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We Have Better Ways to Break Habits Than Willpower. Why Don't We Use Them? - HBS Working Knowledge
People trust others who use willpower more than commitment strategies. The researchers asked 400 online participants to give a small amount of money to one of two partners, saying the partner could choose to keep the entire amount or give some of it back. Meanwhile, participants were told that one of the partners used willpower to resist checking out social media sites while working, and the other used a blocking app. Overwhelmingly, participants chose to give their money to the first partner, 69 percent compared to 31 percent, showing that they trusted the person who used willpower more to give back some of the money. The results indicate that participants believed the person who used willpower put in more effort and was therefore considered more trustworthy.
Search - Consensus: AI Search Engine for Research
Boiled coffee, which contains higher levels of cafestol and kahweol, significantly raises serum cholesterol levels. Studies have shown increases ranging from 0.48 mmol/L to 1.7 mmol/L depending on the duration and amount consumed
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Habitual Coffee, Tea, and Caffeine Consumption, Circulating Metabolites, and the Risk of Cardiometabolic Multimorbidity | The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism | Oxford Academic
Nonlinear inverse associations of coffee, tea, and caffeine intake with the risk of new-onset CM were observed. Compared with nonconsumers or consumers of less than 100 mg caffeine per day, consumers of moderate amount of coffee (3 drinks/d) or caffeine (200-300 mg/d) had the lowest risk for new-onset CM, with respective hazard ratios (95% CIs) of 0.519 (0.417-0.647) and 0.593 (0.499-0.704). Multistate models revealed that moderate coffee or caffeine intake was inversely associated with risks of almost all developmental stages of CM, including transitions from a disease-free state to single cardiometabolic diseases and subsequently to CM. A total of 80 to 97 metabolites, such as lipid components within very low-density lipoprotein, histidine, and glycoprotein acetyls, were identified to be associated with both coffee, tea, or caffeine intake and incident CM.
Coffee-Dementia Link Continues to Unfurl | MedPage Today
Among 6,001 Health and Retirement Study
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participants in the U.S., drinking two or more cups of coffee a day was associated with a 28% lower risk of dementia over 7 years compared with drinking less than one daily cup (P<0.05), reported Changzheng Yuan, ScD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston and the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China, in a poster presented at the meeting.
Social Media Fuels Eating Disorder Echo Chambers - Neuroscience News
The researchers next looked at how these communities interacted with each other. Chu described the result as “astonishing.” Clusters, or echo chambers, appeared where tens of thousands of users in the same community responded to and retweeted each other, yet they had little interaction with outside groups.
Consumption of coffee or caffeine and serum concentration of inflammatory markers: A systematic review - PubMed
Fifteen studies (8 involving coffee and 7 caffeine) were included. Increased adiponectin levels were found in four of seven trials comparing filtered coffee/caffeinated coffee with placebo or comparing its levels at baseline and after consumption of medium or dark roasted coffee, but no change was seen in caffeine trials. None of the five studies assessing the effects of coffee found changes in C-reactive protein (CPR), but one out of three trials found decreased CPR levels in response to caffeine. Interleukin (IL)-6 was increased by caffeinated coffee compared with placebo in one of four coffee trials, and by caffeine in three out of five studies. Caffeine increased IL-10 levels in two of three trials. These data suggest a predominant anti-inflammatory action of coffee but not of caffeine consumption. Moreover, the proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses to caffeine point to its complex effects on the inflammatory response.
He was treated for blood clots but still felt fatigued and breathless - The Washington Post
Porter’s history of blood clots for no apparent reason, his continued shortness of breath and chest pain, along with the results of the VQ scan and other tests strongly suggested one diagnosis: chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH).
This rare form of pulmonary hypertension is caused by clots that clog arteries, forming scar tissue that adheres to blood vessels in the lungs, narrowing the vessels and impeding blood flow.
Experts estimate that between 2 and 5 percent of people with blood clots will develop CTEPH, which doesn’t respond to blood thinners.
But unlike other forms of pulmonary hypertension, CTEPH can be cured by a pulmonary thromboendarterectomy (PTE), a long, complex and demanding operation to remove clots. Nonsurgical treatment involves medication, but is not curative.
What Happens When One Twin Exercises and the Other Doesn’t - Outside Online
All the twin pairs came in for physical examinations, and the results were pretty much what you’d expect. The exercising twins had higher VO2 max (38.6 vs. 33.0 ml/kg/min), smaller waist circumference (34.8 vs. 36.3 inches), lower body fat (19.7 vs. 22.6 percent), significantly less abdominal fat and liver fat, and so on. The study is free to read if you want to dig further into the details, but the results aren’t surprising. Exercise clearly improves a bunch of health parameters, and genes clearly matter too—after all, the differences aren’t that big.
