http://bit.ly/2KWc2tG

As some researchers have put it, "A huge proportion of your immune system is actually in your [gastrointestinal] tract." So, how do bacteria and the immune system interact?

New research now illuminates part of the answer to this question. It reveals that the "friendly" bacteria collaborate with both the cells that line the inside of our intestines and with immune cells to regulate the immune system's response to infection.

The researchers found that the friendly bacteria interact with both the epithelial cells that line the inside of our gut and with our immune cells to find the right "dosage" of the immune response.

"We found that when we gave the laboratory animals antibiotics, the antigen-presenting cells did not make IL-10."

"When we put back bacteria in the animals' guts, only bacteria that could attach to the intestinal epithelium triggered IL-10 production by antigen-presenting cells and reduced the inflammatory response," Prof. Diehl explains.

"It's somewhat counterintuitive because microbes that can attach to the intestinal epithelium are thought of as pathogens that can potentially cause disease."

"But, in this case we found that the attachment of bacteria to the epithelium was not causing disease; on the contrary, it was necessary to promote a balanced regulation of the T cell responses and helped protect the gut," she says.

http://bit.ly/2KSPy9P

Initial human studies that compared fasting every other day to eating less every day showed that both worked about equally for weight loss, though people struggled with the fasting days. So I had written off IF as no better or worse than simply eating less, only far more uncomfortable. My advice was to just stick with the sensible, plant-based, Mediterranean-style diet.

New research is suggesting that not all IF approaches are the same, and some are actually very reasonable, effective, and sustainable, especially when combined with a nutritious plant-based diet. So I’m prepared to take my lumps on this one (and even revise my prior post).

We have evolved to be in sync with the day/night cycle, i.e., a circadian rhythm. Our metabolism has adapted to daytime food, nighttime sleep. Nighttime eating is well associated with a higher risk of obesity, as well as diabetes.

Based on this, researchers from the University of Alabama conducted a study with a small group of obese men with prediabetes. They compared a form of intermittent fasting called “early time-restricted feeding,” where all meals were fit into an early eight-hour period of the day (7 am to 3 pm), or spread out over 12 hours (between 7 am and 7 pm). Both groups maintained their weight (did not gain or lose) but after five weeks, the eight-hours group had dramatically lower insulin levels and significantly improved insulin sensitivity, as well as significantly lower blood pressure. The best part? The eight-hours group also had significantly decreased appetite. They weren’t starving.

Just changing the timing of meals, by eating earlier in the day and extending the overnight fast, significantly benefited metabolism even in people who didn’t lose a single pound.

http://bit.ly/2KXgFnC

Stimulating the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for controlling complex ideas and behaviors, can reduce a person’s intention to commit a violent act by more than 50 percent, according to research from the University of Pennsylvania and Nanyang Technological University published in the Journal of Neuroscience.What’s more, using such a minimally invasive technique, called transcranial direct-current stimulation, increased the perception that acts of physical and sexual assault were morally wrong.

“The ability to manipulate such complex and fundamental aspects of cognition and behavior from outside the body has tremendous social, ethical, and possibly someday legal implications,” says Roy Hamilton, a neurologist at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and the senior paper author.

It’s viewing violent crime from a public-health perspective, adds psychologist Adrian Raine, a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and co-author on the paper. “Historically we haven’t taken this kind of approach to interventions around violence,” he says. “But this has promise. We only did one 20-minute session, and we saw an effect. What if we had more sessions? What if we did it three times a week for a month?”

http://bit.ly/2tZoj7d

Research from the University of Pennsylvania shows that using minimally invasive electrical currents on the prefrontal cortex can reduce the desire to carry out physical and sexual assault and increase the perception that such violence is morally wrong.

timulating the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for controlling complex ideas and behaviors, can reduce a person’s intention to commit a violent act by more than 50 percent, according to research from the University of Pennsylvania and Nanyang Technological Universitypublished in the Journal of Neuroscience. What’s more, using such a minimally invasive technique, called transcranial direct-current stimulation, increased the perception that acts of physical and sexual assault were morally wrong.

“The ability to manipulate such complex and fundamental aspects of cognition and behavior from outside the body has tremendous social, ethical, and possibly someday legal implications,” says Roy Hamilton, a neurologist at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and the senior paper author.

It’s viewing violent crime from a public-health perspective, adds psychologist Adrian Raine, a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and co-author on the paper. “Historically we haven’t taken this kind of approach to interventions around violence,” he says. “But this has promise. We only did one 20-minute session, and we saw an effect. What if we had more sessions? What if we did it three times a week for a month?”

