A new method to detect infections and to test serious diseases and drugs is developed by Manchester University scientists which uses Bio chips.

Published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), the technique uses Protein chips that are objects like slides. They have proteins attached to them and permit crucial data about the behavior of proteins to be gathered. They permit to conduct tests to understand the behavior of bio proteins and their interaction with cells, drugs, DNA and other proteins simultaneously.

The Manchester team of Jenny Thirlway and Jason Micklefield and Lu Shin Wong, said “the technical challenges of attaching proteins in a reliable way have previously held back the widespread application and development of protein chips.”

As proteins can be placed precisely on a chip, it would be possible to scan large numbers of them simultaneously and also isolate the data bearing on individual proteins.

The benefit of using these chips is that they uses a very minimum amount of material- the protein which makes an easy task to gather information about rare proteins which are available in a very small amount.

According to the researchers they have found a better way to attach active protein to a chip which is reliable, quick and efficient. Unlike the traditional method, the attachment in the new method occurs in a single step in just a few hours.

It requires no prior chemical modification of the protein of interest or additional chemical steps.

Researcher Jason Micklefield said, “DNA chips have revolutionized biological and medical science. For many years scientists have tried to develop similar protein chips but technical difficulties associated with attaching large numbers of proteins to surfaces have prevented their widespread application.”

“The method we have developed could have profound applications in the diagnosis of disease, screening of new drugs and in the detection of bacteria, pollutants, toxins and other molecules,’ Micklefield added.”

Humidity and heat, which makes us restless, can be proved favorable for the athletes. On one side when Olympic athletes are worried about heat and humidity, researchers said that the same heat and humidity is positive for them. Research shows that higher humidity can result in increased concentration of athletes ‘drawing’ on mental ‘reserves’ and allow improved mental performance.

Beijing heat might give unexpected benefit to the athletes. A study from Nottingham Trent University found that members of the GB hockey squad were better at decision-making in the heat.

Scientist Hannah Macleod said that they could draw on “cognitive reserves”.

It was tested on two athletes who were set to play under two different environmental conditions. One in the same hot environment expected in Beijing and other in normal conditions. When asked to complete mental tasks, the players completed the same number in the hot environment as in normal conditions, but with notable improvements in the time taken to do so.

Ms Macleod said, “We’ve found that under extreme conditions, elite athletes are able to draw on cognitive reserves which allow them to counter the effects of heat stress.”

“Their mental acuity is actually seen to improve, a result that is of enormous benefit to competitors in field sports such as hockey.”

Conventional wisdom says athletes, particularly those from cooler countries, find it tough to adapt to competing in high temperatures but Macleod denied the thought saying, “Our findings have been able to offer reassurance to the GB players that their brain functions will not be affected by heat stress.”

The conclusion from these findings says that ‘humidity’ forces individuals to adapt by focusing and increasing concentration. Ironically, it helps the individual to achieve better.

Pregnancy is a very critical and crucial time period not only for would be mother but for a father too. Avoid any risk that can lead to complicate or terminate a pregnancy. There are a number of different activities you should encourage or avoid during your pregnancy. Regular medical examination and proper diet are the common things which every one knows. Similarly avoid junk food, illegal drugs, drinking and smoking habits, if any are other such things that should be avoided. But still there are many other factors and issues which are not very important during normal conditions but should be taken care during pregnancy for your baby’s health.

Get the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) for Folic Acid: Proper amount of Folic Acid reduces your baby’s risk for spinal bifida.  0.4 mg of folic acid is recommended daily. Doctor’s consultation is advised for proper recommendations.

Take Prenatal Vitamins: Parental vitamins are the need during pregnancy which provides the necessary vitamins for both you and your baby. It can also help you avoid diabetes.

Eat sufficient of Protein: Take sufficient amount of proteins during pregnancy. Adequate protein is essential for the development of the baby especially the brain. Eat protein rich diet. The RDA of protein for pregnant women is 75 grams but 100 grams is often recommended.

Get Plenty of Exercise: You also need to exercise daily. Normal exercise is not recommended in this period. Consult your doctor to give you tips and tell you about the special exercise recommended for pregnant women. Also watch your weight as normally would. Weak kegal muscles can contribute to pain during birth, premature flexion of the baby’s head and a prolonged second stage. Childbirth can also weaken these muscles and cause discomfort afterwards.

Get Enough Fat in Your Diet: Fat and cholesterol are also necessary for you but not excess of it. Make sure you are taking a balanced fat diet. 2 tablespoons of fat a day is recommended for pregnant women. Fat which you normally try to avoid, are important for absorbing the fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K) and for stretchable skin. Fat is also needed to develop baby brain.

