We all know that stress and anxiety have been clinically shown to be detrimental to one’s physical health, but what about the opposite? Can holding positive thoughts be an elixir for good health?

Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers set out to find the answer to that question and came up with some enlightening discoveries that could have strong implications for the design of disease prevention and health intervention strategies.

Not only do positive emotions and optimism prevent the ravages caused by stress-related emotions, but they provide protection against cardiovascular disease (CVD) by slowing the progression of disease.

The Harvard researchers found that individuals who felt a greater sense of well-being derived from practicing optimism and holding positive emotions engaged in healthier behaviors such as exercising, eating a balanced diet, and getting sufficient sleep. Those individuals also experienced better biological function, such as lower blood pressure, healthier lipid (blood fat) profiles, and normal body weight.

“The absence of the negative is not the same thing as the presence of the positive. We found that factors such as optimism, life satisfaction, and happiness are associated with reduced risk of CVD regardless of such factors as a person’s age, socioeconomic status, smoking status, or body weight,” said lead author Julia Boehm, research fellow in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health at HSPH. “For example, the most optimistic individuals had an approximately 50% reduced risk of experiencing an initial cardiovascular event compared to their less optimistic peers,” she said.

“These findings suggest that an emphasis on bolstering psychological strengths rather than simply mitigating psychological deficits may improve cardiovascular health,” Kuzbansky said.

Is the overuse of antibiotics and antibacterial products to blame for the pandemic levels of allergic diseases? 

One group of experts seems to think so, and they set out to show that the 100 trillion individual bacterial cells within the intestine might play an important role in influencing and controlling allergic inflammation.

Researchers a the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and collaborators from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and institutions in Japan and Germany published a study in Nature Medicine which looked at how gut bacteria controls allergic diseases.

When the researchers gave mice a broad-spectrum antibiotic – one that kills a wide range of bacteria – the mice showed significantly elevated levels of basophils, a type of white blood cell, and a marked increase in the amount of basophil-mediated allergic airway inflammation. They also had elevated levels of antibodies known to be important in controlling allergies and asthma (IgE class antibodies). The mice were then subjected to common household dust and subsequently showed higher basophil responses in the blood and lymph nodes as well as a heightened allergic response with increased inflammation in the lungs.

The researchers hope to further their understanding of the intricate interplay between the immune system and beneficial, or commensal, bacteria. “It may be beneficial to identify the specific commensals and commensal-derived signals that regulate circulating basophil populations as this could lead to the development of new probiotic or other commensal-derived therapies,” David Artis, PhD says.

The results of their study emphasizes the important function that our gut bacteria provides to influence and regulate our immune system to control not only allergies and asthma, but other inflammatory conditions such as cancer and autoimmune disorders.

Over the past decade, the use of music as medicine has been evolving into an accepted part of recovery programs at hospitals and clinics nationwide. As an adjunct to standard medical treatment, it is used primarily to reduce stress, ease pain, and reduce nausea. Now, researchers are linking certain types of music with enhancing the immune system.

Although the underlying mechanism of the effects of music on the immune system is not fully understood, researchers from Japan found that playing opera and classical music influenced the survival of heart transplants in mice. Both types of music increased the time before the transplanted organs failed, but single frequency monotones and new age music did not.

Some evidence points to music’s healing effects originating with the parasympathetic nervous system, which regulates the bodily functions that we have no conscious control over, including digestion. In this Japanese study, the research team pinpointed the immune system’s source of this protection specifically to the spleen.

Source: Auditory stimulation of opera music induced prolongation of murine cardiac allograft survival and maintained generation of regulatory CD4+CD25+ cells; Masateru Uchiyama, Xiangyuan Jin, Qi Zhang, Toshihito Hirai, Atsushi Amano, Hisashi Bashuda and Masanori Niimi; Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery

Two natural forms of pain relief – the placebo effect and redirecting one’s attention, usually by a high-level cognitive function – were previously thought to rely on the same brain mechanism since both activities originate in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. But a recent study counters that belief and actually shows that adding the two together greatly increases the pain-relieving effect from both applications.

In the study, researchers from Columbia University and the University of Colorado Boulder reduced pain in two ways – either by giving participants a placebo, or a difficult memory task. But when they put the two together, “the level of pain reduction that people experienced added up. There was no interference between them,” says Buhle.

The findings are promising for pain relief. Clinicians use both placebos and distraction—for instance, virtual reality in burn units. But they weren’t sure if one might diminish the other’s efficacy. “This study shows you can use them together,” says Buhle, “and get the maximum bang for your buck without medications.”

