Month: January 2022

Giving makes us feel connected to others and reinforces a positive self-image.

The joy of giving does not fade like the joy of getting, new research reveals.

Usually when people repeat pleasant experiences, happiness fades after each one.

However, when people keep on giving to others, the happy feeling remains powerful.

In fact, people in the study were just as happy giving money away after the fifth time as they were the very first time.

It may be because giving makes us feel connected to others and reinforces a positive self-image.

Dr Ed O’Brien, the study’s first author, said:

“If you want to sustain happiness over time, past research tells us that we need to take a break from what we’re currently consuming and experience something new.

Our research reveals that the kind of thing may matter more than assumed: Repeated giving, even in identical ways to identical others, may continue to feel relatively fresh and relatively pleasurable the more that we do it.”

For the study, people were asked to either spend $5 per day on themselves or to give it away to others.

Those that spent the money on themselves saw a pattern familiar to psychologists.

The first day they got a kick out of it, but that quickly faded as the days past (this is called ‘hedonic adaptation’).

But, for those that gave their money away, the joy was just as strong on the fifth day as it was on the first.

Dr O’Brien said they tested all sorts of alternative explanations for their results.

For example, perhaps people thought longer and harder when giving the money away.

This did not explain the effect, though:

“We considered many such possibilities, and measured over a dozen of them.

None of them could explain our results; there were very few incidental differences between ‘get’ and ‘give’ conditions, and the key difference in happiness remained unchanged when controlling for these other variables in the analyses.”

The study is to be published in the journal Psychological Science (O’Brien & Kassirer, 2018).

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Eating high amounts of this type of carbohydrate makes you live longer.

Eating more high fibre foods is linked to a longer life, research finds.

However, it has to be from unprocessed foods.

Dietary fibres are indigestible carbohydrates as our body can’t break them down into sugar.

Fibre helps the body to keep blood sugar in control and makes you feel full for longer.

Consuming 35 g of fibre a day will reduce the risk of early death by more than a third.

Experts say that high fibre intake increases life expectancy, improves blood sugar levels, and causes weight loss, however, processed foods won’t have these beneficial effects.

One study found that consuming 35 g of fibre per day will lower the likelihood of early death by 35 percent compared with those who have only 19 g of fibre a day.

Fibre-rich foods include fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts.

Dr Andrew Reynolds, the study’s lead author, said:

“Try a few different ways to increase your fiber intake, see what works best for you.

If you eat white refined bread or rolls, try changing to wholegrain bread or rolls.

Try brown rice, try brown pasta, try adding half a tin of legumes to meals you already make.”

In this study, adults with prediabetes who consumed foods rich in fibre had lower cholesterol and blood sugar levels as well as losing weight.

Another study has shown that not all foods with fibre are equal.

For example, whole grains are rich in fibre but their beneficial health effects will weaken with processing.

Participants were asked to eat unprocessed or less-processed wholegrain foods like brown rice, intact oats, and whole-grain bread made with coarsely ground flour for two weeks.

In the second fortnight, they ate more processed wholegrain foods like wholemeal bread and instant oats and whole-grain bread made with finely milled flour.

Professor Jim Mann, the study’s senior author, said:

“Wholegrain foods are now widely perceived to be beneficial, but increasingly products available on the supermarket shelves are ultra-processed.”

Eating minimally-processed wholegrain foods showed that participants after their meals had much improved blood sugar levels and during the day they had less swings in blood glucose levels.

During the study period they were asked to maintain their weight but the results showed that they lost a little weight in the first fortnight of consuming less processed whole grains and put on a little weight in the second two weeks of having processed whole grain foods.

The first study was published in PLOS Medicine (Reynolds et al., 2020) and the second study was published in Diabetes Care (Åberg et al., 2020).

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The extracts work by preventing the build up of sticky amyloid beta in the brain.

Compounds found in carrots and green tea have been shown to reverse Alzheimer’s, research finds.

The plant-based treatment was able to completely restore the memories of mice in the study.

Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) is a compound found in green tea.

Meanwhile, ferulic acid is found in rice, tomatoes, carrots, oats and wheat.

For the study, mice genetically programmed to develop the disease were given plant-based supplements for three months.

Although mouse studies often do not translate into humans, the findings are still promising, said Professor Terrence Town, study co-author:

“You don’t have to wait 10 to 12 years for a designer drug to make it to market; you can make these dietary changes today.

I find that very encouraging.”

For the research, 32 mice with Alzheimer’s symptoms were randomly assigned to different diets.

Four groups were fed with different combinations of EGCG and ferulic acid.

The dosages were 30 mg per kilogram of body weight.

This amount could easily be consumed by a human as part of a healthy diet or in the form of supplements.

The mice were given a range of tests of their memory and learning.

These are the mouse-equivalent of tests given to assess dementia in humans.

Professor Town explained the results:

“After three months, combination treatment completely restored working memory and the Alzheimer’s mice performed just as well as the healthy comparison mice.”

The group of mice that did best were those that were given both compounds together.

The two compounds appear to work by preventing the build up of sticky amyloid beta in the brain.

These are the clumps of protein seen in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.

The compounds also reduced neuroinflammation and oxidative stress.

The study was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (Mori et al., 2019).

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Social media use does not predict later depression, research finds.

Using social media does not predict the onset of depression, research finds.

The conclusion contradicts previous studies claiming that social media use causes depression.

The study, unlike previous investigations, followed people for up to six years to see which came first, social media use or depression.

The results showed that heavier social media users did not become more depressed later on.

However, one group of young people (adolescent girls) who were already depressed did end up using social media more.

This suggests social media use does not cause depression, but could be a way of dealing with it (whether successful or not).

Ms Taylor Heffer, the study’s first author, said:

“This finding contrasts with the idea that people who use a lot of social media become more depressed over time.

Instead, adolescent girls who are feeling down may turn to social media to try and make themselves feel better.”

The study followed 594 Canadian children from the 6th, 7th and 8th grades for two years, as well as 1,132 undergraduate students for six years.

Ms Heffer explained the reasoning behind this strategy:

“You have to follow the same people over time in order to draw the conclusion that social media use predicts greater depressive symptoms.

By using two large longitudinal samples, we were able to empirically test that assumption.”

The results showed that social media use did not predict later depression.

However, specifically among adolescent girls, being depressed predicted increasing use of social media.

Ms Heffer said:

“There may be different groups of people who use social media for different reasons.

For example, there may be a group of people who use social media to make social comparisons or turn to it when they are feeling down, while another group of people may use it for more positive reasons, such as keeping in contact with friends.”

The study was published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science (Heffer et al., 2019).

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