Currency

Research Archive

Welcome to our Chinese medicine and acupuncture research news pages. We add to the content of these pages continuously as more research news comes in. Browse through the complete archive below or use the category links on the right.

Please note that the most twenty recent research archive items are free to view but access to the thousands of items in the archive require a journal subscription.

Affirmations can make some people feel worse

Categories: Lifestyle research

Canadian psychologists have found that people with low self-esteem can actually feel worse after repeating positive statements about themselves. The researchers asked people with high and low self-esteem to repeat a positive self-statement ("I am a lovable person"). They then measured the participants' moods and their feelings about themselves. The low self-esteem group felt worse afterw ...

Mobile phones damage sperm

Categories: Lifestyle research

Radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMR) in the range emitted by mobile phones can cause damage to human spermatozoa. When an Australian team exposed sperm to RF-EMR they found that their motility and vitality were significantly reduced, while mitochondrial generation of reactive oxygen species and DNA fragmentation were significantly elevated. The researchers conclude that their finding ...

Smoking marijuana and tobacco increases COPD risk

Categories: Lifestyle research

Smoking both tobacco and marijuana increases the risk of developing respiratory symptoms and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Canadian clinicians surveyed a random sample of 878 people aged 40 years or older living in Vancouver about their respiratory history and their history of tobacco and marijuana smoking. Concurrent use of marijuana and tobacco was associated with increased risk ...

Fertility drugs increase cancer risk

Categories: Lifestyle research

Ovulation-inducing drugs may increase the risk of women later developing uterine cancer. Israeli scientists have compared cancer incidence in a group of 15,030 Israeli women 30 years after they gave birth. Of the 567 women who had been given ovulation-inducing fertility drugs, five developed uterine cancer, which is about three times the incidence of members of the group who had not been given the ...

HRT shrinks the brain

Categories: Lifestyle research

A US-study has suggested that some forms of post-menopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can cause brain areas involved in thinking and memory to shrink slightly. The researchers carried out brain scans on 1,400 women aged 71 to 89 who had taken part in an earlier HRT trial. They found that two key areas of the brain were smaller in women who had taken conjugated equine oestrogen orally than ...

Telly watching doubles asthma risk

Categories: Lifestyle research

Children who spend more than two hours a day watching TV have double the risk of developing asthma, a UK study has found. 3,000 children were tracked from birth to age 11. Their parents were questioned annually about incidence of wheeze and diagnosed asthma among their children. They were also asked to assess children's television viewing habits from age three-and-a-half onwards. None of the child ...

Mild obesity takes years off your life

Categories: Lifestyle research

Being moderately overweight can reduce lifespan by two to four years, according to a major new study of obesity and mortality carried out in the UK. The huge collaborative study pooled data together data from 57 studies involving almost 900,000 people, mostly from Europe and North America. The results showed that people whose BMI was higher than 25 had shorter lifespans on average. Those with a BM ...

Nature benefits the brain

Categories: Lifestyle research

US researchers exploring the cognitive benefits of interacting with nature have found that walking in a park in any season, or even just viewing pictures of nature, can help improve memory and attention. They compared the restorative effects on cognitive functioning of interactions with natural versus urban environments. Participants walked on an urban route or through botanical gardens before und ...

Female hormones linked with unfaithfulness

Categories: Lifestyle research

Young women with high levels of oestrogen are more likely to be serial monogamists or to cheat on their partners and also see themselves as more attractive than other women, according to an American psychologist. Two salivary samples were taken from 52 normally cycling female university students at two points in their menstrual cycle. At both testing sessions, participants completed self-perceived ...

Fertile women more susceptible to being chatted up

Categories: Lifestyle research

French psychologists have found out that women are most likely to give their phone number to a male stranger when they are most likely to get pregnant. Researchers recruited handsome young men to chat up women on a street corner, in order to determine whether fertility affects receptivity to male advances. Less than a minute after the encounter, a female researcher approached the women, revealing ...

