Study: Self-control is contagious

Before patting yourself on the back for resisting that cookie or kicking yourself for giving in to temptation, look around. A new University of Georgia study has revealed that self-control—or the lack thereof—is contagious.

In a just-published series of studies involving hundreds of volunteers, researchers have found that watching or even thinking about someone with good self-control makes others more likely exert self-control. The researchers found that the opposite holds, too, so that people with bad self-control influence others negatively. The effect is so powerful, in fact, that seeing the name of someone with good or bad self-control flashing on a screen for just 10 milliseconds changed the behavior of volunteers.

“The take home message of this study is that picking social influences that are positive can improve your self-control,” said lead author Michelle vanDellen, a visiting assistant professor in the UGA department of psychology. “And by exhibiting self-control, you’re helping others around you do the same.”

People tend to mimic the behavior of those around them, and characteristics such as smoking, drug use and obesity tend to spread through social networks. But vanDellen’s study is thought to be the first to show that self-control is contagious across behaviors. That means that thinking about someone who exercises self-control by regularly exercising, for example, can make your more likely to stick with your financial goals, career goals or anything else that takes self-control on your part.

VanDellen’s findings, which are published in the early online edition of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, are the result of five separate studies conducted over two years with study co-author Rick Hoyle at Duke University.

via University of Georgia: News & Information.

Cobra Venom Erases Arthritis Symptoms

In 2002, arthritis sufferer Joe de Casa was working in his Northamptonshire garden in England when a venomous snake bit him. After surviving the bite, de Casa, who struggles with arthritis, claimed that the following months provided his only pain-free days in years.

Such anecdotal claims, including teachings in India’s centuries’ old Ayurveda traditional medicine system, may hold some truth. Venom from cobras may not only treat arthritis, but also prevent further damage from the condition.

Scientists have just determined that Indian monocellate cobra venom displayed anti-arthritic activity during lab tests on rodents, according to a paper that will be in the February-March issue of the journal Toxicon.

While clinical trials on humans are still needed, a cobra venom arthritis ointment is in the works, lead author Antony Gomes told Discovery News.

“We have already prepared such an oil-based preparation (for topical application), which is showing very promising results on humans,” Gomes, a professor of physiology at the University of Calcutta, said.

“As soon as the patent protocol (period) is over, we wish to go for industrial collaboration for marketing,” he added.

For the study, Gomes and his colleagues induced arthritis in lab rats by injecting them with a saline and olive oil solution containing tuberculosis bacteria, which can cause arthritis.

via Cobra Venom Erases Arthritis Symptoms : Discovery News.

One in five has gene that greatly increases odds of surviving to 100 yrs

In the genetic lottery of life expectancy, you might think 100 is a pretty lucky number.

Now it’s just got luckier.

Scientists have discovered that a gene already known to treble your odds of living to 100 may also ward off Alzheimer’s disease.

One in five of us is dealt this genetic hand that promises to extend our lives without the loss of mental agility.

The gene is the first to be identified that actually cuts the odds of Alzheimer’s disease rather than raising them.

Its discovery could pave the way for new drug treatments to combat the devastating illness.

More than 700,000 Britons have Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia and the number of cases is expected to double within a generation.

There is no cure and existing drugs, which raise levels of key brain chemicals, do not work for everyone and their effects wear off over time.

Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York tracked the health of more than 500 elderly men and women for four-and-a-half years.

All were free of dementia at the start of the study but 40 had developed it by the end.

Blood samples showed that the CETP gene, already known to treble-the odds of living to 100, also cut the odds of dementia by 70 per cent.

Genes come in pairs – and it was those with two copies of the ‘centenarian’ version who benefited, both from the added longevity and the Alzheimer’s protection.

They also suffered less age-related memory decline, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported.

Researcher Dr Amy Sanders said: ‘We found that people with two copies of the longevity variant had slower memory decline and lower risk for developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. More specifically-those who carried two copies of the favourable variant had a 70 per cent reduction in their risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease compared with those who didn’t.’

Around one in five of those studied had the required pair of ‘ centenarian’ genes.

via The golden oldie gene: One in five has age-defying ‘centenarian gene’ that greatly increases odds of living to 100 | Mail Online.

Morphine helps wounded avoid post-combat stress

U.S. combat soldiers in Iraq who received a shot of morphine within an hour of being wounded were less likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The painkiller injections are no guarantee of preventing PTSD, according to the report in the New England Journal of Medicine, but the findings may help doctors find a better way to prevent the debilitating psychic strain of combat.

“We are not sure if the effect is from pain reduction or from an effect morphine has on memory consolidation in the brain immediately after a traumatic event. Or it may be both working together,” Troy Lisa Holbrook of the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego said in a telephone interview.

“We need more research to tease those out and find out which one it is,” she said.

PTSD can cause flashbacks, edginess and emotional numbness. The risk depends on the type of traumatic events a person is exposed to. A 1995 survey found that 7.8 percent of the U.S. population was destined to experience PTSD at some point.

“The search for a ‘morning-after pill’ after exposure to traumatic stress is obviously of great importance,” Dr. Matthew Friedman of the National Center for PTSD wrote in a commentary.

The study of 696 members of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, all wounded in Iraq from 2004 to 2006, found that 61 percent of those who eventually developed PTSD had been given morphine, usually within an hour after being wounded.

But 76 percent of those who did not develop PTSD had been given morphine. …

via Morphine helps wounded avoid post-combat stress | Reuters.

Morphine: See opium poppy…

Morphine comes from the latex sap of the opium poppy also known as Papaver somniferum. Opium poppies produce opium, and morphine is one of several alkaloids present in the plant. Morphine is separated from the other alkaloids found in the raw opium usually by a cooking process. – answers

Opium poppy: See Afghanistan…

Based on UNODC data, there has been more opium poppy cultivation in each of the past four growing seasons (2004–2007), than in any one year during Taliban rule. Also, more land is now used for opium in Afghanistan, than for coca cultivation in Latin America. In 2007, 93% of the opiates on the world market originated in Afghanistan^. This amounts to an export value of about $64 billion, with a quarter being earned by opium farmers and the rest going to district officials, insurgents, warlords and drug traffickers. – wikipedia

Afghanistan: See post-comban stress…

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wear on, hundreds of thousands of veterans are at significant risk for a particularly distressing and impairing mental health syndrome: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. First documented in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, PTSD becomes a serious risk when a service member experiences, witnesses, or is confronted with an event involving actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others — welcome to any day in the Global War of Terror. – military.com

In other words, Morphine in the title of this post is acting like a drug, pretending it helps you solve the problem it creates.