Ohio State University, August 12, 2020
Walking with a purpose - especially walking to get to work - makes people walk faster and consider themselves to be healthier, a new study has found.
The study, published online earlier this month in the Journal of Transport and Health, found that walking for different reasons yielded different levels of self-rated health. People who walked primarily to places like work and the grocery store from their homes, for example, reported better health than people who walked mostly for leisure.
"We found that walking for utilitarian purposes significantly improves your health, and that those types of walking trips are easier to bring into your daily routine," said Gulsah Akar, an associate professor of city and regional planning in The Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture.
"So, basically, both as city planners and as people, we should try to take the advantage of this as much as possible."
The study used data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey, a U.S. dataset collected from April 2016 to May 2017.
The researchers analyzed self-reported health assessments from 125,885 adults between the ages of 18 and 64. Those adults reported the number of minutes they spent walking for different purposes - from home to work, from home to shopping, from home to recreation activities and walking trips that did not start at their homes.
And, the survey respondents ranked how healthy they were on a scale of 1 to 5. The dataset the researchers analyzed included more than 500,000 trips.
The researchers - Akar and Ohio State doctoral student Gilsu Pae - found that walking for any duration, for any purpose, increased how healthy a person felt.
But they also found that an additional 10 minutes of walking per trip from home for work-based trips - say, from a person's house to the bus stop 10 minutes away - increased that person's odds of having a higher health score by 6 percent compared with people who walk for other reasons. People who walked from home for reasons not connected to work, shopping or recreation were 3 percent more likely to have a higher health score.
And, the researchers found, people who walked for work walked faster - on average, about 2.7 miles per hour - than people who walked for other reasons. People who walked for recreational purposes - say, an after-dinner stroll - walked, on average, about 2.55 miles per hour.
The researchers also found that walking trips that begin at home are generally longer than walking trips that begin somewhere else. The team found that 64 percent of home-based walking trips last at least 10 minutes, while 50 percent of trips that begin elsewhere are at least that long.
Akar has studied the ways people travel for years, and said she was surprised to see that walking for different purposes led to a difference in how healthy people believed they were.
"I was thinking the differences would not be that significant, that walking is walking, and all forms of walking are helpful," she said. "And that is true, but walking for some purposes has significantly greater effect on our health than others."
Akar said the findings suggest that building activity into parts of a day that are otherwise sedentary - commuting by foot instead of by car, for example - can make a person feel healthier.
"That means going to a gym or a recreation center aren't the only ways to exercise," Akar said. "It's an opportunity to put active minutes into our daily schedules in an easy way."
Eating raw organic fruits and veggies helps boost your gut health
Graz University of Technology (Austria), August 12, 2020
A study published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology found that consuming organic produce promotes gut microbiome diversity.
Birgit Wassermann, the first author of the study and a researcher at the Graz University of Technology in Austria, explained that consuming raw fruits and vegetables is key to maintaining a diverse microbial community, which is essential for a healthy gut microbiome and a strong immune system.
But these foods don’t need to just be raw, they should also be organically produced. In their study, Wassermann and her colleagues found that while the production method didn’t affect the abundance of microbes found in the different tissues of apples, the microbes present in organically produced apples were more diverse than those harbored by conventionally produced ones.
Wassermann and her team chose to study apples because they are popular worldwide. In 2018 alone, about 83 million apples were grown, and production continues to grow today.
Organic vs conventional
Using genetic analysis and fluorescence microscopy, the researchers found that both conventional apples and organic apples had roughly the same amount of total bacteria (about 100 million per apple). While different parts of the fruit contained distinct microbial communities, apple pulp and seeds had the largest bacterial colonies. Apple peels were surprisingly less colonized.
The researchers also found that organic apples had a more diverse bacterial population than conventionally grown apples. Additionally, organic apples contained beneficial bacteria, such as the common probiotic, Lactobacillus.
On the other hand, conventional apples had a greater chance of containing potentially pathogenic bacteria like Escherichia and Shigella, both of which are linked to food poisoning symptoms like cramps and diarrhea.
According to Wassermann, the very diverse microbiome of organically grown apples can help fight human pathogens by outcompeting them. She explained that the microbial pool that organic apple trees are exposed to tends to be more diverse and more balanced, and this helps promote their health by bolstering their resistance to pathogens. (Related: Exploring the ”gut-heart” connection: Can heart failure be treated by boosting gut microbiota health?)
The difference between “organic” and “conventional” fruits
According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), organic is a label for foods that are grown in accordance with certain federal guidelines. These guidelines include factors like soil additives, pesticide use and how animals are raised.
On the other hand, conventional refers to modern, industrial agriculture that uses chemical fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Research suggests that organic produce has a similar nutritional profile to conventional produce, but the former helps reduce your exposure to pesticides and harmful bacteria.
When buying produce, consider other health factors like chronic conditions or pregnancy. To narrow down your search, start by learning about the fruits and vegetables that are more likely to be exposed to different kinds of pesticides.
Smiling can trick your mind into being more positive, study finds
University of South Australia, August 11, 2020
From Sinatra to Katy Perry, celebrities have long sung about the power of a smile—how it picks you up, changes your outlook, and generally makes you feel better. But is it all smoke and mirrors, or is there a scientific backing to the claim?
