Video games make kids eat more says study

An hour spent playing video games may make teenage boys eat more over the rest of the day, a small study suggests.

The study, of 22 normal-weight teens, found that the boys ate a bigger lunch when they had a pre-meal video game, versus an hour spent relaxing. And they did not make up for the extra bites by burning more calories through gaming, or by eating less later in the day.

On average, the boys downed 163 calories more on the day when they played video games, researchers report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Exactly what that means for video gamers' waistlines is unknown. But the findings add to studies that have linked kids' screen time - from TV and computers - to the odds of being overweight.

While those studies observed patterns, and do not prove cause-and-effect, the current study actually tested the idea that something about video-gaming itself might affect eating habits, explained lead researcher Jean-Philippe Chaput.

It's not clear why boys ate more on game day, according to Chaput, who researches obesity and lifestyle at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ottawa, Canada.

"We didn't see an increase in hunger," he said, adding that neither the boys' self-ratings of hunger nor their levels of appetite hormones appeared to be affected by playing video games.

Instead, Chaput speculated that there is a subtle "mental-stress effect", and eating food may satisfy the brain's need for a "reward".

"And most of the food we'd want," Chaput said, "would be sugary and fatty".

He noted that in past research, he has found a similar effect of computer work on calorie intake.

For the current study, Chaput's team had the teenage boys come to a research lab on two separate days: on one morning, they played a soccer video game for an hour, followed by lunch; on another morning, they sat quietly for an hour before lunchtime.

The boys then went home and kept a record of what they ate for the rest of the day.

Overall, Chaput's team found, the teens spent more energy when they played video games than when relaxing. But their food intake more than compensated for the energy they burned that day, netting them an extra 163 calories.

There are still many questions - including whether findings from the research lab translate into the real world.

Chaput speculated that the number of extra calories could be even greater in real life, where kids often spend hours playing video games in a day, and may eat junk food while they play.

On the other hand, it's not clear if the extra calories seen in this study are an "acute effect" that would fade if someone played video games regularly, according to Chaput.

But if video games do regularly affect how kids eat, he said, it would be concerning. Even though an extra 163 calories "sounds minor", Chaput said, "if it is chronic, it could have a major effect over the years".

By comparison, a can of regular coca cola contains 90 calories.

For now, Chaput suggested that parents try to limit their kids' time in front of the TV and computer, and replace some of those sedentary hours with physical activity.

Experts generally recommend that children get no more than two hours of screen time per day. But research suggests that few kids meet that goal.

Chaput suggested that parents "act as role models" for their kids, and spend less time parked in front of the tube themselves. "Go outside and play with your kids," he advised.

Still, Chaput said he is not blaming video games for the childhood obesity epidemic. "Obesity prevention is complex. This is just one factor in the overall picture."

One question for future studies, he said, is what kind of effects "active" video games, like Wii games, might have on kids' calorie balance.

On the positive side, they get users to move and burn calories; but if they also encourage overeating as compared to old-fashioned exercise, like riding a bike, that would be a downside.

Tweet

If you're living in an affluent area means you are more likely to commit suicide

It may come as something of a surprise, but the happiest countries have the highest rates of suicide.

Behavioural scientists found that the more affluent an area then the happier it was, but the more likely its residents are to take their own lives.

They put this down to contrast, with a miserable person in an otherwise happy area likely to feel his lot is comparatively worse.Whereas the same person in an unhappy environment would be less inclined to dwell on his own misery and more able to tolerate it, the study suggests.

Researchers from the University of Warwick and Hamilton College in New York said that previous studies have shown 'happy' nations had high suicide rates, with Denmark often singled out as an example.

The team found the same was true about comparatively happy nations including Canada, the U.S., Iceland, Ireland and Switzerland. To rule out cultural differences and suicide reporting conventions, researchers focused on a single country - the U.S. - to see it the same pattern could be seen across its various states.

They found that states with people who are generally more satisfied with their lives tended to have higher suicide rates than those with lower average levels of life satisfaction.

Utah is ranked first in life satisfaction, but has the ninth highest suicide rate, while New York was ranked 45th in life satisfaction but had the lowest suicide rate in the country. Even after making adjustments for age, gender, race, education and income the link could still clearly be made, the scientists write in the U.S. publication Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

After these adjustments, Hawaii would rank second in average life satisfaction, but with the fifth highest suicide rate in the country. New Jersey would rank near the bottom in life satisfaction (47th) but with one of the lowest adjusted suicide risks (also 47th).

Professor Andrew Oswald, of the University of Warwick, co-author on the report Dark Contrasts: The Paradox Of High Rates Of Suicide In Happy Places, said this could come down to how we judge ourselves by other people.

