Expert speaks on Foetal Alcohol Disorder in Auckland, New Zealand

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Visiting American expert speaks on Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in Auckland, New Zealand...






Visiting expert on Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder says sufferers have 60 percent chance of becoming involved in criminal activity



People who suffer from Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder have a high risk of becoming involved in criminal behaviour, according to a visiting expert in the field.



Dr Natalie Novick-Brown from Washington University, is speaking in Auckland today on the link between drinking during pregnancy and criminal activity.



The international forensic psychology expert says pre-natal alcohol exposure can damage the central nervous system and 60 percent of those with FASD will be arrested at least once, by the time they are a young adult.



Sufferers have problems with cognition and learning, memory and language skills and particularly with social skills, judgement, decision-making and impulse control.



Dr Novick-Brown believes early detection and treatment will help change these behaviour deficits.









Acknowledgements: © 2010 NZCity, NewsTalkZB

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The healing power of plants - How nature promotes a sense of wellbeing...

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The healing power of plants - How nature promotes a sense of wellbeing...







First published at Qondio:











Are you seeking an inner calm? Then I suggest you could look no further from your garden. Really? Yes, really my friend. Research emanating from the Texas A&M University has reportedly found that green spaces have had a direct effect on our health. When patients rooms had a view of hospital gardens, they recovered faster fron surgery, had shorter hospital stays and needed fewer painkillers. The team also found that showing patients photos of nature reduced blood pressure in five minutes or less.


Nature stops us from worrying and obsessing over detail, according to environmental psychologist Clare Cooper Marcus. "Gardens create a state of diffuse awareness rather than focussed attention."



All our senses - sight, smell etc - are aroused, making us aware of our surroundings. This relaxes our mind and restores our ability to pay attention when we reurn to work.



So there is more to your garden than you realise. More than just green fingers.


Acknowledgements:  Peter Petterson

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Ladies, pass the tissues - man flu is not a myth...

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Ladies, pass us the tissues - man flu is not a myth...


It's enough to make any woman sick — man flu really does exist.



The discovery was made by scientists at the UK's Cambridge University.



They established men have evolved a weaker immune system than women because of their inclination to ''live fast, die young'', according to media reports.



The research showed men are not only more likely to catch diseases than women but also tend to suffer more seriously, and for longer periods of time.



Different sexes have different ways of coping with their infections — maintaining the ability to mate while ill is more important to men than getting better.



Yet for women, it’s the other way around, the study found.



Men also believed they would be re-infected quickly because their desire to compete with other males meant they were more likely to engage in risky activity, the study said.



Acknowledgements: MSN NZ: Lifestyles

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Kiwis urged to have flu jabs as soon as possible following MOH swine flu predictions...

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New Zealanders are being urged to have flu jabs as soon as possible following the Ministry of Health's swine flu predictions.




They have predicted the resurgence of swine flu as soon as the end of the month, according to media reports.



Kiwis are being encouraged to get the shot now as it takes up to two weeks to develop immunity after vaccination.



Director of public health Dr Mark Jacobs told reporters the indications from the Northern Hemisphere were "if we are going to get a second wave, it's likely to start quite early in autumn — in March or April".



The injection is about $20 and can be requested from a GP or nurse.



The elderly, young children at high health risk and people with any of a range of listed health conditions can have the jab for free under a government state-funded initiative.



Children must be six months old to have it.



The programme runs until the end of June.



The ministry has said up to half the New Zealand population could have caught the virus during the first wave last year.



An unknown but large number of people would have been exposed to the virus without experiencing any symptoms.



This will work in their favour this year as those people would have become immune to the virus.



Dr Jacobs said that was the ministry was relying on this natural immunity — and advocating rapid uptake of the vaccine — in its hopes that any second wave would have only a mild impact.



Read more about family health: Ministry Of Health

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Cutting salt intake could prevent deaths,,,

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Cutting Salt Could Prevent Deaths...





Cutting just half a teaspoon of salt a day from the intake of most U.S. adults would prevent 92,000 deaths, 99,000 heart attacks and 66,000 strokes according to predictions from computer models that used actual clinical data to judge the effects of the change.



Less salt is as big a benefit to health as is quitting smoking, according to work that appears in the January 20, 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.



"The [heart] benefits of reduced salt intake are on par with the benefits of population-wide reductions in tobacco use, obesity, and cholesterol levels," explains Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD. Limiting your daily salt intake by half a teaspoon (3 grams) isn't enough of a reduction to bring many diets to the 3.7 grams a day that's the recommendation for about 70% of adults, or the 5.8 grams a day suggested for high risk adults.



In fact, the average U.S. man gets 10.4 grams of salt a day; the average U.S. woman gets about 7.3 grams a day.



Some of the biggest reductions in dietary sodium would need to come from food makers who would have to stop adding so much to processed foods.



The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 77% of the salt in our diet comes from these types of foods. Surprisingly, the salt shaker accounts for just 6% of our daily intake, while salt used in cooking accounts for a mere 5% of intake.



Would we miss the salt if it were removed? "In the United Kingdom, a population-wide reduction in dietary salt of 10% was achieved in four years without a reduction in sales of the food products included in the initial effort and without consumer complaints about taste," Bibbins-Domingo and her colleagues point out.



Another plus, once you cut back on the salt (even if you don't know you're doing so) this encourages you to prefer less salty foods. The change in your taste for salt comes in just a few weeks.



In an editorial published along with the study, Johns Hopkins researcher Lawrence J. Appel, MD, MPH and Cheryl A.M. Anderson, PhD, MPH call for more regulations.



Of course such restrictions would certainly be opposed by industry, as we've seen with the effort by New York City to regulate sale in prepared foods. Opposition to the measure comes from the Salt Institute, a trade group that represents the industry.













..

Representative for the salt industry aren't convinced that the moderate reduction in blood pressure from cutting salt is worth the risks to health that come from depriving our bodies of this natural, necessary nutrient used for many thousands of years.




Morton Satin, speaking for the Salt Institute says, "Mediterranean diet consumers, such as the Italians, consume 40% more salt than Americans, but because they eat a balanced diet with plenty of salads and vegetables, they have the best cardiovascular figures in the world. I'm concerned that the reduction in salt in canned vegetables could lead to less vegetables being consumed. This would be harmful to consumers, especially children."



Making the change, even cutting just 1 gram of salt from your diet, would have quite an impact on the health of many of us according to the researchers.



If you have risk factors for early death or heart problems, limiting your salt intake could be a very smart move and natural too. What's more, you don't need to do anything beyond making the change in your salt intake to get the benefit to your health.



Acknowledgements: Kirsten Whittaker

Daily Health Bulletin Editor

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Daily Bulletin: Short Breaks Boost Memory...

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Daily Health Bulletin:

Short Breaks Boost Memory:

When it comes to giving your brain an edge in digesting new information, and perhaps improving your memory, a study by researchers at New York University to be published in the January 28, 2010 issue of journal Neuron finds that resting while awake, as you might during a coffee break, a walk or as you meditate, helps consolidate memory and improves recall.

Earlier work has shown that processes that improve memory go on while we sleep, but this is the first study to look at what happens during times of so-called wakeful rest.

“Taking a coffee break after class can actually help you retain that information you just learned,” explains researcher Lila Davachi, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at the Center for Neural Science at New York University. “Your brain wants you to tune out other tasks so you can tune in to what you just learned.”

For the project, 16 adults, aged 22 to 34, were shown pairs of images (a human face and an object, or a human face and a scene) and told to associate the object with the person in the picture, but not told they’d be tested on this later on.

This learning period was followed by a time of wakeful rest (about 8 minutes) where the subjects were told only to relax and think about whatever they liked. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to measure the brain activity before, during and after the testing.

The researchers found that the activity between the hippocampus and neocortex – two areas of the brain known to be involved in memory and processing – increased as the subjects were shown the images and during the resting phase as well.

The subjects who had the greatest increases in activity between the two brain areas while resting and looking at the images did better on associative memory tests than those who had weaker reactions.

It seems the greater the activity in the two regions of the brain, the stronger the memory.

“Your brain is working for you when you’re resting, so rest is important for memory and cognitive function,” Davachi says. “This is something we don’t appreciate much, especially when today’s information technologies keep us working around the clock.”

So, could taking a short break and letting the brain relax when studying for an exam or getting ready for a business presentation be a better way to learn and memorize?

Study leader Dr. Davachi says, “People tend to think that if we want to remember something, you should do something active, like rehearse the material. And you can do that – we know it helps, but my suspicion is just letting your mind wander is going to be okay.”

For now researchers can’t say that one type of wakeful rest is better than another for enhancing memory. Your best bet might be to sit quietly and do nothing, just letting the information sink in.

The researchers involved in this work hope their findings will be of value to anyone trying to improve their memory, and help science further understand memory and how it works.

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Its probably not unhealthy to have a big bum...

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Its probably not unhealthy to have a big bum - a big stomach is another matter.

According to researchers, a type of fat that accumulates around the hips and bum may help fight diabetes.

The green light to get a big bum:

This is the news every woman wants to hear — it's okay to have a big derriere, in fact, it's healthy! A new study by US researchers shows that a type of fat found commonly found around the hips and bottom, known as subcutaneous fat, or fat that collects under the skin, helps to improve the sensitivity of the hormone insulin. Insulin is responsible for regulating blood sugar and therefore might actually offer some protection against diabetes.

Fat that helps you lose weight:

It sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, but subcutaneous fat may also be able to help you lose weight.

The researchers conducting the study found that mice who had been given transplants of this wonder fat actually lost weight. The fat, which was injected into their abdomens, caused their fat cells to shrink even though they made no changes to their diet or activity levels.

"It was a surprising result," said Dr Ronald Kahn of Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. "We found [subcutaneous fat] had a beneficial effect, and it was especially true when you put it inside the abdomen."

Pear-shaped bodies less prone to disease
It's already know that a type of fat, known as visceral fat, that collects in the abdomen can increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease, while people with more fat deposits on their bums and hips are less likely to suffer. But this new study reveals that subcutaneous fat may be able to combat thisthose same diseases.

The mice that got the subcutaneous fat transplanted into their stomachs actually began to lose weight after just two weeks and, on top of this, their blood sugar and insulin levels also showed improvements.

So it’s good news all around for rounded women. Dr Kahn agrees, saying, "It's an important result — [it says] that not all fat is bad."

Acknowledgements: MSN Health