This is gross: is Facebook triggering eating disorders?

Provocative new research ties high Facebook use to an increased risk of eating disorders.
Florida State University investigators studied a group of college women and found that more time on Facebook was associated with higher levels of disordered eating. The research, published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, is believed to be the first of its kind to prove that time spent on the social media website reinforces women’s concerns about weight and shape, and can lead to increased anxiety.

Women who placed greater importance on receiving comments and “likes” on their status updates and were more likely to untag photos of themselves and compare their own photos to friends’ posted photos reported the highest levels of disordered eating.
“Facebook provides a fun way to stay connected with friends, but it also presents women with a new medium through which they are confronted by a thin ideal that impacts their risk for eating disorders,” said lead study author and psychology professor Pamela Keel in a statement.

The study
Keel, along with co-authors Annalise Mabe and K. Jean Forney, studied 960 female college students.
These women were evaluated on the time they spent on Facebook, how important they considered ‘likes’ to be and whether or not they ‘untagged’ photos of themselves.
‘Over 95% of college women in our study use Facebook, and those with Facebook accounts described typically spending 20 minutes on the site during each visit, amounting to over an hour on the site each day,’ said Dr Pamela Keel.
Dr Keel found that the women who spent the most time on Facebook had the highest levels of body image problems and were the most likely to have an eating disorder.

Increased body consciousness raises the risk of an eating disorder
‘This causal link is important because anxiety and body image concerns both increase risk for developing eating disorders,’ Dr Keel stated. She added: ‘Facebook merges powerful peer influences with broader societal messages that focus on the importance of women's appearance into a single platform that women carry with them throughout the day’.
‘As researchers and clinicians attempt to understand and address risk factors for eating disorders, greater attention is needed to the emerging role of social media in young people's lives.’These women were also more likely to view receiving comments and ‘likes’ on status updates as important, frequently they ‘untagged’ pictures of themselves and compared their photos to those of friends. ‘In examining the immediate consequences of Facebook use, we found that 20 minutes of Facebook use contributed to maintenance of higher weight and shape concerns and anxiety compared to a control internet condition’.

Bottom line
Researchers have long recognized the powerful impact of peer/social influences and traditional media on the risk for eating disorders. Facebook combines those factors.
“Now it’s not the case that the only place you’re seeing thin and idealized images of women in bathing suits is on magazine covers,” Keel said. “Now your friends are posting carefully curated photos of themselves on their Facebook page that you’re being exposed to constantly. It represents a very unique merging of two things that we already knew could increase risk for eating disorders.”

The research is important because it may lead to interventions to reduce risk factors for eating disorders, which are among the most serious forms of mental illness.
“Eating disorders are associated with the highest rates of mortality of any psychiatric illness,” Keel said. “They are associated with high rates of chronicity — they’re not things that women necessarily grow out of. We know that peer factors have a significant influence, so understanding when and how peers do things that are unhelpful to one another gives us an important opportunity to protect and prevent.”
Ironically, Facebook may be one of the best ways to employ intervention strategies, such as encouraging women to put a stop to so-called “fat talk.”
“That’s when women get together and engage in negative commentary, usually about their own body, and it gets reinforced because it’s a way women bond with one another and they get reassurance — ‘Oh, no, you don’t look fat. Look at me,’” she said.
“It’s bad for women because it reinforces how important it is to be thin and reinforces really negative talk about the self.”

Her advice to young women?
“Consider what it is you are pursuing when you post on Facebook,” she said. “Try to remember that you are a whole person and not an object, so don’t display yourself as a commodity that then can be approved or not approved.”

Sources: http://www.ahchealthenews.com/, http://psychcentral.com/news/, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

You won't bee-lieve it! Honey found to fight antibiotic resistance.

It is a natural medicine used for thousands of years to clean wounds and fight bacteria. Now honey, that delectable condiment for breads and fruits, could be one sweet solution to the serious, ever-growing problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, researchers say.
Medical professionals sometimes use honey successfully as a topical dressing, but it could play a larger role in fighting infections, the researchers predicted. Their study was part of the 247th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.

Sweet news
Study pioneer Susan M. Meschwitz, Ph. D said that the novel property of honey lies in its capacity to battle infection on various levels, making it more difficult for microorganisms to develop resistance.

Honey uses a combination of weapons, including hydrogen peroxide, acidity, osmotic effect, high sugar concentration and polyphenols - all of which actively kill bacterial cells, she explained. The osmotic effect, which is the result of the high sugar concentration in honey, draws water from the bacterial cells, dehydrating and killing them. 
Several earlier studies have shown that honey inhibits the formation of biofilms or disease-causing bacteria. According to Meschwitz, "honey may also disrupt quorum sensing, which weakens bacterial virulence, rendering the bacteria more susceptible to conventional antibiotics". Quorum sensing is the way bacteria communicate with one another and may be involved in the formation of biofilms.
What's more, unlike conventional antibiotics, honey doesn't target the essential growth processes of bacteria. The problem with this type of targeting, which is the basis of conventional antibiotics, is that it results in the bacteria building up resistance to the drugs.

Why it is so good

While science is still trying to isolate the precise mode of the antibacterial action of honey, it has been suggested that phenolics play a role. As phenolics (phenols/polyphenols) are present in food consumed in human diets and in plants used in traditional medicine of several cultures, their role in human health and disease is a subject of research. For example, some phenols are germicidal and are used in formulating disinfectants.

Although the specific polyphenols found in honey vary with nectar source and region, the most common antioxidants found in honey include the phenolic acids caffeic acid, p-coumaric acid, and ellagic acid and the flavonoids quercetin, apigenin, galangin, pinocembrin, kaempferol, luteolin, and chrysin.

Manuka honey, for example, could be an efficient way to clear chronically infected wounds and could even help reverse bacterial resistance to antibiotics, according to a study in Australia. At the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), researchers found that when combined with common antibiotics, the treatment with Manuka honey hampered the spread of bacteria on wounds.
Crucially, scientists found the honey prevented the bugs from developing any resistance to the antibiotic. Professor Liz Harry, of UTS, said: "Manuka honey should be used as a first resort for wound treatment, rather than the last resort, as it so often is." The research follows a previous study which found that the honey was effective against more than 80 types of bacteria, including MRSA (Meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).

Antibiotic Resistance is becoming more prevalent

Not every medical condition calls for antibiotics. Yet, on many occasions patients with non-bacterial related illnesses – such as the common cold, which is caused by a virus – insist on getting a prescription for them anyway. For illnesses that do need antibiotics to treat, some people fail to follow directions – discontinuing dosing once they start to feel better in lieu of finishing out the prescribed regimen.

Abusing antibiotics through excessively unnecessary or improper use can result in conditions like antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance is a form of drug resistance whereby some microorganisms are able to survive after repeated exposure to one or more antibiotics. Pathogens resistant to multiple antibiotics are considered superbugs and are extremely difficult or impossible to treat as a result.

Sources: http://www.eurekalert.org/, http://www.sciencedaily.com/, http://www.wholewomanhealth.org/, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/

Eating Little & Often Myth Busted: Total Calorie Count is Important - study found

Eating small but frequent meals is often recommended for weight loss. But new research suggests this approach may not boost your metabolism or encourage weight loss.
In fact, the study - presented at the Society for Endocrinology annual BES conference few days ago - suggests counting calories is all that really matters when it comes to losing weight.

The study
The researchers of this latest study, led by Dr. Milan Kumar Piya of the University of Warwick in the UK, note that previous research has suggested eating a single high-fat meal increases low-level inflammation in the body when bits of gut bacteria - known as endotoxins - enter the blood stream.
Since this kind of inflammation has been linked to a future risk of developing cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes, the researchers wanted to investigate whether eating often would cause more damage that might increase these risks in obese individuals.

