New research, published in the journal Science, suggests that poverty, and all the concerns associated with it, is linked to poor decision making and diminished cognitive ability. The researchers found that being concerned about how you’re going to make rent or where your next meal is coming from, takes up so much cognitive resources that it diverts it away from matters which demand more mental resources, such as academics, proper time management or self-improvement.

Not quite the same situation, but similar I guess

“A lack of financial resources can impair cognitive function, which hinders their ability to make good decisions and can cause further poverty” said Jiayang Zhao, assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, and lead author of the study. “These financial pressures create a salient concern in the mind and draws mental resources to the problem itself. This means we are unable to focus on the things in life that really need our attention.”

In a series of experiments, the researchers set scenarios for their participants, centred around figuring out ways to solve common financial problems, like sudden car repairs or unplanned expenditure, and were asked to complete the logic and cognition tests while they were doing so.

There was no difference between the rich and poor when the financial situation was easy to figure out. However, lower income participants performed significantly worse on the tests when the financial situation was dire, compared to participants with a higher income. The participants who had the burden of poverty on their shoulders exhibited a decline in cognitive ability similar to losing 13 IQ points, or missing a full night’s sleep.

So before I sound like a nagging parent and tell you to get a job, just know that you have no excuse to be academically underperforming – you don’t have the same financial concerns as someone in true poverty. Are you failing classes? Try studying.

You can read the actual study below:

Mani, A., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E., & Zhao, J. (2013). Poverty impedes cognitive function, Science, 341(6149), 976-980.

Yup – this was pretty much me this week

Boy was that a mistake. My muscles are screaming in agony! I’m literally staggering around campus like a zombie, slowly shuffling my way towards my destination. But it turns out there’s something that can alleviate this pain.

No it’s not morphine – it’s an amino acid called L-citrulline. And you’ll never guess where it’s found in abundance.

Watermelon. Yup – watermelon. That big, green, oval shaped ball of sweetness is the answer to all my muscle soreness woes.

L-citrulline is a natural antioxidant that accelerates the removal of lactic acid from muscles, which allows for more intense periods of training and the muscles to recover faster from their ordeal.

Scientists from the Technical University of Catagena, Spain, wanted to see whether watermelon juice could be an alternative to the sports drinks that we drink today, such as Powerade and Gatorade, and comparing its effectiveness between the two.

The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry,  found that people who drank natural watermelon juice before exercising reported feeling less sore the following day compared to those who drank a placebo.

This kid is NOT going to be sore tomorrow

Now before you go out and storm the supplements store for L-citrulline supplement, you should take note that cells absorbed L-citrulline a lot more readily when it was straight from the source and not the supplement mixed with water.

That means that L-citrulline works best in its organic form; straight from the watermelon.

Literally straight from it. Just take the watermelon, shove it in a juicer and revel in its sweet glory.

So there we have it. Instead of tanking up on protein shake before a big workout session, why not try a nice big glass of watermelon juice? It could do wonders for your muscles!

You can read more about the properties of L-citrulline here with the original research article:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf400964r

I’ve heard some people say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. In a way, it is, because when you wake up, you haven’t had anything to eat or drink in around 7 or 8 hours – you’re essentially fasting. Hence the name breakfast (because you’re breaking the fast). But if you’re one of those people who literally have no time to grab a bite before legging it to wherever you’re off to, you might want to reconsider taking a few minutes to eat something.

New research, conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health at Harvard University and published in the journal Circulation, found that men who skipped breakfast quite often had a whopping 27% higher risk of having a heart attack or dying from heart disease, compared to men who routinely ate breakfast. The study was conducted over 16 years and looked at approximately 27 000 men.

Leah Cahill, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of the study, makes the astounding conclusion:

“Don’t skip breakfast,”

In all seriousness, don’t.
Cahill thinks that skipping breakfast places a strain on the body:

“Over many years … it can lead to insulin sensitivity, which can lead to [type-2] diabetes, [and] it can lead to high blood pressure,” she says, which over time can lead to heart disease. “We really saw that breakfast itself was important,” concludes Cahill. Whether it’s skipping breakfast in the morning or eating very late at night, this pattern of eating may lead to adverse metabolic effects that set the stage for heart disease.

