Hearing loss, a disability currently untreated in about 85 percent of those affected. They can still hear sounds and think the real problem is that people aren’t speaking clearly.

They often ask others to speak up, repeat what was said or speak more slowly. As hearing worsens, they are likely to become increasingly frustrated and socially isolated.

Social isolation, in turn, has been linked to depression and an increased risk of death from conditions like heart disease.

Rose Marie Jewett, 83, of Janesville, Wisconsin, who had experienced progressively worsening hearing loss for decades, had all but given up hope of hearing others speak or ever again enjoying music.

She said she could understand how hearing loss could lead to dementia, because she was ‘forgetful’ when she did not hear what she should have heard.

It’s not that she forgot things but rather, she had never heard them to begin with, and the strain of constantly trying to piece things together was taking its toll.

“When you can’t hear anybody, you don’t pay attention,” Ms. Jewett said. “You shut yourself off from the world, you don’t think very well, your memory gets bad and you get kind of dull.”

Last year researchers demonstrate an independent association with dementia by following 639 people ages 36 to 90 for nearly 12 years.

Dr. Frank R. Lin, an otolaryngologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, and his colleagues there and at the National Institute on Aging showed a direct relationship between the participants’ degree of hearing loss and their risk of later developing dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

For each 10-decibel loss in hearing, the risk of dementia rose about 20 percent among the participants. Compared with those who could hear normally when first examined, the risk of dementia doubled among those with mild hearing loss, tripled among those with moderate hearing loss and increased fivefold among those with severe hearing loss.

The relationship between hearing loss and dementia persisted even when other factors linked to cognitive disease, like hypertension, diabetes and smoking, were taken into account.

“People are most likely to notice communication problems when their hearing loss exceeds 25 decibels,” Dr. Lin said in an interview. Hearing loss at this level affects the clarity of words.”

“The brain dedicates a lot of resources to hearing,” Dr. Lin said. “When the clarity of words is garbled, the brain gets a garbled message. It has to reallocate resources to hear at the expense of other brain functions.”

Thus, the overworked brain may lose “cognitive reserve,” the ability of healthy parts of the brain to take over functions lost by other parts.

In the contrary those with highest levels of vitamin D due to sun’s exposure have a ten percent lower risk of developing the mental disorder.

Children who are exposed to the sun and having oily fish(i.e. tuna) part of their menu can help increase their levels of vitamin D.

In a study taken in more than 2,700 children aged nine and thirteen those with the lowest levels of vitamin D were more likely to show signs of depression while those with higher levels show a decline in depressive symptoms in their teen formative years.

Exposure to the sun is a major source of vitamin D because it is mainly made by the action of its sunlight on the skin.

Although vitamin D is found in oily fish, and is routinely added to milk, diet accounts for very little of the nutrient that actually makes it into the bloodstream.

The study investigated levels of two forms of vitamin D, D2 (ergocalciferol) and D3 (cholecalciferol) , and found the strongest anti-depression link is with D3.

Because of the preoccupation with the harmful effects of too much sun, most people do not get enough of D3.

Vitamin D3 is a hormone that is produced naturally within the human body when the skin’s surface is exposed to sunlight but most people do not synthesize healthy levels of the nutrient.

A generic vitamin D tablet is likely to contain high levels of vitamin D2. While D2 is healthy in small amounts, large quantities of the vitamin can be toxic to the body.

In contrast, there is no risk of toxicity with vitamin D3. Vitamin D3 helps the body absorb calcium and works to control the immune system.

A lack of sufficient vitamin D3 can leave your body more vulnerable to autoimmune diseases and cancer.

Those with insufficient levels of vitamin D3 have suffered from mood swings, depression and even Alzheimer’s disease.

Nourishing sunlight is the only source of vitamin D3 synthesis in the human body.

Morning sun is the safest for the body. Head outside for at least 20 minutes each day and expose a minimum of 40 percent of your body to the sun for maximum D3 synthesis.

During cold months, pill or liquid supplements may be necessary for many adults.

Foods rich in vitamin D3, include egg yolks, sardines, fortified whole milk, mackerel and beef liver.

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The danger of falls after treatment with older anti depressants is well known, as the drug can cause vertigo and instability.

It was believed that by switching to newer or latest version of SSRI type drugs, would reduce the problem.

However, the latest research, from the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, appears to show the contrary.

The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology noted that the risk of injuries from falls was tripled.

Dr. Carolyn Sterke recorded the daily drug use and records of falls in 248 nursing home residents over a two-year period.

The average age of the residents was 82, and the records suggested that 152 of them had suffered a total of 683 falls.

The consequences of falls were relatively high, with 220 resulting in injuries including hip fractures and other broken bones – and one resident died following a fall.

The risk of having an injury-causing fall was three times higher in residents taking SSRIs compared with those not taking the drug, and this risk rose further if the patient was being given sedative drugs as well.

Professor Clive Ballard, from the Alzheimer’s Society, said it was ‘worrying’ that such a commonly prescribed anti-depressant was causing increased risk.

