Six in Ten Canadians Concerned Technology Takes Away From Face Time with Family and Friends!
Face time is quality time and it's just better face to face
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/September2008/22/c6853.html?view=print

It's Better Face to Face

Canadians are feeling the strain of technology on their relationships with friends and family, with sixty-one per cent wishing they could go back to a time where reliance on technology wasn't so heavy. "Human interaction moves people emotionally and while electronic communication is efficient to stay in touch, Canadians want and need to complement their relationships with more face time," says relationship expert Allie MacPhail who works with teens, parents, married couples and peers on strengthening their relationships. "Although Canadians, specifically teens and young adults, are often very well connected online and through text messages, many of them feel isolated, lonely and lacking real, personal connections. Quality relationships are more important than quantity of friends and Canadians need to get offline and make face time with their family and peers."

Here are some tips from Allie MacPhail on how to create more face time with family and friends:

• Invite the person out (or in) to participate in a common interest/activity (i.e. dog walking, lunch, going to the gym etc.).

• Ask for some face to face time. People often mention that they want to get together but the actual planning of it happens much less frequently.

• Turn off the electronics. As much as we think we can still focus on the conversation at hand, the TV and computer are huge distractions.

• Start an informal group such as a book club or join a sports team. Face to face will happen with more ease when people have common goals.

• Respect the time of others and yourself while still honouring the relationship you have (i.e. "I know you are busy, but I would love to spend an hour/30 minutes with you to catch up.").

Canadians Want Face Time

The Dentyne(*) survey revealed many Canadians feel that they are losing their personal touch with family and friends:

• While we crave face time, Canadians are more likely to use technology to connect socially with friends and family (ninety-seven per cent) rather than connecting in person (seventy-nine per cent);

• And when Canadians are face to face, breath matters. In fact ninety-five per cent of Canadians confirm fresh breath is important;

• More than half of Canadians (fifty-five per cent) agree that life is so busy that electronic communication is necessary to stay in touch with friends and family;

• Canadians are more likely to contact friends via phone (ninety-one per cent) or email (eighty-six per cent);

• Canadians aged 18-34 are more likely than older adults to use a Blackberry, cellular phone, Facebook and instant messaging to stay connected;

• Albertans use technology the most when connecting with friends and family, averaging 24.2 times a weekday, while Quebec has the lowest usage, averaging 14.9 times a weekday;

• The extent to which males and females rely on technology vs. face to face communication on a typical weekday for social purposes (excluding people from home) is virtually identical, with females showing a slightly increased reliance on technology (18 times per day) vs. males (17 times per day).

"Many Canadians under the age of 30 are increasingly socialized to rely on text, email and social networking to communicate with people in their lives," says MacPhail. "As a result, they are not getting the emotional benefits of a personal relationship and can therefore have a difficult time functioning in a normal conversation. Canadians need to leave their PDAs behind and activate their social and emotional connections. Face time is quality time and it's just better face to face."

Canadian Cancer Society Calls on Parties to support a National Caregivers Strategy

OTTAWA, Sept. 11 /CNW/ - More than 50 per cent of Canadians are concerned about the financial impact of caring for a sick family member, says a national public opinion poll conducted for the Canadian Cancer Society. Poll results also show that more than 60 per cent of Canadians believe it is likely that they, or their spouse or partner, will be a caregiver to a sick family member in the future.

"A federal election is a good time to ask candidates about our citizens' future needs," says Dan Demers, Director, Public Issues, Canadian Cancer Society. "The Canadian population is aging and increasingly Canadians will be caring for loved ones who have cancer and other serious illnesses that could lead to death. While some financial support currently exists for caregivers, much more needs to be done to assist these people who are the invisible backbone of our healthcare system. We are calling on all the political parties to implement a national caregivers strategy to prevent this growing challenge from become a future crisis."

The poll results show Canadians support improved caregiver benefits:
Almost three in five, or 59 per cent of Canadians said they would be more likely to vote for a party that promises a longer period of support for Canadians who have to be absent from work to care for a gravely ill family member at risk of dying.

Fifty per cent say that a fair government program would provide up to six months of paid leave if a person had to leave work temporarily to be a caregiver to a gravely ill family member at risk of dying.

Many caregivers suffer financial difficulties as they deplete personal savings and lose income when they are unable to work.

