Physical activity boosts recovery and long-term health of cancer survivors

By: Lee Harvey

Doctors fail to inform cancer patients about benefits of physical activity as charity calls for exercise to be 'prescribed'.

A report published by Macmillan Cancer Support says 1.6 million British cancer survivors could be at greater risk of long-term health problems because they aren't physically active enough.

Macmillan's Move More report is a comprehensive evidence review of over 60 studies, a survey of 400 health professionals, and studied findings from pilot schemes which are commissioning and running physical activity services for cancer patients.

The report reveals new evidence showing just how important physical activity is to the recovery and long term health of cancer patients.

According to the Move More report, doing the recommended levels of physical activity can reduce a prostate cancer patient's risk of dying from the disease by up to 30% compared to patients doing less than an hour of exercise per week.

In addition, the report states significant amounts of physical activity can reduce a bowel cancer patient's risk of recurrence and of dying from the disease.

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How much sugar is in different products

 When I saw these pictures, I was very impressed, especially with some of them. Guys from the site SugarStacks tried to give us an idea about how much sugar we can consume if we eat some products. But they note: “We don’t differentiate between different types of sugar – i.e., sucrose, fructose, cane sugar, corn syrup, honey, etc., although there are differences in how these sugars are metabolized. We just used cubes of white sugar as a visual aid”.

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10 Facts About Olive Oil

 

10 Facts About Olive Oil

Olive oil is a fabulous ingredient with many uses, from medicinal purposes such as preventing heart disease and cancer to beauty benefits such as providing anti-aging properties, amongst the most popular form which is using in cooking and baking.

1. History
The olive tree is a crop native to Asia Minor that spread to Iran, Syria, Palestine and the rest of the Mediterranean basin around 6,000 years ago. It is among the oldest cultivated trees in the world and began growing long before the written language existed.
2. Family
The olive family, also known as the Oleaceae family, comprises of 600 species and which are situated on all continents.
3. The Olive Tree
There are many variations of olive trees which have many similarities and equally a lot of differences. Growing characteristic and appearance vary, as well as the size, taste and quality olives that they produce.
4. Harvesting
One of the most debated questions among growers is when to harvest. Harvesting can be done in many different ways, from hand-picking to completely mechanized harvesting.

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  Sex and coffee 'trigger stroke'

 

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News

Coffee, sex and blowing your nose could increase the risk of a type of stroke, say researchers in the Netherlands.

The study on 250 patients identified eight risk factors linked to bleeding on the brain.
They all increase blood pressure which could result in blood vessels bursting, according to research published in the journal Stroke.
The Stroke Association said more research was needed to see if the triggers caused the rupture.
More than 150,000 people in the UK have a stroke each year with nearly 29,000 due to bleeding on the brain.
Bleeding can happen when a weakened blood vessel, known as a brain aneurysm, bursts. This can result in brain damage or death.
The researchers at the University Medical Center in Utrecht looked at 250 patients for three years to identify what triggers ruptures.
Caffeine danger They found that coffee was responsible for more than one in 10 burst brain aneurysms.

Continue reading the main story

Percentage of bursts due to:

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5 Things You Must Know About Sleep

Robin Lloyd
Date: 01 August 2008 Time: 10:47 AM ET

You're tired. You could put your head down on a desk right now and fall asleep immediately. You went to bed late last night, had trouble falling asleep and woke up too early. And let's not kid ourselves: Tonight will be the same unless … well, read on.
This is the classic not-so-shut-eye experience of many Americans who think they are sleep-deprived and possibly need pills or other treatment to fix their insomnia, teeth grinding, jet lag, restless or jerky legs, snoring, sleepwalking and so forth.
Reality is quite different.

For instance, insomnia is said to be the most common sleep disorder, but these dissatisfying sleep experiences only get in the way of daily activities for 10 percent of us, according to the National Institutes of Health. And in almost half of those cases, the real underlying problem is illness (often mental) or the effects of a substance, like coffee or medication.