The researchers zeroed in on the prefrontal cortex—and specifically, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the top, front area of the brain—because it’s well-documented that antisocial individuals have deficits in this region, says Olivia Choy, an assistant professor in psychology at NTU in Singapore and the lead author on the paper.

“If an offender’s brain is scanned, we don’t really know if it’s the brain deficit that leads to the behavior or if it’s the other way around,” says Choy, who earned her doctoral, master’s, and bachelor’s degrees from Penn. “One of the main objectives of this study was to see whether there was a causal role of this brain region on antisocial behavior.”  

http://bit.ly/2tWIpyU

The US Opioid Crisis, Charts Galore

How many hospital admissions, deaths and addicted babies does it require before the government empowers their federal health agencies to intervene?

The US accounts for 4.4% of our 7.1 billion global population, and consumes nearly 90 percent of the world’s opiate supply.

As we all know by now, this situation spread like pill popping wildfire, and is completely out of hand. Drug overdoses have dramatically increased over the last two decades, with deaths more than tripling between 1999 and 2016. In 2008 overdose was declared the number one cause of accidental death in the states. This is killing more Americans than gun violence and car crashes combined.

In 2016, more than 63,000 people died from drug overdose, approximately 42,249 or 67% involved prescription or illicit opioids.

Synthetic opioids account for the highest number of deaths and belong to the novel psychoactive substances (NPS) drug category. These are man made and similar in action to the naturally occurring opiates, morphine and heroin. They are derived from species of the opium poppy plant and have been used for medicinal and recreational purposes for centuries.

Fentanyl is the most popular synthetic opioid. Fatal overdoses doubled in 2017, to over 19,000. Unlike many other synthetic opioids, fentanyl is available for prescription use. Licensed in the 60’s, it was administered during surgery. Clinical use expanded in the 90’s, when a prolonged-release skin patch was developed for chronic pain.

Fentanyl is estimated, dose for dose, to be 75 times stronger than morphine and is now common in the illicit drugs market. The opioid is reportedly used as a highly dangerous lacing agent of heroin and cocaine.

Associated Complications of Opioid Addiction

There are a host of associated side effects, illnesses and complications, which go hand in hand with opiate abuse. This includes opioid use disorder, hepatitis, HIV and neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS).

Nearly six out of every 1,000 infants born in the US are now diagnosed with NAS. This number has quadrupled in the last 15 years. The number of effected babies between 1999–2016, in Tennessee alone:-

http://bit.ly/2tWcej4

Asimportant as it is to start your day right, it’s equally important to end each day with intention. An evening routine not only honors the day you had, it prepares you for the tomorrow by generating massive momentum, productivity, focus, creativity, and energy — but you wouldn’t know it in a society that celebrates busyness over basic health.

The fact is that you cannot, and will not, be healthy if you are not actively optimizing your night routine. I’ve been tweaking my own for a few years, and the best version so far is below. Use it as a springboard for exploring what works for you.

http://bit.ly/2IS0xyh

‘I can’t feel my legs.’

I screamed in my head, but my throat closed up in panic. I was stuck.

It was about 1 am and I had just, rather unceremoniously, sat down on the toilet to pee. Only this time, for the first time in the 22 years of my life, I couldn’t get back up.

The incident was the first of its kind, but the ordeal was old and familiar. I had grown used to a frighteningly high level of muscle fatigue but I had never considered being stuck in a situation like this, quite literally with my pants down.

In my struggle to get back up, I fell over, and everything stopped.

In the dead of the night, with tears streaming down my face, I was numb on the damp bathroom floor. I couldn’t help feeling my helpless, humiliated worst. Thankfully, I had my cell phone on me. I called up my brother repeatedly and he came and broke the door down.

I was safe.

Then there was the time I was travelling alone last year and had a full panic attack as I entered the airport because I was fatigued to my maximum. As the airline ground staff helped me process my ticket and luggage, it felt as if everyone’s eyes in that tiny Pune terminal were fixated on the young girl in the wheelchair. Confused, pitying stares.

But while all the drama unfolded outside, I was catching up on what my friends were doing on their Instagram stories.

http://bit.ly/2IQgbKT

Summary: A new study reveals practicing mindfulness could help provide some relief for those suffering from tinnitus. Researchers say MBCT significantly reduces the severity of tinnitus symptoms compared to relaxation based treatments.

