Island Sun Times

BELIEF IN EXERCISE MAY MAKE IT MORE EFFECTIVE

People who think they’re getting a good workout obtain more benefits than those who perform the exact same activities, but don’t think what they are doing is exercise, according to the findings of a study by Harvard researchers. These results support the idea that the benefits of exercise may involve a placebo effect.

Hotel cleaners who were told that their work of cleaning roughly 15 rooms each day was enough physical activity to maintain a healthy lifestyle were more trim and fit four weeks later than their peers who weren’t given this message, Dr. Ellen Langer and her student Alia J. Crum report in the February issue of Psychological Science.

While the placebo effect of fake pills is widely accepted, Crum and Langer note, no one has yet studied whether the belief that exercise is maintaining fitness might exert a kind of placebo effect as well.

To investigate, the researchers recruited 84 female housekeepers working at seven different hotels. Workers in four of the hotels were told that the exercise they got on the job met or exceeded the Surgeon General’s activity recommendations for a healthy lifestyle, while those in the three other hotels were not told anything. Several measures of participants’ fitness and health were taken at the beginning of the study and four weeks later.

Before the study started, about two thirds of all participants said they didn’t exercise regularly, while one third said they didn’t exercise at all. After four weeks, 79.7 percent of the women in the informed group said they exercised regularly. They also lost two pounds, on average; lowered their blood pressure by 10 percent; and showed reductions in percentage of body fat, body mass index, and the size of their waists in relation to their hips.

All of these changes were significantly greater than those seen in the group who weren’t told that their work was good exercise.

One possible explanation could have been that women in the informed group became more active and ate more healthily, the researchers note, but they found that this was not the case, making it unlikely that the fitness improvements were due to changes in behavior.

“These results support the hypothesis that exercise affects health in part or in whole via the placebo effect,” Crum and Langer write. “Whether the change in physiological health was brought about directly or indirectly, it is clear that health is significantly affected by mind-set.”

SOURCE: Psychological Science, February 2007.

ANTIBIOTIC OVERUSE DOES MAKE MICROBES RESISTANT

Study confirms the drugs alter healthy & unhealthy bacteria

While scientists have believed for years that excessive antibiotic use leads to microbes gaining resistance to those drugs, a new study offers up much-needed proof.

“A lot of studies have shown an association between antibiotic use and resistance,” said Dr. Herman Goossens, lead author of the report in the Feb. 10 issue of The Lancet. “But all those studies are based on indirect evidence. There have been no randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind studies. Ours is the first study to show directly that antibiotic use leads to resistance,” he said.

The study was performed at University Hospital Antwerp in Belgium, where Goossens is professor of medical microbiology.

The study showed that “antibiotics will have a tremendous effect on normal flora [microbes] which will exist for at least six months,” Goossens said. It also showed that different antibiotics in the same family can have strikingly different effects on these bugs.

In the study, healthy volunteers were given either azithromycin or clarithromycin, members of the macrolide family of antibiotics, while a third group received a placebo.

The researchers periodically tested samples of the Streptococcus family of bacteria, obtained from individuals in each group, to see if they had developed any resistance to the macrolide drugs.

As expected, resistance levels rose in the two groups given the antibiotics — by 50 percent after eight days in the clarithromycin group, and by more than 53 percent after four days in the azithromycin group. There was no increase in antibiotic resistance among people who took the placebo.

And while azithromycin caused a slightly greater increase in bacterial resistance over the short term, clarithromycin seemed to favor the survival of bacteria carrying a gene called erm(B), which appears to confer high-level resistance to macrolide antibiotics.

Both drugs also affected the levels of naturally occurring, harmless bacteria in the mouth, an effect that was still evident after 180 days.

“Other studies have shown that resistance genes can spread among bacteria,” Goossens noted. “They can spread to pathogens causing such problems as ear infections and sore throats. Then these become very difficult to treat.”

According to the researchers, the study’s take-home message is one experts have preached for years: “Physicians should take into account the striking ecological effects of antibiotics when prescribing such drugs to their patients.”

However, differences in resistance patterns between the two closely related antibiotics also invites further study, they added.

