Updated 6:24 am, Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Seeking serenity on your smartphone
Dozens of apps have sprung up in recent years promising to train users in various forms of stress-melting meditation. Many promote a popular approach adapted from Buddhist meditation that is known as mindfulness — or "mindfulness meditation" — the nonjudgmental observation of one's breath, presence and thoughts. That is what Kat McKerrow of Baltimore was seeking when she downloaded an iPhone app called Calm. For about $10 a year, it offers dozens of guided meditation modules, set to soothing music and nature sounds, to help with such things as anxiety, creativity and sleep.
Blood test indexes Alzheimer's risk
For the first time, a test that detects 10 types of lipids, or fats, circulating in a person's blood has been shown to predict accurately whether he or she will develop the memory loss and mental decline of Alzheimer's disease over the next two to three years. A screening test based on the findings could be available in as little as two years, said the researchers.
The effort to identify predictors of Alzheimer's that are reliable, easy and inexpensive to detect is described in the journal Nature Medicine. Blood biomarkers for Alzheimer's could make it possible to identify those at risk before symptoms show, the authors suggested.