Honey bees can be trained to detect cancer

Portuguese designer Susana Soares has developed a device for detecting cancer and other serious diseases using trained bees

The bees are placed in a glass chamber into which the patient exhales; the bees fly into a smaller secondary chamber if they detect cancer.

“Trained bees only rush into the smaller chamber if they can detect the odour on the patient’s breath that they have been trained to target,” explained Soares, who presented her Bee’s project at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven last month.

Scientists have found that honey bees - Apis mellifera - have an extraordinary sense of smell that is more acute than that of a sniffer dog and can detect airborne molecules in the parts-per-trillion range.

Bees can be trained to detect specific chemical odours, including the biomarkers associated with diseases such as tuberculosis, lung, skin and pancreatic cancer.

Bees have also been trained to detect explosives and a company called Insectinl is training “sniffer bees” to work in counter-terrorist operations.

Read More: 

Source: de zeen

India’s first successful Liver Transplant recipient completes 15 years

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi Monday felicitated Sanjay Kandasamy, India’s first successful liver transplant recipient, as he completed 15 years post transplantation.

Kandasamy, 16, had undergone the path-breaking procedure as an 18-month-old in 1998 at Apollo Hospital here.

Gandhi interacted with the teenager and his family at her residence here.

“It is a testament not only on India’s medical acumen but also of the tenacity of this young man,” Gandhi was quoted by an official statement issued by the hospital.

Kandasamy, who hails from Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu, was born with a rare condition seen in one one in 12,000 babies.

“Sanjay now leads a completely normal life, goes to school like other kids, enjoys meals, plays football and wants to become a doctor to save lives. Sanjay’s success helped establish liver transplantation in India,” said Anupam Sibal, senior paediatric gastroenterologist in the hospital.

Source: Business Standard

For More click here:

Baby with swollen head to undergo more surgeries

Baby Roona, who had undergone a series of surgeries at a hospital here in few months ago for an oversized head, will undergo follow-up surgeries, doctors at a city hospital said on Saturday.

The child of a daily wage labourer from Tripura, two-year-old Roona Begum is suffering from hydrocephalus, a rare disorder that has caused her head to swell to an unprecedented 94 cm.

She was admitted to Gurgaon’s Fortis Memorial Research Institute here in April this year at the age of 18 months, where she underwent multiple complex procedures to get her head circumference reduced to 58 cm.

“The five surgeries we performed earlier have not only helped the child survive a potentially fatal condition, but also enabled her to attain improved nutritional status and vitals. She has gained weight, is showing better neck control and is even making noises,” surgeon and director of neurosurgery in the hospital, Sandeep Vaishya, said.

Elaborating on the likely follow-up surgery next week, Vaishya said: “This will be the first step in the next round of treatment for the child. We are monitoring her condition and will proceed with the surgery once we get a go-ahead from her attending paediatrician.”

Fortis Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Fortis Healthcare Limited, continues to oversee the treatment of the child.

Source: Times of India

45 Uses For Lemons

Most people are familiar with the traditional uses for lemons to health and add some citrus flavor to our foods. However the diversity of applications for lemons far exceeds general knowledge and once you read the following list, you’ll likely want to stock at least a few lemons in your kitchen 24-7.

1. Freshen the Fridge
Remove refrigerator odors with ease. Dab lemon juice on a cotton ball or sponge and leave it in the fridge for several hours. Make sure to toss out any malodorous items that might be causing the bad smell.

2. High Blood Pressure
Lemon contains potassium which controls high blood pressure and reduces the effect of nausea and dizziness.

3. Prevent Cauliflower From Turning Brown
Cauliflower tend to turn brown with even the slightest cooking. You can make sure the white vegetables stay white by squeezing a teaspoon of fresh lemon juice on them before heating.

4. Mental Health
Lemon water can also prep up your mood and relieve you from depression and stress. Long distance walkers and world travelers as well as explorers look upon the lemon as a Godsend. When fatigue begins, a lemon is sucked through a hole in the top. Quick acting medicine it is, giving almost unbelievable refreshments.

