Posture can influence mood & behaviour

A person’s posture may affect her emotional state and decision-making capability, says a new study published in the British Journal of Psychology (August). In a laboratory study, researchers at McGill University, Montreal (Canada), found participants who sat upright reported more positive feelings and performed better in a task involving risk and reward than participants who slouched or sat in the control condition. “The effects were relatively small and were observed under controlled conditions. Still, the findings offer new evidence that physical position can influence mood and behaviour,” says the study’s senior author Jorge Armony, professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at McGill U.

Rather than directly instructing participants to sit in a particular way, researchers altered the environment so that posture changed without participants being aware. People in the upright group took greater risks and earned larger rewards over the course of the experiment. “This suggests they were not acting more impulsively but were engaging in more effective risk-taking,” says Armony. Responses to a questionnaire also showed that participants in the upright group reported significantly stronger feelings of pride, an emotion associated with a positive mood.

Social bonding reduces risk of adolescent suicide

Social bonds and recognition reduce the risk of adolescent suicide, according to a new study of the Pennsylvania State College of Health and Human Development (USA) published in Journal of Adolescent Health.

Researchers analysed data of 190,151 students in classes VI, VIII, X and XII who participated in the Pennsylvania Youth Survey (PAYS), a long-running study of behaviour and attitudes related to violence and use of intoxicating and addictive substances. PAYS includes questions about substance use, depression and experiences of being bullied, factors shown to increase suicidal impulses and behaviour.

Teenagers who reported stronger attachment — from low to moderate or from moderate to high — to their immediate family had one-third less suicide risk than their peers, demonstrating the greatest reduction in suicide risk. “We found that strong social bonds help decrease teen suicide risk in every circumstance. While there is no single solution to preventing adolescent suicide, strengthening social bonds can benefit youth,” says Xue Zhang, assistant professor of biobehavioural health and lead author of the study.

Sugar-sweetened beverages raise gastric cancer risk

Sixty-five percent of US adults report consuming one or more sugar-sweetened beverages every day. A study published in Gastro Hep Advances (August) found that consuming sugary drinks daily is associated with increased risk of developing gastric cancer while artificially sweetened beverages (diet soda, zero-sugar energy drinks) weren’t associated with increased risk.

Researchers at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital analyzed data from 112,284 participants in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. Both studies gathered detailed diet, lifestyle and health information on US adults over many decades. During the follow-up period, which spanned decades, 278 participants developed gastric cancer.

“This is the first study to demonstrate an association between sugar-sweetened beverages intake and gastric cancer in the US population.,” says senior author Andrew T. Chan, a gastroenterologist and epidemiologist at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute.

Full-fat dairy products have no health risk 

A new study led by University of Toronto researcher Harvey Anderson published in the Journal of Nutrition (July) has found that three daily servings of full-fat dairy milk products can be incorporated into a person’s diet without negatively affecting her body weight, energy metabolism or blood lipid levels.

In the study, 74 obese adults were randomly assigned one of three diets containing full-fat dairy: a low fat-dairy, calorie-restricted diet, an energy-neutral diet with three daily servings of dairy products or an unrestricted diet with three daily servings

All participants followed Canada’s Food Guide. After 12 weeks, researchers found no significant differences in weight, body composition, or cholesterol levels between low fat-dairy and high fat-dairy groups.“Those who had three servings of dairy didn’t have adverse levels of blood cholesterol or lipids or evidence of insulin resistance,” says Anderson, a professor of nutritional sciences in Toronto University’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine.