Testosterone Therapy: No Use!

Healthy older men who given large doses of testosterone show increases in muscle mass and power will result nothing in physical function, a new study shows.
This was likely because the men in the current study were "unusually fit for their age," Dr. Thomas W. Storer of Boston University School of Medicine and colleagues say, meaning that the strength and muscle they gained didn't affect their already-excellent physical function.
Future investigations of testosterone therapy should be conducted in people who do have functional limitations, the researchers say, "so that there is room for demonstrable improvement in function with increased muscle strength."
Giving men extra testosterone can build muscle, but studies investigating its effects on performance and function have had mixed results, Storer and his team note in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Individual Response to Diet is Related to Four Genes

The reports fro REUTERS highlight the necesity of treating every one individually in seeing response to diet and decease. The hope is, the future is brighter because the science make one step ahead.
Four genetic variations appear to determine the speed at which people burn up food, researchers said on Thursday, a finding that could one day see doctors offer their patients more individual care.
Differences in metabolism can make some people more susceptible to diseases such as diabetes and explain why response to diet, exercise and drugs to treat certain conditions varies from person to person.
Knowing right away how a person's body will break down molecules in the blood that build up muscle and cells and provide energy could lead to better care, said Karsten Suhre, a researcher at the Helmholtz Center in Munich.
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HEALTHY LIFE: EAT FISH

Eating fish at least twice a week may reduce the incidence of kidney disease in patients with diabetes, according to findings from a large British study. It is a little bit shocking because commonly diabetics are advised to limit dietary protein to delay the progression of kidney disease.
Recent observations suggest that the benefit to the kidneys may have to do with "the protein source rather than quantity," the investigators note in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.

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Alzheimer is Related to Body Weight and Sexes!

First, I was shock to read it. Alzheimer has something to do with weight? Actually, indeed. And it's different for men an women? According to the research, yes! Changes of weight?
Reuters says that women who are heavy in their middle years are at greater risk of Alzheimer's disease, especially if they have large waists. However, for men, being underweight during that period of life actually increases the likelihood of developing the degenerative brain disease, researchers report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Weight loss could signal underlying disease processes related to the development of Alzheimer's disease, the team suggest, noting that other researchers have found that people with mild cognitive impairment who lose weight or are underweight are more likely to develop Alzheimer's.
There also appear to be close relationships between fat- and appetite-regulating hormones and brain function, the researchers add, while both excess fat and decline in mental function have been linked to inflammation.
SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, November 15, 2008.
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Tips to Keep Alzheimer Away

Edythe London, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles speaks for CNN that there are at least five ways to keep alzheimer away.
1. Antioxidants
London makes sure her mother takes vitamins A, C, and E. They're antioxidants, which prevent cell damage and are believed by some to slow down diseases of aging. "There are studies that suggest antioxidants might prevent dementia," she says.
2. Fish oil supplements
Dr. Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging, says aging brains show signs of inflammation, and fish oil has anti-inflammatory properties.
3. Phosphatidylserine supplements
Phosphatidylserine is a lipid found naturally in the body. Small says he's not 100 percent convinced these supplements will help stave off dementia, but they're worth a try. "If I start having memory problems when I get older, I'll give them a trial run and see if they help," says Small, author of the new book "iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind."
4. Curry
Small, who's 57, says that as he gets older, he might also try eating more foods with curry in them. "Some studies in Singapore show that those who ate curry once a week had better memory scores," he said.
5. Cross-training your brain
"Our brains can be made stronger through exercise," says Andrew Carle, assistant professor of in the department of health administration and policy at George Mason University. "In the same way physical exercise can delay many of the effects of aging on the body, there's some evidence cognitive exercise can at least delay the onset of Alzheimer's."

Happy or Unhappy People: See Their TV hours

NY Times begin his news with a statement that happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds.
Is it correct? Don't people who watch TV happyh with their programs? Although people who describe themselves as happy enjoy watching television, it turns out to be the single activity they engage in less often than unhappy people, said John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and the author of the study, which appeared in the journal Social Indicators Research. TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.
It's not like avoiding tv to be haappy, but if you want to a kind of know whether someone including you happy, just see their TV hours.

Good Exercise and Less Sleep is a Bad Combination for Cancer Risk

Please see carefully this research : those who slept less than seven hours nightly had a 47 percent higher risk of cancer than those who got more sleep among the physically active women, the researchers reported at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.
What does it mean? It means if you have enough exercise, you will get away from cancer. But if you are less sleep, which means seven and hal hours a day--according to a research, your exercise is not useful for you, in the term of cancer risk.
The study involving around 6 thousands women in Maryland confirmed previous findings that people who do regular physical activity are less likely to develop cancer.
But when the researchers looked at the women ages 18 to 65 who were in the upper half in terms of the amount of physical exercise they got per week, they found that sleep appeared to play an important role in cancer risk.
Sleep experts say chronic sleep loss is associated with obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, cardiovascular disease, depression, cigarette smoking and excessive drinking.

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Family History Breat Cancer is Related to the Disease

If you are a woman with a family history of breast cancer but who test negative for two genetic mutations commonly linked to it, you still have a very high risk of developing the disease, according Canadian researchers said on Monday.
Reuters report that these women are fourty percent risk to develop breast cancer than the average woman, according to researchers led by Dr. Steven Narod of the University of Toronto.
"I think we were surprised that it was that high. But certainly at that level of risk, one would think about preventive measures," Narod, who presented the findings at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.
The women came from families with a history of breast cancer -- either two or more cases of breast cancer among close relatives under age 50 or at least three cases among close relatives of any age. Narod said it had been unclear exactly what risk breast cancer posed to women in these circumstances.
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Also Read Breast Cancer Preventive

Liver Cancer is Related to Diabetes?

Patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have a significantly higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) compared to the common population, according to findings from a case-control study conducted in Italy.
The association of type (DM2) ... with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has been long suspected.
It should be a warning from the type 2 Diabetee, although the reports also add:
"However, the temporal relationship between onset of diabetes and development of HCC, and the clinical and metabolic characteristics of patients with DM2 and HCC have not been well examined," said Dr. Valter Donadon, at Pordenone Hospital, and co-authors note in the October 7 issue of the World Journal of Gastroenterology.
Read Reuters reports

Chronic Pain ? You may be Depressed

The brains of individuals with major depressive disorder appear to react more strongly when anticipating pain and also display altered functioning of the neural network that modifies pain sensitivity, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Recurring or chronic pain occurs in more than 75 percent of patients with depression, and between 30 percent and 60 percent of patients with chronic pain report symptoms of depression Compared with the controls, patients with depression showed increased activation in certain areas of their brain—including the right amygdala—during the anticipation of painful stimuli. They also displayed increased activation in the right amygdala and decreased activation in other areas, including those responsible for pain modulation (adjusting sensitivity to pain), during the painful experience.

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The First Victim of Economic Crisis: Women

Mr. Obama introduced Mrs. Obama as "the rock of our family". The women are indeed. The holy stone of families. How if the economy turn down and turmoil? They are the first one who will stress out.
Stocks are tumbling, the U.S. economy may be in recession, and don't even look at your 401K. It's little wonder some people are stressed out, but women may be bearing the brunt of it.
In a recent survey, women expressed more fear about the economic situation than men and reported more physical and psychological effects because of related stress.
Read more in Reuters

Risk of Stroke with Non Fasting Triglyceride

Reuters report a study from Copenhagen City Heart Study high levels of triglycerides, a fatty molecule found in the blood, detected while a person is not fasting, are associated with an increased risk of stroke.
Most studies examining this topic have focused only on triglyceride levels taken during fasting. The possibility of a link with nonfasting triglyceride levels is supported by two recent studies showing a direct relationship between these levels and the risks of heart attack and death.
The result suggest that elevated levels of nonfasting triglycerides could be considered together with elevated levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol for prediction of cardiovascular risk.
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Sleep at least seven and half hours per day!

Get enough Sleep! It keeps you away from from heart attack! It's what the researchers team lead by Kazuo Eguchi, M.D., Ph.D., at Jichi Medical University, Tochigi, Japan.
Sleeping less than seven and a half hours per day may be associated with future risk of heart disease, according to a report in the November 10 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. In addition, a combination of little sleep and overnight elevated blood pressure appears to be associated with an increased risk of the disease.
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Also the recommended blog about healthy heart

Bad Odor is Brought to Our Bad Dreams

German researchers have found that sleepers exposed to an unpleasant smell will have negative dreams. The opposite is also true. When subjects were exposed to the smell of roses, their dreams were predominantly positive. These olfactory observers used rotten eggs in their study, but we are sure that a stinky gym sock, left perched on the pillow of your enemy, would work just as well. While we’re fairly certain that the researchers didn’t plan to have their findings used in this manner, there are always unintended (and sometimes dastardly) consequences of scientific breakthroughs.
You may be laugh, but, it is true that good smell can boost your mood instantly. Wonder why you dreamed being chased by snake, beside your boyfriend's armpit? LOL
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Women with migraines are 30% Less Breast Cancer

Reuters report that women who have a history of migraine headaches are far less likely to develop breast cancer than other women, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
The study is the first to look at the relationship between breast cancer and migraines and its findings may point to new ways of reducing a woman's breast cancer risk, they said. They found women who had reported a clinical diagnosis of migraine had a 30 percent reduced risk of developing hormonally sensitive breast cancers.
Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide, with an estimated 465,000 deaths annually, according to the American Cancer Society.
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Is Your Boyfriend a Narcissist?

The new study found that narcissists are more likely to philander and dump their partners than people who view closeness and commitment as the most important parts of a relationship, said Ilan Shrira, a UF visiting psychologist.
Narcissists have a heightened sense of sexuality, but they tend to view sex very differently than other people do. They see sexuality more in terms of power, influence and as something daring, in contrast to people with low narcissistic qualities who associated sex more with caring and love. As a result, narcissists tend to go through a string of short-term relationships that don’t last long and are usually devoid of much intimacy.
Even when they’re in a relationship, they always seem to be on the lookout for other partners and searching for a better deal, whether that’s because of their heightened sexuality or because they think multiple partners enhance their self-image isn’t entirely clear.
Although narcissism and sexuality have been linked since the psychoanalytic writings of Freud, researchers have paid little attention to the connection, he said.
Typically, males are more narcissistic than females, who are known to place greater priority than men on personal relationships. Narcissists tend not to value relationships unless it’s for self-serving purposes,” he said.Narcissists often make a good first impression because of strong social skills that make them appear charming, and sometimes even empathetic, but this is usually only a ploy to attract attention. Once you get to know these people, you realize they’re very self-focused and are always bringing the conversation back to themselves.
In this research, Shrira collaborated with Joshua D. Foster, a University of South Alabama social psychologist, and W. Keith Campbell, a University of Georgia social psychologist and author of the 2005 book “When You Love a Man Who Loves Himself.”
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Depression is Related to Chronic Pain

Reuters reported that scientists have found clues in the brains of people with major depression that might help explain why so many depressed people also battle chronic pain, according to a U.S. study published on Monday.
Brain imaging showed people with depression had more activity in brain regions involved in emotions when they anticipated or experienced pain, the researchers found.
More than three quarters of depressed people have recurring or chronic pain, while 30 percent to 60 percent of people with chronic pain report symptoms of depression, the researchers wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
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