To conduct their study, the team analyzed 24 lean and obese women who were given two meals or five meals on separate days.
These women consumed the same number of calories on both days, and the researchers meanwhile measured their energy expenditure using whole body monitor calorimeters.
The finding revealed two important facts Findings from the study revealed that whether the women ate two meals or five meals had no effect on how many calories were burned. Over a 24-hour period, the women burned the same number of calories when they ate both numbers of meals.
Additionally, the investigators observed that obese women who ate five meals had significantly higher endotoxin levels by the end of each day, compared with when they only ate two meals.
Dr. Piya says their research has yielded two main findings:

• The size and the frequency of the meal has no relation with the amount of calories burnt in the day and the weight of the women. This directly contradicts previous belief that eating less and often is good if you are on a diet or planning to loose weight. The only important factor to consider is the amount of calorie taken and the number of calories burnt.
• The other important inference which came out of the research was that eating more frequently keeping the calorie count equal could actually result in more endotoxin production in obese individuals. Dr Priya pointed out that carrying more weight with increased frequency of meals will result in formation of more endotoxin which has been directly linked to Type 2 Diabetes and Cardiovascular disease.

The next step of the research is to assess the impact of diet, gut flora, and calories burned in different people. “By understanding how diet affects inflammatory risk and energy expenditure, we will further our understanding of how we can better target diet intervention on an individual basis,” Piya notes.

Bottom line
Though we need more research to be conducted with relatively greater sample size. But, one thing is clear: if you are on a diet the only thing you should be working towards is keeping the calorie count to what suits your age, sex and BMI [Body Mass Index]. Eating less and often does not boost metabolism or increase your chances of losing weight.
Burn what you eat, is all time advice that the doctors give to people who are interested in losing weight or want to live healthy disease free life.

Sources: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/, http://www.medicinetips.net/, http://www.futurity.org/

Scientists probe dark chocolate's health secrets

Love dark chocolate?
Now you can eat it with much less guilt because scientists have discovered why it is so good for us.
A recent study on dark chocolate and heart health found eating the stuff in moderation can reduce the risk of atherosclerosis, or the thickening and hardening of the arteries, by restoring arterial flexibility and preventing white blood cells from sticking to blood vessel walls.
Now scientists have discovered why this happens - and its down to how our guts ferment the fibre in cocoa beans.

Good microbes, bad microbes
Researcher Maria Moore, from Louisiana State University said: 'We found that there are two kinds of microbes in the gut: the 'good' ones and the 'bad' ones. 'The good microbes, such as Bifidobacterium and lactic acid bacteria, feast on chocolate.
'When you eat dark chocolate, they grow and ferment it, producing compounds that are anti-inflammatory.' This naturally forming anti-inflammatory enters the bloodstream and helps protest the heart and arteries from damage. Bad gut bacteria, such as Clostridia and some strains of Escherichia coli (E.coli) trigger inflammation, leading to bloating, diarrhoea and constipation.

Cocoa and its antioxidants
The team tested three types of cocoa powder, the raw ingredient used to make chocolate, in an artificial digestive tract consisting of a series of modified test tubes.
Cocoa contains so-called antioxidant polyphenol compounds, such as catechin and epicatechin, and a small amount of dietary fibre. Both components are poorly digested and absorbed, but are readily processed by the friendly bacteria in the colon.
Dark chocolate contains a higher cocoa content, increasing this process. 'In our study we found that the fibre is fermented and the large polyphenolic polymers are metabolised to smaller molecules, which are more easily absorbed,' said Dr John Finley, who led the Louisiana team. 'These smaller polymers exhibit anti-inflammatory activity. When these compounds are absorbed by the body, they lessen the inflammation of cardiovascular tissue, reducing the long-term risk of stroke.'

Bottom line
The findings were presented at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Texas.
Combining cocoa with prebiotics - indigestible food ingredients that stimulate bacterial growth - is likely to enhance the process with beneficial results, said Dr Finley. 'When you ingest prebiotics, the beneficial gut microbial population increases and out-competes any undesirable microbes in the gut, like those that cause stomach problems,' he added.
Prebiotics are found in foods such as raw garlic, raw wheat bran, and cooked whole wheat flour, and are especially abundant in raw chicory root. They can also be obtained from widely available supplements.
Combining dark chocolate with fruits such as pomegranates or acai may also boost its benefits, said Dr Finley.

Sources: http://www.sciencedaily.com/, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/, http://www.latimes.com/science/

Regular exercise may slow diseases that cause blindness and decrease the risk of stroke in women

More and more research confirms the health benefits of regular exercise. Now a new study published in The Journal of Neuroscience suggests that moderate aerobic exercise may slow the progression of diseases that destroy the retina of the eye and eventually cause blindness.

What is age-related macular degeneration
Age-related macular degeneration is characterized by a gradual deterioration of the macula, the central part of the retina that helps you perceive fine details in your field of vision. As a result, central vision and sharpness is impaired, problematizing daily tasks like driving and reading. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the condition currently affects about 1.8 million Americans over 40.

The study
Although several studies in animals and humans point to the protective effects of exercise in neurodegenerative diseases or injury, less is known about how exercise affects vision.
Machelle Pardue, PhD, together with her colleagues Eric Lawson and Jeffrey H. Boatright, PhD, at the Atlanta VA Center for Visual and Neurocognitive Rehabilitation and Emory University, ran mice on a treadmill for two weeks before and after exposing the animals to bright light that causes retinal degeneration. The researchers found that treadmill training preserved photoreceptors and retinal cell function in the mice.

Bottom line
"One point to emphasize is that the exercise the animals engaged in is really comparable to a brisk walk," Pardue says. "One previous study that examined the effects of exercise on vision in humans had examined a select group of long distance runners. Our results suggest it's possible to attain these effects with more moderate exercise."
"This is the first report of simple exercise having a direct effect on retinal health and vision," Pardue said. "This research may one day lead to tailored exercise regimens or combination therapies in treatments of blinding diseases."

More good news coming from another recent study
Another recent study concluded that moderate exercise could decrease the risk of stroke in women by 20% and could offset the increased risk in women taking postmenopausal hormone therapy.
The study found there was no need to run the marathon or do intense strenuous exercise to get the health benefits and the effects can be immediate.

Professor Sophia Wang, lead author of the study, said: "I was surprised that moderate physical activity was most strongly associated with a reduced risk of stroke. More strenuous activity such as running didn’t further reduce women’s stroke risk. Moderate activity, such as brisk walking appeared to be ideal in this scenario."
The study also found that overweight women with diabetes had an increased risk of stroke. Says Prof. Wang, "Physical activity, obesity and diabetes are all highly correlated with one another. Stroke prevention among diabetics is thus a particularly important scientific question to address."

What we CAN do to prevent diseases
The study recommended that women incorporate some type of physical activity into their daily routine and Prof Wang said: "You don’t have to do an extreme boot camp. The types of activities we’re talking about are accessible to most of the population." Power walking and recreational tennis, for example, do not necessarily require special memberships to gyms.

Sources: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/, http://www.eurekalert.org/, http://www.medicaldaily.com/, http://usaherald.com/43125/,

To savor the flavor, perform a short ritual first

We all have them. Rituals we do before eating, though most of us don't think of them that way.
You may be the type of person who always eats chips in a bowl because they're just not the same out of the packet. Or you might only drink peppermint tea from your favourite striped mug because it tastes better that way.