What’s interesting is a comment by Rachael Johnson, a professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont, and a spokesperson for the American Heart Association, who says that the body of evidence suggests that breakfast has its benefits, but her advice? Don’t force it:

“If you’re not a breakfast eater, don’t just add the calories on top of what you’re doing and expect you’re going to be miraculously healthier,” says Johnson.

And it’s good advice; especially if you’re trying to lose weight.

I am not kidding! According to research conducted by nutritional scientists at Cornell University, and published in the journal Physiology and Behavior on July 2, 2013, skipping breakfast a few times a week might be a viable strategy to losing some excess weight.

In the study, the researchers either fed or withheld breakfast from a pool of participants: half were regular breakfast eaters and the other half regularly skipped breakfast. The point of this study was to see how much these participants ate during the day.

So what do you think? If you didn’t anything since morning, would you eat more to compensate for it?

Apparently not, according to the results of the study. Although the breakfast skippers were hungrier throughout the day, they didn’t eat more than those who ate breakfast – in fact the skippers ate LESS than those who ate breakfast. David Levitsky, a professor of nutritional science and psychology a Cornell University, and lead author of the study explains:

“There’s a fundamental belief that if you don’t eat breakfast, you will compensate for the lost calories at lunch or later in the day. We’ve found that there is no caloric compensation in a normal group of eaters – If you skip breakfast, you may be hungrier, but you won’t eat enough calories to make up for the lost breakfast.”

So there we have it, ladies and gents! You can make a choice: Eat breakfast regularly and avoid raising your risk of heart disease and heart attack, or you can skip breakfast every once in a while and lose a bit of weight.

If you are interested in reading more about the research by Rimm and Cahill, just follow the link below:
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/128/4/337.abstract

And if the research by Levitsky and Pacinowski is more your speed, then follow this one:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938413001479

We know that exercise has a range of benefits, such as losing weight, keeping our bodies healthy and keeping the brain working. But work, life and general laziness can stop us from doing it. So I’m going to stop you right there and tell you why you should get back to the gym, or brave the cold and go for a run – it could just save your sanity, or even your life.

Are you lazier than a corgi?

New research from Princeton University has found that exercise actually rewires our brains to be more resilient to stress and anxiety. Exercise helps the brain by adapting to the naturally stressful and physically taxing environment, damping the effects of stress and anxiety.

In the study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the researchers found that the brains of mice who were allowed to exercise freely, behaved differently to those of mice who were not. The neurons in the brains of the exercising mice shut off stimulation in the brain region which regulates anxiety – the ventral hippocampus – when the mice were exposed to a stressful stimulus (in this case, cold water).

Elizabeth Gould, a professor of Psychology at Princeton University and lead researcher of the study, said

“Understanding how the brain regulates anxious behavior gives us potential clues about helping people with anxiety disorders. It also tells us something about how the brain modifies itself to respond optimally to its own environment.”

Why does this matter to me? I’m not a mouse! True, but it doesn’t mean that our brains aren’t similar in behaviour.

The applications of this study can be used for humans too! We all experience stress every day, and dealing with stress is becoming an increasingly important in our lives. We try to relax by doing stuff we like, such as vegging out in front of the TV, having a drink with mates, or just chilling out listening to the iPod, but exercise is a much better way of relieving stress. And it’s not just stress it inhibits – cancer too! Prostate cancer, to be exact.

If you’re a guy, you should pay attention!

Although the effects of physical activity differ from person to person, there is a general consensus that exercise helps our bodies control weight through the burning of excess energy, improves the effectiveness of  our immune system, and also regulates the levels of hormones such as leptin and insulin. Now what’s important here, that you may not have considered before, is that the regulation of these hormones is incredibly important – because higher levels of these hormones, leptin and insulin, lead to an increased risk of developing prostate cancer.

