Nintendo "brain games" no more effective than low-budget puzzles: researchers

"Edu-tainment" games like the popular Brain Training series (available on the Nintendo DS console) have been credited with bringing a new group of older users to gaming. The game features a number of activities, such as solving math problems, counting currency and unscrambling letters, that Nintendo says is based on the work of Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima.

"The Nintendo DS is a technological jewel. As a game it's fine,” Alain Lieury of the University of Rennes in Brittany, told the Times of London “But it is charlatanism to claim that it is a scientific test.”

Lieury conducted a study with 67 10-year-old children, who are at an age where he says they have the best chance of improvement in brain performance.

He split the children into four groups — two did a seven-week memory improvement course, while the other did puzzles with pencil and paper, and the last went to school as normal.

At the end of the seven-week period, all the children were given tests to measure memory, logic, arithmetic skills and symbol interpretation.

Lieury found no significant improvement in memory among the first two groups — in fact, they registered a decline. The group with paper and pencil did 33 per cent better in memory tests. The Nintendo group did 17 per cent worse.

The Nintendo group did fare better in math tests — a 19 per cent improvement — and that number was replicated in the paper-and pencil-group, while the fourth group improved 18 per cent.

Nintendo, in response, told the Daily Telegraph that it never claimed to have scientifically improved cognitive ability.

Nintendo's website, which doesn't explicitly say Brain Age improves a user's intelligence or memory, nevertheless says it features games "designed to help stimulate your brain and give it the workout it needs .…"

"The design of Brain Age is based on the premise that cognitive exercise can improve blood flow to the brain."

Lieury says doing puzzles like Sudoku or playing Scrabble would be just as effective as playing games like Brain Training. Lieury's findings will be published in Stimulate Your Neurones, a book due out later this month.

Frequent sex linked to higher prostate cancer risk

Men who are very sexually active in their twenties and thirties are at greater risk for developing prostate cancer, a new study suggests, especially if they are frequent masturbators.

I guess too much of a good thing, can be a bad thing....

British researchers asked more than 800 men - about 400 cancer patients and 400 who do not have cancer - about their sexual history, including the number of partners they have had, how frequently they have sex and how often they masturbate.

Among other findings, the team learned that men with prostate cancer were among the subjects who reported having sex with the greatest frequency.

Of the subjects who had been diagnosed with cancer:

• Forty per cent of men in their twenties fell in the highest frequency category, reporting that they had sex 20 or more times per month, compared to 32 per cent in the control group.
• Thirty-four per cent of men in their twenties reported that they masturbated frequently, compared to 24 per cent in the control group.

One theory to explain the link could be that having higher sex hormone levels not only leads to a higher sex drive, but also to a higher risk of cancer, the researchers said.

"Hormones appear to play a key role in prostate cancer and it is very common to treat men with therapy to reduce the hormones thought to stimulate the cancer cells," lead study author Dr. Polyxeni Dimitropoulou, of the University of Nottingham, said in a statement. "A man's sex drive is also regulated by his hormone levels, so this study examined the theory that having a high sex drive affects the risk of prostate cancer."

The level of the men's sexual activity when they were in their forties and fifties did not increase their prostate cancer risk.

In fact, even a low level of sexual activity in their fifties appeared to offer a small amount of protection against the disease.

Dimitropoulou said further research is needed to determine how sexual activity may offer protection for older men.

The findings are published in the journal BJU International.

Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in Canadian men.

The Canadian Cancer Society estimated that more than 24,000 men would be diagnosed with the disease in 2008, and 4,300 would die of it.

Prostate cancer has no single cause, but a man's risk increases as he gets older. Recent research has linked obesity, low levels of physical activity and eating a high-fat diet to an increased risk of developing the disease.

No proof that so-called detox products work

According to scientists who have studied the topic, there is no proof that detox products actually work

Many products that claim to detox the body may not actually work, British scientists warn, as the companies that manufacture them can provide little, if any, research to support their claims.

A report issued by Sense About Science, a British charity founded to protect the public from bogus science claims, compiled data on products ranging from shampoos to cleansers to so-called detox patches.

When they tried to compile scientific information for 15 products that make detox claims, the researchers found that the manufacturers could not provide research to prove the efficacy of their products.

"In fact, no one we contacted was able to provide any evidence for their claims, or give a comprehensive definition of what they meant by 'detox,'" the report said. "We concluded that 'detox' as used in product marketing is a myth."

For example, Garnier's Clean Detox Anti-Dullness Foaming Gel claims it "detoxifies by cleansing the skin's surface."

When researchers called the company to find out how the cleanser detoxifies the skin, they found out that the company defined toxins as dirt and oil, which any cleanser can remove.

The researchers found that similar products like shampoos that claimed to detoxify hair were simply washing hair much like any other shampoo.

The evidence wasn't much better for health products that claimed to detox the body.

The researchers found that Vitabiotics, a daily vitamin that promises to remove toxins and pollutants from the body, was never tested to prove that it works and may only provide the body with nutrients that can be acquired through a healthy diet.

Other products, such as detoxifying waters and smoothies, did not have any scientific evidence to back up their claims of being able to flush toxins out of the system. Some even promised improved functioning of the liver, which processes liquids and neutralizes toxic chemicals that are both produced within the body and come from environmental sources, such as a poor diet.

"Companies use the word 'detox' as a trendy attention-grabber to sell products," said Harriet Ball of Voices of Young Science, the group of researchers that conducted the study.

"This is misleading, suggesting there is something additional or special about the product. Many people would buy face wash with the 'detox' pretense anyway, but the more companies make such claims, the less shoppers really know what they are paying for, nor understand what detox is and whether they even need it."

People should not get confused over the concept of "cleansing" or "detox" itself, as these are valid scientific concepts and natural processes of the body (of all organisms, in fact). The thing is, though, that only the body can cleanse and detox itself through its own natural healing abilities. All a person needs to do is provide the conditions in which the body can perform the detoxification and healing process.
This is done by eating a raw food (fruit and veggie) diet followed by a water-only fast of a few days.

The raw food diet should be followed for 3 weeks before commencing the fast, and then raw food should be used to break the fast and continued that way for another 2 weeks. You'll be feeling years younger after this, and will also be at your ideal body weight. A great part about the diet? There's no money to be spent in this natural process! It's free, and only requires nutritious natural food.

But of course companies will try to exploit people's lack of knowledge on this point and try to sell us whatever they can..(why pay for something, when you don't have to??)

As with all forms of diet and exercise though, Consult a physician before beginning anything..

With these detoxification "diets" you'll feel great at first since it will give you a 'high' as your body enters starvation mode and gives off endorphins so that you can keep functioning to find food. Further, the starvation mode will also tell your body to store fat as rapidly as it can once food is reintroduced. This goes for fasting diets, the maple and lemon diet, and all other fad diets.

Eat a balanced diet and exercise. Then your body will be healthy enough for your liver and kidneys to detoxify itself.