Good news for coffee lovers: Daily coffee may benefit the heart: Drinking two to three cups a day was associated with greatest heart benefits -- ScienceDaily
For the first study, researchers examined data from 382,535 individuals without known heart disease to see whether coffee drinking played a role in the development of heart disease or stroke during the 10 years of follow up. Participants' average age was 57 years and half were women. In general, having two to three cups of coffee a day was associated with the greatest benefit, translating to a 10%-15% lower risk of developing coronary heart disease, heart failure, a heart rhythm problem, or dying for any reason. The risk of stroke or heart-related death was lowest among people who drank one cup of coffee a day. Researchers did observe a U-shaped relationship with coffee intake and new heart rhythm problems. The maximum benefit was seen among people drinking two to three cups of coffee a day with less benefit seen among those drinking more or less.
Salad or cheeseburger? Your co-workers shape your food choices -- ScienceDaily
When co-workers are eating together, individuals are more likely to select foods that are as healthy -- or unhealthy -- as the food selections on their fellow employees' trays. "We found that individuals tend to mirror the food choices of others in their social circles, which may explain one way obesity spreads through social networks," says Douglas Levy, PhD, an investigator at the Mongan Institute Health Policy Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and first author of new research published in Nature Human Behaviour. Levy and his co-investigators discovered that individuals' eating patterns can be shaped even by casual acquaintances, evidence that corroborates several multi-decade observational studies showing the influence of people's social ties on weight gain, alcohol consumption and eating behavior.
Anonymous cell phone data can quantify behavioral changes for flu-like illnesses: Iceland study links cell phone metadata with public health data -- ScienceDaily
The researchers collaborated with a major cell phone service provider in Iceland, along with public health officials of the island nation. They analyzed data for more than 90,000 encrypted cell phone numbers, which represents about a quarter of Iceland's population. They were permitted to link the encrypted cell phone metadata to 1,400 anonymous individuals who received a clinical diagnosis of a flu-like illness during the H1N1 outbreak.
"The individual linkage is key," Vigfusson says. "Many public-health applications for smartphone data have emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic but tend to be based around correlations. In contrast, we can definitively measure the differences in routine behavior between the diagnosed group and the rest of the population."
More than half of people using cannabis for pain experience multiple withdrawal symptoms: Minority experience worsening of symptoms over time, especially younger people -- ScienceDaily
In addition to a general craving to use cannabis, withdrawal symptoms can include anxiety, sleep difficulties, decreased appetite, restlessness, depressed mood, aggression, irritability, nausea, sweating, headache, stomach pain, strange dreams, increased anger and shakiness.
Previous research has shown that the more symptoms and greater severity of symptoms a person has, the less likely they are to be able to reduce their use of cannabis, quit using it or stay away from it once they quit.
They may mistakenly think that the symptoms happen because of their underlying medical conditions, and may even increase the amount or frequency of their cannabis use to try to counteract the effect -- leading to a cycle of increasing use and increasing withdrawal.
Could excessive sugar intake contribute to aggressive behaviors, ADHD, bipolar disorder? New peer-review paper looks at evolution and current Western diet to help explain manic behaviors -- ScienceDaily
The research, out today from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and published in Evolution and Human Behavior, presents a hypothesis supporting a role for fructose, a component of sugar and high fructose corn syrup, and uric acid (a fructose metabolite), in increasing the risk for these behavioral disorders.
"We present evidence that fructose, by lowering energy in cells, triggers a foraging response similar to what occurs in starvation," said lead author Richard Johnson, MD, professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.
Johnson outlines research that shows a foraging response stimulates risk taking, impulsivity, novelty seeking, rapid decision making, and aggressiveness to aid the securing of food as a survival response. Overactivation of this process from excess sugar intake may cause impulsive behavior that could range from ADHD, to bipolar disorder or even aggression.
Coca-Cola’s work with academics was a “low point in history of public health” | The BMJ
An analysis of thousands of emails has shown the extent to which Coca-Cola sought to obscure its relationship with scientists, minimise perception of its role, and use researchers to promote industry friendly messaging. The findings represented a “low point in the history of public health,” said one of the authors.