New research from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, has found that acute exercise has inhibitory effects on the growth of cancerous cells on the prostate. We previously knew that long term exercise habits aided the production of In the study, the researchers took a serum sample of 10 men, before and after they completed an intense bicycle training regimen. They then compared the two serums, and let the cancerous cells grow in an incubator. If there was no effect, then the two cell cultures should be the same right?

Well, they injected the incubated cells in some mice (who also had prostate cancer by the way), and found that the mice injected with serum obtained after exercise, grew 31% less cancerous cells than the ones before exercise. The researchers sum this up nicely (albeit quite scientifically…)

Serum from endurance trained individuals on a low-fat, high fiber diet has been shown to inhibit growth of an established prostate cancer cell line when compared to control serum… It can be speculated that the increase in serum growth factors induced by acute exercise may be detrimental to prostate cancer progression into malignancy.

What does it mean…? It’s quite simple really, doing at least 60 minutes of intense exercise can inhibit prostate cancer cell growth!

So there we have it! Exercise is good for you!
Not only does it help you alleviate stress, but it also helps inhibit prostate cancer cell growth!
So get off your couch/computer and go and do something!
Go for a long hard run, get in the zone and pump the weights or take part in some martial arts classes (I hear MMA is the vogue now) and you’ll be a better person for it – I guarantee you.

If you’re interested in reading a more about the story from Princeton University, you can have a squiz here:

http://bit.ly/18MfrlE

Alternatively, you can read the actual research report from the Journal of Neuroscience, you can find it here:

http://bit.ly/1dgYnlo

If learning more about how exercise can inhibit prostate cancer cell growth is more your speed, you can find the original article here:

http://bit.ly/12XSCqY

And yes – that’s true, but where else?

I’ll bet you didn’t know this, but it turns out that we have tastebuds all over our body.
Literally. All. Over.
Including the places where the sun don’t shine… such as the brain, intestines, anus and the testes.

Now you might think, “what’s the point in having tastebuds in those parts of the body?

Well, Bedrich Mosinger,  lead author of the paper, doesn’t know either:

“[The] function of taste receptors and signaling proteins outside of taste system is still unclear… [in some areas] they seem to be part of the chemical sensing of sugars or amino acids,” he said. “For the most part, though, full function of these extra-orally located taste receptors is unknown.”

Sorry that didn’t answer your question, but what they DID find might be more surprising!

“OK, I’ll bite: what’s the point in having taste buds in the testes?” you ask.
And here’s the short answer – humanity would not survive if we didn’t.

Yeah man, it’s true! Scientists from the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia, the U.S., were initially trying to make genetically modified mice that didn’t have these taste receptors, for use in other taste-related research. However, they noticed something a little strange – male mice who didn’t have these receptors could not reproduce. It’s crazy right? But if you remove these taste receptors from the testes of the mouse, they actually became infertile.

“The males are sterile, their sperm count is low, and spermatozoa are not developed properly,” Mosinger said, “These results indicate a crucial role for these extraoral “taste” molecules in sperm development and maturation.”

Equally startling is this revelation here:

“We previously reported that blocking of human TAS1R3, but not mouse TAS1R3, can be achieved by common medications or chemicals in the environment.

We hypothesize that even low levels of these compounds can lower sperm count and negatively affect human male fertility, which common mouse toxicology assays would not reveal. Conversely, we speculate that TAS1R3 and GNAT3 activators may help infertile men, particularly those that are affected by some of the mentioned inhibitors and/or are diagnosed with idiopathic infertility involving signaling pathway of these receptors.

Quit yo’ jibber-jabber! What does this mean?

Well a few things things:

Firstly, without the TAS1R3 gene in male testes, sperm would be under-developed and low in count, rendering men sterile and humanity unable to procreate.
I think it’s quite obvious to see the problems facing humanity if we couldn’t reproduce (if you’re in the condom business, you should be up in arms!)

