An aspirin a day may keep cancer away....

The results of a major UK based study involving 8 clinical trials and looking that the affects of taking low dose daily aspirin in the prevention of a number of cancers, has recently been released. The results are staggering. Low dose daily aspirin reduced the rate of cancer deaths by 21% during the trials and 20% over a 20 year period after the trials.  (The Lancet,  DOI:10.1016/50140-6736(10)62110-1)

Plants naturally synthesize aspirin because it has a protective effect for them against a number of diseases.  Intensive farming however tends have the effect of lowering or reducing these naturally occurring aspirin levels. Could it be that simply by replacing the aspirin that we would normally have received from naturally grown plant foods we boost our own defenses against diseases such as cancer, defenses which should have been there in the first place.  Whatever the mechanism is, the UK study certainly appears to give a very convincing result.

Eye cell tranplants lead way to future sight restoration method(s)

The two, light detecting cell types vital for vision in the eye are the 'cone' cells, vital for colour vision and the 'rod' cells, highly sensitive to light detection in dim or dark conditions. Ultimately many forms of blindness result from loss of these cells.  Jane Sowden and her team at University College London have been experimenting with the transplantation of these cells into blind mice. The hope is that that eventually human stem cells can be induced to develop into rod or cone cells which can then be transplanted to restore sight in blind people. The experiments have been aimed to establish whether a transplant would be viable.

Most recent results after injection of 200,000 isolated precursor cone and rod cells in the region of the retina showed that in 21 days the new cells settled into the normal photoreceptor (light sensitive) layer which was damaged in the blind mice and grew into proper rods and cones.

The results are exciting and pave the way for potential cure of many blindness causing conditions.

What makes us happy !

A 25 year study by Bruce Headey at the University of Melbourne and his team has looked at what generates happiness in people. Starting initially looking at around 300 people per year it ended up conisdidering 60,000 per year by the end of the expanding study. 

The results showed that certain changes changes in lifestyle led to significant long-term changes in life happiness. The notable point was that the changes were long term. This flies in the face of an older theory which suggested that level of happiness was genetically determined and changes in happiness level  were just transitory with fairly short term reversion to the genetically predetermined norm.

Of the influences determining a persons happiness, the greatest was their partners level of neuroticism as determined by set tests for that factor.  Altruism, family values, and shared strong devotion to a religion also were important.  A persons weight was another factor for long-term happiness, especially women who reported significantly less happiness when they were obese. This was not mirrored in men however though underweight men scored slightly lower than those with healthy weights.



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