We may finally know what causes Alzheimer’s – and how to stop it

A genuine smile can be a greeting, a door opener, and initiate a contagious response. When we are embarrassed or ashamed because of missing, discolored, or crooked teeth, we lose a genuine asset to our interpersonal relationship building. Dental veneers can be a valuable tool in restoring your smile.

It’s relatively normal to be scared of going to the dentist. But what if we told you it could lead to a mouthful of mercury?

Researchers in Turkey published in the journal Radiology, showing that a new type of MRI scan has the slightly worrying effect of, er, making your fillings leak mercury into your mouth. Yes, it turns out a simple medical scan might give you a free helping of delicious heavy metals.

First, a quick recap: MRI – which stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging – is a technique for scanning the body that has been around for nearly 50 years already. It relies, as the name suggests, on using strong magnetic fields to generate images of internal organs.

So how strong is a “strong magnetic field”? A standard MRI uses a magnetic field of 1.5T (Teslas – the unit of measurement for magnetic field strength). For comparison, the magnetic field surrounding the entire planet is only about 0.00005T. So, pretty strong.

But since the early 2000s, a new type of MRI scanner has been in commercial production – and it can produce magnetic fields of 7T and higher. In 2003, the FDA declared strengths of up to 8T a “non-significant risk”, and the new machines quickly proved popular for research and clinical use – despite concerns that not enough research had been done into their safety. In particular, researchers questioned whether enough was known about how the ultra-high magnetic fields would affect surgical and dental implants in patients.

This is where the new study comes in. The researchers took 60 “human teeth that had been extracted for various reasons”, which sounds very fine and not suspicious, and gave them all amalgam fillings – that’s the silver type you probably think of as a “normal filling”. They then divided the teeth into three groups: one underwent a normal 1.5T MRI scan, one had a 7T scan, and a control group had no scan at all. After nine days brewing in vials of artificial saliva, the amount of mercury that had leaked out of the teeth was measured and recorded.

The results were … not great. Although the mean amount of mercury that leaked in a normal MRI was a little higher than the control group, the teeth that had the ultra-high MRI scan had lost nearly five times as much. The researchers also noted that problems have been found with other dental implants, with gold and platinum crowns becoming hotter under the higher magnetic fields.

Despite the worrying results of the study, it’s important to remember that mercury-based fillings have been in common use for hundreds of years, and are declared safe by the FDA, the American Dental Association, the UK’s NHS, Health Canada and many more – and although ultra-high field MRI scans might be on their way, you’re unlikely to undergo one for a very long time.

The first thing Larry Dougherty noticed about his dental school classmate Ana Paula Ferraz was her long, jet black hair. As Ana got to know Larry, she fell in love with his kindness and sense of humor.

After dental school, it was “I do” for the couple. Ana and Larry married in a small, 60-person wedding at an old estate home in Miami. One of their most special guests – the couple’s rat terrier Chi Chi, in full top-hat regalia – even rode to the wedding with Larry in the limo. “It was perfect,” Ana says. “We couldn’t stop smiling.” And they haven’t stopped since. Today, dentists Ana and Larry run their own practice and have some “been there, done that” advice to share for anyone getting ready to celebrate a wedding.

Whitening for the Wedding

The dress isn’t the only thing that’s white at many weddings. Some couples, including Ana and Larry, whiten their teeth for sparkling smiles on the big day. “If I were to whiten my teeth for a wedding, which I did, I would have a dentist do the whitening in an office,” Dr. Ferraz said. “That way, you can see results right away and not have to worry about placing whitening trays in your mouth every day.”

Because whitening can make your teeth feel more sensitive, Ana and Larry whitened their teeth a month before the big day. “We scheduled the appointment early to give our smiles time to adjust, which I recommend,” she says. “That way, by your actual wedding day, your teeth aren’t too sensitive.”

There are also some at-home options you can use, such as trays you can get from your dentist. You can also use whitening toothpaste or strips with the ADA Seal of Acceptance. That way, you know they are safe and effective. Ask your dentist which method is best for you, but above all, stay away from home remedies, which can actually do more harm than good.

