Happy Halloween 2013!

This dark cold night, the grave’s delight, the warlocks, werewolves, vampires, and zombies are at their play; Ye think that without… The wild shivering winds shout, But no, it is they – it is they…. Happy Halloween…

Burn Tons of Calories While Standing

A study shows that you can burn a lot of calories just by standing more in a day that may give you major health benefits instead of sitting.

BBC, Dr John Buckley, and researchers from the University of Chester carry out an experiment by asking ten volunteers who work at an estate agents to stand for at least three hours a day for a week.

The volunteers wore accelerometers which is a movement monitor,  heart rate monitors, and glucose monitors to measure blood sugar levels throughout the day and night.

The researchers noted measurements on when the volunteers are standing, and when they are just sitting. Comparing the two, the data shows striking differences. The blood glucose levels goes down to normal levels after a meal more quickly on the days when they are standing as oppose to when they sit. Also their heart rates remain higher when they are standing, recording about 10 extra beats per minute, that resulted into a bigger calorie burn.

"If we look at the heart rates," Dr. John Buckley said, "we can see they are quite a lot higher actually - on average around 10 beats per minute higher and that makes a difference of about 0.7 of a calorie per minute."

0.7 of a calorie per minute is not that much but if it accumulate, it can get to 42 calories an hour. If you find time to stand everyday for 6 hours, that's 252 calories a day and 1,764 calories a week.

Dr Buckley added that if you consider it as an activity level, "then that would be the equivalent of running about 10 marathons a year. Just by standing up three or four hours in your day at work."

So if you want to burn more, you need to practice doing your work while standing!

New Study to Cure Baldness

A new study shows that it is possible to grow new hair follicles from human skin cells that may cure baldness for both men and women.

Laboratories encountered a lot of difficulties in replicating human hair follicles. But using a new technique shows that it can trigger hair growth in skin tissues.

As an alternative to just transplanting hair follicles from one surface to another which is the norm in hair transplants, the skin tissue of the patient will be used to produce essentially large quantities of follicles for hair-transplant operations, study said.

The researchers believes that the study is a "milestone advance" in stimulating hair growth in people suffering from hair loss.

"This approach has the potential to transform the medical treatment of hair loss," Angela Christiano said. Angela Christiano is a Professor at the Columbia University in New York. She is one of the lead authors of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Current hair-loss medications tend to slow the loss of hair follicles or potentially stimulate the growth of existing hairs, but they do not create new hair follicles. Neither do conventional hair transplants, which relocate a set number of hairs from the back of the scalp to the front. Our method, in contrast, has the potential to actually grow new follicles using a patient's own cells. This could greatly expand the utility of hair-restoration surgery to women and to younger patients - now it is largely restricted to the treatment of male-pattern baldness in patients with stable disease," she added.

The treatment could make hair transplantation available to people with a small number of follicles, which includes patients with female-pattern hair loss, scarring alopecia and hair loss due to burns.

The new study results were published here.

Do you have IBS and want to get rid of it?

IBS or irritable bowel syndrome is a common disorder of the digestive system that causes abdominal pain and cramping, changes in bowel movements, diarrhea, constipation, and other symptoms.

Probiotics are great options for treating IBS.

Our intestines are filled with different kinds of bacteria and they are called collectively as gut flora. They all get along with each other when you are healthy but oftentimes they are disturbed that results to unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms. There are a lot of reasons for it, like stomach flu or side effect of antibiotics.

“The thought is that if you can restore a balanced intestinal flora in somebody with IBS, you may be able to eliminate the symptoms. So a better biome may mean a better life,” explained Cmdr. Patrick E. Young, USN, a gastroenterologist at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

Probiotics are “friendly” bacteria because they keep your digestive system healthy and the best studied probiotic in the treatment of IBS is Bifidobacterium infantis. Data shows that it reduces bloating, abdominal pain, and passing of gas, it also ease the bowel movement difficulty and normalize the aberrant peripheral cytokine levels.

Will the new "Satisfries" from Burger King Satisfries you?

Burger King introduces it's new Diet fries they call "Satisfries" that they claim are 20% healthier and with the same taste as regular fries.

The company said that the newly-designed batter means the potato will absorb less oil. The "Diet" fries are being introduced to the menu at Burger King to attract more health-conscious customers.

The new Burger King "Satisfries" have 20% less calories than regular fries. The small portion of a regular Burger King fries have 320 calories the "Satisfries" have only 270 calories in it.

The company also claims that their diet fries have about 40% less fat and 30% less calories than fries sold by McDonald's.

The "Satisfries" are crinkle-cut so that staff can tell the difference when serving them.

The suggested price for a small order of "Satisfries" is $1.89, while the regular fries cost $1.59.