How Old Is Old?
June 30, 2009
This is from the New York Times. Made me think, plus I am tiling my kitchen and way behind schedule so it is quoted verbatim.
How old do you feel? And how old will you be when you reach old age?
The public’s views on age and aging are explored in a new national survey on aging from the Pew Research Center, explained in a story by my colleague Sarah Arnquist.
Most adults over age 50 feel at least 10 years younger than their actual age, the survey found. One-third of those between 65 and 74 said they felt 10 to 19 years younger, and one-sixth of people 75 and older said they felt 20 years younger.
And at what age does old age begin? Most people in the survey said old age starts at age 68. Are they kidding? That seems way too young to me. Not surprisingly, most people over 65 have a different idea about old age. Among those getting the senior citizen discount, most say old age begins at 75.
Now consider the answer given by people under 30. Most of them think you’re old by the time you hit 60, Ms. Arnquist reports.
Read the full story, “How Old Do You Feel? It Depends on Your Age.” Be sure to listen to the audio to the left that features people of various ages explaining how they define old age.
And then please join the discussion below. How old do you feel? And at what age do you think old age begins?
photo credit: AleBonvini
Technorati Tags: old age, aging, old
High Carb Foods Reduce Artery Function
June 27, 2009
We all have heard that high carb foods may be bad for us. There have been a number of studies linking high carb foods to big bellies, diabetes and a number of other not-so-good health effects. Now there is evidence that eating high carb foods reduce artery function for several hours.
Well before the Adkins diet became popular, some research had suggested that eating a lot of high carb foods increased the risk of cardiac events.
New research suggests that this increased risk may in part be due to meals with high simple carbohydrate levels causing arteries to have reduced function for at least several hours after the meal.
The arteries in our blood system can get wider and narrower as required by the body. For instance, to lower blood pressure, the body can make arteries wider, increasing the volume,which then lowers the pressure. Think of water coming out of the hose. If you squeeze the end to make it a bit narrower the water would squirt out with a higher pressure.
If your arteries become less elastic, or become less able to contract the body cannot control things like blood pressure as well. Studies comparing people with normal body fat and obesity have shown that arteries are less elastic.
In the new study expansion of the brachial artery, the major blood vessel of the upper arm, was compared in study subjects who ate either one of two different types of a high carb meal, a low carb meal or got water. The three meals and water were rotated, so all subjects were analyzed after consuming all three meals and water. The artery function was reduced after eating, but not when just drinking water. The effect on arteries was much greater for the both the high meals, than for the high fiber meal.
This research is another piece of evidence that eating a high carb diet may not be the best for your health.
photo credit: saragoldsmith – Walkers potato chips (crisps) – even cajun squirrel flavour are high carb
Technorati Tags: high carb, artery, elastic, reduced function
More Weight, Lower Risk Of Osteoporosis
June 22, 2009
What is one advantage of carrying a bit too much weight? Yes, there is a benefit from extra weight. The answer is reduced risk of developing osteoporosis in your lifetime.
Peak bone mass is at about 20 years. After this time everyone starts to lose bone mass. Some fast, some slow. Everybody will develop osteoporosis eventually. That is why I said “in your lifetime”.
Bone density is defined by T score. 1.0 or greater is normal. -1.0 to -2.5 is osteopenia (some bone loss). -2.5 and below is osteoporosis. Bone density is measured by DEXA (dual energy X-ray absorptiometry – try saying that quickly 5 times in a row).
One of the major determinants of keeping bones strong is weight bearing exercise. The more you stress bones the stronger they try to be. Bone is constantly being lost and made. More stress favors more bone being made.
This is where being heavy comes in. More weight means more impact on your bones and more stress. I am not advocating weight gain, but it is nice to have some positive reinforcement once in a while.
An alternative to weight is jumping-style activities. This mimics a higher body weight since gravity is being used.
I was surprised to read that the US Preventative Services Task Force, who I had never heard of before, recommended DEXA screening for women 60-64 years who weighed less than 70 kg (154 lbs) and all women over 65. I would have thought that preventative would mean younger.