Here are five recent findings that might help you rest easier:

1. We sleep better than we think we do

For most of us, sleep deprivation is a myth. We're not zombies. The non-profit National Sleep Foundation (which takes money from the sleep-aid industry, including drug companies that make sleeping pills) says the average U.S. resident gets 7 hours a night and that's not enough, but a University of Maryland study earlier this year shows we typically get 8 hours and are doing fine. In fact, Americans get just as much sleep nowadays as they did 40 years ago, the study found.

2. We need less sleep as we age

We'll die without sleep. The details are sketchy, but research suggests it's a time when we restore vital biological processes and also sort and cement memories. Last year, the World Health Organization determined that nightshift work, which can lead to sleep troubles, is a probable human carcinogen. On the upside, the latest research suggests we need less of it as we get older.

3. You can sleep like a baby (or Thomas Edison)

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How to Get Happy when You're Sad ?

Everyone can feel a bit down and sad sometimes, and it totally stinks. Here are some ways to cheer up!

Remember that sadness will eventually go away if you think positively.

1 - Call up a friend to talk about it (or to get your mind off it).

2 - Watch a funny movie, preferably one that you've already seen and liked. Or, watch a sad one, that will make you think "huh, my life isn't as bad as theirs!!"

3 - Exercise. Go for a walk, a jog, or a bike ride. Doing this will make your body release endorphins and adrenaline through your body which will make you feel better physically and emotionally.

4 - Be spontaneous. Sometimes a consistent and boring routine can make you feel bad. Do something out of the blue, but don't make any rash decisions.

5 - Paint a picture. Express your feelings with color and shapes.

6 - Think about good memories. If you've lived through them once, than you can definitely have them again. Just because things may seem bad right now doesn't mean that tomorrow they will be.

7 - Take a shower. You will feel happier and refreshed.

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What are the Effects of Elevated Potassium Levels?

The effects of elevated potassium levels are related to the health of your heart. When potassium stays in your blood because your kidneys aren't filtering it out, you may experience weakness accompanied by an irregular heartbeat. This condition, called hyperkalemia, can be detected with an electrocardiogram after you exhibit symptoms.
Potassium is a substance essential to your body. A mineral in nature, potassium is considered an electrolyte. Electrolytes are charged particles, containing ions, whose tiny electrical charge helps to send messages through your nerves. Therefore, either elevated or lowered levels of potassium will affect your nervous system by sending innacurate signals, sometimes resulting in paralysis.

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How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

Sleep is one of the richest topics in science today: why we need it, why it can be hard to get, and how that affects everything from our athletic performance to our income. Daniel Kripke, co-director of research at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center in La Jolla, Calif., has looked at the most important question of all. In 2002, he compared death rates among more than 1 million American adults who, as part of a study on cancer prevention, reported their average nightly amount of sleep. To many, his results were surprising, but they've since been corroborated by similar studies in Europe and East Asia. Kripke explains.
Q: How much sleep is ideal?
A: Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hr. or more, or less than 6.5 hr., they don't live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hr. Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.
Morbidity [or sickness] is also "U-shaped" in the sense that both very short sleep and very long sleep are associated with many illnesses—with depression, with obesity—and therefore with heart disease—and so forth. But the [ideal amount of sleep] for different health measures isn't all in the same place. Most of the low points are at 7 or 8 hr., but there are some at 6 hr. and even at 9 hr. I think diabetes is lowest in 7-hr. sleepers [for example]. But these measures aren't as clear as the mortality data.

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Why Do We Remember Bad Things?

