Tag Archives: Physical health

The Diet for “Fast” Physical and Mental Health Benefits: Intermittent Fasting

Posted on March 23, 2018 by Aron Ha | Leave a comment

You may have heard of the typical low carb or low fat diet, but have you heard of intermittent fasting? Intermittent fasting (IF) is a relatively new diet that has been recently growing in popularity because of its powerful, life-changing benefits for the body and the brain.

There are many diets out there that are complex and intimidating to follow; however, IF keeps it simple.

What is intermittent fasting and how does it work?

IF is an eating pattern where an individual cycles between periods of eating and non-eating. There are many variations of IF that contain different fasting and non-fasting timeframes. Which variation an individual should use is based on their personal preference and their lifestyle/goals. Compared to other diets that require you to limit your calories, IF requires you to cut out the entire meal itself. With IF’s unconventional dieting approach, this makes IF easy to follow for the average person. This has contributed to the diet’s rise in popularity as well as its benefits in body composition and the brain.

Why should I try this diet? What are its benefits?

There are many benefits with intermittent fasting. Below are some of the most important ones that separate this diet apart from others.

Source: The Renegade Pharmacist

IF alters the function of cells, genes and hormones

When the body is in a fasted state, the body undergoes physiological changes such as changes in hormone levels. This allows the body to use stored fat as its main source of energy. Furthermore, insulin blood levels decrease which helps with fat burning. The human growth hormone (HGH) also gets elevated during fasting. Elevated levels of HGH further increase fat burning, muscle gain and other health benefits. As a result of decreased insulin levels and increased HGH, our cells undergo cellular repair processes and removes toxic waste from cells. This in turn can help prevent cancer.

IF benefits the brain

Previous studies have shown that IF improves certain metabolic features that are important for mental health. This involves lowering of blood sugar levels and insulin resistance which is important in fighting against certain diseases. Fasting up-regulates the secretion of brain-derived neurotrophic factors (BDNF), a protein that is involved in cognitive functions, memory and overall brain health. A study that experimented with rats showed that IF can elevate the production of new nerve cells which positively impacts the brain. Secretion of BDNF also contributes to lower chances of mental disorders such as depression and other brain conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. Furthermore, a study involving animals has shown that IF prevents brain damage caused by strokes.

IF can lower the risk of Type 2 Diabetes

As mentioned earlier, fasting reduces insulin. The reduction of insulin levels ultimately lowers type 2 diabetes, a lifelong disease that increases the production of insulin beyond healthy levels. A study comparing IF to calorie restriction diets showed that IF has a stronger impact on lowering insulin levels and lowering blood sugar levels in the body. Collectively, studies have shown that IF can serve as an efficient protection mechanism for people at risk of type 2 diabetes.

IF can improve heart health

Today, heart disease is the leading cause of death in both men and women. It is still not well known whether IF can improve heart health due to the limited amount of studies out there. Emerging studies on the effectiveness of IF and heart disease are slowly on the rise.

Below is a video from the Intermountain Research & Medical Foundation discussing their findings on heart disease and IF.

Source: IntermtnMedCtr/Youtube

Intermittent fasting comes with physical and many mental health benefits that sets this apart from other diets. Why diet focussing only on physical health when you can also improve mental health and focus on bettering your longevity?

Make a change where your future self will thank you.

– Aron Ha

Negative effects on the brain caused by recreational marijuana

Posted on March 19, 2018 by huanxin zhang | 2 comments

Marijuana is one of the three main forms of cannabis (a kind of drug affecting mental activity, behaviour, or perception). It is made from the cannabis plants’ leaves and dried flowers.

Quick GuideUnderstanding Medical Marijuana: Laws, Uses, Safety

cannabis / image from Quick GuideUnderstanding Medical Marijuana

In all the products of cannabis, marijuana is the least powerful. It is always smoked or even made into eatable products such as marijuana ice cream.

marijuana ice cream /image from Dr Greenlove

Therefore, some teenagers think that the marijuana can not hurt them and some of them even think that using marijuana allows them to be relaxed and settle down and improve their concentration. However, the fact is that recreational marijuana-use by youth can cause negative effects on the brain and daily performance.

The Risky Chemical in Marijuana

The delta-9-tetrahydro-cannabinol (THC), a main chemical in marijuana, is risky for biological systems in the brain.

The chemical formula of THC/ image from Evidence for God from Science

THC affects the cerebellum and the basal ganglia. The cerebellum is the area of the brain which controls balance and coordination. The basal ganglia are the parts of the brain which are helpful for controlling movement. These effects impact performance in some activities, such as sports and driving.

