Alzheimer's patients do not benefit from eating fish... but Omega 3 appears to slow deterioration in the early stages

The study which showed benefit was of people "who had a mild memory complaint". Generalizing that to Alzheimer's is a stretch. I have had a problem with certain types of memory (e.g. remembering appointments and anniversaries) all my life and I don't THINK I have Alzheimer's. Note also that the study concerned was of a proprietary product. One wonders how well experimenter expectation effects were excluded and just what the exact analysis of the product was (Were small amounts of caffeine included, for instance?). As it is only a conference report at this stage, such questions are not readily resolved

Omega-3 fatty acid supplements did nothing to slow memory declines in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, US researchers said on Sunday. The findings from an 18-month, government-backed study suggest taking supplements of docosahexenoic acid, or DHA - an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish - does not arrest Alzheimer's in people who have already developed the mind-robbing disease. 'These trial results do not support the routine use of DHA for patients with Alzheimer's,' Dr Joseph Quinn of Oregon Health and Sciences University in Portland, who led the study, said in a statement.

But a six-month company study that looked at people whose memory was slipping just a bit found Martek Biosciences Corp's DHA supplements helped restore some of the mental acuity they had lost. 'The benefit is roughly equivalent to having the learning and memory skills of someone three years younger,' Martek researcher Karin Yurko-Mauro said in a telephone interview.

Both studies, which are being presented at an international Alzheimer's Association meeting in Vienna, Austria, show the difficulty of treating the disease. Taken together, the findings along with other studies suggest treating Alzheimer's must begin early in the disease process, before sticky amyloid plaques begin forming toxic clumps in the brain. 'It may be that ... by the time you have Alzheimer's disease, it is too late,' Dr Ronald Petersen, director of Alzheimer's research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said in a telephone interview.

Plenty of studies in both mice and people had suggested that a diet rich in DHA - an omega-3 fatty acid found in fatty cold-water fish - could dramatically slow Alzheimer's disease, and hopes were high for DHA as a possible new treatment. DHA is naturally found in the body in small amounts, and is the most abundant omega-3 fatty acid in the brain.

In the Alzheimer's study supported by the National Institute on Aging, Quinn and colleagues compared Martek's DHA supplements to a placebo in 402 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's. Although blood levels of DHA increased, the team saw no change in two widely accepted Alzheimer's tests. But the study did suggest some benefit in people with Alzheimer's who do not have the ApoE4 gene, which raises their Alzheimer's disease risk.

Quinn called the finding 'intriguing' because other trials have shown different response rates based on this gene, and said future studies should look at this.

In the six-month Martek study, researchers looked at the effects of a 900 mg daily dose of DHA on 485 healthy people with an average age of 70 who had a mild memory complaint. People in this study were tested using a computer memory test. At the end of six months, those who took DHA made far fewer mistakes than those in the placebo group. The effect was 'almost double,' Yurko-Mauro said.

Petersen, a former vice chairman of the Alzheimer's Association, said the study was promising, but needs to be confirmed before healthy people start taking DHA supplements. 'The association is not recommending normal elderly people take DHA based on this study,' he said.

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Swearing can help reduce pain

Even the most mild-mannered of individuals have been known to utter the odd expletive in moments of intense pain. Now it seems they have the perfect excuse. Swearing helps reduce pain, according to new research.

A study of responses to pain found that people who cursed in response to pain could cope with being hurt for nearly 50 per cent longer than their clean-speaking peers.

When they started their research, experts at Keele University's School of Psychology thought that cursing would lower pain tolerance. But after monitoring the reactions of 64 volunteers, stunned research leader Dr Richard Stephens and colleagues John Atkins and Andrew Kingston found that swearing actually had a beneficial effect. Last night Dr Stephens told how he came up with the idea for the study after blurting out a swear word when he accidentally hit his thumb with a hammer as he built a shed in his garden.

The 64 undergraduates were subjected to a gruelling ice water test to see how the cursing affected their pain tolerance. First they had to submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swearword of their choice. Then they repeated the exercise - but using a word they would choose to describe a table. Despite initial expectations, researchers found volunteers could keep their hands in ice for longer when repeating the swear word. On average, the students could put up with the pain for nearly two minutes when swearing. By contrast when they refrained from using expletives they could only endure the ice for one minute and 15 seconds.

Researchers believe swearing has a pain-reducing effect because it triggers the body's natural fight-or-flight response. They suggest that the accelerated heart rates of the volunteers repeating the swearword indicates an increase in aggression, in a classic fight-or-flight response of downplaying being hurt in favour of a more pain-tolerant machismo.

Dr Stephens said it was clear the swearing triggered both an emotional and a physical response. 'We are not sure why swearing works like this, but when it happens it's accompanied by an increase in heart rate,' he said. 'It could be the aggression of swearing, the machismo, makes you more pain resistant.'

While surprised by the results he added: 'It might explain why the centuries-old practice of cursing developed and still persists today.' For those who think that the results may give a green card to turning the air blue, Dr Stephens did, however, have a word of warning. 'If they want to use this pain-lessening effect to their advantage they need to do less casual swearing and only do it when they really need it.'

Rohan Byrt, spokesman for the Casual Swearing Appreciation Society, said he thought the study was the first time swearing's benefits had been proved. He said:'"I've always thought that swearing does have some real therapeutic merit. 'Even for those who consider themselves clean spoken, the odd swear word will just slip out. For me, it's almost a natural instinct, a gut reaction'

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Everyone in Britain will soon get untested vaccine against swine flu

This seems amazingly precipitous. The reasoning is clearly that MOST people will be OK and damn the minority. I think I would rather take my chances with the flu rather than risk Guillain-Barré syndrome

The NHS is preparing to vaccinate the entire population against swine flu after the disease claimed the life of its first healthy British patient. A new vaccine is expected to arrive in Britain in the next few weeks and could be fast-tracked through regulatory approval in five days. As many as 20m people could be inoculated this year. Ministers have secured up to 90m doses, and the rest of the population is likely to be offered vaccinations next year.

A man from Essex was confirmed on Friday as the first person without underlying health problems to have died from the virus. The health department said most people with the virus had only mild symptoms.

Peter Holden, the British Medical Association’s lead negotiator on swine flu, said GPs’ surgeries were ready for one of the biggest vaccination campaigns in almost 50 years. “If this virus does [mutate], it can get a lot more nasty, and the idea is to give people immunity. But the sheer logistics of dealing with 60m people can’t be underestimated,” he said. The health department said a vaccination programme would be drawn up based on expert advice.

The path of a popular medicine from the laboratory to the chemist or doctor’s surgery can involve years of clinical trials on a select group of patients. When the new vaccine for swine flu arrives in Britain, regulators said this weekend, it could be approved for use in just five days.

Regulators at the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) said the fast-tracked procedure has involved clinical trials of a “mock-up” vaccine similar to the one that will be used for the biggest mass vaccination programme in generations. It will be introduced into the general population while regulators continue to carry out simultaneous clinical trials.

The first patients in the queue for the jab - being supplied to the UK by GSK and Baxter Healthcare - may understandably be a little nervous at any possible side effects. A mass vaccination campaign against swine flu in America was halted in the 1970s after some people suffered Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system.

However, regulators said fast-tracking would not be at the expense of patient safety. “The vaccines are authorised with a detailed risk management plan,” the EMEA said. “There is quite a body of evidence regarding safety on the trials of the mock-up, and the actual vaccine could be assessed in five days.”

The UK government has ordered enough vaccine to cover the entire population. GPs are being told to prepare for a nationwide vaccination campaign. Dr Peter Holden, the British Medical Association’s lead negotiator on swine flu, who has been attending Department of Health meetings on the outbreak, said GPs’ surgeries were prepared for one of the biggest vaccination campaigns in almost 50 years.

He said although swine flu was not causing serious illness in patients, health officials were eager to start a mass vaccination campaign, starting first on priority groups. First, the jabs would reduce the chances of a shortage of hospital beds because of people suffering from swine flu. Second, it would reduce the effect on the economy by ensuring workers were protected from the virus. “The high-risk groups will be done at GPs’ surgeries. People are still making decisions over this, but we want to get cracking before we get a second wave, which is traditionally far more virulent.”

Holden said it was likely the elderly would be given their seasonal flu jab as well as the swine flu vaccination. The new vaccine is likely to require two doses.

Details of the inoculation plans emerged after the death of a patient, reportedly a middle-aged man, at a hospital in the Basildon area of Essex. The victim had no underlying health problems, but officials say there is no evidence the swine flu virus had mutated into a more dangerous strain.

Holden said it would be the biggest campaign in response to an outbreak since mass vaccination against smallpox in 1962. He said surgeries would be aiming to inoculate about 30 people an hour in a “military-style operation”. The Department of Health said it had still not finalised which groups would be vaccinated first, but children, frontline health workers, people with underlying illnesses and the elderly are likely to take priority.

