Jessica Guest Blogs: Pain in the Brain

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This Guest Blog Post is from Jessica Xi, one of Dr. T’s Health Psychology students:

We know that placebos can help reduce pain, but it’s still not entirely understood how this works. This recent article, describes an attempt to use fMRI scans to explain how the placebo effect functions. Researchers noticed that some areas of the prefrontal cortex, which controls thinking, do not contribute to the placebo effect. Because previous research has revealed that distraction can also reduce pain, it is predicted that distraction is associated with thought control of the brain. Distraction reduces pain by activating a different part of the brain compared to placebos, so if you want a more powerful pain reducing effect, you should use both techniques.

Danni Guest Blogs: Stress eating in children

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Danni Ji, one of Dr. T’s Health Psychology students, guest blogs again!:

In this recent study, researchers tested children to see how stressed they would get by delivering a speech or performing a mathematics task. They measured stress through salivary cortisol before and after the task. After the task, the children participated in an eating activity. Those with exhibited higher cortisol release consumed significantly more calories than those whose cortisol levels only rose slightly. Furthermore, researchers found that cortisol levels stayed elevated or decreased slowly in those kids with the greatest BMIs, and these kids also consumed the greatest number of calories. These findings shed much-needed light on triggers of eating in childhood.

Julie Guest Blogs: Write your illness away

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This Guest Blog Post is from Julie Nam, one of Dr. T’s Health Psychology students:

Adjusting to an illness is not easy, especially if that illness is cancer. Ms. Kyle Potvin, a breast cancer patient, uses an effective technique, writing about her illness, but takes it up a notch, by creatively expressing her cancer through poetry. In her poems, Ms. Potvin disclosed her emotions, such as loss ad mortality, and processed her thoughts. The support for poetry writing as a therapy has been effective in diverse populations, such as people struggling with pain and adolescents struggling with bullying. People suffering from both physical and mental illnesses have, amazingly, found a way to fight for health through artistic approaches. Historically, this approach does make sense, considering that many of the greatest authors in literature wrote through their struggles. Read more about Ms. Potvin’s story and the research behind writing therapy here.

Sharon Guest Blogs: Supplements to reduce autism risk?

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This Guest Blog Post is from Sharon Lai, one of Dr. T’s Health Psychology students:

Some believe that taking vitamins and other supplements could prevent autism. While this new research cannot not prove this theory, it does suggest that taking supplements could reduce the risk of your child getting autism. Study results suggest that taking supplements containing folic acid could reduce the risk of autism. Women who took folic acid “before and in early pregnancy were 39% less likely to have autistic children,” but the effect only happened when women took these supplements during six weeks before and six weeks after conception. These findings shed some light on a potential critical period in fetal development for reducing the risk of autism.

Stand up for better health!

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We all know that exercise is good for us, but does the type of exercise we do influence our health? Researchers from Maastricht University, Netherlands, found that a lengthy, low-intense exercise may be more beneficial to overall health than a short, high-intense exercise. For this study, researchers assigned participants to one of three different lifestyle regime conditions. The first group were given the most sedentary routine, requiring them to sit  for 14 hours/day with no exercise. The second group had to sit for 13 hours/day, but also had to indulge in one hour of a highly intensive form of exercise. The third group was instructed to commit 6 of the 14 hours to low-inensiity activities, four for walking and two for standing, per day. The study found that the health improvements in cholesterol, lipid, and insulin levels were more drastic and of greater significance in the third group than in the second group. This finding suggests that not only does exercise contribute to one’s health, but that also the biggest health outcomes may not always come from the most rigorous exercise.

Valeriya Guest Blogs: Stressing the significance of stress

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This Guest Blog Post is from Valeriya Komova, one of Dr. T’s Health Psychology students:

 

Many of us don’t realize how stress impacts everyday life; however, the American Medical Association classified stress as being the cause of more than 60% of all human illness and disease. All stress, big and small, affects our bodies. It can disable your thinking, and when you become accustomed to stress, its effects can go unnoticed until it is too late. The good news is that we can control how we respond to it, and we can begin by recognizing stress and dealing with it the very moment that it comes up. Read here about effective strategies that we can employ daily can help save our health and prevent us from visiting the doctor in the future.

Danni Guest Blogs: Flu Mask Fashion

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Danni Ji, one of Dr. T’s Health Psychology students, guest blogs again!:

It may not be the most stylish fashion statement, but past research has found that using surgical masks by flu patients reduced the impact of large droplet spray (coughing, sneezing). And now a recent study by Dr. Milton and his research team found that using a surgical mask prevents both large and fine airborne particles from escaping into the air, which can infect other individuals. Dr. Milton and his team tested 38 flu patients for both coarse (≥ 5 µm) and fine (< 5 µm) particles, and found that there is 9x more influenza virus present even in the smallest airborne droplets exhaled by flu patients than healthy patients. Additionally, wearing a face mask significantly reduced the amount of virus in the smallest droplets by 2.8 fold.

Diet drinks with liquor, you’ll get sicker…

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There are several rules of thumb for mitigating intoxication when consuming alcohol that focus on what alcohol you’re drinking. But new research from Northern Kentucky University reveals that what you mix your alcohol with can also be a significant factor. A comparison of breath alcohol concentrations (BrAC) after consuming a mix of alcohol and either a regular soft drink or an artificially sweetened diet soft drink resulted in higher BrAC in the diet soft drink condition. So in addition to taking into account how much you’ve eaten and whether you have wine before liquor or beer before wine, pay careful attention to the non-alcoholic additions!

Facts from fiction in the obesity hype

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In our society so focused on battling the “obesity epidemic”, here is an article that everyone should read before making any presumptions or judgements about weight and obesity. The authors debunk several myths about obesity regarding weight loss maintenance, weight loss goals, breast feeding, and sexual activity. They also touch on breakfast, childhood habits, fruit and vegetable consumption, weight cycling, and snacking as commonly misconceived factors in obesity. Ultimately, this is a great source to inform your own understanding of this hot-topic societal issue.

 
What this article doesn’t address, though, is the issue of obesity and health, and the debate over whether we should (or even can) use weight as a meaningful indicator of physiological health… stay tuned for future blog posts!

Danni Guest Blogs: In the mood for success…

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This Guest Blog Post is from Danni Ji, one of Dr. T’s Health Psychology students:

 

This recent study found that good moods help older adults to improve their decision making and working memory. Subjects were either given candy and thank you card or no reward before testing, to boost their moods. They then attempted to learn the values of a deck of a card in order to get more profit/gains than losses. Those given the reward before the task performed significantly better than those who didn’t receive the reward. These findings offer some valuable insight into social and environmental factors that can influence cognitive performance.