University of Minnesota psychological scientist Kathleen Vohs's ritual was to shake her sugar packet prior to pouring a little bit in to her espresso. She would then take a sip, realise her coffee wasn't sweet enough, and add the rest of the packet. She did this every time she ordered coffee, despite the fact she always ended up using the entire packet.
Vohs was so intrigued by her own behaviour, she went on to lead a study about food rituals and how they affect perception of taste. The first experiment in the study, published in Psychological Science, involved 52 participants. They were divided into two groups and instructed to either eat a chocolate bar or perform a short ritual before digging in.

The "ritual" group was asked to break the chocolate bar in half before unwrapping one side and eating that part only. Next, they were told to unwrap the second half and eat that.
Tellingly, those who performed these instructions said they enjoyed the chocolate more and were willing to pay more for it than those who simply ate the bar.

 A second experiment instructed participants to eat one carrot each from three separate bags on a table. One group was told to perform an identical set of movements before eating each carrot (in other words, a ritual), while the others were told to do different, random movements before eating each carrot.
Those who did the same movements beforehand enjoyed their carrots most.
In the final two studies, Vohs and colleagues showed that personal involvement in the ritual is paramount — watching someone else methodically mix lemonade doesn’t make it taste any better. Additionally, they found that by engaging in small rituals before eating, it’s possible we pay more attention to our food, which makes us more personally involved in the experience.

This mindfulness may also help us develop more healthy eating behaviours, the researchers suggest. Rituals may also help in portion control, something the University of Minnesota researchers did not address in their experiments. In a small randomized controlled trial at the University of Texas in Austin, researchers found that teaching restaurant diners to focus on awareness of hunger and taste, along with other strategies, was effective at promoting weight management. When you savor food you enjoy it more, and sometimes you eat less.

Food rituals are an important part of cultures around the world, whether it’s singing happy birthday and blowing out the candles before eating cake or blessing food before a meal.
In China, many people slurp rather than bite their noodles, as breaking them is said to shorten one’s life. Champagne has become the traditional beverage for celebratory toasts and breaking the wishbone of a roast turkey or chicken is believed to bring good luck.

However most of the rituals are highly individual; it's a way of making the food our own. So it's not surprising that it helps us enjoy it more. It situates us in the moment, slows the process and helps us become more mindful of what we're doing even with positive implications on diet.



It's also no coincidence that many of the foods we associate with rituals – such as biting the bottom of a Cornetto first, then racing to finish the ice-cream before it becomes a dripping, oozy mess – are treats or snacks. They're almost always sweet and part of our childhoods. It was a way of savouring the treat but it's also a sign that we want to interact with our food more than merely eating it. Eating is a really sensorial experience. We see the shapes, hear the sounds, notice the form food takes, and find ways of engaging with those.

The researchers believe that applying rituals could also help us enhance other areas of our life, such as exercise and relationships. They suggest that rituals may serve as a covert means to get people to do a little more of what makes life worth living.

If you find yourself treating food as fuel and not as an enjoyable experience, consider creating some food rituals to make mealtimes more satisfying:

• set the table
• chew slowly and eat mindfully – focus on the flavours and engage each of your senses
• turn off the TV, computer and other distractions during mealtimes.

  Do you or your family have any culinary rituals that help make food more enjoyable?

Sources: http://www1.umn.edu/, http://www.stuff.co.nz/, http://www.comvita.co.nz/, http://www.goodfood.com.au/, http://well.blogs.nytimes.com

Study shows what foods deposit fat and where it is deposited on your body

If you want to avoid developing an apple shape, then you should eat salmon and walnuts, new research suggests. Swedish researchers discovered that people who eat a lot of polyunsaturated fat gain more muscle - and less fat - than those who eat a lot of saturated fat. People who eat mainly polyunsaturated fat - which salmon and walnuts are rich in - also store less fat around their waists and their internal organs.

This was the first study on humans to show that the fat composition of food not only influences cholesterol levels in the blood and the risk of heart disease, but also where in the body fat will be stored. The findings have recently been published in the American journal Diabetes.

