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Research Archive

Welcome to our Chinese medicine and acupuncture research news pages. We add to the content of these pages continuously as more research news comes in. Browse through the complete archive below or use the category links on the right.

Please note that the most twenty recent research archive items are free to view but access to the thousands of items in the archive require a journal subscription.

Get the right amount of sleep to live longer

Categories: Lifestyle research

Getting just the right amount of sleep is unequivocally associated with living longer, according to a systematic review by English and Italian authors. The researchers investigated the relationship between duration of sleep and all-cause mortality, analysing 16 studies which included 1,382,999 participants (follow-up range 4-25 years). Meta-analysis showed that people who generally slept for less ...

Highflying women at greater risk of heart disease

Categories: Lifestyle research

Young women with stressful jobs are more likely to develop heart disease, a Danish study has found. The Danish Nurse Cohort Study prospectively followed a total of 12,116 nurses, aged 45-64 years at baseline, for a total of 15 years. By the end of the study, 580 women had been admitted to hospital with heart disease. The results showed that women who said their job was a little too stressful were ...

Deet is neurotoxic

Categories: Lifestyle research

Deet (for N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide), the active ingredient in most insect repellents, has been found to be toxic to the central nervous systems of both insects and mammals. Using toxicological, biochemical and electrophysiological techniques, French researchers found that deet inhibits the activity of acetycholinesterase, a key central nervous system enzyme, in a manner similar to organophosphat ...

Gallstone risk reduced by exercise

Categories: Lifestyle research

People who exercise more are significantly less likely to develop gallstones, according to UK investigators. A prospective cohort study followed 25,639 volunteers over 14 years for symptomatic gallstones, dividing them into four different levels of activity. Comparing the highest level of physical activity against the lowest three levels, an increase of just one activity level corresponded to a 17 ...

Artificial sweeteners may increase risk of preterm birth

Categories: Lifestyle research

A large Danish study has found a correlation between the amount of diet drinks consumed by women and their risk of going into preterm labour. The prospective cohort analysis of 59,334 women found that the risk of preterm birth was increased by 38% for women drinking an average of one can of artificially sweetened soft drink per day. Regular intake of four or more cans of soft drink per day was fou ...

Alcohol reduces risk and severity of rheumatoid arthritis

Categories: Lifestyle research

Drinking alcohol appears to reduce the severity of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and also reduces the risk of developing the disease, in a dose-dependent manner, according to research from the UK. 873 patients with erosive RA, and 1004 healthy controls were included in the study. The risk of developing RA decreased according to frequency of alcohol consumption, such that non-drinkers were four times a ...

Breast milk gives infants intestines a protective coat

Categories: Lifestyle research

A large part of human milk consists of complex sugars that are undigestible by babies, but American scientists have worked out that its purpose is instead to influence the composition of bacteria in the infant's gut. The researchers have found that strains of the bacterium Bifidobacterium longum infantis, commonly found in the faeces of breast-fed infants, possesses genes that enable it to thrive ...

Antibiotics on verge of being useless

Categories: Lifestyle research

A sobering paper in the prestigious journal Lancet Infectious Diseases predicts a disastrous near future in which antibiotics are no longer effective against infectious diseases. The article explains how a new gene called NDM 1 discovered last year by the paper's author Professor Tim Walsh, can pass easily between enterobacteriaceae such as Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, making them r ...

Mind-body therapies beneficial for menopause symptoms

Categories: Lifestyle research

A systematic review by American authors suggests that mind-body therapies may be beneficial for alleviating specific menopausal symptoms. Eighteen clinical trials, involving a total of 882 women, met their inclusion criteria. Interventions included yoga and/or meditation programs, tai chi and relaxation practices. Eight of the nine studies of yoga, tai chi, and meditation-based programs reported i ...