The European Commission is also identifying population groups which it believes should get priority. It is keen to ensure that countries such as the UK, which had ordered supplies of the vaccine in advance, do not cause inequities in treatment elsewhere in Europe. It warned health ministers in a note circulated last month that if the vaccines were more readily available in some countries it could cause “vaccine tourism/shopping in other member states”.

About 15 people have died of swine flu in Britain, but most of those infected get only mild symptoms. According to the latest figures from the Health Protection Agency, the UK has had 9,718 confirmed cases of the disease.

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How Much Fish For Health?

I don't think that the health benefits of fish eating are established beyond reasonable doubt and the health risks seem to be entirely theoretical -- but the approach below is better balanced than most

This week we launched HowMuchFish.com, the only online seafood calculator that quantifies both the health risks and benefits of a diet rich in seafood. Fed up with fishy activists like Greenpeace (a group more concerned with “saving” the fish than with your health) and Jeremy Piven (who, let’s face it, is just trying to save his own hide), we analyzed USDA nutritional information and worked with registered dieticians to explore both sides of the fish equation. And guess what? Seafood scored high marks across the board.

HowMuchFish.com puts conflicting information about seafood and health into a useful context (finally!) by displaying the nutritional content of the top ten most popular seafood species—the positive impact of fish consumption as well as the hypothetical risks from trace amounts of mercury.

Here’s an example: A 130-pound woman who enjoys canned light tuna would need to eat 123 ounces (7.7 pounds) of it every week in order to risk any negative health impact from mercury. But in just one 6-ounce serving, she gets all of the protein and selenium she needs for the day, as well as high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B12, potassium, and iron. All of those health benefits clearly outweigh the miniscule amount of mercury detectable in that can of tuna (as well as activists’ scaremongering).

As we’re telling reporters today:

“The Internet is full of doom-and-gloom seafood calculators that only tell half the story. We’re trying to bring some balance to the discussion. The entire medical literature contains zero cases of fetal mercury poisoning related to fish consumption in the United States. But it’s full of evidence that fish is a health food.”

This message is crucial given how successful anti-seafood activists have been in scaring people away from such a healthy and important dietary staple. In our recently updated “Tuna Meltdown” report, we found that more than a quarter-million underprivileged American children were born at risk of having abnormally low IQs between 2000 and 2006, just because their low-income mothers were afraid to eat fish during their pregnancies.

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Fruity San Francisco: Leave no windowsill unturned!

Here's betting that meetings and conferences held by city workers will in future be much less well-attended. What would YOU rather have: Doughnuts or a nice plate of broccoli? Bagels and Lox or Brussells sprouts?

He's already banned spending city money to buy bottled water and mandated composting citywide. Now, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is taking on something as basic as water and trash: food. Newsom on Wednesday issued an executive directive he hopes will dramatically change how San Franciscans eat.

All city departments have six months to conduct an audit of unused land - including empty lots, rooftops, windowsills and median strips - that could be turned into community gardens or farms that could benefit residents, either by working at them or purchasing the fresh produce. Food vendors that contract with the city must offer healthy and sustainable food. All vending machines on city property must also offer healthy options, and farmers' markets must begin accepting food stamps, although some already do.

The mayor will send an ordinance to the Board of Supervisors within two months mandating that all food served in city jails, hospitals, homeless shelters and community centers be healthy. And effective immediately, no more runs to the doughnut shop before meetings and conferences held by city workers. Instead, city employees must use guidelines created by the Health Department when ordering food for meetings. Examples include cutting bagels into halves or quarters so people can take smaller portions and serving vegetables instead of potato chips.

"We have an eating and drinking problem in the United States of America," Newsom said Wednesday. "It's impacting our health, and it's impacting our economy."

The directives are the product of an "urban-rural roundtable" of food experts from around California convened by Newsom last year. The group was charged with finding ways to get more of the food grown on farms within 200 miles of San Francisco onto the plates of city residents, especially those who depend on government meals. The idea is to decrease the need to import food, reconnect people to homegrown food rather than processed food, and to provide more options in neighborhoods like Bayview-Hunters Point that lack easy access to grocery stores.

Many of the details have yet to be worked out, including how much it will cost. Newsom bristled when asked how it would be funded because there's no money to implement the food policy in the budget agreed to by the mayor and the board's budget committee just last week. "We have plenty of resources," he said. "This is not a budget buster."

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, a member of the budget committee, said he likes the idea - and in fact, supervisors have been calling for the creation of an urban farm in San Francisco for years. He said that he wanted one included in the redevelopment of the former UC Berkeley Extension site on Laguna Street, but that the idea was never embraced by the mayor's administration. "Even if it's a good idea, the timing's a little odd," Mirkarimi said of the unfunded proposal coming just days after the budget compromise. "I like the notion if we're able to get this at a very low cost."

It's also unclear how much land could be converted into community farms. The Public Utilities Commission has thousands of acres outside San Francisco that could be used, and the Real Estate Division and the Recreation and Park Department own some unused parcels in the city.

Newsom made the announcement Wednesday at a junkyard-turned-farm in West Oakland that could serve as a model for how land could be converted in San Francisco. A stone's throw from BART, it used to be home to old cars and one angry dog, but now is run by the nonprofit City Slicker Farms. With a handful of staff members and scores of volunteers from the neighborhood, the nonprofit operates six small farms in West Oakland and sells the produce, along with honey and eggs, on a sliding scale to local residents at a Saturday farm stand.

The 2,000-square-foot former junkyard now produces 2,000 pounds of food every year, including lettuce, squash, tomatoes, parsley, sage, collard greens, grapes, cherries and plums. "This speaks to people's soul," said Barbara Finnin, director of City Slicker Farms. "It's a place people can relax, be outside, and nourish themselves and their families." Newsom toured the farm, biting off a piece of kale to taste, munching on an apricot and admiring sunflowers taller than him.

Back in San Francisco, it was apparent Newsom's idea may take some getting used to. Michael Summers, who operates a hot dog stand in Civic Center Plaza that contracts with the city, said the dogs made of tofu don't sell nearly as well as the old-fashioned meat kind. That was evidenced by the line of people ordering hot dogs just after noon - and not a tofu order among them.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is calling for city-funded food to be healthy and sustainable. His administration provided the following directives for what this means:

* Safe and healthy: Avoids excessive pesticide use and has high nutritional value.

* Culturally acceptable: Acceptable culturally and religiously to San Francisco's diverse population. An example would be providing Chinese seniors with bok choy and other vegetables they're familiar with at local farmers' markets. [And EVERYTHING must be both Halal and Kosher, of course]

* Sustainable: Grown in a way that maintains the health of agricultural lands and advances self-sufficiency among farmers and farmworkers. An example would be using manure as a fertilizer rather than chemicals. [Yeh! Shit in the garden. Don't waste good shit in restrooms. That's the way they do it in India and we need to learn from more "sustainable" cultures, don't we?]

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Britain's obesity capital resists health drive

Officialdom have tried it all but people still insist on eating what they like

On the front line of Britain’s fight against obesity lies a town with a guilty secret — it has an abiding passion for pork pies. Stockton-on-Tees eats more of them than anywhere else in the region according to suppliers, who sell off surplus pies to local butchers. Perhaps that’s one reason why the town was named as the country’s capital for childhood obesity in Department of Health figures released this week.

One in six children starting primary school in the borough is obese and by the time they leave for secondary school, 20 per cent of pupils fall into the same category. More than one in three 11-year-olds are either overweight or obese.

Another community confronted by such statistics might have shuffled away behind closed doors into chipmunching, couch-potato denial. However, when the scale and cost of the problem became apparent two years ago, Stockton’s leaders decided to tackle the issue head on. Treating diseases related directly to obesity cost local NHS trusts £26.9 million in 2007. By 2015, unless action is taken, the bill could rise to £33.5 million.

To visit this post-industrial town today is to encounter a testing ground for every conceivable initiative designed to help people to lose weight. Whether any of them will work remains to be seen, but almost every public or private body with an interest in the long-term health of the population seems to be on board. So are some, but not all, of the residents.

Elizabeth Shassere, Stockton’s director of public health, says it is imperative to move beyond the excuses for poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle. Pockets of significant social deprivation? Yes, but Stockton has fewer than many of its neighbouring boroughs. What about the majority, even in the poorest communities, who manage to stay fit and healthy? And affluent families who struggle with their weight? Ignorance of a sensible diet? Educate them. Nowhere to exercise? Provide it. Specialist help for the clinically obese? Provide that, too. Can’t afford to use the leisure centre? Give the children free admission. It is a whole-life approach that begins with ante-natal visits by midwives.

Advice is offered on nutrition and cookery, physical activity programmes for pregnant women and the importance of breastfeeding, which, at 54 per cent, is below the national average in Stockton. Young women are also encouraged to join Fit to Push, a programme of organised walks for mothers with prams and buggies. School initiatives include Clean Your Plate. Stickers are awarded for a clean plate at the end of every meal and the pupil with the most stickers wins a prize. Evidence shows this has reduced portion sizes. There are healthy workplace programmes, free leisure facilities for 7,400 children and Sporting Start, which gives children aged from 3 to 16 a free introduction to activities including gymnastics, badminton and street dancing.