As part of a healthy weight loss diet, desserts have long been taboo. Until now, that is. In a surprising discovery, researchers from Tel Aviv University found that when dessert is incorporated into a 600-calorie breakfast, balanced with proteins and carbohydrates, dieters are able to lose more weight — and keep it off in the long run.

Prof. Daniela Jakubowicz, Dr. Julio Wainstein, and Dr. Mona Boaz of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Diabetes Unit at Wolfson Medical Center, and Prof. Oren Froy of Hebrew University Jerusalem, say that the key is to indulge in the mornings when we’re able to expend the extra calories throughout the rest of the day. Indulging early in the morning will also help control cravings, and it provides energy for the day’s tasks, aids in brain functioning, and kick-starts the body’s metabolism. Attempting to avoid sweets entirely can create a psychological addiction to these same foods in the long-term, explains Prof. Jakubowicz.

The TAU researchers conducted a 32-week study which allowed clinically obese, non-diabetic adults to add cookies, cake, and chocolate to their breakfast, and found the participants lost an average of 40 lbs., compared with a control group that abstained from sweets. The study also showed they were able to keep the weight off longer.

One of the biggest challenges that people face is keeping weight off in the long-term, says Prof. Jakubowicz. Ingesting a higher proportion of our daily calories at breakfast makes sense. It’s not only good for body function, but it also alleviates cravings. Highly restrictive diets that forbid desserts and carbohydrates are initially effective, but often cause dieters to stray from their food plans as a result of withdrawal-like symptoms. They wind up regaining much of the weight they lost during the diet proper.

Prof. Jakubowicz suggests, based on the results of the sudy, that curbing cravings is better than deprivation for weight loss success.

And other statistics related to the issue are of grave concern:

• The majority of patients under age 65 years receive at least one prescription drug annually.
• Four million prescriptions for long-acting painkillers are written every year; painkillers are the most commonly prescribed drugs in America.
• In 2007 there were 11,500 deaths related to painkillers; experts say the drugs do not always deliver substantial pain relief, and carry a high risk of addiction, side effects, and death.

Gordon D. Schiff, M.D., from Harvard Medical School, Boston, with colleagues in the medical and pharmacy divisions of the University of Illinois at Chicago, outlines a series of steps in their published report that appeared Archives of Internal Medicine,one of the JAMA/Archives journals, that can be taken to rein in prescription writing. “Although others have used labels such as healthy skepticism, more judicious, rational, careful, or cautious prescribing,” they write, “we believe that the term conservative prescribing conveys an approach that goes beyond the oft-repeated physician’s mantra, ‘first, do no harm.’”

Dr. Schiff’s recommendations include:

• Determine if other interventions besides prescription drugs would be more helpful;
• Use discernment when prescribing to determine the best choices available and avoid using multiple prescriptions;
• Be more vigilant about adverse side effects, including patients’ potential drug reactions, instructing them about the warning signs, and being more discerning about choosing prescriptions that make a patient more prone to withdrawal symptoms or relapse;
• Be judicious about claims being made about any new drug’s benefits, perhaps waiting until it has a proven track record, and ensuring it targets the core issue;
• Collaborate with patients on a shared agenda for more effective treatment, such as encouraging them to use skepticism about promises made in advertisements and re-think demanding those drugs, and encouraging them to be more compliant with suggested approaches to treatment;
• Consider foremost the long-term effects of prescription drug treatments and consider different therapies that are less likely to cause chronic health issues.

The experts recommend taking greater care when deciding to prescribe a drug, especially one that is new or not well understood. “While clinicians must always weigh the benefits of conservative prescribing against the risks of withholding potentially needed medications, at the very least we should seek to shift the burden of proof toward demanding a higher standard of evidence of benefit before exposing patients to the risks of drugs.”

In a study by the University of Bordeaux of 7,625 people aged 65 and older, those who regularly used olive for cooking and as a dressing had a 41 percent lower risk of stroke compared with those who never consumed olive oil.

“Our research suggests that a new set of dietary recommendations should be issued to prevent stroke in people 65 and older,” said study author Cécilia Samieri, PhD, with the University of Bordeaux and the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in Bordeaux, France. “Stroke is so common in older people and olive oil would be an inexpensive and easy way to help prevent it.”

Olive oil is associated with other proven health benefits as well, such as protective effects against diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.

