Body of Wealth

A paraglider fails to control his chute and falls to the ground. The lower bones of his leg came through the knee and thighs. The man should have been screaming with pain or fainted from it. But no! Danny Penman had learnt hypnotism before and he psyched himself to believe that he was in a garden of flowers. He felt no pain after that.

This is a true tale. Hypnotism can be used as anaesthesia! Many doctors in Europe are using it. The benefits are obvious. It is cheap and it has no side effects. Some doctors use a local aesthetic while cutting the skin during surgery and nothing more. The patients are hypnotized during the operation and feel no pain.

For many of us, the day begins with a steaming cup of coffee. We get over our sleep hangovers and get geared for the day after tasting that special caffeine ambrosia. But now a research published in the June 25th issue of Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry implies that one can get over the stress caused due to lack of sleep by just smelling coffee!

Ageing is often related to degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, but now a breakthrough is achieved in the research for treating these. Scientists have found a way of giving old and tired muscles, responsible for degeneration, a new lease of life.

An experiment was conducted on mice by tweaking its biochemical signals to increase the ability of its stem cells to restore the youthful vigor. Conducted by the University of California, Berkeley the study was published in the journal Nature. The study stated that adult stem cells play an important role in helping to repair the mature and differentiated cells which constitutes the body’s tissues. It identified two key regulatory pathways that could control the working of the adult stem cells thus, tricking them into making the repair work faster. The experiment revived the muscle tissue in the old mice making it as vigorous as its younger counterparts. This will also solve the ethical question in the use of stem cells derived from embryos as they make use of the individual’s own stem cells. According to one of the researcher Dr Morgan Carlson,

We are one step closer to having a point of intervention where we can rejuvenate the body’s own stem cells so we don’t have to suffer from some of the debilitating diseases associated with ageing.

The research now aims at finding the cell regeneration capacity of the young to adjust it when older, thus, avoiding muscle degeneration in older age.

Via: BBC

Image Credit: Wellcome

Cosmetic surgery, also known as plastic surgery, is the method of remolding the original physical features to acquire a look that is approved and appreciated by the society. The surgery was earlier recommended for those suffering with major burns or deformities to correct their looks, however, with time people have started using it to enhance their looks the way they want.

According to a new study published by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), the predicted number of people going under the knife would be well over 55 millions by 2015. This amounts to approximately one cosmetic surgery for every five Americans, including children. The most favored surgeries for women are breast augmentations, liposuctions and eyelid enhancements while that for men are liposuctions, eyelid enhancements and nose reshaping. In the non surgical category, however, Botox remains the favorite for both the genders.

At last there comes up some solution for preventing a kid from having a life long addiction of smoking. Some serious research has been done by the scientists at the University of Utah; regarding the characteristic of being a life long smoker. The researchers have taken DNA samples of about 2,827 smokers. They made a vivid study over the changes in the genetic code called single nucleotide polymorphisms. This is something that is very much a part of nicotine addiction and that leads to a life long smoking practice. This research justifies the point that kids who have picked up smoking before 17 years of age are more into this addiction than those who have had it after 17.

We already know that breast milk is the best source of nourishment for the new born baby. Now, there is more good news from the breast-feeding world. A study conducted by Dr. Hazel B. Nichols and colleagues (University of Wisconsin, Madison) shows that women who were breast-fed as infants seemed to run a lower risk (about 17 percent reduction) of developing breast cancer as adults in comparison to those who were not breast-fed.

The study was conducted taking a sample of 2016 women in the age range of 20 to 69 years suffering from breast cancer and 1960 women who did not have the ailment. It was found that women who were breast-fed as infants ran a lower risk of developing breast cancer and amongst the women who were breast-fed, the ones who were fourth or fifth born had fared much better than the first-borns in terms of vulnerability to the malignant tumor.

For the first time, researchers have used stem cell technology to grow huge quantities of red blood cells. This could help eliminate the need for blood donations, as blood types A, B and O have been harnessed. Now there would be no question of a shortage of blood supply in blood banks, as it can be created on demand without any limits. Red blood cells could be used instead of blood and save millions of people. The universal donor blood type O-negative could be mass-produced, which is found in small numbers of Caucasians and a minuscule number of Asians. This could also mean avoiding the transmission of viruses during blood transfusions, so the future looks bright. However, the cells need to be able to survive long enough in the human body to be useful.

Via: DailyMail

Science and technology not only makes and improves one’s style of living but now it would also make you more beautiful and young. No doubt hair are the best and most precious feature of our personality and premature baldness is the biggest curse. But thanks to the newly devised technique, known as ‘follicular cell implantation’ by which one can just relax and regain their lustrous hair. The technique works by cloning the remaining hair in the laboratory to provide a limitless supply of an individual’s hair to replace the loss caused due to burns, cancer treatment or simply the onset of age. This amazing work being carried out by a British team and being backed by a £1.9 million government grant would be available to patients within five years. This would provide the patients with a torture free and less expensive treatment to preserve their seductive looks. The latest results of the Phase II trial, presented at a conference of leading hair replacement surgeons in Rome, revealed that the technique increases hair count in at least two thirds of patients after six months and four out of five if the scalp is stimulated beforehand through gentle abrasions that encourage hair growth.

Avian influenza is a disease caused by the H5N1 virus amongst birds and poultry. It has claimed the life of many birds which had to be culled due to infection. The virus causing this disease in birds on mutation infects human and can prove to be fatal. Figures show that while it has affected only 385 people around the world, 243 have been killed by the deadly virus. According to expert’s warnings a bird flu pandemic is already on the cards but their research shows that there is not enough preparation for combating the same.
Speaking on the issue based on research, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Julie Gerberding said

We are a long way from being fully prepared. We do not have a vaccine that will provide universal protection. We don’t have surveillance in every country. We don’t have control of the virus in animal reservoirs.

Things are definitely looking down for the Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre, Canada, where 326 cancer patients were exposed to wrong dose of radiations for a long span of 3 years! Apparently, the patients afflicted by basal and squamous cell carcinomas were administered radiations as low as 17 percent from the prescribed intensity between November 2004 and November 2007. A permissible variation is somewhere around 5 to 7 percent, in this case 17 percent sounds rather drastic and it’s believed that patients with aggressive melanoma skin cancer were not even close to being cured with such an exposure.