The report fills in an important gap in knowledge, said Dr. Stephanie Dancer, a consultant microbiologist at Southern General Hospital in Glasgow, Scotland. She wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal.

“Microbiologists knew this anyway, but it’s so nice to see direct evidence,” Dancer said. “It’s what we have needed.”

“I do feel very, very strongly, as my colleagues do, that we are running out of [effective] antibiotics,” Dancer said. “This study is so nice, because it gives concrete evidence underpinning everything we have suspected.”

MORE TEENS ARE SAYING, “HAVE A CIGAR”

They’re getting the message about cigarette dangers but not ‘stogies’, research finds
Slowly but surely, American kids have gotten the message that cigarette smoking is stinky, smelly and a hazard to your health.

Now, if only they would believe the same about cigars.

While cigarette consumption declined in the United States by 10 percent from 2000 to 2004, cigar consumption jumped 28 percent, according to a recent report published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Other studies have found that teens who smoke cigars are definitely behind some of that increase. For instance, a 2004 survey conducted in Cleveland found that 23 percent of the 4,409 teens polled preferred cigars, compared to 16 percent choosing cigarettes.

And the increase may not yet have peaked, said John Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, a national legal action anti-smoking organization based in Washington, D.C.

“Many of the factors that began leading to the [cigar] increase are still present,” Banzhaf said. They include the perception that cigars look fashionable and the fact that high-profile politicians and others are seen smoking them regularly, he said.

“We have Arnold (Schwarzenegger, California’s governor), smoking cigars and occasionally, Bill Clinton,” he said. “More and more women are smoking cigars.”

But it’s not just politicians and women who are fueling the image that cigars are hip, said Scott Goold, director of Tobacco Freedom, an Albuquerque, N.M.-based group. “Our popular culture is filled with images of cigars,” he said.
Your neighbor passes them out, for instance, when the family has a new baby. And businessmen smoke them when they cinch a business deal, he noted.

For cash-strapped teens, finances may play a role in their tobacco of choice, Banzhaf said. “Many states raise cigarette taxes but not cigar [taxes],” he said.

There’s also the perception that cigars are just not as dangerous as cigarettes in terms of cancer risk, a perception Banzhaf and other experts said is incorrect.
While it’s difficult to compare cigarettes and cigars head-to-head in terms of health risk, Banzhaf said, it’s clear both are risky. Cigar smoking is strongly linked to a host of deadly cancers of the lip, tongue, mouth, throat, esophagus, larynx and lung. According to data from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, smoking just one or two cigars a day doubles the risk for oral and esophageal cancer and increases larynx cancer risk six-fold.
Risks rise even higher once users decide to inhale cigar smoke. Compared to nonsmokers, cigar smokers who inhale deeply face 27 times the risk of oral cancer and 53 times the risk of cancer of the larynx, according to the NIH report.

So, what works and what doesn’t if you’re a parent trying to convince your teen to avoid cigars and other tobacco?

Dwelling on the long-term risk of cancer – that they may come down with lung cancer at 40 – is not usually effective, Banzhaf said, because the typical teen thinks of the 40th birthday as an eternity away.

Teens also have a hard time personalizing risk. They tend to think they are immune to life’s dangers – that something bad could happen to the next person, but not them.

Parents should instead focus on the reasons kids light up to begin with. “Kids like to start smoking not so much for the taste but because it is a sign of growing up,” Banzhaf said. Peer pressure plays a role, too.

“If parents can start to convince kids that smoking makes you stinky and smelly, not sexy and sophisticated, that can have a great impact,” he said.

Goold tells parents to maintain an ongoing dialogue with their children, the same as they would when talking about not taking drugs. Spending time together as a family, such as eating dinner together, can help make that conversation flow more naturally, he said.

A HONEY OF AN ANTIOXIDANT
Darker varieties, made from ‘honeydew’ left on plants, may be especially healthy, study finds

What’s the health buzz on honey?

If you’re looking for the best choice, consider darker-colored “honeydew” varieties from bees that collect the sugary secretions that insects leave on plants, otherwise known as honeydew.

According to a new study of Spanish varieties, honeydew honey has even higher levels of disease-fighting antioxidants than the honey that bees make from nectar.

But all honey, regardless of its origins, is good for you, the experts said.

“Besides its value as a great sweetening agent, honey has proved that it also has effective antioxidant and antibacterial activities,” said study co-author Rosa Ana Perez, a researcher with the Instituto Madrileno de Investigacion y Desarrollo Rural, Agrario y Alimentario in Madrid.

In recent years, honey has gained a reputation as a health food, especially in light of research suggesting that it has germ-fighting powers and is high in antioxidants, chemicals that appear to block certain types of cell damage caused by molecules called free radicals.

“There is increasing evidence that free radicals contribute to the development of diseases, such as neurodegenerative disease, chronic inflammatory disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease and aging,” Perez said.

In 2004, U.S. researchers found that antioxidant levels rose in people who ate between four and 10 tablespoons of honey per day, depending on their weight. It wasn’t clear at the time, however, which varieties of honey might harbor the most antioxidants.

In the new study, researchers looked at 36 varieties of Spanish honey in two groups – clover honey, made by bees from the nectar of flower blossoms, and honeydew honey, made by bees from a sweet, sticky substance secreted by insects such as aphids that live off plants.

Honeydew honey is only produced in a few parts of the world and is considered a delicacy in certain regions.

The researchers performed tests on the honeys and reported their findings in the February issue of the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.

According to the results, honeydew honeys had higher levels of antioxidants in general. The researchers also report that Spanish honeydew honeys tend to be darker and more acidic than clover varieties.

Perez said honeydew honey from outside of Spain should also show similar signs of higher levels of antioxidants. Honeydew honey is relatively rare in the United States.

Should people eat a lot more honey? “An adequate diet rich in natural antioxidants: fruit, vegetables, olive oil, wine, honey, among others, could prevent some disease,” according to Perez.

But she added that consumers should be careful, because honey is also full of carbohydrates – it’s about 80 percent sugar – and it “must be incorporated into diet in a balanced manner, both quantitatively and in relation to the other foodstuffs.”

Finally, she said, honey is not a miracle food. “I don’t think that a foodstuff on its own could allow the improvement of the health of anyone, or even prevent some disease,” Perez said.

FEEDING YOUR BRAIN: NEW BENEFITS FOUND IN CHOCOLATE

As if people needed another excuse to like chocolate, new studies suggest a specially formulated type of cocoa may boost brain function and delay decline as people age, researchers said in February.

Scientists, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, presented results from early studies testing the effects on the brain of flavanols, an ingredient found in cocoa.

Funded by candy maker Mars Inc., which provided a specially formulated liquid cocoa concoction for the research, the studies suggest that flavanols increase blood flow to the brain and may hold promise for treating some vascular impairments.

Mars, a private company, has made a study of the health benefits of cocoa. Its CocoaVia line of chocolates, made with a process that retains flavanols, have been shown in clinical trials to have benefits for the heart.

The latest research also suggests benefits for the brain.

Ian Macdonald of Britain’s University of Nottingham Medical School, conducted a small brain imaging study on young, healthy women to see whether flavanol-rich cocoa helped boost cognitive function during challenging mental tasks.

Although the beverage did not improve their performance on the tests, it did increase blood flow to their brains for a two to three-hour period, Macdonald said.

He believes more research might show that increased blood flow could benefit older adults and those who have cognitive impairments, such as fatigue or even mini-strokes.

A U.S. study of healthy adults over 50 also found a marked rise in blood flow. It was conducted by Harvard Medical School researcher Dr. Norman Hollenberg, who has studied the effects of cocoa and flavanols on Panama’s Kuna Indian population.

Hollenberg believes that, while promising, the brain benefit needs to be verified. “The only way we can prove something is working is a large clinical trial,” he said.

Meanwhile, the researchers cautioned against rushing out to binge on the special Mars line of chocolates.

“It is a modest calorie load but it is a calorie load,” Macdonald said. “As long as you are doing something to earn that 100 calories, then that’s fine.”