The food industry is making a major shift in response to the fact that label-conscious grocery shoppers are increasingly shunning synthetic ingredients and food additives such as Blue No. 1, BHT, and aspartame. Extracts from algae, rosemary and monk fruit could soon replace those substances, according to reports in Chemical & Engineering News in 2014.
Tag: depressive symptoms
Mindfulness & Making Up Your Mind
One 15-minute focused-breathing meditation may help people make better decisions, according to new research from a team at INSEAD — a graduate business school with campuses in France, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi — and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The findings are published in the February 2014 issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Weather Changes Linked to Strokes
Stroke hospitalization and death rates may rise and fall with changes in environmental temperature and dew point, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2014 in San Diego.
CareBox to Help You Age in Place
A highly sensitive alarm unit called the CareBox, which will be available toward the end of 2014, can immediately call family members, neighbors, or caregivers by telephone, cell phone, or the Internet when someone in the home falls or is otherwise in need of assistance. A release from Fraunhofer, the German research company that created the device, notes that an estimated 30 percent of people over 65 years of age lwho live at home fall at least once a year. For those over 80 years old, more than 40 percent take a tumble annually.
Will Brain Training Make You Smarter?
By Deane Alban
Last year over $1 billion was spent on brain training programs, making this an exploding new industry. But do brain training programs live up to the hype? Are they worth the time and money spent? Do the benefits gained translate to better overall brain function?
Adding Up Empty Calories
Most of us have heard the phrase empty calories. We know that they’re not a good thing, but how much do you know about what empty calories are, exactly, and how many are in foods you may eat daily?
Here, from the experts at the site choosemyplate.gov, a program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is what you need to know:
Solid fats and added sugars add calories to food but few or no nutrients. For this reason, the calories from solid fats and added sugars are often called empty calories.
Lactic Acid May Help Crucial Brain Functions
Researchers have uncovered a previously unknown mechanism in the body that regulates a hormone that is essential for a number of crucial functions, including the control of blood pressure.
Aging and the Pursuit of Happiness
As we age, frequent experiences such as spending time with friends and family tend to make us even happier than extraordinary experiences such as traveling to exotic locales. That is the findings of a study done by Amit Bhattacharjee at Dartmouth and Cassie Mogilner the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The researchers explored the role of age regarding the happiness we feel from both the ordinary and the extraordinary experiences in our lives.
Successful Approaches to Stopping HRT
Many women will try to stop using hormone pills and patches intended to control menopausal symptoms but fail because the symptoms return, according to Katherine Newton, PhD at the University of Washington and colleagues. The team’s article, published online in the January 20th 2014 issue of Journal of Women’s Health. The researchers identified key characteristics of hormone therapy cessation that can increase the likelihood of success.
Juggling Points to Better Prostheses & Tx for Ataxia
A study led by Johns Hopkins engineers has used the skill of juggling to gather critical clues about how vision and the sense of touch help control the way humans and animals move their limbs in a repetitive way, such as in running. The findings eventually may aid in the treatment of people with neurological diseases and could lead to prosthetic limbs and robots that move more efficiently. The study has been published online by the Journal of Neurophysiology and will be the cover article for the journal's March 2014 print edition.
Your Right to Your Lab Reports
As part of an ongoing effort to empower patients to be informed partners with their health care providers, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has taken action to give patients or a person designated by the patient a means of direct access to the patient’s completed laboratory test reports.
Fatigue Helps You Make Good Health Decisions
Researchers say there might be one good thing about being fatigued: we make better health-care decisions when we’re feeling tired and run down.
“We proposed that people are more motivated to engage in healthful behavior when they are depleted and perceive their safety to be at stake,” write authors Monika Lisjak, of Erasmus University, and Angela Y. Lee, of the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
Watch: How to Stay Fit After 60
Here's another addition to our ThirdAge Video Collection. Press play to start learning!
The Best Nutrition for Cancer Patients
Nutritional support for cancer patients is more crucial than many of us realize. In fact, an estimated 20 to 40 percent of cancer patients die from malnutrition-related causes.
In some ways, that is unfortunately not surprising, given the side effects that usually occur with chemotherapy or radiation. But, according to the Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), even just a 5 percent weight loss in a month can decrease a patient’s tolerance for treatment, or can alter their treatment plan.
In-home Caregiving Extends Patient’s Life
An in-home program that provided elderly people with counseling and resources increased the time they lived successfully at home, even with dementia and other memory disorders.
Most of the participants in the study said they preferred to stay at home.
The pilot program, conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, focused on elderly Baltimore residents over a period of 18 months.
Beyond Emotional Intelligence
John Mayer, the University of New Hampshire psychologist who co-developed with Peter Salovey the groundbreaking theory of emotional intelligence popularized by Daniel Goleman in the book “Emotional Intelligence”, has introduced another paradigm-shifting idea.
Better Design for Running Shoes on the Horizon
If running is your exercise of choice, you may soon have the option of wearing dramatically improved shoes when you train. A study of how foot muscles support the arch of the foot, led by researchers at t he University of Queensland in Australia used retro-reflective skin markers for three-dimensional motion capture on the right foot of each participant. The results were published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface on January 29th 2014.
Heart Patients Now Less Likely to Die of Heart Disease
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN were pleasantly surprised to find that more people who have known coronary heart disease die from other causes — such as cancer, and lung and neurological diseases — than heart disease, compared with 20 years ago. The study was published online on February 10th 2014 in Circulation, an American Heart Association journal.