Kincora Therapy Centre’s Facebook Wall 2015-04-29 12:40:10
What Is Gout?
articles.mercola.com
Learn important facts about gout, including its symptoms, natural treatment options, and what foods to avoid to protect yourself from this debilitating disease.
Kincora Therapy Centre’s Facebook Wall 2015-04-29 12:39:36
Inspirational Quotes
Heartwarming and inspirational quotes can always uplift and brighten a person’s day!
Kincora Therapy Centre’s Facebook Wall 2015-04-29 12:39:15
This Is What Sitting for Too Long Can Do to Your Body
themindunleashed.org
With the continuous progress of technology, we need to put less and less effort to get the things done. And it’s not…
Kincora Therapy Centre’s Facebook Wall 2015-04-29 12:39:15
This Is What Sitting for Too Long Can Do to Your Body
themindunleashed.org
With the continuous progress of technology, we need to put less and less effort to get the things done. And it’s not…
Kincora Therapy Centre’s Facebook Wall 2015-04-28 21:55:51
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Orla Foley
Novel Brain Stimulation May Boost Creativity, Treat Depressionhttp://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/843829Application of a weak electric current to the frontal areas of the brain boosts creativity and may lead to a novel method of treating depression, a new proof-of-concept study suggests.Applying 10 Hz of stimulation via electrodes to healthy individuals, the team was able to increase alpha oscillations in the brain and improve performance on a commonly used measure of creativity.They now hope to use the findings as a springboard to improve alpha oscillations in individuals with depression and so improve symptoms.Explaining how alpha oscillations may mediate creativity, coauthor Flavio Frohlich, PhD, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, said in a release, "For a long time, people thought alpha waves represented the brain idling.""But over the past 20 years, we've developed much better insight. Our brains are not wasting energy, creating these patterns for nothing. When the brain is decoupled from the environment, it still does important things."The team believes that the stimulation may also enhance phase synchronization between the frontal regions, further boosting creativity.The research is published in the June issue of Cortex. Creativity Boost Dr Frohlich told Medscape Medical News that the overall goal of his research is to develop novel treatments for psychiatric illnesses."The approach we take is that we develop paradigms that use noninvasive brain stimulation," he said."Specifically, one of our interests is developing new treatments for mood disorders, such as major depressive disorder, and what we know from the literature is that a specific type of activity in the brain, these so-called alpha oscillations, are impaired."Because alpha oscillations, which are in the frequency band of 8 to 12 Hz, are known to be more pronounced during tasks that require a lot of creativity, the researchers enrolled 20 healthy individuals in a study with a randomized, balanced, crossover design.They applied 10 Hz or sham current to the frontal cortex through the scalp via three electrodes during two sessions.The sessions consisted of an initial 5 minutes of stimulation, followed by 25 minutes during which the participants completed the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT), a commonly used creativity test.The results showed that compared with sham stimulation, 10 Hz of transcranial alternating current stimulation was associated with a significant 7.4% increase in performance on the creativity index of the TTCT.Furthermore, there was no improvement in performance on the TTCT when 40 Hz of stimulation was used to increase gamma wave stimulation, indicating that alpha activity in frontal brain areas is selectively involved in creativity."We've shown that we can specifically moderate alpha oscillations in terms of behavior effects, and we know that alpha oscillations are impaired with patients with depression, so a restoration of the electrical activity patterns is a highly promising approach to improve behavioral symptoms," said Dr Frohlich."Does it really work that way? We don't know. But it's a hopeful first step that those kinds of interventions can really change high-order brain function."To that end, Dr Frohlich has embarked on two clinical trials to determine whether transcranial alternating current stimulation will be of benefit to people with major depressive disorder and premenstrual dysphoric disorder.Home-Based Treatment? Commenting for Medscape Medical News, Paul E Holtzheimer, MD, associate professor of psychiatry, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, New Hampshire, described the study as "well designed" and "very interesting."But whether that "will translate into behavioral change that has clinical meaning in treating depression, we will have to wait and see."Dr Holtzheimer noted that an attractive aspect of the technique used in the study is its noninvasive nature. There