Four common bad habits combined — smoking, drinking too much, inactivity and poor diet — can age you by 12 years, sobering new research suggests. The findings are from a study that tracked nearly 5,000 British adults for 20 years, and they highlight yet another reason to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

The risky behaviors were: smoking tobacco; downing more than three alcoholic drinks per day for men and more than two daily for women; getting less than two hours of physical activity per week; and eating fruits and vegetables fewer than three times daily.

Overall, 314 people studied had all four unhealthy behaviors. Among them, 91 died during the study, or 29 percent. Among the 387 healthiest people with none of the four habits, only 32 died, or about 8 percent.

These habits combined substantially increased the risk of death and made people who engaged in them seem 12 years older than people in the healthiest group, said lead researcher Elisabeth Kvaavik of the University of Oslo.

The study appears in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine.

The healthiest group included never-smokers and those who had quit; teetotalers, women who had fewer than two drinks daily and men who had fewer than three; those who got at least two hours of physical activity weekly; and those who ate fruits and vegetables at least three times daily.

“You don’t need to be extreme” to be in the healthy category, Kvaavik said. “These behaviors add up, so together it’s quite good. It should be possible for most people to manage to do it.”

For example, one carrot, one apple and a glass of orange juice would suffice for the fruit and vegetable cutoffs in the study, Kvaavik said, noting that the amounts are pretty modest and less strict than many guidelines.

The U.S. government generally recommends at least 4 cups of fruits or vegetables daily for adults, depending on age and activity level; and about 2 1/2 hours of exercise weekly.

Study participants were 4,886 British adults aged 18 and older, or 44 years old on average. They were randomly selected from participants in a separate nationwide British health survey. Study subjects were asked about various lifestyle habits only once, a potential limitation, but Kvaavik said those habits tend to be fairly stable in adulthood.

Death certificates were checked for the next 20 years. The most common causes of death included heart disease and cancer, both related to unhealthy lifestyles.

Kvaavik said her results are applicable to other westernized nations including the United States.

June Stevens, a University of North Carolina public health researcher, said the results are in line with previous studies that examined the combined effects of health-related habits on longevity.

The findings don’t mean that everyone who maintains a healthy lifestyle will live longer than those who don’t, but it will increase the odds, Stevens said.

Source: Yahoo

I was browsing the web earlier today looking for some interesting reads. One specific article caught my attention right away. The article covers an eternal question most of us probably have pondered about. Why does time fly by as we get older?

I personally think the main reason for that is the fact that we get more and more busy as we get older. When we’re young we don’t have any commitments, all we have to worry about is school and homework. Everything else is also known as “the good life”. Click to read this interesting article..

Yes, we all get older. But now, getting older has become a video fetish; all kinds of people take pictures of themselves every day for six, seven, eight years and then blend the images together into a … well, if you’ve missed the Web craze, Homer Simpson’s “Every Day” is a perfect catcher-upper.

Not only can you see Homer switching jobs (cavalryman, Indian, king, infantryman, fisherman, fireman), you watch his body grow, swell, swag. As with all things Simpson, the physical changes are dramatic.

But what these videos don’t show are the psychological changes, and one of the most universal changes is that as humans age, they change the way they feel about time.

Faster And Faster And Faster

As people get older, “they just have this sense, this feeling that time is going faster than they are,” says Warren Meck, a psychology professor at Duke University.

This seems to be true across cultures, across time, all over the world. No one is sure where this feeling comes from.

Scientists have theories, of course, and one of them is that when you experience something for the very first time, more details, more information gets stored in your memory. Think about your first kiss.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine says that since the touch of the lips, the excitement, the taste, the smell — everything about this moment is novel — you aren’t embroidering a bank of previous experiences, you are starting fresh.

Have you noticed, he says, that when you recall your first kisses, early birthdays, your earliest summer vacations, they seem to be in slow motion? “I know when I look back on a childhood summer, it seems to have lasted forever,” he says.