5. Refresh Cutting Boards
No wonder your kitchen cutting board smells! After all, you use it to chop onions, crush garlic, and prepare fish. To get rid of the smell and help sanitize the cutting board, rub it all over with the cut side of half a lemon or wash it in undiluted juice straight from the bottle.

6. Respiratory Problems
Lemon water can reduce phlegm; and can also help you breathe properly and aids a person suffering with asthma.

7. Treating Arthritis and Rheumatism
Lemon is a diuretic – assists in the production of urine which helps you to reduce inflammation by flushing out toxins and bacteria while also giving you relief from arthritis and rheumatism.

8. Prevents Kidney Stones
Regular consumption of the refreshing drink — or even lemon juice mixed with water — may increase the production of urinary citrate, a chemical in the urine that prevents the formation of crystals that may build up into kidney stones.

Source: KWN

Read full article here

Alternative Treatments for Diabetes

Diabetes is continuing to emerge as one of the gravest healthcare threats with millions of people being affected all over the world. Till this date the conclusive treatment of diabetes is out of reach for modern medicinal tradition, but on the other hand an array of holistic procedures and alternative treatments are showing promise to curb diabetes under control. Here we introduce some of the best known alternative treatments for diabetes.

The deadly chronic endocrine disorder called diabetes making millions of people suffer and cause enormous medical complication leading to death. Diabetes typically is a disease that requires continuous management rather than curative approach as the disease at best can be checked and cannot be permanently cured. Though total recovery from diabetic condition is still out of reach as far as the curative approach of modern medical drugs are concerned, it is now a widely acclaimed fact that alternative treatments for diabetes with the use of herbs and herbal remedies are more effective to curb diabetes over a long period of time. These alternative therapeutic and lifestyle procedures which are also called holistic treatments are without side effects and can boost the natural process of metabolism to a significant extent.

Ayurveda

Ayurveda considers diabetes to be a disease intricately related to our metabolic disorder and as per Ayurvedic the situation can only be reversed by addressing the contributory factors effectively. The elimination of sugar from the dietary regimen, replacement of simple carbohydrates with complex ones rich with dietary fibers and finally use of herbs for boosting metabolism, these three are the principal ways that as per Ayurvedic principle can check diabetes. In many parts of the world, even across top healthcare establishments Ayurvedic treatment regimen is widely applied to treat diabetes.

Read full article:

Source: News Track India

Is Your Child Getting Enough Fiber?

Three out of four children aren’t getting enough fiber, which puts them at high risk for chronic constipation, among other things. Here are some ways to make sure your child isn’t at risk and how to incorporate more fiber in your family’s diet.

Why Fiber is Important 

Fiber is the part of natural foods (plant foods, the only place fiber is found) that isn’t digested. It provides “roughage” for everything that you eat and helps things move through the digestive process. In Dr. Rex Russell’s book, What The Bible Says About Healthy Living, he notes the importance of fiber based on a group of African men, some living in Africa and some attending school in England. The African natives ate a traditional high-fiber diet and rarely needed medical attention. The Africans who were at school in England were enjoying processed foods without fiber. They suffered from episodes of appendicitis, hemorrhoids, ulcers, and gallstones.

The term “processed foods” refers to products made with grains that are heavily processed and very far from their natural state. These include products like enriched macaroni, cookies, cakes, pies, and cereals.

Inadequate fiber intake is also believed to contribute to, and sometimes even cause, heart disease, colon cancer, high blood pressure, and adult onset diabetes. Without sufficient fiber to move food through the body, toxins and bodily waste can fester inside the body for extended periods of time.

A lack of fiber also highly contributes to obesity problems in America. Part of this results from the negligible amount of fresh fruits and vegetables consumed by Americans. Both fruits and vegetables, along with other natural foods, contain two types of fiber: soluble and insoluble. Soluble is the kind of fiber that changes as it moves through your digestive system, while insoluble doesn’t change; both are equally important. 

