Health News

Health benefits of apple juice

We’ve all heard the old adage, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”, but does apple juice hold the same miraculous benefits?

We decided to find out and viola, listed below are the top 6 health benefits offered by apple juice.

 1: Reduces heart risk

Drinking a glass of apple juice helps prevent cholesterol formation in your blood vessels and arteries. This further helps in reducing the risk of developing two major causes of heart diseases-high cholesterol and plaques in the arteries.

2: Improves digestion

A glass of raw apple juice helps to clean the liver and kidneys by removing harmful toxins. Due to its cleansing properties, it helps you achieve a cleaner digestive system and you are better protected against liver and kidney diseases.

3: Helps in weight loss

If you are trying to shed some weight, then add apple juice to your diet. Apple juice is completely free of calories and fat and can lower cholesterol.

4: Provides energy

A glass of apple juice is packed with various essential nutrients like vitamin A, vitamin C, Vitamin E, vitamin K and folate. Due to their richness in all these nutrients, it helps to pack your body with lots of energy.

5. Lowers the risk of dementia

Various studies have showed that drinking apple juice regularly helps lower the risk of dementia in older people. Apple juice also slows down brain aging and helps keep it sharp for a longer time.

6: Improves vision

Apple juice is rich in vitamin A, which helps in improve eye health. Vitamin A helps protect your eyes from eye diseases and keeps your vision sharp.

Source; Times of India

High blood pressure continues to be a bigger problem in Southeastern US

 

One third of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, but in the southeastern part of the country the rate is well over half, according to a new study that finds too little is being done to reverse the problem.

The Southeast has been called the Stroke Belt because of well-known high rates of cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure. But that knowledge has not led to changes, nor to a full understanding of the reasons for the population’s high risk, the study team reports.

“The rates have not changed,” though the U.S. has had treatment guidelines for high blood pressure since 1977, said one of the authors, Dr. Uchechukwu K. A. Sampson, an assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

“The number of people who do not know that they have high blood pressure is the same,” he added.

High blood pressure is an established cause of death from cardiovascular disease and accounts for up to 7.5 million deaths worldwide each year, the researchers point out.

To investigate the persistently high rates of high blood pressure in the South, Sampson’s group used a large database with recent information on men and women in southern states covering the years 2002 to 2009.

They focused on 69,000 white and black adults with similarly low income and education levels – to eliminate poverty as a factor – and analyzed what other causes might be contributing to blood pressure problems.

Overall, they found that 57 percent of the study participants had high blood pressure. Blacks were nearly twice as likely as whites to be suffering from the disease, which has no symptoms of its own, but can lead to stroke or kidney damage if untreated.

But the racial difference was seen mainly among women. Fifty one percent of black and white men had high blood pressure, but the rates were 64 percent among black women and 52 percent among white women.

Obesity seemed to be a main driver of the problem, especially among whites, with the most severely obese having more than four times the risk of high blood pressure compared to normal weight men and woman.

Other factors linked to the likelihood of severe high blood pressure included high cholesterol, diabetes, a history of depression and a family history of heart disease.

The numbers Sampson’s group found have not changed from previous studies and that consistency is alarming, he said.

“Are they still the same factors people have found before?” Sampson said. “If they are, that is bad news, then that means we have not done what we should have done in the past few years.”

Of the study participants who knew they had high blood pressure, 94 percent were taking at least one blood pressure medication, which is a good thing, Sampson said. But only 30 percent were taking a diuretic medication that promotes water loss from the body. Diuretics should be one of the first-line medication options, the authors write.

Black people were twice as likely as whites to have high blood pressure without knowing it, Sampson said.

That racial difference did not change even when researchers accounted for differences in income and education, the authors write in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

All of this lines up with what doctors and researchers already knew, Sampson said.

Without specific studies, it’s hard to say why population rates have not gone down, and why so many people still do not know they have high blood pressure, and why so few are on diuretics, he said.

Women may not actually be more predisposed to high blood pressure, Sampson said, but they may be less aware of the risk than men.

Awareness efforts have historically focused on men when it comes to heart and blood pressure problems, but women are equally likely to have problems, he said.

