Currency

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.

Small babies prone to depression later in life

Categories: Lifestyle research

Analysis of data from a landmark public health study suggests that people who had a low birth weight are more likely to experience depression and anxiety later in life. Canadian researchers used information from the Medical Research Council's National Survey of Health and Development, one of the longest-running cohort studies ever. The survey tracked more than 4,600 people born in Great Britain in ...

Elective caesareans increase risk of breathing problems

Categories: Lifestyle research

Babies delivered by elective caesarean section before term carry up to a fourfold increased risk of breathing problems, compared with babies delivered vaginally or by emergency caesarean section. Researchers in Denmark investigated the association between elective caesarean sections and newborn respiratory problems in over 34,000 births. The study found that, at 37 weeks' gestation, the risk of br ...

High earners drink more

Categories: Lifestyle research

Professional and high-income households are the heaviest drinkers, according to figures from the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS). On average, British men drank 18.7 units of alcohol weekly during 2006 compared with nine units for women. This rose to 22.9 units per week for men and 12.5 for women in the top socio-economic group. When asked about their heaviest drinking day in the previous ...

Sociable people get fat, but worriers are thin

Categories: Lifestyle research

Extroverts tend to be overweight, while anxious types are more likely to be thin. Japanese researchers surveyed more than 30,000 people aged between 40 and 64 about their height and weight, and subjected them a personality test. The results showed that outgoing people were far more likely to have a body mass index (BMI) of more than 25 (defined as overweight). People with the most anxious personal ...

Money makes you happy, but only if you give it away.

Categories: Lifestyle research

Experiments in which students were given small amounts of cash windfalls with instructions on how to spend it, showed that those who gave the money away (donating to charity or giving a gift) were happier at the end of the day than those who blew it on themselves (to pay a bill or indulge in a treat). Two more surveys by the same team mirrored these results. In one, 16 Boston company employees wer ...

Migraines may be associated with specific personality types

Categories: Lifestyle research

Italian researchers compared 105 patients suffering from migraine without aura with a control group of 79 healthy subjects using psychometric questionnaires. Migraine patients were found to show more depressive symptoms, more difficulty with anger management with a tendency to hypercontrol, and a distinctive personality profile with high harm avoidance, high persistence and low self-directedness. ...

Sunbathing may protect against ms

Categories: Lifestyle research

A study from California has examined the influence of childhood sun exposure on the risk of multiple sclerosis (MS) in monozygotic twins. Seventy-nine twin pairs were identified where there was a quantifiable difference in sun exposure between the pair and where only one twin had MS. A numerical index of sun exposure related activities was calculated for each individual. It was found that sun expo ...

Loneliness impairs immune response

Categories: Lifestyle research

Lonely people are prone to illness and early death because their immune system genes are dysregulated. An American study analysed gene transcription activity in people who chronically experienced high versus low levels of subjective social isolation (loneliness). Genes linked to inflammation showed increased activity in people who described themselves as lonely, compared with those who said they h ...

Anger and stress are bad for the heart

Categories: Lifestyle research, Hypertension

Anger and stress in middle-aged men and women are associated with developing high blood pressure and coronary heart disease (CHD). Investigators analysed data from an American cohort study of 15,792 subjects aged 45-64 at enrolment. Participants were followed up over 11 years for the development of hypertension (blood pressure >139 systolic or >89 diastolic) and CHD events. Subjects underwen ...