Maintaining steady blood sugar reduces those extra pounds

Maintaining stable blood sugar levels has big implications for good health. Blood sugar alterations can cause mood swings, energy dips, fatigue, irritability, headaches, cravings for carbohydrates or coffee, lightheadedness, a shaky feeling if you skip a meal or the feeling that you need a nap after eating.

If you suffer from any of these symptoms, you might want to think about blood sugar and how much better you can feel when you avoid the highs and lows.

The fix for all of these symptoms is blood sugar regulation. Many hormones come into play, such as insulin. After eating a meal containing carbohydrate, our bodies break the this down into simple sugars that are then carried in the bloodstream. The pancreas responds by secreting insulin. Insulin's job is to travel through the bloodstream seeking sugar and transport it into cells for storage in the form of glucose. Glucose levels in the blood then come back down to the proper level.

When blood glucose is chronically high, damage can occur to the liver, pancreas, kidney, blood vessels, brain and nerves. Keeping blood sugars at a reasonable level is important for overall health.

The body's first choice when it goes to store sugar is to put it in the liver and the muscles. The problem arises when these storage sites become full. The body then needs to find another place to put it, storing sugar in the form of triglycerides. Some of the triglycerides remain in the blood, and some get stored as body fat.

The body uses carbohydrates for fuel first. If you eat a steady supply of food rich in carbohydrate, they are readily available to the body, and it doesn't have to take this out of storage when it needs some energy. You never get to tap into the fuel supply stored in the fat cells, so it remains on your body as fat.

Your body is not receiving adequate nutrition from a high-carbohydrate diet, so your body sends you a message to keep eating. What it really needs is the nutrition stored in vegetables and protein sources like meat, dairy and eggs. But if you keep feeding your body with carbohydrate when you feel hungry, you keep experiencing the energy peaks and valleys and lose an opportunity for better nutrition from foods that have more to offer. Also, you can't lose weight until you force your body into fat-burning mode by shifting to a diet that isn't so reliant on carbohydrates.

Should Mark Zuckerberg allow blood donation status on Facebook?

Facebook has emerged not just as a social media tool but something that makes our world go around. It has the potential to change the world with over 1.28 billion active users and that’s why SocialBlood.org is asking Facebook to add blood donation status on people’s profile pages. There is almost always a shortage of blood in both developing and developed countries. This is a fact and the situation has been this way for quite some time despite so many people willing to donate blood.

A petition has been started by SocialBlood.org, an Indian company which uses Facebook to help people fight blood donors. SocialBlood.org was started by 24-year-old Karthik Naralasetty after he was moved by the plight of a four-year-old girl who was suffering from thalassemia. He had told us earlier in an exclusive interview: ‘SocialBlood plugs into the Facebook for the obvious reasons of having everyone in one place. On syncing with the service, the user adds information like the city they are available in, geofence (for notifications for blood request), blood type and if they can donate blood. Then it pulls up list of connections that are already using the service. The interface is fairly simple to use, the filters on the top bar help to narrow down on blood request and donors available for a particular blood type. The map pulls up that information with markings on the location and a legend is available for the assistance of first time users.

The beauty of a social platform like this is the fact that, it helps democratize and populate the system with the known network. We can scan the network for blood relations (known people with the same blood type as ours) and invite members which can be extremely useful during the time of distress. The user can also make a blood request using a quick form asking critical questions. The user adds information like what component (red blood cells, plasma or whole blood) along with type is required and adding other details like the number of units required, the date of requirement and hospital name.

Many people require blood from accident victims to people suffering from rare blood disorders. It’s important to ensure that these people get blood that is free from HIV, hepatitis viruses and other infections which can be transmitted through unsafe transfusion. In high-income countries, transfusion is most commonly used to support advanced medical treatment and complex surgeries like open-heart surgery and advance trauma care. In low- and middle-income countries it is used often for management of pregnancy-related complications, childhood malaria complicated by severe anemia and trauma-related injuries.

