A new study has linked depression as a high risk for heart disease.

Heart attacks have a variety of causes, the most common being a high cholesterol diet, smoking, and being overweight. However, the wellbeing of our body is closely linked with the state of our mental health. A new study has found that depression can pose as many dangers to your heart as much as all other more common factors.

For the study, a team of researchers from Germany analyzed the health records of more than 3,400 men from Europe, with ages between 45 to 74. All the participants were followed up to 10 years. After the extensive analysis, the researchers observed that death from various types of cardiovascular disease during the study was very strongly associated with the mental health state of the patients just as much as it was affected by other heart disease factors.

More specifically, the researchers looked at how depression, determined by a checklist of several mood symptoms including fatigue and anxiety, affected the rate of heart disease in the participants. They found that depression accounted for around 15 percent of all deaths from coronary heart and cardiovascular disease. The other high risk factors like cholesterol and obesity a 8 to 21 percent chance of death, while diabetes only had 5 to 8 percent of heart disease death.

Only smoking and high blood pressure accounted for more heart disease deaths than depression. The findings of the study were published in the journal Atherosclerosis and revealed that patients with suffering from depression and exhaustion have a higher chance of dying from heart disease, despite not having any of the other risk factors.

The researchers reached this conclusion after the results for each variable had been adjusted for all the other risk factors. This suggests that depression is independently linked to heart disease death, and not caused in combination with other risk factors.

The researchers recommend that patients with classic heart disease factors should undergo routine mental-health screenings. Depression must be addressed as serious as all other risk factors, despite the current stigma that patients face. Furthermore, treating depression can have a much more noticeable effect and sooner than treating other risk factors.

What do you think about the study’s findings?

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The wearable baby monitors might not be as effective as some may think.

Everybody wants the best for their baby. This is why more and more companies are developing devices that can help parents look after their children. The new trend when it comes to baby devices is the wearable smartphones baby monitors.

These devices are new to the market and some of them are still not approved by pediatricians. This is why doctors advise parents not to buy them. The wearable baby monitors might not be as effective as some may think.

These devices are made from electronic sensors which are attached to the clothes of the baby. Some are attached to the sock other to buttons or onesies. These baby monitors are supposed to monitor the baby’s vitals like oxygen levels, breathing, and pulse rate.

The wearable baby monitors sent a notification on the smartphone of the parents when something is wrong with their child. Doctors warn parents to be careful when buying devices for their children because some of them are not approved by the FDA.

Another problem with these wearable baby monitors is that they might send false alarms that can concern the parents. Then the parents will take the baby to the doctor to see if something is wrong with it. The problem is that unnecessary tests will be made and the child is the one that suffers.

Doctors mentioned that there are some normal fluctuations that could be seen by these baby monitors as a sign of alarm. This is because the baby monitor is set to alert the parents when the vital are not in the normal state. This could happen a lot because babies tend to have a lot of fluctuations.

“I worry about the unnecessary care and even potential harm to babies that can be associated with alarms from these devices,” Christopher Bonafide, from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said. “There’s not a role for these devices in the care of healthy infants.”

These devices are marketed as great baby monitors that can help parents avoid SIDS, a condition that kills more than 3000 infants every year in the US. Doctors mentioned that the wearable baby monitors are not effective in reducing the risk of SIDS.

What is your opinion about these devices? Would you buy one for you baby?

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Scientists were able to confirm the benefits of mindfulness meditation.

High levels of stress can be quite dangerous for the wellbeing of a person. While many people already believe and use meditation as a way to reduce stress, only now has its benefits been confirmed by science thanks to a new study.

This is not the first time that scientists were interested in confirming the impact of meditation on a person’s mental state, but testing its effectiveness in an objective manner has been quite difficult due to the subjective nature of the experiment. However, scientists were able to design a rigorous clinical trial to test the impact of mindfulness meditation.

The study was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and was published in the journal Psychiatry Research by a team of researchers led by Dr. Elizabeth A. Hoge, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s Medical Center, the Department of Psychiatry.

For their study, the searchers recruit 89 patients diagnosed with a general anxiety disorder, characterized by chronic and excessive worrying. This type of disorders affects around 7 million people in the US alone. The researchers then randomly divided all the patients into two groups. One group took part in a mindfulness meditation stress reduction course for eight weeks. The other group participated in a stress management education course, which offered them general tips about nutrition, sleep, as well as a variety of other wellness aspects.

Previous mindfulness meditation studies compared the results to that of an untreated control group. This allowed the patients to know if they are being treated or not, and thus skew the results of the study.  Furthermore, the clinical trial also involved testing the results by measuring the stress levels of patients by asking them to speak in public, while researchers monitored several blood-based markers for stress responses.

The researchers discovered that the control group experienced a modest rise in stress levels after the clinical trial, while the group which practiced mindfulness meditation had a dramatic drop in stress after the experiment. This led scientists to confirm the benefits of meditation. Therefore, scientists believe that this type of treatment can be an effective tool in combating anxiety in all types of patients.

What do you think about the study? Do you practice mindfulness meditation?

Image source: Paulding County Area Foundation

Acupuncture may relieve excessive crying of babies.

Acupuncture is regarded by many people as a somewhat strange and unorthodox treatment, but both eastern and western medicine have taken notice of its health benefits. According to a new study, among the benefits of acupuncture is the reduction in babies’ excessive crying known as infantile colic.

The study was published in the online journal Acupuncture in Medicine and it details how the benefits of acupuncture, a treatment known to relieve patients of pain, induce calm, restore gut function, and more, may even help parents reduce the excessive crying of their babies.

Doctors characterize infantile colic as a condition present in babies who cry more than three hours a day at least three days in a week. This condition can affect one in five families and causes pain for the baby and stress for its parents.

For their study, the researchers wanted to determine if the pain-relieving effects of acupuncture would also be present in babies suffering from the condition. Therefore, they compared two types of acupuncture treatments with just standard care. The study involved the observation of 147 babies affected by excessive crying and whose condition was confirmed during a routine check-up across four different child health centers in Sweden.

All the babies involved in the study were aged between 8 weeks and 2 years old. All of them were found healthy besides the colic condition. Furthermore, all of them did not receive any cow’s milk for at least five days as a way to curb excess fussing or crying.

The scientists then randomly allocated each baby to one of three groups and were required to visit the health center for two more times each week over the course of two weeks. The visits included a 30-minutes discussion with a nurse regarding the baby’s symptoms and situation as well as statutory appointments which consisted of childcare advice, weighing and measuring of the baby.

The first group in the study received minimal acupuncture treatment at one acupuncture point for a few seconds. The second group of babies received a tailored acupuncture treatment of five acupuncture points for 30 seconds. Finally, the last group received no acupuncture at all to act a control a group. Furthermore, over the course of the entire study, the parents were asked to monitor how long and often their child cried before and after the treatment.

The researchers saw a reduction in excessive crying in all groups as the colic cleared up in all babies, but the drop was more significant in babies who received the acupuncture treatment.

Image source: Wikimedia

Experts found a type of Japanese tapeworm in US salmon.

Americans who enjoy eating raw or undercooked fish should be careful because they can become infected with the Japanese broad tapeworm.

Known as the Diphyllobothrium nihonkaiense, this species is a digestive tract-invading parasite which can cause a lot of damage. Although most scientists believed that the Japanese tapeworm lives just in Asia, recent research has shown that it has infected US salmon as well.

CDC experts announced that the samples from numerous wild Alaskan salmon tested positive for the Japanese broad tapeworm larvae. As such, the biologists stress that those who catch salmon along the North American Pacific coast should be extremely careful because the fish is most likely infected.

Back in 1986, the researchers discovered this parasite, and concluded that it caused roughly 2,000 infections, making it the 2^nd most prevalent type of infection caused by a species of tapeworm.

The scientists later discovered that the parasite is more dangerous than they had thought. More precisely, most of the infections occurring in Russia, South Korea, and Japan were caused by the Japanese broad tapeworm.

In other words, this species of tapeworm is the most dangerous. Three years ago, a team of wildlife biologists caught 64 wild salmon in Alaska and analyzed them. They found out that the fish were infected with larvae between eight and 15 mm long.

After lab testing, they established that the larvae were Japanese tapeworms. According to the study findings, there are four types of Pacific salmon which can carry Japanese tapeworm larvae, such as sockeye salmon, pink salmon, masu salmon, and chum salmon.

Also, these species arrive in many restaurants worldwide, so they might occur even in Europe. It is worth mentioning that those who become infected usually experience no symptoms. Just some of them can suffer abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, and weight loss.

In the worst-case scenario, this parasite can cause more violent symptoms such as painful bile ducts inflammation and intestinal obstruction. This parasite can grow up to 30 feet long, and it consumes a lot of vitamin B12.

In time, vitamin B12 deficiency can have a detrimental effect on the brain affecting cognitive abilities and memory. Fortunately, tapeworm infections are very rare across the United States, but CDC officials urge citizens to be aware of the risks of consuming undercooked or raw fish.

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