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Scientific American Mind - July 1, 2009
How can you stay sharp into old age? It is not just a matter of winning the genetic lottery. What you do can make a difference
By Christopher Hertzog, Arthur F. Kramer, Robert S. Wilson and Ulman Lindenberger
As everybody knows, if you do not work out, your muscles get flaccid. What most people don’t realize, however, is that your brain also stays in better shape when you exercise. And not just challenging your noggin by, for example, learning a new language, doing difficult crosswords or taking on other intellectually stimulating tasks. As researchers are finding, physical exercise is critical to vigorous mental health, too.
Surprised? Although the idea of exercising cognitive machinery by performing mentally demanding activities—popularly termed the “use it or lose it” hypothesis—is better known, a review of dozens of studies shows that maintaining a mental edge requires more than that. Other things you do—including participating in activities that make you think, getting regular exercise, staying socially engaged and even having a positive attitude—have a meaningful influence on how effective your cognitive functioning will be in old age.
Further, the older brain is more plastic than is commonly known. At one time, the accepted stereotype was that “old dogs can’t learn new tricks.” Science has proved that this dictum must be discarded. Although older adults generally learn new pursuits more slowly than younger people do and cannot reach the peaks of expertise in a given field that they might have achieved if they had started in their youth, they nonetheless can improve their cognitive performance through effort—forestalling some of the declines in cognition that come with advancing age. As John Adams, one of the founding fathers and the second U.S. president, put it: “Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.”
The news comes at a propitious time. The proportion of older adults in the U.S. and in other industrial nations continues to grow: in 1900, 4.1 percent of U.S. citizens were older than 65, but by 2000 that amount had jumped to 12.6 percent; by 2030, 20 percent of us will be in that category. From a societal point of view, prolonging independent functioning is both a desirable goal in itself and a way of deferring costs of long-term care. For individuals, maintaining optimal cognitive functioning is worthwhile simply because it promises to enhance quality of life through the years.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Men's Health, Mental Health, Nutrition & Fitness, Recent Posts on July 2, 2009 - י' תמוז תשס"ט at 1:57 pm
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By Robin Nixon, Special to LiveScience, May 26, 2009
Socialites and curmudgeons not only have different party demeanors, they may also have different brain structures, a new study suggests. But what came first — the incentive to charm or the bolstered brain anatomy — is still a matter of debate.
Forty-one randomly selected men filled out a questionnaire assessing their own tendency to, say, "make a warm personal connection." Those who reported being sociable and emotionally demonstrative also tended to have denser cell concentration in two brain structures: the orbitofrontal cortex and the ventral striatum, said the study’s head researcher Graham Murray of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
The research was published in the May 20 issue of the European Journal of Neuroscience.
Chicken or egg
Many studies have found correlations between the size of a particular brain structure and physical behavior, such as the classic finding that taxi drivers often have more developed hippocampi, structures associated with spatial memory. Whether the above-average geographic abilities existed before or only developed after the subjects became cabbies is unclear. The burgeoning field of social neuroscience is producing similar findings.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Men's Health, Mental Health, Science on May 27, 2009 - ד' סיון תשס"ט at 9:36 am
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By Joel Greenberg,Chicago Tribune,July 8, 2008
JERUSALEM — Inon Schenker, an AIDS prevention specialist, pulled out a medical logbook from a shelf and opened it to a page filled with handwritten entries.
The notations, from 1993, recorded ritual circumcisions performed on Jewish men from the former Soviet Union at the height of the wave of Immigration to Israel from Russia and neighboring republics.
The entries showed 32 circumcisions by a single doctor in a day’s work, an assembly-line rate that Schenker believes shows the potential in Israel for helping combat AIDS in Africa, where recent studies have shown male circumcision to be a significant protective measure against the disease.
In the heyday of Russian Immigration to Israel in the 1990s, about 1,000 adult male circumcisions a month were performed on newcomers in hospitals and clinics, in accordance with Jewish law.
“Israel is the only country with such experience in mass adult-male circumcision, and it can respond to a very important humanitarian challenge,” said Schenker, director of Operation Abraham, a project launched last year that dispatched Israeli surgeons to teach circumcision in Africa.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Judaism, Men's Health, Middle East Report, Recent Posts on July 9, 2008 - ו' תמוז תשס"ח at 2:38 pm
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Science Daily, September 24, 2007 — Researchers in California are reporting new evidence explaining pomegranate juice’s mysterious beneficial effects in fighting prostate cancer.
Juice from the pomegranate shows promise for fighting prostate cancer. (Credit: USDA Agricultural Research Service)
In a new study, Navindra Seeram and colleagues have found that the tart, trendy beverage also uses a search-and-destroy strategy to target prostate cancer cells.
In previous research, Seeram’s group found that pomegranate juice consumption had a beneficial effect for prostate cancer patients with rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels. Such increases in PSA signal that the cancer is progressing, “doubling time” a key indicator of prognosis. Men whose PSA levels double in a short period are more likely to die from their cancer. Pomegranate juice increased doubling times by almost fourfold. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Men's Health, Recent Posts on September 24, 2007 - י"ב תשרי תשס"ח at 12:15 pm
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Hormome-suppressing therapy linked to cardiac risk in study.
