Every once in a while I like to take a look at some of the more pointless pieces of medical research, studies that tell you something you could have guessed without devoting years of research and lots of money to it. Sadly, there’s never a shortage of people with PhD’s willing to tell you the obvious.

An unlucky break

Here’s one I came across just this week. Adolescent girls who take part in high impact sports such as soccer, gymnastics or even cheerleading are at greater risk of having a stress fracture than girls who don’t take part in those activities.

Really! You mean if I do things where I’m flinging my body around I’m more likely to hurt it than if I’m just sitting at home reading a book or playing video games. Amazing.

Remarkably that came from folks that you think would know better, researchers at Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. And it was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, a really well-respected journal.

I guess everyone screws up once in a while.

Twist and shout – ouch!

On a similar vein a study from the Center for Injury Research and Policy found that gymnastics is more dangerous than chess, and in fact has an injury rate comparable to ice hockey.

Incredible. I would have thought it was more than ice hockey to be honest because hockey players don’t have so far to fall, and are wearing lots of padding. Gymnasts have flimsy outfits on and are hurling themselves around beams, bars and vaulting horses. That’s one of the reasons I dropped gymnastics at school and took up a much safer sport; rugby!

I drink therefore I am

But it’s not just sports that are the focus of pointless pondering. Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine found – gasp horror shock! – that the heavier a drinker a young person was the more likely they were to have multiple sex partners.

They could have found that out by simply propping themselves on a bar stool in any bar in town and watched the action around them. Probably saved themselves a lot of time and money too.

Who knows, with all that research going on around them they might even have got lucky and taken their “work” home with them.

Sometimes something seems so obvious you don’t even need to point it out. But not apparently if you are a medical researcher. It seems that nothing is so patently clear that they can’t find some pretext to get research dollars to tell us what we already know.

For instance, a new study in the journal Spine says that heavy backpacks put a lot of extra weight on a child’s spine, and the heavier the backpack the more weight and the greater the potential for pain. No kidding! And they needed a study to tell us that?

They could just have gone to any school and seen the kids coming out, doubled over like a fourth grade Quasimodo as they struggle to make it home or to their parent’s car with the equivalent of a small cow on their back. Now, maybe that’s not as thoroughly scientific as doing a randomised control study with complex statistical analysis but you know what, it’s just as true. Or they could just have asked the kids. That would work too.

Here’s my current favorite study. Those lovely people at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that antibiotics that can cause hearing loss in people can actually, when given in extended low doses, protect the hearing of young mice.  You read that correctly, young mice.

Why is this important? Is there a big problem among the adolescent mouse population regarding hearing loss that we need to get to the bottom of (too many mice wearing their iPods too long at high volume no doubt). Are juvenile rodents walking around with ear trumpets so they can hear the delighted squeals of their brothers and sisters who have found a lump of cheese. Who even came up with the premise for this study and thought “hmm, I wonder if this antibiotic which causes hearing loss in people could help protect some other mammalian species?”

Or was it just the pharmaceutical company that makes the antibiotic looking for another market because clearly the human market for a drug that makes you deaf is going to be rather small. But think of the consequences. Now all this mice will be able to hear us setting mouse traps or putting down poison so they know to avoid them. Pretty soon our homes and our cities will be overun with mice spreading plagues and disease and all manner of unpleasant things.

The young mice of the world thank you Professor William W. Clark, PhD. The rest of us, well, we’re not so keen on it.

If your idea of a good workout is driving around a golf course in a cart and playing a round of golf, say bye bye to your brain! A new study says to help protect your mind against the ravages of dementia you need to up the ante a bit. But the good news is you don’t have to do too much more, just get out of the cart and walk!

In one study, done by the lovely people at the Mayo Clinic, researchers found that moderate physical activity performed in midlife or later can reduce the risk of memory loss or other mental problems. At the other end of the scale, in a study out of the University of Washington School of Medicine,  researchers found that people who already have those mild cognitive problems can reduce them or even reverse them, just with some vigorous exercise. Cool eh!

If you want to read the specific details of the studies the research is published in the January issue of Archives of Neurology.

What’s important is that both point to the role that exercise can play in reducing or even reversing memory problems as we get older.  In both cases the researchers were focusing on a condition called mild cognitive impairment, that’s a kind of interim stage where you have trouble remembering things, or learning new things, it’s not normal but it’s not completely losing your marbles. While you might think what’s the big deal, the big deal is that every year around 10-15 percent of people with mild cognitive impairment develop dementia, such as Alzheimer’s, compared to only one or two percent of the general population.

So if getting out of the golf cart and walking can help save your brain, what the heck are you doing sitting there! Get up and move it.

High Blood Pressure, Dementia and Older Women

And if you are looking for another way to reduce your risk of dementia, here’s one, lower your blood pressure. A new study found that older women with high blood pressure are at increased risk of developing brain lesions that can lead to dementia later in life. And while this study was just done in women there’s no reason to think the findings don’t also apply to men.

Researchers with the Women’s Health Initiative followed some 1,403 women over the age of 65 over the course of eight years. At the beginning of the study the women all had their blood pressure measured and underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They underwent similar tests at the end of the eight years.

They found that women who had high blood pressure at the beginning of the study (140/90) had significantly higher amounts of what they called “white matter lesions” in their brain at the end of the study. Those lesions have been shown to interfere with the ability of nerve cells in the brain to communicate with each other. There is also evidence indicating that the greater the number of lesions in white matter, the bigger the risk of dementia.

So, want to keep your brain healthy? Then keep your body healthy. A great way to lower your blood pressure is a diet low in sodium, rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, and lots of exercise. Simple eh!