatal.

The team concluded that bodybuilding supplements caused prolonged jaundice in young men but no fatalities or liver trans-plantations occurred. However, the team also noted that they couldn't say that the results applied to the whole of the U.S. population. More research is needed, but the public needs to be cautious before taking any dietary supplements.

Smoking e-cigarettes may lead to addiction marijuana and cocaine

A new study has observed that smoking e-cigarettes may encourage the addiction to other substances, such as marijuana and cocaine.

The study presented at Massachusetts Medical Society examined that the e-cigarettes may act as a "gateway drug" to addiction to drugs.

Co-author Denise B. Kandel, PhD, professor of sociomedical sciences (in psychiatry), Department of Psychiatry and Mailman School of Public Health, at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), said that while e-cigarettes eliminated some of the health effects associated with combustible tobacco, they were pure nicotine-delivery devices.

Dr. Eric Kandel said that their findings provided a biologic basis for the sequence of drug use observed in people and one drug altered the brain's circuitry in a way that enhanced the effects of a subsequent drug.

Kandel continued that e-cigarettes had the same physiological effects on the brain and may pose the same risk of addiction to other drugs as regular cigarettes, especially in adolescence during a critical period of brain development and nicotine clearly acted as a gateway drug on the brain, and this effect was likely to occur whether the exposure comes from smoking cigarettes, passive tobacco smoke, or e-cigarettes.

The study is published in the online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Low nicotine cigarettes may reduce addiction

Cigarettes with low levels of nicotine may reduce addiction in smokers without increasing exposure to toxic chemicals, says a study.

The study monitored the smoking behaviour of 72 adults as they switched between three types of cigarettes with markedly reduced nicotine levels.

When the participants switched between conventional cigarette brands - which have similar nicotine content - there was no significant change in their puffing behaviour, number of cigarettes consumed or levels of toxic chemicals in their systems.

"We found that smokers were unable or unwilling to compensate when there was markedly less nicotine in the cigarette," said David Hammond, from the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at University of Waterloo in Canada.

The cigarettes - Quest 1, Quest 2 and Quest 3 - had a nicotine content of 8.9, 8.4 and 0.6 mg, respectively, as opposed to an average of 12 mg in a regular cigarette.

The study appeared in the journal Cancer Epidemiology.

Yoga may boost your brainpower

Hatha yoga (Sanskrit: हठयोग haṭhayoga, About this sound listen (help·info) IPA: [ɦəʈʰəˈjoːɡə]), also called haṭhavidya (हठविद्या), is a kind of yoga. The word haṭha (lit. 'force, violence') denotes a system of physical techniques supplementary to a broad conception of yoga.

As a part of Hindu origin, Hindu tradition believes that Shiva Himself is the founder of hatha yoga.

In the 20th century, hatha yoga, particularly asanas (the physical postures), became popular throughout the world as physical exercises, and is now colloquially termed "yoga".

According to legend, Lord Shiva is credited with propounding hatha yoga. It is said that on a lonely island, assuming nobody else would hear him, he gave the knowledge of hatha yoga to the Goddess Parvati, but a fish heard the entire discourse, remaining still throughout. The fish (Matsya) later became a siddha and came to be known as Matsyendranath. Matsyendranath taught hatha yoga to his disciple Gorakshanath and to a limbless man, Chaurangi. Hatha Yoga Pradipika mentions many other famous hatha yogis. Hatha yoga was thus passed down in disciplic succession.

Practicing hatha yoga three times a week can significantly improve cognitive function in the elderly, scientists led by an Indian-origin researcher have found.

Hatha yoga three times a week for eight weeks improved sedentary older adults’ performance on cognitive tasks that are relevant to everyday life, researchers said.

The findings involved 108 adults between the ages of 55 and 79 years of age, 61 of whom attended hatha yoga classes.

The others met for the same number and length of sessions and engaged in stretching and toning exercises instead of yoga.

