Your childhood 'bestie' may have a surprisingly protective effect on your health as an adult.

"[W]hen you're a kid," comedian Jerry Seinfeld said, in what is now a classic episode of his show, "you can be friends with anybody,"

He goes on. "Remember when you were a little kid what were the qualifications? If someone's in front of my house now, that's my friend; they're my friend. That's it! Are you a grown up? No? Great! Come on in! Jump up and down on my bed!"

Making "best friends" was also easy as a kid, continues Seinfeld. "[I]f you have anything in common at all: 'You like cherry soda?' I like cherry soda! We'll be best friends!"

However, making new companions as adults is not as easy. As an adult, you probably aren't that interested in new "BFFs" — or, in Seinfeld's words, "You're not interviewing, you're not looking at any new people, you're not interested in seeing any applications."

The good news, however — coming from a study recently published in the journal Psychological Science — is that the friendships we made so easily in childhood have health benefits that can carry over well into our adulthood.

In fact, the study — carried out by Jenny M. Cundiff, at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, and Karen A. Matthews, at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania — suggests that the more time that you spent hanging out with your best buddies as a kid, the likelier you are to have a healthy weight and blood pressure as an adult.

Healthier weight and blood pressure

It's a fact that friendships boost your health and well-being. In adulthood, having more friends correlates with a lower risk of heart disease and hypertension. But do the benefits of your childhood friends last into adulthood?

This is what the researchers wanted to find out, so they analyzed data from a large longitudinal study of 267 adults whose social lives were monitored between the ages of 6 and 16. Of all the study participants, around 56 percent were black and about 41 percent were white.

The study also looked at personality traits such as introversion and extraversion in both childhood and adulthood, as well as physical health and socioeconomic status.

The researchers found that adults who used to spend a lot of time with friends as young boys had lower blood pressure levels and body mass index (BMI) at the age of 32.

After accounting for potential confounders, this association was still strong and evident over a 16-year period.

Cundiff comments on the strength of the findings, saying, "Although this wasn't an experiment, it was a well-controlled longitudinal study in a racially diverse sample."

"[S]o," she continues, "it provides a strong clue that being socially integrated early in life is good for our health independent of a number of other factors such as personality, weight in childhood, and the family's social status in childhood," the psychologist explains.

"These findings suggest that our early social lives may have a small protective influence on our physical health in adulthood, and it's not just our caregivers or financial circumstances, but also our friends who may be health protective."

Jenny M. Cundiff

To summarize, if a common preference for cherry soda isn't enough to make new friends anymore, don't worry; your childhood friends who used to jump on your bed are, in some ways, still looking out for you.

Research gives a deeper insight into the molecular changes associated with cancer.

Researchers from Michigan State University in East Lansing are using novel molecular routes to attack cancer.

The scientists were particularly interested in bromodomain inhibitors (BET inhibitors).

These are a promising new class of drugs that target the genes involved in cancer's growth.

BET inhibitors prevent the expression of certain growth-promoting genes and therefore slow tumor growth.

The researchers have published two papers in the journal Cancer Prevention. One concentrates on breast and lung cancer, and the other focuses on obesity-related cancers. Both approach the same molecular pathways.

Halting cancer genes

The first was a preclinical study led by Karen Liby, who's an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.

This study found that a BET inhibitor called I-BET-762 delays the progression of existing lung and breast cancers by interacting with a cancerous gene called c-Myc.

In health, this gene helps to regulate DNA transcription, but a mutated version is found in many types of cancer cell, where it helps them to proliferate quickly.

Prof. Liby explains, "I-BET-762 works by targeting DNA so that this gene can't be expressed. It does this by inhibiting a number of important proteins — both in cancer and immune cells — ultimately reducing the amount of cancer cells in mice by 80 percent."

The proteins it inhibits are vital for the cancer to grow. When one of them — called pSTAT3 — becomes active in immune cells, it prevents them from carrying out their protective role.

This allows cancer to progress unimpeded. In cancer cells, pSTAT3 is typically overproduced, effectively shielding the cancer cells and allowing the tumor to continue to grow.

In Prof. Liby's initial study, they reduced levels of pSTAT3 by 50 percent in both immune and cancer cells.

Obesity and cancer

For the second study, Jamie Bernard — an assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology — tried a similar approach but used precancerous cells. These are abnormal cells that may develop into cancer cells. The focus, this time, was on obesity-related cancers.

Obesity is a risk factor for a range of cancers, including breast, colorectal, kidney, and pancreatic cancers. The exact reason for this relationship is still relatively unclear, but changes in hormone levels, immune activity, and growth factors are thought to play a part.

Researchers are trying to understand the molecular processes at work with a view to curtailing them.

"Almost half a million of all new cancers have been linked to obesity. There is evidence that visceral fat and high-fat diets can increase cancer risk; and while current cancer treatments have helped to lower cancer mortality, the number of obesity-associated cancers continues to climb."

Prof. Jamie Bernard

Prof. Bernard explains the premise of his study, saying, "We looked directly at the effect I-BET-762 had on human cells that could become tumorigenic but weren't quite yet." And the results were encouraging.

"We found," he concludes, "that the drug prevented more than 50 percent of these cells from becoming cancerous."

Again, c-Myc seems to be the key to I-BET-762's success. The c-Myc gene is generated by visceral fat that surrounds the body's organs, which is distinct from subcutaneous fat that sits below the skin. Scientists know that visceral fat is more harmful to health than subcutaneous fat.

Cancer treatment has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, but mortality rates in lung and breast cancer are still high. Research into how these conditions can be prevented is essential.

Currently, other drugs with a similar action to I-BET-762 are being tested for the treatment of a range of cancer types.

The team hopes that, by understanding specific targets, better prevention methods can be put in place for populations at high risk of developing certain cancers.

Even if you are desk-bound all day at work, there are plenty of ways to stay active.

Research has demonstrated that sitting for an extended period is linked with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and an increased risk of death from heart disease and cancer.

Excessive sitting may also slow metabolism, which has an impact on the body's ability to regulate blood pressure and blood sugar, as well as break down body fat.

Injecting physical activity into your working day could reduce some of the health risks that are elevated by being sedentary.

One study found that doing just 30 minutes of activity on 5 days each week — be it going to the gym, cycling to work, or going for a lunchtime walk — could prevent 1 in 12 deaths globally.

Being physically fit can also protect against some of the harms of stress in the workplace. Stress can lead to impaired mental well-being, depressive symptoms, and high blood pressure — all of which could lead to absences from work.

When working at a desk for 7–10 hours per day, finding opportunities to be active can be a challenge.

Medical News Today have compiled five top tips to help you stay active in your working day.

1. Cycle or walk to work

Depending on the location of your job and how far you work from home, try switching up how you get to and from work. Leave the car at home and cycle or walk instead.

Cycling to work is linked to a reduced risk of death from all causes.

When compared with commuting to work by car or public transport, cycling to work has been linked with a reduced risk of death from all causes, and a lower cancer risk.

Both cycling and walking to work have also been associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

Furthermore, people who walk or cycle to work have alower body mass index (BMI) and body fat percentage in midlife than those who commute by car.

Those who actively commute to work, by foot or by bike, also benefit from improved well-being and report feeling more able to concentrate and under less strain than those who travel to work by car.

Recent findings indicate that most people hop into their cars instead of actively commuting to work due to worries about the extra time that walking or biking will take. But, when asked to estimate how long it would take to walk or bike to a common location, a majority of participants were incorrect and overestimated.

If you are overweight and inactive, cycling to work is just as effective at helping you to lose fat mass as joining a gym, according to a study by the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

A morning ride to work could be just the tonic you're looking for if you'd like to lose weight but don't have the time or inclination to visit a fitness center regularly.

2. Stand up regularly

Something as simple as standing up now and then while at work could help curb the related health risks of sitting for too long.

Using a standing desk could help to improve cognitive function.

To reduce sedentary behavior and time spent sitting at work, guidance was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2015 by experts.

The team concluded that office workers should stand up for at least 2 hours during their work day, with that target eventually reaching 4 hours, to break up prolonged sitting.

Researchers believe that incorporating standing and walking behaviors into the work day might be more doable for workers than targeted exercise.

Recommended work-based standing behaviors include:

• standing or light activity for 2–4 hours during work hours for workers who are mostly desk-based
• using sit-stand desks or standing workstations to break up sitting-based work regularly
• avoiding prolonged static standing, which can be just as harmful as sitting for too long
• altering posture frequently to prevent potential musculoskeletal pain and fatigue

More and more businesses are adopting the use of sit-stand desks as more evidence comes to light on their benefits.

The University of Iowa in Iowa City discovered that employees who had sit-stand desks spent 60 minutes more standing per day and burned up to 87 more calories compared with their sitting counterparts. This amount could prove significant in fighting the obesity epidemic, note the researchers.

Another study reported that using a standing desk instead of a sitting desk for 6 hours of the day could help individuals to lose weight over time.

The findings showed that standing burned 0.15 calories per minute more than sitting — which, over the long-term, would equate to a 143.3-pound adult losing 5.5 pounds in 1 year and 22 pounds in 4 years, providing they did not increase their food intake.

Using standing desks has also been shown to have neurocognitive benefits. For example, students who continuously used standing desks experienced improvements in executive functions and working memory capabilities.

3. Move more

Moving more may sound like an obvious action to take when trying to be less sedentary, but, when in the depths of a taxing project, it's easy for many hours to fly by without any sign of movement.

Take the stairs rather than the elevator to incorporate exercise into your working day.

Research has found that for every extra hour of sitting over 5 hours, waist size increased by 2 centimeters and the risk of cardiovascular disease by 0.2 percent.

Low-density lipoprotein, or "bad," cholesterol increases and high-density lipoprotein, or "good," cholesterol decreases.

When questioned about their actual and desired levels of sitting, one study reported that desk-based employees wished to spend less time sitting and more time doing physical activity during their working day.

Even when you're sitting down, you don't need to necessarily sit still; fidgeting in your seat could make all the difference.

A study led by the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom suggested that small movements — such as those involved in fidgeting — might counteract some of the adverse effects of prolonged sitting.

Research has demonstrated that vascular function is impaired after 6 hours spent sitting at a desk. However, taking a walk around the office for 10 minutes after a long period of sitting down can restore vascular health.

Get movement into your working day by making a few simple changes.

• Walk to a co-workers desk to speak with them instead of sending an email.
• Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
• Park your car a few blocks away from your work entrance.
• Take the "scenic" route to your desk to fit in some extra steps.
• Reorganize your desk so that you have to stand up and reach for any tools you regularly use.
• Stand up to answer the phone or write emails.
• Set an alarm to remind you to take a quick activity break.

4. Re-engineer the work environment

Incorporating physical activity into your working day has numerous health benefits, decreases work absence, and boosts cognitive abilities, mood, and productivity. Given all the positive outcomes of being less sedentary, your boss may be open to changing up the working environment to provide more options for movement.

Small desk movements can be encouraged by using a bounce ball to sit on.

Some firms are already offering stretch classes before work, yoga breaks during office hours, and lunchtime running groups to help workers to look after their well-being and increase work efficiency.

Many steps can be taken to re-engineer the office environment. These may include:

• removing chairs and desk seating
• encouraging walking meetings
• creating walking tracks
• introducing a pedometer program
• using mobile sets instead of traditional phones
• introducing games to the workplace
• offering activity monitors
• advising employees on activity and nutrition
• adding desks with movement interventions, such as treadmills
• sitting on bounce balls

A study that examined the effect of a re-engineered working environment found that in addition to workers losing weight and body fat, the company's revenue rose by nearly 10 percent in the first few months of the study.

There are no drawbacks to using desks with movement interventions. In fact, one professor from Clemson University in South Carolina revealed that using a FitDesk increased motivation and morale and improved problem-solving, decision-making, and creativity.

Even a small device, such as a portable pedal machine, could counter some of the harmful effects of sedentary working, according to a small study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

5. Take an active lunch break

Rather than eating your lunch at your computer while checking your smartphone and answering emails, take a break and do something physically active. You will go back to work feeling refreshed, revived, and more able to concentrate for the rest of the day.

Taking an active lunch break could help you go back to work refreshed and motivated.

Whether you go for a brisk walk, cycle, swim, or to your gym for an hour, doing exercise of any kind helps to break up your day and motivate you for your remaining hours in the office.

A study of more than 1 million people uncovered that being physically active for at least an hour each day may eliminate the increased risk of death related to sitting for 8 hours per day.

People who spent 8 hours each day seated but were physically active were less likely to be at risk of early death than individuals who sat for fewer hours but were inactive.

Workers who make time to engage in physical activity are also reported to be less likely to develop mental health deterioration, such as symptoms of depression and burnout, than those who do not engage in exercise.

People who were physically active for 4 hours per week were half as likely to experience problems with their mental health than physically inactive individuals.

No matter how you tackle staying active during your working day, it is important to remember that any movement at all, if only for 10 minutes, is better than staying still and not moving at all.

Start small with a 10-minute brisk walk each day and aim for three 10-minute brisk walks, or 30 minutes of moderate physical activity, on 5 days of the week.

No one enjoys dieting and, if the latest study is correct, we may as well give it up.

I've been on and off of diets for approximately my entire adult life. Although I don't consider myself overweight, I have a great deal more belly fat than I would like.

The diet industry is a multi-billion dollar affair, proving that I am not alone.

In fact, the vast array of dieting gadgets, books, and videos proves that there is no definitive solution.

Many factors that are involved in weight gain are understood — for example, we know that a sedentary lifestyle, consuming a lot of takeout food and sweet drinks, and smoking will cause us to pile on the pounds. However, there is still much to learn.

Is dieting the answer?

According to new research from the University of Helsinki in Finland, many of us are barking up the wrong nutritional tree; dieting is not the answer at all and, in the long run, it might even harm our chances of maintaining a healthy girth.

One of the researchers involved in the latest effort to understand the factors behind weight gain is Ulla Kärkkäinen, a licensed nutritional therapist.

She explains, "Often, people try to prevent and manage excess weight and obesity by dieting and skipping meals. In the long-term, such approaches seem to actually accelerate getting fatter, rather than prevent it."

To reach this conclusion, Kärkkäinen and her team used data from the FinnTwin 16 study, which involves more than 4,000 young men and women.

Because early adulthood is a critical time for weight gain (as I know only too well), this group made an ideal study sample. The findings were recently published in the journal Eating Behaviors.

What factors influence weight gain?

The participants all completed surveys regarding dietary and activity habits and other life factors at the age of 24, and then a decade later when they were aged 34.

Across the 10-year period, the majority of participants gained weight — that's life, I guess. Roughly one quarter of men and women managed to hold down a stable weight, and just 7.5 percent of women and 3.8 percent of men lost any weight.

Over time, women gained an average of 0.9 kilograms per year and men gained 1.0 kilogram each year.

Here's the interesting part: men and women who never dieted but had regular eating patterns were more likely to maintain a stable weight.

One of the main things that the scientists wanted to understand was whether or not there are any sex differences — and it turns out that there are.

Men who smoked tobacco were more likely to gain weight. However, women had a higher chance of gaining weight if they had given birth to two or three children, drank more sweetened drinks, or were less contented with their lives.

On the other side of the weighing scales, women were protected from weight gain by exercise, and men were less likely to put on weight if they were more highly educated and were heavier at the start of the study.

Although the basic underlying message around maintaining a healthy weight is to take on the right amount of calories and exercise more, the story is never really that simple. There are so many factors at play in each individual that there cannot be a one-size-fits-all strategy.

As Kärkkäinen says, "To effectively prevent weight gain, understanding the factors underlying weight management that precedes the gain, or primary weight management, is of utmost importance."

This study does show that exercise is effective at keeping off the pounds, particularly in women, but it also shows that there is more at work.

Giving up dieting and focusing on eating in a more regular fashion seems to be the key. In some ways, this is good news for people who struggle to lose weight and keep it off.

"Generally speaking, weight management guidance often boils down to eating less and exercising more. In practice, people are encouraged to lose weight, whereas the results of our extensive population study indicate that losing weight is not an effective weight management method in the long run."

Ulla Kärkkäinen

She continues, "Prior research has shown that approximately every other adult is constantly dieting. According to the National Institute for Health and Welfare, nearly a million Finns diet every year."

"Even though dieting may seem a logical solution to weight management problems," Kärkkäinen concludes, "it can actually increase weight gain and eating problems in the long run."

So, rather than selecting the latest fad diet, perhaps we should focus on keeping things consistant and regimented. It has to be worth a shot, and it means that I can burn all of those diet books I've never read, too.