A weekly round-up of news affecting your health.
EXERCISE
Exercise could make the heart younger.
A Harvard University study, published this week, found mice who ran around five kilometres every day made over four times as many new heart muscle cells compared to mice who did no exercise.
The researchers say given losing heart cells is linked to heart failure, the findings have implications for public health, physical education and the rehabilitation of cardiac patients.
"Maintaining a healthy heart requires balancing the loss of heart muscle cells due to injury or ageing, with the regeneration or birth of new heart muscle cells. Our study suggests exercise can help tip the balance in favour of regeneration," co-author Dr Anthony Rosenzweig said.
Professor of Stem cell and Regenerative Biology, Richard Lee said, "Our study shows that you might be able to make your heart younger by exercising more every day."
The study is published in journal Nature Communications.
MEDITERRANEAN DIET
Here's another reason to eat a Mediterranean-type diet: It's good for your gut.
Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found eating a plant-based diet enhanced the good bacteria living in the gut by up to seven per cent, compared to only 0.5 per cent from eating a more meat-centric, Western diet.
Four the study, published in journal Frontiers in Nutrition, 'non-human primates' were either fed a Western or Mediterranean diet for 30 months.
The Western diet consisted of lard, beef tallow, butter, eggs, cholesterol, high-fructose corn syrup and sucrose, while the Mediterranean diet consisted of fish oil, olive oil, fish meal, butter, eggs, black and garbanzo bean flour, wheat flour, vegetable juice, fruit puree and sucrose.
The diets had the same number of calories.
At the end of the 30 months, researchers analysed faecal samples and found the gut bacteria diversity in the Mediterranean diet group was significantly higher than in the group that ate the Western diet.
"We have about two billion good and bad bacteria living in our gut," said lead author Hariom Yadav, assistant professor of molecular medicine and microbiology and immunology at Wake Forest Baptist.
If the bacteria are of a certain type and not properly balanced, a person's health can suffer, Assistant Professor Yadav said.
"Our study showed that the good bacteria, primarily Lactobacillus, most of which are probiotic, were significantly increased in the Mediterranean diet group," he said.
The Mediterranean diet has also been found to improve heart health, and lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the "bad" cholesterol that's more likely to build up deposits in your arteries, according to the Mayo Clinic.
PMS
Heavy alcohol intake may be linked to premenstrual syndrome (PMS), Spanish researchers say.
PMS is suffered by hundreds of thousands of women across the globe and includes any or all of mood swings, tender breasts, food cravings, fatigue, irritability and depression.
Its severity varies from woman to woman.
A study published in journal BMJ Open this week estimates around one in 10 cases of PMS may be associated with alcohol consumption.
The more a woman drank, the greater the association, according to the study.
Researchers at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, reviewed 19 relevant studies published up until May 2017.
The research review, which took in more than 47,000 European participants, showed alcohol intake was associated with a "moderate" heightened risk of PMS of 45 per cent, rising to 79 per cent for heavy drinkers.
"These findings are important, given that the worldwide prevalence of alcohol drinking among women is not negligible," the authors wrote.
