The Great Pumpkin Benefits

Pumpkin Seeds: A Calming Influence?

There couldn't be a more appropriate time for this study. Research from the Whitby Mental Health Centre shows a common commodity associated with Halloween may be just the thing to ease your fears if the most frightening time of year leaves you feeling a little nervous. They're a form of pumpkin seeds and who would have believed it - tests show they can help ease your stress.

Angeli Chitale often feels nervous, but finds taking the seeds eases her anxiety. "It makes you feel calmer," she points out. How can that be? It turns out pumpkin seeds contain a substance called tryptophan, the same ingredient found in turkey that makes you so sleepy after your Thanksgiving dinner. It produces serotonin in your brain, which helps elevate your mood.

The group in the study that took pure pumpkin seed flour with the oil removed experienced 16 per cent less anxiety. "They didn't feel the panic that they felt before," confirms Dr. Craig Hudson, a psychiatrist with the Whitby Mental Health Centre. "They still felt anxious but they were able to control their anxiety."

And Angeli finds bedtime a lot easier, too. "In the evening time I felt that I slept better and I've had insomnia forever."

The results excite Dr. Hudson because there's no real medication involved. "We describe this now as a functional food. It has the look and feel of a food yet has the function of a drug."

But there is one caveat in this that can sow the seeds of surprise. It only works on pumpkin seeds with the oil squeezed out. That allows the tryptophan to be absorbed into your brain.
Source: CityNews.ca

Cerebral Optimism Inherent - Study Indicates

Humans hard-wired for optimism, study finds

Humans are hard-wired for optimism and think good things will happen to them in the future despite no evidence to support such expectations, according to a study by U.S. and British researchers.

People expect to live longer and be healthier than average, underestimate their likelihood of getting a divorce and overestimate their prospects of career success, psychologists and neurologists from New York University and University College in London wrote in the latest issue of the periodical Nature.

The optimism is wired into the brain, they wrote, which recalls past events in an effort to imagine the future. Certain portions of the brain — the amygdala and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex — showed increased activity in test subjects who had been asked to imagine future events.

The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to monitor subjects while they thought of future possible events, such as winning an award or the end of a relationship.

"When participants imagined positive future events relative to negative ones, enhanced activation was detected in the rostral anterior cingulate and amygdala, which are the same brain areas that seem to malfunction in depression," said lead author Tali Sharot, now a post-doctoral fellow at University College London.

More optimistic participants showed greater activity in the rostral anterior cingulate region when imagining future positive events, Sharot said.

The researchers found test subjects usually expected positive events to happen sooner than negative events, and generally imagined them with greater vividness.

"Our behavioural results suggest that while the past is constrained, the future is open to interpretation, allowing people to distance themselves from possible negative events and move closer toward positive ones," NYU professor Elizabeth Phelps said in a release.

"Understanding optimism is critical as optimism has been related to physical and mental health. On the other hand, a pessimistic view is correlated with severity of depression symptoms."

Source: CBC.ca

Sleep Deprivation Detrimental to Reason

Lack of sleep hinders coping skills, logical reasoning: study

Scientists have confirmed what every newborn-cradling, sleep-deprived parent knows: that lack of sleep is connected to an inability to cope with normal emotional challenges.

They also theorize that sleep deprivation is linked to psychiatric ailments such as anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder.

Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Medical School have found that the amygdala, the region of the brain that alerts the body to protect itself in times of danger, goes into overdrive on no sleep. This in turn shuts down the prefrontal cortex, which commands logical reasoning, and thus prevents the release of chemicals needed to calm down the fight-or-flight reflex.

The findings are published Oct. 22 in the journal Current Biology.

"It's almost as though, without sleep, the brain had reverted back to more primitive patterns of activity, in that it was unable to put emotional experiences into context and produce controlled, appropriate responses," said Matthew Walker, director of UC Berkeley's Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory and senior author of the study, in a release.

The researchers studied 26 healthy participants aged 18 to 30, splitting them into two groups with equal numbers of males and females.

The sleep-deprived group stayed awake during Day 1, Night 1 and Day 2, while the sleep-control group stayed awake both days and slept normally during the night.

The participants' brains were scanned with magnetic resonance imaging while they were exposed to images that ranged from neutral to very negative. The brain responses of the participants were measured.

Researchers found that the amygdala became hyperactive in response to negative visual stimuli such as mutilated bodies, children with tumors and other gory images in study participants who stayed awake for 35 hours straight.

Brain scans of those who got a full night's sleep in their own beds showed normal activity in the amygdala.

"The emotional centres of the brain were over 60 per cent more reactive under conditions of sleep deprivation than in subjects who had obtained a normal night of sleep," Walker said.

The researchers feel that the findings point to a connection between sleep disruption and mood disorders, including bipolar disorder.
Source: CBC.ca

Loss of Hearing LInked to Anit-impotence Drugs

Anti-impotence drugs linked to hearing loss

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved labelling changes for three kinds of erectile dysfunction drugs to display more prominently the potential risk of sudden hearing loss.

The FDA on Thursday asked manufacturers of Viagra, Cialis and Levitra to revise product labelling after a very small number of patients taking the drugs reported sudden hearing loss, sometimes accompanied by ringing in the ears and dizziness.

It's not clear if the drugs actually trigger hearing loss, but the agency decided to act after counting 29 reports of hearing problems since 1996 among users.

Dr. Robert Boucher, an agency ear, nose and throat specialist, said in reviewing the reports he noticed that the hearing loss occurred within hours to two days of taking one of the drugs.