DEXA just involves lying on table with no metal on your body, while your spin and hip are scanned. I had one about 5 years ago after destroying my hand, whacking it on the wall, trying to play squash. My doctor was convinced that to due to the significant damage that I did to the bones in my hand, I must have really low bone density. No. I just whacked it really hard, and eventually ended up having to have reconstructive surgery for tendon damage. The hand is now a bit knobbly and does not work quite as well as it did.
If you are depressed about your weight – remember there is one positive effect – stronger bones.
Technorati Tags: osteoporosis, osteopenia, weight bearing, DEXA, bone, T score
Does Your Personality Have An Impact On Your Health?
June 21, 2009
There seems to be an increasing amount of evidence that the mind and body are connected on many levels. There are a range of personality types, ranging from very introverted to a mad extrovert. What is your personality type? Does your personality have an impact on your health?
The connection between mind and body is a key part of many ancient religions, and was generally accepted until relatively recently. The rise of the science and “rational thinking”, changed this. The dogma was that thoughts, emotions, etc., did not significantly impact body processes and had only a small role to play in disease.
The pendulum is starting to swing back the other way. Now, there is quite a bit of evidence that the mind does play a role in our health.
For instance, the role that stress plays in our health is now a major subject of research. Short-lived (acute) stress is usually good. It helps us respond to things that need an immediate response. It is the continual chronic stress that negatively affects the body.
A new study shows that those who had a high level of “dispositional energy”, have much lower levels of an inflammatory molecule called interleukin 6, shortened to IL6.
High dispositional energy is usually a characteristic of extroverts, and is active engagement with life. Dispositional energy has been called the life force. Other characteristics of extroverts such as being happy, and liking to be around other people did not affect the levels of IL6.
Since inflammation is a key player in a number of diseases including heart disease and diabetes, having a lower of inflammation lowers the risk of serious effects from these diseases. The new research suggests more dispositional energy, with less inflammation leads to a lower risk of inflammatory diseases.
There is a question that needs to be answered. If we all started to be more engaged and increase our dispositional energy will our risk having major heart disease or diabetes? Or do we need to have been born with high dispositional energy levels?
photo credit: quantumdtell
Technorati Tags: personality, dispositional energy, mind, body, inflammation, health
Are Sit-Ups Good For Abdominals and Spine?
June 17, 2009
Do you do abdominal exercises? If so, do you do crunches and pull in your abdominals? If so, perhaps this is not a good idea.
If you use a DVD or go to a class to do exercise that involves abdominals, usually you are told repeatedly the same thing. “Pull in your tummy. Try to flatten or hollow out your abs. Try to flatten your back against the floor. “
The idea behind keeping the abs flat and the back against the floor is to work the deep abdominals. The idea is to work the transversus abdominis, since many years ago some research suggested that this muscle did not work properly in those who had back pain. Therefore, it was suggested that if these muscles were strengthened then back pain would be lessened or cured.
Now some researchers are suggesting that the original research may be flawed, or at least not universally applicable for all back pain.
Further, now many think that perhaps it is not just the deep abdominals that need working. They are suggesting that you need to work all the muscles round the core including the surface (superficial) muscles.
Others suggest that the flat tummy, lower back on the floor is actually bad for your spine. That this goes against the natural curve of the lower back and the muscles that hold the curves of the back.
Further some researchers suggest that sit-ups (crunches) are bad for your spine and that other exercises should be done to strengthen the core. So whether you should have a flattened tummy, or not, is irrelevant. The theory behind crunches being bad for you is that the spine flexes back for each crunch and this squeezes your spine in a way that is bad for it, if it is done repeatedly.
The NYT* has an article about the different points of view. There is also a short video in which 4 exercises that work the core are demonstrated. These 4 exercises do not involve sit-ups and were developed to work all the core muscle groups. I think the video is very interesting so check it out.
I am going to try the new exercises – tomorrow.
*You need to register to look at much of the content on the NYT website, however there are no strings attached to registering.
Technorati Tags: abdominal exercises, sit-ups, crunches, flattened tummy, core, spine
Why Do We Have Fingerprints?
June 15, 2009
Why exactly do we have fingerprints? What do you think? What is their function?
Never thought about this before. My guess was that the ridges make us more sensitive to touch.
I heard an interview on the radio with a researcher who works on hands, claws etc. He has just published a paper that says that fingerprints do not improve our grip. The reverse is true, there is less friction so there is less grip.
In the experiments a graduate student had his fingers and thumbs attached to a machine that pressed his hand and dragged it against a Perspex sheet, and the amount of friction was measured. As the poor graduate student’s hand was pressed harder the level of friction on the skin did not increase as fast as expected.
Thinking about it, this makes sense. Having ridges on our fingers means that the whole surface is not in contact with something, but just the smaller area of the ridges.
The researcher suggested that the ridges protect our fingers from damage by not gripping so well. As he mentioned, areas that have a strong ridge pattern are more resistant to blisters than the flatter areas. For instance when doing things that involve friction and the skin on our hands,we are less likely to get blisters on our finger tips than smoother areas of the hand.
Other theories of why we have fingerprints are the sensitivity to touch, and something to do with channeling water away, so when are hands are wet we don’t lose so much grip.
Sometimes I find it amazing what we don’t know. Since skin is obvious and easily accessible for study, you would think we would know pretty much everything about it.
photo credit: Steve & Jemma Copley
Technorati Tags: fingerprint, grip, friction, skin
High Vitamin D Levels Equal Successful Weight Loss?
June 13, 2009
It so hard to lose weight. Now there is the suggestion that low levels of vitamin D may provide yet another difficulty for weight loss. Do high vitamin D levels equal successful weight loss?
In the last few years it has been discovered that many adults are vitamin D deficient. This is a combination of eating less vitamin D containing foods, and the recent horror of getting any sun on our skin.
New research measured the circulating vitamin D levels of the study subjects before starting a diet. The study participants then all followed a diet for 11 weeks that was individually calculated to have 750 calories less than their estimated daily needs.
The results showed that the higher the circulating vitamin D levels, the greater the weight loss. The authors say that for every increase of 1 ng/ml of 25-hydroxycholecalciferol— measurement of concentration, of a pre-form of vitamin D – study participants lost another half a pound by the end of the diet period. For every increase of 1 ng/ml of the active form of vitamin D, study participants lost another quarter of a pound by the end of the diet period.
In addition, higher levels of vitamin D were related to greater loss of abdominal fat.
The question is, why low vitamin D levels slow weight loss.
There are at least several possible explanations. For instance, are the actual levels of vitamin D not important? Instead are vitamin D levels an indicator of how much time is spent outside being active? Which would lead to increased weight loss.
Vitamin D has many important functions in the body, including functioning as a hormone. Recently, there has been a lot of evidence that several other hormones influence appetite, where fat is deposited and other aspects of eating and weight. It could be that vitamin D also plays a role in hormonal control of weight loss and gain.
If the second reason turns out to be correct, this provides another good reason for making sure that we have adequate vitamin D levels in our bodies, from foods, supplements or the sun.
Technorati Tags: vitamin D, weight loss, low vitamin D
Xtreme Eating Awards For 2009
June 10, 2009
Eating out can be a minefield. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has released the Xtreme Eating Awards for 2009.
The subtitle of the article, about the Xtreme Eating Award, put out by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is “Care for an entrée with your entrée?” Another good quote is, “Forget the arms race. It’s the waist race.”
The article highlights some of the more extreme choices at chain restaurants.
An example is the Chicken and Biscuits from the Cheesecake Factory. This entrée has 2,500 calories. Since most of us would probably have some type of appetizer, and a drink or too, we could be consuming close to 3,500 calories at one meal.
Another featured dish is Applebee’s Quesadilla burger. Which is a bacon cheeseburger inserted into a quesadilla. This actually sounds quite good to me. However, it has 1,820 calories, 46 g of saturated fat and 4,410 mg of sodium. Apparently you can add chili fries, or more cheese to this entree.
To put the Quesadilla burger in perspective, 46g of saturated fat is more than 3 oz of butter (3/4 of a stick). The entrée also contains 4,410 mg of sodium. The daily recommended amount of dietary sodium in the US is 2,300 mg per day and in the UK it is 1,600 mg. The DASH diet, designed by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NIH) to lower blood pressure, suggests a goal of 1,500 mg dietary sodium for effective lowering of blood pressure. Using the UK level, or the lower level suggested for blood pressure control, the quesadilla has almost 3 days worth of sodium. With that much sodium I am sure I would drink quite a bit, which would increase the calorie intake.
The question is, would seeing the calories, saturated fat and sodium listed for every item on the menu make us make better choices. My guess is that initially yes, but then we would not pay much attention. What do you think? Would seeing the nutrition data affect what you chose? Check out the article.
Technorati Tags: Xtreme Eating Awards, calories, saturated fat, sodium, blood pressure, quesadilla
Breast Density And Cancer Risk
June 7, 2009
Different women have different breast densities. One thing that breast density can affect a number of things including cancer risk.
Breast density is mainly determined by genetics and age. The range can be from very dense to low density. Generally as we age the breast tissue becomes less dense. The percentage of young women with dense breasts is greater than 50%, later in life the percentage of elderly women with dense breasts is about 25%. Taking combined hormone replacement therapy (HRT, estrogen + progestin) often makes breasts denser.
What exactly is the difference between a dense breast and one that is not considered dense?
Breasts are composed of fat and other components such as glands and fibrous tissue. Those with less dense breasts have more fat and less of the glandular and fibrous tissue. The denser the breast, the less fat. The amount of fluid present in the breast can also affect its density, so there can be some changes in density at different stages of the menstrual cycle.
It has been known for a number of years that those with denser breasts seem to have an increased breast cancer risk.
Dense breasts are more difficult to analyze by mammography. The denser tissue looks white, while the fattier tissue looks darker. It is much easier to see detail, and in particular, detect tumors in darker mammograms. It had been suggested that the reason for the higher cancer risk for dense tissue, could be due to the greater difficulty detecting small tumors in dense breasts.
This website has images of mammograms of different densities. Toward the bottom on the page, click on the links and look at more examples. When you look at the examples of very dense breasts, you can see in some of them, how hard it must be detect much.
However, more recently studies of large numbers of women have suggested that having dense breasts increases the risk of breast cancer. It has been suggested that it is the higher number of epithelial and stomal cells (glandular and fibrous tissue, respectively) that increases the risk of cell becoming cancerous.
If you do not know if you have dense breasts, ask next time you have a mammogram. Discuss with your radiologist or other physician, how often you should have a mammogram.
Technorati Tags: breast density, dense breasts, glandular tissue, fibrous tissue, fat, mammogram, cancer risk
Sleep Problems?
June 5, 2009
Have sleep problems? Do you have trouble falling asleep? Or do you wake up and have trouble going back to sleep?
I have problems with waking up at 3 to 4 am and not going back to sleep. It started a few years ago when I was very stressed about something. The big stress went away, but my waking in the night did not.
Today in the NYT health section there is an article about sleep problems. The article has a number of interesting facts.
Only 28% of adults get 8 hours of sleep per night
20% of adults sleep 6 or fewer hours per night
The market for insomnia drugs will be $3.9 billion by 2012
The article has the usual advice. Exercise, try to relax, reduce stress, do no consume caffeine or other stimulants after mid afternoon, do not have more than one alcoholic beverage at night, try not do, or get involved in, anything stressful in the evening, do not watch TV in bed and don’t clock watch in the night.
There was also some information about cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. The idea of CBT is to try to change “bad” behaviors. A number of studies have shown that it can be effective for insomnia. In the article it said you can do CBT for insomnia online at www.cbtforinsomnia.com
The article stated that, 81% of 118 subjects who used online CBT for insomnia said that it improved the quality of their sleep, and 35% said it greatly improved their sleep.
I decided what the hell for $24.95. I downloaded the 5 pdfs and read the first one about sleep and sleep problems. Now I have to keep a sleep diary for a week. It will be evaluated and then I will be given guidelines. The course lasts for 5 weeks.
I will let you know how I get on.
Technorati Tags: sleep problems, cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, sleep diary
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