Now an Online Game to improve Mental Health of the Youth

A youth welfare group has come up with a new way to improve the mental health of young people: an online video game. Called “Reach Out Central”, this online role-playing game has been promoted by the Inspire Foundation. In this game players can “test-drive life and play it when and how you want to”.

Helping and befriending the computer-controlled characters that inhabit the online world is essential, and the Inspire Foundation hopes skills developed in the game and choices made there about friends, partying, work and life in general will transfer to the real world.

The foundation’s director of programs, Jonathan Nicholas, said that young people aged 16-25 would be targeted, as they were the most vulnerable.

He also said a major focus was to develop a cool, fun game that looked good and was engaging. Engagement was difficult to achieve by simply forcing booklets of information at young people.

Mark Rosser, senior program manager for youth at national depression initiative beyondblue, said one in five young people suffered from depression each year and he was concerned that fewer than 40 per cent of them actually went on to seek help.

Nicholas believes Inspire’s use of an engaging game to deliver mental health information online is a winning strategy. He said much of Reach Out Central’s content was based on an education program used in schools.

“Rather than being a static game it’s probably best to think about Reach Out Central as an online soapie game - we’ll continue to add in and write new storylines,” he said.

The Sony Foundation stumped up the $500,000 needed to develop the game, but it is also supported by beyondblue, NSW Health, Teen Spirit Foundation and The Golden Stave Foundation.

Source : healthyjockey.com

India to have maximum Cardiac cases in the world by 2010

The Institute of Preventive Cardiology (IPC) foundation has associated itself with Emami Foundation to start a Centre on Preventive and Non-invasive Cardiac Care in the city and the Vishwa Jagriti Mission Trust would support the Foundation in this project.

Addressing a press conference, cardiologist Dr Pratiksha Reeg Deb said, “Young India is falling prey to heart-related ailments and is on the verge of an epidemic, which will be much greater that the tsunami,” and added, “We need to awaken the Indian citizens to that they can start the prevention programme before it is too late.”

“Heart disease is a disease of ignorance. Prevention is the only vaccination to heart attack,” is the only piece of advice Dr Deb has to offer to the heart patients.

According to her, due to faulty lifestyle like improper eating habits and patterns, lack of exercise, addictions like alcohol, tobacco, smoking, the risks of problems like diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure and heart ailments are looking up in today’s young generation.

Dr Deb said,”By 2010,India will have the maximum number of cardiac cases in the world and by 2015, 60 per cent of the cardiac deaths in the world.” “About six crore Indian adults are suffering from Coronary Artery Diseases while another 18 crore more face the same risk,” she informed.

Responding to a question, Dr Deb stated that this Preventive and Non-surgical Cardiac Clinic would first examine the financial status of a patient and then decide to offer free treatment to them.

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"Genius" DVDs can harm babies

Watching DVDs
Depending on your child's age, 'genius' DVDs can either slow their ability to learn new words, or have no effect at all DVDs and videos said to stimulate babies' brains can slow vocabulary development if they are overused, US researchers report.

For every hour a day spent watching such recordings, infants aged 8 to 16 months understand an average six to eight fewer words than babies who do not watch them, says Associate Professor Frederick Zimmerman of the University of Washington and colleagues.

Older toddlers are not harmed or helped by the videos, the researchers report in the Journal of Pediatrics.

"The most important fact to come from this study is there is no clear evidence of a benefit coming from baby DVDs and videos, and there is some suggestion of harm," Zimmerman says.

"The bottom line is the more a child watches baby DVDs and videos, the bigger the effect. The amount of viewing does matter."

Zimmerman and colleagues conducted random telephone interviews with more than 1000 families with babies and asked detailed questions about television and video viewing.

Parents of the 8- to 16-month-olds were asked how many words like choo-choo, mummy and nose their child understood.

Parents of the toddlers were asked how many words like truck, cookie and balloon their children knew.

"The results surprised us, but they make sense. There are only a fixed number of hours that young babies are awake and alert," says Professor Andrew Meltzoff, a psychologist who worked on the study.

"If the 'alert time' is spent in front of DVDs and TV, instead of with people speaking in 'parentese' - that melodic speech we use with little ones - the babies are not getting the same linguistic experience," Meltzoff adds.

"Parents and caretakers are the baby's first and best teachers. They instinctively adjust their speech, eye gaze and social signals to support language acquisition.

"Watching attention-getting DVDs and TV may not be an even swap for warm social human interaction at this age. Old kids may be different, but the youngest babies seem to learn language best from people."

Dr Dimitri Christakis, a paediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute who worked on the study, says parents frequently ask him about the value of such videos.