Source: Pediatrics for parents

Read More:

Makeup Tips for Holiday Beauty

Even if you are going to dig out the same little black dress to wear to your holiday parties every year, you can still turn up the volume on your everyday beauty routine. Don’t be scared to break out of your beauty box for just one night.

–Be prepared

The trend in makeup foundation may be all aglow … but the shade of your foundation is critical. There are lots of factors that come into play. If you’ve been wearing Revlon all your life ever since you outgrew Bonne Bell in your teens then you need to take a U-turn right now, no matter where you are, and make an appointment with a makeup expert. There are hundreds of them out there … and many of them are available instantly by just walking into your favorite department store. They can answer all your questions, including “Do I have warm undertones or cool undertones in my skin?” Ask your friends for suggestions, and get thee to a beauty consultant fast. You’ll be surprised at how many years younger you may look with this one switch. Have a rosy outlook

Source: The National Ledger

 Read More:

Kids Are Less Fit Than Their Parents Were

Today’s kids can’t keep up with their parents. An analysis of studies on millions of children around the world finds they don’t run as fast or as far as their parents did when they were young.

On average, it takes children 90 seconds longer to run a mile than their counterparts did 30 years ago. Heart-related fitness has declined 5 percent per decade since 1975 for children ages 9 to 17.

The American Heart Association, whose conference featured the research on Tuesday, says it’s the first to show that children’s fitness has declined worldwide over the last three decades.

“It makes sense. We have kids that are less active than before,” said Dr. Stephen Daniels, a University of Colorado pediatrician and spokesman for the heart association.

Health experts recommend that children 6 and older get 60 minutes of moderately vigorous activity accumulated over a day. Only one-third of American kids do now.

“Kids aren’t getting enough opportunities to build up that activity over the course of the day,” Daniels said. “Many schools, for economic reasons, don’t have any physical education at all. Some rely on recess” to provide exercise.

Sam Kass, a White House chef and head of first lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move program, stressed the role of schools in a speech to the conference on Monday.

“We are currently facing the most sedentary generation of children in our history,” Kass said.

The new study was led by Grant Tomkinson, an exercise physiologist at the University of South Australia. Researchers analyzed 50 studies on running fitness — a key measure of cardiovascular health and endurance — involving 25 million children ages 9 to 17 in 28 countries from 1964 to 2010.

The studies measured how far children could run in 5 to 15 minutes and how quickly they ran a certain distance, ranging from half a mile to two miles. Today’s kids are about 15 percent less fit than their parents were, researchers concluded.

“The changes are very similar for boys and girls and also for various ages,” but differed by geographic region, Tomkinson said.

The decline in fitness seems to be leveling off in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and perhaps in the last few years in North America. However, it continues to fall in China, and Japan never had much falloff — fitness has remained fairly consistent there. About 20 million of the 25 million children in the studies were from Asia.

In China, annual fitness test data show the country’s students are getting slower and fatter over the past couple of decades.

Experts and educators blame an obsession with academic testing scores for China’s competitive college admissions as well as a proliferation of indoor entertainment options like gaming and web surfing for the decline.

China’s Education Ministry data show that in 2010 male college students ran 1,000 meters 14 to 15 seconds slower on average than male students who ran a decade earlier. Female students slowed by about 12 seconds in running 800 meters.

Tomkinson and Daniels said obesity likely plays a role, since it makes it harder to run or do any aerobic exercise. Too much time watching television and playing video games and unsafe neighborhoods with not enough options for outdoor play also may play a role, they said.

Other research discussed global declines in activity.

Fitness is “pretty poor in adults and even worse in young people,” especially in the United States and eastern Europe, said Dr. Ulf Ekelund of the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo, Norway.

World Health Organization numbers suggest that 80 percent of young people globally may not be getting enough exercise.

Source: abc News

Bedroom computers, TV may add to autism sleep issues

Kids with autism and related disorders are prone to sleep disturbances but a new study finds that screen time, especially in the bedroom, may make their sleep problems worse. 

