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Archive for December, 2010

Bully in the Family

Monday, December 13, 2010 by:Jill Montag
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If you were bullied by your big brother, it turns out you might have been safer with a big sister instead. According to a recent study, older brothers are more likely to bully siblings than older sisters.

Italian researchers set out to investigate the effects of birth order, gender, personality and family relationship qualities on sibling bullying. They asked 195 children aged 10 to 12 years old with siblings that were no more than 4 years older or younger to complete questionnaires that gauged their bullying experiences. The kids were asked a range of questions regarding whether they had bullied anyone or been a victim.

The results? Apparently children with older brothers were more likely to report being bullied at home, while boys were more likely to bully if they had a younger sister or brother. Interestingly, this was not the case with older sisters, who were more likely to bully a sibling based on the quality of their relationship rather than their older age.

The authors of the study theorize that older sisters are raised to responsible and protective towards their younger siblings, while older brothers are more likely to be hierarchical and seek to dominate these relationships and maintain this with daily bullying.

Falling in Love More Scientific than you Think

Thursday, December 9, 2010 by:Jill Montag
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If you thought falling in love was all about pure emotion, think again — a new study says it’s more scientific than you might think.

The study, called “The Neuroimaging of Love,” conducted by researchers at Syracuse University, reveals that falling in love can elicit the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, plus it also affects intellectual areas of the brain. The researchers also found that falling in love takes only about a fifth of a second.

The researchers discovered that when a person falls in love, 12 areas of the brain work together to release euphoria-inducing chemicals like dopamine, adrenaline, oxytocin and vasopression. Love also affects sophisticated cognitive functions like mental representation, metaphors and body image.

The authors of the study say these findings prove that the brain actually falls in love, not the heart. However, they say, the heart is related because the “concept of love is formed by both bottom-up and top-down processes from the brain to the heart and vice versa.”

These findings have important implications for mental health and neuroscience research because love that doesn’t work out can be a significant cause of emotional stress and depression. Identifying parts of the brain stimulated by love should help doctors and therapists to better understand the pains of love-sick patients.

Smoking and Your Kids

Tuesday, December 7, 2010 by:Jill Montag
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Here’s yet another reason not to smoke — or allow others to smoke — around your children. According to new research, children exposed to second-hand smoke have significantly higher rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), headaches and stuttering than their peers who are not exposed.

Researchers from the University of California San Francisco asked about exposure to cigarette smoke at home among children aged four to 11 and teens aged 12 to 15. They also measured the cotinine levels in their blood (a measure of exposure to tobacco smoke). The study found children exposed to second-hand smoke had double the rate of ADHD (10.6% compared to 4.6%), almost double the rate of stuttering (6.3% compared to 3.5%) and a higher rate of headaches (14.2% compared to 10.0%). Teens also had significantly higher rates of headaches (26.5% compared to 20.0%).

The authors of the study say these results show that children’s exposure to second-hand smoke could have a negative impact on their learning and education, as well as on their health and overall well being.

Walnuts and Stress

Monday, December 6, 2010 by:Jill Montag
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The next time you feel stressed, you might want to reach for some walnuts. According to a recent study, a diet rich in walnuts and walnut oil may prepare the body to deal better with stress.

A team of researchers from Penn State looked at how these foods, which contain polyunsaturated fats, influence blood pressure both at rest and other stress. They studied 22 healthy adults with elevated LDL cholesterol, providing all meals and snacks during three diet periods of six weeks each. They found that including walnuts and walnut oil in the diet lowered both resting blood pressure and blood pressure responses to stress in the laboratory. As a stresor, the study participants gave a speech or immersed their foot in cold water. The researchers found that adding flax seed oil did not further lower blood pressure. However, they did learn that adding flax oil to the walnut diet significantly improved a test of vascular health that some of the participants underwent.

The authors of the study say this is the first study to show that walnuts and walnut oil reduce blood pressure during stress. They say this is important because while it’s hard to avoid stress altogether, a dietary change could help our bodies better respond to it.

Office Work and Obesity

Thursday, December 2, 2010 by:Jill Montag
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Add something else to the list of things to blame for those extra pounds: your job. That’s right, according to new research, your job may actually be making you fat.

Researchers at the University of Montreal report that office workers have become less active over the last three decades, and this decreased activity may at least partly explain the rise in obesity.

The researchers studied several Statistics Canada databases on the health of Canadians that included 17,000 to 132,000 respondents. They concluded that the lack of physical activity during office hours could explain the 10 percent rise in obesity between 1978 and 2004. The good news, they say, is that both men and women have at least adopted healthy transportation behaviors such as walking and biking.

The authors of the study believe the answer to combating the inactivity and rise in obesity would be to integrate sport, work and transportation. For example, they suggest it may be more effective to exercise in smaller doses throughout the day (i.e. walking at break time and taking the stairs instead of the elevator) rather than concentrating the effort. They also believe more should be done to promote and market exercise, such as tax credits for employees who take part in organized exercise activities.

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