“African American women are known to have a very high prevalence of hypertension and that its onset is significantly earlier than what is seen in white women,” Dr. John M. Flack said.

Flack is chair of the department of medicine at Wayne State University at the Detroit Medical Center in Michigan.

Source: news.nom

Anxiety linked to stroke risk

 

Men and women with severe symptoms of anxiety may have a higher risk of stroke than their more relaxed counterparts, a new study suggests.

“The greater your anxiety level, the higher your risks of having a stroke,” study co-author Dr. Maya J. Lambiase, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told Reuters Health.

“Assessment and treatment of anxiety has the potential to not only improve overall quality of life, but may also reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, such as stroke, later in life,” she said in an email.

Dr. Philip Muskin, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York emphasized that the stroke risk identified in the study among overly anxious individuals was not vastly increased.

“What it’s really saying is, you’re a little more likely to have a stroke,” said Muskin, who was not involved in the study. Still, he added, “I would like to be a little less likely (to have a stroke) in my life.”

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S., but few studies have looked at psychosocial factors other than depression or psychological stress or distress, that may contribute to a person’s risk of stroke.

Yet, Lambiase and her colleagues point out, anxiety has been linked to increased cigarette smoking, alcohol abuse and physical inactivity – all of which are known to increase stroke risk.

To investigate the association between anxiety and stroke, the researchers analyzed data from 6,019 men and women who were enrolled in the First National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 1971-1975 and followed for about 16 years.

The participants were interviewed at the start of the study to determine the presence and severity of any anxiety symptoms, and stroke events were identified by examining hospital or nursing home discharge reports and death certificates.

A total of 419 strokes occurred throughout the study period, but the risk of stroke was higher among those who reported greater anxiety symptoms, including excessive feelings of worry, stress and nervousness, at the initial interview.

Overall, anxiety was linked to a 14 percent higher risk of stroke relative to participants who were not anxious, Lambiase and her co-authors report in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

But stroke risk also appeared to rise in line with increasing severity of anxiety symptoms, the results suggest.

The link between anxiety and stroke risk remained even after the researchers took into consideration other factors that may have influenced cardiovascular health, such as alcohol use, physical activity and smoking. After those adjustments, men and women with higher levels of anxiety were 33 percent more likely to experience stroke than those with fewer anxiety symptoms.

Similarly, the link between anxiety symptoms and increased stroke risk remained when the researchers accounted for study participants’ age, gender and symptoms of depression.

The researchers didn’t analyze the reason for the connection between anxiety and stroke, but they speculate multiple factors are likely to be involved. These could include unhealthy coping behaviors people with anxiety indulge in as well as overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system, which controls fight-or-flight responses, such as the release of stress hormones.

“People with high anxiety levels are more likely to smoke and be physically inactive, possibly explaining part of the anxiety-stroke link,” Lambiase said. “Higher stress hormones, blood pressure or sympathetic output may also be factors.”

“However,” she added, “future research is needed to determine the precise mechanisms whereby greater levels of anxiety increase a person’s risk for stroke.”

Dr. Muskin acknowledged that the study findings do point to a greater risk of stroke among overly anxious people, “but there are things you can do about that,” he said.

Noting that “anxiety predicts bad health behaviors,” Dr. Muskin cited the importance of stopping smoking and starting to exercise. He also described the importance of meditation and proper breathing techniques, which he teaches in his private practice with patients.

“Doing nothing leaves you at a higher risk (of stroke),” he said, but breathing exercises have “a psychologically beneficial effect,” with no harm and no addicting qualities, he told Reuters Health.

source: yahoo news

New York facility is ‘last hope’ for girl declared brain dead, family say

The family of Jahi McMath, the 13-year-old girl declared brain dead after complications from routine tonsil surgery, said Saturday a hospital in New York may be able to accept her and keep her on life support.

The girl’s uncle and lawyer wouldn’t provide the hospital’s name, saying they don’t want media attention to hurt her chance of being accepted and transferred there.

“It’s an organization that believes in life,” attorney Chris Dolan told the Associated Press.
“It’s our last, last hope,” he said after two facilities in California that agreed to accept Jahi decided to back out.

A nursing home in the San Francisco Bay Area that had been willing to care for the girl if she had two tubes inserted changed its mind. Dolan said a facility in the Los Angeles area also withdrew its offer because it didn’t want media attention or to jeopardize its relationship with its doctors, who refused to treat someone who’s been declared brain dead.

Time is short for the family, as Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo on Tuesday ruled that the Children’s Hospital Oakland may remove Jahi from a ventilator at 5 p.m. Monday unless an appeal is filed.

Jahi underwent a tonsillectomy at the hospital on Dec. 9 to treat sleep apnea. After she awoke from the operation, her family said, she started bleeding heavily from her mouth and went into cardiac arrest. Doctors at Children’s Hospital concluded the girl was brain dead on Dec. 12 and wanted to remove her from life support. The family said they believe she is still alive.

Before Jahi can be transferred, she must undergo two more medical procedures — the insertion of a breathing tube and a feeding tube.

“Children’s Hospital Oakland does not believe that performing surgical procedures on the body of a deceased person is an appropriate medical practice,” David Durand, its chief of pediatrics, said in a statement Thursday.

Douglas Straus, a lawyer for the hospital, said in a letter made public Friday that before the hospital would comply with the family’s request to move Jahi, it would need to speak directly with officials at any nursing home to make sure they understand her condition, “including the fact that Jahi is brain dead” — and to discuss needed preparations, including transportation.

“Children’s Hospital will of course continue to do everything legally and ethically permissible to support the family of Jahi McMath. In that regard, Children’s will allow a lawful transfer of Jahi’s body in its current state to another location if the family can arrange such a transfer and Children’s can legally do so,” Straus wrote in the letter.

He also said the Alameda County coroner needed to sign off on the move “since we are dealing with the body of a person who has been declared legally dead.”

Dolan said he had already obtained signed consent from the coroner for Jahi’s transfer. The Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau said it had no comment.

He said Saturday he was waiting to hear from the New York hospital after its facility director and medical director speak.

Hospital spokeswoman Cynthia Chiarappa said the hospital has not heard from any facility to discuss how it can accommodate “a deceased body on a ventilator.”

source: Nbc news

Study: Concussions May Lead To Alzheimer’s Plaque Buildup For Some

Concussions have already been linked to the Alzheimer’s-like degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in athletes and military members who have experienced repeated head blows and traumatic brain injuries.

Now, a new study links concussions to Alzheimer’s disease itself.

Mayo Clinic researchers gave brain scans to 141 Minnesotans who had been experiencing memory problems, and found those who had suffered a brain injury that caused them to black-out had more amyloid plaques in their brain than those who hadn’t.

Amyloid plaque is the telltale sign of Alzheimer’s disease, formed by pieces of a sticky protein that break off in the brain and clump together. Some clumps may form in brain regions involved in learning, memory and thinking, the Alzheimer’s Association explains. More plaques form as the disease progresses.

Researchers gave brain scans to 448 people without any memory or cognitive problems, and 141 people who had mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition characterized by declines in memory and thinking skills that aren’t caused by aging. They were also asked whether they had ever experienced a brain injury that caused them to lose consciousness. People with MCI are at a heightened risk of developing Alzheimer’s or another type of dementia, but not everyone with the condition will get worse.

The researchers found 18 percent of those with MCI had reported a prior brain injury, and on scans, they saw the patients had an average of 18 percent more amyloid plaques than those with no history of head trauma. They found no plaque differences in any of the brain scans of people without memory problems, regardless of whether they’d had a brain injury.

Source: dig triad

Is your yogurt actually healthy?

If there’s ever news in the yogurt world, this is it: Whole Foods Market plans to stop selling Chobani Greek yogurt in 2014 because the product contains genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

GMOs are a result of a crop’s DNA being altered by scientists to protect it from various environmental threats, according to the National Institutes of Health. They get a bad rap because these combinations of genes can’t occur in nature, and they contain compounds not yet tested for human consumption

While Chobani markets its products as containing only natural ingredients, the company’s use of milk comes from dairy cows fed GMO animal feed.

Whole Foods says they’re making way for more exclusive, local brands, especially those that are organic, according to the announcement.

It’s difficult to say definitively that you should avoid GMOs, Alan Aragon, Men’s Health’s nutrition advisor, said. There is some research that demonstrates their downsides, though: The latest animal studies indicate that genetically modified foods have toxic effects on the digestive and reproductive systems.

They have also been linked to many food allergies, according to the University of Medical Sciences in Poland. However, “for anything to be reasonably deemed dangerous, you’d need abundant and consistent evidence in both animal and human trials,” Aragon said. “In this case, the findings just aren’t there.”

If you want to avoid them, you’re likely safe with organic products—which are not allowed to contain GMOs. But when it comes to your yogurt, stick with your Chobani if you like it, Aragon said. If you want to try something GMO-free, go for it, he adds. Brown Cow Greek Yogurt and Straus Organic Yogurts are both organic and non-GMO verified.

Source: Topix

Patient doing well with French company’s artificial heart: report

A 75-year-old Frenchman was feeding himself and chatting to his family, more than a week after becoming the first person to be fitted with an artificial heart made by French biomedical company Carmat, one of his surgeons said.

“He is awake, feeding himself and talking with his family. We are thinking of getting him up on his feet soon, probably as early as this weekend,” Professor Daniel Duveau, who saw the patient on Thursday, told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

A more detailed account of the patient’s health would be made public on Monday, the paper wrote.

Heart-assistance devices have been used for decades as a temporary solution for patients awaiting transplants, but Carmat’s bioprosthetic product is designed to replace the real heart over the long run, mimicking nature using biological materials and sensors.

It aims to extend life for patients suffering from terminal heart failure who cannot hope for a heart transplant, often because they are too old and donors too scarce.

 

The artificial heart, which can beat up to five years, has been successfully tested on animals but the December 18 implant in a Paris hospital was the first in a human patient.

Three more patients in France are due to be fitted with the device. The next operation is scheduled for the first weeks of January, the newspaper reported.

In this first range of clinical trials, the success of the device will be judged on whether patients survive with the implant for at least a month.

The patients selected suffer from terminal heart failure – when the sick heart can no longer pump enough blood to sustain the body – and would otherwise have only a few days or weeks to live.

Artificial hearts thus fuel huge hope amongst patients, their families, and investors. Shares in Carmat have risen more than five-fold since floating on the Paris exchange in 2010.

Duveau told the JDD that Carmat’s first patient was very combative and confident with his new prosthetic heart.

“When his wife and his daughter leave him, he tells them: ‘See you tomorrow!’ All he wants is to enjoy life. He can’t wait to get out of the intensive care unit, out of his room, and out of uncertainty.”

Source: Fresh News

Multiple vaccines associated with increased infant mortality

As pentavalent vaccine has already created widespread controversy with reports linking increased morbidity and mortality to multiple vaccines in low-income countries, including Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and India, a new study published in the journal Vaccine has diametrically opposed to the extensively held conviction that more vaccines administered to infants the better.

The new observational study titled, ‘Co-administration of live measles and yellow fever vaccines and inactivated pentavalent vaccines is associated with increased mortality compared with measles and yellow fever vaccines only’ is a result of randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial conducted during 2007-2011 in the West African country Guinea-Bissau. The study has questioned the belief that vaccination is always a life-saving intervention.

Sayer Ji, “My personal belief about the expanding vaccination schedule, as well as increasing the number of vaccine antigens per vaccine, is we are engaging in unprecedented mass experimentation on our children, as there are simply far too many variables to control and understand now in order to make the determination that they are effective, much less safe. It is likely — and research bears this out — that the ultimate result of employing so vaccines, along with the known dangers of excipients and adjuvants, is increased morbidity and mortality in exposed populations.”

As the finding hold importance when one considers that pentavalent vaccines, with the efforts of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), aims to reach millions of children in several developing countries, he said, “Global vaccination campaigns are based upon a fundamental error in thinking. You can’t vaccinate away undernourishment, poor living conditions, or lack of water sanitation. Let these charitable programmes and the wealthy nations and corporations put their money where their mouths are and provide ‘first world’ solutions for third world problems.”

“India stands today as the mother to one of the most advanced, while also ancient, medical systems in the world, Ayurveda, and must consider the implications of casting its inheritance to the wind in favour of strictly Western medical interventions, many of which are being aggressively championed for reasons that are as much political and economic as they are humanitarian in nature,” he said.

“The primary suggestion I would give is to not ignore the significant body of peer-reviewed research that now exists showing the unintended, adverse health effects of vaccination which may in some cases far outweigh their purported benefit. Also, these are not strictly academic matters but the lives of our children and future generations are on the line,” Sayer Ji opined.

In the light of the study, Dr Jacob Puliyel, head of paediatrics at St Stephen’s Hospital, New Delhi, told , “I do not think international agencies will do anything till we highlight every death as unacceptable.”

Source; Green med info

Diabetes risk gene may be inherited from Neanderthals

 

A gene variant that increases the risk of diabetes in Latin Americans may have been inherited from Neanderthals, a new study has found.

The gene variant was detected in a large genome-wide association study (GWAS) of more than 8,000 Mexicans and other Latin Americans.

People who carry the higher risk version of the gene are 25 per cent more likely to have diabetes than those who do not, and people who inherited copies from both parents are 50 per cent more likely to have diabetes, researchers found.

The higher risk form of the gene – named SLC16A11 – has been found in up to half of people with recent Native American ancestry, including Latin Americans, ‘BBC News’ reported.

The variant is found in about 20 per cent of East Asians and is rare in populations from Europe and Africa.

The elevated frequency of this risk gene in Latin Americans could account for as much as 20 per cent of the populations’ increased prevalence of type 2 diabetes – the origins of which are not well understood.

“To date, genetic studies have largely used samples from people of European or Asian ancestry, which makes it possible to miss culprit genes that are altered at different frequencies in other populations,” said co-corresponding author Jose Florez, a Broad associate member, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Assistant Physician in the Diabetes Unit and the Center for Human Genetic Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

“By expanding our search to include samples from Mexico and Latin America, we’ve found one of the strongest genetic risk factors discovered to date, which could illuminate new pathways to target with drugs and a deeper understanding of the disease,” Florez said.

In the study published in the journal Nature, researchers conducted genomic analyses, in collaboration with Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and discovered that the SLC16A11 sequence associated with risk of type 2 diabetes is found in a newly sequenced Neanderthal genome.

Source: Indian Express

Low Vitamin B-12 Levels Tied to Bone Fractures in Older Men

Older men with low levels of vitamin B-12 are at increased risk for bone fractures, a new study suggests.

Researchers measured the levels of vitamin B-12 in 1,000 Swedish men with an average age of 75. They found that participants with low levels of the vitamin were more likely than those with normal levels to have suffered a fracture.

Men in the group with the lowest B-12 levels were about 70 percent more likely to have suffered a fracture than others in the study. This increased risk was primarily due to fractures in the lumbar spine, where there was an up to 120 percent greater chance of fractures.

“The higher risk also remains when we take other risk factors for fractures into consideration, such as age, smoking, [weight], bone-mineral density, previous fractures, physical activity, the vitamin D content in the blood and calcium intake,” study author Catharina Lewerin, a researcher at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, said in a university news release.

It is not known, however, if consuming more vitamin B-12 — which is found in eggs, fish, poultry and other meats — can reduce the risk of fractures in older men.

“Right now, there is no reason to eat more vitamin B-12, but rather treatment shall only be applied in confirmed cases of deficiencies and in some cases to prevent deficiencies,” Lewerin said. “For anyone who wants to strengthen their bones and prevent fractures, physical activity 30 minutes a day and quitting smoking is good self care.”

Although the study tied lower vitamin B-12 levels to a higher risk of fracture in older men, it did not establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

This study — published online in the journal Osteoporosis International — is a part of an international research project initiated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health that includes 11,000 men.

Source: Health