More data on Hormone Replacement Therapy

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has been controversial in recent years. First thought to be helpful to avoid symptoms of menopause and to reduce the development of cardiac disease in post-menopausal women, clinical trials were halted in 2002 because of significant increases to the development of breast cancer and to no apparent benefit to reducing cardiac disease. While estrogen treatment alone, compared with estrogen + progesterone combinations, is better (reduced risk for developing breast cancer and lowers risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke), further studies have tried to determine if timing of administration offered any effect. Turns out that it does, although it’s not necessarily glowing news. Researchers in Britain just published findings in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (2011, volume 103:296-305) indicating that taking HRT at the time or shortly after onset of menopause significantly increases the risk of developing breast cancer compared with those who took a greater than 5 year break before starting HRT therapy. Data in this paper also validates previous studies by the Women’s Health Initiative. Both groups have now shown that the risk of developing breast cancer increased coordinately with an increase in body mass index, however the risk associated with HRT did not further increase with BMI and therefore obesity does not influence the elevated risk associated with HRT. Additionally, although risk of breast cancer increases with prolonged HRT exposure, these risk levels decrease back to levels of those who have never taken HRT within 2- 3 years.

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writing increases test scores

Everyone has experienced at some point in their life that anxious feeling just before taking an important test. For some, this type of high anxiety can decrease performance leading to lower test scores. Some good news on how to circumvent this has just emerged in a new paper published this week in Science Magazine (vol 331:211-213). Knowing that long-term journal keeping or writing is a therapeutic approach to alleviate depression in some patients, Drs. Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock hypothesized that writing about the fears of the upcoming test just prior to taking the test may help alleviate some anxiety and increase test scores. The researchers tested high school and college students by having them write about their fears about the test 10 minutes prior to test taking and found that this exercise did indeed increase test scores. The writing, they found, had to be about the anxieties they were feeling (termed expressive writing) and that writing about just any topic didn’t produce the same results. This meant that a mere distraction from the test wasn’t enough to reduce anxiety and increase scores, but that discussing the anxiety was important. Overall, this study suggests that a simple writing exercise just prior to an important test may help to increase test scores.

Music and our brains

An interesting paper was just published in Nature Neuroscience recently (online January 9, 2011). Dr. Valorie Salimpoor and her colleagues demonstrated for the first time that music enjoyment results from the release of the pleasure-seeking neurotransmitter dopamine deep within the ancient parts of our brain, the limbic system. Using imaging techniques, PET and functional MRI or fMRI, and linking this data to when people feel the most enjoyment from their music of choice, they show that dopamine is released in the caudate and the nucleus accumbens regions in our brains. Interestingly, the dopamine levels increased both in anticipation of the enjoyment as well as at peak enjoyment levels, although dopamine levels rose at a greater rate during peak enjoyment in the nucleus accumbens while decreased during the peak in the caudate regions. What this means is yet to be deciphered completely.

Why does this matter? Previous reports have implicated dopamine in pleasure from music in the past, however none have done so directly. Also, this clearly shows that these regions within the limbic system are used for more than just survival. An ancient part of our brain is wired to enjoy the less tangible things like music. It helps to explain why music is so important and is such a part of our daily lives. It’s everywhere and it’s used to evoke emotions and to sell us stuff all the time!