By Ed Edelson
HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, June 8 (HealthDay News) — The male hormone-suppressing treatment used against aggressive prostate cancer may help bring on earlier heart attacks in older men, new research suggests.
“The new finding is that in men who have risk factors for heart attack, even six months of androgen-suppression therapy [and] maybe as little as three months, can cause a heart attack to occur sooner by about 2.5 years,” said lead researcher Dr. Anthony D’Amico, chief of genitourinary radiation oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
That finding, which comes from analysis of pooled data of studies in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, does not mean that such men should not be treated to suppress the activity of androgens — male sex hormones that spur the growth of prostate cancer cells, D’Amico said. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Men's Health on June 10, 2007 - כ"ד סיון תשס"ז at 7:05 am
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A new blood test for prostate cancer, currently being tested, could one day revolutionize the way the disease is diagnosed and treated.
By Anne Underwood, Newsweek, April 26, 2007
April 26, 2007 – Prostate cancer is the second leading cancer killer among men, after lung cancer. The American Cancer Society projects that in 2007 there will be 219,000 new cases and 27,000 deaths. Yet detecting the disease early has always been problematic. The only blood test available now—a test for prostate-specific antigen (PSA)—is not good at distinguishing malignancies from benign prostate enlargement (BPH). And it’s useless for separating aggressive cancers from others that are so slow-growing they will likely never cause problems.
But a new blood test, described this week in the journal Urology, could change all that. In a study of 385 men, the new test was able to distinguish BPH from prostate cancer, and it pinpointed men who were healthy, even when their PSA levels were higher than normal. It also did the reverse—singling out men with cancer, even when their PSA levels were low. It may also distinguish cancer confined to the prostate from cancer that has spread beyond the gland. And it has the potential to dramatically reduce the number of biopsies performed every year. More trials are required, but if they’re as promising as this initial study, the new test could reach the market in two to three years.NEWSWEEK’s Anne Underwood spoke with the study’s senior author, Dr. Robert Getzenberg, director of urology research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Excerpts: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Men's Health, Recent Posts on April 26, 2007 - ח' אייר תשס"ז at 1:08 pm
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International experts have backed the use of male circumcision in the prevention of HIV.
BBC News, March 28, 2007
The World Health Organization and UNAIDS said circumcision should be added to current interventions to reduce the spread of HIV.
Three African trials have shown that circumcision halved the rate of HIV infection in heterosexual men.
The recommendations largely apply to countries where rates of heterosexual transmission is high.
Experts warned that greater use of circumcision would not replace the need for other prevention methods, such as condoms. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Judaism, Men's Health, Recent Posts on March 28, 2007 - ט' ניסן תשס"ז at 10:45 am
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Court grants parents the right to impregnate strangerwith son’s sperm
JERUSALEM – In a precedent-setting decision, an Israeli court has ruled that a dead soldier’s family can use his sperm to impregnate a woman he never met.
Keivan Cohen, 20, was shot dead in 2002 by a Palestinian sniper in the Gaza Strip. He was single and left no will. But at the urging of his parents, a sample of his sperm was taken two hours after his death and has been stored in a hospital since.
When the family tried to gain access to the sperm, however, the hospital refused, on the ground that only a spouse could make such a request. Arguing that their son yearned to raise a family, his parents challenged that decision in court. And on Jan. 15, after a four-year legal battle, a Tel Aviv court granted the family’s wish and ruled that the sperm could be injected into a woman selected by Cohen’s family. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Men's Health on January 31, 2007 - י"ב שבט תשס"ז at 2:33 pm
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25-year study finds substantial benefit to controversial procedure
Circumcised males are less likely than their uncircumcised peers to acquire a sexually transmitted infection, the findings of a 25-year study suggest.
According to the report in the November issue of Pediatrics, circumcision may reduce the risk of acquiring and spreading such infections by up to 50 percent, which suggests “substantial benefits” for routine neonatal circumcision. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Judaism, Men's Health, Recent Posts on November 7, 2006 - ט"ז חשון תשס"ז at 12:06 pm
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By Shmuel Shapira, Israel 21C, October 29, 2006
Shmuel Shapira is a professor, Hadassah University Hospital Deputy Director General and Director of Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health
Israel has been always in the front of world clinical medicine, medical sciences and biotechnology. And in the last five years major promising scientific contributions have originated from different Israeli hospitals and faculties of medicine which are having worldwide implications. Here are just a few of the highlights which my medical and scientific colleagues at Israeli hospitals and research centers have been part of:
Ovarian tissue transplant
In a breakthrough that provides hope for woman undergoing chemotherapy during their fertile years, for the first time in the world, a cancer patient who had become sterile due to anti cancer chemotherapy treatment gave birth after undergoing a transplant of ovarian tissue. The ovarian slices had been taken from her body prior to initiation of chemotherapy treatment and preserved by freezing them.
Behind the stunning medical advance were Dr. Dror Meirow, Prof. Jehoshua Dor, and Dr. Jacob Levron of the IVF Fertility Unit at Sheba Medical Center. The global breakthrough was reported in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2005. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Men's Health, Women's Health on November 1, 2006 - י' חשון תשס"ז at 2:17 pm
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