Secondly,  the statement ” the blocking of human TAS1R3 gene can be achieved by common medications or chemicals in the environment,” should be ringing alarm bells.
Essentially, they’re saying that this particular gene is actually quite easily blocked as a result of medicines and chemicals which are all around us, and might even use every day.
The problem is, we can’t tell which sorts of chemicals or compounds they are because they haven’t been able to identify them yet.

Thankfully, now that scientists have found a link between this particular gene and male infertility, new medications can be produced which activate or unblock this particular gene.
So although we don’t quite know what compounds activate or deactivate this gene, this will probably be the next step in this line of research!

So stay strong, sterile men of the world, science can (and probably will) help you out!

To find out more, you can read an article about it here:
http://au.businessinsider.com/taste-receptors-in-testes-and-fertility-2013-7

Or if you’re really keen to understand the science, you can find the original research paper here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/06/26/1302827110

Tastebuds… elsewhere… might not be so bad after all

In a new study by researchers from Oxford University, United Kingdom, and published in Nature on 20 June, the authors believe that Mars once had an atmosphere rich in oxygen. By examining the rocks on the surface of Mars, obtained from NASA’s Mars rovers, they found that the chemical composition of Mars rocks were similar to those found on Earth.

In a quote from a news article, Professor Bernard Wood, the lead author of the paper, said:
“What we have shown is that both meteorites and surface volcanic rocks are consistent with similar origins in the deep interior of Mars but that the surface rocks come from a more oxygen-rich environment, probably caused by recycling of oxygen-rich materials into the interior… This result is surprising because while the meteorites are geologically young, around 180 million to 1.4 billion years old, the Spirit rover was analyzing a very old part of Mars, more than 3.7 billion years old.”

Now a lot of people think that while Mars and space exploration is cool and all, what’s the importance of it? I mean, why should we care that there was oxygen on Mars billions of years ago? It’s not like we’re living on Mars – and it’s not like there’s oxygen now. I think this finding is pretty interesting. While oxygen may or may not exist on Mars right now, understanding the history and climate of Mars way back then is still an important part of understanding the planet. Scientists had believed for a while that water existed on Mars – hinted by the landscape of Mars – and it’s going to be interesting to figure out what happened such that all the oxygen disappeared.

What’s your say on the topic? Is this sort of research important, or should we be focusing on Earth first rather than an extraterrestrial planet most of us won’t visit in our lifetime?

What was Mars like billions of years ago?

Here’s the news article from Sci News where I pulled the quote:
http://www.sci-news.com/space/article01169-mars-oxygen-atmosphere.html

You can also read the actual paper and learn more about it here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v498/n7454/full/nature12225.html

Well, it turns out that this could actually be doing a lot more harm than I thought – and we should definitely pay more attention to this problem. Let me ask you a question: Do you check your emails on your iPhone right before bed? What about looking at Facebook on your smartphone before you sleep? Perhaps reading an ebook on your tablet, in an attempt to doze off? Playing music on your iPod? Jump straight off the computer and into bed? All these sorts of activities aren’t exactly doing our body, and our sleep, any favours.

Lack of sleep could be causing you to worry more than usual

I recently came across an interesting article from the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) which says just this, and I’m going to quote it directly:

Leading Australian researcher Professor Shantha Rajaratnam says there is growing evidence that the night time use of portable digital devices is likely to compound the problems associated with artificial lighting.

A recent study in the United States showed that devices such as laptops, smart phones and tablets emit approximately 30 to 50 lux, about half the illumination of an ordinary room light.

“We know from preliminary reports that this level of light emission, 30 to 50 lux, is sufficient over a week or so to delay the timing of the circadian clock as well as suppress the production of the hormone melatonin,” says Professor Rajaratnam.

Melatonin, which is produced when it is dark, helps regulate and promote sleep. People who do not have enough of the hormone take longer to fall asleep.

“The extent of the response of the circadian clock will depend on how bright the light is – that is how far away the device is from the eyes – as well as what colours of light are being emitted,” Professor Rajaratnam said.

Most disruptive to the body clock is short wavelength blue light – exactly what backlit portable screens shine directly into the eyes.

