Category Archives: Health

Fitness, Health, Medical, Science

Research reveals that walking is better for the brain than cycling

HEALTH

WALKING is better than cycling for the brain, because striking the ground boosts blood flow.

A stroll is often seen as gentler exercise than a long bike ride.

But as your foot hits the ground, each step sends backward-flowing pressure waves up the arteries, which boost the brain’s blood circulation.

This makes walking better for cerebral blood flow than cycling.

It follows numerous studies showing walking can prevent Alzheimer’s disease, which has been linked with reduced blood flow in part of the brain. Researchers at New Mexico Highlands University say a stroll not only boosts brain function, but may make exercise more enjoyable.

Lead researcher Dr Ernest Greene said: ‘What is surprising is that it took so long for us to finally measure these obvious hydraulic effects on cerebral blood flow.’

The scientists took ultrasounds from 12 healthy adults as they stood upright or walked steadily at a rate of a metre per second.

This calculated the speed of blood flow through vessels including the carotid artery to both sides of the brain. Plodding feet sent pressure waves through the arteries, which modify and increase the brain’s blood supply.

The waves were found to synchronise with the heart rate and stride rate to regulate blood circulation to the brain. While the effect was less dramatic than when running, it was greater than when cycling.

The results, presented to a meeting of the American Physiological Society, show that the brain, as well as the heart and muscles, benefits from going for a walk.

The NHS advises people to take 10,000 steps a day to reduce the risk of stroke, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and asthma.

Appendage:

Walking

Some of the benefits of walking.

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Britain, Government, Health, Politics

Why are we letting the whole world use our health service?

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

health-tourism

The National Health Service is under considerable strain. It is not an international health service providing a worldwide service.

LAST year foreign patients left the NHS with an unpaid bill of almost £30million.

That is nearly double the amount for the previous year and clear evidence that action must be taken to clamp down on health tourism.

The NHS, as the Department of Health has rightly said, is a national health service not an international one.

There is simply no way that the British taxpayer can afford to pay for the rest of the world to come here and access treatment.

It would of course be inhumane to turn away anybody in need of emergency care while they are in this country.

But that is not to say that the NHS is obliged to treat for free any individual who happens to suffer from a minor illness or requires non-urgent treatment while on British soil.

For all the tough talk we are continuing to offer healthcare worth huge sums of money to people who have no right to it.

An explosion in demand is putting the NHS under increasing pressure.

This is not purely the result of health tourism but stopping people from overseas from accessing free treatment should be easy.

That ministers allow them to keep getting away with it is worrying. We are not a country that should be providing free-for-all.

We need the Government to put British taxpayers first and stop others from abusing our health service.

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Health, Medical, Science

Questions of Science: ‘Rubbing salt in to the wound’…

Health

Rubbing salt in the wound was a way of preventing infection. But how did it work?

Applying salt to a wound creates a highly saline environment, one in which it is difficult for microbes to grow. The high concentration gradient between the salt solution and the fluid inside bacterial cells makes it far more difficult for the microbes to extract water from the solution without using a lot more energy. As a result, the bacteria become placid and dehydrated and cannot function normally or proliferate.

Concentrated sugar solutions also have a dehydrating effect. This accounts for the extended shelf life of chutneys and preserves, and explains why honey can be used on wound dressings and, ironically, on bee stings as an antiseptic.

Blood is 83 per cent water. Because salt is hygroscopic, it absorbs water, accelerating the tendency for blood to clot and drying the wound. This helps deny microorganisms a favourable habitat. Saline solutions do generate osmotic pressure – it forces water out of microbes to equalise the salt concentration across their cell membranes. This can kill them, so salt acts as a disinfectant.

The stinging of the wound signals that salt does cause injury to the body. But in the absence of a better option at the time, killing a few healthy skin cells was deemed acceptable collateral damage when the alternative may have been a serious infection or possible death.

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