The number of taxpayers who included private pension or annuity income in their 2016 returns fell 1.2%, to 28 million.
Read the source article here.
Author: SupremeCmdr
Widely used e-cigarette flavoring impairs lung function
A new study has found that a common e-cigarette flavoring that has chemical characteristics similar to toxic chemicals found in cigarette smoke disrupts an important mechanism of the lungs’ antibacterial defense system.
Read the geeky stuff here.
EXCITING NEWS! (new free open access medical journal from JAMA)
You can access the first issue at this link.
People with family history of alcoholism release more dopamine in expectation of alcohol
People with a family history of alcohol use disorder (AUD) release more dopamine in the brain’s main reward center in response to the expectation of alcohol than people diagnosed with the disorder, or healthy people without any family history of AUD, reports a new study in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
This explains a lot.
Read about this small interesting study here.
Meat Company Finds Americans Are Afraid of Hot Dogs
Meat brand Applegate finds that 47 percent of consumers are scared to discover the ingredients in hot dogs, while 24 percent of millennials never purchase them.
Read the survey results here.
I find surveys like this amusing. Interview 1000 people and extrapolate the findings to all Americans. The click bait title is great too. It’s so misleading I had to copy it verbatim.
Early-life obesity impacts children’s learning and memory
A new study by Brown University epidemiologists found that children on the threshold of obesity or overweight in the first two years of life had lower perceptual reasoning and working memory scores than lean children when tested at ages five and eight. The study also indicated that IQ scores may be lower for higher-weight children.
“Excess early-life adiposity was associated with lower IQ, perceptual reasoning and working memory scores at school-age,” Li said.
The authors pointed out that the sample size of their study was limited and that further studies should be conducted to confirm their findings. Future work could also investigate the impact of early-life weight status on school performance, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnoses and special education use.
If these study results hold up in future studies then I’ll know just what the hell happened to me.
Social Isolation Transforms the Brain
In mice.
Confirming and extending previous observations, the researchers showed that prolonged social isolation leads to a broad array of behavioral changes in mice. These include increased aggressiveness towards unfamiliar mice, persistent fear, and hypersensitivity to threatening stimuli. For example, when encountering a threatening stimulus, mice that have been socially isolated remain frozen in place long after the threat has passed, whereas normal mice stop freezing soon after the threat is removed. These effects are seen when mice are subjected to two weeks of social isolation, but not to short-term social isolation — 24 hours — suggesting that the observed changes in aggression and fear responses require chronic isolation.
Though the work was done in mice, it has potential implications for understanding how chronic stress affects humans.
Get out of the house. Socialize with friends and family. Leave the cell phone at home.
Social media is not social. It’s a serious public health problem for the brainwashed masses with addictive behaviors.
Read the source article here.
Vitamin B12 Breakthrough for more complete Vegetarian and Vegan diets
Vitamin B12 (known as cobalamin) is an essential dietary component but vegetarians are more prone to B12 deficiency as plants neither make nor require this nutrient.
But now a team, led by Professor Martin Warren at the University’s School of Biosciences, has proved that common garden cress can indeed take up cobalamin.
The amount of B12 absorbed by garden cress is dependent on the amount present in the growth medium, and the Kent team was able to confirm B12 uptake by showing that the nutrient ends up in the leaf.
I can’t wait for the silly money and marketers to grab this and run.
Read the source article here.
Vegan Diet Rapidly Improves Type 2 Diabetes Markers in Adults
The 16-week randomized controlled trial in 73 adults showed that participants who ate a diet of vegetables, grains, legumes, and fruits significantly improved their overall metabolic condition, say Hana Kahleova, MD, PhD, of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, DC, and colleagues.
Previous studies have shown that the prevalence of diabetes is 46% to 74% lower in people who eat a plant-based diet compared with meat lovers in the general population, according to background information in the article.
A vegan diet has also been shown to improve glycemic control in type 2 diabetes better than calorie-restricted, low-carbohydrate diets, the researchers note.
You can access the Medscape article here.
This is a link to the online abstract.
Reminder — Beer, wine and whiskey are vegan!
Sleep Apnea Raises Your Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death
In a five-year study of nearly 11,000 people, those with obstructive sleep apnea had a higher risk of sudden cardiac death. At greatest risk were those aged 60 and older with moderate to severe apnea (20 episodes an hour).
When their oxygen saturation levels dipped below 78 percent — preventing air from flowing into the lungs — their risk increased by 80 percent.
Memo to Underwriters:
In case anyone asks why we are so harsh on untreated OSA quote this study.
Article link here.
Link to the study abstract here.
RESULTS:
During an average follow-up of 5.3 years, 142 patients had resuscitated or fatal SCD (annual rate 0.27%). In multivariate analysis, independent risk factors for SCD were age, hypertension, coronary artery disease, cardiomyopathy or heart failure, ventricular ectopy or nonsustained ventricular tachycardia, and lowest nocturnal O2sat (per 10% decrease, hazard ratio [HR]: 1.14; p = 0.029). SCD was best predicted by age >60 years (HR: 5.53), apnea-hypopnea index >20 (HR: 1.60), mean nocturnal O2sat <93% (HR: 2.93), and lowest nocturnal O2sat <78% (HR: 2.60; all p < 0.0001).
CONCLUSIONS:
In a population of 10,701 adults referred for polysomnography, OSA predicted incident SCD, and the magnitude of risk was predicted by multiple parameters characterizing OSA severity. Nocturnal hypoxemia, an important pathophysiological feature of OSA, strongly predicted SCD independently of well-established risk factors. These findings implicate OSA, a prevalent condition, as a novel risk factor for SCD.
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