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Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences
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Total 132 results found since Jan 2013.
UCLA department of neurosurgery ranked No. 2 in research productivity
The UCLA department of neurosurgery ranks No. 2 in the nation in scholarly research, according to a recent paper evaluating the impact of published articles in the field.
The five-year review, published in the Journal of Neurosurgery, rated the academic publishing output of faculty at 103 American neurosurgical residency programs from 2009 to 2013. The top five programs were UC San Francisco, UCLA, the University of Pittsburgh, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Johns Hopkins University.
“I’d like to personally congratulate the exceptionally productive neurosurgery faculty at UCLA and UCSF,” said Dr. Neil Mart...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - July 29, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Expert advice: How to help an addicted friend or family member get help
Experts understand that addiction isn’t a weakness or moral failing; it’s an illness, much like cancer or heart disease. And It often falls to family members and friends to convince their addicted loved one to seek help. The task can feel like negotiating an emotional minefield with anger, obfuscation and denial among the likely outcomes. How do you know if there’s a problem, when do you intervene and how? Dr. Timothy Fong, associate clinical professor of psychiatry and director of the UCLA Addiction Medicine Clinic, provided guidance in the July 2015 issue of UCLA Magazine. An edited version of the article fo...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - August 1, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
UCLA–Tel Aviv study suggests REM sleep helps the brain capture snapshots of dream images
When we sleep, we experience our most vivid dreams and vigorous brain activity during the rapid eye movement, or REM phase. Although scientists have long suspected that our eyes flicker in response to what our unconscious mind sees in our dreams, no one has been able to prove it.
Now, an international team of researchers led by UCLA’s Dr. Itzhak Fried is the first to demonstrate that during dreams, our eyes and brains respond similarly to how they react to images when we’re awake. Published in the Aug. 11 online edition of Nature Communications, the findings offer a rare glimpse into the working of individual brain...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - August 12, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Keeping gut bacteria in balance could help delay age-related diseases, UCLA study finds
Why do some people remain healthy into their 80s and beyond, while others age faster and suffer serious diseases decades earlier? New research led by UCLA life scientists may produce a new way to answer that question — and an approach that could help delay declines in health.
Specifically, the study suggests that analyzing intestinal bacteria could be a promising way to predict health outcomes as we age.
The researchers discovered changes within intestinal microbes that precede and predict the death of fruit flies. The findings were published in the open-source journal Cell Reports.
“Age-onset decline is very tightly ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - September 11, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
UCLA researchers discover method to measure stiffness of arteries in the brain
UCLA researchers have discovered a noninvasive method to measure vascular compliance — that is, the stiffness of arteries — in the human brain, a finding that may have implications for preventing stroke and diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease earlier.
The UCLA team measured the volume of cerebral arteries using a technique called arterial spin labeling. They measured once at the systolic phase of the cardiac cycle, when the heart is pumping blood into the brain, and again at the diastolic phase, when the heart is relaxing.
The stiffer the arteries they tested, the smaller the change in the arterial blood volume between th...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - September 23, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
High-fructose diet hampers recovery from traumatic brain injury
A diet high in processed fructose sabotages rats’ brains’ ability to heal after head trauma, UCLA neuroscientists report.
Revealing a link between nutrition and brain health, the finding offers implications for the 5.3 million Americans living with a traumatic brain injury, or TBI. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 1.7 million people suffer a TBI each year, resulting in 52,000 annual deaths
“Americans consume most of their fructose from processed foods sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup,” said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery and integrative biology an...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - October 2, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
New app lets you check air quality as easily as checking the weather
Yareli Sanchez lives in Los Angeles and jogs regularly, but she never used to know if the day’s air quality was bad until after she had already set out for a run — her chest would tighten and it would become hard to breathe. She knew poor air quality triggered her asthma, but she didn’t have a convenient way to check the day’s pollution levels.
For the past few months, instead of using trial-and-error, she’s checked UCLA’s new AirForU app, which uses GPS data to give her local air quality ratings. The app is useful for anyone in the U.S. who sees a hazy skyline and wonders how safe it is to breathe outside air...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - October 23, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
$10 million gift to UCLA from Wendy and Leonard Goldberg is largest ever to support migraine research
UCLA Health Sciences has received a $10 million gift, most of which will support multidisciplinary research on migraine, a debilitating neurological disorder that affects 36 million people in the U.S.
