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Burdock Root

Divisions Plague Dems As Obama Recruits New Allies, Governors
"Four divisive issues could dash President Barack Obama"s hopes of overhauling health care: cost, creating a government-run plan, taxing workers" benefits and penalizing employers that don"t offer coverage," the Associated Press/Boston Globe reports.
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Researchers Say Stress In The Womb Can Last A Lifetime
Visitors can see how their stress levels could affect the heart rate of their unborn baby and find out why pregnant women should reduce their anxiety, at a new exhibit at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, which opens today (30 June 2009).
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BPA Chemical Leaches From Hard Plastic Drinking Bottles Into The Body, Study
New research from the US suggests that people who drink from bottles made of polycarbonate plastic, such as that used to make hard-plastic
Mental Health

Melatonin - The Fountain Of Youth?

Melatonin can slow down the effects of aging. A team at laboratoire Arago in Banyuls sur Mer (CNRS / Universitç© Pierre et Marie Curie) has found that a treatment based on melatonin can delay the first signs of aging in a small mammal. These results appeared in the journal PLoS ONE on 15 June 2009. Better known as the "time-keeping" hormone, melatonin is naturally secreted by the body during the night. It is therefore a kind of biological signal for nightfall, allowing an organism to synchronize itself with the day/night rhythm. At Laboratoire Arago, Elodie Magnanou and her co-workers studied the long-term effects of melatonin on the Greater White-toothed shrew, a small nocturnal insectivorous mammal. Under normal conditions, this animal shows the first signs of aging after reaching 12 months, mainly through the loss of circadian rhythm in its activities. By continuously administering melatonin, starting a little before 12 months, the appearance of these first signs was delayed by at least 3 months, which is a considerable period in relation to the lifespan of this shrew(1). Melatonin is now known to play several beneficial roles. These include being an antioxidant, an anti-depressant, and helping to remediate sleep problems. The next step will be to understand the mode of action of the hormone on aging, so we can perhaps envisage its use on humans. (1)The Greater White-toothed shrew has a lifespan of 12 to 18 months in the wild and up to 30 months in captivity. Captivity does not change the time at which signs of aging appear, it simply lengthens life. Dç©lç©gation Paris Michel-Ange


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