Health News

7 healthy reasons to eat raisins!

Raisins are also considered to be nature’s healthy alternative to candies as they are extremely sweet and convenient to eat. In terms of cost too, they are cheaper as compared to other dry fruits like pistachios and cashew nuts.

1. Keeps you energetic

If you are feeling fatigued and low on energy, try eating raisins. They contain sugars like fructose and glucose and promote the efficient absorption of nutrients in your body.

2. Good for your oral health

Unlike candies which are notorious for causing cavities, raisins contain oleanolic acid which prevents the growth of harmful bacteria in your mouth. This in turn helps in keeping oral health problems like tooth decay and cavities at bay.

3. Strengthens your bones

Calcium, a nutrient present in raisins helps strengthen your bones and keeps debilitating diseases like arthritis and osteoporosis at bay. Additionally, they have a micronutrient called boron which aids in the absorption of calcium.

4. Acts as an aphrodisiac

Eating raisins is a great way to rev up your love life as it contains an amino acid called arginine that raises your libido. Along with raisins, you could also eat foods like walnuts and pomegranate to boost your sex life.

5. Treats infections

Raisins can be an effective home remedy to treat infections as they have polyphenols with anti bacterial and anti inflammatory properties.

6. Keeps cancer at bay

Raisins are rich in antioxidants which prevent your cells from suffering from free radical damage which helps in preventing cancer. In particular, a polyphenolic antioxidant called catechin present in raisins has been found to protect against cancer.

7. Helps cure constipation

Constipation can be an extremely unpleasant condition to have. Raisins are rich in fibre which helps clear the food stuck in your bowel. You could also try eating papaya and guavas to help relieve the symptoms.

All of these properties ensure that you stock up on raisins the next time you go to the supermarket.

Source: The health

Too much computer time hits bone health in adolescents

Researchers have found that in boys, higher screen time was adversely associated to bone mineral density (BMD) at all sites even when adjusted for specific lifestyle factors.

Results of a study showed that the skeleton grows continually from birth to the end of the teenage years, reaching peak bone mass – maximum strength and size- in early adulthood. Along with nutritional factors, physical activity can also greatly impact on this process.

The Norwegian study explored the hypothesis that greater computer use at weekends is associated with lower BMD. The data was obtained from 463 girls and 484 boys aged 15-18 years in the Tromso region of Norway. The students participated in the Fit Futures study from 2010-2011 which assessed more than 90 per cent of all first year high school students in the region.

BMD at total hip, femoral neck and total body was measured by DXA (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry). Lifestyle variables were collected by self-administered questionnaires and interviews, including questions on time per day during weekends spent in front of the television or computer, and time spent on leisure time physical activities. The associations between BMD and screen time were analyzed in a multiple regression model that included adjustment for age, sexual maturation, BMI, leisure time physical activity, smoking, alcohol, cod liver oil and carbonated drink consumption.

Source: Business standard

 

Scientists visualize new treatments for retinal blindness

A new report published in The FASEB Journal may lead the way toward new treatments or a cure for a common cause of blindness (proliferative retinopathies). Specifically, scientists have discovered that the body’s innate immune system does more than help ward off external pathogens. It also helps remove sight-robbing abnormal blood vessels, while leaving healthy cells and tissue intact. This discovery is significant as the retina is part of the central nervous system and its cells cannot be replaced once lost. Identifying ways to leverage the innate immune system to “clean out” abnormal blood vessels in the retina may lead to treatments that could prevent or delay blindness, or restore sight.

“Our findings begin to identify a new role of the innate immune system by which endogenous mediators selectively target the pathologic retinal vasculature for removal,” said Kip M Connor, a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Ophthalmology at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary Angiogenesis Laboratory. “It is our hope that future studies will allow us to develop specific therapeutics that harnesses this knowledge resulting in a greater visual outcome and quality of life for patients suffering from diabetic retinopathy or retinopathy of prematurity.”