Academics the UK and Italy worked with US Right to Know, an investigative public health and consumer group, to obtain and analyse more than 18 000 pages of email correspondence between the Coca-Cola Company, West Virginia University, and the University of Colorado.1
Both universities were part of a “front group” funded by Coca-Cola called the Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN), a global network of scientists1 said to have been created by Coke to downplay links between obesity and sugary drinks.2
Sugary drink tax models show health gains, cost reductions, but vary by tax design -- ScienceDaily
Boston researchers created a nationally representative microsimulation model to test three types of taxation on sugary drinks: a flat "volume tax" by drink volume ($0.01 per ounce), the only type used in U.S. cities to-date; a "tiered sugar content tax" by 3 levels of sugar content (ranging from $0.00 for less than 5 grams of added sugars per 8 ounces, to $0.02 per ounce of added sugars for more than 20 grams of added sugars per 8 ounces); and a "fixed sugar content tax" by absolute sugar content ($0.01 per teaspoon of added sugars, regardless of the number of ounces).
Under the simulation scenario, the researchers found all three tax structures would generate tax revenue, lower health care costs and prevent cardiovascular disease events and diabetes cases. However, the tiered tax and sugar content tax could generate the largest health gains and cost savings. Any of the tax designs could be effective public health policy tools that may be able to reduce consumption of sugary drinks, and thus improve health and overall well-being, the researchers noted.
Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away From Bad Diets - The New York Times
“Coca-Cola’s sales are slipping, and there’s this huge political and public backlash against soda, with every major city trying to do something to curb consumption,” said Michele Simon, a public health lawyer. “This is a direct response to the ways that the company is losing. They’re desperate to stop the bleeding.”
Coke has made a substantial investment in the new nonprofit. In response to requests based on state open-records laws, two universities that employ leaders of the Global Energy Balance Network disclosed that Coke had donated $1.5 million last year to start the organization.
Could coffee be the secret to fighting obesity? -- ScienceDaily
"From our previous work, we knew that brown fat is mainly located in the neck region, so we were able to image someone straight after they had a drink to see if the brown fat got hotter," said Professor Symonds.
"The results were positive and we now need to ascertain that caffeine as one of the ingredients in the coffee is acting as the stimulus or if there's another component helping with the activation of brown fat. We are currently looking at caffeine supplements to test whether the effect is similar.
Social network structure is predictive of health and wellness
Social network analysis has been used for health-related problems including mental health [4, 6], physical well-beings [1, 2], and illness [8, 27]. Most of the work has largely focused on social networks as a diffusion mechanism of health [1–5] or emotions [6–9]. This paper provides a novel perspective on the value of social network structure in not only understanding our health behavior but also in predicting the wellness states, above and beyond what the data from wearables or demographic tells us. Clearly, social networks are an important piece of the puzzle about our health and wellness. We showed that by including features derived from social networks, accuracy increases significantly and at times using only social network features adds more predictability. Specifically, we find that happiness and positive attitude have the most significant jump when using social network structure features in addition to health behavior and demographic data. This clearly demonstrates that it is the tight coupling of an ego’s social and health behavior that result in improved understanding and predictability of the ego’s wellness state.
Your circle of friends is more predictive of your health, study finds -- ScienceDaily
Handing someone a means to track their steps and monitor their health in the hopes that their health improves simply may not be enough to see meaningful or significant results. Those employers, Chawla said, would benefit from encouraging employees to build a platform to post and share their experiences with each other. Social network structure helps complete the picture of health and well-being. […]"When we hear that health and wellness programs driven by wearables at places of employment aren't working, we should be asking, is it because we're just taking a single dimensional view where we just give the employees the wearables and forget about it without taking the step to understand the role social networks play in health?"
Your circle of friends is more predictive of your health, study finds -- ScienceDaily
Social network structure provided significant improvement in predicting one's health and well-being compared to just looking at health behavior data from the Fitbit alone. For example, when social network structure is combined with the data derived from wearables, the machine learning model achieved a 65 percent improvement in predicting happiness, 54 percent improvement in predicting one's self-assessed health prediction, 55 percent improvement in predicting positive attitude, and 38 percent improvement in predicting success.
"This study asserts that without social network information, we only have an incomplete view of an individual's wellness state, and to be fully predictive or to be able to derive interventions, it is critical to be aware of the social network structural features as well," Chawla said.
Exercise activates memory neural networks in older adults: Study shows acute exercise has the ability to impact brain regions important to memory -- ScienceDaily
Dr. Smith's research team measured the brain activity (using fMRI) of healthy participants ages 55-85 who were asked to perform a memory task that involves identifying famous names and non famous ones. The action of remembering famous names activates a neural network related to semantic memory, which is known to deteriorate over time with memory loss.
This test was conducted 30 minutes after a session of moderately intense exercise (70% of max effort) on an exercise bike and on a separate day after a period of rest. Participants' brain activation while correctly remembering names was significantly greater in four brain cortical regions (including the middle frontal gyrus, inferior temporal gryus, middle temporal gyrus, and fusiform gyrus) after exercise compared to after rest. The increased activation of the hippocampus was also seen on both sides of the brain.
