Latest news with #dogs
Daily Mail
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Nicola Peltz and husband Brooklyn Beckham launch Instagram page for their dogs amid feud with his family
Nicola Peltz revealed over the weekend that she and her husband, Brooklyn Beckham, have set up an Instagram page for their dogs. The heiress, 30, told fans on her Insta stories she had a 'very important announcement' to make, adding: 'We made an account for our doggies.' She shared a link to 'peltzbeckhambabies', which featured a snap of one of their pooches, Birdie. The page features images of the couple's other dogs Lamb, Label and Angel, although she referred to them as 'Birdalina', 'Angelina', 'Lambilina', and 'Labellina' in the captions. It so far has just 358 followers, while it only follows Nicola and Brooklyn. It comes months after the couple reportedly set up a new charity dog shelter in Los Angeles. According to The Sun, they launched the Peltz Beckham Foundation, in a bid to rescue and shelter homeless dogs. The couple have been at the center of a feud that pitted Brooklyn, 26, and Nicola against the rest of his family. Last week, it was revealed that Brooklyn and Nicola's Instagram accounts no longer follow his younger brothers Cruz, 20, and Romeo, 22, in the latest family drama. But Brooklyn's friends told that Cruz and Romeo have blocked them on the social media platform. Brooklyn and Nicola are still following his mom Victoria, 51 and dad David, 50. Cruz and Romeo were still following Brooklyn and Nicola earlier this week but appeared to respond after Brooklyn posted a birthday tribute to sister Harper, sharing a family photo which didn't include them - which Nicola reposted. Meanwhile, Nicola doubled down as she declared him 'her everything' on Wednesday. Nicola took to her Instagram Stories with snaps of the pair embracing during their sun-soaked getaway on board her billionaire father's yacht in St Tropez. She also shared a video of herself posing in a black bralette from the trip.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Parkinson's Disease Has a Smell That Some Dogs Can Detect
Dogs really can be trained to smell Parkinson's disease, according to new research from the United Kingdom. In a double blind trial, a Golden Retriever and a Labrador were able to sniff out which skin swabs came from people with Parkinson's. The smell of the oily secretions seemed to hold secret clues. "The dogs in this study achieved high sensitivity and specificity and showed there is an olfactory signature distinct to patients with the disease," says animal behavioral scientist Nicola Rooney from the University of Bristol. "Sensitivity levels of 70 percent and 80 percent are well above chance, and I believe that dogs could help us to develop a quick, non-invasive, and cost-effective method to identify patients with Parkinson's disease." Related: Today, there is no definitive early test for Parkinson's, which is why scientists are so interested in finding potential biomarkers of the disease on our skin. The knowledge that Parkinson's distinctly changes a person's body odor first came to light roughly a decade ago – all because of one woman. Twelve years before her husband's diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, Joy Milne could sense something was off – specifically, she could smell it. Milne, a Scottish nurse, is known as a 'super-smeller', and in 2016, she became famous among neuroscientists for her extraordinary abilities. In a small pilot study, Milne correctly identified each patient with Parkinson's disease based solely on the scent of their shirts. Her one misidentification turned out to be correct nearly a year later. The news raised an important question: If someone like Milne could smell Parkinson's years before it was diagnosed, could a dog do the same? Dogs are known to have incredible senses of smell, far more powerful than our own. Previous studies have found our pets can smell our stress, our coronavirus infections, and even our cancers – so if a distinct odor for Parkinson's does exist, then maybe a dog can sniff it out, too. In the past decade, a few preliminary trials have provided evidence for that hypothesis. But some only gave limited information on how the dogs were trained and tested. The recent trial from the UK is a collaboration between a program called Medical Detection Dogs and neuroscientists at the University of Manchester. One goal of the research is to figure out what the dogs are actually smelling, and why. In 2019, for instance, researchers at Manchester helped identify which odor compounds set the distinctive smell of Parkinson's apart. Their results were later confirmed by Milne, the serendipitous "super-smeller". A few years on, the odor compounds were used to create a diagnostic 'swab test' for Parkinson's, currently in testing. Perhaps, further down the road, trained dogs could help neuroscientists identify more unique biomarkers of the disease. The trouble is, though, not all canines are up to snuff. In the current trial, only 2 out of 10 dogs made it through training, and neither performed perfectly. One dog, for instance, falsely flagged a tenth of the odor swabs from healthy people as having Parkinson's. The other gave false alarms less than 2 percent of the time. Overall, however, the dogs could smell which person had Parkinson's at a rate well above chance, providing proof of principle. "We are extremely proud to say that once again, dogs can very accurately detect disease," says Claire Guest, the CEO of Medical Detection Dogs. "There is currently no early test for Parkinson's disease and symptoms may start up to 20 years before they become visible and persistent leading to a confirmed diagnosis. "Timely diagnosis is key… " The study was published in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease. Related News Expert Reveals What Can Happen if Testosterone Gel Rubs Onto Others Radioactive Waste Exposed Children in Missouri to Cancer Risks, Study Finds A Single Brain Scan Halfway Through Your Life Can Reveal How Fast You're Aging Solve the daily Crossword
Fox News
a day ago
- Health
- Fox News
Trained dogs can smell Parkinson's disease before symptoms show up, study finds
Man's best friend could provide more than just companionship. In a new study from the University of Bristol, dogs were found to detect Parkinson's disease well before symptoms appear. Previous research has shown that people with Parkinson's have increased amounts of sebum — an oily, waxy substance with a distinctively musky odor — on the skin. In the new study, two dogs that had been trained on more than 200 odor samples were presented with skin swabs from 130 people with Parkinson's and 175 people without the disease, according to a press release. The dogs — a golden retriever named Bumper and a black labrador named Peanut — were rewarded for positively identifying Parkinson's samples and for ignoring negative ones. The dogs showed sensitivity of up to 80% — which means they identified people who had the disease 80% of the time. They achieved specificity of up to 98%, which is how good they were at ruling out people who did not have Parkinson's. "The dogs … showed there is an olfactory signature distinct to patients with the disease." The University of Bristol collaborated with Medical Detection Dogs and the University of Manchester on the study, which was published in The Journal of Parkinson's Disease on July 15. While there is no early screening available for Parkinson's, some early warning signs can appear years or even decades before diagnosis, according to experts. "Identifying diagnostic biomarkers of PD, particularly those that may predict development or help diagnose disease earlier, is the subject of much ongoing research," said lead study author Nicola Rooney, associate professor at Bristol Veterinary School at the University of Bristol, in the release. "The dogs in this study achieved high sensitivity and specificity and showed there is an olfactory signature distinct to patients with the disease," she went on. "Sensitivity levels of 70% and 80% are well above chance, and I believe that dogs could help us to develop a quick, non-invasive and cost-effective method to identify patients with Parkinson's disease." Claire Guest, chief scientific officer at Medical Detection Dogs in the U.K., reiterated that the study confirmed dogs can "very accurately" detect disease. "Timely diagnosis is key, as subsequent treatment could slow down the progression of the disease and reduce the intensity of symptoms," she said in the release. Perdita Barran, professor of mass spectrometry at The University of Manchester, said the study "adds to the growing body of evidence showing that simple, non-invasive skin swabs can be used to diagnose Parkinson's disease, offering a faster and more accessible method for early detection." For more Health articles, visit Looking ahead, the team plans to conduct longer-term studies to assess dogs' capacity to detect Parkinson's before diagnosis. The Michael J. Fox Foundation and Parkinson's UK provided funding for this study.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Dogs are helping people regulate stress even more than expected, research shows
In a 2022 survey of 3,000 U.S. adults, more than one-third of respondents reported that on most days, they feel 'completely overwhelmed' by stress. At the same time, a growing body of research is documenting the negative health consequences of higher stress levels, which include increased rates of cancer, heart disease, autoimmune conditions and even dementia. Assuming people's daily lives are unlikely to get less stressful anytime soon, simple and effective ways to mitigate these effects are needed. This is where dogs can help. As researchers at the University of Denver's Institute for Human-Animal Connection, we study the effects animal companions have on their humans. Dozens of studies over the last 40 years have confirmed that pet dogs help humans feel more relaxed. This would explain the growing phenomenon of people relying on emotional support dogs to assist them in navigating everyday life. Dog owners have also been shown to have a 24% lower risk of death and a four times greater chance of surviving for at least a year after a heart attack. Now, a new study that we conducted with a team of colleagues suggests that dogs might have a deeper and more biologically complex effect on humans than scientists previously believed. And this complexity may have profound implications for human health. How stress works The human response to stress is a finely tuned and coordinated set of various physiological pathways. Previous studies of the effects of dogs on human stress focused on just one pathway at a time. For our study, we zoomed out a bit and measured multiple biological indicators of the body's state, or biomarkers, from both of the body's major stress pathways. This allowed us to get a more complete picture of how a dog's presence affects stress in the human body. The stress pathways we measured are the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal, or HPA, axis and the sympathoadrenal medullary, or SAM, axis. When a person experiences a stressful event, the SAM axis acts quickly, triggering a 'fight or flight' response that includes a surge of adrenaline, leading to a burst of energy that helps us meet threats. This response can be measured through an enzyme called alpha-amylase. At the same time, but a little more slowly, the HPA axis activates the adrenal glands to produce the hormone cortisol. This can help a person meet threats that might last for hours or even days. If everything goes well, when the danger ends, both axes settle down, and the body goes back to its calm state. While stress can be an uncomfortable feeling, it has been important to human survival. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had to respond effectively to acute stress events like an animal attack. In such instances, over-responding could be as ineffective as under-responding. Staying in an optimal stress response zone maximized humans' chances of survival. More to the story After cortisol is released by the adrenal glands, it eventually makes its way into your saliva, making it an easily accessible biomarker to track responses. Because of this, most research on dogs and stress has focused on salivary cortisol alone. For example, several studies have found that people exposed to a stressful situation have a lower cortisol response if they're with a dog than if they're alone – even lower than if they're with a friend. While these studies have shown that having a dog nearby can lower cortisol levels during a stressful event, suggesting the person is calmer, we suspected that was just part of the story. What our study measured For our study, we recruited about 40 dog owners to participate in a 15-minute gold standard laboratory stress test. This involves public speaking and oral math in front of a panel of expressionless people posing as behavioral specialists. The participants were randomly assigned to bring their dogs to the lab with them or to leave their dogs at home. We measured cortisol in blood samples taken before, immediately after and about 45 minutes following the test as a biomarker of HPA axis activity. And unlike previous studies, we also measured the enzyme alpha-amylase in the same blood samples as a biomarker of the SAM axis. As expected based on previous studies, the people who had their dog with them showed lower cortisol spikes. But we also found that people with their dog experienced a clear spike of alpha-amylase, while those without their dog showed almost no response. No response may sound like a good thing, but in fact, a flat alpha-amylase response can be a sign of a dysregulated response to stress, often seen in people experiencing high stress responses, chronic stress or even PTSD. This lack of response is caused by chronic or overwhelming stress that can change how our nervous system responds to stressors. In contrast, the participants with their dogs had a more balanced response: Their cortisol didn't spike too high, but their alpha-amylase still activated. This shows that they were alert and engaged throughout the test, then able to return to normal within 45 minutes. That's the sweet spot for handling stress effectively. Our research suggests that our canine companions keep us in a healthy zone of stress response. Dogs and human health This more nuanced understanding of the biological effects of dogs on the human stress response opens up exciting possibilities. Based on the results of our study, our team has begun a new study using thousands of biomarkers to delve deeper into the biology of how psychiatric service dogs reduce PTSD in military veterans. But one thing is already clear: Dogs aren't just good company. They might just be one of the most accessible and effective tools for staying healthy in a stressful world. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Kevin Morris, University of Denver and Jaci Gandenberger, University of Denver Read more: Service dogs can help veterans with PTSD – growing evidence shows they may reduce anxiety in practical ways Lending a helping paw: Dogs will aid their crying human Therapy dogs help students cope with the stress of college life Kevin Morris receives funding for this research from the Morris Animal Foundation, the Human-Animal Bond Research Institute, and the University of Denver. Jaci Gandenberger receives funding from the University of Denver to support this research. Solve the daily Crossword
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Nicola Peltz announces new joint venture with husband Brooklyn Beckham amid ongoing family feud
Nicola Peltz has revealed she and husband Brooklyn Beckham have launched a new joint venture amid their ongoing feud with his famous parents. The Beckham family have been at the centre of a feud that has pitted Brooklyn, 26, and his wife Nicola, 30, on one side, and the rest of the family on the other. However, brushing aside the drama and firmly sticking by her man, Nicola took to Instagram to reveal that she and Brooklyn have started an Instagram account just for their dogs. Taking to her Instagram stories on Sunday night, the actress informed her fans that she had a 'very important announcement'# to make, before adding: 'We made an account for our doggies.' She then shared a link to the page called 'pelzbeckhambabies', which featured a snap of one of their pet pooches Birdalina. The page features images of the couple's other dogs Lamb, Label and Angel. At the time of publication, the page has just 134 followers, while Nicola and Brooklyn are the only accounts it follows. It comes just months after Brooklyn made a surprising career change away from England alongside Nicola. In the hopes of moving away from the drama, Brooklyn is allegedly setting up a new charity dog shelter with Nicola in Los Angeles. According to The Sun, the couple are reportedly launching the Peltz Beckham Foundation, in a bid to rescue and shelter homeless dogs. MailOnline contacted The Beckham's representatives for comment at the time. The couple, who wed in April 2022, are in the midst of an escalating rift with his parents David and Victoria Beckham. It comes after Nicola doubled down as she declared him 'her everything' on Wednesday. Nicola took to her Instagram Stories with snaps of the pair embracing during their sun-soaked getaway on board her billionaire father's yacht in St Tropez. At the time of publication, the page has just 134 followers, while Nicola and Brooklyn are the only accounts it follows The couple only had eyes for each other as she wrapped her arms around his neck while he pulled her in close. She wore a bikini top and skimpy white shorts while her husband shielded his eyes behind shades and a baseball cap and cheekily squeezed her bottom. Nicola captioned the post: 'My everything @BrooklynBeckhamPeltz' with Brooklyn later resharing it with his followers. Last week, it was revealed that Brooklyn and Nicola's Instagram accounts no longer follow his younger brothers Cruz, 20, and Romeo, 22, in the latest family drama. However, Brooklyn's friends told MailOnline on Friday that Cruz and Romeo have actually blocked them on the social media platform. This would make sense given that Brooklyn and Nicola are still following Victoria, 51 and David, 50. Cruz and Romeo were still following Brooklyn and Nicola earlier this week but appeared to take action after Brooklyn posted a birthday tribute to sister Harper, sharing a family photo without them in it - which Nicola reposted. There was much speculation whether Brooklyn would reach out to Harper on her 14th birthday on Thursday, but despite him doing so, it seems all is not well in the camp. Brooklyn's birthday tribute to Harper marked his first public interaction with his family since he paid tribute to his grandmother Sandra on June 26, despite remaining silent and shunning his father's 50th birthday earlier that same month. Sources close to the family have told MailOnline of their fears that Brooklyn and his wife Nicola have also distanced themselves from Harper after they failed to visit her when they flew into London in May to film an advert for French-Italian clothing brand Moncler just over a mile from the family home in Holland Park. David and Victoria had no idea whether Brooklyn, who Harper has idolised since she was a little girl, would message her privately or publicly on Instagram because they have no communication with him.