When researchers compared boys with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to other boys, they found that all the kids with bedroom access to media slept fewer hours, but the relationship was twice as strong for the boys with autism.

“In-room media access was associated with about 1.5 fewer hours of sleep per night in the group with autism,” said Christopher R. Engelhardt, who led the study at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

“This association can potentially be problematic, particularly if the reduction in sleep interferes with other daily activities, such as school, homework, interactions with other people, or driving,” he told Reuters Health in an email. 

Past studies suggest that up to 80 percent of kids with autism, and related conditions like Asperger syndrome, experience sleep troubles, including difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep through the night. Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) also are known to have a high rate of sleep disturbances.

With both conditions, it’s unclear why sleep is so difficult. Theories include a disruption in sleep-wake cycles that are regulated by the hormone melatonin, which is often deficient in kids with ASDs, Engelhardt and his colleagues write in Pediatrics.

Because kids with autism spectrum disorders, like those with ADHD, also tend to spend a lot of time watching TV and playing video or computer games, the researchers wondered whether that could be contributing to their sleep problems.

So they recruited the parents of 49 boys with autism spectrum disorders, 38 with ADHD and 41 comparison boys with typical development to fill out questionnaires about their children’s bedroom screen access and sleep patterns. All the kids were between ages eight and 17.

Boys with autism who had TV, computers or video games in their bedrooms got less sleep than all the other boys, including boys with autism who didn’t have media in their bedrooms.

Without a TV in their room, boys with autism spent an average of about nine hours sleeping, compared to less than eight hours among kids with an ASD and a bedroom TV.

In contrast, bedroom TVs didn’t seem to make a difference for boys with ADHD or typical development.

Boys with autism with computers in their rooms slept nearly two hours less than boys with autism and no bedroom computer.

A lot of time spent playing video games, regardless of where they were located, was also linked to shorter sleep times among boys with ASDs.

Even for typical children, too much time with TV or video games has been linked to attention problems, hyperactivity, arguments and physical fights, Engelhardt said.

“We can’t say that access to a TV causes less sleep,” only that the two are linked for some kids, he said.

Last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics called for limiting screen time for all kids to one or two hours per day “This is a good recommendation for all children,” Dr. Beth Marlow, Burry Chair in Cognitive Childhood Development and director of the Sleep Disorders Division at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

“Following this recommendation for kids with (autism spectrum) and ADHD is good, although children with (autism spectrum) or ADHD who are still having difficulty with sleep despite limiting electronics really deserve a sleep evaluation by their pediatrician or sleep specialist.”

Read More: 

Source: Reuters

Include broccoli in your diet to keep diseases at bay

Scientists hope that the harvesting of what they call ”booster broccoli” — containing more vitamins and nutrients than other vegetables — will soon begin.

Bred from strains of the vegetable naturally high in antioxidants, it joins a growing crop of ”super foods” that are believed to be good enough to prevent heart disease, cancers and degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and help weight control.

Vital Vegetables chairman John says that capsicums with extra vitamins A, C and E levels, and tomatoes that can reduce risks of prostate cancer will be released in the next 12 months.

According to him, supermarkets will soon stock foods ‘boasting higher levels of goodness’ for the time poor.

”Our lifestyles seem to get faster all the time. If you can get the recommended daily intake of fruits and vegetables through eating less, isn’t that kind of the way we are going in the world these days?” the ‘Age’ quoted him as saying.

”I think consumers are looking at things that are better for them. And here you’re going to get more bang for your bite,” he added.

Two breakfast cereals with the potential to reduce the risk of colon and bowel cancers, heart disease, diabetes, stroke and to help control weight were released by the CSIRO last month.

Dr Bruce Lee, director of the CSIRO’s Food Futures National Research Flagship, says that other super grains to be used in breads, biscuits and pasta can be released by 2012.

”You can take supplements or you can get people to eat a healthy diet, but often it is hard to get people to change their dietary habits. ”The beauty of these types of foods is that you can add the wholegrain into the food – you are not forcing consumers to change their diet to something else,” he says.

Source: Indian Express

For more interesting news: click here: 

Baby Carrots with Dill, Butter, and Lemon

Prep: 10 minutes; Cook: 10 minutes.

 Yield: 6 servings (serving size: about 1/2 cup)

 Nutritional Information

 Calories per serving:   82

Fat per serving:           3g

Saturated fat per serving:       1g

Monounsaturated fat per serving:      1g

Polyunsaturated fat per serving:        0.0g

Protein per serving:     2g

Carbohydrates per serving:     13g

Fiber per serving:        3g

Cholesterol per serving:          6mg

Iron per serving:          1mg

Sodium per serving:    341mg

Calcium per serving:   57mgIngredients

 Ingredients

1. 2 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
2. 2 pounds baby carrots, peeled and tops trimmed to 1 inch
3. 1 tablespoon butter
4. 2 teaspoons chopped fresh dill
5. 1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
6. 1 tablespoon grated lemon rind
7. 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
8. 1/2 teaspoon salt
9. 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preparation

1. Place broth in a large pot. Arrange carrots in a metal steamer insert or bamboo steamer; place in pot. Cover; bring broth to a boil. Steam carrots for 10 minutes or just until crisp-tender. Transfer carrots to a large bowl. Add remaining ingredients; toss well. Serve immediately.

Source: Health

For more interesting news click here: 

At 107, nation’s oldest veteran enjoys limelight

Richard Overton, believed to be the oldest living United States veteran at 107, accepted a box of cigars and a standing ovation Thursday with a humble demeanor and a beaming smile.

More than 100 people packed a conference room at the Stephen F. Austin building in downtown Austin to attend a pre-Veterans Day ceremony in Austin honoring Overton and Ken Wallingford, who spent 10 months in a tiger cage as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

“I’ve gotten so many letters and so many thank yous and I enjoy every bit of it, but I’m still going to enjoy some more,” said Overton, who is planning a visit with President Barack Obama next week in Washington, D.C.

Ex-state employee

Overton, identified by the General Land Office as the nation’s oldest veteran, was born in Bastrop County. He served in the Army during World War II in the South Pacific and now lives in Austin. He sold furniture in Austin after the war and later worked for the state Treasurer’s Office.

He drives and walks without a cane. During a television interview in March, he told a reporter that he doesn’t take medicine, smokes cigars every day and takes whiskey in his morning coffee. The key to living to his age, he said, is simply “staying out of trouble.”

The day’s ceremony, sponsored by the General Land Office, also recognized Wallingford, who shared his experience in captivity in the Cambodian jungle as the audience listened in amazement.

The former Army sniper, now 65, alternately laughed and became emotional as he told the story of his imprisonment and triumphant return home.

“As we look forward to Veterans Day I hope each and every one of us can remember those who have served, and importantly, those who serve today,” said Wallingford, who is veterans liaison for the Veterans Land Board.

Emotional memories

Wallingford brought a food and water bowl, sandals, pajamas and photos from his imprisonment in April 1972 to being set free in February 1973. His voiced cracked as he described his return to the United States.

“We weren’t going to leave without you guys,” Wallingford remembered hearing in the Army helicopter on his way out.

President Lyndon B. Johnson offered Wallingford and the other POWs who returned with him the presidential suite and staff of the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, he said.

Bill McLemore, deputy commissioner for the Veterans Land Board and a retired Army colonel, served with Wallingford. “Most veterans are just looking to have someone reaffirm that what they’ve done was an honorable thing to do,” McLemore said.

Source: Houston Chronicle

for more interesting news, click here: 

Vietnam releases dengue-blocking mosquito

Nguyen Thi Yen rolls up the sleeves of her white lab coat and delicately slips her arms into a box covered by a sheath of mesh netting. Immediately, the feeding frenzy begins.

Hundreds of mosquitoes light on her thin forearms and swarm her manicured fingers. They spit, bite and suck until becoming drunk with blood, their bulging bellies glowing red. Yen laughs in delight while her so-called “pets” enjoy their lunch and prepare to mate.