Tinnitus, described as a sensation or awareness of sound that is not caused by an external sound source, affects approximately six million people in the UK – 10 percent of the UK’s population. Approximately 1 in 100 people are very distressed or disabled by it and as many as 1 in 20 people are at least moderately distressed by it. Tinnitus is associated with complaints of emotional stress, insomnia, auditory perceptual problems and concentration problems.

As yet there is no treatment to stop the tinnitus noise but this research, funded by the British Tinnitus Association (BTA), shows clearly that treatment can make it less severe, intrusive and bothersome.

Dr Liz Marks, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath, will explore the report’s findings in more detail at the BTA’s annual conference in Birmingham in September. She said: “We compared MBCT to relaxation therapy, a traditional treatment for people with chronic tinnitus, to determine if MBCT was a better option than the current recommended practice.

“In total 75 patients took part in the trial at UCLH’s Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital receiving either MBCT or relaxation therapy. The study found that both treatments led to a reduction in tinnitus severity, psychological distress, anxiety and depression for patients.

“However, the MBCT treatment led to significantly greater reductions in tinnitus severity than the relaxation treatment, and this improvement lasted for longer. In addition, 182 patients who completed MBCT routinely in our clinic showed a similar level of improvement.”

Relaxation therapy provides patients with specific skills to reduce stress arousal levels. In contrast, MBCT, taught by highly-trained clinical psychologists, teaches patients to pay purposeful, present-moment attention to experiences, rather than trying to supress those experiences. Practicing mindfulness meditation in this way can cultivate a more helpful way of responding to tinnitus. People learn how to ‘allow’ and ‘accept’ tinnitus, rather than having to ‘fight it’ or ‘push it away’. Mindfulness does not aim to change the nature or sound of the tinnitus, but the therapy can lead to tinnitus becoming less intrusive, to a point where it is no longer a problem for people.

Dr Marks added: “MBCT turns traditional tinnitus treatment on its head – so rather than trying to avoid or mask the noise, it teaches people to stop the battle with tinnitus.

“The mindfulness approach is radically different from what most tinnitus sufferers have tried before, and it may not be right for everyone. We are confident, however, that the growing research base has demonstrated how it can offer an exciting new treatment to people who may have found that traditional treatment has not been able to help them yet. We hope the results of our research will be one of the first steps to MBCT becoming more widely adopted.”

http://bit.ly/2ISC8c6

WSU study questions value of long-term opioid therapy for chronic, non-cancer pain.

Stopping long-term opioid treatment does not make chronic, non-cancer-related pain worse and, in some cases, makes it better, Washington State University researchers have found.

The research marks a crucial first step towards understanding how ending long-term opioid therapy affects patients with different types of chronic pain and could help medical practitioners identify effective, alternative treatments to opioids.

"On average, pain did not become worse among patients in our study a year after discontinuing long-term opioid therapy," said Sterling McPherson, associate professor and director for biostatistics and clinical trial design at the WSU Elson F. Floyd College of Medicine. "If anything, their pain improved slightly, particularly among patients with mild to moderate pain just after discontinuation. Clinicians might consider these findings when discussing the risks and benefits of long-term opioid therapy as compared to other, non-opioid treatments for chronic pain."

http://bit.ly/2IQZ4sf

Problem-solving education found effective, perhaps by reducing perceived stress.

In a sample of 230 low-income mothers the 111 who received PSE had an 11% lower rate of perceived stress, a 15% greater rate of "behavioral activation" change, and a 17% greater rate of problem-focused coping, compared with the control group, reported Michael Silverstein, MD, MPH, of Boston Medical Center and colleagues in JAMA Network Open.

Lower levels of perceived stress were associated with decreased depressive symptoms, while behavioral activation and problem-focused coping were not correlated with depression, the researchers reported.

Each participant received six one-on-one, workbook-based PSE activities, which were conducted between 2011 and 2016 in the mothers' homes or at six different facilities that host Head Start, a federally funded program that provides early childhood education to low-income children and families.

The researchers followed up with the mothers at 6 and 12 months, with only a few participants dropping out over the course of the study. The majority of mothers (66.1%) were Hispanic, with an average age of 31.4.

"Across an array of plausible theory-based intervention mediators, improvement in perceived stress was associated with both intervention participation and depressive symptom outcomes," the investigators wrote. "However, the mechanism for much of the intervention's impact on depression remained unexplained."