That’s because when it’s the “first”, there are so many things to remember. The list of encoded memories is so dense, reading them back gives you a feeling that they must have taken forever. But that’s an illusion. “It’s a construction of the brain,” says Eagleman. “The more memory you have of something, you think, ‘Wow, that really took a long time!’

“Of course, you can see this in everyday life,” says Eagleman, “when you drive to your new workplace for the first time and it seems to take a really long time to get there. But when you drive back and forth to your work every day after that, it takes no time at all, because you’re not really writing it down anymore. There’s nothing novel about it.”

That may be because the brain records new experiences — especially novel and exciting experiences — differently. This is even measurable. Eagleman’s lab has found that brains use more energy to represent a memory when the memory is novel.

So, first memories are dense. The routines of later life are sketchy. The past wasn’t really slower than the present. It just feels that way.

There are all kinds of arguments one could have with this theory, but before we poke it, we want you to feel it.

Here’s a celebration of dense early memories from a very recently departed (not to heaven, just back to California) intern at NPR, Maggie Starbard. With a bunch of friends (Caitlin Fitch, Mark Turner and Mike Eckelkamp), Maggie decided to dwell on a lazy beach where kids are collecting dense memories by the truckload:

Now for the pokes. Who said that novel experiences belong exclusively to the young?

Older people have novel experiences — lots of them. Some of us have crazier middle ages than youths. We fall in love, out of love. Then our parenting years are filled with watching our babies’ first thises, first thats. Retired people travel — if they can afford to — to duplicate some of those rushes of novel experiences.

Yes, it’s true, the youngest years are chock full of novelty, but Duke’s Warren Meck points out that when you hit your 60s and 70s, and time is beginning to run out, experiences get more precious and once again you remember all the details.

So take this “novelty” explanation for why time moves faster as you age and weigh it as you will.

Other theories may prove more satisfying.

Professors Meck and Eagleman explore a number of them on our All Things Considered broadcast. If you wish to hear the “Aging Brain” theory of why time goes faster, or the “How Long Have You Been Alive?” explanation, they await you at the top of this page, where the button says “Listen.”

Link to the article is here.

The rough 507 carat white stone was unearthed at the historic Cullinan mine – where the famous Cullinan diamond was discovered in 1905. A spokesman for the mining firm Petra Diamond said the gemstone found last week was among the world’s 20 largest diamonds ever discovered.

He added: “Initial examinations indicate that it is of exceptional colour and clarity, and most likely to be a Type I diamond.

“At 507 carats (just over 100 grams) the diamond, which has yet to be named, is considered to be among the top 20 largest high quality rough diamonds ever found worldwide and ranks alongside other illustrious diamonds recovered at the celebrated Cullinan mine.“Further details, including colour grading and clarity, will be released once the diamond has undergone appropriate analysis.” The stone was found alongside three other valuable diamonds, with miners also unearthing a gemstone of 168.00 carats and two other stones of 58.50 and 53.30 carats. Petra confirmed the rocks were discovered during digging at the huge Cullinan mine, around 25 miles outside Pretoria in South Africa’s mineral-rich Gauteng province.

The original 3,106 carat Cullinan diamond became the largest rough diamond ever discovered when it was found on January 26 1905 by miner Frederick Wells. Once polished, the stone was presented to King Edward VII and now forms part of the British crown jewels. Experts have put its value in excess of $320 million. It was only overtaken as the world’s biggest polished diamond in 1985 with the discovery of the Golden Jubilee diamond, also at the Cullinan mine.

That stone was smaller than the original on discovery but had a larger polished weight of 545 carats. The Cullinan mine has also produced several of the world’s other largest diamonds, including the famous Centenary diamond, at 599 carats rough. Petra Diamond’s boss, Johan Dippenaar, said the discovery ranked alongside some of the mine’s other historic finds.

He said: “The Cullinan mine has again given the world a spectacularly beautiful and important diamond. “Initial indications are that it is of exceptional colour and clarity, which suggest extraordinary potential for its polished yield. “We now eagerly await the findings of the expert analysis.” The Cullinan mine was for decades owned by famous South African mining giant De Beers. As the excavation work moved deeper underground the site was deemed likely to become less profitable.

