Smiling Reduces Stress And Helps The Heart

A new study suggests that holding a smile on one's face during periods of stress may help the heart. The study, due to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, lends support to the old adage "grin and bear it", suggesting it may also make us feel better.
The study is the work of psychological scientists Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman of the University of Kansas. They looked at how different types of smiling, and people being aware of smiling, affected their ability to recover from stressful episodes.
Kraft told the press they wanted to explore whether old adages like "grin and bear it" had any scientific merit.
The age-old saying suggests smiling not only signals happiness to others, but could also be a way to help cope with life stresses.
Previous studies have shown that smiling affects emotion, and that positive emotions have an effect on stress. But Kraft and Pressman are the first to experiment with types of smile to see what effect they have on stress.
Researchers often class smiles as being of two types: standard smiles, where only the mouth shapes the smile, and genuine or Duchenne smiles, where the muscles around the mouth and the eyes shape the smile. (The latter was named after Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne, who used electrophysiology to show how truly happy smiles also use the muscles around the eyes).

Kraft and Pressman experimented with types of smile to see what effect they had on stress

For their latest study, Kraft and Pressman invited 169 volunteers from a Midwestern university to undergo an experiment in two stages: training and testing.
In the training stage, the researchers taught the volunteers how to either hold their faces in a neutral expression, hold a standard smile, or hold a Duchenne smile.
They also got some of the volunteers to hold their face in a forced smile by holding chopsticks in their mouths.
In the testing phase, the volunteers performed some multi-tasking activities, during which they held their faces in the manner instructed.
The activities were designed to increase stress levels, but the volunteers didn't know this. One test for instance, asks the participant to use their non-dominant hand to follow the path of a moving star that they observe in a mirror. The other test involves plunging a hand into a bucket of ice water.
The researchers monitored the participants' heart rates as they performed their various tasks.
They found the participants who were instructed to smile, and in particular those whose faces expressed genuine or Duchenne smiles, had lower heart rates after recovery from the stress activities than the ones who held their faces in neutral expressions.
Even the volunteers who held chopsticks in their mouths, that forced the muscles to express a smile (but they had not explicitly been instructed to smile), had lower recovery heart rates compared to the ones who held neutral facial expressions.
The researchers say their findings suggest smiling during brief periods of stress may help reduce the body's stress response, regardless of whether the person actually feels happy or not.
Pressman said this could be useful to know, for instance if you find yourself stuck in a traffic jam, try to hold your face in a smile for a few moments: it may do more than just help you "grin and bear it", it may actually help your heart health too.

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Male infertility

Approximately 15 percent of couples are infertile. This means they aren't able to conceive a child even though they've had frequent, unprotected sexual intercourse for a year or longer — or for at least six months if the woman is age 35 or older. In about half of these cases, male infertility plays a role.
Male infertility is due to low sperm production, misshapen or immobile sperm, or blockages that prevent the delivery of sperm. Illnesses, injuries, chronic health problems, lifestyle choices and other factors can play a role in causing male infertility.
Not being able to conceive a child can be stressful and frustrating, but a number of male infertility treatments are available. Approaches can include treatment for the male partner, the female partner, or both.

Treatments of male Infertility

Treatment of male infertility depends on the cause, how long you've been infertile, your age and personal preferences. In all cases of infertility, the female partner also will need to be checked and may need treatment. In some cases, treatment of the female partner can compensate for male fertility problems. Your doctor may try to improve your fertility by either correcting an underlying problem (if one is found) or trying treatments that seem like they may be helpful. Often, an exact cause of infertility can't be identified. Even if an exact cause isn't clear, your doctor may be able to recommend treatments that work.
Treatments for male infertility include:
Surgery. For example, a varicocele can often be surgically corrected or an obstructed vas deferens can be repaired.
Treating infections. If a blood test reveals high numbers of white blood cells, you may have an infection of the reproductive tract. Antibiotic treatment may cure the infection, but doesn't always restore fertility.
Treatments for sexual intercourse problems. Treating conditions such as erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation can improve fertility. Approaches can include medication or counseling.
Hormone treatments and medications. In cases where infertility is caused by high or low levels of certain hormones or problems with the way the body uses hormones, your doctor may recommend treatment with hormone replacement or medications that change hormone levels.
Assisted reproductive technology (ART). For blockage of the vas deferens, retrograde ejaculation or other problems with sperm delivery, sperm can be taken directly from the testicle or recovered from the bladder and injected into an egg. The most common ART treatment is in vitro fertilization (IVF). This procedure involves surgically removing an egg from a woman's ovary, combining it with sperm in the lab, and then placing the fertilized egg into the uterus.

