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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.

Four healthy habits add 14 years to life

Categories: Lifestyle research

Combining four healthy lifestyle habits can add as much as 14 years on to your lifespan. UK researchers examined the relationship between lifestyle and mortality in a cohort of 20,000 people aged 45-79, with no known cardiovascular disease or cancer at baseline. Participants scored one point for each health behaviour: current non-smoking, not physically inactive, moderate alcohol intake (1-14 unit ...

Drink to healthy ageing

Categories: Lifestyle research

People who start drinking alcohol in later life immediately decrease their risk of developing cardiovascular disease. A US study examined a cohort of 7697 adults aged 45-64 years, who had no history of cardiovascular disease at baseline, over a 10-year period. Of participants who were nondrinkers at baseline, 6% began moderate alcohol consumption within a six-year follow-up period. After four year ...

Middle age makes you miserable - official

Categories: Lifestyle research

The biggest risk for a midlife crisis is not divorce, ill health or losing one's job, it’s merely the act of aging itself. Researchers from Great Britain and the USA analysed data spanning more than 35 years, 2 million people and 80 countries. They looked at measures of mental health, such as depression, anxiety, mental well-being, happiness and life satisfaction and correlated them with age ...

Bra size linked to diabetes

Categories: Lifestyle research

Breast size in early adulthood may predict women's risk of developing diabetes later in life. Canadian researchers carried out a secondary analysis of data collected from a cohort study of 92,000 women, mean age 38 at baseline, which began in 1989. The women's bra cup sizes at the age of 20 were taken from the answers given in a questionnaire. A total of 1,844 new cases of type 2 diabetes arose du ...

Eczema linked with poor intestinal flora at birth

Categories: Lifestyle research, Allergies

Babies with only a limited variety of bacteria in their faeces one week after birth are more likely to develop atopy as infants. Swedish researchers collected faecal samples collected from 35 infants at one week of age and used molecular techniques to analyse the diversity of their intestinal microflora. Reduced microbial diversity of early faecal microbiota was significantly associated with the d ...

Small babies prone to depression later in life

Categories: Lifestyle research

Analysis of data from a landmark public health study suggests that people who had a low birth weight are more likely to experience depression and anxiety later in life. Canadian researchers used information from the Medical Research Council's National Survey of Health and Development, one of the longest-running cohort studies ever. The survey tracked more than 4,600 people born in Great Britain in ...

Elective caesareans increase risk of breathing problems

Categories: Lifestyle research

Babies delivered by elective caesarean section before term carry up to a fourfold increased risk of breathing problems, compared with babies delivered vaginally or by emergency caesarean section. Researchers in Denmark investigated the association between elective caesarean sections and newborn respiratory problems in over 34,000 births. The study found that, at 37 weeks' gestation, the risk of br ...

High earners drink more

Categories: Lifestyle research

Professional and high-income households are the heaviest drinkers, according to figures from the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS). On average, British men drank 18.7 units of alcohol weekly during 2006 compared with nine units for women. This rose to 22.9 units per week for men and 12.5 for women in the top socio-economic group. When asked about their heaviest drinking day in the previous ...

Sociable people get fat, but worriers are thin

Categories: Lifestyle research

Extroverts tend to be overweight, while anxious types are more likely to be thin. Japanese researchers surveyed more than 30,000 people aged between 40 and 64 about their height and weight, and subjected them a personality test. The results showed that outgoing people were far more likely to have a body mass index (BMI) of more than 25 (defined as overweight). People with the most anxious personal ...

Money makes you happy, but only if you give it away.

Categories: Lifestyle research

Experiments in which students were given small amounts of cash windfalls with instructions on how to spend it, showed that those who gave the money away (donating to charity or giving a gift) were happier at the end of the day than those who blew it on themselves (to pay a bill or indulge in a treat). Two more surveys by the same team mirrored these results. In one, 16 Boston company employees wer ...

Migraines may be associated with specific personality types

Categories: Lifestyle research

Italian researchers compared 105 patients suffering from migraine without aura with a control group of 79 healthy subjects using psychometric questionnaires. Migraine patients were found to show more depressive symptoms, more difficulty with anger management with a tendency to hypercontrol, and a distinctive personality profile with high harm avoidance, high persistence and low self-directedness. ...

Sunbathing may protect against ms

Categories: Lifestyle research

A study from California has examined the influence of childhood sun exposure on the risk of multiple sclerosis (MS) in monozygotic twins. Seventy-nine twin pairs were identified where there was a quantifiable difference in sun exposure between the pair and where only one twin had MS. A numerical index of sun exposure related activities was calculated for each individual. It was found that sun expo ...

Loneliness impairs immune response

Categories: Lifestyle research

Lonely people are prone to illness and early death because their immune system genes are dysregulated. An American study analysed gene transcription activity in people who chronically experienced high versus low levels of subjective social isolation (loneliness). Genes linked to inflammation showed increased activity in people who described themselves as lonely, compared with those who said they h ...

Anger and stress are bad for the heart

Categories: Lifestyle research, Hypertension

Anger and stress in middle-aged men and women are associated with developing high blood pressure and coronary heart disease (CHD). Investigators analysed data from an American cohort study of 15,792 subjects aged 45-64 at enrolment. Participants were followed up over 11 years for the development of hypertension (blood pressure >139 systolic or >89 diastolic) and CHD events. Subjects underwen ...

Bad relationships are bad for the heart

Categories: Lifestyle research

A prospective cohort study of 9,011 British civil servants assessed negative aspects of close relationships, such as not confiding and not getting emotional support, using a questionnaire. Associations between negative aspects of relationships, and coronary events were determined during 12 years of follow-up. Results showed that people who experienced negative aspects of a close relationship had a ...

Moderate drinking good for the old brain

Categories: Lifestyle research

The results of a prospective observational study of 6005 UK adults over 50 suggest that moderate drinking is associated with better mental health than abstinence. For both men and women, better cognition and subjective well-being, and fewer depressive symptoms, were associated with moderate levels of alcohol consumption than with never having drunk at all. (Moderate alcohol consumption in older ad ...

Night shifts are carcinogenic

Categories: Lifestyle research

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the cancer arm of the World Health Organisation, has reclassified overnight shift work as a probable carcinogen. Epidemiological studies on nurses and flight crews have previously linked night work with cancer of the breast and prostate. An IARC panel of 24 experts looked at eight epidemiological studies on cancer rates from different geograp ...

Ten steps to avoiding cancer

Categories: Lifestyle research

The American Institute for Cancer Research and World Cancer Research Fund have issued a comprehensive report detailing the links between cancer and various dietary and lifestyle factors. The report lists ten recommendations for those who want to reduce their cancer risk: keep body fat down (recommended BMI 21-23); aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day; avoid junk food; eat no mo ...

Breastfeeding prevents asthma

Categories: Lifestyle research

Longer breastfeeding in infancy is associated with improved lung function in later childhood, as long as the mother does not have asthma. American researchers followed 679 children from birth to adolescence and evaluated their lung function between the ages of 11 and 16. Breastfed children with non-asthmatic mothers showed increased lung volume and no decrease in forced expiratory volume (FEV) ove ...

Relaxed mum = relaxed baby

Categories: Lifestyle research

Researchers in the USA measured foetal responses to a guided meditation designed to induce maternal relaxation during the 32nd week of pregnancy. The 18-minute guided imagery intervention generated significant changes in maternal heart rate, skin conductance, respiration period and respiratory sinus arrhythmia. Significant alterations in foetal behaviour were also observed, including decreased foe ...