The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| To soothe lower back pain, start walking, says study Posted: 06 Mar 2013 07:37 AM PST  NEW YORK, March 6 — Sufferers from lower back pain may find relief in a new research-backed program that involves the simple act of walking two or three times a week. A new study from Tel Aviv University finds that fast walking two to three times a week for 20 to 40 minutes may relieve back pain just as well as physical therapy multiple times a week. For the study, the researchers recruited 52 patients with lower back pain. Through questionnaires, subjects were initially assessed for pain levels, feelings of disability, and avoidance of daily activities, as well as muscle and walking endurance. Half of the subjects completed a typical clinic-based muscle strengthening program, with two to three exercise sessions a week for six weeks. The other half completed a six-week aerobic walking program on a treadmill, walking two to three times weekly for 20 to 40 minutes each session. The findings, announced March 5, are published in the journal Clinical Rehabilitation. Other perks for the walkers included a slight boost in physical fitness. Plus lead researcher Dr. Michal Katz-Leurer added that walking can reduce blood pressure, boost brain and immune system functioning, and reduce stress. Still walking isn't the only game in town. In 2011, a US study found that yoga could play a role in reducing chronic back pain. In that study, subjects who took weekly 75-minute yoga classes over a period of 12 weeks saw an improvement in back pain. The findings were published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, a journal of the American Medical Association. Access the new study: http://cre.sagepub.com/content/27/3/20 |
| Personality traits probed in high-res brain scans Posted: 06 Mar 2013 05:14 AM PST  A five-year project will use advanced brain imaging technology to collect vast amounts of data on healthy adults and make it freely available to researchers worldwide. — shutterstock.com picWASHINGTON, March 6 — US researchers on Tuesday published incredibly detailed images of the human brain as part of an international project aimed at uncovering how brain architecture influences personality. The five-year "Human Connectome Project" or HCP — being conducted at 10 research centres in the US and Europe — will use advanced brain imaging technology to collect vast amounts of data on healthy adults and make it freely available to researchers worldwide. "The HCP will have a major impact on our understanding of the healthy adult human brain," said David Van Essen, of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. It will enable "the scientific community to immediately begin exploring relationships between brain circuits and individual behavior," he said. "And it will set the stage for future projects that examine changes in brain circuits underlying the wide variety of brain disorders afflicting humankind." Tuesday's initial release includes scans of 68 healthy adults, along with behavioral information, including individual differences in personality, cognitive capabilities, emotional characteristics and perceptual function. The extremely high-resolution brain scans were achieved using two techniques of magnetic resonance imaging. Each have limitations, the researchers said, but taken together, they should give a more complete picture of what goes on in the brain. The researchers also performed scans of the test subjects while performing specific tasks. The resulting dataset is massive — comprising two terabytes (2 trillion bytes) of computer memory, or the equivalent of more than 400 DVDs. Over the next five years, the researchers hope to release similar information on a total of 1,200 individuals, including siblings and twins, which will help determine which brain circuitry traits might be inherited. — Reuters |
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