"We don't know enough to say that it's ironclad caused by the drugs, but we see enough to say we can't ignore it either," he said.

The reports involved hearing loss in one ear, which in a third of cases was temporary.

The FDA has urged patients who experience any hearing problems, loss or ringing in the ears to promptly call their doctors and stop taking the impotence drugs.

Because some level of hearing loss is usually associated with the aging process, patients taking these drugs (phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors) may not think to talk to their doctor about it, said Dr. Janet Woodcock, the FDA's chief medical officer.

Source: CBC.ca

HIV drug approved in Canada - First in 10 years

New drug approved in Canada to treat HIV, first in 10 years

Health Canada has approved the first drug in the first new class of HIV medications to be brought to market in Canada in a decade.

Celsentri - the brand name for the drug maraviroc - is the first of a class of drugs called CCR5 antagonists to gain regulatory approval.

The drug, made by Pfizer Canada Inc., blocks entry of HIV into the immune system's T cells, reducing the level of the virus in the body. It is approved for use only in people who have already been on other HIV medications; it is not licensed for people who are just starting anti-retroviral drug therapy.

Dr. Philip Berger, an HIV-AIDs specialist, said having a new class of AIDS drugs will help people who have developed resistance to existing therapies. Those are often longtime HIV-AIDS survivors who were started on a single or dual drug regime before the current triple-drug therapy was developed.

"It is definitely an advance for people who have used up all of their current options," said Berger, who practises at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. He noted that other new classes of HIV drugs are also in the pipeline.

"For those that began on AZT mono-therapy, for example, 20 years ago or were on dual therapy, which turned out to be ineffective, for that group these new classes of drugs are critical," he said.

Source: CBC.ca

Bulking up Seniors

Seniors looking to get more bang for their exercise buck may benefit from popping an over-the-counter nutritional supplement every day, according to new research.

Exercise has already been proven to combat the loss of muscle mass. But adding two supplements commonly found in health-food stores, creatine monohydrate and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), can boost the effects of exercise, according to research published today in the peer-reviewed online journal of the Public Library of Science, PLoS One.

Creatine, a compound produced by the body and naturally occurring in meat that helps supply energy to muscles, and CLA, a naturally occurring fatty acid, appeared to help study participants build muscle while shedding fat, says Mark Tarnopolsky, the lead researcher and a professor of medicine and pediatrics at McMaster University.

The supplements appear to work only in combination with exercise, and most of the benefit comes from activity. "No one has a weight-loss miracle cure - if they did, they'd be a billionaire," Dr. Tarnopolsky said. "If you're sitting on your keister, the creatine does nothing for you and the CLA probably does nothing for you."

Thirty-nine people aged 65 or older took part in the trial, in which all performed regular resistance training over the course of six months. All showed improvements in function and strength, but those who took the supplements instead of a placebo showed a greater improvement in muscle mass and fat loss.

Those who took the supplements in the study on average gained 2.1 kilograms of muscle mass and lost 1.9 kilograms of body fat. Those who took a placebo gained 0.9 kilograms of muscle mass and lost only 400 grams of body fat.

While he studied only the senior demographic, Dr. Tarnopolsky says he can see baby boomers extrapolating from the study's results.

"For the overweight, middle-aged person or the older adult who is starting to exercise ... at least in the short term this combination does appear to get people to where they want to go a little bit faster."

Previous studies had shown creatine worked to increase muscle mass, but had no effect on fat. Data on CLA were mixed for humans; animal studies had shown the supplement's ability to decrease fat.

Creatine has also received somewhat of a bad rap: Though legal, it's been linked with steroid use and other illegal doping in the world of sport.

But athletes take the compound at much higher doses, and even at those doses Dr. Tarnopolsky questions whether they would be performance-enhancing.

To maximize safety, Dr. Tarnopolsky consulted hundreds of studies on creatine as well as on CLA to determine the lowest possible dose. He administered five grams of creatine and six grams of CLA daily.

Without supplements, adults normally get between one and 1.5 grams a day of creatine from food.

In some Nordic countries, he says, a diet high in cold-water fish results in intakes of close to five grams a day.

The only side effects at the dosages he administered are gastrointestinal upset in 5 per cent of people.

But he warns that some nutritional supplements contain 20-gram doses. "All bets are off if you put someone on 20 g," he says.

Hamilton resident Chris Dunn, 71, who took supplements in the study, has no doubt the combination worked for him. He noticed a marked increase in strength during his weight-training sessions. "It was amazing; quite noticeable," he says.

Elizabeth and Michael, who asked that their last names not be used, described themselves as anti-vitamin and say they were skeptical of the supplements. Already active at 75 and 77 respectively - the married couple regularly ski and hike Ontario's Bruce Trail - they volunteered for the study primarily for the supervised exercise program.

Both say they feel they benefited. "Health doesn't come in a bottle," Elizabeth says. "But I feel pretty good."

Michael, a former family doctor, says he wants to read the results of the study before deciding whether they might add a supplement to their breakfast routine.

Dr. Tarnopolsky suspects further research may show that the effects drop off after six months, in which case the supplements may only be of benefit in the early stages of a new exercise program. But that's a good thing, he says.

"If people see changes happening, they're more likely to stay with the program," he says. "Any way we can improve compliance and get people to stick with exercise, we're going to see the effects. Folks even in their 90s can improve."

Source: The Globe and Mail.com

Health Canada pulls Prexige off Market due to Liver Problems

Health Canada is advising consumers that it has stopped the sale of the anti-inflammatory drug Prexige (lumiracoxib) in Canada and will cancel the drug's market authorization due to the potential for serious liver-related adverse events.