Is Childhood Intelligence Linked to Pain Problems in Adulthood?

Title: Is Childhood Intelligence Linked to Pain Problems in Adulthood?
Category: Health News
Created: 12/4/2012 6:37:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 12/5/2012 12:00:00 AM

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10 Years of Tamoxifen Better Than 5: Study

Title: 10 Years of Tamoxifen Better Than 5: Study
Category: Health News
Created: 12/5/2012 10:35:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 12/5/2012 12:00:00 AM

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Social Media May Help Fight Childhood Obesity

Title: Social Media May Help Fight Childhood Obesity
Category: Health News
Created: 12/4/2012 5:19:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 12/5/2012 12:00:00 AM

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Zac Efron and Imogen Poots filming Are We Officially Dating? in New York

Is it just us, or would Zac Efron & Imogen Poots make a really cute couple?

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Brown Fat Transplants May Spur Weight Loss

Dec. 10, 2012 -- Mice given brown fat transplants lose weight and avoid the kinds of metabolic changes that lead to type 2 diabetes, even on high-fat diets, a new study shows.

Scientists hope the same approach may one day lead to treatments for obesity and diabetes in people.

Unlike white fat, which stores calories, brown fat burns calories like a furnace. Its main job seems to be to keep the body warm.

People have deposits of brown fat between the shoulder blades and along the spine, around the heart, on the side of the neck, and near the collarbones. But those stores are tiny compared to the pounds of white fat most people carry. Researchers have wondered if adding more brown fat might jump-start a body’s sluggish metabolism.

To test that theory, researchers took a tenth of a gram of brown fat from the backs of male mice and injected it into other mice that were the same sex and age.

Scientists have tried brown fat transplants before but they haven’t worked very well, says researcher Laurie J. Goodyear, PhD, head of the Section on Integrative Physiology and Metabolism at Harvard’s Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.

Goodyear thinks that was partly because of where the brown fat was placed in the body and how long researchers waited to see results.

This time, Goodyear and her team placed the brown fat in the gut, a place it’s not normally found. Studies have shown that fat in the abdomen, especially fat around the liver, influences insulin resistance and also the release of blood fats called triglycerides. 

After eight weeks, mice that got injections of brown fat processed blood sugar more normally, had less insulin resistance, and were leaner than mice given placebo procedures.

“These effects were really very pronounced and very dramatic,” Goodyear says.

Encouraged by their results, the team next gave brown fat transplants to mice on high-fat diets. In both people and mice, high-fat diets reliably lead to weight gain and drive up blood sugar, setting the stage for type 2 diabetes.

Brown fat appeared to blunt some of the effects of the high-fat diet. Transplanted mice maintained their weight and blood sugar better than those who didn’t get transplants. And the more brown fat they got, the stronger the benefits seemed to be.

How is brown fat working? Further testing on transplanted mice showed they had higher levels of proteins and molecules that control how the body handles blood sugar.

The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

How soon could the technique be tried in humans?

“I think it’s a ways off,” Goodyear says, “but I think that the studies that we’ve done here really support the idea that it could work.”

Other researchers say the study is interesting, but they aren’t yet convinced that brown fat will someday become a treatment for obesity or diabetes.

“Its purpose is to produce heat and fight cold exposure. It’s certainly not there to combat obesity. It has no purpose in evolution to do that,” says Andre Carpentier, MD, a professor of diabetes and physiology at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada.

Carpentier studies brown fat in people, but he was not involved in the current research.

Carpentier says if more studies show that brown fat can safely be increased in the body, it could one day become a tool to fight weight gain and diabetes.

But he says it’s important to keep in mind that even under the best circumstances, the effects of brown fat are likely to be modest.

“You may end up burning a little bit more calories at the end of your day, but it’s not going to be anything close to what you can achieve by doing exercise and diet,” Carpentier says.

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Recreational Marijuana: Are There Health Effects?

Dec. 11, 2012 -- On Monday, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed an order legalizing recreational marijuana use for adults.

Last week, Washington was the first state to OK adult recreational use of the drug. Several other states are considering similar laws.

While much research has focused on the value of medical marijuana to help chronic pain and other problems, what about the health effects of purely recreational marijuana?

WebMD turned to two experts, recently published studies, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse to draw up a scorecard of possible major health effects.

"Putting smoke in your lungs is not good for the lungs," says Roland Lamarine, HSD, professor of public health at California State University, Chico. He reviewed published studies on the health effects of marijuana earlier this year for the Journal of Drug Education.

Smoking marijuana produces a nearly threefold increase of inhaled tar compared with tobacco, according to some studies. Other research suggests that marijuana smokers, compared to cigarette smokers, inhale more deeply and hold their breath longer.

"There are still questions that aren't answered about lung damage," Lamarine says. For cigarette smokers who also smoke marijuana, there may be an additive effect, he says.

Combining the two appears to be a trend, he says. "Some of the [college] kids tell me they buy cigars and put in some marijuana, so there is both marijuana and tobacco," Lamarine says.

Marijuana smoke contains cancer-causing substances, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Some research shows that marijuana smoke has up to 70% more cancer-causing substances than tobacco smoke, it says.

"Nobody is advocating that routinely inhaling carcinogenic smoke is healthy," says Paul Armentano, the deputy director of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws).

However, he says, many marijuana users these days have turned to alternate delivery methods, such as oral, tinctures, and vapor forms. In research, he says, the vaporized forms have fewer adverse chemicals than the inhaled form.

Those who keep marijuana use light do not appear to lose lung function, according to a 2012 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers compared tobacco and marijuana users. Tobacco use was associated with lower lung function, and the function got worse as smoking levels increased.

For the study, low levels of lifetime exposure to marijuana, defined as one joint a day for seven years, did not show evidence of adverse effects on lung function. The study does not confirm these findings with heavy users.

Long-term, heavy use of marijuana can lead to impaired thinking skills and memory problems, Lamarine says, citing published studies.

The impairments can be especially hazardous when trying to do everyday activities such as driving.

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Beet Juice Lowers Blood Pressure

Dec. 14, 2012 -- Drinking a glass of beet juice may have an immediate impact on lowering blood pressure, according to a new study.

The study shows that within hours of drinking it, beet juice lowered systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure reading) by an average of 4-5 points among a small group of healthy men.

Researchers say that drop may seem small, but on a public health level a reduction like that would equate to a 10% reduction in deaths due to heart disease.

“It’s promising that we can see an effect from a single dose,” says researcher Leah Coles, PhD, a research fellow at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia. “That effect might be even greater over the long term if they are drinking it day upon day.”

Previous studies have shown that beet juice, also known as beetroot juice, can lower blood pressure in a laboratory setting. But researchers say this is the first study to look at the effects of adding beet juice to a heathy person’s diet without making any other diet or lifestyle changes.

The results appear in Nutrition Journal.

In the study, 15 men and 15 women drank either 17.6 ounces of a beet juice beverage consisting of about three-fourths beet juice and one-fourth apple juice, or a placebo juice. They were then monitored for 24 hours. The same procedure was repeated two weeks later, with those who drank the placebo on the first round receiving beetroot juice on the second.

Among both men and women, the results showed a trend to lower systolic blood pressure six hours after drinking the beet juice.

But when researchers limited their analysis to men only, they found a significant reduction of about 4.7 points among those who drank the beetroot juice.

Previous studies have also suggested that beetroot’s blood-pressure-lowering effects may not be as strong in women.

In this case, Coles says it may be partially explained by the fact that the women in the study tended to be older, and many were on prescription medications, such as oral contraceptives.

Experts say it’s the high concentration of nitrates in beets that are responsible for the benefits.

In a lengthy biological process, nitrates from dietary sources like beets and leafy green vegetables are converted to nitric oxide within the body. The nitric oxide then relaxes blood vessels and dilates them, which helps the blood flow more easily and lowers blood pressure.

“Whether from foods or from juice, you are seeing a consistent effect of nitrates in lowering blood pressure,” says registered dietitian Norman Hord, PhD, MPH, an associate professor at College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore. “It’s probably the most potent blood-pressure-lowering component of the diet.”

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