To make this discovery, Connor and colleagues compared two groups of mice, a genetically modified group which lacked activity in the innate immune complement system, and a normal group with a fully functional innate immune system. Researchers placed both groups in an environment that induced irregular blood vessel growth in the eye, mimicking what happens in many human ocular diseases. The mice that were lacking a functional innate immune system developed significantly more irregular blood vessels than the normal mice, indicating that the complement system is a major regulator of abnormal blood vessel growth within the eye. Importantly, in the normal mice, scientists were able to visualize the immune system targeting and killing only the irregular blood vessels while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

“Knowing how the complement system works to keep our retinas clean is an important first-step toward new treatments that could mimic this activity,” said Gerald Weissmann, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “It’s a new understanding of how proliferative retinopathies rob us of sight, and promises to let us see the path ahead clearly.”

Source: India medical Times

Diet supplement causes nearly 100 hepatitis cases

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A popular diet supplement has caused an outbreak of severe liver disease, sickening nearly 100 people in 16 states since it was first reported in Hawaii last year, according to a new paper. The publication calls for a better system to remove dangerous supplements from the market.

As of February, OxyElite Pro, a dietary supplement manufactured by USPLabs that claims to help people burn fat, has been linked to 97 cases of hepatitis, including 47 people who were hospitalized, three who needed liver transplantations and one person who died, according to the paper, which was authored by Dr. Pieter Cohen, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a general internist at Cambridge Health Alliance.

Although people who took the supplement started getting ill in May last year, the Food and Drug Administration did not learn of the cases until four months later, in September, when doctors reported a cluster of liver illnesses in Hawaii. USPLabs stopped selling the product in Octobe

Health officials suspect that a new ingredient called aegeline that was added to the supplement caused the illnesses, Cohen said. Because the FDA regulates supplements only after they come to market, companies are not required to prove that their products are safe and effective before marketing them.

“This really points to the fact that there’s no safety testing … before a new ingredient shows up in a supplement in the United States,” Cohen said. “Guess who’s the experimental animal — the consumer.”

Dangerous supplements are supposed to be identified and removed quickly, but this is often not the case, as demonstrated by the hepatitis outbreak, Cohen said. Doctors can report adverse events tied to dietary supplements through an online portal called MedWatch.

But in most cases, the FDA does not receive reports of the harmful effects of supplements, Cohen said. Those cases might be reported to a poison control center, which does not communicate with the FDA, or they might not get reported at all, he said.

“Dangerous supplements remain on store shelves for weeks, months or years” because the FDA has a fractured system for monitoring supplements, Cohen said.

He proposes that all dietary supplements should be registered, and information about the supplements and their ingredients should be incorporated into a database maintained by the FDA and poison centers.

Under this organization, if a person has an adverse reaction to a supplement, it would be reported to a response team made of up doctors, toxicologists, pharmacologists and chemists. The team would then investigate the case, report to the FDA and offer advice about treating the patient.

“In the situation where we know that some supplements out there may be dangerous, we’d better have a really good system” to detect them, Cohen said.

While improved monitoring of supplements is needed, it is not the ultimate solution, Cohen said. Congress should change the law regulating supplements to require that all supplement ingredients undergo safety testing before they come to market, he said.

“Until that happens, consumers and physicians cannot be assured that the pills, powders and potions labeled as dietary supplements are safe for human consumption,” Cohen wrote in the April 3 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Source: CBS news

Study: Eat 7 servings of fruit, veggies daily

You know the saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”? Turns out eating one apple isn’t enough. A new study suggests people who eat up to seven servings of fruit and vegetables a day can cut their risk of death by 42% – and that vegetables may be more important than fruit to your overall health.

The study, conducted by scientists in the United Kingdom, was published online Monday in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The study

Researchers looked at data from more than 65,000 adults over age 35 who participated in the Healthy Surveys for England study between 2001 and 2008.

HSE surveyors had asked participants about their fruit and vegetable consumption during a 24-hour time period. Portion sizes were defined by the UK’s Department of Health to be about 80 grams (equivalent to just under 3 ounces). The new study authors compared this nutrition information to mortality data for the group over the following eight or so years.

The results

The participants ate an average of 3.8 servings of fruit and vegetables per day. Older, non-smoking women tended to eat more than other demographic groups. Produce consumption was also linked to participants’ body mass indexes; those who ate more fruit and vegetables tended to have a lower BMI.

The researchers found that a diet rich in fruit and vegetables can be protective against cancer, heart disease and all other causes of death. Eating at least seven servings was best, but each serving increase was associated with a lower risk of death.

To make sure they weren’t counting people who were seriously ill at the time of the survey, researchers excluded deaths that occurred in the year following the data collection. When they did so, they found that people who ate at least seven daily servings of fruit and vegetables had a 42% lower risk of death from all causes than those who ate less than one daily serving.

When researchers broke it down by cause of death, veggie lovers had a 25% lower risk of dying from cancer, and a 31% lower risk of dying from heart disease or stroke.

Vegetables seemed to provide a greater health benefit than fruit. Eating more than three or four servings of fruit daily didn’t increase a study participant’s chance of survival, the study authors concluded.

Study limits

HSE surveyors only recorded one day of each study particpant’s fruit and vegetable consumption. On that day, the participant could have eaten more or less produce than they would normally consume.

Researchers also did not include participants’ total caloric intake, salt consumption or fat consumption in their analysis.

As the study authors say, their data shows a “strong association, but not necessarily a causal relationship.”

Takeaway

Eat more vegetables. Even if you, like many of the study participants, believe you’re eating an overall healthy diet, you “need to aim higher,” according to an editorial accompanying the study.

This study follows previous research presented at the American College of Cardiology’s annual session last week. Dr. Michael Miedema and his colleagues found that women who ate eight to nine servings of fruit and vegetables in their 20s were 40% less likely to have dangerous plaque in their arteries in their 40s.

“There is value in knowing how the choices we make early in life have lifelong benefits,” Miedema said in a press release.

So fill up on salad. Snack on raw carrots. And yes – eat that apple.

Sorce: CNN

Skin cancer: Genetic mutations ‘warn of risk’

Scientists say they have taken a step forward in understanding why some people are at greater risk of skin cancer because of their family history.

A newly identified gene mutation causes some cases of melanoma, a type of skin cancer, says a UK team. The discovery will pave the way for new screening methods, they report in Nature Genetics.

The risk of melanoma depends on several factors, including sun exposure, skin type and family history. Every year in the UK, almost 12,000 people are diagnosed with melanoma.

About one in 20 people with melanoma have a well-established family history of the disease. A team led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, found that people with mutations in a certain gene were at extremely high risk of melanoma.

The mutations switch off a gene known as POT1, which protects against damage to packets of DNA, known as chromosomes.

Co-author Dr David Adams, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said the discovery should lead to the ability to find out who in a family was at risk, and who should be screened for skin cancer.

He told the BBC: “The mutations in this gene result in damage to the end of the chromosomes and chromosomal damage in general is linked to cancer formation – that’s the pathway for it.”

Early detection
A number of gene mutations have been identified as increasing the risk of melanoma, but others remain unknown.

Prof Tim Bishop, Director of the Leeds Institute of Cancer and Pathology, said the finding increased understanding of why some families had a high incidence of melanoma.

“Since this gene has previously been identified as a target for the development of new drugs, in the future it may be possible that early detection will facilitate better management of this disease,” he said.

The team found cancers such as leukaemia were common in these families, suggesting the gene may underlie other cancers and not just melanoma.

Dr Safia Danovi of Cancer Research UK said: “This is a step forward for people with a strong family history of melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer.

“But it’s important to remember that, for most of us, avoiding sunburn and sunbeds is the best way to reduce the risk of this disease.”

Source: BBC

Chronic stress in early life linked to anxiety, aggression in adulthood

Researchers have suggested that chronic stress in early life causes anxiety, aggression in adulthood.

A research team led by Associate Professor Grigori Enikolopov of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) conducted experiments designed to assess the impacts of social stress upon adolescent mice, both at the time they are experienced and during adulthood.

The tests began with 1-month-old male mice – the equivalent, in human terms of adolescents – each placed for 2 weeks in a cage shared with an aggressive adult male.

The animals were separated by a transparent perforated partition, but the young males were exposed daily to short attacks by the adult males. This kind of chronic activity produces what neurobiologists call social-defeat stress in the young mice. These mice were then studied in a range of behavioral tests.

These experiments showed that in young mice chronic social defeat induced high levels of anxiety helplessness, diminished social interaction, and diminished ability to communicate with other young animals. Stressed mice also had less new nerve-cell growth (neurogenesis) in a portion of the hippocampus known to be affected in depression: the subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus.

Another group of young mice was also exposed to social stress, but was then placed for several weeks in an unstressful environment. Following this “rest” period, these mice, now old enough to be considered adults, were tested in the same manner as the other cohort.

In this second, now-adult group, most of the behaviors impacted by social defeat returned to normal, as did neurogenesis , which retuned to a level seen in healthy controls. “This shows that young mice, exposed to adult aggressors, were largely resilient biologically and behaviorally,” says Dr. Enikolopov.

However, in these resilient mice, the team measured two latent impacts on behavior. As adults they were abnormally anxious, and were observed to be more aggressive in their social interactions.

The study has been published online in the journal PLOS ONE.

Source: zee news

Let your feelings out to boost your sex life!

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Just letting your feelings out without ambivalence may be a major booster to your sex life, a study has found. ‘The more ambivalent you are, the less you are able to communicate your emotions satisfactorily, and the more you are likely to be uncomfortable with your partner,’ said Nayla Awada, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the Universite de Montreal in Canada.

Couples who regulate their emotions together in a satisfactory manner are more fulfilled sexually, psychologically, and relationally, said the study. This holds true even among couples in which the woman has provoked vestibulodynia (PVD), also known as ‘vulvar vestibulitis’, Awada discovered. For the research, Awada studied 254 couples in which the woman was diagnosed
with PVD.

PVD is characterized by burning sensation felt on the ‘vestibule’, or entrance of the vagina. ‘Ambivalence of both partners is related to greater emotional distress and more sexual and relational difficulties in the couples,’ said the researcher.

Source: The health Site

Nasal spray nanovaccine promises no pain, more gain

Vaccines save lives, but sometimes they fail to reach the people who need them most, in parts of the developing world. A research team from Iowa State University is currently developing a new generation of vaccines that uses nanotechnology, and is delivered in spray form. One of the advantages of this new type of vaccine is that is can increase access to people living in remote areas because it requires no refrigeration and is simpler to administer.

Current vaccines typically work by introducing part of a virus or bacteria into the body, to trigger what is known as humoral response – the immune system’s ability to produce antibodies that prevent future infections. But more recently, science has started to focus on the use of T cells (white blood cells that monitor abnormalities and infections) to fight viral and bacterial infections, a possibility that these new spray vaccines also explore.

The formula of the vaccine includes protein sampled from the target virus or bacteria, covered in biodegradable polymers. Once sprayed or shot into the body, it will activate the immune system and trigger either the T cells or the humoral response to create specific immunological defenses, depending on the chemical composition of the vaccine.

Research so far has shown that the nanovaccine is effective to produce immunity with T cells on rodents. The next phase of the research will assess how it works with larger mammals.

The new type of vaccine offers practical advantages as it can be safely stored at room temperature for up to 10 months without compromising its efficacy. Additionally, the nasal spray format makes application, as well as follow-up shots, easier, even paving the way for self-administration. With no needles involved, it should be easier for parents to take their children through a pain-free procedure, an idea that has been explored by MIT researchers as well.

The findings of the research were recently presented at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), which was held at the Dallas Convention Center in the US.

Source: gizmag

Sick Again? Why Some Colds Won’t Go Away

About a month ago Sharon Gilbert was hit with a runny nose, sore throat and a cough. The whole snotty works.

A few weeks later she thought she had recovered. Then her husband Derek got sick, and bam. “Suddenly I started getting all the symptoms [again] and it was worse,” said Ms. Gilbert, a 61-year-old writer in Charleston, Ill.

In the winter that seems to have no end in many parts of the country, people like Ms. Gilbert have been plagued with the seemingly everlasting cold.

That’s partly because the common cold can last longer than many people think—up to two weeks for the principal symptoms and perhaps weeks more for a cough that lingers even after the virus has been cleared away. There’s also the possibility of secondary infections such as bacterial sinusitis.

And some patients might get back-to-back colds, doctors say. It isn’t likely people will be reinfected with the same virus because the body builds some immunity to it. But people can pick up another of the more than 200 known viruses that can cause the common cold, some of which are worse than others.

“When you hear people who have the cold that ‘won’t go away,’ those are typically back-to-back infections of which we see a lot of in the cold weather when people are cohorting together,” said Darilyn Moyer, a physician at Temple University Hospital and chairwoman-elect of the American College of Physicians Board of Governors.

Influenza may get all the attention, but the common cold is the leading cause of doctor visits, according to the National Institutes of Health. Each year, people in the U.S. get about one billion colds, and 22 million school days are lost to the stubborn viruses.

Experts say adults on average get two to five colds a year; school children can get as many as seven to 10. The elderly tend to get infected less because they’ve built up immunity to many viruses. And adults who live or work with young children come down with more colds.

Don’t I know it. For more than a month now my family seems to be playing a game of pass-the-nasty-cold. My husband had a cold and lingering cough for weeks, which we suspect he gave to our infant. Finally I succumbed.

We blamed the purveyor of all germs, our kindergartner. Just as we were all recovering, the infant started day care and brought home a virus and we’re all on round two of apparently a different cold.

Experts say it’s possible that the carrier of germs—in this case our kindergartner—can infect others without having symptoms himself.

“At any given moment if we were to swab you…we’d probably come up with five different rhinoviruses sitting in your nose but you’re not sick,” said Ann Palmenberg, a researcher at the Institute of Molecular Virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rhinovirus is the most common viral cause of the common cold, accounting for 30% to 50% of adult colds, and there are more than 150 strains of it.

To get infected, the so-called ICAM receptors, which the rhinovirus attaches to in order to enter the nasal cells, need to be open, Dr. Palmenberg said.

“Rhinos are out there all the time, it’s just a question of when you are susceptible,” she said. Factors such as stress, lack of sleep and people’s overall health can make them more likely to get infected. More than 150 strains or genotypes of the rhinovirus have been identified and researchers believe there are probably many more.

Rhinovirus replicates best in the relatively lower body temperatures of the upper respiratory area, such as the nasal passages, sinuses and throat.

Other viruses, such as the less-common adenovirus, can replicate and attach to receptors in the upper and lower respiratory tracts, causing a more serious illness.

Other viruses—including the coronavirus, respiratory syncytial virus and enterovirus—have also been identified as causing cold symptoms. “The most confounding thing of all is that we still haven’t identified the cause of 20% to 30% of adult common colds,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Sometimes a cold that never seems to end could be a sign of something more serious. A cold may result in a sinus infection, bronchitis or pneumonia. And cold symptoms are at times confused with seasonal allergies.

A usually dry cough that lingers after a cold is typically due to bronchial hyperreactivity or tracheal inflammation, doctors say. “After you go through an infection in your respiratory system, you can almost have a transient form of asthma where your bronchial tubes are very highly reactive and very irritated and inflamed,” said Dr. Moyer, of Temple University Hospital.

A review of various studies, published last year in the journal Annals of Family Medicine, found that coughs on average last about 18 days. The report also said a survey of nearly 500 people found that most participants expected a cough should disappear in about a week and believed antibiotics from their doctor would help them. (A big no-no!)

Some experts believe having one cold virus and a weakened immune system could make catching another virus easier. Because the epithelial linings in the nose are weakened when you have a cold, the broken down mucus-membrane barrier may be more prone to picking up another virus.

But others suggest that proteins such as interferons, which are secreted during a cold to help fight the virus, may also boost resistance to getting infected by a second virus, according to Dr. Fauci, of the NIH.

What can a person do to prevent or shorten a cold? Nearly everyone knows someone who swears by taking echinacea or zinc or downing packs of vitamin C.

But doctors say the evidence isn’t conclusive that any of these remedies helps. Some research indicates that exercise and meditation could help prevent colds.

The good news is spring is here, at least officially, so the worst of the winter cold season should be over. Come summer, however, a new batch of viruses emerge and you might find yourself saying hello to the pesky summer cold.

Source: The Wall Street Journal