Depression is detectable in the blood!

Researchers at the MedUni Vienna have demonstrated the possibility of using a blood test to detect depression. While blood tests for mental illnesses have until recently been regarded as impossible, a recent study clearly indicates that, in principle, depression can in fact be diagnosed in this way and this could become reality in the not too distant future.

Serotonin transporter (SERT) is a protein in the cell membrane that facilitates the transport of the neurotransmitter serotonin (popularly known as the "happiness hormone") into the cell. In the brain, serotonin transporter regulates neural depression networks. Depressive conditions can frequently be caused by a lack of serotonin. As a result, the serotonin transporter is also the point of action for the major antidepressant drugs.

The serotonin transporter, however, also occurs in large quantities in numerous other organs such as the intestines or blood. Recent studies have shown that the serotonin transporter in the blood works in exactly the same way as in the brain. In the blood, it ensures that blood platelets maintain the appropriate concentration of serotonin in the blood plasma.

Researchers at the MedUni Vienna have now used functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain and pharmacological investigations to demonstrate that there is a close relationship between the speed of the serotonin uptake in blood platelets and the function of a depression network in the brain.

This network is termed the "default mode network" because it is primarily active at rest and processes content with strong self-reference. Findings from recent years have also demonstrated that it is actively suppressed during complex thought processes, which is essential for adequate levels of concentration. Interestingly, patients with depression find it difficult to suppress this network during thought processes, leading to negative thoughts and ruminations as well as poor concentration.

This is the first study that has been able to predict the activity of a major depression network in the brain using a blood test. While blood tests for mental illnesses have until recently been regarded as impossible, this study clearly shows that a blood test is possible in principle for diagnosing depression and could become reality in the not too distant future. This result means that the diagnosis of depression through blood tests could become reality in the not too distant future.

Low iron levels 'double stroke risk'

More than 15 million people worldwide suffer a stroke every year, resulting in almost 6 million deaths. Now, new finds that iron deficiency could increase a person's risk of stroke by making the blood sticky.

The research team notes that previous research has shown that iron deficiency could be a risk factor for ischemic stroke - when small blood clots interrupt blood flow to the brain - in adults and children.

To investigate why this is the case, the researchers analyzed the iron levels of 497 patients with hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) - a rare disease than can lead to enlarged blood vessels in the lungs. The research team explains that healthy blood vessels usually filter out small blood clots before the blood travels to the arteries. But in HHT, the blood vessels can allow small blood clots to make their way to the brain.

The investigators found that patients with moderately low iron levels (6 micromoles per liter) had double the risk of stroke, compared with patients with iron levels deemed middle of the normal range (7-27 micromoles per liter). Further investigation revealed that iron deficiency increases the stickiness of platelets - small blood cells. This prompts platelets to stick together, causing clotting.

Since platelets in the blood stick together more if you are short of iron, we think this may explain why being short of iron can lead to strokes, though much more research will be needed to prove this link.

Chronic pain may be genetic

Some people seem to have a higher tolerance for pain than others. According to American Academy of Neurology's the answer is genetic. Their research forms part of an investigation into the causes of chronic pain.

Unlike normal or "acute" pain - the sensation triggered by the nervous system to alert the body to possible injury - chronic pain is persistent, with pain signals continuing to fire in the nervous system for weeks, months or years. Chronic pain can come from an ongoing ailment, such as arthritis, cancer or an infection; from a one-off injury such as a sprained back; or it can even occur in people who have suffered no specific injury or illness.

People who suffer from chronic pain may get combinations of headaches, low back pain or nerve pain, among other symptoms. People with chronic pain also might have chronic fatigue syndrome, endometriosis, fibromyalgia, inflammatory bowel disease, interstitial cystitis, tempromandibular joint dysfunction.

Doctors may take a variety of approaches in treating chronic pain. Drugs, acupuncture, local electrical stimulation, brain stimulation and even surgery may be used, depending on the case. Some doctors also report success in treating patients with placebos. Less invasive treatments include psychotherapy, relaxation therapy, biofeedback and behavior modification.

Previous research into chronic pain has found that patients with this condition often have low levels of endorphins in their spinal fluid, so some treatments are aimed at stimulating endorphin levels.

As part of the new study, researchers asked 2,721 patients with chronic pain to rate the intensity of their pain from 0 to 10. All of the patients were taking prescribed opioid pain medications.

The researchers divided the participants into three groups. Those who scored their pain 1-3 were classed as having "low pain perception," people who scored 4-6 had "moderate pain perception," while "high pain perception" was defined by scoring 7-10.

The majority of the people in the study (46%) had moderate pain perception, closely followed by high pain perception (45%). Only 9% of the participants had low pain perception, and anyone giving their pain a rating of 0 was disqualified from the study.

The research team found that a gene variant, DRD1, was 33% more common in the low pain group than in the high pain group. The people in the moderate pain group were more likely to have another two variants - COMT, which was 25% more common in this group than in the high pain group, and OPRK, which was 19% more common. The high pain group, meanwhile, were 25% more likely to have the variant DRD2 than the people in the moderate group.

This study is quite significant because it provides an objective way to understand pain and why different individuals have different pain tolerance levels. Identifying whether a person has any of these four genes could help doctors better understand their patients' pain perception.

Low blood sugar may cause couples to fight more!

A quick candy bar may delay more than hunger. It could prevent major fights between husbands and wives. That's because low blood sugar can make spouses touchy, researchers propose. We need glucose for self-control; anger is the emotion that most people have difficulty controlling.

The researchers studied 107 married couples for three weeks. Each night, they measured their levels of the blood sugar glucose and asked each participant to stick pins in a voodoo doll representing his or her spouse. That indicated levels of aggressive feelings. The researchers found that the lower the blood sugar levels, the more pins were pushed into the doll. In fact, people with the lowest scores pushed in twice as many pins as those with the highest blood sugar levels, the researchers said.

The study also found that the spouses were generally not angry at each other. About 70 percent of the time, people didn't put any pins in the doll. The average for the whole study was a bit more than one pin a night per person. Three people put all 51 pins in at one time and one person did that twice.

Researchers said there's a good physical reason to link eating to emotion: The brain, which is only 2 percent of the body weight, consumes 20 percent of our calories. Eating a candy bar might be a good idea if spouses are about to discuss something touchy but that fruits and vegetables are a better long-term strategy for keeping blood sugar levels up.

Blood pressure guidelines raised for people above 60

New guidelines that relax blood pressure levels for people over 60 came. The new guidelines give a little more leeway and a little less stress about this particular indicator. Until recently, the control goal for people 60 and older was 140/90. Now, it's 150/90.

According to Duke University researchers, that could mean that 5.8 million people considered uncontrolled under the old guidelines wouldn't need blood pressure medication under the new guidelines. While the new guidelines should result in fewer medication side effects, some say it could increase the risk for heart disease, stroke and kidney disease.

While everyone agrees that hypertension can lead to strokes, heart disease and kidney disease, just how low blood pressure levels should be to reduce the risk is controversial.

One in four adults in the over-60 group is on hypertension drugs to meet the old guidelines. According to the study, 13.5 million adults — most over 60 — would no longer be classified as having poorly controlled blood pressure, including 5.8 million who would no longer need blood pressure pills under the new guidelines. These adults would be eligible for less intensive blood pressure medication under the new guidelines, particularly if they were experiencing side effects. But many experts fear that increasing blood pressure levels in these adults could be harmful.

For quite a while, the goal, especially for older patients, has been much too low. They get calcified arteries, so it's harder to get blood pressure control overall. Adding more and more medications, and driving their systolic pressure down makes the diastolic (bottom) number way too low for them. It can cause a lot weakness and dizziness. That can affect quality of life, she said, and cause falls, which can mean dangerous hip fractures among other injuries.