You remember where you were on the morning of 9/11, but you have no recollection of what you had for lunch last Thursday. One of life's great mysteries is why certain experiences get lodged immovably in our memory, while others are forgotten. Fortunately, recent advances in neuroscience have helped spur major breakthroughs in scientists' understanding of the nature of memory. To explain, TIME asked Matt Wilson, a professor of neurobiology at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.
Q: Why do we remember unpleasant events better than ordinary ones?
A: We think of memory as a record of our experience. But the idea is not just to store information; it's to store relevant information. [The idea is] to use our experience to guide future behavior.
There's been a lot of really interesting research that points to a connection between our memory of the past and our ability to imagine the future. In our studies of animal models of memory, where we're able to go in and actually watch the pattern of [a rat's] brain activity, we can see that the brain activity while the animal is in a behavior-based situation, [such as navigating a maze,] directly corresponds to its future behavior: what it can, may and will do in the future. We can see that the animal does in fact — I hesitate to use the word, but I'll use it anyway — "think." In terms of brain activity, anticipating the future and remembering the past seem to be related.

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Which Are Worse: Calories from Carbs or Fat?

If you're one of millions of Americans trying to lose weight, you probably wish you had a more effective diet than the one you're on now. And if you're wondering whether Dean Ornish's low-fat diet will help you shed pounds better than Dr. Atkins' low-carb menu, the answer is simple: it doesn't matter. Scientists know that on a molecular level, different types of starch and different types of fat have varying effects when they hit the body. But in terms of weight loss, low-fat diets and low-carb diets overall are equally effective (and, most of the time, neither will help you keep the weight off long-term), says Walter Willett, chair of the department of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health. Here's why.
Q:Will eating a calorie of fat make you fatter than eating a calorie of carbohydrate?
A: From many kinds of studies conducted over years, we are quite confident now that a calorie from fat will cause a similar amount of weight gain as a calorie from carbohydrate. There are some interesting questions about whether eating carbohydrate calories versus fat calories will make you eat more calories, but based on what you put into your mouth, it's pretty clear that the source of the calories is really not important.
[Whether fats or carbohydrates are more filling] is one issue that's been raised — but it's been raised on both sides. The best way to get to the bottom line is to look at long-term studies where we randomize people to a high-fat/low-carb diet or to a low-fat/high-carb diet and follow them for at least a year or more. That kind of study takes into account the possibility that one kind of diet provides more satiety; so, over the long run you would see more weight loss on that diet. But those studies — half a dozen or more have been done — show quite clearly that the percentage of calories from fat has very little effect on long-term weight loss.

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Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men?

 Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men?

Across the industrialized world, women still live 5 to 10 years longer than men. Among people over 100 years old, 85% are women, according to Tom Perls, founder of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University and creator of the website LivingTo100.com. Time.com asks him why.
Q: Why do women live longer than men?
A: One important reason is the big delay — and advantage — women have over men in terms of cardiovascular disease, like heart attack and stroke. Women develop these problems usually in their 70s and 80s, about 10 years later than men, who develop them in their 50s and 60s. For a long time, doctors thought the difference was due to estrogen. But studies have shown that this may not be the case, and now we know that giving estrogen to women post-menopause can actually be bad for them.

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Why Are People Taller Today Than Yesterday?

Skeletons and written records show that human beings today are inches taller than humans just a century or two ago. And yet even today average heights vary among different nationalities, even among genetically homogenous populations, like the South Koreans and North Koreans. (South Koreans are taller.) John Komlos, professor of economics at the University of Munich and a pioneer in studying human well-being through history, explains what governs human height, and why some populations are taller than others.
Q: Why are people taller today than yesterday?
A: There are two main reasons. One is that the diet has improved considerably. In spite of some very negative aspects of the diet of industrialized populations, we have much better vitamin, mineral and protein intake than 100 or 200 years ago. As a consequence the body can grow much better.

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What is the Ideal Weight for my Height?

Calculating ideal weight for height is one way of determining whether one is over or underweight. This method also takes into account the frame size of a person. So for example, frame might be calculated by measuring the distance between the sides of the right elbow when the arm is extended in front of the chest, and the elbow bends so the forearm is parallel to the body.

A medium frame measurement of this type would be 2.75 to 3 inches (6.98-7.62 cm) in a man that is 68 to 71 inches (1.72 -1.8m) tall. In a woman that is 64-67 inches (1.62-1.7m) tall, medium frame measurement of the elbow would be between 2.25 to 2.5 inches (5.71-6.35cm).

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