health tips

Children at risk of AIDS should be tested at birth – UN

More than a quarter of a million children each year are born infected with the virus that causes AIDS, but too few are being tested early to receive treatment and prolong their lives, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Michele Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, called for diagnostic kits to be improved for detection in babies of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, and for their “still high” current price of $25-50 to be brought down.

Children are the “forgotten” victims of the AIDS epidemic, yet 260,000 babies joined their ranks last year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, he said.

“Irrespective of the market size we need to make sure that diagnostics are made available for children,” he told a news conference in Geneva ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1.

“We made a lot of progess during the last 2-3 years in terms of treatment, in terms of medicines, in terms of making sure that the molecules are more well-targeted for children. But where we are failing is also making early diagnostics.”

U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories and Swiss drugmaker Roche are among the main manufacturers of HIV diagnostics, according to senior UNAIDS officials.

Some 3.3 million children under age 15 have HIV, but only 1.9 million of them require treatment today, according to the Geneva-based agency. Fewer than 650,000 or 34 percent of the 1.9 million received antiretroviral AIDS drugs in 2012, still a rise of 14 percent from the year before, it said.

Some 14 million adults with HIV need treatment, and 9 million of them or 64 percent are receiving it, a far higher coverage rate than for children.

UNAIDS has identified 22 priority countries for stopping infections in children, 21 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, home to 90 percent of women living with HIV. The other is India.

In three of these priority countries – Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi – fewer than 5 percent of infants at risk are being tested for HIV at birth, UNAIDS says.

“In priority countries, only 3 in 10 children receive HIV treatment. We have seen tremendous political commitment and results to reduce mother-to-child transmission but we are failing the children who become infected,” said Sidibe, who is from Mali.

All children under five who test positive for the virus should be put on treatment, according to Mahesh Mahalingam, UNAIDS director for its global plan for stopping new infections in children.

Current PCR tests are able to detect the virus in a baby only after the age of six weeks and require sending a blood sample to a specialised laboratory, he said.

“What we looking for are easier tests that we can administer earlier on, this will help detect the virus and start them on medicines faster. We recommend that as soon as the child is known to be HIV positive, you start on anti-retroviral drugs,” Mahalingam told Reuters.

He added: “The earlier we can diagnose, the earlier we can treat them which increase chances of child survival. Children are now getting to grow into adults. If we start pretty early they have the same chance of living as any other children.”

Source: New Vision

Nut eaters have lower cancer, heart disease risk

Help yourself to some nuts this holiday season: Regular nut eaters were less likely to die of cancer or heart disease — in fact, were less likely to die of any cause — during a 30-year Harvard study.

Nuts have long been called heart-healthy, and the study is the largest ever done on whether eating them affects mortality.

Researchers tracked 119,000 men and women and found that those who ate nuts roughly every day were 20 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who never ate nuts. Eating nuts less often also appeared to still lower the death risk, in direct proportion to consumption.

The risk of dying of heart disease dropped 29 percent and the risk of dying of cancer fell 11 percent among those who had nuts seven or more times a week compared with people who never ate them.

The benefits were seen from peanuts as well as from pistachios, almonds, walnuts and other tree nuts. The researchers did not look at how the nuts were prepared — oiled or salted, raw or roasted.

Nut eaters stayed slimmer.

“There’s a general perception that if you eat more nuts you’re going to get fat. Our results show the opposite,” said Dr. Ying Bao of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

She led the study, published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine. The National Institutes of Health and the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research & Education Foundation sponsored the study, but the nut group had no role in designing it or reporting the results.

Researchers don’t know why nuts may boost health. It could be that their unsaturated fatty acids, minerals and other nutrients lower cholesterol and inflammation and reduce other problems, as earlier studies seemed to show.

Observational studies like this one can’t prove cause and effect, only suggest a connection. Research on diets is especially tough, because it can be difficult to single out the effects of any one food.

People who eat more nuts may eat them on salads, for example, and some of the benefit may come from the leafy greens, said Dr. Robert Eckel, a University of Colorado cardiologist and former president of the American Heart Association.

Dr. Ralph Sacco, a University of Miami neurologist who also is a former heart association president, agreed.

“Sometimes when you eat nuts you eat less of something else like potato chips,” so the benefit may come from avoiding an unhealthy food, Sacco said.

The Harvard group has long been known for solid science on diets. Its findings build on a major study earlier this year — a rigorous experiment that found a Mediterranean-style diet supplemented with nuts cuts the chance of heart-related problems, especially strokes, in older people at high risk of them.