In the past two years 8,150 pedometers have also been issued to Stockton residents in the hope that a third of the borough’s 189,000 population will be walking 10,000 steps daily by 2010. Attempts are being made to curb the proliferation of fast-food outlets, improve the physical environment and cycling routes and create more safe areas for children to play outside.There are even “walking school buses”, in which children are led by adults on walks to and from school.

It all sounds admirable. The reality, on a sun-dappled afternoon this week in the old railway town from which Harold MacMillan took his title, was not quite so inspirational — though there were some true believers. Young mothers Jill Herbert and Tracey Watson emerged from the Splash Centre, where their children had enjoyed a free swimming session, to evangelise about diet and exercise. Nathan, 4, eats a lot of fruit, fish and pasta, while three-year-old Isabelle loves “all sorts of vegetables, even broccoli and cauliflower”.

Enter the Castlegate shopping centre and the picture changes. Here is the world of the budget shopper: Pound World, More4Less, Poundland and Home Bargains. Les Meynell, who runs a family butcher’s shop and delicatessen, says that his business has survived, while rivals have been forced to close, by selling hot, rich, juicy pre-cooked meat and poultry, which vastly outsells his raw, fresh products.

“It’s all changed. The young ’uns don’t want to go home and cook fresh joints. They can manage a pan of chips and that’s about it. People want their meat already cooked and that’s what’s kept us afloat,” he said. Mr Meynell was visited by a well-meaning health official, who encouraged him to use low-fat mayonnaise in his sandwiches. He tried it for a week and gave up. “The regulars came back and asked us what the hell we were doing? They said the low-fat sandwiches were tasteless, and they were right. Ask most of my customers and no one gives a stuff about healthy eating, except well-to-do people who want to look after their figure. They buy a salad sandwich, we charge them the earth for it and they go away happy.”

Warming to his theme, Mr Meynell confided Stockton’s best-kept secret. A company well known nationally for its pork pies often turns to butchers such as Mr Meynell to offload bulk deliveries deemed surplus to supermarket requirements. “I can sell £1,000-worth of pork pies in my shop every week. The supplier told me that in Newcastle they can’t sell them for any money. Nowhere else in the North East eats pork pies like we do in Stockton,” he said.

Around the corner, Brian Peacock, a greengrocer, says many young people do not even recognise many of the vegetables he sells. “It’s only older people who buy the veg. And the students. As for the rest of them, they don’t know what half of them are called, let alone how to cook or eat them.” Stockton’s target is to cut child obesity rates back to their 2000 level by 2020. If the council and health authorities fail to deliver, it will not be for want of trying.

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British "reforms" see pupils reject school food

The number of children having school meals has stalled after the increase in nutritional standards pioneered by Jamie Oliver, official figures show today. Only a third of secondary age pupils eat a cooked lunch. Participation has decreased ever since the standard of food rose after Oliver’s School Dinners campaign in 2005 which resulted in the banning of Turkey Twizzlers and daily helpings of chips.

The School Food Trust, a government agency responsible for improving the quality and take-up of school meals, claimed a victory because the figures rose marginally when comparing schools that had used exactly the same method of calculation last year. But the figures are an embarrassment for the Government, which pledged three years ago to achieve an increase of 10 percentage points in the number of children eating school meals, by this autumn — a target that has been missed whichever set of data is used.

The School Food Trust claimed this year’s was the first “statistically robust national survey” of school meal take-up, but did not say in previous years that the figures were unreliable. When comparing schools that had collected the figures in the same way year-on-year, it said the number of children eating school meals had risen by 0.1 per cent, from 43.8 per cent to 43.9 per cent at primary level, and from 35.5 per cent to 36 per cent in secondary schools.

But figures from all local authorities that responded show the overall national figures were 39.3 per cent in primary schools, compared with 43.6 per cent last year, and 35.1 per cent at secondary level, compared with 37.2 per cent in 2008. The School Food Trust said that this year's figures had been collected in a different way, so that the years could not be compared.

The Local Authority Caterers’ Association(LACA) described the increase as “marginal”. Neil Porter, its chairman, said: “We recognise that this year we are using a different way to calculate the data on the take-up of school lunches. LACA is encouraged by the apparent marginal upward trend in meal take-up in both primary and secondary schools. “However, we believe that we are on a longer journey when it comes to secondary school students. Increasing secondary meal take-up will continue to be a challenge for all of us.”

It was at a secondary school in South Yorkshire that mothers of pupils took orders from the local fast food shop for pupils at lunchtime, after children refused to eat the new healthy school meals. They were seen pushing burgers, fish and chips through the school gates.

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Schools Secretary, said the figures showed a “massive drop” in the number of children eating school meals, and had missed its target to increase participation by “well over one million children”. He added: “We now know that barely a third of secondary school pupils are eating school meals. “There are a number of reasons why the Government has missed its target — including the rushed introduction of new food standards before the groundwork had been done to ensure children will eat the new healthier option.

“The Government stands little chance in meeting its targets unless there is both more investment in the school meals service and a massive change in expectations, so that sitting down for a proper lunch once again becomes the norm for every child.”

Prue Leith, chairwoman of the School Food Trust, said: “We now have a genuine picture of take-up across the country and we can see that real progress is being made the length and breadth of England. “I am heartened that take-up has increased slightly in primary schools following the introduction of new nutrient-based standards and am convinced we are winning the battle for the hearts, minds and tastebuds of children and parents. “It is particularly pleasing that secondary schools have turned the corner. This has always been a long-term project.”

Diana Johnson, the Schools Minister, said: “Four years ago, the majority of children were eating unhealthy meals at school. Chips, chocolate and sugar-filled fizzy drinks were available everyday as a choice for school lunch. Today there is no school where this can now happen — all schools must provide a portion of vegetable and fruit as part of a nutritionally balanced main meal. Now millions of children across the country are eating healthy school lunches. “We know that it is often the state of dining facilities and poor organisation, not nutritional changes that put children off schools dinners. That is why we have invested significant funds in improving dining facilities and the School Food Trust is supporting schools to improve the way they organise their meals services.”

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Third of women with breast cancer 'don't need treatment'

Clearly, treatment should only be undertaken in most cases after monitoring over time is done -- to disclose whether tumor growth is occurring. But such repeated imaging would be too costly for Britain. Paying the wages of an army of bureaucrats gets first call on the British budget. Because of the high risk of false positives, some authorities even discourage breast self-examination these days -- on the grounds that it does more harm than good

A third of women diagnosed with breast cancer have gone through unnecessary treatments, a study revealed yesterday. Routine breast screening produces a high rate of 'false positives' - because it is not sensitive enough to detect which lumps will lead to dangerous cancers and which will not. This means that thousands of British women have been 'over-diagnosed' - forcing them to endure invasive and painful treatment such as needless mastectomies, surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

The study showed that in more than a third of cases, lumps which were flagged up as a cause for alarm were harmless - either because the tumour was growing so slowly that the patient would have died of other causes before it produced any symptoms, or because the cancer remained dormant or even regressed.

In an editorial accompanying the research, H Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute in the U.S., said that women needed to be aware of the risks, as well as the benefits, of cancer screening. 'Mammography is one of medicine's "close calls" - a delicate balance between benefits and harms - where different people in the same situation might reasonably make different choices,' he said. 'Mammography undoubtedly helps some women, but hurts others. No right answer exists, instead it is a personal choice.'

Cancer charities were keen last night to stress that routine screening is estimated to save 1,400 lives every year in England alone. All women from 50 to 70 are invited to the checks every three years. Across the UK, more than 45,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year and 12,000 die.

Scientists from the Nordic Cochrane Centre, who carried out the study, analysed breast cancer trends seven years before and seven years after the introduction of screening programmes in five countries - the UK, Canada, Australia, Sweden and Norway. Taking into account other factors, such as changes in background levels of breast cancer, they estimated the level of overdiagnosis as 35 per cent.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the study's authors said: 'Screening for cancer may lead to earlier detection of lethal cancers but also detects harmless ones that will not cause death or symptoms. 'The detection of such cancers... can only be harmful to those who experience it.' They said that perhaps doctors doing the screening should request biopsies only for breast masses larger than a certain size.

Dr Sarah Cant, from Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: 'We hope this research will not discourage women from attending breast screening. 'Unfortunately, it is currently not possible to predict which cancers found through screening will develop aggressively and which will grow very slowly. 'Based on all the current evidence, we believe the benefits of detecting breast cancer early still outweigh the risks.'

But good news, death rates at new low The British death rate from three of the most common cancers has fallen to its lowest level in almost 40 years, research has shown. The toll from breast, bowel, and male lung cancer is at its lowest since 1971, an analysis by Cancer Research UK found. This means Britain could be at last turning the tide on its appalling record of cancer survival compared with the rest of Europe. The UK has the worst cancer record in Western Europe. Its survival rates are on a par with Poland and the Czech Republic, even though these countries spend two-thirds less on cancer treatment.

Critics have claimed the UK's poor showing proves that the vast amount of extra funding poured into the NHS by Labour has been wasted - although ministers say the new figures should be a cause for optimism. Breast cancer deaths among women peaked in 1989 at 15,625 but dropped to 11,990 in 2007, according to the data. Bowel cancer deaths among both sexes peaked in 1992 at 19,598, but fell to 16,007 in 2007.

Meanwhile, the number of men dying from lung cancer peaked in 1979 at 30,391 but dropped to 19,637 in 2007. The number of people developing cancer is on the rise as we live longer than ever before. But fewer people are dying from the disease - partly due to improved screening and new and better treatments.

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Antibiotic 'boosts lifespan' (in mice)

But the side-effects could be severe. Fancy a suppressed immune system or feeling hungry all the time?

A COMPOUND found in the soil of Easter Island stunningly boosts the lifespan of mice, enabling some to live more than 100 years old in human terms, researchers reported today. The remarkable molecule, a bacterial byproduct discovered in a sample taken from the remote Pacific archipelago in the 1970s, is called rapamycin, after the island's Polynesian name of Rapa Nui.

Rapamycin first came to light because of its qualities as a fungus fighter. It was later used to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients and then became incorporated into "stents" - implants used to keep arteries open in patients with coronary disease. It is now in clinical trials for cancer treatment.

The latest step in this remarkable odyssey is the vision that rapamycin, or something like it, may one day massively boost human life expectancy. "I've been in ageing research for 35 years and there have been many so-called anti-ageing interventions over those years that were never successful," said Arlan Richardson, director of the Barshop Institute, one of three centres that carried out the experiments. "I never thought we could find an anti-ageing pill for people in my lifetime. However, rapamycin shows a great deal of promise to do just that."

Intrigued by findings that suggest rampamycin inhibits an enzyme linked to ageing in invertebrates, the researchers decided to add the drug to the diet of older mice. The rodents were 20 months old at the time, which in human terms is equivalent to around 60 years of age. Female mice with rapamycin added to their food lived 13 per cent longer on average compared with non-rapamycin counterparts. Males which were fed the drug gained nine per cent in their lifetime. The change was even more striking among the 10 per cent of mice that lived longest. Within this group, rapamycin females lived 38 per cent longer and rapamycin males 28 per cent longer than non-rapamycin counterparts.

Rapamycin may retard ageing processes or the onset of cancer but has no impact on the causes of death itself, the study said.

The project, reported in the British science journal Nature, is part of a test program under the US National Institute on Ageing (NIA), which is looking for drugs that will help people remain healthy and active throughout their lives. Previous work on rapamycin longevity was carried out on yeast, worms and flies. This study is the first to show it also appears to work on mammals.

Scientists have already found that by keeping mice skinny by restricting their diet, they could make the rodents live longer. The theory behind rapamycin is that it works on the same molecular mechanisms as calorie restriction.

Initially, the US researchers hoped to start giving rapamycin to mice from four months of age. But the project was hit by delays in formulating the drug so that it could enter the specially-bred animals' bloodstream more effectively. As a result, the experiment was not started until the mice were 20 months old, but the team decided to press ahead anyway.

"Most reports indicate that calorie restriction doesn't work when implemented in old animals," said Mr Richardson. "The fact that rapamycin increases lifespan in relatively old mice was totally unexpected."

In a commentary also published by Nature, University of Washington biocehmists Matt Kaeberlein and Brian Kennedy cautioned middle-aged people against rushing to take rapamycin, given that the drug is known to suppress the immune system, which fights invading microbes. Despite the rush of optimism sparked by rapamycin, "extending human lifespan with a pill remains the purview of science-fiction writers for now", they said.

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Working mothers have fatter kids, paper finds

At last! An "obesity" writer who is realistic about social class effects

CHILDREN of many full-time working mothers are up to 12 per cent more likely to be overweight than the kids of stay-at-home mums. But the link between a mother's paid work and her kids' waist lines is only found in families at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

In a paper to be presented today to the Australian Social Policy Conference in Sydney, economic researcher Anna Zhu finds children in families earning less than $1000 a week with a full-time working mother are most at risk of being overweight. "The main reason is that to maintain a healthy lifestyle requires time and/or money," Ms Zhu told The Australian. "Indeed, it could just be money because we don't find the effect in high-income families."

Ms Zhu, from the University of NSW's Social Policy Research Centre, said stay-at-home mothers had the time to prepare meals and richer full-time working mothers could outsource the preparation of healthier food to a nanny or carer, but poorer mothers working long hours had fewer options. "These mothers are constrained for time (so they resort to) things like pre-packaged food. And without the income, they turn to cheaper options that have higher calorific value."

The rate of mothers joining the labour force and with a youngest child aged less than five years old rose from 36 to 43 per cent between 1986 and 2000, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Over a similar period, the prevalence of overweight children almost doubled, and the prevalence of obese children tripled.

While Ms Zhu's study focused on 4 to 5-year olds, she said similar research conducted overseas produced the same outcome for children of all ages. She warned the results should not be interpreted as support for the view that mothers shouldn't work. "There are an array of other benefits of the mother working," she said. "This study is more presenting the reality that full-time working mothers face significant time constraints, and a lack of money limits their options to provide their children with a healthy lifestyle."

The other factor determining a child's chances of being overweight was the amount of exercise they did. "Families with low incomes won't be able to afford to pay people to take them to outdoor activities while they work," Ms Zhu said. "Instead the kids are more likely to be at home watching TV. If the full-time working mum isn't earning enough to hire a nanny to take them to the park, the mum is probably happier for them to be indoors because they feel they are safer there."

Ms Zhu said governments should be looking at policy options to provide greater support for working mothers. She said for low-income families, a full-time working father had a beneficial impact on a child's propensity to be overweight because the extra income for the family means better nutrition and a healthier lifestyle.

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Are eldest children really a cut above?

Order of birth is said to influence everything from IQ to personality. But is it a myth or hard scientific fact? The article below is an unusually well-informed exposition of the fact that birth order is of trivial importance

I exhibit, it is alleged, the typical personality characteristics of a first-born: swotty, bossy and stubborn. That is the verdict of my husband, the youngest of three sons and possessed of a laissez-faire attitude to life. In fact, I’ve noticed that most first-borns I know are married to later-borns; can any union between eldest children survive the constant jostling for pole position?

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion on birth order. From the kind of personality you have, to the kind of profession you pursue, there is a popular belief that much of it rests on whether you emerged from your mother’s womb before or after your siblings (or somewhere in between). And you can look to almost any sphere of achievement to prop up the story: George W. Bush, the former American President, was more successful than his younger brother Jeb, a mere State Governor, who was in turn more accomplished than their younger brother Neil, a businessman blamed, along with other directors, for the collapse of a savings and loans company. While Bill Clinton excelled at political conviction, the only conviction boasted by his younger brother Roger was one for cocaine possession.

Parents, too, seem to agree that all siblings are not created equal. Last week, an online survey of nearly 10,000 mothers for netmums.com found that 35 per cent thought their first-born would fare best academically, compared with 15 per cent who named their youngest as the scholar in the family.

But what about the science of birth order? Despite its seductive appeal as an explanation of why children born to the same parents and raised in the same environment can be so different, many researchers believe that birth order has virtually no bearing on personality and behaviour. While there are well-documented differences in, say, IQ between older and younger siblings, those differences are so small as to be negligible, and do not explain differences in temperament.

Ginger Moore, the Professor of Psychology at Pennysylvania State University, who has reviewed the literature as part of her research into child development, says: “There are no clear systematic differences that are a function of birth order and there is no scientific research that shows that there are.” There are simply too many other variables involved in sculpting personality and behaviour, she says, that combine to swamp any minor influence that birth order might exert. While mums and dads might ladle out differing amounts of attention to the various members of their brood, she insists that those discrepancies cannot be boiled down to the single factor of order. It is the most demanding child, not necessarily the eldest, that often monopolises mother.

Professor Moore explains: “There is no doubt that parents treat children differently, and some of that difference may be related to birth order. For example, they tend to be more anxious with first-borns, and some of our research has found that mothers are more positive when interacting with their second child. “However, the way that parents interact with their children, the expectations they have of them and the opportunities they give them, most likely have less to do with birth order and more to do with many other factors, such as the child’s personality, gender, the number of children in the family, the spacing between siblings and parental age.”

Even though the first-born has the undivided attention of her parents, she will be shoved out of the limelight once No 2 arrives. And those later siblings, Professor Moore suggests, bask in the attention of not just their more experienced parents but also of their older siblings. In effect, the younger siblings receive über-parenting.

