A new study conducted at Mayo Clinic and published in the April issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings reports that one in six patients receiving therapeutic doses of certain drugs for Parkinson's disease develops new-onset, potentially destructive behaviors, notably compulsive gambling or hypersexuality.
That may make grandpa a lot more interesting in doses but hedonistic, destructive behavior can be life-altering for the family members no amused by those antics, like the wife who finds her house mortgaged to have gambling money.
Older people can dance their way towards improved health and happiness, according to a report from the Changing Ageing Partnership (CAP). The research, by Dr Jonathan Skinner from Queen’s University Belfast, reveals the social, mental and physical benefits of social dancing for older people. It suggests that dancing staves of illness, and even counteracts decline in aging.
Recommendations include the expansion of social dance provision for older people in order to aid successful aging and help older people enjoy longer and healthier lives.
Jonathan Skinner, Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s, studied the effects of social dancing amongst older people in Northern Ireland, Blackpool and Sacramento.
Here's another reason to hate leftovers. A research study in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology sheds light on one cause of arthritis: bacteria. In the study, scientists from the United States and The Netherlands show that a specific gene called NOD2 triggers arthritis or makes it worse when leftover remnants of bacteria cell walls, called muramyl dipeptide or MDP, are present. This discovery offers an important first step toward new treatments to prevent or lessen the symptoms of inflammatory arthritis.
Botox and face lifts only give the appearance that you've turned back the clock, and although expensive procedural looks are deceiving, your telomeres don't lie. As your cells divide, telomeres become shorter, eventually leading to cell death over time.
Unfortunately, scientists are far from curing this universal "disease" known as aging. However, understanding the mechanisms of aging will have a more immediate impact on the development of stem cell therapies, and researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden have discovered that the female egg is capable of reversing this telomere molecular clock.
A new study says that some aspects of peoples' cognitive skills, like making rapid comparisons, remembering unrelated information and detecting relationships, will peak at about the age of 22 and then begin a slow decline starting around age 27.
Timothy Salthouse, a University of Virginia professor of psychology and the study's lead investigator, and a team conducted the study during a seven-year period, working with 2,000 healthy participants between the ages of 18 and 60.Participants were asked to solve various puzzles, remember words and details from stories, and identify patterns in an assortment of letters and symbols.
40 is the new 30, but maybe it should be the new 80.
Who hasn't tried to bleach their hair with hydrogen peroxide in college? I can't tell you how many young scientists we know who tried to go for that young Reed Richards look.
It turns out that hydrogen peroxide may be responsbile for bleached hair in aging also, though not intentionally.
Researchers of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany nd the University of Bradford say they have now unlocked the secret of hair turning white or gray in old age. According to them, free oxygen radicals are significantly involved in the loss of hair color.
The theory that a higher metabolism means a shorter lifespan may have reached the end of its own life, according to a study published in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology. The study, led by Lobke Vaanholt (University of Groningen, The Netherlands), found that mice with increased metabolism live just as long as those with slower metabolic rates.
We know that lifespan can be extended in some animals by restricting calories such as sugar intake shortly after birth. Université de Montréal scientists now say that it's not sugar itself that is important in this process but the ability of cells to sense its presence.
Aging is a complex phenomenon and the mechanisms underlying aging are yet to be explained. What researchers do know is that there is a clear relationship between aging and calorie intake. For example, mice fed with half the calories they usually eat can live 40 percent longer. How does this work?
A new hypothesis, published in today's Nature, suggests that Alzheimer's may be caused by a normal prenatal developmental process gone awry in the adult brain.
Before you cast aside years of beta-amyloid research or proclaim a cure is imminent, relax - the results are only from lab and mouse studies. The research indicates that beta-amyloid precursor protein "and DR6 are components of a neuronal self-destruction pathway, and suggests that an extracellular fragment of APP, acting via DR6 and caspase 6, contributes to Alzheimer's disease."