It’s quite interesting how the LIGHT from our mobile devices affects us so. I had never really considered this until I actually thought about it. In my room, I have a small portable heater that has an LCD display – and it shines a bright blue light when it’s on – and I can’t turn it off. And then it suddenly hits me – I actually do recall not being able to sleep very well when that heater is on. I think there are two parts to this that make it worse than it sounds: the high lux that the LCD display emits while it’s on, and the fact that it shines a bright blue light, capable of partially illuminating the room.

If that wasn’t worrying enough, here’s something else that stumped me. New research from the University of California Berkeley has shown that lack of sleep can contribute to excessive worrying. The behaviour of the amygdala, the part of the brain that regulates memories and emotions; and the insular cortex, responsible for a majority of human bodily functions and emotions, were very similar to people with anxiety disorders.

This finding is pretty interesting. Consider how our lives revolve around technology. We get up in the morning, do our morning routine, get on a bus, check emails and social media on our smartphones, sit down and work on a computer all day, get back on the bus to go home, keep checking emails and social media, sit in front of the TV or computer… and then go to sleep when we realise it’s much later than it really is.

Personally, I sleep in the hours between midnight to 2 am, just because my computer and the internet keeps me there. I’ve actually done this for so long, that after reading this article, made me seriously question my own health – especially when it comes to sleeping habits.

But what the point of this research is should not be forgotten: it’s explaining how certain parts of the brain act under such conditions – that its behaviour is similar to that of those with anxiety disorders. Suddenly, a perfectly “normal” person who experiences a lack of sleep begins to show signs of anxiety and stress. I’ve heard stories about people who haven’t had a good nights sleep in years and how it affected their personalities, moods and behaviour. In one case, a woman was saying that her husband was very depressed and just lethargic, but after she got a new mattress which helped him sleep, he was back to his old self.

In fact, this is not unheard of. New research from Washington University in the U.S., has found that depressed children’s amygdala functions differently to those of non-depressed children. Comparisons of fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans of children’s brains when they looked at people’s faces. The researchers found that there was a relationship between amygdala function and negative affect:

To our knowledge, this is the earliest evidence of alterations in functional brain activity in depression using fMRI. Results suggest that, similar to findings in older depressed groups, depression at this age is associated with disrupted amygdala functioning during face processing.

The findings also raise the intriguing possibility that disrupted amygdala function is a depression-related biomarker that spans development. Additional studies will be needed to clarify whether the current findings are a precursor to or a consequence of very early childhood depression.

This is pretty interesting because when we think of depression, we never really think about kids who are this young. The researchers also raise an interesting point: is this behaviour of the amygdala an early warning marker of depression, or is it a result of being depressed? Understanding this will help doctors understand more about depression and further of the examination of the amygdala might lead to better treatments later.

So what should you take away from this? Sleep is important! Our rooms should be as dark and quiet as possible. Try to stay away from your electronic devices and refrain from using them right before you sleep. AND STOP WORRYING! It’s detrimental to your efforts. Just relax… and sleep!

Want to learn more? Head on over to the UC Berkeley page:
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/06/25/anticipate-the-worst/

If you’re also interested in the article from the ABC, you can find it here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-01/artificial-light-leading-to-increase-in-sleep-disorders/4790448

And if you want to know more about amygdala function and depression, you can find that article here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890856713002086

Stop worrying… Just relax!

Most of us know what we should be eating and how much, but that’s only half the story – there are many unconscious mechanisms at work in our body and mind that influence our eating habits, which may hold telling clues to understand the development of eating disorders.

Jaimi Corsaletti, an honours student at RMIT University in Melbourne, is particularly concerned about the alarming rise in the rate of women, as young as 15, being diagnosed with an eating disorder.

“The rate of disordered eating among women aged 15 years or over has doubled over the past decade,” she says.

Corsaletti is gathering volunteers for an experiment that aims to identify how particular thought patterns such as guilt and remorse are associated with eating habits, and how these patterns can sometimes develop into dangerous eating disorders.

