Laughter has similar health benefits to aerobic exercise and statin use!!!!

How cool is this!  From the Scope blog at Stanford University:

How laughter, anger may influence heart health


Lia Steakley on August 29th, 2011 1 Comment

Anger and the inability to manage stress can harm your heart, while laughter can be an effective stress-reliever and improve cardiovascular function, according to a pair of studies presented yesterday at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) meeting.

In the first study, Italian researchers recruited 228 survivors of an acute myocardial infarction, 200 of whom were men, conducted psychological evaluations of individuals and followed them for 10 years to evaluate how negative emotions such as anger, depression and anxiety might affect prognosis in cardiology. During this time, researchers recorded 51 cardiac events. According to an ESC release:

To understand which factors were able to predict these events the authors used a statistical analysis known as the Cox model. Examining factors such as the age of patient, gender, psychological variables, clinical data (traditional risk factors, peak cardiac necrosis enzymes, left ventricular wall motion score index and heart rate variability), the results show that the only factors able to predict cardiac events in patients are the Anger and Stress-related disturbances, with a relative risk of 2.30 and 1.90 respectively. Patients who had reported a high score on the Anger scale had a higher risk of experiencing a new event, 2.30 times superior in comparison with those who had reported a low score on the same scale.

These study results were particularly interesting in light of additional findings presented at the ESC meeting by University of Maryland researcher Michael Miller, MD, who has been exploring the role of laughter and humor in reducing the risk of heart disease for the past decade.

Miller’s early work suggested mental stress caused blood vessels to constrict so he decided to examine if positive emotions, such as laughter, had the opposite effect. In his latest study, participants were instructed to watch either a comedy or intense drama and were monitored for carotid artery activity during the films. According to an ESC release:

When study volunteers watched the stressful movie, their blood vessel lining developed a potentially unhealthy response called vasoconstriction, reducing blood flow. This finding confirms previous studies, which suggested there was a link between mental stress and the narrowing of blood vessels. However, after watching the funny movie, the blood vessel lining expanded.

Overall, more than 300 measurements were made with a 30-50% difference in blood vessel diameter between the laughter (blood vessel expansion) and mental stress (blood vessel constriction) phases. “The magnitude of change we saw in the endothelium after laughing was consistent and similar to the benefit we might see with aerobic exercise or statin use” says Dr. Miller.

Making a PSA about handwashing fun

Beetroot Juice: The new cardiovascular cure-all???

Check this out!  I don't usually get too excited about a new wonder drug -- but what happens when the new wonder drug is juiced up plant product?  Beetroot?  I'm not sure how that is going to taste.  Or if your teeth are going to become permenantly purple but....

Researchers are finding that the nitrates in beetroot juice lower blood pressure (the high the pressure the more effective it is!), increase our ability to exercise, and improve physical performance in events like the Tour de France.

How's this all possible?  And what are the downsides?

Well...the nitrates in the juice relax the blood vessels and cause working muscles to require less oxygen for a given amount of work.

As for the downsides.....taste, maybe?  Research has shown results with 250 ml of juice.  Seems like a very small price to pay to possibly avoid having to take blood pressure meds!

What do you think?

How play can transform our economic landscape

Think we need to be serious about getting our country's ecomony back on track?  From the unhappiest, least innovative place in Europe, here's one speaker's thoughts on how play will transform his country.  Can it work for us too?  I think so.



What do you think?

Good Samaritans saving lives? Now there's an App!!

Fire Department App - PSA from Fire Department on Vimeo.


Check out this app!  The San Ramon Fire Dept built an app to connect first responders to emergencies.  In many cases, especially cardiac events, the difference between a 2 minute and 5 minute response time is the difference between life and death.

According to TechCrunch:

[Y]ou launch it, and it prompts you to ask if you’ve been trained in CPR and would be willing to help a stranger in the event of an emergency. If you accept this, then the application will take advantage of the iPhone’s location monitoring to get a general sense of where you are (a new feature enabled with the most recent update allows this with a minimal amount of battery drain).

Then, the next time a 911 dispatch center receives a call for an emergency that’s occurring near you, you’ll receive a push notification telling you that help is needed. The app will also tell if you if an automated external defibrillator (those electric paddles that can kickstart a heart) is nearby.

How cool is it when technology really does bring us together and make the world a better place!!

Interested?  Read more here !

Loved this and thought I would share it.....

How cool is this?!  Thanks Michael via Dewey!

The Future of Medicine?

Small changes add up

I just came across this calculator that let's you figure out how many more calories you would burn if you did your office work standing instead of sitting.  It's an interesting take on trimming your waistline!

Thanks to Jay for sharing.

How much do you love your smart phone?

Here is an article about out love affair with our phones!   

Do you prefer your cell phone over sleep? You're not alone
Our obsession with our smartphones has grown into a full-blown addiction, according to a new survey in the iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report. According to iPass, one of every three mobile workers get up regularly throughout the night to check email on their phone, and nearly half of those surveyed admitted that they couldn’t sleep without a smartphone within reach.

And loss of sleep isn’t the only obstacle our phone addiction brings with it, as a little under one third of respondents said that their domestic partners were upset by their incessant use of technology. And that’s most likely a low-ball figure, as a good chunk of those surveyed were probably either single, or somewhat oblivious to the fact that their partners were upset.

The report claims that our mobile obsession, at least within the workforce, started when people began to value speed over quality. In many executive circles, the employee with the first response was considered to be a better worker than his more thoughtful colleagues. According to the survey, 40 percent of respondents admitted to interrupting a meeting to take a call.

Even those of us who don’t partake in the corporate America lifestyle know how annoying it can be to try having a conversation with someone whose main priority is their current SMS exchanges. What’s funny is that, along with the 40 percent who admit to interrupting meetings for phone calls, an additional 40 percent agree that doing so is unacceptable behavior.

Drug use

Here's a neat post about how different drugs cause different amounts of harm among the following categories:

• Mortality
• Damage
• Dependence
• Impairment of mental functioning
• Loss of tangibles
• Loss of relationships
• Injuries to others
• Crime increase
• Environmental degradation
• Family breakdowns
• International turmoil
• Economic cost
• Loss of community cohesion and reputation

 Think you know which drug scores as the most destructive?  Click here to find out!

Mindfulness and the acceptance of the unfair

For those of you that also read Eating Coach, you will already know what a huge proponent of Mindfulness Training I am. 

This article from Biosingularity, discusses how mindfulness training effects decision making -- moving away from the more emotional areas of the brain and increasing the ability of the brain to make a decision based on more rational information of the present moment.

Eating too much, impulsively buying things we can't afford, acting out because life isn't fair -- all of these seemingly hard to control impulses might be brought under better management with mindfulness training.

At best, it could change your life -- at worst, you've devoted some time to a undertaking that didn't pan out.  Might just be worth a try!

Positivity

Here's a neat positivity test.  A couple of weeks ago, at BorgessAthlete, I talked about positive to negative interaction ratios and some of the research done by Marcial Losada on what it takes to have a team (athletic or work-related) flourish (or languish).

The same principles apply with the emotions you feel within yourself.  How did your day stack up to the goal positivity ratio of 3:1?  Take the test and find out.

Then....if you're not happy with the results and you realize you want more positivity in your life, check out this website from the Happiness Project.

Remember:  what you think is that which you create!  --make it GREAT!

The Job -- will you join me???

The job isn't to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo.  --Seth Godin (from the Poke the Box workbook)

Real Age Calculator

Interested in calculating your biological age?  I just tried these two sites:

http://www.realage.com/the-you-docs/my-realage

This was took 15 minutes or so.  It was fairly comprehensive and gave me some interesting feedback.  If you have the time, this is a great resource for working on a health improvement plan.

http://www.sonnyradio.com/realage.htm

This was a much quicker survey.  That being said, it is much less comprehensive but still offered insights on changes I could make to impact my health.

Managing Diabetes without insulin?

A researcher at Children's Hospital in Boston is experimenting with a protein in the liver that, when artificially simulated, controls blood glucose levels without the use of insulin.  Research is providing an interesting potential option in the management of diabetes!  Click here for more information.

How to keep your kids Intuitive Eaters

This morning there was a very interesting piece on NPR talking about techniques for developing picky eaters into people who like a wider variety of foods.  Click on over  -- you might learn something that changes your eating behaviors, too!

Future Trends in Healthcare?

Check out this super thought provoking map depicting trends shaping our health care workforce 2010-2020. (if the graphic doesn't pop up, click the download PDF to view the map and scroll to page 2)

Does this map change your expectations for the future?

Why do I love Seth Godin????

He just might be more optimistic than I am about what each of us can accomplish in the world!

Your Brain on Meditation....

I've heard lots of people talk about how good meditation is for us -- and sure, it seems logical.  But for those science-minded skeptics amoung us, a new research article will highlight some of the physical changes that happen in the brains of meditators.

The researchers report that those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress.

A more highly functioning brain?  Who doesn't need that??

Just another reason for me to love my iphone!!!

Ever been blown away by just how smart your smart phone is?  I am! (and slightly scared too)

Here is some research that indicated our phones might provide just what is needed to make prosthetic limbs work better!  Super, duper cool.