A face full of needles may not be your idea of spa heaven. Yet as more and more of us seek natural alternatives to lasers and Botox, cosmetic acupuncture could well become the new “facelift” of choice.
They are tiny needles, and Most people really don’t feel them go in at all.
The treatment begins with cleansing. Then the needles go in: first a couple in the legs, which stings a little, then one on the belly. Still manageable. Then the face. This feels like red ant bites along the jaw, brows, smile lines and crow’s feet. Ouch. Jimenez, calm and efficient, expresses surprise at your low pain threshold and – perhaps because you are beginning to beg for mercy – the acupunture specialist stops at 12 needles (normally you would get about 14 in the face). Once in, they are, indeed, painless. Point of the exercise: a half-hour relaxing with up to 14 needles in your face can help boost your skin tone and make you look younger
Cosmetic acupunture….click & see
The pros
# Not a syringe, scalpel or laser in sight.
# Relaxing and holistic: your overall health really matters.
# Nurturing: Gemma Jimenez is sympathetic and kind DResults: it really does seem to make a short-term difference.
The cons
# Time consuming: initially you need sessions two to three times a week, then once every three weeks for maintenance.
# Ouch: the needles can smart.
# Pricey: over a lifetime, on a purely cost basis, you might be better off with a scalpel.
The 52-year-old man involved was free of melanoma two years after treatment.
US researchers, reports the New England Journal of Medicine, took cancer-fighting immune cells, made five billion copies, then put them all back.
Scientists in the UK warned that further trials would need to be done to prove how well the treatment worked.
The body’s immune system plays a significant role in the battle against cancer, and doctors have been looking for ways to boost this tumour-killing response.
The 52-year-old man had advanced melanoma which had spread to the lungs and lymph nodes.
“This is another interesting demonstration of the huge power of the immune system to fight some types of cancer”…. says Spokesman, Cancer Research UK
Scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle concentrated on a type of white blood cell called a CD4+ T cell.
From a sample of the man’s white blood cells, they were able to select CD4+ T cells which had been specifically primed to attack a chemical found on the surface of melanoma cells.
These were then multiplied in the laboratory, and put back in their billions to see if they could mount an effective attack on the tumours.
Two months later, scans showed the tumours had disappeared, and after two years, the man remained disease-free.
The new cells persisted in the body for months after the treatment.
‘Immune power’
While claiming this as a world first, the study authors pointed out that their technique applied only to a patient with a particular type of immune system and tumour type, and could work for only a small percentage of people with advanced skin cancer.
Dr Cassian Yee, who led the project, said: “For this patient we were successful, but we would need to confirm the effectiveness of therapy in a larger study.”
A spokesman for Cancer Research UK also said more research would be needed, adding: “This is another interesting demonstration of the huge power of the immune system to fight some types of cancer.
“Although the technique is complex and difficult to use for all but a few patients, the principle that someone’s own immune cells can be expanded and made to work in this way is very encouraging for the work that ourselves and others are carrying out in this field.
Scientists have found a way to give old, tired muscles a new lease of life. Stem cells play a key role in repairing muscle……CLICK & SEE
.
They tweaked biochemical signals in mice to boost the ability of the animal’s stem cells to repair damaged tissue, restoring its youthful vigour.
The breakthrough raises hopes of new treatments for age-related degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
The study, by the University of California, Berkeley, is published in the journal Nature.
“We are one step closer to having a point of intervention where we can rejuvenate the body’s own stem cells so we don’t have to suffer from some of the debilitating diseases associated with ageing” says Dr Morgan Carlson , University of California, Berkeley
Adult stem cells play a key role in helping to repair the mature, differentiated cells that make up the body’s working tissues.
The Berkeley team identified two key regulatory pathways that control how well adult stem cells carry out their repair work.
They were then able to modify the way stem cells reacted to those biochemical signals to revive the ability of muscle tissue in old mice to repair itself nearly as well as the muscle in the mice’s much younger counterparts.
Using adult stem cells to rejuvenate tissue would eliminate the ethical controversy surrounding the use of cells taken or derived from embryos.
Researcher Dr Morgan Carlson said: “We are one step closer to having a point of intervention where we can rejuvenate the body’s own stem cells so we don’t have to suffer from some of the debilitating diseases associated with ageing.”
Regeneration capacity
The Berkeley team compared muscle regeneration capacity of two-year-old mice – comparable in age to a human aged 75-85 – to that in two-month old mice, comparable to a human aged 20-25.
As expected, they found the muscle tissue in the young mice easily replaced damaged cells with healthy new cells, while areas of damaged muscle in the older animals was full of scar tissue.
But when they effectively disabled the “ageing pathway” by blocking production of a key protein called TGF-beta, the level of cellular regeneration in the older animals was comparable the much younger mice.
However, the researchers warned that closing down the ageing pathway completely could run a risk of many health problems, for instance the ability to suppress cell division is key to controlling the development of cancer.
Lead researcher Dr Irina Conboy said the key was to find the right balance between the biochemical pathway which promoted healing, and that which promoted ageing.
“We need to find out what the levels of these chemicals are in the young so we can calibrate the system when we’re older.
“If we can do that, we could rejuvenate tissue repair for a very long time.”
Rebecca Wood, of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: “Since Alzheimer’s causes brain cells to gradually die, research into ways to regenerate them could eventually lead to revolutionary new treatments for this devastating disease.
“More research is needed as this study was conducted on muscle tissue rather than the complex nerve cells in the brain and there are many health problems associated with the suppression of cell division.”
Dr Susanne Sorensen, of the Alzheimer’s Society, said the research was interesting as it had recently been shown that stem cells in the brain might be able to help create new tissue after damage has been done.
“This new research gives further hope that our own stem cells can be used to help regenerate cells in the body.”
The crook of your elbow is a special ecosystem that provides a bountiful home to six tribes of bacteria. Even after you wash, there are still 1 million bacteria living on every square centimeter.
These bacteria are what biologists call commensals, helpful rather than harmful organisms. They moisturize your skin by processing the raw fats that it produces.
The bacteria were discovered as part of the human microbiome project, a study researching all of the various microbes that live in people. The project is in its early stages, but has already established that the bacteria in the human microbiome collectively possess at least 100 times as many genes as the 20,000 or so in the human genome.
The bacterial cells also outnumber human cells by 10 to 1.
Humans depend on their microbiome for essential functions, including digestion, leading microbiologists to conclude that a person should really be considered a superorganism.
According to new research, after diabetic patients drank a special high-flavonol cocoa for one month, blood vessel function went from severely impaired to normal. Flavanols are natural plant compounds also found in tea, red wine, and certain fruits and vegetables. They are responsible for cocoa’s healthful benefits.
The improvement was as large as has been observed with exercise and many common diabetic medications.
The cocoa used in this study is not sold in the supermarket.
