Running Daily For a Minute May Boost Bone Health

Agencies

July 18, 2017

Jul 18: Want to improve your bone health? Running -- a high-intensity and weight-bearing physical activity -- for just one to two minutes each day may help you, new research shows. running

The findings showed that women who on an average did 60-120 seconds of running per day had four per cent better bone health than those who did less than a minute, while those who ran for more than two minutes a day, had six per cent better bone health.

"We don't yet know whether it's better to accumulate this small amount of exercise in bits throughout each day or all at once, and also whether a slightly longer bout of exercise on one or two days per week is just as good as 1-2 minutes a day," said lead author Victoria Stiles from the University of Exeter.

But the research, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, showed a clear link between this kind of high-intensity, weight-bearing exercise and better bone health in women.

"It seems likely that just 1-2 minutes of running a day is good for bone health," Stiles said.

Good bone health has multiple health benefits, including a reduced risk of bone diseases like osteoporosis and fractures in old age.

For the study, the team looked at data on more than 2,500 women, and compared activity levels (measured by wrist-worn monitors) with bone health (measured by an ultrasound scan of heel bone).

For people interested in increasing their day-to-day levels of activity, Stiles recommended increasing walking activity first.

"Further on, we would suggest adding a few running steps to the walk, a bit like you might if you were running to catch a bus," Stiles noted.

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Smoking linked to higher risk of coronavirus, says WHO

Agencies

July 2,2020

London, Jul 2: The World Health Organisation says smoking is linked to a higher risk of severe illness and death from the coronavirus in hospitalised patients, although it was unable to specify exactly how much greater those risks might be.

In a scientific brief published this week, the U.N. health agency reviewed 34 published studies on the association between smoking and Covid-19, including the probability of infection, hospitalisation, severity of disease and death.

WHO noted that smokers represent up to 18% of hospitalised coronavirus patients and that there appeared to be a significant link between whether or not patients smoked and the severity of disease they suffered, the type of hospital interventions required and patients' risk of dying.

In April, French researchers released a small study suggesting smokers were at less risk of catching Covid-19 and planned to test nicotine patches on patients and health workers — but their findings were questioned by many scientists at the time who cited the lack of definitive data.

WHO says "the available evidence suggests that smoking is associated with increased severity of disease and death in hospitalized Covid-19 patients. It recommends that smokers quit.

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Study links genetics to childhood emotional, social and psychiatric problems

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April 17,2020

Washington DC, Apr 17: In recent research, scientists have linked the emotional, social and psychiatric problems in children and adolescents with higher levels of genetic vulnerability for adult depression. The study implies that the genetics passed from parents may be linked with psychiatric problems in children and adolescents and may also leading to depression in adults.

University of Queensland scientists made the finding while analysing the genetic data of more than 42,000 children and adolescents from seven cohorts across Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK.

Professor Christel Middeldorp said that researchers have also found a link with a higher genetic vulnerability for insomnia, neuroticism and body mass index.

"By contrast, study participants with higher genetic scores for educational attainment and emotional well-being were found to have reduced childhood problems," Professor Middeldorp said.

"We calculated a person's level of genetic vulnerability by adding up the number of risk genes they had for a specific disorder or trait and then made adjustments based on the level of importance of each gene We found the relationship was mostly similar across ages," Middeldorp added.

The results indicate there are shared genetic factors that affect a range of psychiatric and related traits across a person's lifespan.

Middeldorp said that around 50 per cent of children and adolescents with psychiatric problems, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), continue to experience mental disorders as adults, and are at risk of disengaging with their school community among other social and emotional problems.

"Our findings are important as they suggest this continuity between childhood and adult traits is partly explained by genetic risk," the Professor said.

"Individuals at risk of being affected should be the focus of attention and targeted treatment," Middeldorp continued.

"Although the genetic vulnerability is not accurate enough at this stage to make individual predictions about how a person's symptoms will develop over time, it may become so in the future, in combination with other risk factors. And, this may support precision medicine by providing targeted treatments to children at the highest risk of persistent emotional and social problems," Middeldorp added.

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