The hypnosis was performed on breast cancer and thyroid patients. ”In all of these procedures local anaesthesia is feasible but not, on its own, sufficient to ensure patient comfort,” says Professor Roelants from the Department of Anaesthesiology at the Cliniques Universitaires St. Luc, UCL, Brussels, Belgium.

“In addition to reducing drug use and hospital stay time, being able to avoid general anaesthesia in breast cancer surgery is important because we know that local anaesthesia can block the body’s stress response to surgery and could therefore reduce the possible spread of metastases,” said Professor Roelants.

The anesthesiologists use eye fixation, progressive muscle relaxation, or the retrieval of a pleasant memory to focus a patient’s attention on one particular point, enabling a modified state of consciousness, with a different perception of the world.

“There is still a lot of debate around the exact mechanism that allows hypnosis to reduce pain perception,” said Professor Roelants,” but what it absolutely clear is that it does so. The result is that one third of thyroidectomies and a quarter of all breast cancer surgery carried out at the UCL hospital are performed under local anaesthetic with the patient under hypnosis.”

The anesthesiologists have confirmed that, regardless of sex or age, and if the patient is motivated, ready to co-operate, and trusts the doctors, hypnosis will work. It can also be applied to surgical patients who undergo carotid artery surgery, inguinal hernia, knee arthroscopy, gynaecological surgery, ophthalmology, ear nose and throat, plastic surgery and egg retrieval for fertility treatment.

The research findings were presented June 12, 2011 at the European Anaesthesiology Congress in Amsterdam.

Dear EarthTalk: Can you explain the 2010 Safe Cosmetics Act? What does it purport to do and has it been signed into law?
– Megan Wilson, Austin, TX

The Safe Cosmetics Act was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in July 2010 by Democrats Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. But it never got past committee reviews and thus never came up for a vote.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has only limited
say in what cosmetics manufacturers can and cannot
put into their products. And the cosmetics industry
has essentially been regulating itself for some three
decades. But critics argue that self-regulation isn’t
appropriate for an industry trading in potentially
carcinogenic products.
Photo credit: Jupiter Images, Thinkstock

The proposed bill aimed to ensure that all personal care products for sale in the U.S. would be free of harmful ingredients and that all ingredients would be fully disclosed. The bill would’ve given the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to prohibit the use of certain ingredients, including carcinogens and reproductive and developmental toxins, to recall products that fail to meet safety standards, and to require product labels to name each ingredient.

The FDA has only limited say in what cosmetics manufacturers can and cannot put into their products. And the cosmetics industry has essentially been regulating itself for some three decades, and would like to keep it that way. In response to failed efforts in the 1970s to force the FDA to regulate cosmetics more like drugs—with required pre-market safety assessments—the industry decided to take matters into its own hands, creating the Cosmetics Industry Review Panel to judge the safety of various ingredients.

Critics argue that self-regulation isn’t appropriate for an industry trading in potentially carcinogenic products. “It’s a panel funded by the trade association,” Stacy Malkan of the non-profit Campaign for Safe Cosmetics told the Washington, DC-based Corporate Crime Reporter. “For 30 years that they have been in operation, they have only looked at about 13 percent of the chemicals in cosmetics. They do cursory reviews. They look mostly for short term health effects. It’s a panel of mostly dermatologists, not toxicologists. So, they don’t have the expertise to be looking at long-term health effects like cancer.”

Another non-profit, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), has identified upwards of 100 different products that passed Cosmetics Industry Review Panel safety assessments despite obvious violations of that body’s own guidelines. According to EWG’s research, 22 percent of all personal care products on store shelves today—including children’s products—may contain a cancer-causing ingredient (1,4-Dioxane), while some 60 percent of sunscreens contain oxybenzone, a potential hormone disruptor.

In response to the government not requiring cosmetics manufacturers to be more responsible, EWG launched the Skin Deep website, an easy-to-use, keyword-searchable database of cosmetics and their health risks and environmental footprints. The idea behind the website is to let users decide for themselves which cosmetics to purchase; EWG hopes that making this information freely available and easy-to-access will help drive demand for safer products.

Supporters of the Safe Cosmetics Act were hopeful that passage of their bill would usher in a new era of more rigorous mandatory screening of cosmetics here at home, and leadership in a global marketplace hungry for safer, greener products. Advocates for safe cosmetics hope that lawmakers will muster the resolve to reintroduce the bill, or another like it, in the current or some future session of Congress.