"It is simply not acceptable for a person already giving so much to support others to carry an additional burden of extraordinary costs and lost income," says Demers.

Demers adds women and lower income families experience the biggest impact of inadequate support for caregivers. "The majority of caregivers are women and about 65 per cent of caregivers report an annual household income of below $45,000."

"Canadians concerned about this issue, particularly women, should think carefully about how to vote in the next election," says Demers. "The time is right for political decision makers to take action. Helping families with seriously ill, or dying, loved ones is a critical component of an effective healthcare system."

The Canadian Cancer Society believes key components of a national caregivers strategy should include:

• An enhanced Compassionate Care Benefit Program - this program is part of the federal Employment Insurance (EI) Program

• A longer benefit period of 26 weeks is recommended (it iscurrently six weeks)

• Expanding benefits for those workers who are not eligible for employment benefits.

• As an EI-based program, many people are not eligible for compassionate care benefits, including people who are unemployed, self-employed, part-time or temporary workers, and contract and seasonal employees.

• Tax system improvements to better support caregivers.

The Canadian Cancer Society is a national community-based organization of volunteers whose mission is the eradication of cancer and the enhancement of the quality of life of people living with cancer. When you want to know more about cancer, visit our website at www.cancer.ca or call our toll-free, bilingual Cancer Information Service at 1 888 939-3333.

Vitamin C Might Help Lower Hypertension
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
Friday, September 19, 2008; 12:00 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article//AR2008091901851

(HealthDay News) -- Vitamin C may help lower high blood pressure by calming an overactive central nervous system, new Italian research suggests. Using intravenously delivered vitamin C, "our study demonstrated for the first time in humans that we can reduce sympathetic nervous system overactivity, and consequently blood pressure, (by) targeting oxidative stress," said study lead author Dr. Rosa Maria Bruno from the University of Pisa.

Bruno explained that the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is part of the body's central nervous system that controls non-voluntary activities, such as blood pressure. Overactivation of the system has been identified as an underlying foundation for the onset of elevated blood pressure and resulting organ damage.

The Italian team was expected to report its findings Friday in Atlanta at the American Heart Association's Conference of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research.

The study builds on prior research touting the potential of vitamin C and other antioxidant nutrients to lower high blood pressure. For example, this past January, British authors presented evidence inThe American Journal of Clinical Nutritionthat suggested that having high levels of vitamin C in the blood might help reduce stroke risk. In the current work, Bruno and her colleagues focused on 12 patients diagnosed with an "essential" form of high blood pressure -- namely, one with no known cause.

None of the patients had received any kind of prior treatment for their condition. Over a five-minute period, all the patients were intravenously administered three grams of vitamin C, after which they were monitored for 20 minutes to assess blood pressure and SNS activity. Electrocardiograms were also taken. The researchers found that "antioxidant capacity" went up as a result of the IV infusions, while SNS activity dropped by about 11 percent. In addition, the participants' blood pressure was found to have plunged nearly 7 percent on average, with a specific drop in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number on a reading) of 9 percent. However, no significant drop in systolic blood pressure was observed.

But Bruno said it's too early to say that vitamin C can reduce either blood pressure or sympathetic activity among healthy patients -- just among those with high blood pressure.

"(And) our results cannot be directly translated into clinical practice, because to obtain this result, we used one high dose of vitamin C administrated intravenously," she added. "We don't know if chronic oral administration of vitamin C can achieve the same effect."

Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of Women and Heart Disease at Lenox Hill Hospital's Heart and Vascular Institute in New York City, added a similar caveat.

"What's interesting about this particular trial is that the vitamin C was given intravenously," she noted. "And maybe that's why it worked here. It's really hard to know. Yet there's something to be said about the concept of vitamin supplementation in treating vascular disease because of the antioxidant content. It makes sense physiologically."

"However, although it would be nice to say to someone, 'if you eat right and take these vitamins, you're going to be OK,' rather than 'here -- take all these medications, with all these side effects,' this is a small esoteric study," Steinbaum said. "This finding is certainly not going to make me or anyone else run out and start giving vitamin C intravenously to our patients."

More information:
For additional information on lowering blood pressure, visit the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/hbp/treat/treat.htm

Why rubbing it better makes pain go away
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 10/09/2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth

Rubbing a sore knee or arm after a bump really does help make the pain go away, say scientists.

