Pennington Biomedical Research Center Research Study Measurements CREDIT Pennington Biomedical

January is when many people are looking for new diet routines, and intermittent fasting is trending, as are traditional calorie-cutting programs.

Research conducted with animal models suggests that intermittent fasting slows ageing, and those animals live longer. Researchers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and the University of Alabama at Birmingham are conducting the DiAL-Health study to see if eating for 8 hours and fasting for 16 each day shows similar results in people. These researchers are looking for healthy adults aged 25-49 to participate.

“Time-restricted eating has many of the same benefits of a traditional weight-loss diet and may be easier to follow,” said Dr. Corby Martin, Professor and Director of the Ingestive Behavior, Weight Management and Health Promotion Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical. “In the DiAL-Health study, we’re obtaining much needed information on time-restricted eating, or intermittent fasting, so we can truly see if it can slow aging and improve ‘healthspan.’ Healthspan is the length of your life that you are free of diseases like diabetes or high blood pressure.”

“Traditional diets, or calorie counting, have been around for hundreds of years, but intermittent fasting has become more popular as an option in recent years as it is likely easier to follow,” Dr. Redman said. “In addition to affecting health and possibly longevity, both methods promote weight loss and overall metabolic health, which can help address the nation’s obesity epidemic.”

Sick building syndrome is an elusive health condition – we have a limited understanding of it, other than its core symptoms and that it’s most commonly developed by poor office environments. Workspaces that are dirty, unorganised, lacking in natural light and using outdated equipment can cause employees to feel intense symptoms of sickness, including nausea, headaches, eye strain, dry skin and others that have now been officially recognised by the NHS as a result of a poor working environment.

But with hybrid working becoming more common, what does sick building syndrome mean for home workers? How can we craft our own home office spaces to combat sick building syndrome? Can hybrid working cause our homes to make us sick?

Causes of sick building syndrome

Research into sick building syndrome has found that there are multiple inadequacies in office environments which can bring about symptoms.

Poor ventilation

Poor air quality is one of the most common causes of sick building syndrome, triggering allergies, headaches, poor concentration and fatigue. A study in 2021 by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found a link between poor office air quality and cognitive ability – meaning poor ventilation can harm both your health and productivity.

Poor lighting

Natural light in an office is the most sought-after feature by employees. It’s not just an aesthetic benefit, however – 84% of workers exposed to natural light have reported a reduction in eyestrain and headaches.

Irregular temperatures

The National Institute of Health indicates that sick building syndrome symptoms increase with the temperature when there is no humidity. A rising temperature can aggravate some specific symptoms, such as sensations of skin, eye and throat dryness.

Poor organisation

The NHS notes the link between poor organisation and cleanliness as another contributing factor. Messy desks and workspaces can allow for a material build-up of dust, triggering allergies, and a mental build-up of stress, triggering anxiety.

Preventing sick building syndrome in your home office

According to ONS Data, 44% of UK workers are now hybrid working – with Microsoft reporting that 56% of workers feel happier since making the transition away from office-based working.

The largely positive response to hybrid working suggests a large percentage of the workforce want to continue home working for the foreseeable future. This makes sick building prevention increasingly important – the last thing anyone wants is for their home to become a place of illness. Here are some suggestions from the experts.

Update your home office

A home office should look different to everyone, and should be tailored to your specific needs. If you suffer from various aches and strains, there are lots of tools available to reduce tension:

• Neck pain – consider an elevated platform for your monitor. This will improve posture and reduce strain on the neck.
• Back pain – ergonomic office chairs reduce strain on the back for long periods of sitting.
• Wrist pain – wrist rests for keyboards reduce tension whilst typing.
• Eye strain – update your monitor to one with a higher refresh rate (commonly listed as ‘Hz’). The higher the refresh rate, the more smoothly images will transition on your screen, helping to reduce headaches.

Top tip: turn on the ‘night light’ in your computer’s display settings to enable a blue light filter. This will lower eye strain and can improve your sleep pattern.

Invest in natural lighting

Fitting high-quality windows into your home office can boost your quality of life at work. A higher intake of natural light reduces headaches and eye strain, as well as making us more productive.

Kevin Brown, Managing Director and aluminium windows expert at The Heritage Window Company, states: “Thinner window frames and more natural light brings us closer to nature – allowing us to bring the outside into our workspace. Feeling closer to nature dramatically increases our mood, which in turn affects our well-being and productivity.”

Greater access to natural light can also treat seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which causes fatigue, depression and social withdrawal. SAD affects around two million people in the UK, making larger windows a key player in boosting serotonin levels throughout the darker months.

Choose an appropriate workspace

85% of those currently working from home want to continue hybrid working for the rest of their careers – so choosing an appropriate room for your home office is a must.

Whether you have lots of space or very little, it’s vital that you do not design an office in your bedroom. Your bedroom should only be associated with rest and sleep. The visual stimulant of a workspace in your bedroom can trigger stress and anxiety, harming your quality of sleep and blurring the lines between work and relaxation.

Instead, you should consider choosing a spare room with south-facing windows to design your office. Kevin explains, “South-facing windows are great for solar control. They let in light all day long, as well as being less heat and glare-prone than east and west-facing windows.”

“This is great for the immune system and for access to the energy-boosting properties of natural light – as well as keeping your home office at a regulated temperature in the winter.”

It’s also wise to invest in an air purifier for your chosen space. These vary in price and size depending on the size of your chosen room, but most decent purifiers start at around £50 for a small-medium sized room. Air purifiers help eliminate allergens from the air, as well as reducing dust build-up. This should help keep your air quality and workspace clean.

