Category: Health

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From Discover Magazine: No More Midnight Snacks? Mice That Eat at Odd Hours Get Fat | 80beats

obese mouse
FA=high-fat, ab libitum (eat-at-will) diet, FT=high-fat, time-restricted diet, NA=normal ab libitum (eat-at-will) diet, NT=normal diet, time-restricted

Diets tell you what you eat, but a new study suggests when you eat matters too. Of two groups of mice who were fed the same high-fat diet, the mice who could eat around the clock were much heavier than those who had food restricted to eight hours per day, in a new study published in Cell Metabolism. 

Researchers in the study gave the mice a special high-fat chow, 61% of whose calories come from fat (compared to just 13% in normal feed). The mice who chowed down all day and night became, unsurprisingly, obese, but the ones who ate the same amount of hi-fat food in only eight hours per day did not. Their body weight was comparable to mice fed an equivalent amount of calories on normal feed.

This being a study in Cell Metabolism, the researchers didn’t stop with just weighing the mice; they did a lot of molecular experiments to work out the link between timing and weight gain. Mice on high-fat, eat-whenever diets had the insulin problems associated with obesity-induced diabetes and lower expression of genes linked to breaking down fats in the …


from Discover Magazine

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From Ars Technica: Coffee may be ok, but coffee drinkers not living longer

Is coffee good or bad for you? If you follow the medical literature, you might think that the answer changes a few times a year. Different studies have found associations with various ailments, while others suggested that people who hit the java actually outlived their peers.

Now, a new study is out that not only finds that coffee has a positive effect, but may help explain why the earlier studies were so confused. As it turns out, coffee drinking is associated with a broad range of bad habits (most notably smoking), so if one adjusts the numbers to compensate for those, coffee drinking starts to look pretty good. Before you rush off for your latest hit, however, you should note the biggest limitation of this study: its population was recruited exclusively from the AARP. If you’re not considering retirement, you might want to hold off until we see more from a study with a younger demographic.

AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) membership is open to anyone over 50, so the population at the start of the study was between 50 and 71. On the plus side, it was huge: over 400,000 individuals. And that was after the authors got rid of people who already had cancer, heart disease, and/or strokes. The initial survey included questions about coffee consumption along with a lot of other health and dietary habits. Once enrolled, the authors followed the participants for 12 years, or until Social Security records indicated they had died.

from Ars Technica

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From Engadget: FCC wants to set aside wireless spectrum for medical body area devices, our hearts are literally aflutter

Smartphone brain scanner

The FCC has been making a big push towards freeing up the airwaves for medical uses, and it just took one of its biggest steps on that front by proposing to clear space for wireless body area networks. Agency officials want to let devices operate in the 2.36GHz to 2.4GHz space so that patients can stay at home or at least move freely, instead of being fenced in at the hospital or tethered to a bed by wires. Devices would still need the FDA’s green light, but they could both let patients go home sooner as well as open the door wider for preventative care. Voting on the proposal takes place May 24, which leaves our tech-minded hearts beating faster — and if the proposal takes effect, we’ll know just how much faster.

 

from Engadget

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From Discover Magazine: Why Are 90% of Asian Schoolchildren Nearsighted? From Doing What You’re Doing Now | 80beats

kid with glasses

With glasses, contacts, and LASIK surgery, most of us nearsightedness folks don’t have to worry about squinting at the blackboard anymore. But the sheer prevalence of nearsightedness, or myopia, among Asian schoolchildren (in Singapore, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea) is stunning: 80 to 90% according to a recent review in the journal Lancet. In comparison, that number is just 20 to 30% in the UK. Myopia has also been on the rise in both Asia and Europe over the past few years.

While there are genes linked to myopia, its rising prevalence in both continents points to environmental causes. Namely, kids are spending more time hunched over screens and books instead of playing outdoors. In myopia, light coming into the eye can no longer focus at the retina because the eyeball has become too long. A body of research in humans and animals suggest that reading at close distances and lack of bright sunlight could cause elongated eyeballs.

In Singapore, myopia has shot up in the last 30 years among all three major ethnic groups—Chinese, Indian, and Malay—which highly suggests a environmental cause. Singaporean schoolchildren who read more than two books per week were also more likely …


from Discover Magazine

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From Lifehacker: Why You Should Stop Wasting Money on Body Detox Products

The world is filled with plenty of myths about health and your body, many of which have been productized. One of the worst offenders is body detoxification, which attempts to sell you products based on the idea that your body is toxic. It’s not, and buying related products is an attempt to fix an issue that doesn’t exist. Brian Dunning of the myth-busting show inFact explains why: More »
 

from Lifehacker