PROTIME-FITNESS HOLISTIC HEALTH AND WELLNESS

  Triple-drug  asthma therapy safely cuts serious flares. Including the third drug to commonly used dual-drug inhalers can reduce asthma exacerbations. Researchers have found that the inclusion of a third drug to commonly used dual-drug inhalers can reduce asthma exacerbations and improve control over the disease in children, adolescents, and adults with moderate-to-severe asthma. McMaster University and The Research Institute of St. Joe's Hamilton announced their findings from a systematic review and meta-analysis. Data from 20 randomized controlled trials, which included almost 12,000 patients, were analyzed in the study. Dual-drug inhalers used to treat asthma typically contain an inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) to reduce inflammation, as well as a long-acting beta-adrenoceptor agonist (LABA) that acts as a bronchodilator. High-certainty evidence showed that the inclusion of a third drug to ICS-LABA combination therapy, known as a long-acting muscarinic antagonist (LAMA), redu...

  A new study finds novel evidence that dreams reflect multiple memories, anticipate future events. Dreams focused on future events utilize memories of multiple past experiences. Dreams result from a process that often combines fragments of multiple life experiences and anticipates future events, according to novel evidence from a new study. Results show that 53.5% of dreams were traced to a memory, and nearly 50% of reports with a memory source were connected to multiple past experiences. The study also found that 25.7% of dreams were related to specific impending events, and 37.4% of dreams with a future event source were related to past experiences' specific memories. In addition, future-oriented dreams became proportionally more common later in the night. "Humans have struggled to understand the meaning of dreams for millennia," said principal investigator Erin Wamsley, who has a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience and is an associate professor in the department of ps...

  New research finds ginger counters certain autoimmune diseases in mice. Naturopathic medicine, or herbal medicine, is all the rage, especially among young people. But how much of this is supported by science? Ginger is known to have anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative effects, making it a popular herbal supplement to treat inflammatory diseases. And according to a Michigan Medicine-led study published in  JCI Insight ,  the main bioactive compound of ginger root, 6-gingerol, is therapeutic in countering the mechanism that fuels certain autoimmune diseases in mice. Researchers specifically looked at lupus, a disease that attacks the body's own immune system, and its often associated condition, antiphospholipid syndrome, which causes blood clots since both cause widespread inflammation and damage organs over time. In mice with either antiphospholipid syndrome or lupus, 6-gingerol prevented neutrophil extracellular trap release triggered by the autoantibodies that these d...

  Cannabis reduces headache and migraine pain by nearly half. Inhaled cannabis reduces self-reported headache severity by 47.3% and migraine severity by 49.6%, according to a  study led by Carrie Cuttler, a Washington State University assistant professor of psychology. The study, published online recently in the  Journal of Pain , is the first to use big data from headache and migraine patients using cannabis in real-time. Previous studies have asked patients to recall the effect of cannabis use in the past. One clinical trial indicated that cannabis was better than ibuprofen in alleviating headaches, but it used nabilone, a synthetic cannabinoid drug. "We were motivated to do this study because a substantial number of people say they use cannabis for headache and migraine, but surprisingly few studies had addressed the topic," said Cuttler, the lead author on the paper. In the WSU study, researchers analyzed archival data from the Strainprint app, allowing patients to tr...

  THE REASON ANTI-CANCER DRUGS NOT ALWAYS EFFECTIVE A possible explanation for why many cancer drugs that kill tumor cells in mouse models won't work in human trials has been found by researchers with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Biomedical Informatics and McGovern Medical School. The research was published today in  Nature Communications. In the study, investigators reported the extensive presence of mouse viruses in patient-derived xenografts (PDX). PDX models are developed by implanting human tumor tissues in immune-deficient mice and are commonly used to help test and develop cancer drugs. "What we found is that when you put a human tumor in a mouse, that tumor is not the same as the tumor that was in the cancer patient," said W. Jim Zheng, Ph.D., professor at the School of Biomedical Informatics and senior author on the study. "The majority of tumors we tested were compromised by mouse viruses." Using a data-...

  IMPROVE BLOOD PRESSURE: MOVE MORE AND SIT LESS According to the new American Heart Association scientific statement published in the American Heart Association's journal, a "prescription" to sit less and move more is the optimal first treatment choice for reducing mild to moderately elevated blood pressure and blood cholesterol in otherwise healthy adults with hypertension . "The current American Heart Association guidelines for diagnosing high blood pressure and cholesterol recognize that otherwise healthy individuals with mildly or moderately elevated levels of these cardiovascular risk factors should actively attempt to reduce these risks. The first treatment strategy for many of these patients should be healthy lifestyle changes beginning with increasing physical activity," said Bethany Barone Gibbs, Ph.D., FAHA, chair of the statement writing group and associate professor in the department of health and human development and clinical and translational sci...