Such a verdict might raise a cheer among later-borns, many of whom feel condemned to live their lives in the shadow of the eldest. But birth order is one of those theories that never quite goes away, lurking quietly in the annals of popular culture until a study comes along that either contradicts or confirms it. A bias towards publishing attention-grabbing papers means that confirmation studies are more likely to make it into print and be noticed by the media. That perpetuates the idea that the birth order view of personality — the dominant eldest, the wayward middle one and the spoilt youngest — is on unshakeable ground.

In addition, the idea of the favoured first-born slots into the Darwinian theory that siblings, whether chicks in a nest or gurgling human beings, must compete against each other for parental attention. Since, in this bleak Darwinian worldview, parents allocate the most resources to the child(ren) most likely to survive and reproduce, lavishing attention on the eldest is a wise strategy.

For well over a century, scientists have toyed with the idea that the road to greatness is littered with first-borns. Francis Galton, the gifted biologist and now notorious eugenicist, noted in 1874 that an unusually high proportion of eminent men (mostly scientists) were first-born sons (women didn’t count, so even if a male had five older sisters, he was still classified as a first-born). Other studies, too, have found first-borns monopolising positions of power and influence, for example, in the higher echelons of medicine and politics.

Galton offered three explanations: that first-borns are treated as mini-adults by their parents and thus invested with more responsibility than future siblings (an echo of the netmums.com finding); that primogeniture means that the eldest sons inherit the family cash and can therefore bag an education denied to younger siblings; and that eldest children have the best access to food and other parental resources, such as time.

Remarkably, a 2008 study bears Galton out. Dr David Lawson and Professor Ruth Mace, from University College London, discovered that on average, only children are taller than peers from large families. Moreover, the eldest children in those families tend to be taller by the age of ten than younger siblings. Since height is a proxy for nutrition in the well-nourished West, this implies that there is more food on the table for the eldest. The study does not support a birth-order theory of personality — it did not look for such evidence — but it is striking in its support for the Darwinian idea of children competing for parental succour. What about IQ? There is a characteristic IQ distribution among siblings, with first-borns hogging the top of the sibling bell curve, and second and third-borns lagging one , two or sometimes three points behind (the lower your ordinal position, which is your place in the sibling line-up, the lower the IQ).

Robert Zajonc, the late Stanford University psychologist, argued, like Galton did, that this was because firstborns are plunged into an intellectually demanding, adult-only environment. Even sexuality appears to be influenced by birth order: the more older brothers a man has, the more likely he is to be gay (the finding applies only to men). This is known as the fraternal birth order effect, and is a pretty sturdy finding. Since sexuality is influenced by hormones, could it be that the womb environment changes for each sibling, and that this is the key to perceived differences? If so, then those differences should be biologically preset and remain unaffected by how the child grows up. In other words, if you are a second sibling, you will always carry the lower IQ of a second sibling.

However, a 2007 study of 250,000 Norwegian conscripts contradicted this: second siblings who had lost an older brother, and were thus elevated in the family’s social ranking to the status of eldest child, boasted IQs that were more similar to eldest children. Similarly, third-borns who lost their elder sibling had an IQ of a “natural” second-born. This implies that the social environment in which a child is raised has a greater sway over IQ than biological order. Similarly, sexuality researchers tried, and failed, to correlate personality characteristics with fraternal birth order. In conclusion, while the link between IQ and birth order is robust, it is a) too small to affect a person’s life chances substantially and b) actually related to social, rather that biological, rank.

One of the most influential works to claim that birth order moulds personality, was Born to Rebel, by Frank Sulloway. The 1996 best-seller argued that first-borns, keen to preserve their favoured status in the family, stick close to their parents, maintain the status quo and don’t question authority. Consequently, it is later-borns who bloom into the risk-taking, creative individuals capable of changing the world. Sulloway, a University of California psychologist and second-born, marshalled such scientific revolutionaries as Darwin and Copernicus, both later-borns, to bolster his case (interestingly, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron are all younger children).

Although Born to Rebel was heralded as a magisterial analysis of the birth-order literature, many researchers have contested Sulloway’s reading of the data. One of his sternest critics is the psychologist Judith Rich Harris, author of The Nurture Assumption, the landmark book that claimed peers are more important than parents in child development. Rich Harris argues that the supposed birth order pattern in personality — the conventional eldest, the laid-back youngest — only exists when siblings are with each other, and that this pattern disappears outside the family environment. The intellectual battle over the book’s central idea has been long and brutal: Sulloway initially threatened to sue his critics, although an extensive, unflattering critique did finally appear in 2004. [Sulloway acted totally outside normal scientific procedure, making his work of no credibility whatever. More details of that here]

So what now for the science of birth order? While studies of large families might provide the best test-bed for theories, they are, in some respects, the worst. That’s because larger families tend to be poorer; and poverty is linked to lower IQs. Bigger families also mean more complicated family dynamics. And because most studies can’t airbrush out all the other factors that might influence personality, behaviour and achievement, it can be dangerous to take a small positive result — such as the matter of an IQ point here and there — and hold it up as proof that who you are and how you behave depends on whether you are the royal or the runt of the litter.

The theory’s refusal to go away, Professor Moore suggests, might be due to birth order being easily measurable. We all know where we stand in the familial order of things; our rank among siblings is perhaps the one indisputable fact among a host of messy, hard-to-measure factors that cloud or complement our development from child to adult. It’s tempting to hold that one measurable fact responsible for our fates.

But how we eventually turn out, she says, is down to the complex interplay between biology and genes, parenting, social milieu, education, peers, and pure luck of the draw. “A single factor, such as birth order, may explain a small portion of the variability in the paths that children take within families, but trying to predict adult personality or behaviour on the basis of birth order is too simplistic.”

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Travel is bad for you! It more than doubles your risk of blood clots

But is it as dangerous as driving your car or crossing the road? I have no doubt that there is something in this but it seems to be very rare in absolute terms

A study published Monday strengthens the evidence that long-distance travel can lead to potentially fatal blood clots in some people -- showing that the risk grows in tandem with the length of the trip. In an analysis of 14 previous studies, researchers found that, in general, travel was associated with a nearly three-fold increase in the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) -- blood clots that form in the veins, often in the legs. If such a clot dislodges and travels to the lungs, it can cause a potentially fatal condition called pulmonary embolism.

Several high-profile deaths have brought attention to the risk of VTE among travelers, particularly those on long-haul flights. Experts think a combination of factors -- including dehydration and hours of sitting in cramped conditions -- explains why some people develop blood clots.

However, not all studies have found a clear link between travel and VTE. To look at the discrepancy, the researchers who conducted the current review, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, analyzed 14 studies involving more than 4,000 cases of VTE. Some of the studies compared VTE patients with a "control" group of people who had been referred for possible VTE symptoms, but were found to not have a clot -- a comparison that carries the risk of bias because the control group likely has a higher-than-average risk of blood clots.

In other studies, the control group consisted of healthy people from the general population -- which are more likely to capture the true VTE risk associated with travel, explained lead researcher Dr. Divay Chandra of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. When the researchers looked only at those studies, they found that travelers had a nearly three-fold higher risk of blood clots than non-travelers. What's more, the risk climbed along with the duration of the trip -- rising 18 percent for every two hours of any type of travel, and by 26 percent for every two hours of air travel.

But while the current findings confirm the travel-VTE link, Chandra told Reuters Health, "there is no reason for panic" because the absolute risk to any one traveler is still low. Still, Chandra said, "people who travel long distances should be aware of the risk of blood clots and learn to recognize the symptoms." Symptoms of a blood clot in the leg include pain, warmth, swelling and redness in the limb. If the clot travels to the lungs, it may cause sudden shortness of breath, chest pain or a cough that produces blood.

To help reduce the risk of VTE, experts generally recommend that long-distance travelers periodically move around and stretch their legs, and drink plenty of water to stay hydrated.

Certain people are at increased risk of blood clots, Chandra noted -- including cancer patients, people who have recently had major surgery such as a joint replacement, and women on birth control pills. They may want to talk with their doctors about any precautions they should take when traveling, he said.

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Vegetarian diet could cut risk of cancer by 45 per cent

And pigs could fly. More guesswork based on just a statistical association. It could be (for instance) that it is mainly fussy middle class people who are the vegetarians and middle class people are healthier anyhow. Or maybe vegetarians live more cautious and hence safer lives, thus exposing themselves to fewer dangerous substances etc. Speculation could go on and on but what's the point? NO causative inferences have been established and none are possible from evidence such as this

Eating a vegetarian diet can almost halve the risk of developing cancer, research suggests. A study of more than 61,000 individuals aged between 20 and 89 found those who did not eat meat reduced overall incidence of the disease by 12 per cent. But the most striking difference was in cancers of the blood, including leukaemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma with 45 per cent fewer cases among the vegetarians. Tumours of the stomach and bladder were also significantly less frequent in this group.

Professor Tim Key, a Cancer Research UK epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, said: 'Over a lifetime about one in three people will be diagnosed with cancer. So if 33 people in every hundred get cancer this would come down to about 29 with everyone following a vegetarian diet, which is 12 per cent lower.' However, Mr Key said the findings were not yet strong enough to advise the public to make dramatic changes to the way they eat as long as they are following an 'average balanced diet'.

Although it is widely recommended we eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day to reduce their risk of cancer and other diseases, there is little evidence looking specifically at a vegetarian diet.

Mr Key, whose findings are published in the British Journal of Cancer, added: 'More research is needed to substantiate these results and to look for reasons for the differences.' His team followed the participants, just over half of whom were meat eaters, for more than 12 years during which time 3,350 were diagnosed with cancer. They looked at the rates of cancer among the vegetarians, and then compared them with those of the meat eaters.

Mr Key said: 'Our study looking at cancer risk in vegetarians found the likelihood of people developing some cancers is lower among vegetarians than among people who eat meat. 'In terms of what explains this we have to look at what other research is going on. For stomach cancer there is already quite a lot of evidence that high intake of food such as processed meat may increase risk. 'Obviously, vegetarians who are not eating meat would not have that risk factor. It could be something about being a vegetarian that is protective, or alternatively it could be something about meat actually increasing the risk.'

Su Taylor, of the Vegetarian Society, said: 'This latest research adds to a growing body of evidence that vegetarians are less likely to get cancer. 'It could be they are simply more likely to stick to the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, thereby eating more roughage, or it could be more complicated than this.'

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Orange juice acid 'can wash away enamel on your teeth'

This one's been around for a while now. Just remember: EVERYTHING is bad for you and life is always fatal. More seriously: The reasoning and findings make some sense but a lot of people are heavy drinkers of Coca Cola, which is very good at dissolving teeth, but most Coke drinkers have still got their teeth. You would have to go unusual extremes for orange juice to harm you

It may not just be breakfast you wash down with a morning glass of orange juice, researchers warned yesterday. Some juice is so acidic, it can take part of your teeth with it. Fruit beverages can cut enamel hardness by 84 per cent causing teeth to erode more than previously thought, according to one U.S. expert. Dr Yan-Fang Ren, of the Eastman Institute for Oral Health, at the University of Rochester Medical Centre in New York, said the acid in orange juice 'is so strong that the tooth is literally washed away'.

Dr Ren and his team made the discovery after studying the effects of over-the-counter teeth whitening products. He found the effect of six per cent hydrogen peroxide, the common ingredient used for teeth whitening, was 'insignificant' compared with acidic fruit juices. The orange juice markedly cut hardness and increased roughness of tooth enamel.

The researchers used a revolutionary vertical scanning microscope for the first time to see the extensive surface detail on teeth. It has long been known that fruit juice and carbonated drinks have high acid content and can reduce the strength of enamel. Dentists have advised some of these drinks should only be consumed with a straw or at the same time as eating food. But the damaging effects of drinks could be worse than previously thought, according to the article in the Journal of Dentistry.

Weakened and eroded enamel may speed up the wear of the tooth and increase the risk of tooth decay developing and spreading. Dr Ren said: 'Most soft drinks, including sodas and fruit juices, are acidic in nature. 'Our studies demonstrated that the orange juice, as an example, can potentially cause significant erosion of teeth. It's potentially a very serious problem for people who drink sodas and fruit juices daily. 'We do not yet have an effective tool to avert the erosive effects, although there are early indications that higher levels of fluoride may help slow down the erosion.'

Dr Ren advises consumers to be aware of the acidic nature of beverages, including sodas, fruit juices, sports and energy drinks. The longer teeth are in contact with the acidic drinks, the more the erosion will be. Those who sip their drinks slowly over 20 minutes are more likely to have tooth erosion than those who finish a drink quickly. Dr Ren said it is important to keep good oral hygiene by brushing teeth twice a day with fluoride toothpaste.

The research comes after a recent study revealed that drinking fruit juice dramatically reduces the effectiveness of drugs used to treat cancer, heart conditions and high blood pressure. Research has shown that orange, apple and grapefruit juice can also wipe out the benefits of some antibiotics and hay-fever pills. It is thought the drinks stop drugs from entering the bloodstream and getting to work in the body - possibly rendering them useless. The potential effects are so serious, researchers warned, that if in doubt patients should swap fruit juices for water when on medication.

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Here we go again: Coffee could halt Alzheimer’s

So regular coffee drinkers don't get Alzheimer's? First time I've heard that the USA and Europe are Alzheimer's-free zones! Why do they bother publishing this sh*t? They have no sense of perspective whatever. China and Japan (tea-drinking nations) are full of demented oldsters? Certainly not in Japan, which is famous for its many highly functional nonagenerarians and centenarians. And tea is normally drunk quite weak in East Asia, meaning that the drinkers get very little caffeine from it

Three large cups of coffee a day could help to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s disease and even reverse the condition, researchers say. A daily dose of caffeine can suppress the degenerative processes in the brain that can lead to confusion and memory loss, a study in mice suggests. Although drinking coffee has previously been linked to a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s, this is the first study to suggest that caffeine can directly target the disease itself.

Alzheimer’s occurs when sticky clumps of abnormal protein in the brain called beta-amyloid build up to form plaques, impairing cognitive function. But mice with a rodent equivalent of the disease showed a 50 per cent reduction in levels of amyloid protein in their brains after scientists spiked their drinking water with caffeine.

The change was reflected in their behaviour as they developed better memories and quicker thinking. In the study, published today in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, researchers from the University of South Florida studied 55 mice that had been genetically engineered to develop dementia symptoms identical to those of Alzheimer’s as they aged. Before treatment the mice, which were aged 18 to 19 months — about 70 years in human terms — had performed poorly in the memory tests.

Half the animals were given a daily dose of caffeine in their drinking water — equivalent to a human consuming about six espresso shots or 500mg of pure caffeine — while the other half continued to drink ordinary water. By the end of the two-month study, the caffeine-drinking mice were performing far better on tests of memory and thinking than mice given water. Their memories were as sharp as those of healthy older mice without dementia.

The scientists found that when the mice drank caffeinated water their blood levels of beta amyloid protein fell quickly. More importantly, the same effect occurred in the brain. Almost half the abnormal protein previously seen when the brains of Alzheimer’s mice were examined had vanished after two months.

The researchers hope that caffeine could present a safe, inexpensive treatment for dementia. Professor Gary Arendash, a memory and ageing specialist who led the latest research, said that he wished to conduct human patient trials as soon as possible. “The findings provide evidence that caffeine could be a viable treatment for established Alzheimer’s disease and not simply a protective strategy,” he said.

A study in 2002 found that people who consumed caffeine in mid-life were 60 per cent less likely to develop the disease.

About 417,000 people in the UK suffer from Alzheimer’s, and numbers are steadily rising. There is currently no cure and although drugs can help stabilise the condition, they are not widely available on the NHS until patients have advanced-stage disease and their effectiveness is relatively unpredictable from person to person.

Taking 500mg of caffeine in tablet form would be safe for most patients and would have relatively few side-effects, Professor Arendash said, although it is not clear how the dosage would translate from mice to humans.

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said that it was too early to say whether coffee or caffeine supplements could help Alzheimer’s patients. “With no cure yet, research into treatments that could help people with Alzheimer’s is vital. [But] we need to do more research to find out whether this effect will be seen in people,” she said.

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Two or more abortions could more than DOUBLE chances of a premature birth next time

Doubling the odds does get us into the area where a finding needs to be looked at seriously but it must be noted that only a statistical relationship has been established. Causal judgments need more evidence. But that abortions sometimes damage the womb and cervix is a perfectly reasonable inference and such damage could lead to problems in taking a pregnancy to full term

Women who have an abortion could be risking the health of their next baby, it emerged last night. Those who terminate a pregnancy are subsequently more likely to give birth prematurely, with two or more abortions more than doubling the odds. Premature babies are at greater risk of health problems, with one in ten having lung disease, cerebral palsy, blindness or deafness.

Fertility doctors said the study did not prove abortion caused premature births because some of the reasons why women choose to terminate a pregnancy - such as unemployment or money worries - are also linked to early birth. But other experts said the evidence was 'compelling' and insisted women seeking abortions should be warned of the risk.

The data, revealed at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Amsterdam, comes as abortion rates hit record levels. More than 200,000 women a year in England and Wales choose to terminate pregnancies - second only to the U.S. in the West. The link between abortion and premature birth emerged during a review of dozens studies on pregnancy complications.

Combining the results revealed that having one abortion raised the risk of the woman having her next baby prematurely, which is defined as before 37 weeks, by 20 per cent. The risk of a very premature baby before 34 weeks rose by 50 per cent. Women who had two or more abortions were almost twice as likely to have a premature baby and two and a half times as likely to have one very prematurely.

Dr Robbert van Oppenraaij, of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, said it was not clear what caused the link, suggesting that abortion may harm the womb or create infection. Smoking, drug use, unemployment and low income are also associated with abortion and premature birth.

However, others said it made 'total sense'. Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment On Reproductive Ethics, said: 'There's a logic. The body is protecting a healthy baby. By producing a abortion, you destroy that protection and make the cervix - the neck of the womb - more vulnerable. 'And if you make the cervix more vulnerable, you are more at risk of a premature baby. 'You don't need a degree in biology to understand that.'

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which carries out almost a third of abortions in Britain, said leaflets it gives patients mention the link to premature birth. Medical director Dr Patricia Lohr said: 'Abortion is extremely safe. When we counsel women, we provide them with information about the potential for a slightly higher risk of miscarriage or early birth.'

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Slimming pill is investigated over 'links to liver damage'

This is pretty absurd. If you have got a million people taking something, of course some of them will get ill -- from other causes. And only ONE of the deaths involved liver damage. Drawing any conclusion from that is a statistical absurdity

A slimming pill that triggered massive sales when it was launched earlier this year is being investigated amid fears it is linked to liver damage. Alli, which blocks the absorption of fat in the gut, is the first diet pill of its kind to be available without prescription. Its main ingredient is the drug orlistat. But now the US medicine watchdog, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is investigating a series of alerts from patients who developed problems while taking orlistat.

The UK drugs regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has also received 31 reports of side effects linked to orlistat since Alli was launched in April. But it was not able to say if those were from patients taking Alli or the stronger pill Xenical – which also contains orlistat but is available only on prescription.

Since Xenical became available in 2001, 24 patients taking it have died, one of liver failure and the others from heart attacks, gall bladder inflammation, multi-organ failure and lung clots. There were also five cases of sudden death where the cause was unclear. In total, the MHRA has received 1,252 reports from patients of potential side effects from Xenical, including heart problems, gastrointestinal issues and skin complaints. Nearly 100 were connected with liver problems.

On the day Alli was launched in the UK, £1million worth of pills were sold. But it has already provoked controversy. Manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) claims it can boost weight loss by up to 50 per cent, helping dieters lose an extra 1lb for every 2lb shed. The treatment is supposed to be taken by people with a body mass index of more than 28, but there have been claims that pharmacists are flouting the rules and giving it to women who are much slimmer. The FDA can ban the sale of drugs and can also order changes to labelling or prescription guidance. While any of its rulings are not automatically adopted in the UK, the European Medicines Agency, which licenses orlistat in the UK, works closely with the FDA.

A spokesman for the FDA said: ‘We have received rare reports of hepatitis and other liver-related laboratory abnormalities in people taking orlistat. The FDA is closely monitoring this issue to determine the need for any regulatory action.’

GSK said the safety of consumers was of ‘utmost importance’ to the company and that it supplied all information about adverse effects to Government drugs bodies. A spokeswoman said: ‘Alli has been used by millions of consumers in the US. The safety and efficacy profile of orlistat is well documented and has been established through data from more than 100 clinical studies involving more than 30,000 patients worldwide.’

A spokeswoman for Roche, which manufactures Xenical, said the company took patient safety issues very seriously. She added: ‘There is no evidence of a link between Xenical and liver toxicity.’

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Men rejoice as research suggests beer bellies caused by genetics - not by the booze

Beer lovers across Britain will be raising a glass to the latest research on drinking. For scientists have discovered that the so-called 'beer belly' is not caused by consuming alcohol – but more to do with genetics. A study of thousands of beer drinkers found that although people who drink regularly are more likely to put on weight, they do not necessarily accumulate fat around the abdomen.

Researchers monitored more than 20,000 people – 7,876 men and 12,749 women – over an average of eight-and-a-half years. Men who were classed as the heaviest drinkers – regularly consuming two pints of beer a day – put on the most weight. But when the researchers then measured hip-to-waist ratios to establish which drinkers developed a pot belly, the results were randomly spread across all drinking groups.

The scientists concluded that genetic factors dictating how people put on weight were more significant than drinking beer. However, they insist that their findings do not mean that drinking should be encouraged, and recommend giving up alcohol completely to avoid gaining weight.

In the study they measured participants' weight, waist and hip circumference at the start and then asked them to document their measurements regularly themselves. The results were adjusted for variables including illness, the menopause, dieting and smoking. The men most likely to put on weight were those who drank the most and also those who drank no beer at all.

Light drinkers saw the least variation in their waist size. For women, drinking more beer was more directly associated with piling on the pounds. But for all the categories, drinking beer led to overall weight gain on both the waist and the hips, and did not necessarily lead to a beer belly. The study stated: 'This analysis showed the empirical basis for the common belief of a beer belly, as we found that beer drinking and waist circumference were positively associated. 'However, our data provided only limited evidence for a site-specific effect of beer drinking on waist circumference, and beer consumption seems to be rather associated with an increase in overall body fatness.

'In terms of public health relevance, it may be therefore important to focus on beer abstention to maintain body weight. 'In terms of the beer belly belief, an explanation could be that all the observed beer bellies in the population result from the natural variation in fat patterning and not from the fact of drinking beer.'

The study, which was carried out by German and Swedish researchers, was published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Beer contains no fat and, measure for measure, has fewer calories than wine. A pint of beer contains about 200 calories, whereas the same volume of wine contains nearly 400.

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Taxing fizzy drinks is no way to fund health reform

History, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt once remarked, does in fact repeat itself.

Not long after taking office as the nation's first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton persuaded Congress to enact a selective excise tax on whiskey. He believed that the consumption of distilled spirits, "carried on to an extreme, no doubt very much on account of their cheapness," threatened the health and morals of the new American community as well as its economy.

Hamilton's tax nearly ended in bloodshed, averted at the last minute when the Whiskey Rebellion's leaders surrendered to a federal militia led by President George Washington himself.

Americans thought the Revolution had freed them from the duties King George had levied on tea, newspapers, legal documents, soap and salt, among others. But before the Constitution was even a decade old, selective consumption taxes — including on snuff, sugar and salt — had returned in full force. Such taxes have been with us more or less ever since.

Secretary Hamilton exploited moral opposition to "demon rum" in order to help pay off the nation's Revolutionary War debts. Now, more than two centuries later, sin taxes are again in play as Congress looks for ways to finance President Barack Obama's proposed health-care reform initiative, which may cost as much as $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

Recognizing that further hikes on existing federal excise taxes for Congress' two old standbys — alcohol and tobacco — will not raise enough revenue, Washington is considering selectively taxing "sugary" soft drinks that supposedly contribute to the modern sin of obesity. Fat cats apparently are not the only Americans who may see their tax bills go up.

Proving FDR's adage, this would not be the first time federal excise taxes have been levied on soft drinks. One such tax was enacted during World War I, but then repealed in 1924; another was in effect briefly at the start of the New Deal. The states also have gotten into the act from time to time, but soft drink taxes have been abolished in all but two states that experimented with them: Arkansas and West Virginia.

Suggesting that "soda is clearly one of the most harmful products in the food supply," as the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest recently did, recasts the proposed excise tax as one with a positive effect: nudging consumer behavior toward a healthier lifestyle. According to one estimate, a tax of one cent per fluid ounce on carbonated soft drinks would raise $17 billion per year and reduce consumption by 13 percent. This appears to allow the federal government to do well by doing good.

Yet the reality is that soft drink sales have already been declining for the last nine years without a federal excise tax. While correlation is not causation, it is clearly a stretch to argue that sodas have contributed significantly to a nationwide obesity "epidemic." In fact, the obesity rates in the two states that do tax soft drinks are among the nation's highest.

Selective excise taxes violate a widely accepted principle of public finance known among economists as "horizontal equity." This principle suggests that individuals in similar economic circumstances ought to bear similar tax burdens. In other words, one person's tax bill should not be higher simply because of what he or she chooses to consume.

Excise taxes also are very blunt instruments for controlling consumption behavior; they punish responsible consumers as well as those who overindulge. Worse, a soft drink tax, like all consumption taxes, would be regressive, falling more heavily on the poor than on the wealthy.

Singling out consumers of some products to finance a health-care plan the president says will benefit all Americans is fiscal discrimination at its most brazen. And the farther the nation moves toward a single-payer health insurance program, the more pressure there will be to tax any product that anyone, anywhere, plausibly can argue is detrimental to one's health.

Today it may be carbonated soft drinks. Tomorrow, it may be ethnic food, coffee, bacon and eggs, hot dogs and red meat.

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Ultrasound treatment offers new hope for prostate cancer patients

Men with early-stage prostate cancer could be treated with soundwave technology instead of surgery, leading to fewer side-effects, research suggests. A study of 172 men whose cancer had not spread beyond their prostate found that 92 per cent were free of cancer a year after undergoing the experimental therapy.

