Category: Longevity & Health

A collaborative systematic review by authors at the Universities of Exeter and Essex, suggests that exercising in nature offers greater improvements in mental and physical well being, compared to exercising indoors.

A total of 833 adults were included in the review, which looked at eleven controlled trials. Exercising in natural environments was associated with greater feelings of revitalisation, increased energy and positive engagement, along with decreases in tension, confusion, anger and depression. People also expressed greater enjoyment and satisfaction with outdoor activity, and stated a greater intent to repeat it.

(Does Participating in Physical Activity in Outdoor Natural Environments have a greater effect on Physical and Mental Wellbeing than Physical Activity Indoors? A Systematic Review. Environmental Science & Technology Journal, March 2011.)

Dutch researchers have found that drinking several cups of tea a day, can cut the risk of death from coronary heart disease by more than a third. They followed 37 500 healthy people for 13 years, and noticed that those who drank between three and six cups of tea a day, were 45% less likely to die from heart disease, than those who drank less than one cup per day. Moderate coffee consumption was also associated with a slightly reduced rate of coronary heart disease mortality.

(Tea and Coffee Consumption and Cardiovascular Morbidity and Mortality. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis & Vascular Biology, 14 July 2010.)

English and Italian researchers investigating the relationship between duration of sleep and mortality from all causes, have performed a systematic review of 16 relevant studies. The studies looked at a total of 1.4 million people, following them up for between 4 and 25 years.

It emerged that people who generally slept for less than six hours per night, were 12% more likely to die prematurely, than those who consistently managed six to eight hours. Longer sleep durations (exceeding nine hours) were associated with a 30% greater risk of death.

(Sleep Duration and All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies. Sleep Journal May 2010.)

American researchers have concluded that older people who follow a Mediterranean diet (typically characterised by a high intake of fish, fruit, vegetables, legumes, cereals and unsaturated fat, a low intake of dairy and meat, and a moderate intake of alcohol), are less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and less likely to progress from MCI to Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Data from 1393 cognitively normal individuals, and 484 individuals with MCI, overall average age 77, was analysed for the study, and participants were followed for an average of over 4 years.

Over that period, 275 of the initially cognitively normal people, developed MCI. Compared to those people with only a low adherance to a Mediterranean diet, those with the highest adherance, had though, a 28% lower risk of doing so. Even those with a moderate adherance showed a 17% lower risk.

Over a similar period, 106 of the 484 individuals with MCI went on to develop AD. Again compared to those with only a low dietary adherance, people with the highest adherance showed a 48% lower risk of progressing from MCI to AD. Those with a moderate adherance showed a 45% lower risk.

(Mediterranean Diet and Mild Cognitive Impairment. JAMA Neurology, February 2009.)

American researchers at the UCLA School of Medicine, looking into the benefits of meditation, have discovered that regions of the brain responsible for regulation of our emotions, are larger in people who have been long-term meditators, compared to those who do not meditate. They used high resolution MRI to scan the brains of 22 participants, aged 30 to 71, all of whom had practised meditation extensively, and compared their scans with those of age-matched controls. Those who meditated had been doing so for between 5 and 46 years, most practised daily, sessions ranged from 10 to 90 minutes, and encompassed a variety of styles.

In the meditators, regions of the brain important in emotional regulation and response control, were significantly larger. Most of the regions identified were in the right hemisphere, associated with sustaining attention and therefore relevant in meditation. The researchers conclude that these enlargements may account for meditators’ ability to cultivate passive emotions, retain emotional stability and engage in mindful behaviour.

(The Underlying Anatomical Correlates of Long-Term Meditation: Larger Hippocampal and Frontal Volumes of Grey Matter. Neuroimage, 15 April 2009.)