Tag: an

An omega-6 fatty acid could help in fight against heart disease

An omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid has the potential to help fight heart disease, finds a new study by researchers at Cardiff University, in collaboration with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. With funding from the British Heart Foundation, the team found that dihomo-gamma-linolenic acid (DGLA), an omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid, could halt the progression of atherosclerosis—one

Early trial shows promise for MDMA as an alcoholism treatment

Scientists use ECSTASY to ‘cure alcoholics’: Four people give up heavy drinking after taking two doses of MDMA alongside psychotherapy in eight-week trial, study claims Scientists from Imperial College London teamed up with mental health workers They trialled a combination of counselling with taking the recreational drug None of the four people were drinking harmfully

To treat an eating disorder, we need to know what emotion fuels it

Pinpointing how different emotional states and neural pathways influence our eating behaviours could pave the way for better ways to tackle eating disorders and obesity. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia can have life-threatening consequences. They affect around 20 million people in the European Union, with an estimated cost of €1 trillion per year.

Heavy periods? You might have an undiagnosed bleeding disorder

About 30 per cent of all women report heavy menstrual periods at some point during their reproductive years. Up to 15 per cent of these have an underlying bleeding disorder and yet most have never been diagnosed, leaving thousands of women to suffer from a treatable problem. As a hematologist and clinician scientist at Queen’s

Drinking water? There’s an app for that

The human body is well equipped to maintain an adequate level of hydration through the various biological feedback control mechanisms of homeostasis. However, this regulation relies on an adequate supply of water. While there is much mythology surrounding how many glasses of water we each must drink daily to stay healthy. Many people sip at

How attention helps the brain perceive an object

It’s easy to miss something you’re not looking for. In a famous example, people were asked to closely observe two groups of people—one group clad in black, the other in white—pass a ball among themselves. Viewers were asked to count the number of times the ball passed from black to white. Remarkably, most observers did

Advice on salt, hidden in an array of foods, gets specific

It can be hidden in bread, pizza, soup and other packaged foods and restaurant meals. Now, advice to watch out for salt is coming with a more specific reason. A report released Tuesday by the National Academies of Science ties the recommended limit on sodium to a reduced risk of chronic disease. The report, which

How Texas Tech health built an app for alternative payment models

Working in healthcare and technology for over a decade and a half, one thing I’ve noticed is that innovation is slowed and often nixed because we look at how an incremental achievement fits into the current mega-sized health I.T. environment. I’ve experienced numerous times where operations, clinical or administrative personnel bring up problems that they

Toward an ‘ultra-personalized’ therapy for melanoma

With new immunotherapy treatments for melanoma, recovery rates have risen dramatically, in some cases to around 50%. But they could be much higher: A new study led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science showed, in lab dishes and animal studies, that a highly personalized approach could help the immune cells improve their abilities

Chronic pain may be an important contributor to suicide

Chronic pain may be an important contributor to suicide. Nearly 9 percent of people who died by suicide in 18 states from 2003 to 2014 had documentation of chronic pain in their incident records. Findings from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) are published in Annals of Internal Medicine. More than 25 million adults