Dhaka, Nov 10 (UNB) -Wrinkles are a natural part of getting older, and there’s no reason to dread getting them. Also known as rhytides, they are folds in your skin. As you age, your skin produces less of the proteins collagen and elastin, which makes your skin thinner. Environmental exposure, dehydration, and toxins can all make your face more likely to develop pronounced wrinkles.

But if you’re especially concerned about your skin’s appearance as you grow older, you may want to speak to a dermatologist.

“If you’ve engaged in lifestyle habits, such as, smoking or excessive drinking, you should be particularly vigilant of your skin’s appearance, as you may be at risk for skin cancer,” says Dr Amitabh Kumar, skin specialist, Max Hospital, Delhi.

If you would like to slow the signs of aging on your face, these are some natural ways to do so:

1. Limit your sugar intake

The medical community continues to learn more about how sugar consumption can affect your health. Sugar in your body sets off a process called glycation, and advanced glycation end products (called AGEs) are no good for your skin. “AGEs break down the collagen in your body and, over time, can make you look older. AGEs have also been linked to food preparation methods such as grilling and frying (as opposed to baking and boiling). Limiting your intake of sugar and oil-rich foods will help your face retain its youthful shape,” says Dr Kumar.

2. Cut out smoking

Smoking is bad for your health for lots of reasons, but many people don’t know that it can age your face prematurely. One fascinating study by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons compared the faces of 79 pairs of identical twins in which one had a smoking habit and the other one didn’t. The striking differences in their ages made it clear that smoking does affect the condition of the skin on your face. “Even being around secondhand smoke can increase your risk for many cancers and other diseases, and it may hurt your skin as well,” says Dr Sanjay Aggarwal, a general physician at Holistic Healthcare Centre in Delhi.

3. Wear sunscreen

Most people know that wearing sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) over 30 can help prevent skin cancer. A 2013 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that sunscreen also helped delay the signs of aging. “While you probably already wear a sunscreen for work, wearing a moisturising sunscreen on your face each day is a habit that will benefit your skin health long-term,” says Dr Kumar.

4. Up your antioxidants

Skin is exposed to more oxidative stress -- an imbalance between free radicals or oxygen-containing molecules and antioxidants in your body -- than any other organ in your body. That means your skin can be damaged just by going through your daily routine. Antioxidants help fight the damage that oxidative stress does to your cells, says Dr Aggarwal. While you can purchase a sunscreen or wrinkle cream enriched with antioxidants, there are plenty of other ways to get that antioxidant boost for your skin. “Eating a diet rich in blueberries, grapes, and spinach will help you get healthy skin from the inside out and could reduce the signs of premature aging,” says Dr Kumar.

5. Wash your face regularly

“Taking that extra three to five minutes to wash your face at night is never a waste of your time. When you leave make-up on your face over night, your skin absorbs most of it. Since most cosmetics contain harsh chemicals, this contributes to the oxidative stress your skin faces,” says Dr Aggarwal. That’s why taking an extra three to five minutes to wash your face at night is never a waste of time. Avoid vigorously scrubbing your face. Use a water-based wipe to cleanse your face before you go to sleep, and finish your wash with some cold water splashed across your skin.

New York, Nov 7 (AP/UNB) — There is now a museum for pizza lovers everywhere that's popped-up in arguably America's pizza capital, New York City.

The Museum of Pizza is dedicated to all things cheese and sauce, but there's more to it than meets the tongue.

"It's often that the simplest ideas are the best. And we wanted to use pizza's ubiquitous appeal to get people through the door and looking at art and hearing about history in a different format," said Alexandra Serio, Chief Content Officer at Nameless Network, the group that baked the Museum of Pizza idea.

"Our approach to this Museum of Pizza is a fine art approach, so we went out to multiple artists contemporary in many mediums, and asked them for their interpretation of pizza," said Serio. "And what we got back is_it ranges the gambit, let's just say that. That's an understatement."

Located on the street level of Brooklyn's William Vale hotel, the museum is an expansive, one-floor space that houses a wide variety of art, from giant photographs to sculptures to large installations that engulf visitors. And the pop-up museum, also known as "MoPi," has already drawn a lot of interest_more than 6,000 people came through the doors when they opened this month.

Another instantly recognizable attribute of the space is the bright colors that are weaved throughout the exhibits_perfect for taking social media-ready pictures.

"Honestly, I thought it would be like more of a museum like at the beginning, with the pizza boxes and it kinda tells you when it was developed and stuff like that," said Nene Raye, visiting from New Jersey. "Then I was kinda hoping they had something artsy in it because I love taking pictures. So this is a mashup of everything_so you get a little bit of education and then some fun, which I love."

Serio said selfie-friendly exhibits are becoming a priority for museums as they try to get younger legs to walk through their doors.

"It's a kind of paradigm shift with museums," she said. "You'll see, I think in the next few years because of museums like the Museum of Ice Cream, and multiple pop-ups of this ilk, museums kind of courting a younger audience and seeing how they can make their exhibitions more tactile, touch and photography friendly."

Lydia Melendez, a self-described "pizza aficionado," bought her tickets in April. For her, this experience was worth the wait.

"I thought it was going to be kinda boring, like I'm going to walk in and there's just going to be a book about pizza and how to make it. But this is definitely one for the books."

While pizza may be the hook that draws those interested to the museum, the focus of MoPi is to expose visitors to the fine art world_even if the education is fed one slice at a time.

"The Museum of Pizza's target demographic isn't necessarily the same type of people that are making a quarterly trips to the MoMA or the Frick collection or the LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) ", said Serio. "We're really putting fine art in a place that's easily accessible for a wide range of people."

The pop-up museum, which costs $35 for adults but is free for kids under 5 and seniors, closes Nov. 18.

Sydney, Nov 5 (Xinhua/UNB) -- Eating fish such as salmon, trout and sardines can significantly reduce asthma symptoms in children, an international study led by researchers at Australia's La Trobe University showed.

Lead researcher Maria Papamichael said the results, released on Monday, are in line with a growing body of evidence which points to a healthy diet being a potential therapy for childhood asthma.

"We already know that a diet high in fat, sugar and salt can influence the development and progression of asthma in children and now we have evidence that it's also possible to manage asthma symptoms through healthy eating," Papamichael said.

Of the 64 children with mild asthma who participated in the trial, half were told to follow a traditional mediterranean diet, high in plant based foods and oily fish, while the others followed their normal diets.

Those who followed the mediterranean diet saw significant reduction in their bronchial inflammation.

"Fatty fish is high in omega-3 fatty acids which have anti-inflammatory properties," Papamichael explained.

According to Professor Bircan Erbas, from La Trobe's School of Psychology and Public Health, "asthma is the most common respiratory disease in young people and one of the leading reasons for hospitalizations and trips to emergency for children."

"It is imperative that we identify new therapies that we can use alongside conventional asthma medications," Erbas said.

Dhaka, Nov 1 (AP/UNB) - New evidence about a cancer operation in women finds a higher death rate for the less invasive version, challenging standard practice and the "less is more" approach to treating cervical cancer.

The unexpected findings are prompting changes at some hospitals that perform radical hysterectomies for early-stage disease.

The more rigorous of the two studies was conducted at more than 30 sites in a dozen countries. It found women who had the less invasive surgery were four times more likely to see their cancer return compared to women who had traditional surgery. Death from cervical cancer occurred in 14 of 319 patients who had minimally invasive surgery and 2 of 312 patients who had open surgery.

Results were published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Radical hysterectomy is standard treatment for women with early-stage cervical cancer. Rates are declining because of widespread screening. The number of operations has fallen, too, to several thousand a year in the United States. Some women with early-stage cervical cancer are choosing fertility-sparing techniques, treatments not included in the new research.

In both studies, researchers compared two methods for radical hysterectomy, an operation to remove the uterus, cervix and part of the vagina. The surgery costs around $9,000 to $12,000 with the minimally invasive version at the higher end.

Traditional surgery involves a cut in the lower abdomen. In a newer method, a surgeon makes small incisions for a camera and instruments. Patients recover faster, so laparoscopic surgery, which has been around for more than a decade, gained popularity despite a lack of rigorous long-term studies.

It's not clear why it failed to measure up. Experts suspect there may be something about the tools or technique that spreads the cancer cells from the tumor to the abdominal cavity.

Some hospitals went back to traditional hysterectomy after the results were presented at a cancer meeting in March.

"We immediately as a department changed our practice and changed completely to the open approach," said Dr. Pedro Ramirez of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Ramirez led the more rigorous study, which randomly assigned 631 patients to one of two surgeries. After 4½ years, the rate of those still living without disease was 86 percent with less invasive surgery and 96 percent with traditional surgery.

The experiment was halted early last year when the higher death and cancer recurrence rates showed up. The original plan was to enroll 740 patients in the study, which was funded in part by surgical device maker Medtronic.

For 33-year-old Alicia Ackley, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer in July, the recommendation for traditional surgery came as a surprise, but she followed the advice of her doctor at MD Anderson after hearing about the research. Tests following her September operation show no signs of cancer.

"I'm very glad I went that route," Ackley said. "The open hysterectomy got everything."

The other study looked at 2,461 women with cervical cancer who had radical hysterectomies from 2010 through 2013. It found a 9.1 percent death rate after four years among women who got minimally invasive surgery compared to 5.3 percent for traditional surgery.

"We're rethinking how we approach patients," said study co-author Dr. Jason Wright of New York-Presbyterian Hospital. "There's a lot of surprise around these findings."

The research is "a great blow" to the technique and the findings are "alarming," said Dr. Amanda Fader of Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. She said Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore has stopped doing less invasive hysterectomies for cervical cancer until there is more data.

While some patients with small tumors might do as well with minimally invasive surgery, "surgeons should proceed cautiously" and discuss the new information with patients, Fader wrote in an accompanying editorial.

London, Oct 30 (Xinhua/UNB) -- Sniff dogs could be trained to detect malaria in people infected with the disease even if they are not showing symptoms, according to a new study by Durham University.

"While our findings are at an early stage, in principle we have shown that dogs could be trained to detect malaria infected people by their odor with a credible degree of accuracy," Steven Lindsay, lead researcher from Durham University, said in a press release.

Researchers from the Medical Research Council Unit of The Gambia and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used nylon socks to collect foot odor samples from apparently healthy children aged five to 14 in the Upper River Region of The Gambia in West Africa.

A total of 175 sock samples were tested, including those of 30 malaria-positive children identified by the study using finger-prick tests and 145 from uninfected children.

The sock samples were then transported to Britain where dogs were trained to distinguish between the scent of children infected with malaria parasites and those who were uninfected.

According to the researchers, the dogs were able to correctly identify 70 percent of the malaria-infected samples. They were also able to correctly identify 90 percent of the samples without malaria parasites.

The study, presented Monday at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Annual Meeting in the U.S. city of New Orleans, could potentially lead to the first rapid and non-invasive test for malaria.

The researchers believe that artificial odor sensors might be developed in the future to detect malaria parasites, but until then trained dogs could be a useful alternative at ports of entry.

According to the World Health Organization's latest World Malaria Report, there were an estimated 216 million cases of malaria in 2016, an increase of five million cases over the previous year. Deaths reached 445,000, a similar number to the previous year.