"The evidence is mounting that they are of no value and may in fact be harmful," Christakis says.

Red and Blue Foods Are The Cancer Fighters

· Health properties detected in new laboratory tests
· Pigment can slow growth or even kill tumour cells

* Ian Sample, science correspondent

Natural pigments that give certain fruit and vegetables a rich red, purple or blue colour act as powerful anti-cancer agents, according to a study by American scientists.

The compounds, found in foods such as aubergines, red cabbage, elderberries and bilberries, restricted the growth of cancer cells and in some cases killed them off entirely, leaving healthy cells unharmed.

The study combined laboratory tests on human cancer cells with experiments on animals that were designed to see whether a diet rich in the foods made a difference to their risk of developing cancer.

Foods with the highest levels of the compounds were most effective at slowing cancer growth, with exotic purple corn and chokeberries stopping the growth of colon cancer cells and killing 20% in lab tests. Foods less enriched with the pigments, such as radishes and black carrots, slowed the growth of colon cancer cells by 50% to 80%.

The findings bring scientists closer to unravelling the key ingredients responsible for giving fruit and vegetables their cancer-fighting properties.

Because the pigments, which belong to a class of antioxidant compounds known as anthocyanins, are not easily absorbed by the bloodstream, they travel through the stomach to the gastrointestinal tract, where they are taken up by surrounding tissues.

Their survival through to the lower part of the intestine may be the key to their role in preventing cancers in the tract, the scientists believe.

Researchers led by Monica Giusti, an expert in plant nutrients at Ohio State University, extracted anthocyanins from a variety of exotic and more common fruits and vegetables that all had a deep red, blue or purple hue and added them to flasks containing a suspension of human colon cancer cells.

When the team calculated how much of each extract was needed to reduce cancer cell growth by 50%, they found anthocyanin from purple corn to be the most potent. Chokeberries and bilberries were nearly as effective, while radish anthocyanin required nine times as much - or 131 micrograms per millilitre of cancer cell solution to cut cell growth by half.

In a second study, the researchers fed rats with colon cancer a diet of anthocyanin extracts from bilberries and chokeberries, which are most often used as flavourings in jams and fruit drinks. Colon tumours in the rats fell by 60% to 70% compared with a control group that were not given anthocyanin.

"All fruits and vegetables that are rich in anthocyanins have compounds that can slow down the growth of colon cancer cells, whether in experiments in laboratory dishes or inside the body."
The team are now investigating whether it is possible to modify the structure of the pigment compounds to make them even more potent. Tentative results so far suggest that grafting an extra sugar or acid molecule to the anthocyanins improved their effectiveness.
The work is part of a long-term investigation aimed at a greater understanding of the 600 anthocyanins found in nature. "We're just beginning to scratch the surface of understanding how the body absorbs and uses these different structures," Dr Giusti said.

In June, market researchers reported that sales of anthocyanin-rich blueberries had doubled in the past two years. The berries joined a growing list of what associations marketing the products call "superfoods", alongside oily fish, brazil nuts and tomatoes. Anthocyanins have previously been linked to helping towards a healthy heart and with treating skin conditions.

Source : www.guardian.co.uk

Grilled Meats Good For Dietician But Could Increase Cancer Risk - How to anticipate it ?

Grilled Meat Experts have said that those who live on grilled meats have an increased risk of developing cancer.

Elizabeth Schaub, a registered and licensed dietician on the medical staff at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano, has claimed that eating grilled meats too often can boost the chances of cancer.
"Grilling is a low-fat method of cooking. But we have to be aware that it can increase our risk of cancer if we eat grilled meats too often", says Schaub.

Schaub said that the juicy burgers, particularly the charred ones, are likely to contain cancer-causing carcinogens.When you grill meat some of the fat does drip down on to the charcoal and when fat meets that really high temperature it develops a carcinogen and the smoke carries the carcinogen back up to the meat which can be dangerous for our bodies.

However, Schaub suggested that one way to grill safer is to simply avoid burning or roasting meats. She said that cooking food longer at lower temperatures is best the best alternative in order to also cut down on carcinogens you can decrease the amount of time that the food is actually on the grill. Precook the meat in either the oven or the microwave then finish it up on the grill just to give it a little bit of crispness and a little bit of flavor. Skinless chicken or lean beef or pork, decreasing the amount of fat that’s able to drip down onto the coals also will decrease your carcinogens.

And finally, Schaub explained that its just meat cooked on the grill, not other foods, that can form cancer-causing chemicals. You really don’t get carcinogen development when you grill fruits and vegetables and those can be a nice, flavorful accompaniment to a low-fat piece of meat for a meal.