All posts tagged: regulates

Business says new Labour plan ‘regulates flexible work out of existence’ | Personal Finance | Finance

Business says new Labour plan ‘regulates flexible work out of existence’ | Personal Finance | Finance

Published by Sam Flores

Peter Kyle, the business secretary, has been asked to tone down the new plans (Image: Getty) The Government should not regulate flexible jobs “out of existence” with reforms which will scrap zero-hours contracts, retail industry leaders have warned. Last week, ministers laid out details for proposals which could ensure guaranteed hours for workers. It started a consultation over potential new rules which would require employers to offer staff on zero hours or short hours contracts a minimum number of hours each week on regular working hours. The consultation on how to implement the changes, which are due to come into effect next year, flagged that the Government would prefer workers to be guaranteed a minimum of between eight and 20 hours per week, if current contracts are at or below that level. More than 1 million people in the UK are working on a zero-hours contract basis – where a worker is not guaranteed a minimum number of working hours – in areas ranging from working in pubs and restaurants to warehouses and hospitals. Peter …

Scientists discover a new gut-brain-heart connection that regulates blood pressure

Scientists discover a new gut-brain-heart connection that regulates blood pressure

Published by José Betancourt

Recent research published in Circulation Research provides evidence that a specific molecule produced by gut bacteria can protect the heart from stiffness and dysfunction by communicating directly with the brain. The study suggests that restoring this bacterial by-product might offer a new way to approach high blood pressure and related heart conditions. Hypertension and related cardiovascular conditions involve a complex interaction among the digestive, nervous, and cardiovascular systems. High blood pressure tends to force the heart muscle to become stiff and lose its ability to relax properly between beats, a condition known as diastolic dysfunction. This stiffness represents a major physiological cause of heart failure, but the biological signals that initiate this structural change remain poorly understood. To understand this process, researchers aimed to identify the chemical messengers that link these physiological systems. “Hypertension is a systemic condition driven by complex interactions between the gut, brain, kidneys, and cardiovascular system,” said study author Suphansa Sawamiphak, a principal investigator at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association in Berlin, Germany. “While we …

How reading books regulates your nervous system

How reading books regulates your nervous system

Published by Jenni Sidey

There’s a feeling I love almost more than anything: the feeling of sinking into a good book while the world around me fades away. My breathing slows, my shoulders drop, and the mental chatter in the back of my mind goes quiet. What’s happening in those moments goes far deeper than entertainment or education, and we seem to sense this instinctively. Reading is relaxing, and many people do it as a counterbalance to our overstimulated age. But what exactly is happening when we read? What’s going on beneath the surface that makes reading a book feel so restorative? The answer lies in how reading changes our neurochemistry in real time. Reading isn’t just about decoding words on a page. It’s a complex neurochemical process that affects everything from our heart rate to our hormone levels. The neurobiology of reading Reading uses some of the oldest circuitry in the human brain. For most of our evolutionary history, we were readers — just not of books. We read animal tracks in mud, storm patterns in clouds, danger …