PMS = pre-menstrual shopping

Categories: Lifestyle research

Shopping spree? Must be that time of the month. It seems that women can now add binge shopping to their list of premenstrual symptoms. In the 10 days before their periods begin, women are more likely to go on a spending spree, according to new research presented to a meeting of the British Psychological Society. 443 women aged 18 to 50 were asked about their spending habits. Almost two-thirds of t ...

Phosphates promote lung tumours

Categories: Lifestyle research

Animal research suggests that a diet high in inorganic phosphates (Pi), found in processed foods including meats, cheeses, beverages, and bakery products, may speed growth of lung cancer tumours and even contribute to the development of tumours in predisposed individuals. Mice with an experimental model of lung cancer were studied for four weeks and were randomly assigned to receive a diet of eith ...

What's lurking in the water?

Categories: Lifestyle research

A comprehensive survey of US drinking water has detected widespread but low-level contamination by a number of drugs and hormonally active chemicals. Scientists tested tap water from 19 US water utilities, which supply more than 28 million Americans, for 51 different compounds, between 2006 and 2007. The 11 most frequently detected compounds, all found at very low concentrations, included: the bet ...

Breast-feeding halves cot death rate

Categories: Lifestyle research

Breast-feeding reduces the risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) by approximately 50% at all ages throughout infancy, according to the results of a German case-control study. The researchers compared 333 infants who died of SIDS with 998 age-matched controls. Breast-feeding at age two weeks was reported for 49.6% of case infants and by 82.9% of control infants. Exclusive breast-feeding at a ...

Mild sleep disturbance impairs memory

Categories: Lifestyle research

Dutch investigators have found that mild sleep disruption that induces shallow sleep, but does not reduce total sleep time, is sufficient to reduce hippocampal activation and interfere with learning and memory. The study involved 13 healthy subjects, mean age 60, whose memory was tested following a night of undisturbed sleep and again following a night of shallow sleep. On the day before, the subj ...

Overtime is bad for the brain

Categories: Lifestyle research

The stress and exhaustion of working long hours can affect the brain's ability to process information, according to a UK/Finnish study. The study examined the association between long working hours and cognitive function in middle age. Data were collected from a prospective study of 2,214 British civil servants who were in full-time employment at baseline. A battery of cognitive tests was employed ...

Obesity causes sweet cravings

Categories: Lifestyle research

Obesity gradually numbs rats tastebuds to sweet foods and drives them to consume larger and sweeter meals, according to American neuroscientists. Previous studies have suggested that obese people are less sensitive to sweet tastes and crave sweet foods more than lean people. The current study looked at the taste responses of two strains of rats. Compared with lean healthy LETO rats, the taste resp ...

Exercise good for older women's brains

Categories: Lifestyle research

Being physically active improves brain blood flow and cognitive ability in older women. A US study compared two groups of women with an average age of 65. One group took part in regular aerobic activity, while those in the other group were inactive. The research team measured the women's cardiovascular health, resting brain blood flow and the reserve capacity of blood vessels in the brain, as well ...

Breathing exercises help with asthma

Categories: Respiratory disorders, Lifestyle research

Breathing exercises can help asthma patients control their symptoms, according to a Scottish study. 183 asthmatic subjects were randomised to three sessions of either physiotherapist supervised breathing training or asthma nurse delivered asthma education. One-month post-intervention, similar improvements in Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire scores were seen in both groups, but six months post ...

Lifestyle changes & supplements outperform statins

Categories: Lifestyle research

Investigators from the US have carried out a randomised trial involving 74 patients with hypercholesterolemia who were either given 40 mg of simvastatin daily with routine counselling or an alternative treatment with therapeutic lifestyle changes, ingestion of red yeast rice and fish oil supplements for 12 weeks. There was a statistically significant reduction in low-density lipoprotein cholestero ...