He said: 'Discontented people in a happy place may feel particularly harshly treated by life. Those dark contrasts may in turn increase the risk of suicide. 'If humans are subject to mood swings, the lows of life may thus be most tolerable in an environment in which other humans are unhappy.'

Professor Stephen Wu of Hamilton College added: 'This result is consistent with other research that shows that people judge their well-being in comparison to others around them.

'These types of comparison effects have also been shown with regards to income, unemployment, crime, and obesity.'

Tweet

Even if you drink just over a unit of beer/alcohol a day "causes cancer"

Drinking a ‘safe’ amount of alcohol below the recommended daily limit increases the risk of developing cancer, with the danger remaining even if you become teetotal, experts say.

New research shows that one in ten cancers in men and one in 33 in women in Britain is caused by drinking – and the figures are on the rise.

Alcohol is blamed for at least 13,000 cases a year, including cancer of the breast, mouth, oesophagus and bowel. Bingeing is responsible for most cases, but some are triggered by drinking at levels below
the suggested daily total, according to the international report.

It found that men who drank more than two standard drinks (or units) a day and women who had more than one were particularly at risk of alcohol-related cancers.

A standard drink is equivalent to a 125ml glass of wine, half a pint of weak beer or a single whisky.

Oxford University researcher Naomi Allen, who helps to compile the ongoing study, said: ‘This supports existing evidence that alcohol causes cancer and that the risk increases even with drinking moderate amounts.’

The study has been tracking volunteers across Europe for years, and Miss Allen said the latest figures understated the risks now.

She added: ‘The results from this study reflect the impact of people’s drinking habits about ten years ago.

‘People are drinking even more now and this could lead to more people developing cancer because of alcohol in the future.’

Figures from eight European countries including Britain were analysed to determine the proportion of cancer cases caused by alcohol, and at what levels of drinking.

NHS guidelines advise that men should drink no more than four units a day while women should not go over three.

Cancers of the pharynx (the cavity behind the nose and mouth), oesophagus and voice box were most commonly caused by alcohol, followed by cancer of the liver.

Overall, in 2008, current and former alcohol consumption caused about 57,600 cases of cancer of the upper digestive tract, bowel and liver in men across Denmark, Greece, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, it showed.

More than half of these cases (33,000) were caused by drinking more than two alcoholic drinks per day. Across all eight countries, some 21,500 cases of upper digestive tract, liver, bowel and breast cancer in women were caused by drinking, of which over 80 per cent (17,400) was due to more than one drink of beer, wine, or spirits per day.

Almost 300,000 cases of cancer are diagnosed each year in Britain. Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, which helped to fund the study, said: ‘Many people just don’t know that drinking alcohol can increase their cancer risk.

‘Keeping alcohol intake to a maximum of one small drink a day for women and two small drinks per day for men can have a real impact.’

The research, published in the British Medical Journal, is part of the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (Epic), which began in 1992 and is one of the largest studies into the links between cancer and diet.

It tracked 360,000 people, mostly aged 35 to 70 when the study started, who were followed up to see how many developed cancer.

Tweet

Why a broken heart 'hurts more' than physical pain??

For centuries poets and songwriters have tried to describe the pain of a broken heart. However, it has taken scientists to prove that the agony of unrequited love is more than a simple emotional response.

Experiments show that being dumped by a lover activates brain regions more usually associated with processing physical pain, such as the searing sensation of being burnt. In other words, a broken heart really does hurt.

The finding could help explain why being given the heave-ho can be so painful for so long. The intriguing idea comes from an American study of 40 men and women whose relationships had ended against their wishes. All said the experience left them deeply hurt.

Their brains were scanned as they looked at various pictures. They rated looking at the picture of an ex and being touched with a hot probe as more painful than thinking about a friend or being touched with a cooler probe. More interestingly, they said that break-up thoughts hurt as much as the hot probe.

Analysis of the scans revealed that the same brain regions lit up when processing the two types of pain, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports. Pugh University of Michigan researcher Ethan Kross said: 'These results give new meaning to the idea that social rejection "hurts".'

'On the surface, spilling a hot cup of coffee on yourself and thinking about how rejected you feel when you look at the picture of a person that you recently experienced an unwanted break up with may seem to elicit very different types of pain.

'But this research shows that they may be even more similar than initially thought.' Other research has shed light on why we often yearn to get back together with a lost love Brain scans of men and women pining for a past partner revealed that a broken heart triggers the same feeling in the brain as kicking a drug addiction.

But there is hope for the lovelorn. The study showed that the greater than number of days since the rejection, the less activity there was in the parts of the brain behind emotional attachment.

Tweet