“It is important to highlight any aspect of care that might be causing risk to a person with dementia,” said Prof. Ballard.

Dr. Sterke said that these risks needed to be taken into account when assessing whether anti-depressants were required.

“More research is now needed to understand why this anti-depressant is having this effect on people with dementia and if there is an alternative treatment for depression that they could be prescribed,” according to Prof. Ballard.

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A hormone is produced in the system in response to the physical activity induced by the body and in the process burned the caloric intake from the food people eat.

Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, provide remarkable insights into how physical activity affects the body at a cellular level.

Scientists closely examined the operations of a substance called PGC1-alpha, which is produced in abundance in muscles during and after physical activity or exercise.

Scientists had also found that mice bred to produce preternaturally large amounts of PGC1a in their muscles are typically resistant to age-related obesity and diabetes, much as people who regularly do their physical activity or exercise.

The researchers used advanced algorithms to determine that increases in PCG1a in muscles caused a subsequent bump in the expression of a protein known as Fndc5.

Harvard researchers realized that one thing the protein did was break apart into different pieces, one of which was a hormone that had never before been identified.

Unlike most substances present in the muscles, hormone does not completely remain there, the scientists noted. It obviously enters the bloodstream and surfs to fat cells, where, by providing various biochemical signals or messages, it begins turning regular fat, especially deep, visceral fat clustered around organs, into brown fat.

The finding that hormone might contribute to the browning of visceral body fat is “an extraordinary discovery,” says Sven Enerback, a professor of metabolic research at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who has written extensively about the biology of fat and obesity.

In essence, hormone appears to be one of the more important missing links in our understanding of how physical activity or exercise improves health.

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Similar impairments have been found in research into other addictions including alcohol and drugs.

Experts in China scanned the brains of 17 young web addicts and found disruption in the way their brains were wired up.

The scientists in China said the study could help develop a treatment, although they admitted they do not know whether the changes to the brain are the cause or consequence of internet addiction.

Up to one in 10 internet users are thought to be addicted, becoming so absorbed in web use that they forgo food or drink for prolonged periods.

Dr. Hao Lei and colleagues write in Plos One: “Overall, our findings indicate that IAD has abnormal white matter integrity in brain regions involving emotional generation and processing, executive attention, decision making and cognitive control.”

Henrietta Bowden Jones, consultant psychiatrist at Imperial College, London, who runs Britain’s only NHS clinic for internet addicts, said: “The majority of people we see with serious internet addiction are gamers people who spend long hours in roles in various games that cause them to disregard their obligations.”

Internet addiction is a clinical disorder marked by out-of-control internet use.

Cognitive function was measured three times over 10 years to assess memory, vocabulary, hearing and visual comprehension skills.

All cognitive scores, except vocabulary, declined among all age groups during the study, and there was evidence of faster decline among older people.

Researchers from the Center for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health in France and University College London observed 5,198 men and 2,192 women over a 10-year period from 1997.

The volunteers were civil servants aged between 45 and 70 who had been enrolled in a long-term health study.

In men, there was a 3.6 percent drop in reasoning after 10 years among those who were aged 45 to 49 at the start of the study and 9.6 percent among those aged 65 to 70.

In women, the decline was 3.6 percent and 7.4 percent in the same age groups respectively.
“Cognitive decline is already evident in middle age,” says the paper, which defines this as the years from 45 to 49.

Authors of the study have said, diseases such as dementia were now thought to be the result of long-term changes over at least 20 to 30 years.

There is enough evidence already to show the importance of healthy lifestyles and good heart health in impacting on the later risk of dementia.

The findings should spur further research into spotting and braking cognitive deterioration, the authors hope.

Many societies face an ‘exponential increase’ in the number of elderly people as a result of increases in life expectancy, they note.

This revealed how the medial gastrocnemius muscle attached to the Achilles tendon adjusted as volunteers walked and ran at various speeds.

According to a new study a gentle run at around two meters per second helps a calf muscle to work more efficiently than when you’re walking briskly.

It has shown that this part of the calf muscle acts the same way as a car clutch, which allows you to shift into a different gear.

The way your calf muscle works makes it less tiring to jog than to walk and thereby you would feel the better benefits.

This more efficient movement helps the muscle release more momentum-boosting energy, which increases stamina levels and this is the reason why it is less tiring to jog than to brisk walk.

This muscle engages as we start to move, holding one end of the tendon while the body’s energy is transferred to stretch it.

The authors found that the Achilles, a long, elastic tendon running down the back of the lower leg ‘springs into action’ releasing this stored energy to help keep us moving.

The team, from North Carolina State University noted that walking fast makes the muscle work harder but provide less energy, with this inefficiency ultimately decreasing our stamina.

Study author Dr. Gregory Sawicki says that ‘Muscles work too inefficiently to speed walk, so the body turns to running in order to increase efficiency and comfort, and to conserve energy.’

‘The muscle can’t catch up to the speed of the gait as you walk faster and faster and this is the reason why ‘speed-walking’ does not have that many followers.

‘But when you shift the gait and transition from a walk to a run, that same muscle becomes almost static and doesn’t seem to change its behavior very much as you run faster and faster.’

