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Medical News Today: Health News. Computer game effective in treating adolescent depression - Health. A special computer game is as effective for treating adolescent depression as one-on-one counselling with trained clinicians, Australian researchers report in the British Medical Journal. Researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand observed 187 young people12 to 19 years old who showed mild to moderate depressive symptoms.

Roughly half played SPARX, a 3D fantasy game that has users work through a series of seven levels dealing with a range of topics, including: Emotions.Finding hope.Recognizing unhelpful thoughts. Over four to seven weeks, players must restore balance in a world dominated by GNATs, or gloomy negative automatic thoughts. Another group underwent face-to-face treatment by trained counsellors and psychologists. According to the researchers, SPARX was as effective in reducing symptoms of depression. The results were based on several depression rating scales.

SPARX improves qualify of life Those in the SPARX group also reported high satisfaction levels with the game. Turmeric, Curcumin Naturally Block Cancer Cells. Measuring blood pressure on one arm not enough: study. The next time you get your blood pressure checked, make sure it's measured on both arms. Doing so could save your life, a new study has found. Systolic blood pressure differences between the left and the right arm could be signs of vascular disease and increase your risk of dying, according to new research published online Sunday by The Lancet. The study is a detailed review of 28 blood pressure studies. It found "significant evidence" that different readings on both arms are associated with increased risk of peripheral vascular disease (PVD), the narrowing of arteries that supply blood to the legs and feet, and cerebrovascular disease, which affects the blood supply to the brain. More alarming is the finding that inconsistent blood pressure readings between the two arms increase the risk of a cardiovascular death by a whopping 70 per cent.

These risks were associated with a difference of 15 points or higher in blood pressure readings from each arm. The authors of the study, led by Dr. Couch potatoes gain weight without ea... JPost - Health & Science. It has been known for some time that people who watch hours of TV a day tend to be at higher risk of becoming overweight or obese. The connection was thought to be because of munching junk food while watching. But Tel Aviv University researchers have found that not just the eating but also the actual position of “couch potatoes” is harmful. Being stretched out in front of the TV is considered to be “active inactivity” and causes viewers to gain weight. Such inactivity actually encourages the body to create new fat in fat cells, says Prof. Amit Gefen of the department of biomedical engineering. Along with his doctoral student, Naama Shoham, Gefen has shown that preadipocyte cells – the precursors to fat cells – turn into fat cells faster and produce even more fat when subject to prolonged periods of “mechanical stretching loads” – the kind of weight we put on our body tissues when we sit or lie down.

In previous studies, Prof. HGH offers miraculous anti-aging results; here's how to naturally boost human growth hormone levels. It's well known that human growth hormone (HGH) is essential for achieving optimal health. Falling HGH levels result in premature aging, loss of lean body mass, lower levels of energy, and a whole host of other aging-related symptoms. But getting a boost in growth hormone should come from natural sources, not drug injections, say an increasing number of doctors and nutritionists.

In other words: if you want the anti-aging benefits of HGH, you'll be far better off finding ways to allow your body to create the substance on its own. But how do you do that? There are all sorts of nutritional supplements that serve as precursors to HGH synthesis in the human body, and that's a good place to start. The number one method for convincing your body to generate HGH is high intensity strength training. Nothing beats strength training for creating human growth hormone, but there's another factor that's just as important: adequate sleep. Get lots of laughter in your life. iTriage: A Comprehensive Health App For iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch. No one wants to be the central character from Jerome K.

Jerome’s “The Man Who Was A Hospital”, and read so much about ailments that they start feeling themselves suffering from almost all of them, but in most cases, a basic knowledge of medicines and medical procedures can prove really useful. iTriage is an app for the iPhone, using which you can gain knowledge of different diseases, their symptoms and treatment.

The app will also serve as your personal medical record-keeper, and is designed to tell you everything about the medication you might be on, or anything else imaginable about disease and cure. The homepage of iTriage lists 9 main categories that you can browse through, and if you are not sure where to look, there is always the Search option. In Symptoms, you can either view all the diseases and their symptoms, or you can use the more interesting graphical option of discovering your disease and confirming its symptoms. Download iTriage Advertisement. Foodconsumer.org. Medical Breakthroughs -- Medical News and Health Information. Health News Distribution | Health News Licensing | Health Content Syndication. THE MEDICAL NEWS | from News-Medical.Net - Latest Medical News and Research from Around the World.