Many previous studies tie nut consumption to lower risks of heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer and other maladies.

In 2003, the Food and Drug Administration said a fistful of nuts a day as part of a low-fat diet may reduce the risk of heart disease. The heart association recommends four servings of unsalted, unoiled nuts a week and warns against eating too many, since they are dense in calories.

The new research combines two studies that started in the 1980s on 76,464 female nurses and 42,498 male health professionals. They filled out surveys on food and lifestyle habits every two to four years, including how often they ate a serving (1 ounce) of nuts.

Study participants who often ate nuts were healthier — they weighed less, exercised more and were less likely to smoke, among other things. After taking these and other things into account, researchers still saw a strong benefit from nuts.

Compared with people who never ate nuts, those who had them less than once a week reduced their risk of death 7 percent; once a week, 11 percent; two to four times a week, 13 percent; and seven or more times a week, 20 percent.

“I’m very confident” the observations reflect a true benefit, Bao said. “We did so many analyses, very sophisticated ones,” to eliminate other possible explanations.

For example, they did separate analyses on smokers and non-smokers, heavy and light exercisers, and people with and without diabetes, and saw a consistent benefit from nuts.

At a heart association conference in Dallas this week, Penny Kris-Etherton, a Pennsylvania State University nutrition scientist, reviewed previous studies on this topic.

“We’re seeing benefits of nut consumption on cardiovascular disease as well as body weight and diabetes,” said Kris-Etherton, who has consulted for nut makers and also served on many scientific panels on dietary guidelines.

“We don’t know exactly what it is” about nuts that boosts health or which ones are best, she said. “I tell people to eat mixed nuts.”

Source: Dallas news

Aloe vera for winters

As the temperature begins to drop, and the skin begins to dry up, it’s vital to drink lots of water and use water-based organic products like aloe vera.  Due to aloe’s high water content (over 99 per cent water) it is a great way to hydrate, moisturize and rejuvenate the skin.

Aloe vera increases the elasticity of the skin making it more flexible through collagen and elastin repair.  It helps supply oxygen to the skin cells, increasing the strength and synthesis of skin tissue and induces improved blood flow. Aloe vera-based moisturisers should be used to keep your skin soft this winter as they prevent it from drying and keeps them fresh, soft and smooth.

Also, do not forget to drink as much water possible. In addition to that herbal teas and clear soups are more creative ways to get your daily H2O intake and flush out toxins.

Source: Deccan Chronicle

Combining breastfeeding and solid food can reduce allergies

Giving a baby solid food besides breast milk after the 17th week of its birth helps it develop a better, stronger immune system to fight food allergies, new research has found.

The University of Southampton study, led by dietician and senior research fellow Kate Grimshaw, revealed that introduction of solid food before this may promote food allergy whereas solid food introduction after the 17th week seems to make the immune system stronger.

“Introducing solid foods alongside breastfeeding can benefit the immune system,” Grimshaw said.

“It appears the immune system becomes educated when there is an overlap of solids and breast milk because the milk promotes tolerogenic mechanisms against the solids,” he said.

The researchers recruited 1140 infants at birth from the Hampshire area.

The diet of these infants was compared with the diet of 82 infants who did not develop food allergy by the time they were two.

Forty one of these children went on to develop a food allergy by the time they were two years of age.

The team found that children who had developed allergies began eating solid food earlier than children with no allergies, roughly at 16 weeks or earlier.

Children with allergies were also more likely to not being breastfed when the mother introduced cow’s milk protein from any source.

Grimshaw said women who are not breastfeeding are encouraged to introduce solids before 17 weeks.

Source: Top News

Playing music at young age can keep brain healthy

A new study has found that playing an instrument at a young age might make you healthier later in life.

Dr. Nina Kraus, professor of neurobiology at Northwestern University, said what is seen in an older adult who has made music is a biologically younger brain, Fox News reported.

Kraus said that the fact that your cognitive sensory reward system is so engaged in the process of playing music seems to strengthen those circuits that are worked for music …and those functions that are important for language.

The study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Source: ANI

Malaria ‘linked’ to household size

Researchers have found that malaria eradication is related more to household size than to a country’s wealth or temperature.

University of Guelph’s economics professor Ross McKitrick and two Finnish professors, Larry and Lena Hulden, found that when average household size drops below four persons, malaria extermination is much more likely.

Malaria is transmitted by infected mosquitoes. The research team examined data on malaria insect vectors, as well as demographic, sociological and environmental factors for 232 countries. Malaria is still prevalent in 106 countries.