are two aspects to this."One is the very low side effect profile, which is similar to other brain stimulation approaches," he said."There may be a little irritability of the skin underneath the electrodes, maybe a mild headache in some patients, but otherwise relatively low side effect burden compared to medications and other brain stimulation approaches, like, say, transcranial magnetic stimulation [TMS]," he added."Because of that decreased risk, it also opens this up to be a home-based treatment," Dr Holtzheimer added."Unlike TMS, where you have to go into the clinic or the hospital to receive this treatment, this is something similar to some of the other devices out there, that you could prescribe for patients.""They could take it home and they could use it per your directions."For Dr Holtzheimer, the current study also highlights growing awareness of the heterogeneity of depression, with potentially different pathophysiologies for different forms of the condition."Despite decades of research, we still have a very limited understanding of what are the unique and specific neurobiological abnormalities that are associated with depression," he said."It is believed by many that there are probably several types of depression and that may have some overlap biologically, but it may also have some differences.""A big push of a lot of research, including my own, is to try and identify biomarkers of specific types of depression that might be amenable to specific treatments, so as to allow more individualized treatment selection, matching specific patients to specific treatments."He added: "However, and to their credit in thinking about this as maybe a first step in a larger research program, we do know that oscillatory activity, as measured by electroencephalography…, has been shown to be abnormal in some patients with depression."Finally, Dr Holtzheimer pointed out that although the team looked at the impact of brain stimulation on creativity during the task, they did not examine whether the effect persisted after the intervention.Describing that as something that "surprised" him, Dr Holtzheimer concluded: "Again, if this going to translate into a treatment, you need to show, as they have with TMS, that you not only get a change in behavior or physiology during the stimulation but that those actually persist for some period of time beyond the stimulation."This study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Department of Psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine, and the Swiss National Science Foundation. UNC has filed a nonprovisional patent on transcranial alternating current–related technology, with Dr Frohlich as the lead inventor. No licensing has occurred, and none of the authors are financially or otherwise benefiting from this initial filing. Cortex. 2015;67:74-82. Abstract
Kincora Therapy Centre’s Facebook Wall 2015-04-28 21:55:16
Functional role of frontal alpha oscillations in creativity
www.sciencedirect.com
Creativity, the ability to produce innovative ideas, is a key higher-order cognitive function that is poorly understood. At the level of macroscopic cortical network dynamics, recent electroencephalography (EEG) data suggests that cortical oscillations in the alpha frequency band (8–12 Hz) are corre…
Kincora Therapy Centre’s Facebook Wall 2015-04-28 21:54:51
Kidney function and the use of nitrofurantoin to treat urinary tract infections in older women
www.cmaj.ca
Background: The antibiotic nitrofurantoin is commonly used to treat uncomplicated urinary tract infections. However, when this drug is used by patients with reduced kidney function, its urine concentration may be subtherapeutic.
Kincora Therapy Centre’s Facebook Wall 2015-04-28 21:54:29
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Orla Foley
Mediterranean Diet Linked to Larger Brain Volumehttp://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/843853Caroline Cassels | DisclosuresWASHINGTON, DC — Adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MeDi) may prevent brain atrophy in old age, new research suggests.A large cross-sectional study by investigators at Columbia University in New York linked adherence to the MeDI to larger brain volume in an elderly population, suggesting this type of diet has the potential to prevent brain atrophy and, by extension, preserve cognition in the elderly."Our study suggests that adhering to MeDi may prevent cognitive decline or AD [Alzheimer's disease] by maintaining the brain structure or delaying aging-related atrophy," said study investigator Yian Gu, PhD.Dr Gu presented the findings here at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) 67th Annual Meeting.Driven by Higher Fish Intake Previous research has linked the MeDi to a reduced risk for AD and slower rates of cognitive decline in the elderly. However, Dr Gu noted that the association of this diet type to more specific brain biological markers and indicators has not been explored extensively.She added that there is increasing use of neuroimaging biomarkers