Finally, avoid placing your desk and monitor against a wall that doesn’t have windows directly behind it. Instead, leave space behind your monitor for natural light to fill. Dark space behind monitors can cause eye strain due to sharp contrast, in turn causing headaches with prolonged use.

Many push desks against walls because they are close to plug sockets, shortening the distance between devices and cables and therefore making your electrical equipment neater. Proper cable management should remedy this concern, with clever management tools like cable trays, covers, boxes, rackets and ties organising your cables into tucked-away bundles.

Top tip: stick an extension cable to the underside of your desk, alongside an under-desk management tray. This should stop your cables from hanging and keep wires in an easy-to-manage space – reducing the build-up of dust and removing a messy eyesore.

We hope you’re feeling inspired to set up the home office of your dreams. There’s only one thing left to do now – get planning!

Study one of few to examine health benefits of Mediterranean diet in a non-Mediterranean context and to assess the health benefits of an overall Mediterranean lifestyle

• In a study of adults in the United Kingdom, those who adhered closely to a Mediterranean lifestyle—including eating a healthy, plant-based diet with limited added salts and sugars and getting adequate rest, exercise, and socialization—were found to have a 29% lower risk of all-cause mortality and a 28% lower risk of cancer mortality compared to those who were nonadherent to the lifestyle.
• Adherence to Mediterranean lifestyle habits around adequate rest, exercise, and socialization was most strongly associated with lower risk of all-cause and cancer mortality, and was independently associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality.

Embargoed for release: Wednesday, August 16, 2023, 4:00 PM ET

Boston, MA—People who adhere to a Mediterranean lifestyle—which includes a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; healthy eating habits like limiting added salts and sugars; and habits promoting adequate rest, physical activity, and socialization—have a lower risk of all-cause and cancer mortality, according to a new study led by La Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. People who adhered to the lifestyle’s emphasis on rest, exercise, and socializing with friends had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality.

The study will be published on Wednesday, August 16, in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

While many studies have established the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet and lifestyle, little research has been conducted on the diet outside of its region of origin. “This study suggests that it’s possible for non-Mediterranean populations to adopt the Mediterranean diet using locally available products and to adopt the overall Mediterranean lifestyle within their own cultural contexts,” said lead author Mercedes Sotos Prieto, Ramon y Cajal research fellow at La Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and adjunct assistant professor of environmental health at Harvard Chan School. “We’re seeing the transferability of the lifestyle and its positive effects on health.”

The researchers analyzed the habits of 110,799 members of the UK Biobank cohort, a population-based study across England, Wales, and Scotland using the Mediterranean Lifestyle (MEDLIFE) index, which is derived from a lifestyle questionnaire and diet assessments. Participants, who were between the ages of 40 and 75, provided information about their lifestyle according to the three categories the index measures: “Mediterranean food consumption” (intake of foods part of the Mediterranean diet such as fruits and whole grains); “Mediterranean dietary habits” (adherence to habits and practices around meals, including limiting salt and drinking healthy beverages); and “physical activity, rest, and social habits and conviviality” (adherence to lifestyle habits including taking regular naps, exercising, and spending time with friends). Each item within the three categories was then scored, with higher total scores indicating higher adherence to the Mediterranean lifestyle.

a) Patterns of whorl direction. (b) Manhattan plot and quantile-quantile plot from the discovery and replication cohorts. CREDIT Journal of Investigative Dermatology

The first gene mapping study on human scalp hair whorls not only shows that hair whorl direction has a genetic basis, but also that it is affected by multiple genes. Four associated genetic variants that are likely to influence hair whorl direction are identified, as reported in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, published by Elsevier.

A hair whorl is a patch of hair growing in a circular pattern around a point specified by hair follicle orientations. As an easily observed human trait, scalp hair whorl pattern is typically defined by the whorl number (single or double whorl) and whorl direction (e.g., clockwise, counterclockwise, or diffuse).

Because atypical whorl patterns have been observed in patients with abnormal neurological development, understanding the genetic basis of whorl patterns may help unravel important biological processes.

The first genome-wide association study (GWAS) on human scalp hair whorls was performed among 2,149 Chinese individuals from the National Survey of Physical Traits cohort, followed by a replication study in 1,950 Chinese individuals from the Taizhou Longitudinal Study cohort.

Lead investigator Sijia Wang, PhD, Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, explained, “We know very little about why we look like we do. Our group has been looking for the genes underlying various interesting traits of physical appearance, including fingerprint patterns, eyebrow thickness, earlobe shape and hair curliness. Hair whorl is one of the traits that we were curious about. The prevailing opinion was that hair whorl direction is controlled by a single gene, exhibiting Mendelian inheritance. However, our results demonstrate that hair whorl direction is influenced by the cumulative effects of multiple genes, suggesting a polygenic inheritance.”

The study identifies four associated genetic variants (at 7p21.3, 5q33.2, 7q33, and 14q32.13). These genetic variants are likely to influence hair whorl direction by regulating the cell polarity of hair follicles, with cranial neural tube closure and growth also potentially playing a role.

Professor Wang continued, “While previous work proposed the hypothesis of associations between hair whorl patterns and abnormal neurological development, no significant genetic associations were observed between hair whorl direction and behavioral, cognitive, or neurological phenotypes. Although we still know very little about why we look like we do, we are confident that curiosity will eventually drive us to the answers.”