"Just like a muscle adapts to repeated use, single sessions of exercise may flex cognitive neural networks in ways that promote adaptations over time and lend to increased network integrity and function and allow more efficient access to memories," Dr. Smith explained.
It's OK to indulge once in a while, study suggests: The body adapts to occasional short-term overeating: Body focuses on removing glucose to preserve insulin sensitivity in short-term overeating bout -- ScienceDaily
Although the amount of visceral fat that surrounds internal organs increased substantially, short-term overeating did not have a significant effect on the men's weight or fat mass. In addition, fasting levels of blood sugar and C-peptide -- an amino acid the body releases in response to increased production of insulin -- did not change. This finding was surprising because fasting levels of endogenous glucose -- new glucose the body produces in addition to what it has already stored for future use -- increased during the short-term trial.
Chronic overeating increased the amount of total body fat and visceral fat as well as post-meal blood sugar and C-peptide levels. However, it did not alter fasting blood sugar levels, endogenous glucose production or the rate of glucose removal from the body (glucose disposal). This may be because the nutrient profile in the long-term trial was consistent with a typical diet and dietary fat percentages did not increase. Long-term overindulgence in fatty foods, instead of more nutritionally balanced foods, may be an important factor that causes rapid changes in blood sugar control.
More Evidence Links Marijuana Use And Psychosis : Shots - Health News : NPR
The study found that those who used pot daily were three times more likely to have a psychotic episode compared to someone who never used the drug.
Those who started using cannabis at the age of 15 or less had a slightly more elevated risk than those who started using in later years.
Use of high potency weed almost doubled the odds of having psychosis compared to someone who had never smoked weed, explains Di Forti.
And for those who used high potency pot on a daily basis, the risk of psychosis was even greater — four times greater than those who had never used.
Cells use sugars to communicate at the molecular level -- ScienceDaily
Using engineered synthetic cells as a model system, lead author Cesar Rodriguez-Emmenegger, a former member of Percec's group, now at Aachen, discovered a way to directly study cell membranes using a method called atomic force microscopy. This approach generates extremely high-resolution scans that reveal shapes and structures at a scale of less than a nanometer, nearly 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Percec's group then built a model that computes how the structural images relate to the cell's function.
The study is the first example of a diffraction-like method that can be done on whole synthetic cells. Using this new method, Percec's group discovered that a lower concentration of sugars on a cell membrane's surface led to increased reactivity with proteins on the membranes of other cells.
THC found more important for therapeutic effects in cannabis than originally thought: Researchers measure product characteristics and associated effects with mobile app -- ScienceDaily
Since its release in 2016, the commercially developed ReleafApp has been the only publicly available, incentive-free app for educating patients on how their type of product (e.g., flower or concentrate), combustion method, cannabis subspecies (indica, sativa, and hybrid), and major cannabinoid contents (THC and CBD) affect their symptom severity levels, essentially providing invaluable user feedback on their health status, medication choices, and the clinical outcomes of those choices as measured by symptom relief and side effects.
The study aimed to address the practical questions of knowing how fundamental characteristics of currently available and frequently used cannabis products, characteristics that often influence consumer choices, affect health symptom intensity levels. The average patient, across the roughly 20,000 measured user sessions and 27 measured symptom categories ranging from depression to seizure activity, showed an immediate symptom improvement of 3.5 points on a 0-10 scale. Dried flower was the most commonly used product and generally associated with greater symptom improvement than other types of products.
BARBARIANS AT THE GATE: CONSUMER-DRIVEN HEALTH DATA COMMONS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF CITIZEN SCIENCE
A few state court cases have found patients own their medical records under specific circumstances.118 Unfortunately, the pertinent body of state medical records law generally applies in traditional healthcare settings and seemingly does not govern commercial providers of PHD devices and services, such as purveyors of medical and fitness devices. Courts do not recognize an individual property right in personal information such as one’s name, address, and social security number.119 Commercial databases that hold such information are generally treated as the property of the companies that compiled them.120 In a famous case121 where plaintiffs sought to block a company from disclosing their personal information by selling its mailing lists, Vera Bergelson notes an implicit judicial bias “that, to the extent personal information may be viewed as property, that property belongs to the one who collects it.”122 This bias— if it exists—is reminiscent of the ancient res nullius doctrine from natural resource law, which treated assets such as subsurface mineral deposits and wild animals as unowned until somebody discovers and captures (takes possession of) them.123 “Rarely used today, it let private owners stake claims as in the Klondike gold rush.”124
