BODY &SOUL
Stroking cats or dogs can significantly reduce stress
Spending just 10 minutes stroking cats or dogs can significantly reduce your stress levels, new research has found. Scientists in the US have shared their latest findings, which show that owning a pet could have many health benefits over time, thanks to a reduction in the stress hormone.
Researchers from Washington State University studied 249 students as they interacted differently with animals. For the study, the students were broken up into groups, with the first able to pet, play and interact with cats and dogs for 10 minutes. The next group were asked to wait in line for their turn to pet the animals while watching the first group. They were asked to do so without their mobile phones or any other reading material. The third group were asked to watch a slideshow of animals, while a fourth group was waitlisted.
Researchers collected saliva samples from each participant at various times throughout the day, starting in the morning when they woke up. “Students in our study that interacted with cats and dogs had a significant reduction in cortisol, a major stress hormone,” said Patricia Pendry, an associate professor in WSU’s Department of Human Development.
The study, which appears in the journal AERA Open, published by the American Educational Research Association, is the first to demonstrate reductions in students’ cortisol levels during a real-life intervention rather than in a laboratory setting.
“We already knew that students enjoy interacting with animals, and that it helps them experience more positive emotions,” Pendry said. “What we wanted to learn was whether this exposure would help students reduce their stress in a less subjective way, which it did.”
Baby food with added sugar should be banned
The World Health Organisation is recommending a ban on added sugars in baby foods for children younger than 36 months, warning that many products are incorrectly marketed as suitable for babies.
As part of a report released by WHO Europe, two new studies found that in three of four cities profiled, half or more of the baby products surveyed contained more than 30 per cent of their calories in total sugars.
About a third of the foods listed sugar, concentrated fruit juice or other sweeteners as an ingredient, and could damage babies’ first teeth and create a preference for sugary foods from a young age. “Foods for infants and young children are expected to comply with various established nutrition and compositional recommendations. Nonetheless, there are concerns that many products may still be too high in sugars,” said Dr Joao Breda, head of the WHO European Office for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases.
The study examined more than 7,900 food or drink products marketed for infants and young children, sold in 516 stores spread across cities including Austria’s Vienna, Bulgaria’s Sofia and Hungary’s Budapest. A substantial proportion of the products sampled – between 28 per cent and 60 per cent – were marketed as suitable for babies under the age of six months, WHO found.
While permitted under European Union law, WHO recommended that food products to supplement breast milk or formula should not be marketed as suitable for babies under that age. The agency’s report instead recommended revised guidelines for baby food, advising that all added sugars, including fruit juice concentrates, should be banned from commercial baby foods, and fruit drinks, sweetened milk, sweets and sugary snacks should also not be marketed as suitable for infants and young children up to 36 months.
“It is really crucial you have products that are not only sweet products,” said Dr Breda. “If babies are exposed to different tastes from the beginning, they will be more willing to try other things.”
Healthy lifestyle changes can cut risk of dementia
A healthy lifestyle can cut your risk of developing Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia even if you have genes that raise your risk of developing the diseases, a study has found. People with high genetic risk and poor health habits were about three times more likely to develop dementia, than those with low genetic risk and good habits, researchers said. Regardless of how much genetic risk someone had, a good diet, adequate exercise, limiting alcohol and not smoking made dementia less likely.
“I consider that good news,” said John Haaga of the US National Institute on Ageing, one of the study’s many sponsors. “No one can guarantee you’ll escape this awful disease,” he said, but you can tip the odds in your favour with clean living.
The results were published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association and should give encouragement to people who fear that gene mutations alone determine their destiny, said Dr. Rudy Tanzi, a genetics expert at Massachusetts General Hospital. Less than five per cent of the genes tied to Alzheimer’s are “fully penetrant,” meaning they guarantee you’ll get the