  An omega-3 that's poison for tumors So-called "good fatty acids" are essential for human health and much sought after by those trying to eat healthily. Among the Omega-3 fatty acids, DHA or docosahexaenoic acid is crucial to brain function, vision, and the regulation of inflammatory phenomena. In addition to these virtues, DHA is also associated with a reduction in the incidence of cancer. How it works is the subject of a major discovery by a multidisciplinary team of University of Louvain (UCLouvain) researchers, who have just elucidated the biochemical mechanism that allows DHA and other related fatty acids to slow the development of tumors. This is a major advance that has recently been published in the journal  Cell Metabolism . Key to the discovery: interdisciplinarity In 2016, Olivier Feron's UCLouvain team, which specializes in oncology, discovered that cells in an acidic microenvironment (acidosis) within tumors replace glucose with lipids as an energy sourc...

  High caffeine consumption may be associated with an increased risk of blinding eye disease. According to an international, multi-center study, consuming large amounts of daily caffeine may increase the risk of glaucoma more than three-fold for those with a genetic predisposition to higher eye pressure. The research led by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is the first to demonstrate a dietary -- genetic interaction in glaucoma. The study results published in the June print issue of  Ophthalmology  may suggest patients with a strong family history of glaucoma should cut down on caffeine intake. The study is important because glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness in the United States. It looks at the impact of caffeine intake on glaucoma and intraocular pressure (IOP), which is pressure inside the eye. Elevated IOP is an integral risk factor for glaucoma, although other factors do contribute to this condition. Patients typically experience few or no symptom...

  A diabetes remission diet also lowers blood pressure and reduces the need for medication. New research has shown that if people achieve and maintain substantial weight loss to manage their type 2 diabetes, many can also effectively control their high blood pressure and stop or cut down on their anti-hypertensive medication. A weight management program, developed by researchers at the Universities of Glasgow and Newcastle for the Diabetes UK-funded Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial (DIRECT), has proved effective at lowering blood pressure and reducing the need for antihypertensive medications, as well as bringing remission of type 2 diabetes. The program involves an initial 12 weeks on a nutritionally complete formula diet (low-calorie soups and shakes), which will induce weight loss of over 15 kg (over 2 stones) if followed fully. Diabetes and blood pressure drugs were stopped at the start and only re-started if blood sugar or blood pressure rose. The weight loss phase is followe...

  Women's mental health has a higher association with dietary factors Exercise could reduce the negative association of certain food and mental distress in mature women According to new research from Binghamton University, the State University of New York, women's mental health likely has a higher association with dietary factors than men's. Lina Begdache, assistant professor of health and wellness studies at Binghamton University, had previously published research on diet and mood that suggests that a high-quality diet improves mental health. She wanted to test whether customization of diet improves mood among men and women ages 30 or older. Along with research assistant Cara M. Patrissy, Begdache dissected the different food groups associated with mental distress in men and women ages 30 and older and studied the different dietary patterns about exercise frequency and mental distress. The results suggest that women's mental health has a higher association with dietary...

  Taking short breaks may help our brains learn new skills Scientists discover that the resting brain repeatedly replays compressed memories of what was just practiced In a study of healthy volunteers, National Institutes of Health researchers have mapped out the brain activity that flows when we learn a new skill, such as playing a new song on the piano, and discovering why taking short breaks from practice is a key learning. The researchers found that the volunteers' brains rapidly and repeatedly replayed faster versions of the activity seen while they practiced typing a code during rest. The more a volunteer replayed the activity, the better they performed during subsequent practice sessions, suggesting rest strengthened memories. "Our results support the idea that wakeful rest plays just as important a role as practice in learning a new skill. It appears to be the period when our brains compress and consolidate memories of what we just practiced," said Leonardo G. Coh...

  Cholesterol metabolite induces the production of cancer-promoting vesicles. Scientists working to understand the cellular processes linking high cholesterol to breast cancer recurrence and metastasis report that a byproduct of cholesterol metabolism causes some cells to send out cancer-promoting signals to other cells. These signals are packaged in membrane-bound compartments called extracellular vesicles. As reported in the journal  Endocrinology , the discovery could lead to new anti-cancer therapies, researchers say. "Extracellular vesicles play an important role in normal physiology, but they also have been implicated before in cancer biology," said study lead Erik Nelson, a molecular and integrative physiology professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "These particles carry cargo from one cell to another. This cargo is important because it's diverse and acts as a communication network. But very little is known about what regulates the vesicles....