At the end of the eight weeks, the yoga group was speedier and more accurate on tests of information recall, mental flexibility and task-switching than it had been before the intervention.

The stretching-and-toning group saw no significant change in cognitive performance over time.

The differences seen between the groups were not the result of differences in age, gender, social status or other demographic factors, the researchers said.

Hatha yoga is an ancient spiritual practice that involves meditation and focused breathing while an individual moves through a series of stylised postures, said Neha Gothe, who led the study with University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Edward McAuley.

“Hatha yoga requires focused effort in moving through the poses, controlling the body and breathing at a steady rate,” said Gothe, now a professor at Wayne State University.

“It is possible that this focus on one’s body, mind and breath during yoga practice may have generalised to situations outside of the yoga classes, resulting in an improved ability to sustain attention,” Gothe said.

“Participants in the yoga intervention group showed significant improvements in working memory capacity, which involves continually updating and manipulating information,” McAuley added.

“They were also able to perform the task at hand quickly and accurately, without getting distracted. These mental functions are relevant to our everyday functioning, as we multitask and plan our day-to-day activities,” he said.

Previous studies have found that yoga can have immediate positive psychological effects by decreasing anxiety, depression and stress, Gothe said.

“These studies suggest that yoga has an immediate quieting effect on the sympathetic nervous system and on the body’s response to stress,” she said.

“Since we know that stress and anxiety can affect cognitive performance, the eight-week yoga intervention may have boosted participants’ performance by reducing their stress,” said Gothe.

The finding was published in The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.

Egg yolk is good for you some facts

Ditching the egg-yolk has always been an ideal option for the weight-obsessed. But why boycott the most delicious part of an egg when research says you should embrace it.

You might think yolks are high in fat and cholesterol but scientists believe their role in raising cholesterol levels is minimal and in fact they're the most nutritious part of an egg. According to nutrition coach Liz Wolfe, NTP and author of 'Eat The Yolks', whole eggs don't raise the risk of heart disease and in fact, it may be worse for your health to not eat the egg yolk. (As reported in huffingtonpost.com)

Previous Claims
Egg yolks, along with other sources of saturated fat and cholesterol, came under fire in the wake of research by Nikolai Anichkov at the turn of the 20th century. Anichkov fed rabbits pure cholesterol and found that their arteries clogged up with plaque. This lead him to believe that cholesterol triggers heart disease and since then there have been many questions raised about the relationship between the two. Wolfe counters this result by saying that, "Rabbits have nothing in common with human bodies... and cholesterol isn't part of their diet anyway."

Researcher Ancel Keys made headlines in the 1950s with his Seven Countries' Study, which almost single-handedly set the line of thinking on saturated fat that prevails today. Keys claimed that after looking at the average diets of populations in seven different countries, he was able to determine that those who ate the maximum amount of animal fat had the highest rates of heart disease. But his analysis was flawed.

Although Keys' data did show a connection between fat and heart disease, he couldn't demonstrate that the relationship was causal. Furthermore, while mortality rates for heart disease were higher in the countries that consumed the most animal fat, deaths from nearly ever other cause were lower - and overall life expectancy was higher.

The New Facts
In 2010, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a meta-analysis - the collected findings of 21 different studies - which stated that "saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke or coronary vascular disease".

Earlier this year, Time magazine reversed the argument it made in a 1984 cover story claiming eggs and other high-fat foods were dangerous.

What's So Great About Egg Yolks
Besides its great taste, egg yolks are power packed with amazing health benefits. Wolfe suggests the real cause of heart disease lies in the inflammation caused by "chronic stress levels and the over-consumption of vegetable oils and processed carbohydrates." According to Wolfe, egg yolks are "a great source of vitamin A, which is good for skin, B vitamins for energy and choline, which also supports brain health, muscles and is necessary for a healthy pregnancy".

The saturated fat in yolks is also necessary for hormone production and the body's absorption of vitamins and minerals. If you control your overall calories, whole egg consumption won't cause weight gain, despite its fat content.