Researchers have discovered that gentle stroking activates "pleasure" nerves beneath the skin, which then reduce the sensation of pain from other nerves. They found that people who were exposed to painful temperatures on the surface of their skin felt less pain if they were stroked at the same time. The scientists believe signals to the brain from the nerves that detect the pleasurable stroking dampen the signals from nerves that detect pain.

Professor Francis McGlone, a neuroscientist at Liverpool University who worked with the scientists behind the study, has also calculated the optimum way of touching someone to produce the most pleasure. Speaking at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, he said the key was to stroke with a slow speed and little pressure.

Professor McGlone, who also works for Unilever's research and development team to develop pleasurable textures for new produces, said: "The picture that is emerging is that there are two separate nerves for painful and pleasurable touch.

"They also seem to mediate each other, so rubbing does make pain feel better."

Working with a team of researchers in Sweden, Professor McGlone has developed a stroking machine that can provide specific speeds and pressures. He found the most pleasurable way to touch someone was to stroke at around two inches per second across the skin and applying pressure equivalent to a third of the weight of a five pence coin.

When the machine stroked volunteers, using a camel hairbrush, at this optimum setting, their pleasure nerve cells went wild with activation and sent signals to the pleasure centres of the brain.

The Swedish researchers, based at the University of Gothenburg, also used brain scanning while exposing volunteers to painful temperatures. They found that those who were being stroked experienced less pain when they were not being stroked.

Professor McGlone also believes that touch is crucial for children as they develop and insufficient physical contact while growing up could be implicated in the risk of depression in later life. He said that human bodies were covered in pleasure nerve fibres, known as C fibres, apart from the palms of hands and soles of feet.

He said: "I agree with the Conservative leader David Cameron that we should be hugging hoodies.

"Rather than handing out anti-depressants to people, we should be hugging and grooming them.

"Grooming is an extremely pleasurable experience and I think the reason we do it so much is because of this rather than just wanting to stay clean."

Unilever are also developing an artificial finger that they hope will be able to replicate the complex sensations of human fingers. Dr Simon Watson, a computational physicist at Unilever, said they have already built a prototype that can distinguish between different levels of roughness of sandpaper.

He added: "Ultimately we want to be able to replicate what human fingers can do in a machine so that robotic hands for example can experience touch.

"We could use it to reliably test the texture of different products."

Interview: Snoring - Research and Treatment
The quiet hero of snoring therapy
Source: http://www.resmed.com.au
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/inconversation/stories/2008/2313016.htm

TRANSCRIPT:

DESLEY BLANCH: Snoring is the cause of sleep apnoea. That's when breathing actually stops, damaging our physiology in the process. King Henry VIII had apnoea, as did Churchill and Brahms, and as do Rosie O'Donnell and Billy Connolly.

Physiologist Professor Colin Sullivan of Sydney University began his work over 30 years ago which has led to a global, multi-billion dollar industry based on masks directing airflows over the user's face. But is it true that apnoea - when people stop breathing as they snore - is behind most of today's vascular disease? And what is next in this immensely important research?

Robyn Williams put these questions and more to Professor Colin Sullivan who here recounts his turning point.

PROFESSOR COLIN SULLIVAN: Well I remember it very clearly. The study was done in my laboratory, where I am still, at the University, and the patient was really very ill with the condition, he was 43 and he had severe sleep apnoea. I in fact recommended tracheotomy for him but the family refused outright.

So he agreed to try this experimental method and my first two PhD students who were involved with it -- Dr Faiq Issa and Dr Michael Burton Jones -- and we brought him in to the lab and set him up on a bed that I had set up there, or a bench, and put on the mask. In fact what it was it wasn't a mask, it was a pair of prongs attached to quite a large-bore tube, which I literally glued on with silastic material, which is a medical silastic, and we started recording, and turned on the pressure and very quickly, like within minutes, he was asleep, I let him sleep with severe apnoea, repeated obstructions, his oxygen would go down to 50%, we just turned up the pressure...

ROBYN WILLIAMS: The flow of air.

