Video Game Improves Mental Skills In Older Adults
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081211081442.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2008) — A desire to rule the world may be a good thing if you're over 60 and worried about losing your mental faculties. A new study found that adults in their 60s and 70s can improve a number of cognitive functions by playing a strategic video game that rewards nation-building and territorial expansion.

This is the first such study of older adults, and it is the first to find such pronounced effects on cognitive skills not directly related to the skills learned in the video game, said University of Illinois psychology professor Arthur Kramer, an author on the study. Decades of laboratory studies designed to improve specific cognitive skills, such as short-term memory, have found again and again that trainees improve almost exclusively on the tasks they perform in the lab – and only under laboratory conditions, Kramer said.

"When you train somebody on a task they tend to improve in that task, whatever it is, but it usually doesn't transfer much beyond that skill or beyond the particular situation in which they learned it," he said. "And there are virtually no studies that examine whether there's any transfer outside the lab to things people care about."

"Older people tend to fare less well on things that are called executive control processes," Kramer said. "These include things like scheduling, planning, working memory, multitasking and dealing with ambiguity."

After testing several video games, the researchers selected "Rise of Nations," which gives gamers points for building cities and "wonders," feeding and employing their people, maintaining an adequate military and expanding their territory.

"You need merchants. You need an army to protect yourself and you have to make sure you're spending some of your resources on education and food," said postdoctoral researcher Chandramallika Basak, lead author on the study. "This game stresses resource management and planning, which I think for older adults is important because many of them independently plan and manage their resources." The study included 40 older adults, half of whom received 23.5 hours of training in Rise of Nations. The others, a comparison group, received no training in the game.

Both groups were assessed before, during and after the video game training on a variety of tests designed to measure executive control functions. The tests included measures of their ability to switch between tasks, their short-term visual memory, their reasoning skills and their working memory, which is the ability to hold two or more pieces of information in memory and use the information as needed. There were also tests of the subjects' verbal recall, their ability to inhibit certain responses and their ability to identify an object that had been rotated to a greater or lesser degree from its original position.

The researchers found that training on the video game did improve the participants' performance on a number of these tests. As a group, the gamers became significantly better – and faster – at switching between tasks as compared to the comparison group. Their working memory, as reflected in the tests, was also significantly improved. Their reasoning ability was enhanced. To a lesser extent, their short-term memory of visual cues was better than that of their peers, as was their ability to identify rotated objects. The video game training had no effect on their ability to recall a list of words in order, their enumeration ability or their ability to inhibit certain responses, however.

There was a correlation between their performance on the game and their improvement on certain cognitive tests, Kramer said. Those who did well in the game also improved the most on switching between tasks. They also tended to do better on tests of working memory.

"In medical terminology, these would be dose-response effects," Kramer said. "The more drug – or in this case the more training on the video game – the more benefit."

The findings are meaningful, Basak said, because they show that multi-dimensional training can affect many individual components of cognitive function. "The fact that you're training people in a molecule and finding transfer to atoms I think is very impressive," she said.

"This is one mode in which older people can stay mentally fit, cognitively fit," Kramer said. "I'm not suggesting, however, that it's the only thing they should do."

Other activities, in particular socializing, exercising and eating well, are also important to maintaining healthy cognitive function in later years, he said.

This research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging. The authors received no monetary or other support from the video game industry. The research appears in December in the journal Psychology & Aging.

Taking a Brrrr-eak? OMA Says Keep Your Butts Outside!

TORONTO, Dec. 26 /CNW/ - As the temperature drops, Ontario's doctors are asking smokers to refrain from smoking indoors to avoid exposing children and other family and friends to harmful second-hand smoke. "With the cold winter weather, doctors are concerned that smokers will be tempted to take it inside," said Dr. Ken Arnold, President of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA). "We want to remind smokers about the danger this poses to their children and other family members."

Last February, the OMA released a report showing that even under the best-case ventilation scenario, with windows open and the fan on high, smoke concentrations in a vehicle are far greater than any other children's environment. Tests reveal that with no ventilation, which is typical of winter
driving in Ontario, smoke concentrations can be up to 27 times higher than in a smoker's home. In-car concentrations of the tiny particles in smoke can be up to 300 times that of outdoor concentrations.

