2024-03-21

Research: Practicing one exhale and one inhale can alleviate Long Covid symptoms

Chinese version of 研究: 練習一呼一吸可緩解長新冠症狀 @ https://vocus.cc/article/65c9f523fd897800013b738e

Practicing one exhale and one inhale can alleviate Long Covid symptoms

British Studies: The latest 2024 study on HEART Rate Variability Biofeedback for LOng COVID Dysautonomia (HEARTLOC) by the University of Leeds in the UK shows that simple breathing exercises twice a day can alleviate the symptoms of Long Covid. Results showed that participants experienced reduced symptoms, slept better, and improved physical function.

Breathing Method: Resonant breathing, repeated for 10 minutes: inhale for 4 seconds, exhale for 6 seconds

Manoj Sivan, University of Leeds said:

"Developing new treatments to help these patients is crucial. Our research shows that resonant breathing is a simple and effective technique that can significantly improve symptoms. It requires little medical intervention, and the technology is affordable. We have learned from patients The feedback there has been very positive.”


Research methods:
Participants used a heart rate variability app on their phones, which provided breathing guidelines and allowed them to track the effectiveness of the technology. While they completed the breathing exercises, they used chest-strap heart rate monitors to monitor the effects. The resulting data, combined with heart rate data from participants wearing Fitbit Charge 5 smartwatches for 6 weeks during the study, was used to analyze health progress.

Although this is only a small study, it also supports previous findings published in Nature Communications: Breathing and brain activity are related, and breathing can regulate sleep oscillations and memory reactivation in humans, thus also providing a way to save the brain. 

Note: Make sure the air is clean and unpolluted.


Spent Coffee Grounds, Not a Waste at all

 Chinese version of  

咖啡渣,一點也不渣 @ https://vocus.cc/article/65f904b2fd89780001b7fde8

咖啡渣為何不渣? 渣中寶貝成分 @ https://vocus.cc/article/65fa5722fd89780001a7da9f

Spent Coffee Grounds, Not a Waste at all

According to the International Coffee Organization (ICO), world coffee consumption is expected to increase by 2.2% in 2023/24, reaching 177 million bags. Among them, Taiwan’s coffee consumption will increase by 8.7% in 2022/23 compared with the 2021/22 coffee year. There are hundreds of benefits of coffee. Drinking a cup of coffee can even work together to seal off COVID-19 for six hours.

What about spent coffee grounds (SCG), then?

Global coffee consumption produces millions of tons of waste spent coffee grounds every year, which can cause damage to wildlife and the environment. However, if we can recycle it properly, spent coffee grounds can be used not only as a general household cleaning helper to remove oil, deodorize and dehumidify, but also can be used to grow plants, feed animals, serve as raw materials for thermal power generation, or purify wastewater contaminated by heavy metals. . Various organic compounds in spent coffee grounds can also react with and deplete ozone, reducing indoor ozone concentration by 25% to 43%, and serve as a green adsorbent for the industrial dye Rhodamine B (RB).

A new study published in the Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology once again proves that spent coffee grounds can be repurposed as a helper in removing environmental toxins, becoming a powerful adsorbent for bentazone.

Bentazidone is a herbicide commonly used in agriculture and is highly neurotoxic. In the study, the researchers found that when they used zinc chloride to activate the carbon in spent coffee grounds, the activated carbon showed 70 percent efficiency in removing benzophenone. Activated carbon is also effective in highly sensitive testing of contaminants in water. The researchers believe that the removal efficiency of bentazone using spent coffee grounds and using commercial activated carbon are very close, but reusing discarded waste spent coffee grounds is a better circular economy solution.

ingredients of spent coffee grounds (SCG): click for english version
The precious ingredients of spent coffee grounds (SCG) include:

  • organic matter: There are more than 1,000 kinds of organic substances, including minerals, lipids, proteins, peptides, free amino acids, and crude fibers (lignin, hemicellulose, and cellulose).
  •  biologically active substances: Bioactive substances are biologically active substances with antioxidant, antibacterial and anticancer activities, such as alkaloids (caffeine and trigonaline), diterpenes (caffeol and kaweol) and polyphenols (tannins, tocopherols) and anthocyanins).
  •  in growth medium: Higher levels of lutein, beta-carotene and chlorophyll were detected in cultured lettuce leaves when waste coffee grounds (up to 10%) were present in the growth medium.
REFERENCE
  •  International Coffee Organization, COFFEE REPORT AND OUTLOOK, December 2023
  •  王鈺雯, 咖啡渣的新用處, CASE報科學. 2016.12.21. https://case.ntu.edu.tw/blog/?p=26576
  •  Hsieh, P. F., & Wen, T. Y. (2020). Evaluation of ozone removal by spent coffee grounds. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 124.
  •   Vo, T. S., Hossain, M. M., & Kim, K. (2023). Natural bamboo powder and coffee ground as low-cost green adsorbents for the removal of rhodamine B and their recycling performance. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 21487.
  •   Rocha, B. C. D. S., Moraes, L. E. Z. D., Santo, D. E., Peron, A. P., Souza, D. C. D., Bona, E., & Junior, O. V. Removal Of Bentazone Using Activated Carbon From Spent Coffee Grounds. Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology.
  •  Dimitrijević, S., Milić, M., Buntić, A., Dimitrijević-Branković, S., Filipović, V., Popović, V., & Salamon, I. (2024). Spent Coffee Grounds, Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria, and Medicinal Plant Waste: The Biofertilizing Effect of High-Value Compost. Sustainability, 16(4), 1632.
  • Andrade, C., Perestrelo, R., & Câmara, J. S. (2022). Valorization of spent coffee grounds as a natural source of bioactive compounds for several industrial applications—A volatilomic approach. Foods, 11(12), 1731.


 

2024-03-20

咖啡渣為何不渣? 渣中寶貝成分

原文發布於: https://vocus.cc/article/65fa5722fd89780001a7da9f

咖啡渣(spent coffee grounds, SCG)的寶貝成分包括[i],[ii] :

有機物

有機物質(organic substances)超過1000多種,其中包括礦物質脂質蛋白質遊離氨基酸粗纖維(木質素、半纖維素和纖維素)。

生物活性物

生物活性物(bioactive substances)具有抗氧化、抗菌和抗癌活性的生物活性物質,如生物鹼(咖啡因和三角鹼)、二萜(咖啡醇和卡威醇)和多酚(單寧、生育酚和花青素)。

在生長培養基中

當廢棄的咖啡渣(高達10%)存在於生長培養基中時,在培養的生菜葉中檢測到更高水準的葉黃素β-胡蘿蔔素葉綠素



[i] Dimitrijević, S., Milić, M., Buntić, A., Dimitrijević-Branković, S., Filipović, V., Popović, V., & Salamon, I. (2024). Spent Coffee Grounds, Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria, and Medicinal Plant Waste: The Biofertilizing Effect of High-Value Compost. Sustainability, 16(4), 1632.

[ii] Andrade, C., Perestrelo, R., & Câmara, J. S. (2022). Valorization of spent coffee grounds as a natural source of bioactive compounds for several industrial applications—A volatilomic approach. Foods, 11(12), 1731.

2024-03-19

咖啡渣,一點也不渣

原文發布於:  https://vocus.cc/article/65f904b2fd89780001b7fde8

根據國際咖啡組織(ICO)估計2023/24 世界咖啡消費量預計將增長2.2%,達到1.77億袋,其中台灣的咖啡消費量,2022/23年較 2021/22 咖啡年度增長8.7%[i]。咖啡的好處百百種,喝杯咖啡,甚至可以協力封印新冠六小時

然而,咖啡渣呢? 全球咖啡消費每年產生數百萬噸廢咖啡渣,這可能對野生動物和環境造成破壞。然而,若我們能好好地回收再利用,咖啡渣除了是一般家庭清潔的小幫手去油除臭除溼外,也可用來種植物、餵食動物、作為火力發電的原料、或是淨化重金屬污染的廢水[ii]。咖啡渣中的各種有機化合物,也可與臭氧反應並消耗臭氧,降低室內臭氧濃度25% 至 43%[iii],以及作為吸附工業染料羅丹明BRB)的綠色吸附劑[iv]

最新發表在《化學技術與生物技術雜誌》上的一項新研究表明,再度證明咖啡渣可以被重新用作清除環境毒素的幫手,成為苯他酮(bentazone的強力吸附劑。苯他酮是一種常用於農業的除草劑,具有高度神經毒性。在這項研究中,研究人員發現,當他們使用氯化鋅(zinc chloride)活化廢咖啡渣中的碳時,活性炭在去除苯他酮方面顯示出70%的效率。活性炭在水中污染物的高靈敏度測試中也很有效。研究人員認為,利用咖啡渣去除苯他酮和使用商業活性碳的苯達松去除效率值很接近,但再利用被丟棄的廢咖啡渣來說,這是一種更佳的循環經濟解決方案[v]



[i] International Coffee Organization, COFFEE REPORT AND OUTLOOK, December 2023

[ii] 王鈺雯, 咖啡渣的新用處, CASE報科學. 2016.12.21. https://case.ntu.edu.tw/blog/?p=26576

[iii] Hsieh, P. F., & Wen, T. Y. (2020). Evaluation of ozone removal by spent coffee grounds. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 124.

[iv] Vo, T. S., Hossain, M. M., & Kim, K. (2023). Natural bamboo powder and coffee ground as low-cost green adsorbents for the removal of rhodamine B and their recycling performance. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 21487.

[v] Rocha, B. C. D. S., Moraes, L. E. Z. D., Santo, D. E., Peron, A. P., Souza, D. C. D., Bona, E., & Junior, O. V. Removal Of Bentazone Using Activated Carbon From Spent Coffee Grounds. Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology.