Month: January 2014

Addicted to Sugar? Here’s How You Can Beat Your Cravings

sugar

A secret weapon that you may like to use in your own personal war against sugar. It stops cravings in their tracks but also deals with mid-afternoon energy slumps. Ready for it? It’s coconut oil.

Take it a tablespoon at a time

Eat it directly after lunch. Or mix it with a little raw cacao powder to make the simplest chocolate snack

It kills sugar cravings, immediately.
How so? Coconut oil is made up of medium-chain fatty acids, or medium chain triglycerides (MCTs). Indeed, coconut oil is nature’s richest source of MCTs. These fatty acids produce a host of health benefits which you can read about here. But here’s the bit I like: your body sends medium-chain fatty acids straight to your liver to use as energy. This means coconut oil is a source of instant energy, much like sugar and other simple carbohydrates. But although both deliver quick energy to your body, unlike the carbohydrates, coconut oil does not produce an insulin spike in your bloodstream. This saves you from a slump, and is really good news for anyone struggling with insulin issues. Like me.

It fills you up, immediately.
After two tablespoons I’m not hungry for about four hours.

And bonus: it helps you lose weight!
Again, it’s the medium-chain fatty acids. Most plant oils are made up of longer chain fat triglycerides (LCTs). LCTs are typically stored in the body as fat; MCTs are transported directly to the liver, promoting “thermogenesis” which increases the body’s metabolism. There are a stack of studies that have shown this to be the case, like this one. This study shows eating two tablespoons of coconut oil with a meal caused body temperature to rise, boosting metabolism. Plus, MCTs are not easily converted into stored triglycerides and cannot be readily used by the body to make larger fat molecules.

Source: huffington post

Hormone Therapy & Joint Replacement in Women

Women who start hormone replacement therapy after having had hip or knee replacement surgery may cut their risk of needing another procedure in the same joint by nearly 40 percent, a new study suggests.

About 2 percent of those who have a hip or knee replacement need another surgery within three years. Most of these additional procedures are needed because of a complication known as osteolysis, which happens when tiny pieces of the implant seep into the tissue around the implant, causing inflammation that destroys the bone around the implant, the British researchers explained.

“There is evidence that drugs like hormone replacement therapy, used usually to prevent osteoporosis and fractures, might have a beneficial effect on implant survival in patients undergoing knee or hip replacement,” said lead researcher Dr. Nigel Arden, director of musculoskeletal epidemiology at the University of Oxford in England.

“These findings must be confirmed in further studies, but they are consistent with previous reports by our group showing an association between use of other drugs that have similar effects on bone and the risk of implant revision [surgery],” he said.

However, many women are nervous about taking hormone replacement therapy because of previously reported increased risks for heart disease and cancer. Since the risk of a second surgery is small, the question remains whether or not it’s worth starting hormone replacement therapy at all.

“Indeed, this is only a small added benefit of hormone replacement therapy. However, it is a relevant piece of information for women who have received a total knee or hip replacement and are considering hormone replacement therapy for menopausal symptoms,” Arden said.

The report was published online Jan. 22 in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

For the study, Arden and his colleagues collected data on more than 21,000 women who had not used hormone replacement therapy after a hip or knee replacement. The investigators compared these women with more than 3,500 women who had taken hormone replacement therapy for at least six months after surgery.

The researchers found that women who had taken hormone replacement therapy for six months after surgery were 38 percent less likely to need another surgery than those who had not.

Moreover, women who took hormone replacement therapy for a year or more after surgery were more than 50 percent less likely to need another surgery over three years of follow-up.

Taking hormone replacement therapy before joint replacement, however, didn’t make a difference in the risk for a repeat procedure, the researchers noted.

Dr. Neil Roth, an orthopedic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, thinks there may be a role for drugs that help build and strengthen bone after knee and hip replacement surgeries. Based on this study, hormone replacement therapy might also be helpful, he added.

Roth noted, however, that this study only showed an association, and not a cause-and-effect link, between hormone replacement therapy and a lowered risk for another surgery.

“Right now, I wouldn’t make any changes in the way I clinically treat things based on this study, but I think it deserves further investigation,” he added.

Source: web md

Consumer Reports: Too many sodas contain potential carcinogen

A chemical found in many sodas may be dangerous to your health, Consumer Reports says. And no, it’s not sugar (this time).

The golden-brown color of many soft drinks comes with a dose of the chemical 4-methylimidazole, or 4-MeI. On U.S. product labels it appears simply as “caramel coloring.”

Those who say the chemical may possibly cause cancer include the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer and the state of California, which now limits manufacturers to 29 micrograms of exposure for the average consumer per day.

Foods exceeding that limit have to carry a warning label that reads: “WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer.”

But when Consumer Reports purchased sodas in California and had them analyzed by a lab, it found that one 12-ounce serving of Pepsi One or Malta Goya exceeded the levels permitted without a warning label.
Ten other brands tested by the group did meet the California standard, which is estimated to limit the risk of cancer from 4-MeI to one case in every 100,000 lifetimes of daily exposure.

“We are concerned about both the levels of 4-MeI we found in many of the soft drinks tested and the variations observed among brands, especially given the widespread consumption of these types of beverages,” said Dr. Urvashi Rangan, a Consumer Reports toxicologist, in a statement.

“There is no reason why consumers need to be exposed to this avoidable and unnecessary risk that can stem from coloring food and beverages brown.”
The Food and Drug Administration does not set federal limits on 4-MeI in food, and the data gathered by Consumer Reports show that in some cases consumers outside California are drinking a slightly different ingredient. For example, Pepsi One purchased by the group in December in New York contains four times as much 4-MeI as the same product bought that same month in California.

What is clean eating?
Currently the FDA has no reason to believe that 4-Mel poses a health risk to consumers at the levels found in foods with caramel coloring, agency spokeswoman Juli Putnam told CNN in an e-mail. The government agency is testing a variety of food and beverages with the chemical and reviewing safety data to determine if any regulatory action needs to be taken, she said.

Consumers interested in more information on 4-Mel can check out the FDA’s FAQ page.
In a statement to Consumer Reports, PepsiCo Inc. said data indicate that the average person consumes less than one-third a can of diet soda per day; therefore, its product meets the California standard, even if a complete serving exceeds that limit.

In addition to new federal standards, Consumer Reports is calling on the FDA to “require labeling of specific caramel colors in the ingredient lists of food where it is added, so consumers can make informed choices.”

“First and foremost, consumers can rest assured that our industry’s beverages are safe,” the American Beverage Association said in a statement. “Contrary to the conclusions of Consumer Reports, FDA has noted there is no reason at all for any health concerns, a position supported by regulatory agencies around the world.

“However, the companies that make caramel coloring for our members’ soft drinks are now producing it to contain less 4-MeI, and nationwide use of this new caramel coloring is underway.”

Source: CNN

Shopping cart danger: 66 kids hurt a day, study finds

The combination of kids and shopping carts is never easy, as any parent of a squirmy toddler knows, but a new study confirms it’s also dangerous, with an estimated 66 children a day in the U.S. hurt in falls and spills.

That’s one child injured badly enough every 22 minutes to go to the emergency room, or more than 24,000 children a year, according to research from Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

And the problem hasn’t gotten better since voluntary shopping cart safety standards took effect in 2004. In fact, since then, the annual number of concussions tied to shopping carts in children younger than 15 jumped nearly 90 percent, according to a new analysis of data from 1990 to 2011 by Dr. Gary Smith, director of Nationwide’s Center for Injury Research and Policy.

“This is a setup for a major injury,” Smith said. “The major group we are concerned about are children under 5.” His study is published in the January issue of the journal Clinical Pediatrics.

Kids ages newborn to 4 accounted for nearly 85 percent of the injuries. More than 70 percent of the harm was caused by falls out of shopping carts, followed by running into a cart or carts tipping over.

It only takes a moment for a parent to look away for a shopping cart accident to happen, Smith said. A wiggly baby in an infant seat or a toddler reaching for a bright box of cereal can easily cause a fall that results in serious injury. Children’s center of gravity is high, their heads are heavy and they don’t have enough arm strength to break a fall, Smith explained.

Just last week, a 19-year-old worker at an Alaska Home Depot caught a baby in mid-air after she fell out of a shopping cart. Christopher Strickland of Anchorage rescued the girl seconds before her head would have hit the concrete floor.

Part of the problem is that the U.S. lacks stability standards for shopping carts that have been adopted in other countries, Smith said.

Parents should opt for carts that seat kids low to the ground, like those with toy cars or fire engines, he said. Otherwise, they should avoid carts, if possible, or remain vigilant while their children are using them.

Source: nbc news

 

Screen Time Study Finds Education Drop-Off

With children spending more time in front of screens than ever, parents sometimes try to convince themselves that playing Angry Birds teaches physics, or that assembling outfits on a shopping app like Polyvore fires creativity.

According to a study scheduled for release on Friday, however, less than half the time that children age 2 to 10 spend watching or interacting with electronic screens is with what parents consider “educational” material. Most of that time is from watching television, with mobile devices contributing relatively little educational value.

What is more, the study, by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, a nonprofit research institute affiliated with the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit producer of “Sesame Street,” shows that as children spend more time with screens as they get older, they spend less time doing educational activities, with 8- to 10-year-olds spending about half the time with educational content that 2- to 4-year-olds do.

Athena Devlin, a professor of women’s and American studies at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and the mother of two children, said that her son, Elias, a kindergartner, still watched quite a bit of public television, including shows like “Wild Kratts” and “Dino Dan,” and that she has been impressed by the detailed facts he learns.

But her daughter, Laura, a fourth grader, prefers shows like “Jessie” on the Disney Channel or “Total Drama Island” on the Cartoon Network, which Professor Devlin sees as the preteen equivalent of her own addiction to “Scandal.”

“I feel like with the educational content of television, the bottom drops out of it after age 5 or 6,” she said. “It’s a bummer, and I’ve looked out for it.”

She said that when playing games, her daughter liked Wizard101, while both children gravitated toward Fruit Ninja or Clumsy Ninja, whose educational value Professor Devlin does not rate highly.

“It would be nice if they could get pleasure out of something that also taught them something,” she said.

According to the survey, 2- to 4-year-olds spent a little over two hours a day on screen, with one hour and 16 minutes of educational time, while 8- to 10-year-olds spent more than two and a half hours a day on screen, but only 42 minutes was considered educational. The survey was based on interviews with 1,577 parents and conducted online from June 28 to July 24 by GfK, a research company.

The survey allowed parents to assess whether a game or program taught social and emotional skills, as well as cognitive learning related to vocabulary, math or science.

The survey said lower-income families reported that their children spent more time with educational programming on screen than middle-income and higher-income families did. Families earning less than $25,000 said 57 percent of their children’s screen time was educational, while families earning $50,000 to $99,000 said it was 38 percent.

Michael H. Levine, the executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, said that particularly for the most vulnerable children who might falter in their academic careers, “we need to have a better balance in the way these media are used.”

Vicki Rideout, who wrote the report, said that with teachers seizing on digital media as a new way to ignite children’s interest at school, more needed to be done to ensure that out-of-school screen activities were not only educational but of high quality.

“It’s far too easy for the best stuff only to be available for the kids who already have many opportunities,” said Ms. Rideout, “and to flip into content that has the gloss of education on it, without the substance, for the kids who are in need.”

Michael Thornton, a second-grade teacher at Meriwether Lewis Elementary School in Charlottesville, Va., and the father of three children under 6, said parents were increasingly asking him for referrals to educational apps, like Geared and Glass Tower, for teaching math and spatial recognition skills, and Chicktionary, for vocabulary.

But, he acknowledged, “you have to really take your time to search through them.”

Baby heart-disease risk ‘shaped early in pregnancy’

A baby’s development in the womb in the first weeks of life is critical for future heart health, research suggests.

A link between poor growth in the first trimester and early risk factors for heart disease has been identified for the first time.

The study, in the British Medical Journal, adds to evidence that heart risk is set long before adulthood.

Pregnant women should think about their baby’s heart health as well as their own, the British Heart Foundation said.

The evidence comes from a study tracking the health, from early pregnancy onwards, of nearly 2,000 children born in the Dutch city of Rotterdam.

A team at the Erasmus University Medical School examined links between the child’s size at the first scan (10 to 13 weeks) and markers of future cardiovascular health at the age of six (central body fat, high blood pressure, high insulin levels and high cholesterol).

“Impaired first trimester foetal growth is associated with an adverse cardiovascular risk profile in school age children,” they reported in the British Medical Journal.

“Early foetal life may be a critical period for cardiovascular health in later life.”

Low birth weight is known to be linked to an increased risk of heart disease in later life. But the new research suggests not only birth weight but poor growth in the earliest phase of pregnancy may influence cardiovascular disease risk.

“These results suggest that the first trimester of pregnancy may be a critical period for development of offspring cardiovascular risk factors in later life,” study author Prof Vincent Jaddoe told BBC News.

“Therefore adverse maternal lifestyle habits influencing early foetal growth may have persistent consequences for their offspring, many decades later. ”

This was the first study showing this link and replication in other studies was needed, he added.

Critical stage
Amy Thompson, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said the first few months of pregnancy were a critical stage in a baby’s development.

“This study suggests that foetal growth within this time may influence their heart health later in life,” she said.

“However, as the researchers acknowledge themselves, further studies are needed to understand why this pattern exists and what it might mean for preventing heart disease.

“If you are pregnant, or planning a family, you should be thinking about your baby’s heart health as well as your own,” she added.

“If you smoke, speak to your GP or midwife about quitting, and keep a check on your blood pressure.

“Your midwife will also advise you on other ways you can make healthier choices during pregnancy.”

Source: BBC news

Interventional Pain Management attaining newer heights in India

There was a time many years back when any intervention by a medical doctor on any patient meant surgery. Epidural injections (caudal, interlaminar or transforaminal) were one of the first spine interventions ever undertaken. With the advancement in technology and especially the use of C Arm fluoroscopes for image guided blocks and ultrasound, interventional pain procedures could be done in much more reliable and predictable manner.

Pain physician of today is competent to treat the entire range of pain encountered in the delivery of quality healthcare, whether it is due to a discrete cause like cancer pain and postoperative pain to primary pain problems like musculoskeletal pain, neuropathic pain, urogenital pain, headaches etc. Pain medicine, which incorporates interventional pain management, has been acknowledged as a discrete discipline by the American Medical Association.

The advent of Radiofrequency (RF) ablation both thermal and pulse radiofrequency have quiet changed the outlook of interventional pain procedures in terms of providing longer lasting solutions for pain problems of the patients. Whether it is medial branch RF for facet syndrome, gasserian ganglion RF for trigeminal neuralgia, genicular branch RF for knee osteoarthritis or Pulse RF of dorsal root ganglion for lumbar radicular syndrome, the scope RF in interventional pain practice has undergone marked change and occupies vital position for providing long term pain relief to the patients.

The spectrum of interventional pain management has broadened with neuromodulation. Be it spinal cord stimulators, intrathecal pumps or peripheral nerve stimulators, these devices have moved in the analgesic ladder and are now indicated earlier rather than late for managing neuropathic or cancer pains.

Therefore the present day pain physician has various weapons in their armoury and apart from medical management, interventional pain management procedures can be resorted to not only to help in the diagnosis but also to provide long-term pain relief for the patient. This can help in providing functional recovery and thereby improve the quality of life of our patients.

Author’s Note: Pain Medicine is one of the newer disciplines in medicine in India (though recognised as a speciality and practised in USA since 1970s) and awareness is low not only among patients but also among the medical fraternity. The Medical Council of India (MCI) now recognizes one year PDCC (Pain & Palliative care) as a requisite training after post graduation in Anaesthesiology.

Source: India Medical Times

Marriage at 25 or older good for men’s bones

Researchers at UCLA have suggested that marriage is good for the health of men’s bones, but only if they marry when they’re 25 or older.

In a new study, researchers found evidence that men who married when they were younger than 25 had lower bone strength than men who married for the first time at a later age.

In addition, men in stable marriages or marriage-like relationships who had never previously divorced or separated had greater bone strength than men whose previous marriages had fractured, the researchers said. And those in stable relationships also had stronger bones than men who never married.

Although for women there were no similar links between bone health and being married or in a marriage-like relationship, the study authors did find evidence that women with supportive partners had greater bone strength than those whose partners didn’t appreciate them, understand how they felt or were emotionally unsupportive in other ways.

This is the first time that marital histories and marital quality have been linked to bone health, the study’s senior author, Dr. Carolyn Crandall, a professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said.

“There is very little known about the influence of social factors – other than socioeconomic factors – on bone health,” Crandall said.

“Good health depends not only on good health behaviors, such as maintaining a healthy diet and not smoking, but also on other social aspects of life, such as marital life stories and quality of relationships,” she said.

The associations between marriage and bone health were evident in the spine but not the hip, possibly due to differences in bone composition, the researchers said.

The data suggested several significant correlations between marriage and bone health – but only for men.

The study authors found that men in long-term stable marriages or marriage-like relationships had higher bone density in the spine than every other male group, including men currently married who had previously been divorced or separated, men not currently in a relationship and men who had never been married.

Among men who first married prior to turning 25, the researchers found a significant reduction in spine bone strength for each year they were married before that age.

For instance, the authors said, those who marry young are likely to be less educated, leading to lower pay and more difficulty in making ends meet.

The study is published online in the peer-reviewed journal Osteoporosis International.

Source: zee news

Blame your genes for your beer bellies

A team of researchers has identified five new genes associated with increased waist-to-hip ratio, potentially moving a step closer to developing a medication to treat obesity or obesity-related diseases.

A person’s measure of belly fat is reflected in the ratio of waist circumference to hip circumference, and it is estimated that genetics account for about 30-60 percent of waist-to-hip ratio (WHR).

The team led by Kira Taylor from University of Louisville School of Public Health and Information Sciences conducted an analysis of more than 57,000 people of European descent, and searched for genes that increase risk of high waist-to-hip ratio, independent of overall obesity.

They investigated over 50,000 genetic variants in 2,000 genes thought to be involved in cardiovascular or metabolic traits.

Their analysis identified three new genes associated with increased WHR in both men and women, and discovered two new genes that appear to affect WHR in women only.

Of the latter, one gene, SHC1, appears to interact with 17 other proteins known to have involvement in obesity, and is highly expressed in fat tissue. In addition, the genetic variant the team discovered in SHC1 is linked to another variant that causes an amino acid change in the protein, possibly changing the function or expression of the protein.

The study was published in journal Human Molecular Genetics.

Source: DNA India

Brisk walk can help beat prostate cancer

Exercise may improve the prognosis of prostate cancer patients by affecting blood vessels in their tumours, a study suggests.

Researchers found that men who walked at a fast pace before being diagnosed with the disease had tumours containing larger and more regularly shaped blood vessels.

Better formed tumour blood vessels may in turn inhibit cancer aggressiveness and promote better responses to treatments, the scientists believe.

Physically active men with prostate cancer have a lower risk of recurrence and death from the disease than those living sedentary lives, but until now the reason has remained a mystery.

The new study looked at 572 prostate cancer patients taking part in a US lifestyle and health investigation called the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

Men with the fastest walking pace – between 3.3 and five miles per hour – prior to diagnosis had 8 per cent more regularly shaped tumour blood vessels than the slowest walkers who ambled at 1.5 to 2.5 mph.

“Prior research has shown that men with prostate tumours containing more regularly shaped blood vessels have a more favourable prognosis compared with men with prostate tumours containing mostly irregularly shaped blood vessels,” said lead scientist Dr Erin Van Blarigan, from the University of California at San Francisco.

“In this study, we found that men who reported walking at a brisk pace had more regularly shaped blood vessels in their prostate tumors compared with men who reported walking at a less brisk pace.

“Our findings suggest a possible mechanism by which exercise may improve outcomes in men with prostate cancer. Although data from randomised, controlled trials are needed before we can conclude that exercise causes a change in vessel regularity or clinical outcomes in men with prostate cancer, our study supports the growing evidence of the benefits of exercise, such as brisk walking, for men with prostate cancer.”

Dr Matthew Hobbs, deputy director of research at Prostate Cancer UK, said: “Although this research provides a plausible explanation of how exercise might improve outcomes for men with prostate cancer, much more research is needed to confirm the impact of lifestyle factors on men’s recovery.

“We hope that further research in this area may one day give us a way to improve the prognosis for the 40,000 men in the UK who are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year.”

Meanwhile a separate study suggest a good night’s sleep may also held the condition. Scientists have linked higher levels of the night-time hormone melatonin with a 75 per cent reduced risk of advanced disease.

Melatonin is produced in the dark at night. It plays a key role in regulating the body’s sleeping cycle and influences many other functions associated with the body’s 24-hour clock, or circadian rhythm.

Low levels of the hormone are typically associated with disrupted sleep.

Scientists studied 928 Icelandic men who were questioned about their sleep patterns.

Source: the Scotsman