The study
Researchers at Uppsala University studied 39 young adult men and women of normal weight, who ate 750 extra calories a day for seven weeks. The goal was for them to gain 3% of their starting weight. The project received considerable attention when it started in 2011, partly because the extra calories were ingested in the form of muffins with high fat content, baked in the lab by Fredrik Rosqvist, a doctoral candidate and first author of the study.
One half of the subjects were random to eat surplus calories from polyunsaturated fat (sunflower oil), while the other half got their surplus calories from saturated fat (palm oil).  Both diets contained the same amount of sugar, carbohydrates, fat, and protein; the only difference between muffins was the type of fat. The increase in body fat and the distribution of fat in the body was measured using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI scans) before and after the weight gain, as was the muscle mass in the body. Gene activity was measured in the abdominal visceral fat before and after the weight gain with the help of a gene chip that studies several thousand genes at a time.

The findings
Despite comparable weight gains between the two diet groups, the surplus consumption of saturated fat caused a markedly greater increase in the amount of fat in the liver and abdomen (especially the fat surrounding the internal organs, visceral fat) in comparison with the surplus consumption of polyunsaturated fat. Moreover the total amount of body fat was greater in the saturated fat group, while, on the other hand, the increase in muscle mass was three times less for those who ate saturated fat compared with those who ate polyunsaturated fat. The researchers believe their findings also suggest people who eat lots of polyunsaturated fat are less likely to develop heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Bottom line
Thus, gaining weight on excess calories from polyunsaturated fat caused more gain in muscle mass, and less body fat than overeating a similar amount of saturated fat. Since most of us are in positive energy balance, and consequently gain weight slowly but gradually over time, the present results are highly relevant for most Western populations.
"Liver fat and visceral fat seems to contribute to a number of disturbances in metabolism. These findings can therefore be important for individuals with metabolic diseases such as diabetes. If the results regarding increased muscle mass following consumption of polyunsaturated fat can be confirmed in our coming studies, it will potentially be interesting for many elderly people, for whom maintaining muscle mass is of great importance in preventing morbidity", says Ulf Risérus, associate professor at the Department of Public Health and Caring Science and director of the study.

Not only how much fat your body has matters, but also WHERE the fat is stored
When it comes to the risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, it seems more important where in the body the fat is stored than how much fat the body has. Visceral fat, along with a high proportion of fat in the liver, is closely associated with increased risk for developing type-2 diabetes. These fat depots are therefore important targets for new drugs and dietary strategies.
A number of studies have indicated that a higher intake of polyunsaturated fats from plant oils and nuts is associated with a decreased risk of type-2 diabetes, but the reasons for this remain unclear.
The present study proposes a potential explanation for such an association, showing that polyunsaturated fatty acids can affect fat distribution in the body more favorably than saturated fats, probably by regulating increased energy combustion or decreased storage of visceral fat in connection with calorie-rich diets.

Fat affects body's genes
The researchers were also able to see that over-consumption of saturated fats seems to be able to "turn on" certain genes in fatty tissue that increase the storage of fat in the abdomen and at the same time hamper insulin regulation. Polyunsaturated fats, instead, can "turn on" genes in visceral fat that in turn are linked to reduced storage of fat and improved sugar metabolism in the body.

The discovery may also be a contributing factor regarding the tendency of some individuals to accumulate fat in the liver and abdomen. The new findings suggest that the fat composition of the diet, in the long term, might play a role in preventing obesity-related disorders, like type-2 diabetes, at an early stage, before overweight develops.

"This is of great interest, as we lack preventive treatments for fatty liver and visceral fat today. The new findings also support international dietary recommendations, which, among other things, recommend replacing some saturated fat from meat, butter, and palm oil, for example, with unsaturated fats from plant oils and fatty fish", says Ulf Risérus.



Sources: http://www.eurekalert.org/, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/, http://www.sciencedaily.com/, http://medicalxpress.com/, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health