Collegiate Times: Little scientific basis for marijuana criminalization

THC and the brain/ image from Collegiate Times

So the THC in marijuana can influences on the cerebellum and the basal ganglia in the brain. Even though THC can affect our brain, the bad thing is that THC percentage in marijuana experienced a dramatical increase from early 1990’s to 2013, which is from 3.73% t0 10%.

The Influence on Memory

In teens, the part of the brain for emotion is developed well, while the part of the brain for judgment still not mature. Smith with other researches found in 2001 that in people who use marijuana everyday for about three years, the hippocampus (a region in brain, is related to long-term memory) looked strange.

image from SlidePlayer

The greater differences in shape of the hippocampus, the poorer performance on memory assessment. In a long-term memory test, young adults who have never used marijuana scored 18% better compared to heavy marijuana-use youths. So if young people use marijuana, their memory would be affected negatively because of the brain chemistry and brain structure impairment.

In conclusion, recreational marijuana is harmful to the brain if youth uses it, especially when marijuana-use is high potency and long-term.

image from Depositphotos

2 Comments

Posted in Biological Sciences

Tagged biology, health, marijuana, memory, Physical health, Science

The Effects of Alcohol and Memory Formation

Posted on March 12, 2018 by jasmine hyun | 3 comments

It’s Friday night, school is over for the weekend and if you are a university student and over the age of 19, you may be planning to meet up with some friends to have a drink or two.

Source: Flickr Commons by Simon Leloup

You may be aware of the term ‘drunk’ and ‘tipsy’ but the science behind why so many young adults turn to alcohol consumption after a long tiring day is that alcohol releases the brains ‘feel good’ chemicals called endorphins that produces the feeling of pleasure in certain areas of the brain. Although its evident that drinking can bring some temporary pleasure, it can have some severe negative consequences, especially when one consumes heavy doses of alcohol for a long period of time.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse when a person drinks heavily over a long period of time may be susceptible to have damaging effects on the brain such as the ability for the brain to form new long-term memories. Long-term alcohol consumption specifically can lead to significant inhibition of neuronal activity in the hippocampus, which is the area the of the brain that plays an important role in the formation of new memories.

Anatomy of the brain: The Hippocampus. Source: The Brain made Simple Website

Alcohol’s influence on memory appears to have a primary effect during the transfer of information from short-term to long-term memory storage (see figure below). The modal model of memory originally proposed by Alkinson and Shiffrin (1968) state that intoxicated test subjects are able to recall information immediately after it is presented and are able to keep it active for 1 minute. Subjects are also able to recall long-term memories formed before they become intoxicated; however, once alcohol was consumed, test subjects began to show impairments in the ability to transfer information into long-term storage. When consumed for long periods of time even when subjects were sober again, they were unable to recall critical elements of events or the entire event while they were intoxicated.

A general model of memory formation. Source: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse website

Although occasional drinking can release some built up stress and bring temporary happiness; when consumed for long periods of time in heavy doses, it can severely hinder the brain’s ability to store long-term memories. So the next time you plan to binge drink, it may be worth considering the long-term consequences that chronic drinking can have on cognitive function.

For more information on the effects of alcohol on the brain:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fBG8xcZoF4

-Jasmine Hyun

3 Comments

Posted in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Public Engagement, Science Communication, Science Communicators, Science in News

Tagged Alcohol abuse, Alcoholism, Binge drinking, Chronic Drinking, Memory loss, Memory storage, Physical health

Economy Class Syndrome: where you sit doesn’t matter

Posted on February 5, 2018 by yuuki shibutani | 1 comment

Too much sitting? Not getting up during a flight?

wikimedia: photo originally posted on Flickr by xlibber

This sounds like myself when I was younger. I was always told by my father to walk around or go to the bathroom even if I did not need to. But now I understand why.

Many people are not aware of the risks in sitting still for a long time, especially for flights longer than eight hours. Although it is rare, this can cause a very serious health condition. This is called pulmonary embolism, PE, or deep vein thrombosis, DVT. This most common and known name is Economy Class Syndrome, where the name came from the idea of purchasing a cheap seat on the plane with the least leg room, making it harder to move legs around and difficult to move out of the seat especially if you have a window seat.

When a person gets this health condition, the blood circulation diminishes and increases the tendency to clot and damage the blood vessel walls. If this gets worse, the clot can lead to fatal blockage in the lungs as well as in the heart. This can then cause severe impairment, organ failure as well as death in extreme cases.

