New Study: Happiness Is The Same As Unhappiness - http://clapway.com/2015/12/11/new-study-happiness-is-the-same-as-unhappiness/

A new study disproves the belief that unhappiness has a direct effect on a person’s health, so there is no connection between happiness and quality of life. The researchers took data from the Million Woman Study conducted in the UK, which was conducted between 1996 to 2001.

Happiness Has No Relation to Disease or Early Death

The research initially assumed that people with the disease would report a higher amount of unhappiness, which was commonly associated with loneliness, lack of exercise and smoking. It was reported that women who get 8 hours of sleep or more are likelier to be happy.

Ten years later, though, the data didn’t look the same. 4% of the 32,000 who died after the study were not unhappier. Upon closer examination of the data, it turned out that women who were rated as unhappy died at the same rate as those who were happy. This included all kinds of death, related to disease or not.

Illness Makes People Unhappy, But Unhappiness Doesn’t Make People Ill

There were no direct links found between unhappiness and illness, not even in the ten-year study. Researchers claim that the connection stems only from a confusion of cause and effect. The study, extensive as it was, definitely eliminates unhappiness as being a cause of the increase in mortality for women.

Obviously, more research is needed to truly confirm this. There are always skeptics, even in this respect. There is some vagueness in the study itself since unhappiness and happiness are things that can’t be measured exactly. Further study could give the community more concrete hope. Though there’s no telling if a shorter study will truly bring the concrete results people are expecting. It’s also worth noting that the study focused on unhappiness, which probably should not be confused with depression. There will probably be more studies conducted in this respect, perhaps incorporating more demographics and all genders.

 

 

New Study: Happiness Is The Same As Unhappiness

Kids with Asthma May Have More Problems - http://clapway.com/2015/12/10/kids-with-asthma-may-have-more-problems

If asthma was not hard enough to deal with for kids, a recent study shows that they have more problems than that. A recently published study, in the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, finds that kids with this type of disease have their risk for heart disease doubled. This is extremely unfortunate news for parents who have children with allergic diseases.

STUDY SHOWS ASTHMA INCREASES BLOOD PRESSURE

The lead author for this study was Jonathan Silverberg. Silverberg is a member at the University of Northwestern, a very prestigious university. He said that with the results of their test, kids with asthma have twice the rate of both high cholesterol and blood pressure. He also mentions the hard reality that these types of risks are starting for children at a much earlier age than they realized. The high cholesterol and blood pressure, he says, will lead these kids to have twice the chance at developing heart disease.

STUDY LEADER MENTIONS WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT NEW ASTHMA ISSUE

Silverberg did acknowledge that there is a chance to help with this. He puts himself and all others in the medical field on notice. He states that they need to start checking children more aggressively to make sure that they do not miss any with high cholesterol and blood pressure. Silverberg continues and says that not all hope is lost, as he says that the children with allergic diseases can alter their lifestyles. Whatever can be done to help these children needs to be done.

A NUMBER OF CHILDREN WITH ASTHMA

Silverberg said that during their study they used some data from the National Health Interview Survey. That survey was taken in 2012 and involved 13,275 children. The data had the percentage of those kids with allergic diseases above 40 percent. 14 percent of those children specifically had asthma. Allergic diseases are not uncommon for children, which makes this, even more, critical.

Kids with Asthma May Have More Problems

New Study Says Lonely People Die Quickly - http://clapway.com/2015/11/27/new-study-says-lonely-people-die-quickly123/

New research out of the University of Chicago states that there’s a direct link between lonely people and illness. Previous studies have asserted the dangers of loneliness, but this has been able to prove that it has a negative impact on people’s health.

No Man is An Island

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, states that lonely people have a higher risk of untimely death, chances being 14% higher than for people living with family or loved ones. Loneliness triggers cellular reactions that change the way the body produces white blood cells.

The study, conducted on humans and the rhesus macaques primate, and they identified a phenomenon called ‘conserved transcriptional response to adversity’, where inflammation genes grow in number and others associated with antiviral responses decline in number. This means that lonely people are less likely to be able to fight viral infections efficiently.

Loneliness Causes Fight or Flight Stress

The research showed that lonely people and primates have a higher production of unripe monocytes, which causes fight or flight stress. This all points to the fact that stress, a low white blood cell count and increased anxiety could lead to untimely death. The research certainly calls for further study into the effects of loneliness and the physical ability to fight infection.