The petite, grandmotherly entomologist _ nicknamed Dr. Dracula _ knows how crazy she must look to outsiders. But this is science, and these are very special bloodsuckers.

She smiles and nods at her red-hot arms, swollen and itchy after 10 minutes of feeding. She knows those nasty bites could reveal a way to greatly reduce one of the world’s most menacing infectious diseases.

All her mosquitoes have been intentionally infected with bacteria called Wolbachia, which essentially blocks them from getting dengue. And if they can’t get it, they can’t spread it to people.

New research suggests some 390 million people are infected with the virus each year, most of them in Asia. That’s about one in every 18 people on Earth, and more than three times higher than the World Health Organization’s previous estimates.

Known as “breakbone fever” because of the excruciating joint pain and hammer-pounding headaches it causes, the disease has no vaccine, cure or specific treatment. Most patients must simply suffer through days of raging fever, sweats and a bubbling rash. For those who develop a more serious form of illness, known as dengue hemorrhagic fever, internal bleeding, shock, organ failure and death can occur.

And it’s all caused by one bite from a female mosquito that’s transmitting the virus from another infected person.

So how can simple bacteria break this cycle? Wolbachia is commonly found in many insects, including fruit flies. But for reasons not fully understood, it is not carried naturally by certain mosquitoes, including the most common one that transmits dengue, the Aedes aegypti.

The germ has fascinated scientist Scott O’Neill his entire career. He started working with it about two decades ago at Yale University. But it wasn’t until 2008, after returning to his native Australia, that he had his eureka moment.

One of his research students figured out how to implant the bacteria into a mosquito so it could be passed on to future generations. The initial hope was that it would shorten the insect’s life. But soon, a hidden benefit was discovered: Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes not only died quicker but they also blocked dengue partially or entirely, sort of like a natural vaccine.

“The dengue virus couldn’t grow in the mosquito as well if the Wolbachia was present,” says O’Neill, dean of science at Monash University in Melbourne. “And if it can’t grow in the mosquito, it can’t be transmitted.”

But proving something in the lab is just the first step. O’Neill’s team needed to test how well the mosquitoes would perform in the wild. They conducted research in small communities in Australia, where dengue isn’t a problem, and the results were encouraging enough to create a buzz among scientists who have long been searching for new ways to fight the disease. After two and a half years, the Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes had overtaken the native populations and remained 95 percent dominant.

But how would it work in dengue-endemic areas of Southeast Asia? The disease swamps hospitals in the region every rainy season with thousands of sick patients, including many children, sometimes killing those who seek help too late.

The Australians tapped 58-year-old Yen at Vietnam’s National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, where she’s worked for the past 35 years. Their plan was to test the Wolbachia mosquitoes on a small island off the country’s central coast this year, with another release expected next year in Indonesia.

Just getting the mosquitoes to Tri Nguyen Island was an adventure. Thousands of tiny black eggs laid on strips of paper inside feeding boxes had to be hand-carried inside coolers on weekly flights from Hanoi, where Yen normally works, to Nha Trang, a resort city near the island. The eggs had to be kept at just the right temperature and moisture. The mosquitoes were hatched in another lab before finally being transported by boat.

Yen insisted on medical checks for all volunteer feeders to ensure they weren’t sickening her mosquitoes. She deemed vegetarian blood too weak and banned anyone recently on antibiotics, which could kill the Wolbachia.

“When I’m sleeping, I’m always thinking about them,” Yen says, hunkered over a petri dish filled with dozens of squiggling mosquito pupae. “I’m always worried about temperature and food. I take care of them same-same like baby. If they are healthy, we are happy. If they are not, we are sad.”

Read full article here:

Source: postbulletin.com

Smokers’ skin may age faster

Smokers are likely to get bags under their eyes and wrinkles around their lips earlier than non-smokers, according to a new study of identical twins.

Judges who didn’t know which twin smoked said the smoker looked older 57 percent of the time. That pattern held when both twins were smokers but one had smoked for many years longer than the other.

“Smoking makes you look old. That’s all there is to it,” Dr. Elizabeth Tanzi said.

“Besides lung cancer, heart attacks and strokes, just one more good reason to stop smoking is that it’s definitely making you look a lot older,” she told Reuters Health.

Tanzi is a dermatologist at the Washington Institute of Dermatologic Laser Surgery and George Washington University Medical Center. She was not involved in the new study but said it confirms what she and others see in practice.

The findings are based on standardized photos of 79 pairs of identical twins taken at the Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio.

Dr. Bahman Guyuron from Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals of Cleveland and his colleagues showed the photos to three trained judges, then asked them to grade each person’s wrinkles and age-related facial features.

The twins were in their late 40s, on average. About three-quarters of them were women.

Forty-five sets of twins included one smoker and one non-smoker. Smokers tended to have more wrinkles and other signs of face aging. But the differences were often small.

For instance, on a 0-to-3 scale, where 0 means no wrinkles and 3 is severe wrinkles, upper eyelids were rated at 1.56 among smokers and 1.51 among non-smokers. Jowls were rated at 1.0 among smokers and 0.93 among non-smokers, on average.

There was no difference in assessments of crow’s feet or forehead wrinkles based on smoking.

Other factors related to skin aging like sunscreen use, alcohol drinking and stress at work were similar among smoking and non-smoking twins, the researchers noted.

Of the remaining 34 twin pairs, one twin had smoked for an average of 13 years longer than the other.

Twins who had smoked for more years had more pronounced bags under their eyes and more wrinkles around their lower lips, according to findings published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

“It really just kind of confirms a lot of stuff that most people believed,” said Dr. Alan Boyd. He is a dermatologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and wasn’t part of the study team.

“I can usually spot a smoker from across the room because of some of their facial skin changes,” Boyd told Reuters Health.

Still, he said the study adds another layer of evidence by putting numbers on the effect of smoking on different parts of the face.

The researchers didn’t take into account how many cigarettes people smoked each day. And although weight was similar between smokers and non-smokers, they didn’t know if differences in fat distribution affected facial appearance.

Tanzi said toxins from smoking can speed up the breakdown of collagen, protein fibers that support skin and help it stick together. Smoking also reduces the amount of oxygen going to the skin, she said.

In addition, having a regular source of heat close to the face may play a role in skin aging, according to Boyd.

“The effects are cumulative. So you can benefit from stopping smoking at any time,” Tanzi added. But, “You want to be careful, because some of those changes may be permanent.”

Facial creams and plastic surgery are options for people whose skin has been damaged by smoking, Guyuron told Reuters Health. But he said the goal of releasing the findings was to give people another reason never to start.

“We are hoping that by again emphasizing the harms that come from smoking we can dissuade individuals from smoking … knowing how much it may damage their skin,” he said.

Source:http://zeenews.india.com/news/health/health-news/smokers-skin-may-age-faster_24779.html

For more interesting news click here:

Woman who never aged dies at 20

A woman who never aged has died.

Brooke Greenberg, of Reisterstown, Maryland, looked and behaved like a toddler until her last breath.

Brooke was eventually diagnosed by her physician with “Syndrome X”, an unidentifiable and unexplained rare disease – which is known to affect only about six people in the world – where they do not age physically or mentally since early childhood.

“While the outside world may have noticed Brooke’s physical stature and been puzzled by her unique development state, she brought joy and love to her family,” Rabbi Andrew Busch, who delivered the eulogy at the funeral, told the New York Daily News. “Her parents, three sisters and extended family showered her with love and respected her dignity throughout her entire life.”

Brooke and her family appeared on Katie Couric’s talk show in the US in January.

They said Brooke could not talk, had baby teeth and still had to be pushed about in a chair.

“From age one to four, Brooke changed. She got a little bit bigger. But age four, four to five, she stopped,” her father told Couric.

Source: http://fxn.ws/1g9526O

For more interesting news Click here: