Longevity science

It has been almost a year since United States Department of Agriculture took down its ORAC database.  Now that this official reference point is gone, does this measure of antioxidant potential still have relevance in the marketplace?

Countering some minor concerns (see our sidebar, “Coffee concerns: minor at most”), growing evidence indicate that coffee is probably a preventive-health powerhouse.
 
There’s little doubt that coffee’s promise stems from its abundance of highly healthful polyphenol-type compounds.
 
Although polyphenols are often called antioxidants, they don’t exert direct antioxidant effects in the body. Instead, they influence gene expression to produce antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and other beneficial effects.

Women with breast cancer who had a few alcoholic drinks per week before their diagnosis were slightly less likely to die from their cancer, according to a study that followed newly-diagnosed patients for 11 years, on average.

Moderate drinking before and after a breast cancer diagnosis was also tied to better heart health and fewer deaths from non-cancer causes, the study team found.

Even a small sleep deficit — as little as an hour a night — can lead to some seriously unpleasant conditions, including floppy eyelids, sexual dysfunction and loss of hair, hearing and even vision.

“Because when we don’t get enough sleep, our immune systems go into overdrive, which causes systemic inflammation and turns on dangerous genetic switches.”

When people stop working, everything about their weekday schedule changes. Their lives may move more slowly and be more relaxed. Losing work-related stress may come as a huge relief — and be good for your health. But losing your everyday movement and social interaction can also harm your health.

Help may be on the way for people with compromised immune systems, severe allergies, or who otherwise have to be wary of airborne nasties. A team of scientists have created something known as a soft x-ray electrostatic precipitator, or an SXC ESP for short. It filters all manner of bacteria, allergens, viruses, and ultrafine particles from the air – plus, it kills everything it catches.

As a futurist, you are famous for making predictions of when technological innovations will actually occur. Are you willing to predict the year you will die?

My plan is to stick around. We’ll get to a point about 15 years from now where we’re adding more than a year every year to your life expectancy.

A daily multivitamin does not increase the risk of death, says a new meta-analysis from Australia that supports the safety of the supplements and challenges previous controversial analyses.

Offering women information on colon cancer screening via the web does not get them to take up screening any more effectively than printed materials, according to a new study.

"It's disappointing that the web didn't have more effect," said Dr. David Weinberg of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, the report's lead author.

Compared to a decade ago, fewer Americans have a cluster of risk factors that together can signal heart troubles and diabetes down the line, according to a new study.

But while so-called metabolic syndrome is declining, some of its components - including large waistlines and poor blood sugar control, which carry their own risks - are becoming more common, researchers found.

Traditional Chinese medicine has long analyzed breath as a way to assess human health and in recent times state-of-the-art technology has been brought to this approach to diagnose various diseases and even stress. Swiss researchers at ETH Zurich and at the University Hospital Zurich are continuing to advance this field by developing a “breathprinting” technique using mass spectrometry that they hope will become competitive with the established analysis methods based on blood and urine.

The scientists modified commercial mass spectrometers to suit the experiment, adding a breath sampling inlet line to deliver exhaled breath from a mouth piece directly into the instrument. The researchers noted two important facts. The first is that the chemical breathprint of exhaled breath, based on volatile and semi-volatile metabolites, showed an individual core pattern. The second was that, during the 11-day test, the breathprint remained constant, making it useful for medical analysis.

The most striking studies find a connection to reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.

In the latte-obsessed United States, tea is gaining ground as scientists and the public learn more about its benefits.

A growing body of research suggests that the world’s second-most-consumed beverage — only water is more popular — helps prevent cardiovascular disease, burn calories and ward off some types of cancer.

Want to cut the length of your workout while maintaining or even increasing the benefits? Try interval training, a type of cardiovascular workout in which you alternate bursts of peppier exercise with slower-paced recovery periods.

Intervals make you work more efficiently: Your overall intensity is greater, so the length of your workout can be cut by about 20 percent. Plus, a growing body of evidence suggests that this approach yields health benefits comparable or superior to traditional exercise.

Cardiac arrests are more likely when levels of air pollution - especially soot-like particles and ozone - have been high in recent days or even hours, according to a large study from Texas.

Evidence already links airborne particles with heart disease and lung problems but the new findings are the first to show that high ozone may immediately raise the risk that a person's heart will stop beating.

A degradable nanoscale shell to carry proteins to cancer cells and stunt the growth of tumors without damaging healthy cells has been developed by a team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Tiny shells (about 100 nanometers in length, roughly half the size of the smallest bacterium) are composed of a water-soluble polymer that safely delivers a protein complex to the nucleus of cancer cells to induce their death. The shells degrade harmlessly in non-cancerous cells.

The process does not present the risk of genetic mutation posed by gene therapies for cancer, or the risk to healthy cells caused by chemotherapy, which does not effectively discriminate between healthy and cancerous cells, said Yi Tang, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

Vegetarians are one-third less likely to be hospitalized or die from heart disease than meat and fish eaters, according to a new UK study.

Earlier research has also suggested that non-meat eaters have fewer heart problems, researchers said, but it wasn't clear if other lifestyle differences, including exercise and smoking habits, might also play into that.

Measure the state of your body and “tune” it. The “patient of the future” measures both external and internal variables. Used to measure weight only, then blood variables, then SNPs (partial genome), then full genome. Critical to track and reduce inflammation.

Increased intakes of lycopene are associated with a reduction in the incidence of cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease, says a new study from Tufts and Boston University.

“Exercise can partially reverse the effects of the aging process ... a minimum quantity and quality of exercise decreases the risk of death, prevents development of certain cancers, lowers the risk of osteoporosis, and increases longevity.” (Gremeaux V et al. 2012)

The ViSi Mobile vital signs monitor built by Sotera Wireless of San Diego, California. This wearable sensor pack uses Wi-Fi technology and is claimed to allow doctors using a tablet or smartphone to remotely monitor patient vital signs with the accuracy of an intensive care unit.

Designed around the concept of “monitoring in motion,” the ViSi Mobile consists of several units made of rugged, water-resistant plastic. These include a wrist unit with monitor readout, chest sensors, a blood pressure cuff monitor and a thumb sensor. These are connected to the existing hospital data infrastructure via Wi-Fi with WPA2 encryption for security.