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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.

Liver yang rising? Anger causes blood to rush to the head

Categories: Lifestyle research, Hypertension

The popular belief that anger provokes a rush of blood to the head has been proved by new research. Experiments in an American lab showed that blood flow to the brain increased significantly in people experiencing mental stress. Fifty-eight volunteers, half healthy and half suffering from high blood pressure, were put through a series of tasks designed to cause mental strain, including recalling m ...

We knew we were right all along and now they finally believe us! western link between ear and bone conditions

Categories: Lifestyle research

Chinese medicine links the health of the bones and the ear via the Kidney organ system. Now Western medicine is making this link. Sufferers of osteoporosis (low bone density) and its preceding condition, osteopaenia, are more likely to also develop vertigo, according to new Korean research. Benign positional vertigo (BPV) can result from ear surgery or head trauma and can be caused by crystals of ...

Gene links physical pain and social rejection

Categories: Lifestyle research

Psychology researchers have determined that a gene linked with physical pain is also associated with sensitivity to social rejection. The US study indicates that variation in the mu-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1), associated with response to physical pain, is related to how much pain a person feels in response to social rejection. People with a rare form of the gene, who were shown in previous work ...

Breastfeeding prevents heart disease and diabetes

Categories: Lifestyle research

Breastfeeding a baby can significantly reduce a woman's chances of developing metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors that makes heart disease and diabetes more likely in later life. Previous research has shown that lactating women have improved blood glucose and triglyceride levels shortly after giving birth. The new study suggests that the beneficial effects of breastfeeding are long-lasti ...

Divorce is bad for your health & getting remarried doesn't help

Categories: Lifestyle research

People who get divorced or who are widowed are more likely to suffer chronic health problems, even if they go on to remarry. According to an American study of 8,652 people aged between 51 and 61, divorced people have 20% more chronic health conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes or cancer than married people. They are also 23% more likely to suffer from mobility problems. Previous studies hav ...

Coffee doesn't sober you up

Categories: Lifestyle research

Drinking coffee when you're drunk won't sober you up. In fact a cup of coffee may make it harder for people to realise they're drunk and therefore more likely to feel competent enough to try potentially dangerous things such as driving while intoxicated. An American laboratory study investigated how alcohol, caffeine or a combination of both affected the ability of mice to negotiate a maze and lea ...

Chemical found in shampoo and toys could lead to low birth weight

Categories: Lifestyle research

Exposure to phthalate, a toxic chemical used as a plasticiser in a wide variety of personal care products and children's toys might contribute to low birth weight in babies. Low birth weight is the leading cause of death in children under five and is a risk factor for cardiovascular and metabolic disease in adulthood. Phthalate exposure can begin while the foetus is in the womb and has been associ ...

Meditation builds grey matter

Categories: Lifestyle research

A team of American scientists has reported that regions of the brain involved in emotional regulation are larger in long-term meditators than in non-meditators. The group used high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of 22 participants, all of whom had extensively practiced meditation. They compared the scans with those of age-matched controls. Those who meditated had be ...

Anxious people prone to asthma

Categories: Psychological / emotional, Lifestyle research

People who are prone to anxiety are more likely to develop asthma, according to German investigators. The team used a questionnaire to evaluate tendencies to hysteria, anxiety and depression in 4010 adults without asthma. When they reassessed participants nine years later, they found that those who had high levels of neurosis were three times as likely to have developed asthma as those with low sc ...

Exercise as addictive as heroin

Categories: Lifestyle research

Excessive exercise can be as addictive as heroin, according to US scientists, and stopping can lead to withdrawal symptoms. The scientists believe that extreme exercise causes increases in endogenous opioid peptides (endorphins), which act in the brain a manner similar to chronic administration of opiate drugs. The psychologists observed a group of rats, some of which exercised excessively on a wh ...

Affirmations can make some people feel worse

Categories: Lifestyle research

Canadian psychologists have found that people with low self-esteem can actually feel worse after repeating positive statements about themselves. The researchers asked people with high and low self-esteem to repeat a positive self-statement ("I am a lovable person"). They then measured the participants' moods and their feelings about themselves. The low self-esteem group felt worse afterw ...

Mobile phones damage sperm

Categories: Lifestyle research

Radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMR) in the range emitted by mobile phones can cause damage to human spermatozoa. When an Australian team exposed sperm to RF-EMR they found that their motility and vitality were significantly reduced, while mitochondrial generation of reactive oxygen species and DNA fragmentation were significantly elevated. The researchers conclude that their finding ...

Smoking marijuana and tobacco increases COPD risk

Categories: Lifestyle research

Smoking both tobacco and marijuana increases the risk of developing respiratory symptoms and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Canadian clinicians surveyed a random sample of 878 people aged 40 years or older living in Vancouver about their respiratory history and their history of tobacco and marijuana smoking. Concurrent use of marijuana and tobacco was associated with increased risk ...

Fertility drugs increase cancer risk

Categories: Lifestyle research

Ovulation-inducing drugs may increase the risk of women later developing uterine cancer. Israeli scientists have compared cancer incidence in a group of 15,030 Israeli women 30 years after they gave birth. Of the 567 women who had been given ovulation-inducing fertility drugs, five developed uterine cancer, which is about three times the incidence of members of the group who had not been given the ...

HRT shrinks the brain

Categories: Lifestyle research

A US-study has suggested that some forms of post-menopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can cause brain areas involved in thinking and memory to shrink slightly. The researchers carried out brain scans on 1,400 women aged 71 to 89 who had taken part in an earlier HRT trial. They found that two key areas of the brain were smaller in women who had taken conjugated equine oestrogen orally than ...

Telly watching doubles asthma risk

Categories: Lifestyle research

Children who spend more than two hours a day watching TV have double the risk of developing asthma, a UK study has found. 3,000 children were tracked from birth to age 11. Their parents were questioned annually about incidence of wheeze and diagnosed asthma among their children. They were also asked to assess children's television viewing habits from age three-and-a-half onwards. None of the child ...

Mild obesity takes years off your life

Categories: Lifestyle research

Being moderately overweight can reduce lifespan by two to four years, according to a major new study of obesity and mortality carried out in the UK. The huge collaborative study pooled data together data from 57 studies involving almost 900,000 people, mostly from Europe and North America. The results showed that people whose BMI was higher than 25 had shorter lifespans on average. Those with a BM ...

Nature benefits the brain

Categories: Lifestyle research

US researchers exploring the cognitive benefits of interacting with nature have found that walking in a park in any season, or even just viewing pictures of nature, can help improve memory and attention. They compared the restorative effects on cognitive functioning of interactions with natural versus urban environments. Participants walked on an urban route or through botanical gardens before und ...

Female hormones linked with unfaithfulness

Categories: Lifestyle research

Young women with high levels of oestrogen are more likely to be serial monogamists or to cheat on their partners and also see themselves as more attractive than other women, according to an American psychologist. Two salivary samples were taken from 52 normally cycling female university students at two points in their menstrual cycle. At both testing sessions, participants completed self-perceived ...

Fertile women more susceptible to being chatted up

Categories: Lifestyle research

French psychologists have found out that women are most likely to give their phone number to a male stranger when they are most likely to get pregnant. Researchers recruited handsome young men to chat up women on a street corner, in order to determine whether fertility affects receptivity to male advances. Less than a minute after the encounter, a female researcher approached the women, revealing ...