The gift was made by philanthropists Wendy and Leonard Goldberg. Wendy Goldberg is an editor and author; her husband, Leonard, is an award-winning film and television producer and executive.
More than 90 percent of sufferers are unable to work during their migraine attacks, costing employers $13 billion a year in lost work days; and every 10 seconds, someone in the U.S. goes to an emergency room with a migraine-related compla...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - December 8, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
At UCLA, it's medicine 2.0
Tucked deep in the basement of UCLA’s Center for the Health Sciences is a room that looks more like an inventor’s fantasy workshop than the medical research facility it is. Tables are piled high with tools, electronics, prototype equipment parts and a few stray robotic arms. Posters on the wall describe pending projects in dense technical language with accompanying photos of futuristic devices.
This hidden space is where scientists are working at the very forefront of technological advances in medicine. Its assemblage of smarts, parts and computers is contributing to an emerging era of personalized, tech-enabled health...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - December 16, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Computational tools could change the way sleep apnea is treated
Imagine that before performing surgery, doctors could consult software that would determine the actual effectiveness of the procedure before even lifting a scalpel.
With the use of a computational model of the human airway being developed by Jeff Eldredge, a professor at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at UCLA, people who suffer from sleep apnea may one day benefit from such a scenario.
Previously, Eldredge, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, had been working on creating models that simulated the interactions between blood and vessel walls with Shao-Ching Huang, an expert in h...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - February 10, 2016 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
UCLA faculty voice: Body mass index perpetuates stigmas and indicates little about health
UCLA
A. Janet Tomiyama
A. Janet Tomiyama is assistant professor of psychology in the UCLA College. Jeffrey Hunger is a doctoral candidate of psychology at UC Santa Barbara. This op-ed appeared March 7 in Zócalo Public Square.
You’ve just returned from your morning run and you’re rustling through your snail mail when you receive some shocking news — an official memo from your employer informing you that your health insurance premium is increasing by 30 percent. You’ve been deemed a health risk, and you are being charged accordingly.
Yet you’re the picture of health: A run is part of your daily routine, you passe...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - April 1, 2016 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Majority of L.A. tenants favor smoke-free apartments, but 80 percent of units are still not protected
Eight of 10 Los Angeles apartment dwellers are not protected from secondhand smoke, and an even bigger percentage — 82 percent — would support smoke-free policies in their buildings, according to a pair of new studies by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
The research was released today to coincide with the kickoff of a new citywide campaign to reduce secondhand smoke in multi-unit apartment buildings.
The two studies outline findings from nearly 1,000 door-to-door interviews with tenants in some of the most densely populated areas of the city of Los Angeles, as well as reports submitted to UCLA by 93 owner...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - April 6, 2016 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
UCLA study identifies how brain connects memories across time
Using a miniature microscope that opens a window into the brain, UCLA neuroscientists have identified in mice how the brain links different memories over time. While aging weakens these connections, the team devised a way for the middle-aged brain to reconnect separate memories.
The findings, which were published today in the advance online edition of Nature, suggest a possible intervention for people suffering from age-related memory problems.
“Until now, neuroscientists have focused on how the brain creates and stores single memories,” said principal investigator Alcino Silva, a professor of neurobiology at the Da...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - May 23, 2016 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
No more sneaking sugar into packaged foods
The iconic black-and-white Nutrition Facts label you find on packaged foods in the United States is getting its first makeover in two decades. The federal government decided last month to update the food label beginning in 2018 by listing how much sugar has been added to a product.
The current label lumps added sugar with naturally occurring sugars in the foods themselves, which is a deceptive practice, said Dr. John Swartzberg, a UC Berkeley clinical professor emeritus and editorial board chair of the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter. So listing added sugar “will hopefully guide people away from consuming products with a ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - June 30, 2016 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Exercise results in larger brain size and lowered dementia risk
FINDINGS
Using the landmark Framingham Heart Study to assess how physical activity affects the size of the brain and one’s risk for developing dementia, UCLA researchers found an association between low physical activity and a higher risk for dementia in older individuals. This suggests that regular physical activity for older adults could lead to higher brain volumes and a reduced risk for developing dementia.
The researchers found that physical activity particularly affected the size of the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain controlling short-term memory. Also, the protective effect of regular physical activit...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - August 2, 2016 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
