Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Containers filled with several types of potentially deadly substances, including a nearly 100-year-old vial of the toxin ricin and samples of the pathogens that cause botulism and the plague, have reportedly been discovered at US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laboratories.
The substances were discovered as part of a search launched in response to the accidental discovery of smallpox at an NIH facility in Bethesda, Maryland earlier this summer, according to BBC News. In that incident, six freeze-dried and sealed vials of the disease were discovered, marking the first time that the unaccounted-for samples of the virus had been discovered in the US.
This latest incident took place at laboratories that the NIH said were permitted to use poisonous substances, but involved materials from historical collections that were allowed to be stored without adhering to any specific safety regulations. Officials told the BBC that the toxins had been improperly stored, but were in sealed containers. No employees were in any danger of being infected, and the samples have since been destroyed.
According to Washington Post reporters Brady Dennis and Lena H. Sun, a total of five misplaced biological materials were discovered by NIH officials at the Bethesda campus over the past few weeks. Alfred Johnson, director of the agency’s office of research services, told the writers that the items were found in locations where they should not have been stored. Johnson’s office is in the midst of a “clean sweep” of NIH labs, Dennis and Sun added.
Three of the samples were found at the NIH Clinical Center’s Department of Medicine, which is home to thousands of microbial samples dating back to the 1950s, Johnson told the Washington Post. Those samples included two vials of the bacteria responsible for causing plague, as well as two vials of a rare bacterium that causes a tropical illness known as Melioidosis and three vials of the bacterium that causes a potentially fatal disease known as tularemia.
The NIH search, which took place between July 29 and August 27, also revealed a vial of ricin in a chemical lab, and two vials of the nerve toxin that causes the muscle-paralyzing disease botulism in a lab of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). While Johnson said that scientists are allowed to have individual quantities of this substance if they are below half a milligram, the total found in the two vials exceeded the limit.
In a memo, the NIH said that it “takes this matter very seriously,” and that “the finding of these agents highlights the need for constant vigilance in monitoring laboratory materials in compliance with federal regulations on biosafety,” according to The Telegraph.
In a separate but related incident, the FDA reported on Friday that it, too, had discovered an improperly stored pathogen – staphylococcus enterotoxin, which can cause food poisoning, in one of its laboratories, the UK newspaper reported. The vials were stored in a locked freezer, the agency said, but not in a lab registered to work with such agents. They were relocated to a registered facility where they were later destroyed.