CONTACTS: FDA, www.fda.gov; Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, www.safecosmetics.org; Corporate Crime Reporter, www.corporatecrimereporter.com; Skin Deep, www.ewg.org/skindeep/.

Dear EarthTalk: What will be the effect of all the flooding along the Mississippi River for organic farmers, given all the pollutants in the water? When they recover, can they still certify their products as organic?
– Michael O’Loughlin, Tigard, OR

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t allow
any flooded out crops — organic or otherwise — to be
sold or consumed by people, due to potential
exposure to sewage, animal waste, heavy metals,
pathogenic microorganisms or other contaminants.
Pictured: An aerial view of farms flooded alongside
the Mississippi River. Photo credit: Lance Cheing,
U.S. Department of Agriculture, courtesy Flickr

The combination of record floods and record numbers of organic farms has led many to wonder about the safety of even our organic groceries. Luckily for Americans, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a policy in place to govern how farmers respond to such situations and how affected crops and fields are handled to ensure that consumers continue to have access to healthy and safe food.

For one, the FDA doesn’t allow any flooded out crops—organic or otherwise—to be sold or consumed by people. The agency considers “ready to eat crops…that have been in contact with flood waters to be adulterated due to potential exposure to sewage, animal waste, heavy metals, pathogenic microorganisms or other contaminants.” Given that there is no known method of “reconditioning” such crops that would “provide a reasonable assurance of safety for human food use,” the FDA instructs farmers to dispose of them “in a manner that ensures they do not contaminate unaffected crops during harvesting, storage or distribution.” So-called “adulterated” food can be seized and violators prosecuted under federal law.

Of course, many farms affected by floods have other fields that remain unaffected. The FDA recommends a 30 foot buffer between flooded areas and fields that can still yield edible food. Also, farm equipment shouldn’t be driven through or exposed to flooded areas (or their affected crops) to minimize the risk of contamination. As to when farmers, organic or conventional, can replant fields inundated with floodwaters, the FDA suggests waiting at least 60 days to ensure contaminants aren’t still in the soil.

No discussion of organic farming and flooding is complete without mention of global warming. Italian researchers analyzed runoff data recorded in the Swiss Alps to study how flood risk varies with temperature, precipitation and elevation in mountainous regions. They reported in the January 2010 edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters that global warming does increase flood risk significantly, and that large floods have occurred more frequently in recent years than in the past.

Furthermore, they predict global warming will result in such floods occurring more often in the future. If global temperatures increase by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, as many scientists expect, so-called “hundred-year-floods” could occur every 20 years or so, putting untold numbers of people at risk. Global warming is also responsible for more frequent and more intense storms that can cause widespread flooding.

The good news is that farming organically is one way to stave off global warming. Research at the Rodale Institute found that “organic farming helps combat global warming by capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide and incorporating it into the soil, whereas conventional farming exacerbates the greenhouse effect by producing a net release of carbon into the atmosphere.” And Cornell University researcher David Pimentel found that organic farms use 63 percent of the energy used by same-size conventional farms, which rely on large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer produced synthetically with large amounts of energy.

CONTACTS: Geophysical Research Letters, www.agu.org/journals/gl/; “Global warming increases flood risk in mountainous areas,” www.idrologia.polito.it/~allamano/lavori/2009GL041395.pdf; Rodale Institute, www.rodaleinstitute.org; “Organic and Conventional Farming Systems: Environmental and Economic Issues,” www.ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/2101/1/pimentel_report_05-1.pdf.

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The “safe” exposure level established by EPA, at 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight per day (50 ug/kg/d), is considered up to 25 times higher than harmful levels. Establishing safe public levels continues to be concern, as BPA is known to cause harmful effects, specifically disrupting the body’s hormone system, since it mimics estrogen – even at low doses.

“Federal health agencies warn parents to limit their children’s BPA exposures,” Environmental Working Group’s senior analyst Sonya Lunder, M.P.H., said. “But with the chemical found in canned food, store receipts and even umbilical cord blood, we think that ‘buyer beware’ isn’t good health policy. Systematic protections for children are the only solution.” EWG has forcefully advocated for health protective safety standards to limit BPA exposures for infants and children.

Hundreds of animal and human studies have linked BPA to abnormal reproductive system development, diminished intellectual capacity, behavioral problems, reproductive system cancer, obesity, diabetes, early puberty, resistance to chemotherapy, asthma, cardiovascular system problems and other chronic disorders. Worker studies have shown lower sperm counts and other ailments of the male reproductive system.