Schedule a Dental Appointment Early On

“Weddings mark such momentous days in our lives, and our smiles are a big part of them,” Ana says. “The last thing you want to worry about is a toothache on your wedding day or on your honeymoon.”
If you don’t see a dentist regularly, the time leading up to your wedding can be a great time to start. Schedule an appointment a few months out to avoid painful and possibly expensive problems around your wedding. “I once cared for a patient whose wisdom teeth were infected less than two weeks before her wedding,” he says. “Having regular dental visits can help reduce your chances of a dental emergency or needing a procedure that close to the wedding.”  Need a dentist? Find one today!

Wedding Day Must-Haves

If your bridesmaids are putting together an emergency kit, there’s one item Ana recommends bringing along. “Have one of your bridesmaids carry floss and little compact mirror to make sure there’s nothing in your teeth and everything looks good,” she says. “That’s what I did.”
Regular brushing and cleaning between your teeth should help your breath stay fresh, but feel free to also pack some sugarless gum with the ADA Seal of Acceptance if you need a breath boost during the day. “Also, avoid food that can leave your breath not as fresh, like onions or garlic,” she says.

Commit to a Daily Dental Routine

Your wedding is just one small part of a long life with your partner. When it comes to your dental routine, don’t let it slide after tying the knot. Ana and Larry followed a healthy dental routine before the wedding.—and have kept up a sweet daily ritual together since then.  “We have our own little routine in the morning where we brush and floss together,” Ana says of her bathroom moments with Larry.

Sometimes, they even chat over the noisy buzzing of their electronic toothbrushes. “It can be hard to hear her but that doesn’t keep me from talking,” Larry says. “I always have something nice to say.”

That four-year boost – found in an analysis of more than 1,000 obits from around the country – was calculated after taking into account the sex and marital status of those who died, two factors that have strong effects on lifespan.

The boost was slightly larger (6.48 years) in a smaller study of obituaries published in a Des Moines, Iowa, newspaper.

“Religious affiliation had nearly as strong an effect on longevity as gender does, which is a matter of years of life,” said Laura Wallace, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in psychology at The Ohio State University.

The study was published online today in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

The researchers found that part of the reason for the boost in longevity came from the fact that many religiously affiliated people also volunteered and belonged to social organizations, which previous research has linked to living longer.

“The study provides persuasive evidence that there is a relationship between religious participation and how long a person lives,” said Baldwin Way, co-author of the study and associate professor of psychology at Ohio State.

In addition, the study showed how the effects of religion on longevity might depend in part on the personality and average religiosity of the cities where people live, Way said.

The first study involved 505 obituaries published in the Des Moines Register in January and February 2012. In addition to noting the age and any religious affiliation of those who died, the researchers also documented sex, marital status and the number of social and volunteer activities listed.

Results showed that those whose obit listed a religious affiliation lived 9.45 years longer than those who didn’t. The gap shrunk to 6.48 years after gender and marital status were taken into account.

The second study included 1,096 obituaries from 42 major cities in the United States published on newspaper websites between August 2010 and August 2011.

In this study, people whose obits mentioned a religious affiliation lived an average of 5.64 years longer than those whose obits did not, which shrunk to 3.82 years after gender and marital status were considered.

Many studies have shown that people who volunteer and participate in social groups tend to live longer than others. So the researchers combined data from both studies to see if the volunteer and social opportunities that religious groups offer might explain the longevity boost.

Results showed that this was only part of the reason why religious people lived longer.

“We found that volunteerism and involvement in social organizations only accounted for a little less than one year of the longevity boost that religious affiliation provided,” Wallace said. “There’s still a lot of the benefit of religious affiliation that this can’t explain.”

So what else explains how religion helps people live longer? It may be related to the rules and norms of many religions that restrict unhealthy practices such as alcohol and drug use and having sex with many partners, Way said.

In addition, “many religions promote stress-reducing practices that may improve health, such as gratitude, prayer or meditation,” he said.

The fact that the researchers had data from many cities also allowed them to investigate whether the level of religiosity in a city and a city’s “personality” could affect how religious affiliation influenced longevity.

The findings showed that a key personality element related to longevity in each city was the importance placed on conformity to community values and norms.

In highly religious cities where conformity was important, religious people tended to live longer than non-religious people.

But in some cities there is a spillover effect.

“The positive health effects of religion spill over to the non-religious in some specific situations,” Wallace said. “The spillover effect only occurs in highly religious cities that aren’t too concerned about everyone conforming to the same norms. In those areas, non-religious people tend to live as long as do religious people.”

