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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.

Active women protected against breast cancer

Categories: Lifestyle research

Physically active women are less likely to get breast cancer. A review of all published literature to September 2007 was conducted using online databases; 34 case-control and 28 cohort studies were included. Evidence for a risk reduction associated with increased physical activity was found in 76% of studies, with an average risk decrease of 25-30%. The most physically active women were found to b ...

A troubled childhood leads to an unhealthy adult

Categories: Lifestyle research

Adverse experiences in childhood increase the risk of developing obesity and type 2 diabetes in adulthood. 9310 members of the 1958 British birth cohort took part in a biomedical interview at 45 years of age. Several adversities in childhood were associated with increased risk for obesity by 20% to 50%. These included physical, verbal, or witnessed abuse; humiliation; neglect; strict upbringing; p ...

Breastfeeding reduces mother's risk of ra

Categories: Lifestyle research

Women who breastfeed for longer have a decreased chance of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Researchers compared 136 women with rheumatoid arthritis with 544 women of a similar age. They found that those who had breast fed for longer were much less likely to get RA. Women who had breastfed for 13 months or more were half as likely to get rheumatoid arthritis as those who had never breastfed. ...

Breastfeeding means brighter kids

Categories: Lifestyle research

Breastfeeding during the first months of life appears to raise a child's verbal IQ, according to a study of nearly 13,889 children carried out in Belarus. Six-year-olds whose mothers had been part of an education program that encouraged them to breast-feed were found to have a verbal IQ that was 7.5 points higher than children in a control group. The experimental intervention led to a large increa ...

He with the lowest handicap lives longest

Categories: Lifestyle research

Swedish investigators have found the death rate amongst golfers is 40% lower than for other people of the same sex, age and socioeconomic status, which equates to an increased life expectancy of five years. The cohort study included 300,818 golfers. Golfers with the lowest handicap (i.e. the most skilled players) were found to have the lowest mortality. The authors conclude that the physical activ ...

Football is bad for the heart

Categories: Lifestyle research

Viewing a stressful soccer match more than doubles the risk of an acute cardiovascular event. A German study carried out during the 2006 World Cup, which was hosted by Germany, found that there were significant increases in cardiac emergencies on days when the host nation was playing. According to the authors, it is not the outcome of a game that triggers a stress-induced coronary events, bu ...

Worrying increases heart attack risk

Categories: Lifestyle research

Chronic anxiety can significantly increase the risk of a heart attack for men. Californian scientists used a cohort study involving 735 men (mean age 60). Each of the men completed psychological testing and was in good cardiovascular health at baseline in 1986. The researchers investigated whether anxiety characteristics independently predicted the onset of myocardial infarction over a 12-year per ...

Healthy seniors live longer

Categories: Lifestyle research, Geriatric

Healthy lifestyle behaviors during the early elderly years are associated not only with enhanced life span in men but also with good health and function during older age. In a prospective cohort study of 2357 healthy men, mean age 72 at baseline, American researchers examined modifiable factors associated with a life span of 90 or more years and late-life function in men. At the beginning of the s ...

It's never too late to get healthy

Categories: Lifestyle research

Even if you are over 65, improving your diet and lifestyle can still lead to significant health benefits and decrease your chances of developing chronic diseases. A literature review by a US author has found that adhering to a low-calorie, low-fat diet, which is high in fruit and vegetables, along with a regular exercise plan, can help the elderly stave off age-related diseases. According to the p ...

Exercise slows ageing

Categories: Lifestyle research

Individuals who are physically active are biologically younger than those with sedentary lifestyles. British investigators surveyed 2401 twin volunteers using questionnaires on physical activity level, smoking status, and socioeconomic status. The researchers then examined the length of telomeres (repeated DNA sequences found at the ends of chromosomes) in the twins' white blood cells. Leukocyte t ...

Four healthy habits add 14 years to life

Categories: Lifestyle research

Combining four healthy lifestyle habits can add as much as 14 years on to your lifespan. UK researchers examined the relationship between lifestyle and mortality in a cohort of 20,000 people aged 45-79, with no known cardiovascular disease or cancer at baseline. Participants scored one point for each health behaviour: current non-smoking, not physically inactive, moderate alcohol intake (1-14 unit ...

Drink to healthy ageing

Categories: Lifestyle research

People who start drinking alcohol in later life immediately decrease their risk of developing cardiovascular disease. A US study examined a cohort of 7697 adults aged 45-64 years, who had no history of cardiovascular disease at baseline, over a 10-year period. Of participants who were nondrinkers at baseline, 6% began moderate alcohol consumption within a six-year follow-up period. After four year ...

Middle age makes you miserable - official

Categories: Lifestyle research

The biggest risk for a midlife crisis is not divorce, ill health or losing one's job, it’s merely the act of aging itself. Researchers from Great Britain and the USA analysed data spanning more than 35 years, 2 million people and 80 countries. They looked at measures of mental health, such as depression, anxiety, mental well-being, happiness and life satisfaction and correlated them with age ...

Bra size linked to diabetes

Categories: Lifestyle research

Breast size in early adulthood may predict women's risk of developing diabetes later in life. Canadian researchers carried out a secondary analysis of data collected from a cohort study of 92,000 women, mean age 38 at baseline, which began in 1989. The women's bra cup sizes at the age of 20 were taken from the answers given in a questionnaire. A total of 1,844 new cases of type 2 diabetes arose du ...

Eczema linked with poor intestinal flora at birth

Categories: Lifestyle research, Allergies

Babies with only a limited variety of bacteria in their faeces one week after birth are more likely to develop atopy as infants. Swedish researchers collected faecal samples collected from 35 infants at one week of age and used molecular techniques to analyse the diversity of their intestinal microflora. Reduced microbial diversity of early faecal microbiota was significantly associated with the d ...

Small babies prone to depression later in life

Categories: Lifestyle research

Analysis of data from a landmark public health study suggests that people who had a low birth weight are more likely to experience depression and anxiety later in life. Canadian researchers used information from the Medical Research Council's National Survey of Health and Development, one of the longest-running cohort studies ever. The survey tracked more than 4,600 people born in Great Britain in ...

Elective caesareans increase risk of breathing problems

Categories: Lifestyle research

Babies delivered by elective caesarean section before term carry up to a fourfold increased risk of breathing problems, compared with babies delivered vaginally or by emergency caesarean section. Researchers in Denmark investigated the association between elective caesarean sections and newborn respiratory problems in over 34,000 births. The study found that, at 37 weeks' gestation, the risk of br ...

High earners drink more

Categories: Lifestyle research

Professional and high-income households are the heaviest drinkers, according to figures from the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS). On average, British men drank 18.7 units of alcohol weekly during 2006 compared with nine units for women. This rose to 22.9 units per week for men and 12.5 for women in the top socio-economic group. When asked about their heaviest drinking day in the previous ...

Sociable people get fat, but worriers are thin

Categories: Lifestyle research

Extroverts tend to be overweight, while anxious types are more likely to be thin. Japanese researchers surveyed more than 30,000 people aged between 40 and 64 about their height and weight, and subjected them a personality test. The results showed that outgoing people were far more likely to have a body mass index (BMI) of more than 25 (defined as overweight). People with the most anxious personal ...

Money makes you happy, but only if you give it away.

Categories: Lifestyle research

Experiments in which students were given small amounts of cash windfalls with instructions on how to spend it, showed that those who gave the money away (donating to charity or giving a gift) were happier at the end of the day than those who blew it on themselves (to pay a bill or indulge in a treat). Two more surveys by the same team mirrored these results. In one, 16 Boston company employees wer ...