Previous research has found that many women experience intense feelings of guilt when they simply think about eating a fattening food, which can affect how they view their body image and as a consequence, their eating habits.

She intends to examine the extent to which men and women feel certain emotions when they simply think about eating fattening or unhealthy foods, and how this can lead to eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

“The hope is that the information we gather can be used to develop better treatment and prevention methods for eating disorders” she says.

Choosing fatty foods is a natural evolutionary preference

THE PROBLEM IS, the craving for fatty (and generally unhealthy) foods isn’t just in our mind. As it turns out, our gut actually wants us to eat fatty foods.

The endocannabinoid – the feel-good reward system – in our gut rewards us for a dose of high-fat food by sending a signal to a cannabinoid receptor, CB-1, in our brains, inducing a pleasant feeling. It’s the same receptor involved in the ‘stoned’ feeling smokers get from marijuana.

Daniele Piomelli from the University of California, Irvine, led a research team studying gluttonous behaviour in rats and found that fatty foods (not so much proteins or carbohydrates) “generate a signal in the tongue that results in the small intestine producing this reward chemical in a powerful positive feedback loop that drives fat intake.”

The results of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in July, could aid scientists in the development of anti-obesity drugs that inhibit the intestinal CB-1 receptors and dial down the fatty food cravings.

“This would certainly be an area ripe for investigation of compounds that could inhibit only intestinal CB1 receptors,” commented Iain Broom, the director of Britain’s Centre for Obesity Research and Epidemiology. “For example, a compound that was not absorbed from the gut and indeed possibly degraded further down the GI tract such that no other CB1 receptors could be blocked.”

IF HIGH FAT DIETS are such a problem, why do we crave fatty foods in the first place?

Researchers from Deakin University in Melbourne found that eating a high fat diet can desensitise a person’s ability to taste fat in foods, which may lead to overeating and weight gain as a result.

Russell Keast, an associate professor at Deakin University and co-author of the study in the July issue of the journal Progress in Lipid Research, found that the taste buds of overweight and obese people are less sensitive to fat in foods.

Keast explains that “people who are insensitive to fat taste tend to consume more energy because their body doesn’t tell them to stop eating – which could be a reason for their over-consumption of fatty foods”.

It’s not all bad news – he believes that it’s possible for people to “train their taste buds to be more sensitive to fat”. By restricting fatty food intake, participants on the low fat diet in the study significantly increased their ability to identify low concentrations of fat.

The thing is; if we cut out the high fat component out of our diets, we’re eating healthier anyway. Generally speaking, fruits and vegetables – the things we should eat the most – often contain little to no fat and are filled with the vitamins, minerals and nutrients essential for good health.

Obviously we should just cut down on fatty foods and eat more fruit and vegetables. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple: it turns out much of our social behaviour sways us to particular food choices.

A recent study by psychologist Kirsten Bevelander and her colleagues from Radboud University in the Netherlands, found that “purchase behaviour seems to be affected by a peer in a way that is similar to eating behaviour being affected by a peer”. The researchers conducted an experiment with teenage girls and examined their purchasing behaviour when shopping with friends.

The girls’ friends were previously instructed to either purchase foods that were high or low in kilocaloric (energy) levels. It turns out that girls whose friends bought a product that was high in energy also bought something high in energy. Conversely, if the friend bought something that was low in energy, so did the participant.

The study found that “the presence of peers during shopping affects the calorie value of product purchases.” So next time you go shopping for lunch with friends, keep in mind that you might be unconsciously tailoring your purchases to be more similar to theirs.

Eating with friends is great – but the amount you eat may be subconsciously affected

IT’S NOT JUST SHOPPING – being with friends can also affect how much you eat. In 2006 in the journalPhysiology and Behavior, biopsychologist Marion Hetherington from Scotland’s Glasgow Caledonian University collaborated with her colleagues from around the UK and published the results of a study that looked at how eating with friends or while watching TV affected how much people ate.