Health News, Wellness, and Medical Information. Independent news on natural health, nutrition and more. Today. Caring For Ailing Spouse May Prolong Your Life. Older people who spent at least 14 hours a week taking care of a disabled spouse lived longer than others. That is the unexpected finding of a University of Michigan study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study supports earlier research showing that in terms of health and longevity, it really is better to give than to receive. "These findings suggest that caregivers may actually benefit from providing care under some circumstances," said U-M researcher Stephanie Brown, lead author of the study report. "Previous studies have documented negative health effects of caregiving. But the current results show that it is time to disentangle the presumed stress of providing help from the stress of witnessing a loved one suffer.

" Brown is an assistant professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School and a faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). Brown has a theory about why this is the case. Health | Antioxidants 'cannot slow ageing' Copper can help in the battle against influenza A H1N1, scientist says. A leading microbiologist from the University of Southampton has told a conference that his research has found copper is effective in inhibiting the influenza A H1N1 virus. Copper appears to have broad spectrum antiviral activity because it is also effective, not only against RNA-based influenza, but also against DNA-based adenovirus 40/41 which causes gastrointestinal infections. Speaking at the BIT Life Sciences 2nd Annual World Summit on Antivirals in Beijing, China this week, Professor Bill Keevil, from the University’s School of Biological Sciences, added that he believed copper could be used to reduce the spread of flu in public places.

"With the ongoing threat of contamination by influenza A viruses, such as H1N1, there is a real and pressing need to utilise all appropriate and effective measures with proven antimicrobial qualities," commented Professor Keevil. Source: University of Southampton Explore further: Glucosamine promotes longevity by mimicking a low-carb diet. Weed Killer Lowers Male Sex Hormones. Do you remember that TV ad for a weed-killer where two men face each other at their front lawns (ala-fastest draw in the west)? Well, that scene was brought to mind when I read this report on atrazine, a popular weed-killer in the U.S.. As one of the most widely used herbicides in the U.S., atrazine easily runs off into surrounding fields and groundwater.

It is banned in Europe because the concentrations of the herbicide in underground water supply systems can not be contained at safe levels. Recently, a study reported that atrazine lowers the production of the male hormone androgen by changing the genes that make them. The study was done on male rats which were fed with higher doses of atrazine. Now granted the study was conducted on rats (what man would like to “drink” atrazine, eh?)

So why haven’t it been banned yet? Here is a list of herbicide brands that carry atrazine in its ingredients. Image: Personal Collection (yes… I have photos of weeds) Milk Protein Linked to Autism, Schizophrenia, Diabetes and Heart Disease -- Health & Wellness. Knowing about the health benefits of raw milk is not enough. In his book The Devil in the Milk, Dr. Kevin Woodford says we have one more lesson to learn: there is a link between the type of milk we drink and a range of serious illnesses, including heart disease, Type 1 diabetes, autism and schizophrenia. Epidemiological evidence from ten countries has demonstrated a strong association between high intake of milk from A1 positive cows and high incidence of these diseases, and has correlated very closely with World Health Organization data on the level of deaths from mental disorders.

Dr. Woodford, Professor of Farm Management and Agribusiness at Lincoln University in New Zealand, points out that milk consists of three parts: fat or cream, whey, and milk solids. All proteins are long chains of amino acids that have many branches coming off of the main chain. The side chain coming off this histidine is a protein fragment known as beta-casomorphin-7 (BCM 7). Dangerous supplements. Working with experts from the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, an independent research group, we identified a group of ingredients (out of nearly 1,100 in the database) linked to serious adverse events by clinical research or case reports.

To come up with our dozen finalists, we also considered factors such as whether the ingredients were effective for their purported uses and how readily available they were to consumers. We then shopped for them online and in stores near our Yonkers, N.Y., headquarters and easily found all of them for sale in June 2010. The dozen are aconite, bitter orange, chaparral, colloidal silver, coltsfoot, comfrey, country mallow, germanium, greater celandine, kava, lobelia, and yohimbe. The FDA has warned about at least eight of them, some as long ago as 1993. Why are they still for sale? Two national retailers we contacted about specific supplements said they carried them because the FDA has not banned them. Amino Acid Reduces Compulsive Hair Pulling - in Psychiatry, General Psychiatry from MedPage Today. PRINCETON, N.J., July 6 -- An amino acid available in health-food stores reduced repetitive hair-pulling in patients with trichotillomania, a compulsive disorder that results in noticeable hair loss, a new study found.

Patients who received the amino acid N-acetylcysteine saw significant reductions in hair-pulling symptoms as measured by the Massachusetts General Hospital Hair Pulling Scale and the Psychiatric Institute Trichotillomania Scale (P=0.001). Overall, 56% percent of patients were "much or very much improved," compared to only 16% taking placebo (P=0.003), according to the study, published in the July 6 Archives of General Psychiatry.

"This study, the first to our knowledge that examines the efficacy of a glutamatergic agent in the treatment of trichotillomania, found that N-acetylcysteine demonstrated statistically significant reductions in trichotillomania symptoms," wrote Jon E. Grant, JD, MD, MPH, of the University of Minnesota School of Medicine, and colleagues. false. Early Diagnosis Of Alzheimer's Possible With Synchrotron Light. Why, you might wonder, can't doctors just take an MRI or CT scan of our brains and tell us whether we are at risk for Alzheimer's disease or not. One simple answer is that the Aβ plaques that form in the brains of Alzheimer's patients are so small in the early stages of the disease that they can't be seen by current diagnostic methods. But that may soon change with new x-ray techniques....

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have demonstrated that a technique used to look at breast tumors and joint cartilage can be used to detect early Aβ plaques in mice. This technique, called diffraction-enhanced imaging (DEI), depends on synchrotron x-ray beams that are thousands of times more intense and concentrated than any x-ray means now used in medicine.

In the mouse study, researchers used DEI in micro-computerized tomography to see the entire mouse brain, including bones and soft tissue structures, as well as the individual Aβ plaques. Credit card-sized device tests for heart disease using less than a drop of blood. Endothelial progenitor cells can become Endothelial cells (pictured), which make up the lining of blood vessels A new credit-card sized device could provide a way to test people for heart disease using a pinprick of blood. Developed by a team of researchers from Harvard and Northeastern universities in Boston the device can measure and collect a type of cells, called endothelial progenitor cells, using just 200 microliters of blood.

The depletion or ageing of these bone-marrow derived endothelial progenitor cells is a risk factor for vascular disease, as they can enter the bloodstream and go to areas of blood vessel injury to help repair damage. This is because they have the ability to become the cells that make up the lining of the blood vessels (endothelial cells). So the device, which enables the easy collection of these cells, could also bring efforts to create tissue in the laboratory for vascular bypass surgeries another step closer to reality. About the Author. Massachusetts Warns: Bisphenol A Toxic ( Mass. Department of Pub. (Date:4/1/2014)... the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the ... trigger a significant shift in opioid addiction prevention, diagnosis ... a comparative review of HIV/AIDS and addiction by researchers ... for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, based at The ...

Emergency Medicine at Rhode Island Hospital and assistant professor ... (Date:4/1/2014)... Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) today announced ... Mayo Clinic, the innovative healthcare organization that has ... quality services in an era of ballooning medical ... the 2014 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and ... , "Operations research is deeply rooted in Mayo ... (Date:4/1/2014)... (Date:4/1/2014)... 36,210 adult tonsillectomy patients finds that 20 percent ... to a decades long discussion. (Date:4/1/2014)... ... of Physicians Foundation and the Institute of ... from academia, medicine, large employers, pharmaceuticals, media, ... address issues in health communication and focus ... ... ... ... ... ...

Killing cancer, without killing healthy cells | Health. Apoptosis (cell death) occurring in the brain. The majority of diseases begin the same way – with the process of cell death, otherwise known as apoptosis. While most imaging techniques seek to reveal abnormalities in the shape and appearance of the body’s organs, Israel’s Aposense, a clinical stage drug development company, has developed a molecular imaging technology to detect apoptosis in the cells themselves, at the earliest phase of a disease. This technology has multiple uses. It can detect diseases before the symptoms manifest themselves; track the day-to-day progress of cancer treatment; and significantly, it can target and treat cancer cells via injection, without harming healthy cells and obviating the need for invasive procedures. Founded originally by neurologist Ilan Ziv in 1997 and chaired today by Eli Horovitz – the former CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals, Aposense takes a two pronged approach, says CEO Yoram Asheri – diagnostic and therapeutic platforms.

Identifying dying cells. Cancer cell breakthrough re... JPost - Health & Sci-Tech - Health. Cancer Cells Are Protected By Our Own Immune System. Skin Cancer: Star Trek-Style Probe Could Improve Diagnosis And Treatment. New drug could cure nearly any viral infection. Treatment with vitamin C dissolves toxic protein aggregates in Alzheimer's disease. Harmless soil-dwelling bacteria successfully kill cancer. Cuba Announces Release of the World's First Lung Cancer Vaccine.