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Have you ever wondered if your bra might cause cancer? Apparently, you are not alone. A group of scientists from the University of Washington recently studied the relationship between bra wearing and increased breast cancer risk among postmenopausal women. The findings of the population-based case-control study, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, found no association.
“There have been some concerns that one of the reasons why breast cancer may be more common in developed countries compared with developing countries is differences in bra-wearing patterns,” Lu Chen, MPH, a researcher in the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health, said in a recent statement. “Given how common bra wearing is, we thought this was an important question to address.”
“Our study found no evidence that wearing a bra increases a woman’s risk for breast cancer. The risk was similar no matter how many hours per day women wore a bra, whether they wore a bra with an underwire, or at what age they first began wearing a bra,” Chen added in a separate statement
Chen continued, “There has been some suggestion in the lay media that bra wearing may be a risk factor for breast cancer. Some have hypothesized that drainage of waste products in and around the breast may be hampered by bra wearing. Given very limited biological evidence supporting such a link between bra wearing and breast cancer risk, our results were not surprising.”
Using a strict epidemiological study design, the study looked at various bra wearing habits in relation to breast cancer risk. The researchers note that the study results should provide reassurance that the risk for most common histological types of postmenopausal breast cancer is not increased by bra wearing.
The research team recruited 454 women with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), 590 women with invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) — the two most common subtypes of breast cancer — and 469 women without breast cancer to serve as controls. All of the participants were postmenopausal women between the ages of 55 and 74 recruited from the Seattle-Puget Sound metropolitan area.
In-person interviews were conducted to gather data on demographics, family history, and reproductive history. The research team also asked a series of structured questions to assess lifetime patterns of bra wearing—including the age at which the participant began wearing a bra, whether she wore a bra with an underwire, her bra cup size and band size, the number of hours per day and number of days per week she wore a bra, and if her bra-wearing patterns ever changed at different times in her life.
According to their analysis, no aspect of bra wearing is associated with an increased risk of either type of cancer.
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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
The days of a traditional 1950s family where Dad goes off to be the breadwinner and Mom stays home to take care of the kids is long gone, replaced by a “peacock’s tail” of various family unit structures, University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen claims in a new report prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families (CCF).
In his paper “Family Diversity is the New Normal for America’s Children,” Cohen reports that only 22 percent of children currently live in a married male-breadwinner family, while 23 percent are cared for by a single mother. Seven out of every 100 live with a parent cohabitating with an unmarried partner, while six live with either a single father or grandparents.
The single largest group of children (34 percent) lives with dual-earner married parents, the study said, but that group represents just slightly over one-third of the whole. That is a far cry from six decades ago, when 65 percent of all kids under the age of 15 were living with a family of married parents where only the father was part of the workforce.
“Different is the new normal. There hasn’t been the collapse of one dominant family structure and the rise of another. It’s really a fanning out into all kinds of family structures,” Cohen told Brigid Schulte of The Washington Post on Thursday. “The big story, really, is the decline of marriage. That’s what’s really changed.”
Between the 1950s and 2010, married couple families decreased from two-thirds of all households to just 45 percent, Cohen told Schulte. He said that he was most troubled by the rapid increase in single parenthood, which is often linked with higher poverty levels. A separate study of 11 wealthy nations found that the largest gap in poverty rates between married couples and unmarried mothers was in the US, the Washington Post added.
Cohen, who used data from the US Census and national surveys on family life to compile his report, told Live Science Contributor Stephanie Pappas that the American family demonstrated a “peak conformity” in 1960, the year in which the marriage rate was at its highest and the number of multigenerational families living under the same roof was at its lowest.
“That year, 65 percent of children under age 15 lived in a family with married parents in which the father was the breadwinner,” Pappas said. “Another 18 percent had married parents who were both employed. Only one child in 350 lived with a mother who had never been married. The vast majority of the single mothers were divorced, widowed or separated, and about 7 percent of children were growing up in those households.”
As of two years ago, however, no single family type held a majority, she added. Cohen’s report revealed there was an 80 percent chance that two children selected at random in 1960 would be growing up in the exact same type of family structure. By 2012, however, that chance had dipped all the way down to 50 percent, he noted.
“Not only is there no dominant family form, but children experience more transitions in and out of different family arrangements than in the past, and do so through more varied pathways than ever before,” the CCF said in a statement, adding that Cohen argues in his report that “market forces and social reforms following the Great Depression and World War II” were “driving forces” of the phenomenon, “though in surprising ways.”
“People are really sort of on their own figuring out how to make their family life work, and that’s one reason why you have the huge advice and parenting industry,” Cohen told Pappas, adding that the search for role models could help explain why Americans are so interested in celebrity marriages and families. “People get reassurance from conformity. Not that everybody wants to conform with everyone else, but they like a model.”
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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
For the first time ever, adult obesity rates have exceeded 35 percent in two US states, and no state in the country had obesity rates of less than 21 percent, according to the results of a new report released by the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) on Thursday.
The study, entitled “The State of Obesity: Better Policies for a Healthier America,” found that Mississippi and West Virginia were tied with the highest adult obesity rate in America (35.1 percent), while the lowest was in Colorado (21.3 percent), TFAH official said in a statement.
The report also found that adult obesity rates increased in six states (Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, New Jersey, Tennessee and Wyoming) while not falling in any of them. Based on the study’s findings, obesity rates among American adults were now at or above 30 percent in 20 of the 50 US states.
Those findings are based on federal government data, Reuters explained, and suggest that the problem is growing worse in spite of the widespread publicity the issue has received in recent years from First Lady Michelle Obama and countless others.
From 2011 to 2012, the rate of obesity increased in just one state, the news organization added. As of 2013, 42 US states had adult obesity rates exceeding 25 percent, and at the national level, the obesity rate remained at approximately one-third of the entire adult population.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the highest prevalence of obesity regionally was in the South (30.2 percent), followed closely by the Midwest (30.1 percent). Third on the list was the Northeast (26.5 percent), with the West (24.9 percent) ranking fourth.
Childhood obesity rates remained steady with approximately one-third of children between the ages of 2 and 19 being overweight or obese in 2012, Reuters said. Higher obesity rates were also found in areas of poverty, which is associated with a decreased availability of healthy foods and a reduced number of safe places to use for exercise, and more African Americans (75 percent) were found to be overweight or obese than whites (67.2 percent).
“That pattern affects children, too. In 2012, just over 8 percent of African American children ages 2 to 19 were severely obese, with a BMI above 40, compared with 3.9 percent of white children. About 38 percent of African American children live below the poverty line, while 12 percent of white children do,” it added. “One-third of adults who earn less than $15,000 per year are obese, compared with one-quarter who earn at least $50,000.”
Among African Americans, adult obesity rates were at or above 40 percent in 11 states and 35 percent in 29 states, the report said. Rates of adult obesity among Latinos exceeded 35 percent in five states and 30 percent in 23 states, while adult obesity rates among whites topped 30 percent in 10 states.
Baby Boomers (those between the ages of 45 and 64) had the highest obesity rate of any age group, topping 35 percent in 17 states and 30 percent in 41 states, the study discovered. Furthermore, the percentage of severely obese adults in the US has quadrupled in the past three decades, with over six percent now meeting the criteria.
“Obesity in America is at a critical juncture,” said Dr. Jeffrey Levi, executive director of TFAH. “Obesity rates are unacceptably high, and the disparities in rates are profoundly troubling. We need to intensify prevention efforts starting in early childhood, and do a better job of implementing effective policies and programs in all communities – so every American has the greatest opportunity to have a healthy weight and live a healthy life.”
“While adult rates are stabilizing in many states, these data suggest that our overall progress in reversing America’s obesity epidemic is uneven and fragile,” added RWJF president and CEO Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey. “A growing number of cities and states have reported decreases in obesity among children, showing that when we make comprehensive changes to policies and community environments, we can build a Culture of Health that makes healthy choices the easy and obvious choices for kids and adults alike.”
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Charlotte Erlanson-Albertsson, Lund University

A spinach extract containing green leaf membranes called thylakoids decreases hedonic hunger with up to 95% – and increases weight loss with 43%. This has been shown in a recently published long-term human study at Lund University in Sweden.

[ Watch the Video: Spinach Extract Curbs Appetite, Sugar Cravings ]

Hedonic hunger is another term for the cravings many people experience for unhealthy foods such as sweets or fast food, a common cause of obesity and unhealthy eating habits. The study shows that taking thylakoids reinforces the body’s production of satiety hormones and suppresses hedonic hunger, which leads to better appetite control, healthier eating habits and increased weight loss.

“Our analyses show that having a drink containing thylakoids before breakfast reduces cravings and keeps you feeling more satisfied all day”, says Charlotte Erlanson-Albertsson, Professor of Medicine and Physiological Chemistry at Lund University.

The study involved 38 overweight women and ran for three months. Every morning before breakfast the participants had a green drink. Half of the women were given 5 grams of spinach extract and the other half, the control group, were given a placebo. The participants did not know which group they belonged to – the only instructions they received were to eat a balanced diet including three meals a day and not to go on any other diet.

“In the study, the control group lost an average of 3.5 kg while the group that was given thylakoids lost 5 kg. The thylakoid group also found that it was easier to stick to three meals a day – and they did not experience any cravings”, said Charlotte Erlanson-Albertsson.

The key is the feeling of satiety and suppression of hedonic hunger, vs homeostatic hunger that deals with our basic energy needs. Modern processed food is broken down so quickly that the hormones in the intestines that send satiety signals to the brain and suppress cravings cannot keep up. The green leaf membranes slow down the digestion process, giving the intestinal hormones time to be released and communicate to the brain that we are satisfied.

“It is about making use of the time it takes to digest our food. There is nothing wrong with our digestive system, but it doesn’t work well with the modern ‘pre-chewed’ food. The thylakoids extend digestion, producing a feeling of satiety. This means that we are able to stick to the diet we are meant for without snacks and unnecessary foods like sweets, crisps and such”, says Charlotte Erlanson-Albertsson.

Publication: ‘Body weight loss, reduced urge for palatable food and increased release of GLP-1 through daily supplementation with green-plant membranes for three months in overweight women’

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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Despite mainstream media portrayals to the contrary, preparing family meals can be a significant source of stress and conflict for many mothers, researchers from North Carolina State University sociology and anthropology department report in the Summer 2014 edition of the journal Contexts.

In the study, associate professors of sociology Dr. Sarah Bowen, Dr. Sinikka Elliott and Dr. Joslyn Brenton, an assistant professor of sociology at Ithaca College and former Ph.D. student at NC State, looked at the notion that reforming the food system requires families to eat painstakingly prepared home-cooked meals as a unit.

“Magazines, television and other popular media increasingly urge families to return to the kitchen, stressing the importance of home-cooked meals and family dinners to physical health and family well-being,” the university said in a statement. However, the authors report that preparing such meals can “place significant stresses on many families” and is “simply impossible” for others.

“We wanted to understand the relationship between this ideal that is presented in popular culture and the realities that people live with when it comes to feeding their children,” added Dr. Bowen. To that end, she and her co-authors interviewed 150 female caregivers in families with children between the ages of two and eight-years-old, and also conducted 250 hours worth of in-depth observations in a dozen of those families.

They found that middle-class, working-class and poor families faced some of the same challenges when it came to preparing family meals, said Dr. Elliott. For instance, mothers of all backgrounds said that it was hard finding enough time to make meals that everyone in the family would be willing to eat.

Furthermore, the study – which was supported by a grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture – found that middle-class mothers were conflicted between their desire the spend quality time with their children and the expectation that they needed to provide those youngsters with home-cooked dinners.

The new study comes just days after McGill University Institute for Health and Social Policy professor Frank Elgar and his colleagues from the US and Canada published research suggesting that regularly eating meals together as a family could provide the social support necessary to help reduce the negative effects of cyberbullying on youngsters.

In that study, Elgar’s team explained that the exchanges which occur during family meal times can benefit the well-being of adolescents, and this communication and interpersonal contact can reduce some of the distressing effects of being bullied online. Their research found that family meal time could reduce moderate the link between cyberbullying and the resulting mental health and substance use issues, including anxiety and substance use problems.

However, while that study found that family meals could potentially reduce stress in victims of online bullying, the new NC State study has found that home-cooked meals can actually be a source of stress for some families – and that financial considerations are one of the main reasons why (but for different reasons, based on socioeconomic status).

As the study authors explain, middle-class mothers expressed concern that they were unable to give their kids the best possible meals because they could not afford to purchase all organic foods, while poor families found that a lack of money made it difficult for them to afford fresh produce, find transportation to grocery stores, or secure the kitchen tools (knives, stoves, pots and pans) required to prepare a home-cooked meal.

“Poor mothers also skipped meals and stood in long lines at non-profit food pantries to provide food for their children,” said Bowen. “This idea of a home-cooked meal is appealing, but it’s unrealistic for a lot of families. We as a society need to develop creative solutions to support families and help share the work of providing kids with healthy meals.”

“There are a lot of ways we could do this, from community kitchens where families work together to arranging to-go meals from schools,” added Elliott. “There is no one answer. But we hope this work inspires people to start thinking outside the family kitchen about broader things we as a society can do when it comes to food and health.”

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Andrea Maruniak, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

Nine out of 10 encourage responsibility; none provide real information about what that means

Alcohol industry magazine ads reminding consumers to “drink responsibly” or “enjoy in moderation” fail to convey basic public health information, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

A report on the research, published in the September issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, analyzed all alcohol ads that appeared in U.S. magazines from 2008 to 2010 to determine whether messages about responsibility define responsible drinking or provide clear warnings about the risks associated with alcohol consumption.

According to the study, most of the ads analyzed (87 percent) incorporated a responsibility message, but none actually defined responsible drinking or promoted abstinence at particular times or in certain situations. When responsibility messages were accompanied by a product tagline or slogan, the messages were displayed in smaller font than the company’s tagline or slogan 95 percent of the time.

Analysis of the responsibility messages found that 88 percent served to reinforce promotion of the advertised product, and many directly contradicted scenes depicted in the ads. For example, a vodka ad displayed a photograph of an open pour of alcohol with a tagline that implied the drinker had been partying all night. In small lettering, the same ad advised the audience to enjoy the product responsibly.

“While responsibility messages were present in almost nine out of ten ads, none of them provided any information about what it means to drink responsibly,” says study leader Katherine Clegg Smith, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Instead, we found that the vast majority of responsibility messages were used to convey promotional information, such as appealing product qualities or how the product should be consumed.”

Federal regulations do not require “responsibility” statements in alcohol advertising, and while the alcohol industry’s voluntary codes for marketing and promotion emphasize responsibility, they provide no definition for “responsible drinking.”

“The contradiction between appearing to promote responsible drinking and the actual use of ‘drink responsibly’ messages to reinforce product promotion suggests that these messages can be deceptive and misleading,” said David Jernigan, PhD, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

A better option for promoting responsible drinking in advertising would be to replace or supplement unregulated messages with prominently placed, tested warning messages that directly address behaviors presented in the ad and that do not reinforce marketing messages, Smith says.

“We know from experience with tobacco that warning messages on product containers and in advertising can affect consumption of potentially dangerous products,” she says. “We should apply that knowledge to alcohol ads and provide real warnings about the negative effects of excessive alcohol use.”

The research was funded under a cooperative agreement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Defining strategies for promoting product through ‘drink responsibly’ messages in magazine ads for beer, spirits and alcopops” was written by Katherine Clegg Smith, Samantha Cukier and David H. Jernigan.

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Low-fat or low-carb – which type of diet is better when it comes to battling obesity and maintaining heart health? Researchers from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine are weighing in on the longstanding debate.
In the latest edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine, lead author Dr. Lydia Bazzano, a professor of nutrition research at the New Orleans-based university, along with colleagues from Kaiser Permanente Southern California and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, explain that restricting carbohydrates was more effective for weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor reduction.
The study authors recruited 148 obese participants and assigned them to one of two specialized diets. One group consumed less than 40 grams of digestible carbs per day, while the other consumed less than 30 percent of their daily calories from fats. While both groups were given dietary advice, neither had strict calorie or exercise goals.
Twelve months later, the low-carb group lost an average of 7.7 pounds more than the low-fat group, the researchers revealed. Furthermore, the blood levels of certain fats which are predictors of heart disease risk also improved more in the low-carb group. Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol for both groups were about the same, but the low-carb group saw an increase in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and a decline in ratio of bad-to-good cholesterol.
“Over the years, the message has always been to go low-fat,” Dr. Bazzano said in a statement Tuesday. “Yet we found those on a low-carb diet had significantly greater decreases in estimated 10-year risk for heart disease after six and 12 months than the low-fat group.”
However, as she told Lauren Raab of the Los Angeles Times, “This isn’t a license to hit the butter and meat fats.” Dr. Bazzano explained that both groups were given instructions to continue being as physically active as was normal for them, and that pre-study counseling covered topics such as meal planning, portion size and reading nutrition labels.
The study participants were also taught about the different types of fats, she told Raab. They were instructed that monounsaturated fats (like canola and olive oils) and polyunsaturated fats (those found in nuts and fish) were “recommended,” and that saturated fats (those solid at room temperature) were “not recommended.”
As Dr. Bazzano told USA Today’s Kim Painter, the low-carb diet participants “were not eating butter and burgers at every meal.” They got 41 percent of their calories from fat, but only 13 percent from saturated fats, meaning that their diets were rich in things like olive oil, canola oil, nuts and avocados, the Tulane University professor added.
“It’s not a license to go back to the butter, but it does show that even high-fat diets – if they are high in the right fats – can be healthy and help you lose weight,” she added. However, as University of Colorado School of Medicine obesity researcher James Hill told Painter, the research did not address the issue of long-term weight maintenance, and that increased (which was discouraged in the study) could require higher levels of carbohydrates.
“The study isn’t the last word on what kind of diet is best,” Raab added. “An analysis published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association looking at 48 studies involving overweight or obese participants found significant weight loss with any low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet.”
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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Watching too much television has long been associated with obesity, but new research published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that what you watch might be every bit as important as how much you watch when it comes to packing on the pounds.
As part of the study, researchers at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab recruited 94 participants and had them watch 20 minutes of television programming while snacking on M&Ms, cookies, carrots and grapes. One-third of the participants watched a portion of the action movie The Island with sound, one-third watched the same movie without sound, and the remaining study participants watched a segment of the Charlie Rose talk show.
According to the study authors, viewers who watched The Island with sound ate 98 percent more grams of food (206.5 grams vs. 104.3 grams) and 65 percent more calories (354.1 calories vs. 214.6 calories) than those who watched the Charlie Rose Show. Even those watching the silent version of the action movie at 36 percent more grams of food (142.1 grams vs. 104.3 grams) and 46 percent more calories (314.5 calories vs. 214.6 calories).
“We find that if you’re watching an action movie while snacking your mouth will see more action too! In other words, the more distracting the program is the more you will eat,” lead author Dr. Aner Tal, a post-doctoral researcher at the Food and Brand Lab, said in a statement.
“More stimulating programs that are fast paced, include many camera cuts, really draw you in and distract you from what you are eating. They can make you eat more because you’re paying less attention to how much you are putting in your mouth,” he added. As a result, the more a program engages a viewer, the worse it might be for them.
So what can a person do to avoid overeating on junk food while watching the hero battle the evil empire? Dr. Tal and his colleagues recommend creating portions of television snacks before sitting down to watch the show, rather than bringing out an entire bag of chips or box of cookies.