Groundbreaking research from the University of South Australia confirms that the act of smiling can trick your mind into being more positive, simply by moving your facial muscles.
With the world in crisis amid COVID-19, and alarming rises of anxiety and depression in Australia and around the world, the findings could not be more timely.
The study, published in Experimental Psychology, evaluated the impact of a covert smile on perception of face and body expressions. In both scenarios, a smile was induced by participants holding a pen between their teeth, forcing their facial muscles to replicate the movement of a smile.
The research found that facial muscular activity not only alters the recognition of facial expressions but also body expressions, with both generating more positive emotions.
Lead researcher and human and artificial cognition expert, UniSA's Dr. Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos says the finding has important insights for mental health.
"When your muscles say you're happy, you're more likely to see the world around you in a positive way," Dr. Marmolejo-Ramos says.
"In our research we found that when you forcefully practice smiling, it stimulates the amygdala—the emotional center of the brain—which releases neurotransmitters to encourage an emotionally positive state. For mental health, this has interesting implications. If we can trick the brain into perceiving stimuli as 'happy', then we can potentially use this mechanism to help boost mental health."
The study replicated findings from the "covert" smile experiment by evaluating how people interpret a range of facial expressions (spanning frowns to smiles) using the pen-in-teeth mechanism; it then extended this using point-light motion images (spanning sad walking videos to happy walking videos) as the visual stimuli.
Dr. Marmolejo-Ramos says there is a strong link between action and perception.
"In a nutshell, perceptual and motor systems are intertwined when we emotionally process stimuli," Dr. Marmolejo-Ramos says.
"A 'fake it 'til you make it' approach could have more credit than we expect."
Coriander is a potent weapon against antibiotic resistant bacteria
University of Beira Interior (Portugal) August 10, 2020
The problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria has been deemed a public health crisis, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting that invasive MRSA – or methicillin-resistant S. aureus – infections affect 80,000 people globally a year, and claim over 11,000 lives. But, what the CDC will never tell you is how coriander can potentially save lives.
Researchers in Portugal now say that that the oil from coriander – a common kitchen spice – is quite toxic to a wide range of harmful bacteria, leading to hopes that it may be enlisted in the fight against MRSA and other pathogens.
Researchers at University of Beira Interior used flow cytometry to study the effects of coriander oil on 12 different disease-causing types of bacteria, including E. coli, Salmonella, B. cereus and MRSA. In the study, published in Journal of Medical Microbiology, the oil significantly inhibited bacterial growth – especially that of MRSA and E. coli.
Researchers found that the coriander oil worked by damaging the membrane around the bacterial cell, interfering with vital functions such as respiration and eventually causing cell death.
Linalool, a terpenoid responsible for coriander’s pleasant scent, is the main constituent, but the coriander oil outperformed linalool alone – showing that interactions between the components in coriander oil made it even more bactericidal.
Finally, the team found that coriander tended to perform better on Gram-negative bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella – as it could more easily disrupt their cell membranes.
Lead researcher Dr. Fernanda Domingues noted that using coriander in foods could help prevent bacterial spoilage and food-borne illnesses, and possibly function as a natural alternative to pharmaceutical antibiotics. The team called for further study to explore practical applications and delivery systems.
Coriander, scientifically known as Coriandrum sativum L. and also called cilantro and Chinese parsley, is an herb used in Mediterranean, Asian, Indian and Mexican cuisine, where it lends its spicy, bracing flavor to chutneys, pickles, sauces and salads.
A staple of folk and herbal medicine, coriander has pain-relieving, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial effects. The seeds have even been used for their mild relaxant, anxiety-easing and mood-elevating properties, and the diluted essential oil has been used to treat topical skin infections.
For this study, researchers used essential oil of coriander, but other research on coriander’s antimicrobial qualities has used other forms, such as freeze-dried powder. Coriander essential oil is one of the most widely-used in the world, and is already in use as a food additive.
The need to develop safe, non-chemical preservatives – and the need to find natural solutions for antibiotic resistant bacteria – mean that studies on natural, herbal substances such as coriander are a “research hotspot.”
Coriander has impressed researchers with its antimicrobial properties, and additional studies attest to that fact.
In a study published in International Journal of Food Nutrition and Safety, researchers found that a water extract of coriander had a very strong inhibitory effect on E. coli and B.subtilis. Many serotypes of E.coli can cause illness, and B. subtilis, while not a disease-causing pathogen, can contaminate food, and cause potatoes to rot.
Researchers found that the coriander extract worked best to inhibit bacteria when it was prepared in a concentration of 10 percent, with a pH of 6 and a salt concentration of 2 percent.
And, a 2015 study published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition showed that coriander seed oil exhibited antimicrobial activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria – along with some yeasts and fungi. Researchers expressed their belief in the successful development of a food preservation strategy featuring coriander oil.
MRSA continues to threaten lives, while food-borne illnesses affect up to 30 percent of the population of developed countries – yearly. The CDC reports that a type of infection called STEC – Shiga toxin-producing E. coli – strikes a whopping 265,000 people every year in the United States alone, causing symptoms of severe stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea.
And, finally, coriander seed oil – non-toxic, non-chemical, and packed with beneficial flavonoids – may very well be the food preservative and antibacterial agent of the future.