The team found that people ate up to 18% more when eating with friends and up to 14% more if they were watching TV. We eat more because we get distracted when we engage in conversation or watch TV and it draws attention away from the food and how much we think we eat, they conclude. Interestingly, the study showed this only happens when we share meals with friends, and not when we eat in the presence of strangers.

The implications of the findings for weight management “were clear,” they say; “eating when engaged in other activities should be avoided or limited, and eating with friends and family requires careful planning to avoid social facilitation effects”.

SO WHAT’S THE SOLUTION? Should you just ignore your friends, hole up in the office and eat lunch by yourself at your desk? Well, yes and no. While you don’t necessarily need to excommunicate yourself from the world, you should pay more attention to your meal.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham in Britain published a study in the journal Appetite in 2011 suggesting that by paying more attention to the meal, we enhance our meal ‘memory’, leading to lower food intake later on.

While eating, people taking part in the study either listened to an audio file that promoted mindful eating, or were instructed to think or do various things which heightened their sensitivity to the meal, such as reading an article from The Times newspaper about chocolate bars and fizzy drinks, or just eating their meal normally. A few hours later, the research team offered the same people cookies as an afternoon snack and measured how much they ate.

The study found that “if participants were instructed to focus on their lunch as they ate it, they consumed less of the afternoon snack later than if they read about food generally at lunch or just ate lunch without any intervention.”

The researchers reasoned that greater awareness of food in this way could explain why those who focus on their food ate less of the snack compared to those in the other groups. “Enhancing meal memory by paying more attention can decrease later food intake,” they suggest.

Paying more attention to your meal and not external stimuli assists in mindful eating

Suzanne Higgs, a psychology researcher based at the University of Birmingham and co-author of the study, says “it depends on how much attention we pay to the distracting task and not just on what it is”.

What does this mean? To put it simply, we ought to be free of distractions while we eat. We should pay more attention and be mindful of what and how much we eat.

That means the TV shouldn’t be the main focus of our meal, eating lunch while working at the office desk should be avoided and don’t have junk food lying around the next time you’re watching a movie.

SO NOW WE KNOW that paying attention and consciously thinking about our food can affect how much we eat later, what about cravings – those unconscious thoughts and desires that randomly pop up in our heads?

What can we do to stop ourselves from falling victim to these cravings? Barbel Knauper, a researcher from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, led a research team who aimed to find whether replacing the imagery of a craved item with an alternative mental image would have any effect on the intensity of peoples’ cravings.

The researchers asked people to try to reduce the intensity of their cravings by engaging in certain types of behaviours. They were asked to undertake certain activities, such as creating an implementation plan to reduce their cravings, reciting the alphabet backwards or imagining themselves engaged in a favourite activity.

Knauper and colleagues found that those who fought cravings by utilising a combination of an implementation plan and alternative imagery experienced much less vivid and intense cravings compared to the other groups.

Knauper explained that “thinking of one’s favourite activity when craving something serves as a crutch by occupying one’s cognitive capacity such that one simply will be able to ‘get over’ the craving and not act on it”.

She says that “asking individuals to imagine themselves engaging in a favourite activity may be an effective measure to reduce craving intensity in everyday life”.

EATING WELL ON YOUR own might be achievable, especially if you’re concentrating on good food habits, but what about the influence of others? Although we’ve all probably slipped from a diet when eating with friends, it seems we’re unwilling to acknowledge this as a contributing factor to the way we eat.

Lenny Vartanian, a health psychologist from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and colleagues published a paper in 2008 in the journal Health Psychology reporting that people don’t acknowledge how eating with peers influences eating habits.

In the experiment, the researchers asked some students to watch TV together and provided them with free access to mini pizzas. They then asked the students to identify what factors led them to eat what they did.

Despite most students eating the same amount as their partners in the study, they still attributed this to their hunger and the fact that the food tasted good, rather than any external influence.

It makes sticking to a healthy diet a challenge, say the researchers, but simply being aware of these influences isn’t the key to weight loss, Vartanian cautions.