When treatment doesn't work
Sometimes male fertility problems can't be treated, and it's impossible for a man to father a child. If this is the case, your doctor may suggest that you and your partner consider either using sperm from a donor or adopting a child
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Scientists classify bananas as natural alternative to sleeping drugs

Revealed a new vision of scientists from the "National Foundation for sleeping" in the United States that can use simple methods and normal way to change the sleep environment for the best person to enjoy the night of sleep, where it leads to enjoy better health and longer life.
While most people get enough sleep also showed a survey conducted by this institution, while the percentage of those who suffer from sleep problems about 57% of the total 26,451 people were surveyed and are forced to wake up at least three times a night because of Tergahm health problems, financial or work.
According to the newspaper "Al-Riyadh" Saudi Arabia is classified some scientists bananas as a natural alternative to drugs hypnotic medical because it contains amino acids needed to produce serotonin soothing and stimulating to sleep with the alert to avoid certain foods containing antioxidants to such as dairy products, peanut butter and some types of meat.
As advised to put perfume of lavender "vanilla" on the pillow, where research has demonstrated that the smell of perfume lavender soothe the nerves and reducing the severity of depression and tension, Vda drops it on the pillow helps to treat insomnia and avoid anxiety and bring comfort to lead to a night of sleep Pacific.
In addition to that evening to do some light exercises make the body feel a little tired of what light prepares the request of rest and sleep because it helps to relax the muscles and the dismantling, but it should be noted that this should be three hours before bedtime, at least.
While help taking a bath of cold water or lukewarm making the body temperature drops and muscles relax resulting signals to be sent normal to the brain for preparing the body wants eternity to rest and that bedtime had come and would prefer to add a few drops of perfume of lavender or vanilla to the water to get the smell For more soothing relaxation.
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FDA Approves Swallowable Sensor That Tracks Health From The Inside

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved an ingestible digital sensor that can be swallowed in a pill to track health data from inside the body. The idea is that the data can be used not only by patients themselves, but also by caregivers and doctors to individualize their care.
The ingestible sensor, formerly known as the Ingestion Event Marker or IEM, is already approved for use in Europe.
It is the first "digital pill" to receive FDA approval, in a move that its maker Proteus Digital Health, whose headquarters are in Redwood City, California, sees as the start of a era where digital medicine "shifts the care paradigm".
On Monday, George Savage, co-founder and chief medical officer at Proteus Digital Health, told the press:
"We are thrilled to have achieved this important milestone to market our ingestible sensor in the United States now, as well as in Europe."
"We are very much looking forward to bringing the benefits of our ingestible sensor to the American public in the form of innovative product offerings," he added.
The ingestible sensor, which is about the size of a grain of sand and made mostly of silicon, is part of an integrated system designed to give patients and their doctors "end-to-end personal health management".
Embedded in a pill or tablet, the device can help keep an eye on whether patients are taking their medications at the prescribed time and rate.
This is important, because although the effectiveness and safety of drugs are established in clinical trials, those tend to follow well-controlled conditions, with patients taking their drugs at the prescribed rates in the right quantities.
But at home, adherence to prescribed regimens may not be so easy to monitor, and without information about precisely when patients are taking their medication, doctors can't see if that is the problem, should the drug not work as it should.
The sensor does not contain a battery, it works like a "potato battery" that children make in science lessons at school. It has two conductive materials, one on either side. When these get wet in the stomach, they power the sensor for a short amount of time.
So once it comes into contact with stomach fluid, the sensor powers up, and "communicates a unique signal that determines identity and timing of ingestion", says Proteus.
The ingestible sensor passes through the body in much the same way as high-fiber food, according to information on the company's website.
The signal that it sends from the stomach travels through the patient's body to a patch worn on the skin. The patch contains technology that senses the signal and records the exact time the ingestible sensor was swallowed.
The patch can then send this information to a mobile phone application, and with the consent of the patient, be passed on to doctors and caregivers, so they can provide better quality care.
Proteus says its integrated "feedback" system is also designed to collect a range of other measurements, such as for heart rate, body position and activity.
Eric Topol, geneticist and cardiologist, is a professor of genomics at The Scripps Research Institute and wrote a book called "The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Healthcare" where, among other things, he says technology that gives doctors a continuously updated picture of what is happening with each patient, will help them provide better, individualized care.
Topol told the press:
"The FDA validation represents a major milestone in digital medicine. Directly digitizing pills, for the first time, in conjunction with our wireless infrastructure, may prove to be the new standard for influencing medication adherence and significantly aid chronic disease management."