In 2007 De Beers announced it had sold the property to Petra Diamond, one of the world’s largest mining firms. Last May a rare blue diamond discovered at Cullinan was sold at auction in Hong Kong for a world record $10.7million. The flawless 7 carat gem was smaller than a penny piece.

Apparently, it’s not as bad as you may think.. I found an article today over at abc where they write about a new study that claims that popcorn isn’t all that bad for you if you eat it right. Apparently popcorn can be very good for you if you drop all the salt and butter because it’s a good source of fiber and antioxidants.

In addition to the finding that cold, oat-based cereals provide the best source of morning milk-bowl-spoon-based antioxidants, the researchers found that popcorn provides more of the dietary fiber and antioxidants than any other snack food, according to findings presented at the meeting of the American Chemical Society.

“It’s a whole grain, people don’t think of it that way but it is,” said Keith-Thomas Ayoob, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York in response to the study’s findings. “It’s a different form of corn, but it’s definitely a whole grain.”

I don’t know about you all, but I hardly ever eat popcorn. If I ever happen to find a bowl with popcorn in front of me, I prefer to eat it without all the butter and salt anyways.

“The more processed the grain is, you’re losing nutrients and antioxidants,” he said. “The closer you can get to the plant, the better off you are.”

In the case of popcorn, he explained, the antioxidants are protected from the sun in the drying process, and the corn loses only a little bit of them when it is popped. Additionally, through the whole process, the fiber provided by the whole grain is not removed.

“If you can air-pop your popcorn and then add a minimal amount of salt, you’d have the best popcorn,” Vinson said.

But while popcorn may have the potential to be a healthy addition to the diet, there are some obstacles.

“Eating plain popcorn is like eating cardboard, and therein lies the problem,” said Andrew F. Smith, author of “Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America.”

While popcorn could be healthy, he said, “It isn’t, because most of us, including myself, love salt, love butter, and love everything else about it. Most people don’t make it right.”

While he doesn’t feel popcorn presents a healthy snack option, Smith expressed disappointment that popcorn manufacturers haven’t created a healthy, yet tasty version of their snack.

“They haven’t done so. I wish they could. I like popcorn,” he said.

Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, confirmed Smith’s sentiments.

“The real issue with popcorn is what gets added to it, and frankly that’s often an issue with foods in the modern food supply,” he said. “If you add a lot of butter and salt to popcorn, it merely becomes the delivery vehicle for a lot of bad stuff.”

So, who’s gonna grab some popcorn this weekend without all the extra butter and salt? ;)

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), or median neuropathy at the wrist, is a medical condition in which the median nerve is compressed at the wrist, leading to paresthesias, numbness and muscle weakness in the hand.

If you’re at risk of developing CTS you’ve probably been in a similar situation to the following: You’re working at your desk, trying to ignore the tingling or numbness you’ve had for some time in your hand and wrist. Suddenly, a sharp, piercing pain shoots through the wrist and up your arm. Just a passing cramp? More likely you have carpal tunnel syndrome.The carpal tunnel is a narrow passageway of ligament and bones at the base of your hand. It contains nerve and tendons. Sometimes, thickening from irritated tendons or other swelling narrows the tunnel and causes the nerve to be compressed. Symptoms usually start gradually. As they worsen, grasping objects can become difficult.

What causes the problem? Some people have smaller carpal tunnels than other people do. Other causes include performing assembly line work, wrist injury, or swelling due to certain diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis. Women are three times more likely to have carpal tunnel syndrome than men. Treatment includes resting your hand, splints, pain and anti-inflammatory medicines, and surgery.

For those of you who are involved with a lot of computer work, it is important to remember that wrong use of the mouse and keyboard CAN result in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome! Below I’ve added a few pictures that display the correct and the incorrect postures for keyboard and mouse usage.

Find more information about CTS at Wikipedia.