Top Five Health News of the Week: 6th-11th April 2009
It is again that time of the week where we reminiscence about the latest events that have taken place in the past week. Like always, we have exclusively chosen five of the most interesting news of the prior week, which we present to you in our Top Five Health News of the Week. We hope that our readers enjoy reading these news events as much as we have enjoyed presenting them to you.
The week started off with rather amazing news for those people who may have conflicting views about eating chocolates and solving mathematical problems! Wouldn’t life be easier if you could just gear yourself up by having a bar of chocolate and getting ready to face the numerous challenges that are aimed at you by your math’s textbook? Well, a study led by Professor David Kennedy from the Northumbria University reveals that this could indeed be possible. Yes, you read it right! Chocolates may help you in solving arithmetic problems. It must be like a dream come true for those people having a sweet tooth and a bitter encounter with math’s problems, if we can call it that. The flavanols in chocolates, by improving the blood flow to the brain, aid in improving the brain’s problem solving abilities. Another effect that consumption of chocolates may have is that they energize people and help them in shedding their fatigue and mental drain. However don’t just start munching on chocolate bars whenever you reach a tough arithmetic problem; because these findings need to be analyzed in more detail before they can be confirmed. Besides, an over consumption of chocolates may improve your brain’s problem solving ability, but it may even increase your body weight and waist size! So until these findings have been finalized, you can get back in the battle field and continue practicing those arithmetic problems.
Next up was a shocking piece of information for those people who may be regularly pampering themselves by drinking a glass of wine in the sunset. It seems that excess consumption of white wine may turn out to be not so good for your teeth. Other than this, the New York University also unearthed that; drinking white wine could make the stains on one’s teeth darker. Because of the acidic reaction of wine the tooth surface gets eroded, due to which chemicals from coffee or tea settle in them. This in turn intensifies the stains present on the tooth surface. Before the world tumbles down on all the wine lovers, let us add that these stains may be overcome with the use of toothpastes containing whitening agents. The harm done to your teeth by drinking wine may be overcome with toothpastes; however the long term harm that it may do to your over all health may not be reversible. So we would recommend our readers to keep a close watch on the amount of alcohol that they consume and stay away from binge drinking.
This news was followed by an interesting study overlooked by a researcher from Johns Hopkins along with a team of international experts. If asked to name the benefits of consuming vegetables, everyone will succeed in giving a long list of its useful properties. After this study, you may want to add another benefit to the list of positive effects gained with vegetable consumption. Broccoli sprouts are believed to be capable of fighting away and protecting an individual from a bacterium, whose list of causal-diseases range from ulcers to major diseases like stomach cancer. In fact, it was also revealed that broccoli sprouts in comparison to the mature heads of broccoli may be a richer source of the potent antibiotic required to fight against the above mentioned bacterium. We are sure a couple of delicious broccoli recipes will make a new place for this healthy vegetable in the heart of your family members.
The next news which caught our attention was a novel study coming to the rescue of pregnant women facing the dilemma of experiencing a supposed “placenta brain.” Pregnant women may usually be heard complaining about having problem remembering things. Therefore this news may prove to be helpful for pregnant women as well as those people who believe that such complains made during pregnancy may be due to tricks played by the mind. Dr. Lenore Ellett, an obstetrics and gynecology registrar at the Melbourne Mercy Hospital for Women says that due to poor quality sleep of pregnant women, they go through such memory problems. It was observed that certain pregnant women could not perform satisfactorily in auditory memory tests, but fared well in visual memory and IQ tests. Pregnancy, in addition to bringing an indescribable amount of joy with itself, also brings a set of other temporary discomforting situations. It would be right on the part of the study to recommend obstetricians to provide pregnant women the required information in a written form rather than verbally, for better retention.
The last news of the week may be intertwined with our previous news on pregnancy and motherhood. Experts from the Harvard University have stated that a mother’s feedback may have a deeper effect on their child, than previously believed. If these experts are to be believed then a mother should be more careful when commenting on their child. Motherhood requires a person to undergo numerous situations and ensure its effect that is left on their children. Maternal criticism was found to leave its mark on the brain of formerly depressed people as against to people who were not depressed. However, these experts are not certain that the different patterns of the brain activity that was noticed, was infact due to these criticisms or due to the previously experienced depressive episode. The maternal criticisms were said to revolve around topics like tattoos, being inconsiderate and body piercing among others. Well, the study findings may need a deeper analysis, but one thing that is known for sure is that a mother’s criticism has the ability to affect an individual in numerous ways.
So that were the Top Five Health News for the week period:6th-11th April 2009, with that its time for us to wrap this section. Ymber Delecto once commented that, “A healthy body and soul come from an unencumbered mind and body.” Leaving you with this thought, we at HealthJockey sign off until next weekend. Have a happy, safe and a healthy week ahead!
