This Week In Wellness

TWIW 56: Movement eases acute mental disorders

This Week In Wellness physical exercise could help reduce the amount of time people spend in acute mental health facilities and reduce their reliance on psychotropic medications when they are there according to a study published in SAGE Journals.
“The general attitude of medicine is that you treat the primary problem first, and exercise was never considered to be a life or death treatment option. Now that we know it’s so effective, it can become as fundamental as pharmacological intervention,” explains David Tomasi, a lecturer at the University of Vermont
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190521124650.htm
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2164956119848657
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TWIW 55: How to track a pandemic

This Week In Wellness whilst the media is reporting the seemingly exponential growth of Coronavirus worldwide some are suggesting that the spread of the disease may be plotting a different path.
It is common in the media to show linear graphs of the Coronavirus that show seemingly exponential growth and this growth has been extrapolated by many experts in the media to forecast dire results. Kenneth Chang, science reporter at the New York times argues that we should be looking more closely at the logarithmic graphs of the spread rather than the linear graphs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/health/coronavirus-data-logarithm-chart.html
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
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TWIW 54: Soup broths may help curb malaria

This Week In Wellness traditional recipes provided by the families of London schoolchildren and derived from traditional family recipes originating in Europe, Africa and the Middle East have in some cases been shown to be as effective as malarial medications.
Researchers from Imperial College London helped the schoolchildren test their family soup broths for activity against the malaria parasite. These broth recipes had been passed down generations for the treatment of fever. Out of a total of 56 broths, five of these broths were shown to curb the growth of the malaria parasite by 50% including two cases where the reduction was equivalent to the leading antimalarial drug dihydroartemisinin.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/193986/scientists-schoolkids-find-family-soups-have/
https://adc.bmj.com/content/104/12/1138
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TWIW 53: Preventing Coronavirus

This Week In Wellness the World Health Organisation WHO has officially declared the Coronavirus COVID-19 a pandemic as action is taken all over the world to halt it’s spread including America shutting its borders to the EU, the NBA cancelling the rest of its basketball season and the Australian Government advising against “non-essential” gatherings of 500 people or more, but are things you can do.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/13/australia-coronavirus-live-news-formula-one-f1-gp-grand-prix-melbourne-australian-government-stimulus-economic-package-asx200-latest-updates?page=with:block-5e6b07f08f08c2df6d278c18
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
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TWIW 52: “Russian Roulette” for 95% of older Australians

This Week In Wellness the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) through their President Associate Professor Chris Freeman say that “we are neglecting vulnerable older Australians when it comes to protecting them from medicine-related harms” and describes their medicine safety as a game of “Russian Roulette”.
https://ajp.com.au/news/most-aged-care-residents-have-three-medicine-problems/
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TWIW 51: Fasting linked to longer life, less disease and better performance

This Week In Wellness a review published in the New England Journal of Medicine has linked intermittent fasting to improved health, slowing or reversing ageing and a reduction in chronic diseases including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers and neuro degenerative brain disorders.
Whilst the authors acknowledge that the results can be variable and influenced by things like sex, diet and genetic factors, they claim that the positvie link to longevity is consistent. They show that studies in animals and humans have shown that the many health benefits of intermittent fasting are not just the result of reduced free-radical production or weight loss but are related to more complex adaptive cellular responses that improve glucose regulation, increase stress resistance and reduce inflammation just to name a fee benefits.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1905136
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TWIW 50: Healthy lifestyle adds 10 disease free years

This Week In Wellness a healthy lifestyle leads to a life that is free of chronic illness including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer for longer.
Using data from the Nurses Health Study and the Health Professionals follow up study this paper in the British Journal of Medicine was able to confirm that never smoking, maintaining a healthy body weight, moderate to vigorous physical activity, moderate alcohol intake and a quality diet were able to add up to 10 years of chronic disease free life as well as increasing life expectancy if they exhibited 4 or 5 of these healthy lifestyle factors.
https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.l6669
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TWIW 49: Cooking oils lead to increased obesity in hunter gatherers

This Week In Wellness a Bolivian hunter gatherer tribe famous for its impeccable heart health has seen an increase in their levels in recent years as their levels of cooking oil intake have gone up.
The Tsimane’ isolated population have traditionally eaten a whole food omnivorous diet including lean meats, fish, fruits and vegetables and occasional honey. Along with an active lifestyle this has led to very healthy hearts. A 2017 study by the NIH National Institute on Ageing showed that they have low average blood pressure, little heart disease and the best coronary artery calcium scores ever measured.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190916081430.htm
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/oby.22556
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TWIW 48: Purpose adds years to your life

And This Week In Wellness a study of 7000 US adults over the age of 50 has shown that those with the lowest sense of life purpose were twice as likely to die in the following 5 years, even when adjusting for socio-economic status, health characteristics and psychological well-being.
In a confirmation of findings from previous studies this 2019 report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It used data from The Health and Retirement Study where participants filled in a questionnaire to rank their life purpose, amongst many other things. These same participants were then followed up 5 years later. According to the study heart, circulatory, blood and digestive tract conditions seemed to be especially related to life purpose.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2734064
https://www.bluezones.com/2019/05/news-huge-study-confirms-purpose-and-meaning-add-years-to-life/
http://thewellnesscouch.com/category/100no
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TWIW 47: Europe bans bee killing pesticide

This Week In Wellness the European Commission has decided not to renew approval for a pesticide linked to harming bees, meaning farmers will not be allowed to use Bayer’s insecticide known as thiacloprid, sold under brands Calypso and Biscaya, after April 30 this year.
“There are environmental concerns related to the use of this pesticide, particularly its impact on groundwater, but also related to human health, in reproductive toxicity,” Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said in a statement.
https://www.dailysabah.com/europe/2020/01/14/eu-commission-bans-bayer-pesticide-harmful-to-bees-humans
https://www.pum.com.au/blog/where-does-australia-stand-on-neonicotinoid-insecticides/
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TWIW 46: Popular sunscreens leading to toxicity

This Week In Wellness sunscreen lotions and sprays may leach up to 360 times more of one chemical alone than the FDA allows, whilst the other 5 chemicals tested also gathered in the blood in levels higher than the recommended amount even days after application.
Strangely the FDA and American Academy of Dermatology stresses the chemicals are safe despite the levels being above their own recommendations and with several reports linking them to hormone disruption and liver and kidney failure.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7911979/Sunscreen-chemicals-concentrations-blood-360-TIMES-higher-FDA-threshold.html
https://bit.ly/2RWN678
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TWIW 45: Insect damage makes fruit healthier

This Week In Wellness research has found that “wounds” caused by insects may actually make fruit healthier for human consumption showing that the stress response mounted by the fruit actually increases the levels of anti-oxidants.
Principle investigator of the study Luis Cisneros-Zevallos, Ph.D.,said that “There was the existing idea proposed by others that insects present in the field in organic farming could cause a stress response in the plant and increase antioxidant compounds, however, this hypothesis or concept was never tested until now, where we mimicked the damage caused by insects. We proved that wounding leaves in plants like those caused by insects produce healthier organic fruit.”
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-wounds.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-55033-w
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