Tinnitus Causes And Treatment

Thursday, December 15, 2016

The First Real Proof That Your Outlook Affects Longevity

There’s plenty of data supporting the connection between a positive outlook and a healthier life—being optimistic can help you fend off stress, eat better and be more physically active, all of which can lower your risk of chronic illnesses.

But despite how often it’s repeated, doctors haven’t been able to definitively tell you that a positive attitude will help you live longer, mainly because most studies on the subject haven’t followed people over long enough periods of time. Studies to date tend to ask people about their outlook at one specific time—and the response can be affected by a number of transient events.

So researchers led by Andrew Steptoe at University College of London decided to look at a long-term study to track how people’s outlook over time affected their longevity. In a report published in BMJ, he studied nearly 10,000 men and women in the English Longitudinal Study of Aging between 2002 and 2013.

During that time, the middle-aged volunteers were asked three times to assess their outlook by answering four questions that evaluated how they enjoyed the things they did: being with other people, their lives overall, and how energetic they felt. Nearly seven years after their last answers, people who reported more enjoyment (or the highest satisfaction scores on all three occasions) were 24% less likely to have died than people who reported no enjoyment. Those who said they were happy on two of the occasions had a 17% lower mortality.

“The longer people are in a positive state, the better it probably is as far as their health is concerned,” says Steptoe. “This adds weight to the evidence that outlook might be relevant to health.”

Of course, there are many aspects of one’s outlook—mood, or how happy or sad a person feels is one, as is a broader sense of satisfaction. In past studies, says Steptoe, most researchers captured the mood element, but weren’t able to incorporate the larger sense of satisfaction or well-being. “An emotional state is distinct from finding life satisfying,” he says. “And it’s distinct from having a fulfilled life. The criticism of past studies is that it just looked at the pleasure aspect. So what we are trying to do is to use a measure that cuts across different distinctions.” The four-questions in the study, he says, were designed to do just that.

And how did the people who reported more satisfaction and enjoyment achieve that state of well-being? Previous studies have pointed to things such as good mental health and social connections. Steptoe says that keeping up friendships and maintaining social interactions can be an important part of a satisfying life, particularly for older people. “Once you enter middle and older ages, investment is social relationships is crucial,” he says. “It’s something that is quite easy to forget about. When things are going well, you don’t make so much of an effort to maintain friendships. But in many ways it’s an investment in the future as well as the present.”

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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Friday, December 9, 2016

The 12 Most Shocking Health Scandals of 2016

From an exponential price hike on life-saving EpiPens to a cleansing conditioner that may cause hair loss, these are the health and wellness controversies that made headlines in the past year.

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Take a Deep Breath: Inhaling the Right Way May Improve Your Memory

When it comes to coping with scary or stressful situations, mental health experts have long given a simple piece of advice: Take a deep breath in through the nose, and out through the mouth. Now, new research suggests that this particular breathing technique really does impact brain activity—and can even improve your memory.

Northwestern University researchers recruited about 100 young adults, some of whom were asked to make snap judgments about facial expressions that flashed quickly across a computer screen. Breathing did affect their performance: When people were inhaling through their noses, they were able to recognize faces expressing fear faster than when they were exhaling. In another test, researchers looked at participants’ ability to remember objects flashing on the screen. Here, too, they were more likely to remember objects if they encountered them during inhales, versus during exhales.

When mouth-breathing, all these effects disappeared.

The new study is the first to show that the rhythm of breathing creates electrical activity in the brain, according to the report, which was published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

“Our data is preliminary, but exciting,” says lead author Christina Zelano, PhD, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, to Health. “And though it is too preliminary at this stage, it has the potential to lead to some deliberate breathing strategies for cognitive enhancement.”

She says that one of the study’s major findings is that nasal inhaling causes a “dramatic difference” in areas of the brain related to emotional processing (the amygdala) and memory (the hippocampus), compared with exhaling.

Researchers discovered that when you breathe in, you’re stimulating neurons in the olfactory cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus, all across the limbic system.

Future studies on this topic may help explain the well-documented psychological benefits of meditation and focused breathing, says Zelano, which can essentially synchronize brain oscillations across the brain’s emotion center.

The findings may also offer a clue as to why our breathing tends to speed up when we’re scared or panicked. “As a result, you’ll spend proportionally more time inhaling than when in a calm state,” Zelano says. This could affect brain function, she adds, “and result in faster response times to dangerous stimuli in the environment.”