PROFESSOR COLIN SULLIVAN: We turned up the flow because what it's doing is increasing the pressure, so turned up the flow of air and then there was this absolutely normal trace and it was spectacular. The excitement is very hard to recreate, it was incredibly exciting so we waited and I decided well I'll drop the pressure again, it could have been he's gotten better spontaneously. We dropped the pressure-back came the apnoea, let it go for a few minutes, increased the pressure, stopped it again, decreased it-so we did this through several cycles.

And I remember thinking well the next thing I need to know is if it's going to work all night. So we decided to leave him on it all night. So we went through until about 6.30 in the morning and he slept for the rest of the night.

I'll never forget the look on his face when he woke up, because he was bright and alert and that day he was under my care in the hospital, he went back to the ward and he was awake all day for the first time. So it was a fantastic night and the physiology was very clear, it's one of those, sort of, moments when you absolutely see what was occurring.

ROBYN WILLIAMS: And you wrote a paper straight away?

PROFESSOR COLIN SULLIVAN: That's right and I sat down in my office while we were doing this and drafted the first draft of the paper. I was going to send off that paper but decided that it might be a one-off; I didn't think it would be, but I would wait until I got several other patients. So we had four other patients and I trialled them first before sending off the paper.

ROBYN WILLIAMS: Professor Colin Sullivan. And that work has led to a huge industry, many prizes and membership of both scientific academies and, just now, a Clunies Ross award for him as well.

ROBYN WILLIAMS: Lots of people snore but not necessarily all of them have apnoea, the stopping of breathing. Are many people just more or less safe snorers?

PROFESSOR COLIN SULLIVAN: I think that's a fair comment, yes there are, but snoring is graded from very mild to quite severe to obstructive and we don't know really where the threshold is. Although we do know that once you start snoring, snoring tends to progress-we understand why it progresses too because snoring actually damages the tissue. But we unequivocally know that once you have sleep apnoea that it is a major risk factor. It is actually a cause-what we now know it causes high blood pressure, it causes heart attack, it causes stroke, and there is very clear evidence it itself is a causative mechanism in the underlying disease that leads to those, that's the vessel disease, atherosclerosis.

But when we come back down the severity, so for instance if you are a heavy snorer and people are commenting on it,it's very likely you are going to have numbers of apnoeas-it might be 7 or 8 in the whole night-when you come back down the scale of severity we don't really know where the line is that puts you at risk. However, it is very clear that snoring gets worse with age.

There are big epidemiological studies now that do link the history of snoring and outcomes and if you have a history of long snoring you're much more likely to have a stroke, heart attack, etc. But those epidemiologic studies show the link, they don't actually show the individual, if you as an individual are snoring a little bit, what is your level of risk. In the mild end the answer is I don't know.

ROBYN WILLIAMS: Well of course a person we haven't mentioned so far is Professor Peter Farrell who became head of ResMed, the great company that made use of some of these ideas. And he is famous for saying things which are startling. He's not a person who is given to understatement and I remember him saying something like apnoea being the cause of something like 90% of cardiovascular diseases like blood pressure and stroke and so forth. Would you put it on that scale?

PROFESSOR COLIN SULLIVAN: It's certainly up there; I wouldn't put a figure on it like that because it's very difficult to dissect out the various elements. There is no question though now that we know that when patients are treated for snoring and apnoea, their risk of cardiovascular disease drops dramatically.

There is no question now that if you have a controlled group untreated and a treatment group there is a huge difference after something like eight years in the number of people having heart attacks, strokes etc. So there is no question about the link. I wouldn't though put a number of 90% on it, I think that we know when you go the other way and look at patients who have had heart attacks, who have had strokes, a very high proportion of them have sleep apnoea and have had it for years.

ROBYN WILLIAMS: Well let's look at the way the technology came to be, on the face of it you wouldn't necessarily imagine that people would be comfortable lying there in bed with a face mask on and a machine blowing air at them.

PROFESSOR COLIN SULLIVAN: Well no, not really, not given the severity of the condition. I think we originally made masks for people, we hand made them and they were made designed around the person's own nose, so it was a bit like making a dental apparatus, if you like. We had to make a mould of the nose etc.

Now those masks actually were very comfortable and the machines we used to produce the air flow and pressure were really off-the-shelf machines used for other purposes which were also very effective. But they were big and produced far too much air and we had to leak a lot of that air-yes, they were noisy but people would put them outside the room etc.

