Harry Styles requests extra security amid safety concerns

One Direction star Harry Styles has requested extra security ahead of the US leg of the band’s tour, amid concerns over his safety.

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Natalie Portman at the grocery store

Natalie Portman struggled with her trolley as she stocked up in Los Angeles - Get the latest in celebrity style and fashion from Glamour.com. Visit Glamour.com to get all the latest celebrity styles, fashion and gossip.

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Resilient Personality May Bring Better Aerobic Health

Title: Resilient Personality May Bring Better Aerobic Health
Category: Health News
Created: 3/1/2013 12:35:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/4/2013 12:00:00 AM

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Lack of Sleep Disrupts Genes

By Peter Russell
WebMD Health News

March 1, 2013 -- Sleeping fewer than six hours for several nights in a row affects hundreds of genes responsible for keeping us in good health, says a new study.

Research led by the U.K.'s Surrey Sleep Research Centre found that people who were subjected to sleep deprivation for a week underwent changes at a molecular level that could affect their well-being.

Sleep disorders are common in industrialized countries, with about 10% to 20% of the U.S. and European population reporting they often don’t get a good night’s sleep. Lack of sleep and disrupting the sleep-wake cycle are known to have a damaging effect on health, but the reasons behind this remain largely unexplored.

The small study involved 14 healthy men and 12 healthy women who were allowed to sleep under laboratory conditions for 5.7 hours one week and 8.5 hours another week.

After each seven-day period, researchers collected and looked at blood samples that included RNA, or ribonucleic acid, from each person. The major type of RNA is called messenger RNA, and this plays a vital role in making proteins. These samples allowed the researchers to examine what happens to the RNA in the blood, brain, and liver.

Professor Derk-Jan Dijk and his colleagues found that volunteers who got less than six hours of sleep each night over the course of a week had changes to 711 RNA genes linked to inflammation, the ability to fight disease, and stress. These changes might have an impact on obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and brain function.

The findings appear in the journal PNAS.

Professor Jim Horne from the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University says people shouldn’t be alarmed by the study results. 

"The potential perils of 'sleep debt' in today’s society and the need for 'eight hours of sleep a night’ are overplayed and can cause undue concern," Horne says. "Although this important study seems to support this concern, the participants had their sleep suddenly restricted to an unusually low level, which must have been somewhat stressful." 

"We must be careful not to generalize such findings to, say, habitual six-hour sleepers who are happy with their sleep,” he says.  “Besides, sleep can adapt to some change, and should also be judged on its quality, not simply on its total amount."

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Researchers Describe 1st 'Functional Cure' of HIV in Baby

Title: Researchers Describe 1st 'Functional Cure' of HIV in Baby
Category: Health News
Created: 3/3/2013 6:35:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/4/2013 12:00:00 AM

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Can Therapy Dogs Help Kids With Autism?

Title: Can Therapy Dogs Help Kids With Autism?
Category: Health News
Created: 2/26/2013 10:35:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 2/26/2013 12:00:00 AM

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Foods Might Serve Up High Levels of Chemicals Found in Plastics

By Carina Storrs

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates, two types of chemicals in plastics that have been linked to a number of health effects, could still find their way into your body even if you avoid foods that are shipped, stored or cooked using plastic materials, new research suggests.

The findings are based on a small study that followed 10 families for five days. Half of the families got catered meals made with fresh, local ingredients that were not stored or prepared with plastics.

The other half got a handout on how to avoid BPA and phthalates in their diet, such as not microwaving foods and drinks in plastic containers and avoiding food in cans, which are often lined in BPA-containing material.

"We fully expected to see reductions in the catered-diet group, and hoped the other group would also have reductions" in their levels of these chemicals, said study author Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Instead, the researchers found that all but one person in the catered-diet group had a spike in phthalate levels in their urine during the five-day diet intervention, and a more modest increase in their BPA levels. In contrast, the group that got handouts had steady levels of these chemicals over the study period.

The researchers then tested the ingredients in the catered diet to track down the source of phthalate exposure and detected high levels in milk, butter and cream, and also in some of the spices, such as cinnamon and ground coriander.

"Several studies have found that high-fat dairy tends to contain high concentration of phthalates, maybe because of phthalates in the plastic tubing that milk goes through to get to the final containers, and it may be in animal products, such as feed," Sathyanarayana said.

Overall, the more processed the food, the more likely it could come into contact with materials that contain phthalates, and phthalates can easily leach from these materials into food, Sathyanarayana explained. Spices could be one type of highly processed food, she added.

Unfortunately, consumers have no way of knowing which products or brands contain phthalates because manufacturers themselves don't know whether their processing materials contain phthalates, Sathyanarayana added.

Brent Collett and his wife and kids were one of the families that received the catered diet for Sathyanarayana's study. At the end of the study, Collett and the other families received a letter telling them their phthalate and BPA levels and the foods that contained phthalates.

