Tech, Healthy and business

There is now hard evidence that meditation can cut stress, newspapers reported October 10 2007. The Daily Mail said that “five short sessions of meditation could be enough to help us achieve piece of mind”. The Daily Telegraph reported that “after meditation training of 20 minutes once a day for only five days, people, had measurably less anxiety and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol”. The papers said that levels of anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue had also gone down. The stories are based on a study comparing meditative practice (using integrative body-mind training) with relaxation training, in 80 Chinese students. The newspapers have reported accurately the positive outcomes of the research. The study is a small but well-conducted trial. Whether the findings can be generalised to the practice of individual meditation (as opposed to guided, group practice as is used here) and across cultures remains to be seen.

Expensive running shoes offer no benefit in terms of cushioning impact and overall comfort compared with 'cheap' trainers, reported The Times and other newspapers on October 11 2007. The researchers found that “no amount of built-in air bubbles, shock absorbers or other cushioning makes a difference to the overall pressure on the foot.” The stories are based on a study that compared the performance of low-, medium-, and high-priced running shoes in men while they were walking, and in a smaller group who ran. The interpretation by the newspapers that this study has shown that expensive trainers do not protect runners’ feet is not quite accurate as the “running” part of the experiment was small and the researchers themselves state that “it was not possible to reliably detect differences between pressure in shoes from different brands and across cost ranges”. Importantly, the participants in the study were normal runners. They didn’t have any gait abnormalities such as over or

Using mobile phones for more than 10 years doubles the risk of brain cancer, newspapers reported. They suggest that the risk may be greater in children whose thinner skulls and developing nervous system make them more vulnerable. The Daily Mail reported that “researchers found that long-term users had double the chance of getting a malignant tumour on the side of the brain where they held the handset”. The stories are based on a review of studies that looked at the difference in mobile phone usage between people with and without brain tumours for more than a 10 year period. The authors found 11 studies on people who had used mobile phones for more than a decade. Some of these showed that mobile phone use significantly increased the risk of some types of brain cancer while others did not. Further perspective is given to this by data from Cancer Research UK, which suggests that “brain tumours” are rare and occur in less than seven in 100,000 people. Contrary to newspaper reports, th

Children who have TVs in their bedrooms are more likely to be overweight than those who do not," BBC News reports. A UK study found a link between children having a TV in their room and an increased risk of obesity. Researchers followed children from seven to 11 years old to see whether the number of hours watching TV, playing on the computer or having a TV in the bedroom influenced the risk of having higher body fat in a couple of years. It found that, compared to children who didn't have a TV in their bedroom at age seven, children who did had a significantly higher body mass index (BMI) and body fat at the age of 11. The association was higher for girls than boys. Although this is an interesting study with potentially useful findings, it cannot prove there is a direct connection between using screens and body weight. But it would seem plausible that at least some children who spend a lot of time staring at a screen are not meeting the recommended levels for physical acti

"Four million people died in 2015 as a result of being too tubby, struck by cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other killer conditions," reports The Sun. This is based on a global study that looked at how the proportion of people who are overweight and obese has changed over time. This was determined by recording body mass index (BMI), where a BMI of 25-29.9 means being overweight and 30 or above is being obese. Researchers then assessed the link between having an unhealthy BMI and health outcomes including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. It found that, despite public health efforts, obesity is on the rise in almost every country and in both adults and children. Prevalence has doubled in most countries over the past 30 years. Researchers also estimated that having a high BMI accounted for 4 million deaths globally, 40% of which occurred in people who were overweight but not yet obese. This demonstrates that being overweight may almost be as risky to health a

Two sets of US guidelines have revised the public health advice on physical activity to clarify that gentle exercise is not enough to improve health, The Guardian reported. Current guidelines suggest that 30 minutes of exercise a day is enough to offer health benefits, however the newspaper said that adults “need to add jogging and twice-weekly weight-training sessions if they want to cut their risk of heart disease and obesity.” The newspaper reports that “the lightest of activities such as dusting and the stroll to the car are being counted as exercise” and quotes the researchers as saying that people have “not accepted, and others have misinterpreted the original recommendation.” The expert panel process and the recommendations offered have clarified some of the more unclear recommendations that were published in 1995. The group of experts met in 2000 to prepare this update, and this was supplemented by panel members’ own searches of the literature. It is not possible to validate