The best option, the researchers said, is to bring out healthier snack foods such as carrots, since action movie viewers tend to munch on whatever happens to be available. After all, they explain, action and sound variation in a program tend to cause people to pay less attention to what they happen to be eating.
Dr. Tal is no stranger to this phenomenon, as he told Deborah Netburn of the Los Angeles Times: “It’s something I noticed in myself. When I go to the cinema and watch a movie I’m really engrossed in, my popcorn will go from full to empty without me realizing it. But if it is a movie I’m less into, I pay more attention to what I’m eating.”
He said that he and his colleagues plan to conduct a follow up study to determine exactly what factors were responsible for mindless eating during action movies, but that they suspect the pacing of the programming and the level of engagement play key roles. The fact that people consumed more food while watching The Island, even when they could not hear the sound, suggests that this is primarily a visual phenomenon.
“One thing we noticed is people eating without paying attention will eat anything. If you don’t really like broccoli but you don’t hate it, this could be a good way for you to get your daily dose of vegetables,” he continued, noting that the results also suggest that people should start tuning in to shows like Charlie Rose. “You’ll eat less and you will get more intelligent television.”
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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Regularly eating meals together as a family can provide the social support necessary to help reduce the negative impact that cyberbullying can have on a youngster, according to new research published online Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Lead author Frank Elgar, a professor in the McGill University Institute for Health and Social Policy, and his colleagues explained that the exchanges which occur during family meal times can benefit the well-being of adolescents, and this communication and interpersonal contact can reduce some of the distressing effects of cyberbullying.

The researchers examined the link between online bullying and both mental health and substance abuse issues, as well as the effects of family contact and communication which takes place during dinner could have in mitigating those problems. The study looked at the data of more than 18,800 students between the ages of 12 and 18, and found that nearly one-fifth of them (18.6 percent) reported they had experienced cyberbullying over the past year.

Elgar’s team also measured five internalizing problems (anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide ideation and suicide attempt), two externalizing problems (fighting and vandalism) and four substance use problems (frequent alcohol use, frequent binge drinking, prescription drug misuse and over-the-counter drug misuse). Cyberbullying was found to be associated with all 11 of those internalizing, externalizing and substance use problems.

However, family dinners appeared to moderate the link between acts of online bullying and the resulting mental health and substance use issues, the study authors said. For instance, there was a four-fold difference in the rates of total problems between no cyberbullying victimization and frequent victimization when there were at least four family dinners per week, but the difference was more than seven-fold when there were no family dinners.

“One in five adolescents experience cyberbullying,” Elgar said in a statement. “Many adolescents use social media, and online harassment and abuse are difficult for parents and educators to monitor, so it is critical to identify protective factors for youths who are exposed to cyberbullying.”

“We found that emotional, behavioral, and substance use problems are 2.6 to 4.5 times more common among victims of cyberbullying, and these impacts are not due to face-to-face bullying; they are specific to cyberbullying,” he added. “The results are promising, but we do not want to oversimplify what we observed. Many adolescents do not have regular family meals but receive support in other ways, like shared breakfasts, or the morning school run.”

Elgar noted the results of the study, which was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Canada Research Chairs, also suggest that parents who are more involved in the lives of their children could go a long way to helping victims of cyberbullying. Touching base with teens or adolescents about their online lives could give them the tools necessary to manage online harassment or cyberbullying that can otherwise go undetected.

In May, researchers from Michigan State University found that socioeconomic status was not a factor in cyberbullying, and that online harassment was just as likely to occur to teenagers living in poor, higher-crime neighborhoods as it was to middle class high-school students living in more affluent areas.

“We found neighborhood conditions that are indicative of poverty and crime are a significant predictor for bullying – not only for physical and verbal bullying, but cyberbullying as well,” said lead researcher Thomas J. Holt, an associate professor of criminal justice at MSU. “This is a very unique and somewhat surprising finding.”

