HEALTH TRENDS

Singing could help stop snoring

A simple set of daily vocal exercises can strengthen the weak throat and palate muscles, which are a major cause of snoring, experts believe. The discovery was made after a singing teacher devised a way to help a friend stop snoring.

Alise Ojay designed a programme of singing exercises which targeted the throat and stopped both chronic snoring and sleep apnoea, which causes people to stop breathing during deep sleep.

Her finding prompted a major study at Exeter University and the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust in the United Kingdom. It saw 30 snorers try the exercises for a few minutes every day for three months.

By the end of the trial, their snoring had significantly improved, compared to 30 others who didn't try the treatment.

Malcolm Hilton, a consultant otolaryngologist who led the research, stated, "Alise told me that a number of people had benefited from the singing exercise programme she had devised to strengthen the throat muscles. I then set up this trial and the results have been really interesting."

He added, "The conclusion we came to was that the three-month programme of daily singing exercises reduced the frequency and severity of snoring, and improved overall quality of sleep."

Hilton said all the trial participants found the singing exercises easy to perform and were able to keep them up throughout the three months.

"It opens up a whole new avenue of potential treatment which avoids surgery, so it is definitely good news for snorers," he said.

"However, it must be used in conjunction with lifestyle changes. Being overweight, for example, is the biggest, single independent predictor of snoring."

The research has been published in the International Journal of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, an open-access journal.

World First-Aid Day this Saturday

This Saturday, the Jamaica Red Cross will join societies across the world to celebrate World First-Aid Day - an event promoting safer communities and global solidarity. Held under the theme 'First-Aid and Road Safety', approximately 100 societies will be participating world-wide.

Red Cross, Jamaica, will mount activities in the centre of Cross Roads (at the intersection of Old Hope Road and Half-Way Tree Road). Starting at 10:00 am, there will be first-aid and emergency demonstrations; as well as a simulation exercise of a road accident.

At 11:00 am, Red Cross volunteers, community leaders, healthcare providers, emergency medical personnel and the media will join hands to form a 'human chain of help' signifying a solid union between communities. This 'human chain' will also be formed simultaneously around the world under the leadership of other national societies. The entire activity is expected to end by 1 p.m.

Laser-based tool allows surgeons to see where tumour ends, brain begins

A new laser-based technology allows surgeons to delineate between brain and cancer tissue on a microscopic level while they are operating. Used to distinguish between healthy tissue and a tumour in the brains of living mice, the researchers prove in their latest study that the new technique is equally effective in tissue removed from a patient with glioblastoma multiforme, one of the deadliest types of brain tumour.

According to a study published in the Journal of Neurosurgery, patients diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme on average are given 18 months to live after diagnosis. And while surgery is one of the most effective treatments for this kind of tumour, less than a quarter of those operations performed to counteract it achieve the best possible results.

"Though brain-tumour surgery has advanced in many ways, survival for many patients is still poor, in part because surgeons can't be sure that they've removed all tumour tissue before the operation is over," co-lead author Dr Daniel Orringer, a lecturer in the University of Michigan's Department of Neurosurgery, United States, said in a statement.

The new approach, called SRS microscopy, helps through the detection of a weak light signal that comes out of the differing materials after they are hit with light from a non-invasive laser, revealing their chemical signatures. By amplifying this signal by more than 10,000 times, the researchers have discovered a way to make live multicolour SRS images of living tissue or other materials.

As a result, the researchers explain in their new study, they are able to use the technique to discover a tumour's 'margin', or where it ends and the healthy cells begin.

E-cigarette use doubles among US teens

Recent research is showing that electronic cigarettes are gaining favour among teenagers in the United States (US), as new data show a recent doubling in usage.

Last year, 10 per cent of high-school students say they tried e-cigarettes, up from 4.7 per cent in 2011, according to the National Youth Tobacco Survey released last week by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A doubling also occurred among US middle-school students, saying they've experimented with e-cigarettes - from 1.4 per cent to 2.7 per cent - and similar spikes in teen usage were found in the 2013 Florida Youth Tobacco Survey.

"The increased use of e-cigarettes by teens is deeply troubling," CDC Director Tom Frieden said, in announcing the findings. "Many teens who start with e-cigarettes may be condemned to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine and conventional cigarettes."

The CDC survey comes as the federal government is expected to announce, as early as October, its plan to regulate these battery-powered devices as tobacco products. E-cigarettes heat a solution containing nicotine, which is derived from tobacco leaves, into a vapour that users inhale. While they don't have the myriad chemicals of regular cigarettes, they still provide a nicotine kick.

The e-cigarette industry said its product helps adult smokers kick the habit and is not aimed at minors. More states, including Indiana and Mississippi, have banned the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, and others are seeking to tax the devices or extend indoor-smoking restrictions to them.

Breast-feeding may protect against breast cancer

Breast-feeding for more than six months appears to guard non-smoking women against breast cancer for longer periods of time, a new study suggests.

Smoking cancelled the benefits of breast-feeding, but there was a decade of difference in diagnosis among non-smoking, breast-cancer patients, depending on how long they breast-fed, the researchers reported.

Non-smokers who didn't breast-feed or did so for less than three months were diagnosed at an average age of 58, while women who didn't smoke and breast-fed longer than six months were diagnosed at an average age of 68. Those who breast-fed longer than six months but also smoked were diagnosed at an average age of 47.

"Those women diagnosed with breast cancer who did not smoke and breast-fed for longer than six months were diagnosed much later - an average of 10 years later," said study author Emilio Gonzalez-Jimenez, a researcher at the University of Granada in Spain.

Although much research has linked pregnancy and a reduced risk of breast cancer, studies on the protective effects of breast-feeding have produced conflicting results, Gonzalez-Jimenez said.

"There are various explanations why breast-feeding seems to prevent breast cancer," Gonzalez-Jimenez said. "The most probable of these are the hormonal changes that take place during pregnancy and lactation."

Among those changes are reduced levels of oestrogen, which fuel many breast cancers, and physical changes in breast cells.

"I recommend breast-feeding for longer than six months," Gonzalez-Jimenez said.

Not smoking is his other piece of advice.