Way said there are limitations to the study, including the fact that it could not control for important factors related to longevity such as race and health behaviors. But a potential strength was that, unlike other studies, religious affiliation was not self-reported, but was reported by the obituary writer.

Overall, the study provided additional support to the growing number of studies showing that religion does have a positive effect on health, Wallace said.

 Explore further: Researcher studies the impact religion has on sleep quality

More information: Does Religion Stave Off the Grave? Religious Affiliation in One’s Obituary and Longevity. Social Psychological and Personality Science. doi.org/10.1177/1948550618779820

Lindsey Bever  June 12 at 1:17 PM

(Courtesy of the Sooter family)

For hours, Matt Sooter had been watching his two young children talk and play.

Maybe the conversation was about Queen Elsa or plastic Easter eggs — two topics his 4-year-old, Adalynn “Addy” Sooter, knew well. He doesn’t recall what the two were discussing that Saturday night at a hospice facility in Arkansas, where Addy lay dying after a long battle with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG), a rare tumor that starts in the brainstem.

But the father does remember the heart-wrenching moment that followed — when Addy’s 6-year-old brother, Jackson, told his younger sister good night for the last time.

Sooter, 29, said that Addy was tiring and that it was time for Jackson to head to sleep not far from his sister’s bedside. Jackson let his sister hold his hand, then he patted her forehead and said, “I love you.”

Sooter snapped a picture and posted it on Facebook on June 2 — capturing a heart-wrenching moment that has been shared across social media.

“A little boy should not have to say goodbye to his partner in crime, his play mate, his best friend, his little sister,” Sooter wrote in the post. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. But this is the broken world we live in.”

Sooter explained that his daughter’s symptoms were progressing quickly and urged family members and close friends to say their goodbyes.

He then asked for prayers for their family — specifically for Jackson.

“He doesn’t want to leave her side and we won’t make him,” he wrote.

[A nurse’s gut-wrenching goodbye to a dying patient]

Jackson knew that his sister had a tumor and that, if it kept growing, she would die. His father said that it made Jackson sad that his “sissy” would no longer be there but that he was glad “she was going to be with Jesus.”

Sooter said Tuesday in an interview with The Washington Post that about 20 minutes after Jackson tucked his sister in, her breathing changed — it became slower, more labored and more erratic. She opened her eyes a couple of times, but she was not coherent, Sooter said.

For the next several hours, Sooter and his wife, Chandra, sat on either side of their daughter’s bed. Then, just after 1 a.m. on June 3, Addy died.

They woke up Jackson about 4 a.m., deciding there was no reason to continue to stay at the hospice facility. It was time to go home, grieve and rest.

“We told Jackson that she had passed — that she was with Jesus and she wasn’t hurting anymore,” Sooter said. “He said ‘Goodbye, Sissy,’ and they went out to the car.”

Sooter posted a photo later that morning, showing Addy wearing a bright white sun hat.

“Our sweet little girl received the miraculous healing that we’ve all been praying for so long and ran into the arms of Jesus,” he wrote. “She passed from this life to the next just as she had lived: stubbornly but also peacefully, and surrounded by family. She wasn’t in any pain at the end.

“For those who were wishing to say goodbye I’m so sorry,” he added. “This all happened so much faster than we expected, but that in itself is a blessing because she suffered so little at the end.”

In 2016, the Sooters, from Rogers, Ark., noticed their daughter’s gait was a bit strange — she was swinging one of her legs instead of picking it up and planting it on the ground. The couple didn’t think much about it until her symptoms started to progress. The then-toddler soon started to lose coordination and motor function, her father said.

“She was still walking but only if she could hold your hand,” he said. “Otherwise, she would crawl.”

In November of that year, Addy was diagnosed with DIPG — a rare and incurable tumor that starts in the brain stem, which controls “breathing, heart rate and the nerves and muscles that help us see, hear, walk, talk and eat,” according to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The hospital states that about 10 to 20 percent of pediatric brain tumors are DIPG.

For the next 19 months, Addy underwent 33 radiation treatments in Arkansas, then 10 experiential chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments in Mexico to try to buy her more time, Sooter said.

But they also tried to enjoy the moments they had left with Addy — a Make-A-Wish vacation to Walt Disney World to meet her favorite “Frozen” queen and her first trip to the beach. Then, her father said, there were the little things that were on the 4-year-old’s “bucket list”: playing hide-and-seek and watching YouTube videos of people opening plastic Easter eggs and showing what was inside.

Eventually, the cancer spread to her spine. Her last week, the tumor in her back started pressing on the nerves in her spine, causing her pain, so her parents placed her in hospice care, Sooter said.

Following Addy’s death, her father said he and Chandra donated their daughter’s tumors to scientific research “in hopes of saving future children from a similar fate,” he wrote on Facebook. At Addy’s service Saturday in Rogers, her parents asked family members and friends to wear bright colors “or one of Addy’s favorite colors, pink, purple, or blue,” to celebrate her life.

A filthy first—the six common types of disgust that protect us from disease revealed

June 4, 2018, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Disgust has long been recognised as an emotion which evolved to help our ancestors avoid infection, but now researchers have been able to show the human disgust system is likely to be structured around the people, practices and objects that pose disease risk.

This is the first time researchers have used the perspective of disease to break the emotion of disgust into its component parts, and identify six common categories triggering disgust—the others being skin conditions such as having lesions or boils, food that is rotting or has gone off and having an atypical appearance such as deformity.

The researchers say these findings could help to target public health messaging, for example to encourage handwashing with soap or to counter the stigma associated with sickness.

The study, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), surveyed more than 2,500 people online, listing 75 potentially ‘disgusting’ scenarios they might encounter, ranging from people with obvious signs of infection, pus-filled skin lesions and objects teeming with insects, to listening to sneezes and defecation in the open. Participants were asked to rate the strength of their disgust response to each scenario on a scale ranging from ‘no disgust’ to ‘extreme disgust’.

Of all the scenarios presented, infected wounds producing pus were rated as the most disgusting. The violation of hygiene norms—such as having bad body odour, was also found to be particularly disgusting.

By analysing participants’ responses, researchers were able to identify the six common categories of disgust, which each relate to regularly occurring types of infectious disease threat in our ancestral past. Historically for example, eating rotting food could have led to diseases like cholera, close contact with unhygienic people could have transmitted leprosy, promiscuous sexual practices could have put an individual at risk of syphilis and contact with open wounds could have led to the plague or smallpox infection.

The results confirm the ‘parasite avoidance theory’, in which disgust evolved in animals, encouraging them to adopt behaviours to reduce the risk of infection. This behaviour is replicated in humans where disgust signals us to act in specific ways, which minimise the risk of catching diseases.

Professor Val Curtis, senior author at LSHTM said: “Although we knew the emotion of disgust was good for us, here we’ve been able to build on that, showing that disgust is structured, recognising and responding to infection threats to protect us.

“This type of disease avoidance behaviour is increasingly evident in animals, and so leads us to believe it is evolutionarily very ancient.

“Increasing our understanding of disgust like this could provide new insights into the mechanisms of disease avoidance behaviour, and help us develop new methods to keep our environments, fellow animals and ourselves healthy.”

Interestingly, the survey results showed that there were gender differences in reactions to the disgusting scenarios that were presented, with women rating every category more disgusting than men. This is consistent with the fact that men are known to indulge in riskier behaviour than women, on average. The categories women in the study found most disgusting were risky sexual behaviour and animals carrying disease.

Before the study, the team predicted that types of disgust would correspond directly to categories of disease threat. However, they found that the types of disgust in the brain were more closely linked to the actions that people need to take to avoid disease—for example by not touching oozing skin lesions or approaching people with bad body odour. This corresponds to an evolutionary view of the emotions which are for action; emotions make us do things that put us in a better state with respect to our survival and reproduction.

Micheal de Barra, who co-led the research at LSHTM and now lectures Psychology at Brunel University London, said: “Although we only really came to understand how diseases transmit in the 19th century, it’s clear from these results that people have an intuitive sense of what to avoid in their environment. Our long coevolution with disease has ‘wired in’ this intuitive sense of what can cause infection.”

Researchers say the findings could be used to develop instruments for measuring disgust, to investigate how disgust might vary across cultures and to understand how moral disgust, for example, relates to disease disgust.

 Explore further: Disgust is way of communicating moral rather than self-interested motivation

More information: Curtis V, de Barra M. 2018. The structure and function of pathogen disgust. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/RSTB.2017.0208

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-filthy-firstthe-common-disgust-disease.htjCpml#