 

 

New Study Says Lonely People Die Quickly

What came first? The smoking or the psychosis? - http://clapway.com/2015/07/11/is-smoking-a-cause-or-a-consequence-of-psychosis-599/

A new research suggests that smoking may be a factor for developing psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia. We’ve been told that “smoking kills” but this is the first study discerning whether it can actually be a casual factor for psychosis.

Smoking: a risk factor not a consequence of psychosis

We would expect smoking rates to increase only after people had developed the condition. However, although more research needs to be done, early information strongly suggests that there might be a correlation between cigarettes and mental disorders.

Dr James McCabe, clinical lecturer in psychosis studies at the King’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience said smoking should be “taken seriously as a possible risk factor” for psychosis and not “dismissed as a consequence of the illness”.

Linking psychotic disorders and tobacco smoking

The study carried out by researchers from Kings College London analysed data from over 60 investigations on a massive group of 15,000 smokers and 2, 73,000 nonsmokers.

Studies were conducted around the world between 1980 and 2014. Three hypotheses were tested linking psychotic disorders and tobacco smoking.

The results of the study

The results, which were published in the Lancet Psychiatry journal, found that 57% of people first diagnosed with psychosis were smokers.

Individuals, who had experienced their first episode of psychosis, were three times more likely to be addicted to cigarettes, compared to non-smokers. Researchers also found that psychotic illnesses develop in individuals who smoke daily, a year earlier than those who do not smoke.

But how is this possible?

Experts attribute the link between smoking and psychosis to a number of factors. Biochemistry plays some part. According to Professor of Psychiatric research at the IoPPN, this could be a consequence of excess dopamine caused by nicotine exposure, which in turn causes psychosis to develop. The authors of the study, however, admitted that coming up with an exact cause-effect relationship between smoking and psychosis is challenging.

Smoking as a self-medication

Tobacco-based incentives in psychiatric settings are becoming less common. But you still hear about the myth that folks need to smoke because it helps with psychiatric symptoms and there is a history of rewarding patients with cigarettes for good behaviour or medication compliance, in some psychiatric institutions.

Furthermore, research published in the Schizophrenia Bulletin focused on how the tobacco industry specifically marketed cigarettes to patients with schizophrenia. People often associate smoking as a sort of self-medication and researchers have found that the culture of the mental health system has also helped to perpetuate tobacco use among people with mental disorders.

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Is Smoking a Cause or a Consequence of Psychosis?

Spiders Can Sail and Walk on Water - http://clapway.com/2015/07/04/spiders-can-walk-and-sail-on-water345/

Behold! Spiders can sail!

In what seems like the unlikeliest of evolutions, it has been found that spiders can sail and walk on water. How does it do this, you ask? Well, you only have to remember how it is that spiders can travel long distances, and then you can figure out how they sail the waters like pirates. If you don’t, here’s how.

By using their webs, spiders can sail and walk on water, gliding around in a sort of adapted version of ballooning. The key is to use their legs to move them along by using the wind on the water, and letting the web drag in the water as a weight, holding the spider down.

Study observes behavior of spiders and interactions on water

When spiders sometimes land on water by mistake, what happens to them is a phenomenon several scientists undertook to find out. A study then was put underway, which would observe that spiders both can sail and walk on water. Research was submitted in March earlier this year before it was finally published yesterday with the BMC Evolutionary Biology in all its scientific glory.

So basically, if spiders are going off course from their intended destinations, they can just drop onto a body of water and sail across it to reorient themselves and continue back on course. You can watch an example of spider behavior on water here. The adaptation also prevents them from crashing and drowning in water after a crazed flight.

The potential of the sailor spider

This behavior is a fascinating addition to what we already know about spiders, but also shows us how much our small eight-legged friends continue to surprise us. Scientists had wondered why it was theorized that spiders were landlocked, when they were often found in the middle of oceans or on remote islands. The potential of this ability to navigate the waters can best summed up by saying that it allows the spiders to better control where they are going and also increases their odds of spreading out geographically, without the obstacle of water acting as a concern. In other words, now that spiders can sail, there is no stopping them!

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Spiders Can Sail and Walk on Water