In fact, Zelano thinks we may even be able to use this knowledge to our advantage. “If you’re in a dangerous environment with fearful stimuli, our data indicate that you can respond more quickly if you are inhaling through your nose,” she says.

Of course, this study is just a first step. Whether we can truly use our breath to enhance or control our fear response—or our memory, for that matter—remains to be seen, says Zelano.

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Monday, December 5, 2016

Yes, Your Office's Open Floor Plan Is Ruining Your Productivity

If you’ve had trouble concentrating in an open floor-plan office, you’re not alone. Now, at least you’ve got science on your side: A new study suggests that overheard work conversations can decrease productivity—and increase annoyance—of other employees within earshot, more so than random and meaningless background buzz.

Open office plans are becoming increasingly common in workplaces, allowing companies to optimize space and, theoretically, encourage dialogue and collaboration among employees. But they also have their fair share of critics, and complaints about lack of privacy and noisy coworkers abound.

It’s no surprise that noise can be distracting, but researchers from Yamaguchi University in Japan wanted to see how work-related chatter might compare with other, less meaningful hubbub. So they performed a series of experiments to investigate the impact of different types of noises, using a test known as the “odd-ball” paradigm.

During odd-ball tests, people are asked to identify unique events sprinkled throughout a series of repetitive events. “To complete the odd-ball task it is necessary to regulate attention to a stimulus,“ said Takahiro Tamesue, associate professor of engineering, explained in a press release.

In one experiment, participants watched pictures flashing on a computer monitor while listening to either pink noise (similar to white noise, but with a spectrum closely resembling that of human voices) or actual male and female speech. Over a 10-minute period, they were asked to count the number of times a red square appeared in a mix of otherwise similar objects.

In the second experiment, people were asked to count the instances of an infrequent 2-kilohertz tone amid a series of 1-kilohertz tones. Afterward, they were asked to rate their level of annoyance at each sound, on a scale of one to seven.

During these and other trials, researchers measured participants’ brain waves using electrodes on their scalps. They looked specifically at two responses known as the N100 and P300 components, which peak approximately 100 and 300 milliseconds after a stimulus (in this case, a sound) is presented. These are thought to represent the activation of neurons involved in analyzing and making decisions about incoming sensory information, Tamesue says.

The researchers found that when participants listened to meaningful speech, they experienced large reductions in their N100 and P300 components—indicating that their selective attention to thinking-related tasks was influenced by the noise. Other experiments also showed that meaningful noises, such as music and conversation, led to greater declines in performance on memory and arithmetic tasks.

And yes, you guessed it: Meaningful noises had a stronger effect on levels of annoyance, as well, compared to meaningless ones.

Tamesue’s research focuses on improving environments by analyzing the physiological and psychological effects of noise. He presented his new study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal, at a joint meeting of the Acoustical Societies of America and Japan, occurring this week in Hawaii.

The findings suggest that settings used for cognitive tasks, such as workplaces and schools, could benefit from designs that take into account the sound that’s likely to be present, says Tamesue—not just the volume, he adds, but the meaningfulness, as well.

“Surrounding conversations often disturb the business operations conducted in such open offices,” he says. “Because it is difficult to soundproof an open office, a way to mask meaningful speech with some other sound would be of great benefit for achieving a comfortable sound environment.”

As for employees already stuck in a poorly designed office space? You could always don your headphones and crank up the white noise. Or, take a cue from other scientific research: Studies have shown that music without lyrics can enhance mental performance, and that natural sounds like a babbling mountain brook can be relaxing (and not distracting) in stressful workplaces.

This article originally appeared on RealSimple.com.

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Tuesday, November 29, 2016

9 Health Editors Share How They Practice Self Care

Between long hours at work, weekend chores, dinner plans with friends, and time for your family, your calendar is overflowing. But can you remember the last time you took an hour, maybe even two, for yourself? If you had to think longer than a few seconds, you may want to consider taking a step back and reevaluating your schedule. Prioritizing everyone else in your life may seem honorable, but the reality is, totally neglecting yourself isn’t good for anyone. In order to take care of others, you first need to take care of yourself. (It’s kind of like the safety messages on airplanes: “In the event of an emergency, please put on your oxygen mask before assisting others.”) So whether you’re facing a rough patch or simply going through the day-to-day grind, self-care should always be on your agenda. Need some inspiration on how to spend your me-time? Here are some self-care practices the editors at Health swear by.