that are sensitive and allow researchers to examine preclinical changes in older individuals, including brain volume, cortical thickness, white matter integrity, and amyloid deposition. These may shed light on the link between diet and the brain from "distinct angles."The aim of the current study was to investigate the association between adherence to the MeDi and structural MRI-based measures of both brain volume and cortical thickness among elderly individuals participating in the Washington Heights-Inwood Columbia Aging Project (WHICAP).The study cohort included 674 multiethnic Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years or older living in an uptown area of New York City and who had no signs of dementia.Twenty-eight percent (n = 187) of the cohort was white, 35% (n = 235) was black, 36% (n = 239) was Hispanic, and 1.9% (13) was of "other" ethnicity.All participants underwent high-resolution structural MRI as well as assessment of MeDi adherence based on a 61-item food-frequency questionnaire that asked participants about intake of fish, vegetables, fruits, legumes, cereals, dairy products, meat, and poultry and alcohol. A higher score (ranging from 0 to 9) indicated better MeDi adherence.The investigators assessed intracranial volume (ICV), total brain volume (TBV), total gray matter volume (TGMV), total white matter volume (TWMV), and cortical thickness (CT).After adjustment for age, sex, education, ethnicity, energy intake, and APOE status, the investigators found that those with higher MeDi adherence scores (5 to 9) had larger TBV (β = 13.6; P = .01), TGMV (β = 5.5; P = .03), and TWMV (β = 7.3; P = .02) compared with those with lower MeDI scores (0 to 4).Among the 9 food components of MeDi, higher fish intake (β = 6.8; P = .01) was associated with larger TGMV, and lower meat intake was associated with both larger TBV (β = 11.1; P = .03) and TGMV (β = 7.4; P = .01). Higher fish intake was also associated with higher CT (β = 0.018; P = .04).Participants who adhered more to a MeDI had larger brain volumes both in gray matter and white matter, said Dr Gu. She also noted that each additional higher MeDi adherence and total brain volume is equivalent to more than 1 year of aging (β for age = 2.5; P < .001).Dr Gu noted that most of the association was driven by higher intake of fish and lower intake of meat. Potential mechanisms, she said, include anti-inflammatory and/or antioxidative effects, as well as potential slowing of the accumulation of β-amyloid or tau.Novel Finding Commenting on the study for Medscape Medical News, David Knopman, MD, professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, said the finding that diet may influence brain volume is novel and adds a "dimension of biology" to the hypothesis that diet and brain health are linked."I think this is a useful and somewhat reassuring observation that diet may influence brain health," said Dr Knopman. However, he cautioned, it doesn't establish whether diet alone is responsible for this effect or whether adherence to a MeDi is a marker of general good health practices."The fact is that science in general has been terribly burned by conflicting claims about diet. Almost all of the studies have been observational and the possibility of causal mechanisms being something else that the diet is a proxy for is a really big issue."However, he added, the literature about the benefits of the MeDi seem to be more than just a random observation. However, "the big question remains is it something in the diet or is the diet a proxy for something else."Dr Knopman also advised caution in interpreting the clinical implications of the study's findings."There is the natural tendency by the media, but also by scientists and the lay public, to assume that the relationships translate to immediate therapeutic benefit. Any therapeutic benefit likely reflects lifelong exposure [to the MeDi] so the idea of changing one's diet at age 75 and thinking it would make much of a difference is absurd."The authors and Dr Knopman have disclosed no relevant financial relationships. American Academy of Neurology (AAN) 67th Annual Meeting. Abstract S36.008 Presented April 22, 2015.Add Comment
Interesting
Interesting
9 Things Every Singer Needs to Know About Their Body
www.totalvocalfreedom.com
This blog post gives you some tips to help you free your body and voice.
Kincora Therapy Centre’s Facebook Wall 2015-04-28 21:27:16
Timeline Photos
Did You Know: The average height of a person decreases, on average, 15mm over the course of the day. This is equal to about a 1% loss of height from morning to evening.
Why does this occur?
The answer is that the intervertebral discs, or spinal discs, are composed largely of water. The discs rest between the spinal bones, or vertabrae. These intervertebral disca are compressed as we stand and walk–it is our own body weight that compresses the intervertebral disc. When you sleep at night, the compressive pressure is relieved, and the discs expand again. While the difference is small, it is a fact!