A glance at some interesting news
December 05, 2019.
Treating high blood pressure with medication not only improves older adults’ cardiovascular health, but also can reduce their risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, according to a thorough examination of long-term data from four countries.
A global team of scientists cross-referenced data from six large, longitudinal studies that tracked the health of over 31,000 adults over age 55 across several years of follow-up. They found that treating high blood pressure — no matter with which type of antihypertensive drug — reduced dementia risk by 12% and the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by 16%. The findings, coordinated by investigators in the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Population Science of the NIA Intramural Research Program, were published in Lancet Neurology.
References:
Further evidence that controlling high blood pressure can reduce dementia, Alzheimer's risk
Intensive blood pressure control may slow age-related brain damage
December 04, 2019.
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health found that women who use permanent hair dye and chemical hair straighteners have a higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who don’t use these products. The study published online Dec. 4 in the International Journal of Cancer and suggests that breast cancer risk increased with more frequent use of these chemical hair products.
Using data from 46,709 women in the Sister Study, researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of NIH, found that women who regularly used permanent hair dye in the year prior to enrolling in the study were 9% more likely than women who didn’t use hair dye to develop breast cancer. Among African American women, using permanent dyes every five to eight weeks or more was associated with a 60% increased risk of breast cancer as compared with an 8% increased risk for white women. The research team found little to no increase in breast cancer risk for semi-permanent or temporary dye use.
References:
Frequently Asked Questions Hair Dye
Eberle CE, Sandler DP, Taylor KW, White AJ. 2019. Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk in a large U.S. population of black and white women. Int J Cancer; doi: 10.1002/ijc.32738 [Online 4 December 2019].
Whether you are an avid gardener or just starting out, the idea of creating a garden using organic methods can seem overwhelming at first. But organic gardening is less daunting than you may think if you understand some basic principles and can be done right in your own backyard.
There are many reasons why today, more than ever before, every owner of a small place should have his, or her, own garden. The old days of home meat producing, cheese-making, and traditional cooking are gone. The growing of healthy organic vegetables and fruits that taste great...
Most things, in the course of development, change from the simple to the complex. The art of gardening has in many ways been an exception to the rule. The methods of culture used for many crops are more simple than those in vogue a generation ago. The last twenty years has seen also a tremendous...
~ William H. Stewart
Significant harm from climate change is already occurring, and further damages are a certainty. The challenge now is to keep climate change from becoming a catastrophe.
The oil, gas, coal, and mining industries stand to lose tremendously if the facts and truth about global warming becomes accepted by world's society.
Transport is considered as one of the the largest sources of air pollution emissions today.
Coastal temperate rainforests once covered 1% of the Earth. Less then half now remains.
Global climate change, driven largely by the combustion of fossil fuels and by deforestation, is a growing threat to human well-being in developing and industrialized nations alike.
Out of the original 1.9 million acres of redwood forest only 106,000 acres of old-growth forest are standing, less than 5% remain.
It is very important to understand the impacts of 1.5°C global warming above pre-industrial levels and related global emission pathways in the context of strengthening the response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.
Two starkly different futures diverge from this time forward. Society's current path leads to increasingly serious climate-change impacts, including potentially catastrophic changes in climate that will compromise efforts to achieve development objectives where there is poverty and will threaten standards of living where there is affluence.
