Health

Water Test to Detect Fluoride

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Researchers at the University of Bath’s Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies and the Water Innovation and Research Centre (WIRC) have developed a simple color changing test to detect fluoride in drinking water. The researches believe this can help prevent bone disease and fluorosis in developing countries. This is because high levels of fluoride can weaken bones, leading to fluorosis. This disease leads to irreversible deformities of the spine and joints and particularly is harmful to children. Such a topic has been covered here before see https://blog.teethremoval.com/large-amounts-of-fluoride-consumed-by-young-children-leads-to-fluorosis/. Fluoride is often added to water in developed countries to help with keeping teeth healthy and prevent tooth decay. However, in some countries there are naturally occur elevated levels of fluoride. Levels of fluoride in drinking water are regularly monitored and controlled at treatment works in developed countries. In other areas of the world there are no piped water system … Read more

Inflammation Plays a Role in Alzheimer’s disease

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Researchers at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the University of Bonn have shown that inflammatory mechanisms from the brain’s immune system drive the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. The research provides new insights into the pathogenetic mechanisms that may hold the potential for preventing Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms show up. Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative condition that eventually leads to dementia. The disease is associated with the aggregation of small proteins called “Amyloid-beta” (Abeta), known as “plaques,” that accumulate in the brain and are believed to harm neurons. Prior studies have shown deposits of Abeta trigger inflammatory mechanisms by the brain’s immune system. Researchers believe that deposition and spreading of Abeta likely precede any clinical symptoms by decades. Even so researchers do not fully understand the processes responsible and thus believe by doing so that effective treatments to target Alzheimer’s … Read more

Health Benefits of Gaming

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After having wisdom teeth surgery many people may just want to lie on the couch and possibly watch TV. However, as you begin to feel better perhaps you think about playing some video games until you make a full recovery. Billions of people across the world currently play video games. However, very few of these gamers will expect to gain any real benefits and in fact may think there are more negative effects. Even so, scientists are increasingly showing that gaming can actually be good for your health in a variety of ways, and that video games can have a multitude of physical and cognitive benefits. Gaming has been used in healthcare to treat a variety of disorders. For example, researchers showed that, in those that had recently undergone trauma or had been through a surgical procedure, gaming could help … Read more

Exploring opioid deaths in chronic pain patients

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Research has found that over half of patients who died from an opioid overdose had been diagnosed with chronic pain and many had psychiatric disorders. The study was conducted by researchers at Columbia University. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the number of opioid-related deaths has quadrupled in recent years, from 8,048 in 1999, to 33,091 in 2015, and the researchers were interested in learning more about what lead those patients to take opioids. The researchers analyzed clinical diagnoses and filled medication prescriptions for 13,089 adults in the Medicaid program who died of an opioid overdose from data collected between 2001 and 2007. During the last year of life, more than half of these adults (61.5%) had been diagnosed with chronic pain and many had also been diagnosed with depression and anxiety. This included 59.3% who were diagnosed with … Read more

Opioid pain relievers to reduce overdose risk

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Researchers at the The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in Florida have developed opioid pain relievers that do not slow or stop breathing which is the cause of overdose. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 91 Americans die every day from opioid overdoses when opiates like heroin, oxycontin, and fentanyl slow and later stop a person’s breathing. The research shows that a range of compounds can deliver pain-blocking potency without affecting respiration. The study builds on two decades of research, where the researchres have long explored whether the painkilling pathway, the G protein pathway, could be unlinked from the breathing suppression pathway, the beta-arrestin pathway. The researchers had their doubts about being able to separate out the pathways and also wanted to know how much separation was needed to see analgesia without respiratory suppression. For the study, the researchers worked to develop … Read more