The millions of people whose genes make them prone to obesity aren’t at the mercy of nature. How they choose to spend their free time can make a big difference in their waistline, according to new research presented today at an American Heart Association (AHA) meeting in San Diego.

Watching TV for two hours each day increases the effect of certain obesity-related genes by as much as 25%, the researchers estimate.

If, on the other hand, people with a strong genetic predisposition to obesity spend one hour each day walking briskly or engaging in comparable exercise, they can halve the genes’ effect.

“In terms of evolution, this makes sense,” says Dr. Roxanne Sukol, a preventive medicine specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, who was not involved in the study. “We didn’t evolve to sit still for hours a day.”

Read more via Walking can cut obesity gene effect in half

It is far from a shocking revelation that red meat is not health food. But a new study from the highly respected researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health offers some of the best and most detailed evidence yet that a daily serving of meat can increase risk of heart disease or cancer.The Harvard scientists followed almost 84,000 women and 38,000 men in the Nurse’s Health Study and Health Professional’s Follow-Up Study for 28 years. It found those eating a daily serving of red meat were 13 percent more likely to die in the study period, and approximately 14 percent more likely to develop heart disease or cancer. Those numbers go up to 20 percent more deaths and an estimated 18 percent more heart problems and cancer for those who reported eating a daily serving of processed meats such as hot dogs, salami and bacon.

via Vitals – Daily serving of red meat raises risk of cancer, heart disease.

Exercise does a lot of good things — it burns calories, helps keep your weight in check and lowers your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Now add one more thing to the list: physical activity can change your DNA.

Unlike the aberrations and genetic mutations caused by carcinogens and toxins, exercise-induced alterations to DNA are more like tune-ups, helping muscles to work better and more efficiently. What’s more, these changes occur even after a single 20-minute workout.

Using acupuncture to manage severe pain in horses and other animals is not a novel concept, but veterinarians have been hard at work lately combing research studies to better understand this complementary therapys usefulness, efficacy, and safety. During a presentation at the 2011 American Association of Equine Practitioners convention, held Nov. 18-22 in San Antonio, Texas, James Kenney, DVM, an equine practitioner from Clarksburg, N.J., presented an overview of acupuncture and equine pain.”According to the World Health Organization, the effectiveness of acupuncture has been established in controlled clinical trials in humans, and the use of acupuncture to control chronic pain is comparable with morphine without the risk of drug dependence and other adverse side effects,” Kenney explained.After an in-depth discussion of the physiologic mechanisms behind acupuncture and pain control, Kenney discussed clinical research on the use of acupuncture in animals.

via The Horse | Acupuncture and Managing Pain in Horses AAEP 2011.

In a fluorescent-lit exam room, Col. Rochelle Wasserman sticks ballpoint-size pins in the ears of Sgt. Rick Remalia.

Remalia broke his back, hip and pelvis during a rollover caused by a pair of rocket-propelled grenades in Afghanistan. He still walks with a cane and suffers from mild traumatic brain injury. Pain is an everyday occurrence, which is where the needles come in.

“I’ve had a lot of treatment, and this is the first treatment that I’ve had where I’ve been like, OK, wow, I’ve actually seen a really big difference,” he says.

‘Let’s Give It A Shot’

“Army doctors have been told by the top brass to rethink their “pill for every ill” approach to treating pain”

via Military Pokes Holes In Acupuncture Skeptics’ Theory : NPR.

Dr. Lynne Eldridge writes about the benefits of Qigong for about.com.

The research I did in writing this article got me started with doing qigong myself! – Lynne Eldridge, M.D.

Qigong, a Chinese practice that involves meditation, breathing, and gentle movements, is increasingly being used for people living with cancer.

As an “alternative” practice, it is used to help people cope with the symptoms of cancer rather than treat cancer. But a new study shows that it may do more than help with pain and fatigue.

Researchers took a look at all studies published on qigong to date. In total, this included 23 studies that, depending on the study, looked at the physical, psychosocial, and biomedical outcomes of people with cancer who practiced qigong.

They found that people treated with qigong, along with traditional therapies to treat cancer, had a significant improvement in their immune function.

Read her full article via Qigong Benefits Immune Function in Cancer Patients.

Rave-goers and visitors to Amsterdam before December 2008 may be intimately familiar with magic mushrooms, but there’s little scientific knowledge on what happens to the brain while tripping.

Now it appears that more research is warranted. A growing number of studies suggested that perhaps the mushrooms’ key ingredient could work magic for certain mental disorders.

New research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on why one of the mushrooms’ hallucinogenic chemical compounds, psilocybin, may hold promise for the treatment of depression. Scientists explored the effect of psilocybin on the brain, documenting the neural basis behind the altered state of consciousness that people have reported after using magic mushrooms.

“We have found that these drugs turn off the parts of the brain that integrate sensations – seeing, hearing, feeling – with thinking,” said David Nutt, co-author of the study and researcher at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom.

Read more via Magic mushrooms may be therapeutic – – CNN.com Blogs.

Say “placebo effect” and most people think of the boost they may get from a sugar pill simply because they believe it will work. But more and more research suggests there is more than a fleeting boost to be gained from placebos.

A particular mind-set or belief about one’s body or health may lead to improvements in disease symptoms as well as changes in appetite, brain chemicals and even vision, several recent studies have found, highlighting how fundamentally the mind and body are connected.

Read more via Why Placebos Work Wonders – WSJ.com.

The addition of acupuncture to best medical care for chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) may have a positive effect, according to a pilot study published online Dec. 5 in Acupuncture in Medicine.

Sven Schroeder, Ph.D., from the HanseMerkur Centre for Traditional Chinese Medicine at the University Medical Center in Hamburg, Germany, and colleagues evaluated the therapeutic effect of acupuncture on CIPN by measuring the changes in nerve conduction studies. Six patients were treated with acupuncture for 10 weeks, along with best medical care, and five patients were given best medical care with no specific treatment for CIPN (control group).

The investigators found an improvement in the nerve conduction study after treatment in five of the six patients treated with acupuncture. In the control group, one patient showed improvement, one showed impairment, and three showed no difference in the nerve conduction study.

“The data suggest that acupuncture has a positive effect on CIPN as measured by objective parameters nerve conduction study,” the authors write. “This pilot study shows encouraging results for the application of acupuncture in CIPN, justifying a randomized controlled trial.

Read more via Acupuncture May Help Chemo-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy –Doctors Lounge.