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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.

Light drinking in pregnancy does not affect babies

Categories: Lifestyle research

Children born to mothers who drink lightly during pregnancy (one to two units of alcohol per week or per occasion) are not at increased risk of behavioural difficulties or cognitive deficits compared with children of abstinent mothers, according to a large study by UK researchers. The research was based on data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), and included information on the behavioural ...

Antidepressants may impair male fertility

Categories: Lifestyle research

A small preliminary study suggests that antidepressants could impair male fertility by causing DNA damage to sperm. A US team gave 35 healthy men doses of the selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitor paroxetine) for five weeks, and examined their sperm before treatment and after four weeks. The men's sperm seemed superficially healthy, with normal sperm amount, shape and motility. However when the t ...

Mobile phones and brain tumours

Categories: Lifestyle research

A meta-analysis from Sweden has evaluated the association between long-term use of mobile phones and the risk of brain tumours. Based on ten studies on glioma and nine studies on acoustic neuroma, they concluded that long term (10+ years) use of mobile phones increased the risk of tumours on the side of phone use (by 200 and 240% respectively). Mobile phone use was not associated with increased ri ...

Caesarean section increases diabetes risk

Categories: Lifestyle research

Babies delivered by Caesarean section have a 20% higher risk than those delivered normally of developing type 1 diabetes. A meta-analysis by Northern Irish researchers examined 20 published observational studies from 16 countries including around 10,000 children with type 1 diabetes and over a million control children. They found a 20% increase of developing the disease in children born by Caesare ...

Caffeine associated with foetal growth restriction

Categories: Lifestyle research

Consumption of caffeine during pregnancy may increase the risk of foetal growth restriction, according to the results of a large, prospective observational study carried out in the UK. 2635 low risk pregnant women were recruited between 8-12 weeks of pregnancy. A validated caffeine assessment tool was used to quantify total caffeine intake from four weeks before conception and throughout pregnancy ...

Living near green spaces is healthy

Categories: Lifestyle research

People who live near green spaces are healthier. British researchers classified the entire pre-retirement population of England (n=40 813 236) into groups on the basis of income deprivation and exposure to green space. They concluded that populations that are exposed to the greenest environments have the lowest levels of health inequality related to low income. The investigators further analysed t ...

Sleep loss leads to inflammation

Categories: Immunity, Lifestyle research

Loss of sleep, even for a single night, can trigger the body's inflammatory response, increasing the risk of heart disease and autoimmune disorders. American researchers measured levels of nuclear factor (NF)-ÎºB, a transcription factor mediating inflammatory signalling, in healthy adults. Measurements were repeated in the morning after normal sleep, after partial sleep deprivation (where the vo ...

Music is good for the heart

Categories: Lifestyle research

Listening to enjoyable music may be good for cardiovascular health, a US study suggests. To determine the effect of music on endothelial function, researchers conducted a four-phase randomised crossover study on ten healthy nonsmokers, mean age 36 years. The volunteers selected 30 minutes of music they enjoyed and were also asked to identify music that made them feel anxious. On four separate occa ...

Alternative approach better than statins

Categories: Lifestyle research

An American randomised controlled trial has compared the lipid-lowering effects of lifestyle changes plus dietary supplements with a standard dose of a statin drug. The study enrolled 74 patients with hypercholesterolaemia and randomised them to an alternative treatment group (AG) or simvastatin (40 mg/d). The alternative treatment included therapeutic lifestyle changes (weekly education meetings, ...

Chlorinated water associated with birth defects

Categories: Lifestyle research

Drinking chlorinated water while pregnant can harm the foetus. A cross-sectional study of nearly 400,000 infants in Taiwan examined the risk of developing eleven common birth defects at four levels of exposure to chlorination by-products. The results revealed that exposure to high levels of by-products substantially increased the risk of three common defects: ventricular septal defects, cleft pala ...

A happy marriage is a healthy marriage

Categories: Lifestyle research

Men and women in happy marriages have lower blood pressure than single people. An American study looked at ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) over a 24 hour period in 204 married and 99 single males and females. High marital quality was associated with lower ABP, lower stress, less depression, and higher satisfaction with life. Single individuals had lower ABP than those in low-quality marriages, sug ...

Grief can be addictive

Categories: Lifestyle research

Prolonged, unabated grief, known as complicated grief, activates neurones in the brain's reward centres, possibly giving memories of lost loved ones addictive qualities. US researchers looked at 23 women who had lost a mother or sister to breast cancer. They found that 11 had complicated grief, while 12 had the more normal, non-complicated grief. Study participants looked at a photograph of their ...

Twenty minutes housework enough to boost mental health

Categories: Lifestyle research

Taking part in just 20 minutes of any physical activity per week is enough to improve mental health. Researchers interviewed 19,842 Scottish men and women about their state of mind and weekly physical activity. Doing any form of daily physical activity (including housework, gardening, walking and sports) was associated with a lower risk of psychological distress, although a dose-response pattern w ...

Exercise reduces cancer deaths in men

Categories: Lifestyle research

Men who exercise often are less likely to die from cancer than those who don't exercise. A cohort of 40,708 Swedish men aged 45-79 was followed for six years. Men who walked or cycled for at least 30 minutes a day had a 33% reduction in cancer mortality compared with men who exercised less or not at all. (Association of physical activity with cancer incidence, mortality, and survival: a population ...

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 ...