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Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the single most easily preventable cause of death and disease is to eliminate tobacco use. Smoking can lead to many health issues including respiratory, cancer, heart disease, and blood problems. Over 480,000 Americans die each year due to cigarette smoking, and 41,000 of these deaths happen due to secondhand exposure to smoke.
With the ever-growing popularity of the e-cigarette, it may be possible that the 41,000 secondhand smoking-related illnesses and deaths could decrease; however, e-cigs are so new that there is not much research about them.
The University of Southern California recently published research about secondhand e-cigarette smoke. The study found that e-cig smoke certainly has a decrease in exposure to carcinogenic particles, but it still is not without its own harm.
The study had volunteers smoke traditional cigarettes and e-cigarettes in offices and rooms because these are the most likely places that people would be exposed to secondhand smoke. The researchers then collected particles in the indoor air to study the chemical content and sources of the samples. What they found proved that e-cigs are safer than traditional cigarettes, but they still have their own set of dangers.
E-cigs have a 10-fold decrease in the bad carcinogens. They have an exposure of close to zero for organic carcinogens. This is definitely good news and further supports the idea that e-cigs are certainly healthier for all than traditional cigarettes. But they are not without their issues in the form of toxic elements like chromium, nickel, lead and zinc. These metals are inhaled by the smoker but also exhaled in the vapor making them dangerous to others. Though the concentration is lower in e-cigarettes than in traditional cigarettes, e-cigs still produce these toxins for the smoker and those close by.
The good news for e-cigarette smokers to come out of this is that the toxic metals most likely come from the cartridges of the e-cig devices more so than the liquid that is vaporized. This means that through better manufacturing standards, these devices could lessen the impact of toxins even further.
Certainly the use of e-cigarettes has helped many to stop smoking the far more dangerous carcinogenic, traditional cigarettes. Naturally, the best choice is to quit smoking altogether. Once a smoker quits, he or she immediately lowers the chance of cancer, heart disease, blood issues, eye problems and breathing troubles. E-cigarettes are definitely safer and healthier than regular cigarettes, but they still aren’t as good as quitting completely.
Though the USC findings are a step in the right direction, there is still much that people do not know about the impact of e-cigarettes. It certainly is good to know that e-cigs are safer and healthier than traditional smoking and secondhand smoke, but until we know more about just how much safer and what other possible dangers e-cigs may expose us to, we should embrace the ideas that e-cigs are still understudied.
Any foreign agents in our bodies expose us to dangers, and though the dangers of e-cigs are less, we should still work to eliminate what we can in order to succeed in preventing illnesses and diseases. Tobacco-related illnesses and diseases are the number one most preventable illnesses and diseases. E-cigs still contain nicotine, which means they still have an impact on our health. This USC study shows the beginning of a greater understanding to that impact.
The research was published online August 22 by the Journal of Environmental Science, Processes and Impacts.
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European Society of Cardiology
Daily fruit consumption cuts the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) by up to 40%, according to research presented at ESC Congress today by Dr Huaidong Du from Oxford, UK. The findings from the seven year follow-up study of nearly 0.5 million people in the China Kadoorie Biobank found that the more fruit people ate, the more their risk of CVD declined.
Dr Du said: “CVD, including ischaemic heart disease (IHD) and stroke, is the leading cause of death worldwide. Improving diet and lifestyle is critical for CVD risk reduction in the general population but the large majority of this evidence has come from western countries and hardly any from China.”
She added: “China has a different pattern of CVD, with stroke as the main cause compared to western countries where IHD is more prevalent. Previous studies have combined ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke probably due to the limited number of stroke cases in their datasets. Given their different physiology and risk factors, we have conducted the first large prospective study on the association of fruit with subtypes of stroke in Chinese adults from both rural and urban areas.”
The current study included 451 681 participants with no history of CVD and not on anti-hypertensive treatment at baseline from the China Kadoorie Biobank conducted in 10 different areas of China, 5 rural and 5 urban. Habitual consumption of fruit was recorded at baseline according to five categories: never, monthly, 1-3 days per week, 4-6 days per week, daily.
Over the seven year follow up period there were 19 300 cases of IHD and 19 689 strokes (14 688 ischaemic and 3562 haemorrhagic). Some 18% of participants consumed fruit daily and 6.3% never consumed fruit. The average amount of fruit eaten by the daily consumers was 1.5 portions (~150g).
The researchers found that compared to people who never ate fruit, those who ate fruit daily cut their CVD risks by 25-40% (around 15% for IHD, around 25% for ischaemic stroke and 40% for haemorrhagic stroke). There was a dose response relationship between the frequency of fruit consumption and the risk of CVD.
Dr Du said: “Our data clearly shows that eating fresh fruit can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, including ischaemic heart disease and stroke (particularly haemorrhagic stroke). And not only that, the more fruit you eat the more your CVD risk goes down. It does suggest that eating more fruit is beneficial compared to less or no fruit.”
The researchers also found that people who consumed fruit more often had significantly lower blood pressure (BP). Eating fruit daily was associated with 3.4/4.1 mmHg lower systolic/diastolic BP compared to those who never ate fruit. Dr Du said: “Our data shows that eating fresh fruit was associated with lower baseline BP. We also found that the beneficial effect of fruit on the risk of CVD was independent of its impact on baseline BP.”
In a separate analysis, the researchers examined the association of fruit consumption with total mortality and CV mortality in more than 61 000 patients from the China Kadoorie Biobank who had CVD or hypertension at baseline. They found that compared to those who never ate fruit, daily consumers of fruit cut their overall risk of death by 32%. They also reduced their risks of dying from IHD by 27% and from stroke by around 40%.
Professor Zhengming Chen, the principal investigator of the China Kadoorie Biobank, said: “Patients with CVD and hypertension should also be encouraged to consume more fresh fruit. Many western populations have experienced a rapid decrease in CVD mortality during the past several decades, especially stroke mortality since the early 1950s, for reasons that are not yet fully explained. Improved access to fresh fruit may well have contributed importantly to that decline.”
The researchers concluded: “Our results show the benefit of eating fruit in the healthy general population and in patients with CVD and hypertension. Fruit consumption is an effective way to cut CVD risk and should not only be regarded as ‘might be useful’. Policies are needed to promote the availability, affordability and acceptability of fresh fruit through educational and regulatory measures.”