Check Immunity to German measles (Rubella): Immunity should be checked for German measles (Rubella), which can lead to miscarriages and fetal deformities, if caught during pregnancy. You can vaccinate for Rubella prior to getting pregnant to avoid any risk.

Avoid Fish: According to the November 27 issue of Time Magazine (page 31), it is warned to pregnant women who take fish during this period. Fish concentrate methyl mercury, which is known to affect the developing child’s brain.

Do not take any drug without consulting: You should not take prescription drugs or Over the Counter (OTC) drugs, including Aspirin, unless told to do so by your doctor.

Avoid artificial Vit A supplement: Vitamin A supplement if taken artificially can greatly increase the risk of having a baby with birth defects or other problems. Natural source like food are OK but make sure you are not taking too much Vitamin A. Artificially supplemented vitamin dose must be avoided.

Avoid X-rays: X-Ray exposures are fairly small, with the greatest risk occurring early in the pregnancy. Informing your doctor or dentist of the fact that you are pregnant is probably the best way to control your risk. If an X-Ray can be postponed until after the pregnancy, then that would eliminate the risk.

Avoid Negative Thoughts and Actions: Focus on your child. Avoid any negative thoughts. It will make you depress and will affect negatively to your health which will affect your baby.

Take Care When Traveling: Travel while pregnancy needs a special care. Avoid long distance travel during this period. At last months do not travel without your doctor’s permission. Sudden jerks during travel can hurt the baby. Make sure the travel is smooth and without jerks. It should not be reckless.

Consult Your Doctor about Family History: Any family health history or any current conditions should be discussed with doctor. Chronic problems or reproductive problems should be told to the doctor. Pre-existing conditions include things such as diabetes, herpes (and other STDs), heart problems, epilepsy and high blood pressure can affect the child also.

According to a report in the journal Pediatrics, special video games can help the young cancer patients to take their prescribed medicine.

“Targeted video games can help improve the lives of young people with cancer, most importantly improve their adherence to their treatment,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Pamela M. Kato of the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands,

Playing a specially designed video game can help adolescents and young adult cancer patients adhere more closely to their prescribed treatment. A study was conducted on 375 male and female patients 13 to 29 years old being treated at centers in the US, Canada and Australia. They were assigned to play “Re-Mission” or “Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb,” a standard video game not focused on cancer care.

Patients in both groups were asked to play their assigned game for at least an hour a week, and 22 % of those in the comparison group and 33 % of those in the Re-Mission group actually did so over the course of the 3-month study.

Research results said that there was 16% rise in antibiotic adherence in those who played Re-Mission. They took 62.3 % of their total prescribed antibiotic medications, compared to 52.5 % for the Indiana Jones group. Adherence to a standard chemotherapy drug was also higher in the Re-Mission group.

The researchers said that adherence is the major problem in adolescents. While dramatic improvements in survival have been seen in pediatric cancer patients, they add, death rates among teens and young adult patients have not followed this trend. “They’re kind of a tough group that gets a little bit lost in the system,” Kato said.

“To me it was kind of changing their reward system for taking chemo and giving them a different insight,” Kato said explaining that the game gave the patients a new way of looking at their illness and hence the result.

Re-Mission (http://www2.re-mission.net) can be downloaded free from the Web site by patients and medical professionals. It is a 3-D game developed by HopeLab, a Redwood City, California-based non-profit company. The game is all about controlling a tiny robot called Roxxi in a 3-D environment which represents the inside of the body of a young cancer patient. Players are allowed to blast cancer cells and control side effects via Roxxi. Taking chemotherapy drugs and antibiotics, using relaxation techniques, eating food and keeping up with other types of self-care are needed to win the game.

Common cold is the most common but the most troublesome and irritating problem of everyone.  For long time, scientists are struggling to get any reliable cure of common cold. Finally an international team has developed a drug against common cold bugs.

The scientists claims that the cold-busting pill known as BTA798 can be effective against bugs that cause half of colds in adults and almost all colds in children.

According to researchers in UK, the drug could be used to clear up sniffles in healthy people and prevent any kind of life-threatening infections in asthma and cystic fibrosis sufferers.

The Daily Mail reported that the drug works by latching on to cold-causing HRV, preventing them from breaking into the body’s cells and causing infection. In a double-pronged attack, it also stops any infection from spreading.

Now, you can get rid of the annoying infection by simply popping this pill. The drug is also tested in laboratory and it was found that it works. The drug killed large quantities of cold virus within a couple of hours. And, trials on British volunteers have started to determine whether it could prevent people from catching a cold.

Research is still on to get the perfect results. If successful, the drug could hit the markets in five years’ time. Till then, try to keep away from common cold!

Good news for egg eaters. Eat two eggs daily and keep yourself fit!

Researchers found that a breakfast with two eggs daily can help lose some weight comparative to eating a bagel of equal calories.

The study was conducted on 152 overweight people into four groups: two groups were fed on two eggs with breakfast every morning, and others were told to have a bagel that was equivalent in calories. Half of the egg eating people and half of the bagel eating people were also put on a low-fat diet with about 1,000 calories a day less than they would usually eat.

An egg breakfast as part of a low-calorie, low-fat diet may help people lose weight, the researchers wrote in the study.

People are then examined till eight weeks and it was found that egg eaters have a 65 percent greater weight loss. The people on the restrictive egg diet had a lost an average of 5.7 pounds, compared to 3.4 pounds for those on the bagel diet. Also, the egg eaters reduced their waist by 34 % and a 16 % greater drop in body fat.

So have a healthy egg breakfast in the morning and keep the body fit!

When a human start aging it is naturally to lose memory better to say we naturally lose the power of multitasking and to do things quickly. However, mental capacity may increase with age which relates with ability to reason and use our experience. Maintaining the memory is a major concern among aging people all around the world.

According to Dr. Vincent Fortanasce, the author of the new book ‘The Anti-Alzheimer’s Prescription’, “Most people feel that they are victims when it comes to Alzheimer’s and memory loss.”

According to Fortanasce’s four-step method for staving off Alzheimer’s, one important thing that affects memory is diet. Diet should be balanced. Simply sticking to carbohydrate rich white bread will remove insulin from the body. it should be noted that your food should include the dietary supplements in proper proportion and in proper order too. One-third carbohydrates, one-third protein, one-third fat should be the order and proportion. Extra carbohydrates may also cause the insulin-degrading enzyme that exists in the brain to work overtime which will remove more insulin, rather than getting rid of beta-amyloid proteins, the toxic protein that produces Alzheimer’s disease.

“Carbohydrates are to the brain what cigarettes are to the lungs,” Fortanasce says.

Fish is also a good diet which prevents memory loss and stroke in healthy, older adults. Research published in the latest issue of the journal Neurology studied on more than 2,300 people age 65 and older found that those who ate broiled or baked tuna and other fish high in omega-3 fatty acids (salmon, mackerel, anchovies) three or more times per week had a nearly 26% lower risk that the silent brain lesions would be linked to dementia and stroke.

Dr. David Siscovick, study author and professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Washington says fried fish or no fish diet is of no use.

Also the soy food like Tofu also increses risk of dementia. According to Loughborough and Oxford University’s last month research, “concerning the high consumption of soy foods, such as tofu” on 700 elderly Indonesians, had an increased risk of dementia or memory loss, particularly if they were over age 65. Researchers believe the link might be due to soy products’ phytoestrogens, which may offer some neural benefits to the middle-aged and young but could harm those over 65.

In a women life, after menopause, the level of estrogen changes in some midlife which can be attributed to lose of memory. A recent research by the University of Illinois at Chicago found that the more hot flashes a woman has, the worse her memory performance, or recollection of words, names, paragraphs and stories. By using monitors to record subjects’ hot flashes, researchers also found that women tend to underreport the number of hot flashes they experience by more than 40%. In other words, women may be frequently experiencing the menopausal symptom and its effects without realizing it.

One more study revealed that taking cholesterol-lowering statins may be good for the mind, possibly due to the drugs’ ability to lower high insulin levels in the brain that are associated with dementia. Taking statins for five to seven years may cut a person’s risk of dementia by half, says Mary Haan, epidemiology professor at the University Of Michigan School Of Public Health and lead author of the study.

But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved the medication of statins for this particular use, it is not advisable to take statins on its own. Also it is not yet clear that which statin might provide the most brain benefits.

These are some of the things which you might be unaware. Keep an eye on these habits and avoid dementia.

A broccoli can help the diabetic patients as the recent research done by a University of Warwick have shown that it undo the damage to heart blood vessels caused by diabetes. People with diabetes are up to five times more likely to develop cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes which further damages blood vessels.

It was found that a compound called sulforaphane present in the broccoli encourages production of enzymes which protect the blood vessels, and a reduction in high levels of molecules which cause significant cell damage.

The research work reported in the journal Diabetes states the tests conducted for the effects of sulforaphane on blood vessel cells damaged by high glucose levels (hyperglycemia), which are associated with diabetes.

They recorded a 73% reduction of molecules in the body called Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). Hyperglycemia can cause levels of ROS to increase three-fold and such high levels can damage human cells.

Professor Paul Thornalley from University of Warwick said, “Our study suggests that compounds such as sulforaphane from broccoli may help counter processes linked to the development of vascular disease in diabetes.”

Also it was found that sulforaphane activates a special protein in the body called nrf2, which protects cells and tissues from damage by activating protective antioxidant and detoxifying enzymes.

Earlier, Brassica vegetables like broccoli have been linked to a lower risk of heart attacks and strokes. In short, the diabetic patient should try more and more Brassica vegetables in their meal.

Obese people are always worried about their extra weight and somehow wants to reduce themselves but did you ever think that why obese people keep trying to lose their weight? There are lots of reasons behind the efforts to lose weight.

An extra pound of weight give rise to so many problems and to remove all these problems from life, people wants to remove that extra pound. Most of the people involved in weight loss habits get indulged in eating disorders and it scares all. Losing weight is definitely an advantage to your health as well as your looks.

Your body’s health highly depends on the weight that it is carrying on with itself. Losing extra weight from your body will definitely comes as a positive sign for your health. An extra weight gives rise to so many disorders which makes you unfit. Obesity is the result of extra weight which further gives rises to so many disorders and diseases.

The weight lose program adds the health benefits if done properly. It makes you fit and keeps away from disorders along with enhancing your looks. Obese or overweight people are at a risk of diseases, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, intestinal diseases etc.

Hence, losing weight will help you to prevent these diseases and disorders from coming near you as well as will help you to cure them.

Other important advantages of being slim include lots more. When you are out shopping for clothes, being slim and fit will pave you an easy way to buy clothes. You can actually see yourself fit into the clothing on display more readily. Clothes for obese people are more costly than for slim people because of the need of extra cloth piece to prepare the garments.

Slim and a fit body is always admired by others. If you look fit and fine, you will be praised by others and people will like your company. An obese person is generally avoided. These advantages of being slim and fit will make you think on this way and you must want to be fit. For this you don’t have to go on a tougher effort of dieting. You can eat what you want and still you can be healthy and fit. For this, see Lose your weight without Dieting.

If some one asked about how to reduce weight, the very easy reply is dieting. But if you want to lose your weight without dieting, here I am to help you.

Change your mind about food: The very first thing is to change your mind about food. Food is needed to live but do not live to eat. Eat only when you feel hungry. Many times we start eating as soon as ant food item comes in our hand. Think before taking it in. Eat the right foods but only those we will eat without adding junk to make it unhealthy. Cut down on your breads but don’t cut them out; use whole grain breads

Avoid announcing your food habits: Do not give much importance to your consciousness towards food. Stop announcing about your plans to lose weight. This will help you to keep yourself away from free advices of your relatives and friends which can change your ideas and can divert towards wrong side.

Do not deprive yourself: Do not deprive of something you really want or like because you will start to crave in its absence. Craving will cause you to eat more than you really want. Just be smart and don’t gorge yourself. Do not eat like you will never eat again or until you feel miserable; you will have more energy and be able to burn off the calories better!

Weight once a week: Only weight once in a week. Take it easy and do not worry about how much you have to lose. Muscle always weighs more than fat so just go for an exercise to tone up and not to build up muscles.

Satisfy your senses: Make sure to eat foods with lots of color and spices; this satisfies the senses and calms cravings. Use olive oil and vinegar on salads. Instead of grabbing a burger and fries, grab one or the other and drink water. You can always have the other later if you really want it.

Cut down alcohol: Alcohol adds unnecessary calories to the body. Most of the drinkers have a fat belly.

Drink water: Drink a lot of water to hydrate the body. Drink a glass of water before each meal then drink water with your meal. You can add lemon and a sugar substitute if you want. Avoid chilled carbonated drinks or at least limit them as far as possible. If you drink coffee and/or tea, drink decaffeinated; it doesn’t hurt your stomach as bad so you won’t be tempted to eat to try to get rid of the acid.

Eat slowly and in smaller fractions: Do not take a bulk of food in your plate. Put a little of each thing you want on your plate and eat slower. If you want more then go back for seconds. You can use smaller bowls ad fill them full to satisfy your sense.  If you want red meat then eat it early in the day because it takes longer to digest than other food.

Go for multivitamins: Eat food rich in vitamins. Dairy products are proven to help you lose weight. You can go for a milkshake without any worry of gaining weight. Eat oatmeal once a day if possible.

Avoid eating in bed: do not eat while you are lying on your bed. Avoid bringing the snacks plate with you when you graze. You will keep eating without knowing that you are really not hungry. Take small amount of it if you feel hungry and if still feeling hungry, go back again to take some more. You will think about it more and if you decide to go back then walking back and forth is exercise too.

Say No to Smoking: When you stop smoking you will gain weight but it will go away. Avoid smoking as long as you no longer need them. Smoking makes exercise harder and if you don’t exercise then you aren’t getting healthy anyway.

I hope all these tips will help you to lose your extra weight and to make you smarter. Keep eating and still lose your extra weight!