According to Dr. Sawicki, ‘Other than Olympic race walkers, people generally find it more comfortable to run than walk when they start moving at around two meters per second, about 4.5 miles per hour.

This study was published in journal proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The ‘ozone layer’, which is considered to be approximately twenty four miles thick extends from six to thirty miles above the Earth’s surface, serves as a shield that protects us from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation.

But at ground-level, it can be a dangerous air pollutant that damages the airways and inflames the lining of the lungs.

In recent years, however, pain researchers have been investigating its potential as a remedy for herniated discs.

This is where discs in the spine which normally act as shock absorbers for the body become damaged and inflamed, pressing against nearby nerves and causing pain and numbness.

Treatments usually involve physiotherapy and painkillers but many people end up needing surgery. But the ozone therapy could help many avoid going under the knife.

Scientists at Frankfurt University in Germany treated patients with bulging discs who had not got better on other treatments and were heading for major surgery.

After a single injection of the gas, 37 per cent reported they were still pain-free six months after the jab.

Another third reported less frequent episodes of back pain, usually once a day rather than several times a day previously.

Of the remainder, 22 per cent reported no improvement and seven per cent said they felt worse.

The gas is first mixed with steroid medicine, which helps to dampen down inflammation, and injected directly into the damaged disc under a local anesthetic.

Scans showed the discs shrunk by between two per cent and 15 per cent afterwards, according to results presented at the recent annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

Some research suggests ozone helps by reducing levels of prostaglandins compounds in the body that trigger inflammation and pain. This helps shrink the disc, easing pressure on nerves.

Research leader Dr. Thomas Lehnert said: “If you reduce the volume, it won’t be pushing against the nerve and causing pain.”

Around two-thirds of patients who had ozone injected said it relieved the pain caused by disc problems.

The research, involving 327 volunteers with long-term back problems that had failed to get better with other treatments, is the latest in a long line of studies highlighting the pain-zapping qualities of the gas.

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A diet rich in vitamins and fish may protect the brain from aging while junk food has the opposite effect, research suggests.

Higher intake of transfats, commonly found in fried foods, fast foods and other less healthy diet options, did not perform as well on cognitive tests.

The best current advice is to eat a balanced diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables, not smoke, take regular exercise and keep blood pressure and cholesterol in check, said Alzheimer’s Research UK.

Researchers at the institute at Oregon State University carried out and analyzed blood nutrients level of 104 people at an average age of 87, specifically with few known risk factors for Alzheimer’s.

They found those who had more vitamin B, C, D and E and high levels of omega 3 fatty acids, found mainly in fish in their blood performed better in tests of memory and thinking skills.

The poorest scores were found in people who had more trans fats in their blood. Trans-fats are common in processed foods, including cakes, biscuits and fried foods.

Co-author Maret Traber of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University said: “The vitamins and nutrients you get from eating a wide range of fruits, vegetables and fish can be measured in blood biomarkers.

The researchers, then carried out brain scans on 42 of the participants. They found individuals with high levels of vitamins and omega 3 in their blood were more likely to have a large brain volume; while those with high levels of trans fat had a smaller total brain volume.

Study author Gene Bowman of Oregon Health and Science University said: “These results need to be confirmed, but obviously it is very exciting to think that people could potentially stop their brains from shrinking and keep them sharp by adjusting their diet.”

Researchers found that while age and education affected performance on the cognitive tests, nutrient status accounted for 17 percent of the variation in scores, and 37 percent of the differences in brain volume.

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For people who have overdone the festive food a little, it could be a quick and relatively best solution to shed excess weight without really trying hard.

A study has shown how dieters can reduce two inches from their waistlines in just only two months by increasing the proportion of protein they eat and cutting back on carbohydrates and fat.

In the study, the group of men and women followed a menu planner that combined healthy, high-protein breakfast. Over a four-week period, 45 volunteers, who were restricted to 1,000 calories a day, lost on average 10 lbs. 7 oz (4.7kg).

But an extended study carried out over eight weeks found that 12 of the overweight participants lost on average 14 lbs. 5 oz (6.5kg) on the diet.

Their waistlines shrank on average by two inches to 37in (94cm), their average body fat fell from 36.8 per cent to 34 per cent, and cholesterol levels dropped by as much as an eighth.

The menus feature snacks and ready meals including Asian-style Lochmuir salmon salad and char-grilled chicken and tomato risotto, with high levels of protein provided by fish and lean meat.

Nutritionists say that a diet containing a high proportion of healthy protein-rich foods can aid weight loss because they create a feeling of fullness faster than those containing carbohydrates or fat.

Popular diets of recent times which adapt the principle have included the Atkins Diet and the Dukan Diet.
The study, by scientists at the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health at Aberdeen University, found that the volunteers felt less hungry despite cutting their calorie intake by 40 per cent.

Senior research fellow Dr. Alex Johnstone recommends sticking to the protein rich diet only as long as it takes to achieve the desired weight loss, then trying to maintain it through exercise.