Category: WHY CORNER

[amazon_link asins=’B07CJG1S2T,B0787GLBMV,B0788GVF14,B07BNCF521,B00WJI8J0O,B01LGMJ5XI,B01LA69GN4,060980670X’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’finmeacur-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’4db85f84-8b60-11e8-b40e-458ab3c880ec’]

Eyebrows also help with communication. Often you can tell how a person is reacting to something just by the way he moves his eyebrows. One of the clearest ways to tell somebody what you’re thinking is to simply move your eyebrows up or down. High eyebrows usually denote emotions such as surprise or happiness whereas low furled brows generally denote anger or unhappiness. In fact, people often get more non-verbal cues from eyebrows that from the eyes.

Eyebrows help in identification too. A recent study showed that when the brows — and not the eyes — were hidden, recognition dropped to around 45 per cent. Eyebrows thus play a significant role in how well we recognise others.

The latest theories conclude that eyebrows helped with natural selection. With eyebrows, you recognise friend from foe more easily. When the cavemen saw a bunch of people with spears coming over the ridge, they could more easily recognise who they were from their facial features. If they did not recognise them, they could at least get an idea from their facial expressions as to whether they were angry or pleased. Such cues told them if they should run away, pick up a club to defend themselves, or greet these visitors. In short, such non-verbal communication helped our early ancestors survive.

Source:The Telegraph (Kolkata,India)

Don’t know why you are putting on so much weight? Blame the stress at work and at home.

In a study to show how stress has a direct effect on fat accumulation, body weight and metabolism, scientists have demonstrated that neuropeptide Y (NPY), a molecule the body releases when stressed, can unlock Y2 receptors in the body’s fat cells, stimulating the cells to grow in size and number.

According to Professor Herbert Herzog, director of the neuroscience research programme at Garvan Institute of Medical Research, blocking these receptors will prevent fat growth or make fat cells die.

Herzog said the finding basically showed that when we have a stress reaction, NPY levels rise in our bodies, causing our heart rate and blood pressure to go up. Chronic stress therefore has damaging effects.

Researchers have now figured out how to remove fat from one part of the body and make it grow in another part at least in mice and say their findings could benefit health as well as beauty.

“We have known for over a decade that there is a connection between chronic stress and obesity. We also know that NPY plays a major role in other chronic stress-induced conditions, such as susceptibility to infection. Now, we have identified the exact pathway, or chain of molecular events, that links chronic stress with obesity,” Herzog said.

Interestingly, the study which Herzog has conducted along with scientists from the US and Slovakia shatters myths that stress-mediated fat gain is brain instigated and shows that it is actually just a physiological response of their fat tissue.

Dr Anoop Misra from Fortis Hospital said, “Obesity has been known to be a disease not due to diet but because of stress. Stress increases cortisol level secreted from the adrenal gland which has direct connection to fat accumulation.”

For the study, scientists at Georgetown University fed normal diets and high calorie (high fat and high sugar) diets to stressed and unstressed mice. The mice on normal diets did not become obese. However, stressed mice on high calorie diets gained twice as much fat as unstressed mice on the same diet.

The unexpected finding was that when stressed and non-stressed animals ate the same high calorie foods, the stressed animals utilised and stored fat differently.

“Our findings suggest that we may be able to reverse or prevent obesity caused by stress and diet, including the worst kind of obesity the apple-shaped type which makes people more susceptible to heart disease and diabetes,” said senior author of the Nature Medicine paper, Professor Zofia Zukowska of Georgetown University.

Zukowska’s team also made NPY into a slow-release pellet. When they placed this pellet under the skin of thin rhesus monkeys, they grew pockets of fat around the pellets. Such treatments may help replace the fat lost in people’s faces as they age.

Source:The Times Of India

KnowHow team explains: This is a myth. The blood alcohol level depends solely on the amount of alcohol one has consumed.

[amazon_link asins=’B00L0IDATO,0544373200,0811843513,1542788471,B00DH1SOXO,1465453385,B016NBO424,0762457260,B000FAGW16′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’finmeacur-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’da2046eb-1ceb-11e7-a5ce-d7f78fed67a6′]

Different concentrations of alcohol are absorbed into our system at different rates which can lead to confusion, as can the different number of alcohol units present in various drinks. It is probably a combination of these factors which make people think that mixing drinks make them more drunk.

At parties most people stick to one kind of drink to begin with. It is only when they have consumed enough alcohol for their judgement to become affected that they decide to experiment with other, possibly higher alcoholic drinks. By this time they have probably lost count of their intake, so the following morning’s hangover is blamed on the spectrum of drinks rather than the quantity.

There is a psychological effect, revealed by a number of experiments, in which people who believed they were imbibing alcoholic drinks (which were, in fact, non-alcoholic) exhibited the same symptoms as those consuming the real thing. According to a recent study, drinking that brings blood alcohol concentration to 0.08 per cent or above should make you feel drunk. Though individual responses to drinks vary enormously, that amount of alcohol in the blood will make most people noticeably drunk.

Source:The Telegraph (Koklata, India)