Who are at risk?

Flickr: photo by Caribb

Although the name had the word “Economy” in it, it could also affect people in business class as well as first class, showing that it does not matter how much legroom you have. This is because the condition is mainly due to sitting in the same position for a long period of time. Therefore, not just on the airplane, but people going to for a long road trip or sitting in a long train ride or even if you’re studying for a long period time in one sitting could increase the risk. There are risk factors that show that people are at risk more than others depending on their health condition. However, even so, this medical condition can happen to anyone.

How do we prevent from getting Economy Class Syndrome?

To prevent this risk, researchers suggest the following:

Get up frequently (every two to three hours)
If you’re in conditions where you cannot easily get up, you can always stretch your feet/legs or give yourself a calf massage.
Stay hydrated

Credit: YouTube Channel – CBC https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=108&v=CiZRcZ8byMg]

These will all help maintain the blood circulation and help prevent from getting economy class syndrome.

Many people still might think that the medical condition is rare and that it will not happen to them. However, I believe that if there are possible solutions to prevent these risks, they should be done.

-Yuuki Shibutani

1 Comment

Posted in Biological Sciences, Public Engagement, Science in News

Tagged health, Physical health

Whales are 1000 times less likely to develop cancer than human

Posted on January 29, 2018 by huanxin zhang | 2 comments

Did you know how many people die from cancer annually? It is over 5 million. What’s worse, worldwide rates of cancer are predicted to increase by 50% compared with the current rates by 2020. What is interesting, however, is that whales rarely have cancer and they are 1000 times less likely to develop cancer than human. According to the research, it was found that their larger body size helps them be away from cancer.

large Body Size

Cells in organisms have the same probability to have a malignant transformation and to become a tumor cell. It means the large organisms with more cells have a higher cancer risk. However, as shown in the graph, mice with a smaller body size are 3 times more likely to have cancer than human. Elephants and whales with a larger body size have a relative lower cancer rate. Actually, as Peto’s paradox demonstrated, the capacity of whales to suppress cancer cells is 1000 times better than humans. The reasons behind this phenomenon are that it takes longer time for a tumor cell to reach the fatal size in whale’s body and whale has a lower metabolism rate.

Long Time

Whales are less likely to have cancer because it takes a long time for tumors in whale’s bodies to reach the lethal size. In large organisms such as whales, Nagy, Victor, & Cropper. (2007) argued that tumors must be larger to become lethal. In order to become lethal tumors, cancer cells need to collect aggressive cells to make themselves stronger. These aggressive cells then grow and gradually become lethal. However, this process takes long time for tumors in large body size organisms to evolve and then reach the large enough lethal size. The longer time to reach the lethal size allows more time for organisms to repair cells so whales are able to repair the cancer cells before they becoming lethal. Therefore, even though it is more likely for whales to have cancer cells, these cancer cells are less lethal while cancer cells in human being’s body are more easily become lethal.

Lower Metabolism Rate

Whales have lower risk of having cancer because of the lower metabolism rate compared with humans. Metabolism proceeds in organism by generating a kind of destructive chemically species-reactive oxygen. The reactive oxygen can damage the DNA by breaking the bonds between DNA and inducing chromosome mutations. Once the DNA is damaged, the risk of cancer increases. What’s worse, the damaged DNA, as junk in the organism, can also induce cancer. It means the rate of metabolism has a positive correlation with the possibility of having cancer.

Based on the previous study, larger organism tends to have a lower metabolism rate. Hence a larger organism has an overall lower risk of having cancer. Consequently, whales, as large organisms, are less likely to have cancer compared with human beings whose body size are smaller.

To summarize, a large body size of whales explains why the cancer rate of whales are lower. Meanwhile, these findings could also be applied to prevent and treat cancer. Though humans cannot change body size easily, humans could try to lower the metabolism rate to achieve the same effect as whales have.

Author: HUANXIN ZHANG

2 Comments

Posted in Biological Sciences, Public Engagement, Science in News

Tagged biology, cancer, medical science, Ocean, Physical health, whale

Volume Warning: How Loud Should you Play Music?

Posted on January 22, 2018 by tianyi lian | 4 comments

In our generation, almost everyone listens to music with electronic devices. In UBC, we can often find some students walk through campus, having dinner at cafeteria, or studying in the library with their headphones. Music seems already become an indispensable part of our life. However, the risk of playing music with high volumes is always overlooked by people. According to Journal of Medical Association, there are 20 percent of teenagers already have hearing loss in varying degrees, which increases 30 percent from 2000. Most of them is noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL).

Source: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OJmvI.gif

How loud is risky?

As we know, many of teenagers and young adults enjoy go to rock concert and sports games which can have the maximum of 150 DB and they seldom realize this hardly damaging the hearing. It’s harmful for our ear to listen music, or expose in a noisy occasions at 85 DB for more than 8 hours. An electronic device can have more than 100 DB as its loudest volume, which is a hundred times more intense than 85 DB and can cause permanent damage to ear after 15 min.

Source: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7KvpH.png

What Should we do as Protection?

The hearing loss or damage is incurable, so it’s vital to protect our hearing. There’s a way to tell whether your music is too loud: you can try talking with your friends, if you can’t hear any voice from your friends’ talk then the music volume should be reduced. To help getting used to a proper volume, every time when you listen to music, slightly decrease the volume on your electronic device. This is good method for to avoid and stop the long term damaging. Or you can make a warning system such as an alarm everyday to remind you put down the volume and reduce the daily time you listen to music using headphones or in noisy surroundings. The most important thing is we must have the awareness of protecting our hearing.

– Tianyi Lian

4 Comments

Posted in Public Engagement, Science in News

Tagged earphones, hearing loss, hearing protection, music volume, Physical health

The Upside of Stress

Posted on January 22, 2018 by jasmine hyun | 3 comments

If you are a university student or a human being for that matter, you know how it feels to be under an overwhelming amount of stress. Chronic stress, as many may already know, can be detrimental to one’s mental and physical health. Long-term exposure to emotional pressure can lead to elevated blood pressure, heart disease and depression.

Source: Flickr Commons by Emma Brown

Although it would be great if we could be lounging around on a resort far far away from deadlines, exams, and responsibilities, researchers have found that stress at acute levels can actually be beneficial to one’s cognitive function and immune readiness.

Note that chronic stress is referred to as the response to emotional pressure suffered for a prolonged period of time whereas acute stress is stress one suffers for only a short period of time.

Scientists at UC Berkley have put this to the test by using rats as test subjects to see if short-term stress really could lead to a boost in cognitive function. They found that after subjecting the test subjects to acute but short-lived stress, this caused a spike in the rat’s corticosterone levels which also led to the development of new cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain associated with memory function. The researchers discovered that two weeks after exposure to acute stress, the test subjects performed better on a memory test compared to the test subjects that were not exposed.

Source: Flickr Commons

Source: Wikipedia

Not only is there a correlation between acute stress and memory function, but researchers at Harvard University found that the same hormones released during acute stress can aid to enhance immune readiness during ‘fight or flight’ situations which led the subjects to be more alert as well as be more attuned to possible environmental threats. Some examples of possible triggers for acute stress include preparing for a job interview or being involved in competitive sports, whereas examples of triggers for chronic stress include being in a bad relationship or being stuck in a job that you dislike for a long period of time.

Although acute levels of stress can be beneficial for some individuals, one’s personal experience is a big factor in determining whether a response to stress, even at low levels, can lead to positive or negative effects. For an example, if a person was to have a history of post-traumatic stress disorder, even stress at low levels can trigger a negative response.

The takeaway message is that although too much stress can lead to adverse consequences to one’s health, the right amount of acute stress can improve brain performance. Therefore it is definitely worth figuring out where your own optimal stress level lies.

If you are still experiencing stress after reading this post here is another way to make stress your friend.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU

Author: Jasmine Hyun

3 Comments

Posted in Biological Sciences, Science Communication, Science in News

Tagged Acute stress, Chronic stress, Cognitive function, Good stress, Mental health, Physical health

Tag Archives: Physical health

The Diet for “Fast” Physical and Mental Health Benefits: Intermittent Fasting

Negative effects on the brain caused by recreational marijuana

The Effects of Alcohol and Memory Formation

Economy Class Syndrome: where you sit doesn’t matter

Whales are 1000 times less likely to develop cancer than human

Volume Warning: How Loud Should you Play Music?

How loud is risky?

What Should we do as Protection?

The Upside of Stress

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Tag Archives: Physical health

The Diet for “Fast” Physical and Mental Health Benefits: Intermittent Fasting

Negative effects on the brain caused by recreational marijuana

The Effects of Alcohol and Memory Formation

Economy Class Syndrome: where you sit doesn’t matter

Whales are 1000 times less likely to develop cancer than human

Volume Warning: How Loud Should you Play Music?

How loud is risky?

What Should we do as Protection?

The Upside of Stress

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