"To have ingredients [such as coriander] that is not a major part of diet lead to this increase was a bit of an eye-opener," said Collett, a psychologist at Seattle Children's Hospital. "There would be no way we as consumers could do any better" than the catered diet in this study at avoiding plastics, he added.

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Countries With More Sugar in Food Supply Have More Diabetes

By Serena Gordon

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 27 (HealthDay News) -- It's a common belief that type 2 diabetes is caused by eating too much sugar. While it's not nearly that simple, a new study bolsters the connection between the disorder and sugar consumption.

The study found that even when researchers factored obesity out, an association still remained between the amount of sugar in the food supply and a country's rate of diabetes.

"The old mantra that 'a calorie is a calorie' is probably naive," said study lead author Dr. Sanjay Basu, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University. "Some calories may be more metabolically harmful than others, and sugar calories appear to have remarkably potent properties that make us concerned about their long-term metabolic effects. This study also suggests that obesity alone may not be the only issue in [the development of] diabetes."

Results of the study are published Feb. 27 in the journal PLoS One.

The prevalence of diabetes in the world has more than doubled over the last 30 years, according to study background information. That means nearly one in 10 adults in the world has diabetes, and most of those have type 2 diabetes. (The less-common type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that's not related to food intake.)

Although the development of type 2 diabetes is associated with obesity and sedentary lifestyles, not everyone with type 2 diabetes is overweight, according to the American Diabetes Association. A genetic susceptibility to the disease is also believed to play a role.

Previous research has suggested that obesity isn't the only driver in the development of type 2 disease, and some studies have pinpointed excessive sugar intake, particularly sugars added to processed foods.

To get an idea of whether sugar plays an independent role in type 2 diabetes, Basu and his colleagues reviewed data from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization on the availability of foods in 175 countries. They also obtained data on the prevalence of diabetes in adults from the International Diabetes Federation.

Using statistical methods to tease out certain factors, such as obesity, the researchers found that the availability of sugar in the diet was linked to diabetes. For every additional 150 calories of sugar -- about the amount in a 12-ounce can of sweetened soda -- that were available per person daily, the prevalence of diabetes rose 1 percent in the population.

And, this rise was independent of obesity, physical activity and other factors that might contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes, the investigators found.

But, when the researchers looked at 150 additional calories per person a day from other sources, they found only a 0.1 percent rise in the rate of diabetes.

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Mother's Drinking Increases Risk of Infant's Death: Study

By Kathleen Doheny

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Feb. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Children of women who are diagnosed with an alcohol disorder during pregnancy or within a year after giving birth have a three-fold higher risk of dying from SIDS -- sudden infant death syndrome -- compared to babies whose mothers do not have alcohol issues, according to a new Australian study.

In the study, a mother's problem drinking was implicated in about one out of every six SIDS deaths, according to the researchers. Alcohol abuse by the mothers was also linked with about 3 percent of the deaths caused by something other than SIDS, the researchers found.

"Maternal alcohol-use disorder is a significant risk factor for SIDS and infant mortality excluding SIDS," wrote researcher Colleen O'Leary, of Curtin University in Perth, and colleagues.

The study was published online Feb. 25 and in the March print issue of the journal Pediatrics

SIDS is defined as the sudden death of an infant less than 1 year old that can't be explained after thoroughly investigating, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overall, SIDS deaths have dropped by more than half since 1990, the CDC noted. Even so, it is still the leading cause of death among U.S. babies aged 1 month to 1 year.

In 2009, about 2,200 U.S. children died from SIDS. The rate is still disproportionately high among some groups, including American Indians, Alaskan natives and blacks, the Australian researchers said.

Australia has a higher-than-average infant death rate, with more than four of every 1,000 live births affected, according to study background information.

Experts have known that certain risk factors increase the chances of SIDS, including bed sharing, maternal smoking and putting a baby to sleep on their stomach. Prevention guidelines recommend positioning babies on their backs.

More recently, researchers have focused on alcohol.

The new study findings did not surprise David P. Phillips, a professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, who also has reported a link between parental alcohol intake and SIDS deaths. As alcohol consumption rises -- such as on New Year's and weekends -- so do the number of SIDS deaths, he found.

"We know that when people are under the influence of alcohol, they perform tasks much more poorly, including parenting," he said.

For the new study, the Australian researchers evaluated nearly 78,000 live births from 1983 to 2005. They found nearly 22,000 of the mothers had an alcohol diagnosis such as acute alcohol intoxication or dependence. About 56,000 did not.

In all, more than 300 children died from SIDS and nearly 600 others died of other causes.

Although the study found an association between infant death and maternal drinking, it didn't establish a cause-and-effect relationship. The researchers can't explain exactly why alcohol abuse and SIDS are linked. They speculate that the alcohol has a bad effect on the development of the brainstem during pregnancy.

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