“Making people aware of the environmental influences just isn’t enough,” he continues, “because it’s very hard to overcome something we do unconsciously. Sometimes we get in an environment or situation where we simply don’t have the control to do things [the way] we want to.”

SO TO BE HEALTHY, the scientific research says you should stop eating those much-desired fatty foods, eat by yourselves and keep mealtimes separate from work and play.

But because we’re human, chances are we’re going to ignore it anyway. While it won’t miraculously make you lose weight in the short term, taking into account the science and adjusting your behaviour accordingly is a small step in the right direction.

With that in mind, let’s make a compromise between science, health and life: try to eat less fatty foods, enjoy eating with friends but maintain integrity to the wallet and the waistline.

Pay attention to the meal and not the TV (unless you’re on a date, in which case you should direct attention to your eating partner) and when those cravings, (like chocolate) arise, fight them off by imagining yourself doing something else you like (except eating chocolate – that’s just counter-productive).

Leishmania is a parasite that infects around 12 million people across 88 countries and kills 500,000 people annually. New research by a team of Australian scientists has identified the metabolic pathways that are essential to the parasite’s survival, right down to the particular atoms it uses as a food source.

The researchers made the discovery by labelling carbon atoms in the Leishmania parasites’ food source and tracking how the energy was metabolised using nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. They hope this information can be applied to future drug design.

“The carbon-tracing method allows us to detect which nutrients the parasite uses to survive and see which metabolic pathways are active for a particular parasite,” said Malcolm McConville, a molecular biochemist and deputy director of the Bio21 Institute at the University of Melbourne and co-author of the paper published in the current issue of The Journal of Biological Chemistry.

“From this, we can use the same approach to look at parasite metabolism in the host itself and develop drugs to fight them.”

The Leishmania Parasite

A pioneering method

“Before this method was developed, biochemists were making predictions based on the genomes, isolating an individual pathway and spending time developing drugs to act against it, only to find that it was redundant and the parasite didn’t use [the pathway] anyway,” said McConville.

“With the development of the carbon-tracing method, it allowed us to take a global approach by looking at as many metabolites as possible to see which pathways were actually being used, saving time and money.”

They found that the tagged carbon was very quickly absorbed into certain metabolic pathways, namely the glycotic pathway and the pentose phosphate pathway. When the organism runs low on energy, atoms can be removed from the metabolic cycle but have to be replaced in order for proper functioning, a process known as anaplerosis.

Anaplerosis in the tricarboxyilic acid cycle (TCA cycle) plays an important role in the parasites’ survival as it allows intermediates to leave the cycle in order to be converted into glucose or other fatty acids. By doing so, it allows the parasite to feed and sustain itself. As a result of this process, an enzyme in the TCA cycle called mitochondrial aconitase generates energy and also toxic compounds, which are damaging to cells.

Parasites unable to spread

The researchers were surprised to discover that the Leishmania parasite needs the mitochondrial aconitase enzyme to function, even though it seems counter-productive to its survival, as it lives in the very cells that contain toxic compounds.

By inhibiting the mitochondrial aconitase enzyme, the energy levels in cells were rapidly depleted and the parasites were unable to spread. When these energy reserves were replenished, the growth arrest stopped.

More effective drugs

The results of this study have far-reaching implications in drug design, according the researchers. “The drugs we have now work, but have all these bad side effects. Now that the parasite seems to have developed a resistance to them, allowing a small sleeper population of them to linger in the host,” McConville said.

“In the development of new drug targets, we should be targeting the latent population as well as glutamate synthesis for a live population as it would cause sufficient damage to activate the body’s natural pathogens to clear the parasites.”

The carbon-tracer approach pioneered by this study would be useful in identifying new and unanticipated pathways in these parasites that could be exploited in order to develop new drugs, McConville said.

Kirill Alexandrov, a professor and research group leader at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, said the research was a “very nice, useful study”.

“Because it points at the parasite’s enzymes that can be targeted with drugs, it will have an impact on the direction of drug development,” he said. However, he cautioned that, “whether it will lead to new drugs is a different story”.