Sweat it out

"It’s the answer you always hear, but making time every day to exercise is my form of self-care. I’m a firm believer in that saying, ‘You’re only one workout away from a good mood.’ In particular, boxing is a huge physical and mental release for me, and barre classes take me back to my ballet days, which feels especially therapeutic. My other self-care move is curling up in my giant fuzzy blanket and watching Sex and the City reruns. It’s mindless and relaxing and just feels great sometimes." —Jacqueline Andriakos, associate editor

Tune in to YouTube

"When I’m feeling down, I typically turn to my favorite form of escapism: YouTube videos. Having a moment when I can just veg out, slap on a calming sheet mask, and watch a video by one of my favorite YouTubers (looking at you, Estée Lalonde and SoothingSista), allows me to momentarily get out of my own head. It might sound silly, but just like reading a good book, watching a good YouTube video takes me out of my own world and into someone else’s, even if just for 10 minutes. It’s enough time for me to put my thoughts and feelings into perspective and luckily, if I need more than 10 minutes of down time, there’s a whole YouTube world out there waiting for me to enjoy.”—Julia Naftulin, editorial assistant

Create a relaxing routine

“I’ve recently started a new nighttime self-care routine that I think has been helping me de-stress and fall asleep a little more easily. Step 1: Turn off the TV around 10 p.m. and force myself to stop refreshing my Facebook feed. Step 2: Make a cup of chamomile tea. Step 3: Turn off all lights in my bedroom, light a few candles, and set up my yoga mat. Step 4: Do the “Bedtime Yoga” sequence from Yoga by Adriene. It’s a 36-minute gentle yoga routine that includes moves to help you unwind and relax muscles, plus a short meditation to set your intentions for the following day." —Kathleen Mulpeeter, senior editor

Grab some knitting needles

"Lately I’ve been doing a lot of knitting. At first it was for practical reasons (I’m making my husband a scarf for Christmas), but I’ve found it has emotional benefits too. The repetitive motion is super soothing, almost meditative—it’s a great before-bed wind-down activity. I’m just bad enough a knitter that I have to concentrate a little on what I’m doing—I can’t knit on autopilot—so it’s very absorbing. I can be sitting on the couch or at the sidelines during my kids’ sports activities and find that 30 minutes has gone by without my even noticing. There’s the satisfaction of having something real and tactile to show for my time. Best of all, it keeps both hands busy so I stay off my phone!" —Jeannie Kim, executive deputy editor

"A few years ago I was going through a rough period in my life and I decided to take up knitting at night when I was having a hard time sleeping. My aunt had taught me the basic stitch when I was a teenager, so I went to my local Michael’s store and bought a bright chunky ball of yarn and got started. Since then, I’ve knit scarves for everyone I love, and this winter I’m planning on paying it forward with a knitting circle making scarves for homeless people in NYC." —MaryAnn Barone, social media editor

Escape with Friends

"There is nothing better than coming home after a long day, lighting some great smelling candles, having a cup of tea and reading a good book in my bed. If I’m not in the mood to focus on a book, I’ll instead put on Friends or some other happy, funny TV show in the background and play games on my iPad. I could do that for days." —Chelsey Hamilton, editorial assistant

Pound the pavement

"If I can, I head out for a run. Especially in the cold weather, a run is very meditative for me—hearing each foot strike and a steady breath can be extremely grounding. And as someone who can’t sit still, classic meditation/breathing exercises do almost nothing for me to relax. Running is also a huge confidence boost—I feel powerful and in control of my body and mind. In training for races, I’ve forgotten how much a run can absolutely turn around my perspective. When you’re going out for a predetermined amount of miles, at a certain pace, on already tired legs, it can feel like such a chore. But last week, when I was feeling stressed and antsy, I decided to head out the door and run for however long I felt like. I came back feeling relaxed and re-centered." —Alison Mango, editorial producer

Pick up a good read

"I know it sounds cliché, but getting lost in a book is my favorite form of self-care. With a two-year-old at home, I don’t have that much time to read. But I sneak in 10 minutes here and there—on the bus, while my son naps, before bed. Right now I’m halfway through Amy Schumer’s The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, and it is exactly the escape I need." —Catherine Di Benedetto, features director

Laugh at what you know

"For me, self-care is curling up on the couch and watching a TV show that makes me laugh. When I’m feeling stressed, my go-tos are reruns of Seinfeld, Parks & Recreation, 30 Rock, and The Office—I’ve seen all the episodes more times than I can count, but that’s the beauty of it. Watching them helps shut off the negative part of my brain for a while." —Christine Mattheis, deputy editor

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