The OMA also partnered with the Heart and Stroke Foundation to launch a radio and newspaper campaign to educate the public about the danger of smoking in the car. The campaign was in support of the Ontario Government's initiative to ban smoking in cars with children. The message was clear; when you smoke in the car with your kids, it's just like they are smoking too. "If you're still smoking please take it outside," said Dr. Arnold. "But if you want to keep warm and stay healthy, call your doctor, because we can help you quit."

Benefits of Celery
http://www.oohoi.com/natural%20remedy/everyday_food/celery.htm

1. Eating celery will reduce high blood pressure and give the effect of calmness.

2. Celery clears uric acid from painful joints and may help the treatment of arthritis and rheumatic problems.

3. Celery also helps the kidney an acts an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant.

4. Another benefit of celery is the fact that you can eat a lot of it without thinking much about your waistline. Celery actually has almost zero calories.

The use :

1. Grated or raw celery can be used on swollen glands.

2. To reduce high blood pressure, eat celery raw.

3. For those who are trying to reduce their weight, drink celery juice before meals. It will help to suppress the appetite.

Tips :

1. The best taste celery is the one with light green ribs and glossy surface

2. Keep celery away from the coldest areas of your fridge since it freezes easily. You don't want to eat frozen celery, right?

Sleep disorder may be marker for neurodegenerative diseases: researchers
Friday, December 26, 2008
CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/12/26/sleep-disorder.html

Individuals with a deep-sleep disorder are more likely to develop neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's or dementia, a new Canadian study reports.

The study, by Dr. Ronald Postuma from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre and Dr. Jacques Montplaisir from the University of Montreal, suggests 52.4 per cent of patients with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep disorder will develop a neurodegenerative disease within 12 years of the initial diagnosis.

The researchers followed all the sleep-disorder patients at Montreal's Hôpital du Sacré Coeur who had been diagnosed with the disorder.

Of 93 patients studied, 26 developed a neurodegenerative disorder, including:

• Fourteen with Parkinson's.

• Seven with Lewy body dementia, a common cause of dementia among the elderly.

• Four with clinical dementia.

• One with multiple system atrophy, which affects movement, blood pressure and other body functions.

"The estimated five-year risk of neurodegenerative disease was 17.7 per cent, the 10-year risk was 40.6 per cent and the 12-year risk was 52.4," the reseatchers said in an abstract of their paper published online.

"These results establish a clear link and indicate that these sleep disorders could be a predictor of neurodegenerative disease," Postuma said in a news release. The participants averaged 65.4 years old, and four out of five were men.

During REM sleep, also known as the dream stage of sleep, the muscles don't relax, as happens normally. Instead, those with the disorder may punch, kick and cry out. Preliminary U.S. estimates suggest one of every 200 people may suffer from the disorder.

Postuma said the study involved only people with no known cause for the problem.

The study, supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec was published Wednesday in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

'Painful legacy' of heart attack
BBC NEWS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7469236.stm

One in five people recovering from a heart attack is still having chest pain a year afterwards, a US study suggests. The journal Archives of Internal Medicine reported some suffered angina every day, despite bypass surgery.

A Colorado University-led team, which quizzed nearly 2,000 patients, said it was linked to smoking or depression in some cases. A spokesman for the British Heart Foundation the study could help doctors spot who was at highest risk.

Chest pain, or angina, is a common symptom of heart disease, and doctors expect some heart attack patients to continue to have it, regardless of efforts to treat their underlying disease. This study, carried out by researchers at the Denver's Colorado University, and the city's Veteran's Affairs Medical Center, tries to shed light on how extensive the problem is.

The team looked at the progress of 1,957 patients, who filled in questionnaires a year after their heart attack. In all, 19.9% of the patients said they still had angina pain one year after their attack, and although this was once a week or less for most, 1.2% of them had daily pain.

Smoking and depression

The questionnaires revealed that those most likely to have chest pain were younger men who had undergone heart bypass operations, or men who smoked or had depressive symptoms.

The researchers said these links might help doctors monitor "at risk" patients.

A spokesman for the British Heart Foundation said: "This study helps us to understand what factors may cause people to experience chest pains one year after heart attack.

"Identification of these factors - for example smoking or depression - can help health professionals recognise people who may be at risk of developing this problem.

"Targeted services for these people - such as helping them quit smoking - may help to improve the quality of life and health of heart patients by alleviating or preventing angina".