Pulse Beat

PROF DR BM Hegde 28 March 2016

Friends Could Help You To Remain Healthy

Several studies, published in some of the leading journals, like the Journal of the American Heart Association, Journal of Neuro-immuno-psychology and many others, have shown how having good friends reduces stress. They have also shown that the more friends one has, the less likely s/he will be depressed or even demented! As far as cardiovascular health is concerned people who are happy with their friends have less heart attacks, strokes and even sudden deaths.

New Treatment for Limb Ischemia To Avoid Amputations

Bioengineers and physicians at the University of California (San Diego) have developed a potential new therapy for critical limb ischemia, a condition that causes extremely poor circulation in the limbs and leads to amputations. The therapy consists of injecting in the affected area a gel derived from the natural scaffolding, or extra-cellular matrix, in skeletal muscle tissue. The team tested the procedure in a rat model of the disease and found that it promotes muscle remodelling and improves blood flow. They published their findings recently in the inaugural issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Basic to Translational Science.

“This is a unique approach that not only helps repair the damaged vascular system, but also helps restore muscle tissue,” said Karen Christman, a professor of bioengineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering and the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine at UC San Diego and the paper’s senior author.

This is still in the experimental stage and needs human studies before being let loose on the common man. I am sure, it will soon become a reality as this can be patented by drug companies who will bend over backwards to get such drugs to the market, sometimes even prematurely.

Mindful Eating Helps Reduce Body Weight

Dr Jennifer J Daubenmier and her colleagues evaluated the effects of a mindfulness-based weight-loss intervention in adults with obesity and, although no statistically significant differences in weight loss were found compared to the control group, the mindfulness intervention showed greater improvements in certain cardio-metabolic outcomes tied to Type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease up to one year after the intervention ended. The research is published in the March 2016 issue of Obesity, the scientific journal of The Obesity Society.

When subjects were trained to concentrate on the present while eating, instead of multi-tasking while eating, they did a lot better in understanding their need for food and did very well to drop weight. A good example is the time-honoured south Indian vegetarian meal at weddings and other religious functions. The meal starts with pickle and then goes on with many curries of vegetables. The serving takes time. By the time the main dish (rice) comes, people would have mentally savoured the smell and the desirable taste of the spread before them. This will bring forth more digestive juices for better digestion and absorption. There is no other distraction; all are seated in a row (usually on the floor but, lately, at tables and chairs) unlike the Western-style buffet dinners where one does not concentrate on the food but gets distracted and cannot control one’s intake based on satiety. Our meal is a type of mindful eating.

Mindful eating has had more positive effects on fasting blood glucose at 18 months and a ratio of triglycerides to HDL-cholesterol levels at 12 months (a difference of -4.1mg/dL and -0.57, respectively), both of which are linked to Type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Deborah Tate, spokesperson for The Obesity Society, said “This research points to some of the potential benefits of enhancing the mindfulness components of behavioural weight loss.”

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