McKitrick said that Malaria-bearing mosquitoes mainly feed at night, and tend to return to the same location for blood meals, asserting that the more people who sleep in one area, the greater the likelihood of an infected mosquito spreading the parasite to a new, uninfected victim.

The researchers looked at factors such as gross domestic product per capita, urbanization and slums, latitude, mean temperature, forest coverage, national DDT use, household size and even religion.

The study has been published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A.

Source: Deccan Chronicle

Alternative Treatments for Diabetes

Diabetes is continuing to emerge as one of the gravest healthcare threats with millions of people being affected all over the world. Till this date the conclusive treatment of diabetes is out of reach for modern medicinal tradition, but on the other hand an array of holistic procedures and alternative treatments are showing promise to curb diabetes under control. Here we introduce some of the best known alternative treatments for diabetes.

The deadly chronic endocrine disorder called diabetes making millions of people suffer and cause enormous medical complication leading to death. Diabetes typically is a disease that requires continuous management rather than curative approach as the disease at best can be checked and cannot be permanently cured. Though total recovery from diabetic condition is still out of reach as far as the curative approach of modern medical drugs are concerned, it is now a widely acclaimed fact that alternative treatments for diabetes with the use of herbs and herbal remedies are more effective to curb diabetes over a long period of time. These alternative therapeutic and lifestyle procedures which are also called holistic treatments are without side effects and can boost the natural process of metabolism to a significant extent.

Ayurveda

Ayurveda considers diabetes to be a disease intricately related to our metabolic disorder and as per Ayurvedic the situation can only be reversed by addressing the contributory factors effectively. The elimination of sugar from the dietary regimen, replacement of simple carbohydrates with complex ones rich with dietary fibers and finally use of herbs for boosting metabolism, these three are the principal ways that as per Ayurvedic principle can check diabetes. In many parts of the world, even across top healthcare establishments Ayurvedic treatment regimen is widely applied to treat diabetes.

Yoga

Among the alternative treatments for diabetes this ancient Indian procedure involving exercises and breathing techniques is considered to have most sustainable health effect. Yogic exercises ideally boosts up the metabolism and helps the cell level glucose consumption in the body. Yoga also helps to reduce other contributing factors that play an important role in causing diabetes like, stress, overweight or obesity syndromes, poor digestion, etc.

Herbal and Dietary Supplements

There are a number of herbs and herbal supplements that are medically proven to be effective to curb diabetes like neem, allium satvium, phylanthus amarus, tinosfora cordifolia and many more. There are particularly some minerals that are effective in reducing the chances of diabetes or in checking diabetes under control, for instance chromium, magnesium, vanadium, nicotinamide, vitamin E, etc.

Lifestyle and home remedies

Daily lifestyle habits and home regimen consisting changes in nutrition and dieting and other lifestyle aspects are accumulatively one of the most effective ways to treat diabetes. High fiber and low calorie diet, eating habit of breaking a big meal in small snack proportions, introducing more green veggies and fruits in daily diet, more physical movements and exercise, distressed living with sound sleep, are some of the irreplaceable lifestyle remedies to curb diabetes.

Acupuncture

Though the mechanism and healing effects of acupuncture for diabetes is still obscure to a greater portion of scientific community, it is widely used in some parts of the world as a healing technique for number of diseases including diabetes. The basic philosophy behind this ancient from of Chinese medication is to create the balance of vital energy through out the body by inserting therapeutic needles at various portions of the body.

Homeopathy

Among the alternative treatments for diabetes homeopathy is considered to have a great patient following simply because of having no side effects and simple yet sometimes effective treatment regimen. Much in the fashion of Ayurveda homeopathic medicines take best effects when applied with directed nutritional regimen or other lifestyle changes. Phosphorous, Codenium and Syzygium are some of the common homeopathic medicines prescribed checking diabetes.

Source: News Track India

compound in grapes minimize effects of meth

A new study has suggested that resveratrol, a natural compound found in colored vegetables, fruits and especially grapes, may also block the effects of the highly addictive drug, methamphetamine.

Dennis Miller, associate professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science and an investigator with the Bond Life Sciences Center, and researchers in the Center for Translational Neuroscience at MU, study therapies for drug addiction and neurodegenerative disorders.

Their research targets treatments for methamphetamine abuse and has focused on the role of the neurotransmitter dopamine in drug addiction.

Dopamine levels in the brain surge after methamphetamine use; this increase is associated with the motivation to continue using the drug, despite its adverse consequences.

However, with repeated methamphetamine use, dopamine neurons may degenerate causing neurological and behavioral impairments, similar to those observed in people with Parkinson’s disease.

Miller said that dopamine is critical to the development of methamphetamine addiction-the transition from using a drug because one likes or enjoys it to using the drug because one craves or compulsively uses it, asserting that resveratrol has been shown to regulate these dopamine neurons and to be protective in Parkinson’s disease, a disorder where dopamine neurons degenerate; therefore, we sought to determine if resveratrol could affect methamphetamine-induced changes in the brain.

Using procedures established by Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease research, rats received resveratrol once a day for seven days in about the same concentration as a human would receive from a healthy diet. After a week of resveratrol, researchers measured how much dopamine was released by methamphetamine.

Researchers found that resveratrol significantly diminished methamphetamine’s ability to increase dopamine levels in the brain.

The study has been published in Neuroscience Letters

Source: Silo Breaker

 

Children at risk of AIDS should be tested at birth: UN

More than a quarter of a million children each year are born infected with the virus that causes AIDS, but too few are being tested early to receive treatment and prolong their lives, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Michele Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, called for diagnostic kits to be improved for detection in babies of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, and for their “still high” current price of $25-50 to be brought down.

Children are the “forgotten” victims of the AIDS epidemic, yet 260,000 babies joined their ranks last year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, he said.

“Irrespective of the market size we need to make sure that diagnostics are made available for children,” he told a news conference in Geneva ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1.

“We made a lot of progress during the last 2-3 years in terms of treatment, in terms of medicines, in terms of making sure that the molecules are more well-targeted for children. But where we are failing is also making early diagnostics.”

U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories and Swiss drugmaker Roche are among the main manufacturers of HIV diagnostics, according to senior UNAIDS officials.

Some 3.3 million children under age 15 have HIV, but only 1.9 million of them require treatment today, according to the Geneva-based agency. Fewer than 650,000 or 34 percent of the 1.9 million received antiretroviral AIDS drugs in 2012, still a rise of 14 percent from the year before, it said.

Some 14 million adults with HIV need treatment, and 9 million of them or 64 percent are receiving it, a far higher coverage rate than for children.

UN AIDS has identified 22 priority countries for stopping infections in children, 21 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, home to 90 percent of women living with HIV. The other is India.

In three of these priority countries – Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi – fewer than 5 percent of infants at risk are being tested for HIV at birth, UNAIDS says.

“In priority countries, only 3 in 10 children receive HIV treatment. We have seen tremendous political commitment and results to reduce mother-to-child transmission but we are failing the children who become infected,” said Sidibe, who is from Mali.

All children under five who test positive for the virus should be put on treatment, according to Mahesh Mahalingam, UNAIDS director for its global plan for stopping new infections in children.

Current PCR tests are able to detect the virus in a baby only after the age of six weeks and require sending a blood sample to a specialized laboratory, he said.

“What we looking for are easier tests that we can administer earlier on, this will help detect the virus and start them on medicines faster. We recommend that as soon as the child is known to be HIV positive, you start on anti-retroviral drugs,” Mahalingam said.

He added: “The earlier we can diagnose, the earlier we can treat them which increase chances of child survival. Children are now getting to grow into adults. If we start pretty early they have the same chance of living as any other children.”

Source : Zee news

 

For breakfast, now make ‘mixed fried eggs’

Eggs, sunny side-up with a mix of greens and other sauces can make your morning meal filling and fun.

We’ve all heard of and eaten mixed fried rice; the other interesting fusion can be got in an egg – a fried one! That’s right folks are creating delicious twists to the breakfast staple and making it nutritious too! Fried eggs are not just greasy, they are also said to be a source of vitamin B12, selenium and riboflavin. If you are using the process of frying, another tip is to olive oil or another light cooking spray to fry the eggs.

Spinach with fried eggs

This one is easy. Saute a little garlic, add spinach to it. When it wilts, keep aside. In another pan, saute boiled chickpeas and a little tomato, then add in the spinach and garlic. Once done, in this pan, break in two fried eggs, remove when set. Serve the dish with crusty bread.

Spinach with mushrooms

Melt butter in a saucepan and add spinach and mushrooms to it. Sprinkle pepper and saute. Top with the fried egg. Serve with sliced bread and herbed butter.

Eggs in tomato

Make a puree of three tomatoes. Add some sauteed onion, garlic and basil to it. Season with salt and pepper. When cooked break fried eggs over it. Drizzle cheese on the top and serve.

Source: article.wn