But you're quite right, I think the notion of actually wearing something during sleep was quite alien, not only to most patients but to doctors. However of course the technology development has been improvement in masks, improvement in machines, intelligent machines, and that of course has been major developments-but of course it's still the same device.

I think one of the interesting things about this treatment is that unlike say breakthroughs in other areas like diabetes, or gastric ulcer for instance, or if we think about the bionic ear and hearing loss-all those areas the disease was known, whereas at the point where I first used this as a method to try and understand the disorder, the disease was really virtually unknown.

So the device was spectacular in that it taught us so much about the disorder because we would literally turn off the obstruction and in those years my science was all about looking at what happened to control the breathing, the blood pressure, to various blood hormones for instance. We'd measure them before and then literally turn the disease off overnight and then measure them after, and we saw major changes. So in fact it's an experimental tool to unravel a disorder, it was actually spectacular if you like.

Now it took a long time before people accepted it as a treatment. In a way the fact of the experimental tool and the fact that it is a very safe treatment preceded our knowledge of the disease and it played a cre-role in the development of the whole area. Also when the treatment became available people started to look for the disease and as they looked they'd see more and more happen.

ROBYN WILLIAMS: Now what do you think of the fact that it's become a multi-million dollar industry and that ResMed, with which you have some association, is virtually dominating the world market with extraordinary success?

PROFESSOR COLIN SULLIVAN: Well I'm absolutely delighted at what's happened that it has actually spawned what is a huge global industry. ResMed isn't the biggest; the other biggest company is in fact a company called Resprionics who were just several months ago bought out by Phillips for some huge amount but ResMed is a close second. But it also has spawned an industry with all the diagnostic technology etc.

I don't know what the absolute numbers using it are but it's in the order of three to four million people use this treatment every night so it's quite extraordinary. ResMed of course is now Australia's biggest medical device company. I think they're looking at annual revenues this year in the order of a billion US dollars so it's a big business.

ROBYN WILLIAMS: I hope you got some of the action.

PROFESSOR COLIN SULLIVAN: Oh, I was a foundation shareholder so I was very fortunate in that.

ROBYN WILLIAMS: I don't suppose, Colin, you snore yourself do you?

PROFESSOR COLIN SULLIVAN: Unfortunately I do now; it's a function of age in very large part. My mother snored quite badly and she in fact had obstructive apnoea I recall, I didn't know what it was at the time, though unfortunately I do, I've put on a bit more weight than I should have and trying to keep fit.

ROBYN WILLIAMS: So you're not on the device yet?

PROFESSOR COLIN SULLIVAN: I try them regularly but I'm not on the device on a regular basis, no.

ROBYN WILLIAMS: Well congratulations, I think it's a marvellous story and a classic example of the way that original science can link with industry and make a difference.

PROFESSOR COLIN SULLIVAN: Thank you.

DESLEY BLANCH: Professor Colin Sullivan at the University of Sydney was talking with Robyn Williams.

Canadians may be ashamed of their mid-morning activities

Kijiji Canada explores the psychology behind Canadians' "trashy" habits

TORONTO, Sept. 23 /CNW/ - Independent research shows that some of the Canadians who admit to taking items left curb-side don't think their own behaviour is acceptable, so Kijiji Canada is providing them with an alternative.

Derogatorily dismissed by some as "trash-picking," Kijiji prefers to refer to the practice of discreetly searching for useful, discarded items as "curb-mining." According to Kijiji, curb-miners are, in most cases, residents of the neighbourhoods in which they mine and can often be spotted mid-morning, briefly stopping their car to rummage through a neighbour's curb-side cast-offs.

Canadians' shameful habits

The numbers reveal a shocking truth: curb-miners are willing to admit to their habit but not all are accepting of their mid-morning activity. With 44 per cent of Canadians admitting to curb-mining and 45 per cent indicating that they know others who curb-mine, the results clearly indicate that most curb-miners admit to their trash picking habit. What's surprising is that some curb miners don't feel that rummaging through someone else's trash is appropriate. In fact, one in every six Canadians who curb mines does not think it is acceptable.

The survey also reveals that nearly two-in-five curb-miners say they are at least sometimes motivated by the fact that curb-mining is free. Absence of a price tag is more of a motivator for younger Canadians. Canadians between the ages of 25 and 44 are more likely than those aged 55 and older to curb-mine because the item is free.