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
One of the inescapable facts of growing older for women is menopause. As our hormonal systems change, so do the needs and functions of our bodies. In our grandmothers’ day, menopause was treated with hormone therapy, but that practice has fallen by the wayside in recent years — with consequences. Millions of women suffering in silence with hot flashes is a preventable side effect of the decline in hormone therapy, according to a new study led by the Yale School of Medicine.
The researchers, led by Philip Sarrel, M.D., emeritus professor in the Departments of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences, and Psychiatry, found that, for most women, moderate to severe hot flashes, known as vasomotor symptoms (VMS), are not treated. Women suffering from VMS have other symptoms as well, including fatigue, sleep disturbance, depression, anxiety and impaired short-term memory.
“Not treating these common symptoms causes many women to drop out of the labor force at a time when their careers are on the upswing,” said Sarrel. “This also places demands on health care and drives up insurance costs.”
The researchers used data collected as part of health insurance claims. They compared data from 500,000 women, 50 percent with and 50 percent without hot flashes, all insured by Fortune 500 companies. Using this data, the researchers calculated the costs of health care and work loss over a 12-month period.
Their findings, published in the journal Menopause, revealed that women who suffered from hot flashes have 1.5 million more health care visits than those without VMS. This has costly side effects: the cost of the additional health care came to $339,559,458 and the work loss represented another $27,668,410 during the study period.
The loss of ovarian hormones in the years just before and after natural menopause is the main cause of hot flashes. The symptoms can occur almost immediately following a hysterectomy, and for these women, they are usually more severe and longer lasting. VMS affects the daily function of more than 70 percent of all menopausal women and more than 90 percent of those with hysterectomies.
Until recently, hot flashes were treated with either hormone therapy or alternative approaches. The 2002 Women’s Health Initiative Study findings, however, caused a sharp drop in the use of hormone therapy because of an unfounded fear of cancer risks.
“Women are not mentioning it to their healthcare providers, and providers aren’t bringing it up,” said Sarrel. “The symptoms can be easily treated in a variety of ways, such as with low-dose hormone patches, non-hormonal medications, and simple environmental adjustments such as cooling the workplace.”
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A Woman’s Guide to Menopause and Perimenopause – Yale University Press Health & Wellness

John Hopton for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Testing on rats has shown that too much junk food may teach our brains to disregard the need for a balanced diet. Reduced self-control from eating bad food could chart a course to overeating and obesity that becomes increasingly difficult to deviate from.
Research has shown that when rats are given access to a junk food diet, the result is not only weight gain but also a reduced appetite for varied foods. The natural inclination towards a diverse and balanced diet that is widespread in animals, including humans, is impeded and continues to be for some time after junk food consumption is stopped. Natural tendency to avoid over-eating is also decreased.
A team led by Professor Margaret Morris, Head of Pharmacology from the School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Australia, observed that rats provided with a two week diet which included daily access to cafeteria foods such as pie, dumplings, cookies and cake had increased weight of ten percent and displayed significant behavioral changes. They became indifferent when it came to choosing food, and had lost their natural propensity for novelty.
The tests had young male rats associate different sound cues with different flavors of sugar water; one cue for cherry and one for grape. Healthy rats that were used to a good diet would ignore cues related to a flavor they had recently overindulged in. But after two weeks on the junk food diet this built in dietary control was less apparent and the rats stopped avoiding the sound that advertised the over-familiar taste, a habit that continued even after a healthy diet was resumed.
It is thought that a diet of junk food causes changes in the reward circuit parts of the rats’ brains, such as the orbitofrontal cortex, an area responsible for decision-making. The brain’s reward responses are similar in all mammals, and so the assumption is that a regular diet of junk food in humans will impair our self-control and make it increasingly difficult for us to say no to harmful foods.
“The interesting thing about this finding is that if the same thing happens in humans, eating junk food may change our responses to signals associated with food rewards,” says Professor Morris. “It’s like you’ve just had ice cream for lunch, yet you still go and eat more when you hear the ice cream van come by.”
These findings bring additional concern to the well-publicized problems of obesity, which results in the deaths of at least 2.8 million people worldwide every year and contributes to a series of chronic diseases.
In addition, Dr. Amy Reichelt, UNSW postdoctoral associate and lead author of the paper, published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology, suggests that, “As the global obesity epidemic intensifies, advertisements may have a greater effect on people who are overweight and make snacks like chocolate bars harder to resist.”
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