James Fishman | Sunstone Online

Music Really Does Soothe the Soul

Most people realize that music can have a calming influence and that it’s used for therapy in many ways. Now, the benefits are even more pronounced. Dr. Diana Vetter and her team at the University of Zurich have found that patients who listen to their favorite music have lower blood pressure and heart rates than do those who don’t. The benefits of the music, interestingly enough, were most pronounced when the patient picked his own play list. Their analysis covered research in the past 15 years. Their findings were published in the Annals of Surgery.

In their study, music was linked to 31% less pain, 29% lower odds of using pain medications and 34% less anxiety.

Marianne van der Heijden, a researcher at Erasmus Medical Center – Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam explained the potential impact of the study. As she said, “Music interventions are not yet part of the system because for an intervention to be formally adapted in medicine and hospitals, efficacy needs to be shown. There now seems to be enough evidence to support the formal adaptation of music interventions in clinical guidelines. Self-selected music interventions shouldn’t be difficult to provide at all and could be realized by creating awareness among hospital staff, patients and their family members about the positive effects of music.”

Brisk Walking May Be the Best Answer to Weight Issues

Research by the London School of Economics might just make you smile. They found that people who walked regularly for exercise had a lower BMI and smaller waist than did those who took part in sports like running, cycling and going to the gym.

Dr. Grace Lordan, who led the research, compared people who said they regularly walked for half-an-hour at a fast-pace with those who did the same amount of manual labor, sports or other rigorous activity. The findings are based on the physical activity levels from the annual Health Survey from England from 1999-2012.

The article will soon be published in the journal Risk Analysis. Read the entire article to learn more.

Can Tea Prevent Broken Bones?

Experts from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, the Royal Perth Hospital and the Flinders University of South Australia in Adelaide have recently conducted a study about the medical benefits of tea. They had an idea that tea might actually help elderly women to improve bone density and they wanted to see if increased tea drinking led to fewer fractures.

Studying close to 1200 women in their seventies over a ten year period, they asked each woman how much tea she regularly drinks and then watched their fracture rate. Women who drank three or more cups of tea every day were 30% less likely to suffer a break than those who drank less than one cup of tea a week.

The concluded that each cup of tea a woman drank each day cut the risk of a fracture by about 9%. As researcher Dr. Jonathan Hodgson explained, |There is increasing interest in the role of dietary factors in osteoporosis and fracture prevention. There is evidence that foods rich in flavonoids – such as fruits, vegetables and tea – may also be related to bone loss and fracture outcomes. Flavonoids are a large class of phytochemicals widely distributed in plant foods. And tea is the main source in many populations.”

He continued, “We have shown that a higher intake of black tea and flavonoids was associated with lower risk of fracture in elderly women. Our results support the hypothesis that tea and its flavonoids may be protective.”

He explained that more research is needed before anyone can conclude that these dietary recommendations would influence osteoporosis, but the findings are definitely interesting. The research was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Being a Mom Might Just Keep You Alive Longer

Your kids might be helping you stay alive, believe it or not. A UK study from the Imperial College London analyzed detailed data on the lives of 322,972 women from ten European countries. They found, during the 13 year study, that women who had children were a fifth less likely to have died in the course of the study. This means that mothers are 20% less likely to die early than are their childless counterparts.

Published in the journal BMC Medicine, it also showed that women who have two or three children are less likely to die of cancer than are others. In addition, mothers who breastfed were 8% less likely to die than were those who bottle fed. The other finding they saw was that women on the pill were 10% less likely to die, as long as they weren’t smokers.

Interesting, while this study didn’t evaluate men, other studies have shown that fatherhood is also good for health. A couple’s happiness increases with the birth of each child – interestingly, until the third. With the fourth child’s appearance, levels of satisfaction start to dip down again.

4 Tips for Better Sleep

If you have trouble going to sleep, or staying asleep through the night, you’re not alone. Almost 40% of the population suffers from some type of insomnia. Here are some tips for making your environment, and your body, ready for a great night sleep.

1. You need to make sure that your bedroom is ready for your sleep. Your bedroom should be calm and relaxing. Your mattress should be comfortable and your bed clothing shouldn’t make you hot or cold. Block out all noise and light so that it’s a dark, quiet room.

2. Use your bedroom only for sleeping and for sex so that you associate your bed with rest and pleasure only.

3. Don’t steal sleep from yourself. Many people will stay up an hour later, thinking it doesn’t make that much of a difference in their sleep. But the sleep that you get before midnight is actually quite important for keeping your immunity up.

4. Taking naps and staying in bed longer on the weekend doesn’t really help. As Professor Colin Espie, a sleep specialist at the University of Oxford said, “Lie ins and long naps at the weekend disrupt our body clocks which could disrupt our sleep in the long term by making it harder to sleep at night during the week.”

4 Safety Tips for Halloween Night

Unfortunately, in addition to the fun to be had on Halloween, there is a lot of danger to be had as well. With so many kids out on the streets, there are bound to be more issues and accidents than usual. Here are four safety tips to ensure that everyone has a blast and stays safe.

1. Decorate your child’s costume and candy bag with reflective tape or stickers and, if possible, put them in a light color. Many accidents occur on Halloween when children are crossing the street or moving from one location to another, and cars don’t see them.

2. Make sure that your child’s costume is flame resistant. Terrible accidents have occurred on Halloween when children have been burnt, or killed, by costumes that catch on fire.

3. Always stay with your child, particularly those younger than 12. If you do let older children out on their own, remind them to stay in a group, not to enter a stranger’s house and to stay in familiar areas.

4. Monitor what candy your children are getting and only allow them to take things that are wrapped and clearly labeled.