They were given general anaesthetic and treated with high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), which uses high-frequency soundwaves to kill cancer cells. Small amounts of tissue are heated up to a temperature of between 80C and 90C.

All the men in the study were day cases and 78 per cent were discharged from hospital in an average of five hours. The trial took place at University College Hospital and the private Princess Grace Hospital, both in Central London. The results were published in the British Journal of Cancer.

Men with prostate cancer are usually treated with surgery or radiotherapy. Surgery involves a hospital stay of two to three days while men having radiotherapy usually need daily outpatient treatment for up to a month.

The results published yesterday found that men treated with HIFU had fewer side-effects than those treated with radiotherapy or surgery. Fewer than 1 per cent had incontinence, none had any bowel problems and 30 to 40 per cent had impotence. Of men treated with surgery or radiotherapy, between 5 and 20 per cent usually suffer incontinence and half have impotence.

Hashim Ahmed, who ran the trial, said that the study suggested that it might be possible to use HIFU more widely in treating men with early prostate cancer with fewer side-effects in the future. “We don’t yet know for sure if HIFU is more effective than traditional treatments so it will be important to carry out further studies involving a larger number of patients, followed over a longer period of time to truly compare the long-term effectiveness of this treatment.”

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Positive thinking makes people with low self-esteem feel worse

LOL! Hopefully, this is the last nail in the coffin of the self-esteem fad. One of many other nails here. I don't suppose that the fad really will die, though. Evidence doesn't count in matters like this. It has for instance been shown since the 1940's that Freudian psychotherapy is no better than placebo but it still has many devotees -- particularly in NYC. It's been said, however, that going to a shrink is the only way to get anyone in NYC to listen to you! I remember certain dinners in New York which make me believe that

REPEATING positive statements such as "I am a lovable person" or "I will succeed" makes some people feel worse about themselves instead of raising their self-esteem, a study says.

“From at least as far back as Norman Vincent Peale's (1952) 'The Power of Positive Thinking,' the media have advocated saying favourable things to oneself,” said the study by Canadian psychologists, which was published in “Psychological Science” on Thursday. It cites a popular self-help magazine that advises its readers to: “Try chanting: I'm powerful, I'm strong, and nothing in this world can stop me,” but says the practice doesn't work for everyone.

Positive self-statements make people who are already down on themselves feel worse rather than better, according to the study conducted by psychologists Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick.

For the study, the psychologists asked people with low self-esteem and people with high self-esteem to repeat the phrase: “I am a lovable person,” and then measured participants' moods and feelings about themselves. What they found is that individuals who started out with low self-esteem felt worse after repeating the positive self-statement.

“I think that what happens is that when a low self-esteem person repeats positive thoughts, they probably have contradictory thoughts,” Wood told AFP. “So, if they're saying 'I'm a lovable person,' they might be thinking, 'Well, I'm not always lovable' or 'I'm not lovable in this way,' and these contradictory thoughts may overwhelm the positive thoughts,” she said.

Although positive thinking does appear to be effective when it's part of a broader program of therapy, on its own it tends to have the reverse effect of what it is supposed to do, said Wood, urging self-help books, magazines and TV shows to stop sending a message that just chanting a positive mantra will raise self-esteem. “It's frustrating to people when they try it and it doesn't work for them,” Wood told AFP.

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New Vegemite put to the taste test

Now THIS is important news. Like most Australians, I am never without Vegemite in the house. I had to laugh at the comment in red, though. That is a LOT of Vegemite to eat. For British readers: Vegemite is similar to Marmite. For American readers: It's beyond explanation. If you ever try it, you will likely hate it



For more than 85 years Australia has been a nation of happy little Vegemites but now there's a new version of the iconic breakfast spread. Mixing the salty taste of traditional Vegemite with milk, butter and cream cheese, it is being marketed as a snacking spread or dip.

Great grandson of the inventor of Vegemite Cyril P Callister, Jamie Callister said during today's sample release at Toowong the new Vegemite should be judged on its merits and not compared to the breakfast table favourite. "I think with this one it's probably going to have a wider appeal - it's not as sharp a taste and it might appeal to more people," Mr Callister said. "Traditionally with Vegemite you either love it or you hate it... I think this might cover a bit more of the in-between ground."

Most shoppers who tried the new spread said they were keen on the new taste but there weren't many who said they would consider switching from the original. "I do like it, it's got a slight after taste but it is smoother and creamier than the original," Sandy Mckevitt from Springwood said. "I'm a Vegemite freak so I don't think I would (switch)."

Fellow shopper Gary Rendshaw said: "It's quite nice, it's like old Vegemite but with a quieter taste." "I think I'll switch to the new one but I'll still keep the old one... I buy the two kilogram buckets of it and they last me about two months."

But outside the centre Lisa Cunningham and her daughter Lilly from Bardon were thoroughly unimpressed with the new product, saying it would not feature in their household. "It's terrible. It is too sweet and I like the saltiness of the original Vegemite. It tastes like they've put some sort of sweetness in it to lessen the taste of the original Vegemite taste," Mrs Cunningham said. Lilly said she would not be recommending the new spread to her friends at school. "Normally I like my Vegemite not too thick on toast... I don't really like the new stuff," she said.

Kraft Foods Australia/New Zealand has said in a statement there are no plans to remove traditional Vegemite from the stands and it will continue to be manufactured in Australia. The new flavour of Vegemite will be available in supermarkets across Australia from July 6.

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Daily sex improves male fertility

The evidence for this seems fairly weak. It would seem to make little difference either way

DAILY sex can improve the genetic quality of a man's sperm and could raise his chances of fathering a child, new research has suggested. Couples who are trying for a baby are often advised to have sex every other day, so that the man's sperm count has time to recover, but scientists in Australia have discovered that this may lower some men's fertility. While abstaining from sex for a few days raises the sperm count, quality can be damaged if a man ejaculates too infrequently.

A study at Sydney IVF, a centre for infertility treatment, has found that daily sex for a seven-day period substantially improves the genetic quality of sperm, without lowering sperm counts enough to impair fertility. David Greening, who led the research, said that for some couples having intercourse every day during the woman's most fertile period could be crucial to starting a family.

The findings, which he presented yesterday at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Amsterdam, could also have important implications for couples having IVF. Men are usually advised to abstain from ejaculation for three days before providing a sperm sample for fertilising their partner's eggs and many couples do not have regular sex while going through IVF.

When men go without ejaculating, the number of sperm stored in the epididymis at the top of the testicle increases. The longer that sperm sits in the epididymis, however, the more genetic damage it accumulates through exposure to heat and to oxygen free radicals. Dr Greening speculated that daily sex might be more fertile sex. "Through simply clearing the epididymis and testicles, DNA damage has less time to occur. There's less time for vandalism."

Two years ago, Dr Greening conducted a pilot study involving 42 men with high levels of DNA damage in their sperm. It found that daily ejaculation reduced DNA damage levels by 12 per cent. He has repeated the experiment in a larger group of 118 men. Among 81 per cent of men, sperm DNA damage decreased by an average of 12 per cent, though DNA damage increased slightly in the remaining 19 per cent.

Dr Greening said that he had changed his advice to couples accordingly. "If I see a couple and the man has high DNA damage to his sperm, I do the 7-day test to see if it comes down," he said.

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Genetic test to produce disease free babies

A “genetic MOT” which can help IVF couples screen embryos for hereditary diseases and have healthy babies could be available in the UK within a year. The technique, known as karyomapping, has the potential to spot virtually any inherited genetic disease. It can also pick up chromosomal problems that might lead to Down’s syndrome or prevent pregnancy. Scientific trials are set to begin on the groundbreaking technique, which has been developed by British researchers and which they believe could eventually even eradicate some inherited conditions like Huntington’s Disease.

But the move will spark fears that the technology is moving towards creating “designer babies”, because it could theoretically be used to screen out non-serious conditions or help couples have babies with “designer” traits such as blue eyes. However, its use would be heavily regulated in Britain and is likely to be limited to extremely serious inherited diseases.

The £2,500 procedure removes the need for geneticists to spend months developing a test for a specific gene mutation, a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Last year the first child in Britain was born free from a breast cancer gene which raises the lifetime chance of developing the disease to 80 per cent, after doctors used PGD. But only around two per cent of 1,500 inherited diseases can be identified in this way.

The new test compares defects in a couples’ genes with that of their embryo, and scientists believe that it can identify almost all known genetic diseases. Developed at the Bridge Centre in London, scientists have successfully proven that the test can identify 100 per cent of embryos with cystic fibrosis, clearing the way for clinical trials to begin later this year.

Gary Harton, from the Genetics & IVF Institute in Fairfax, Virginia, who will lead the trials, said he hoped to be offering the test to tens of couples by December. Embryos proven to be free from the disease are then implanted into the women using in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).

As well as diseases caused by gene mutations the technology can also detect those that come from abnormalities in chromosomes, such as Down’s Syndrome. Detecting problems in chromosomes can also reduce the chance that an embryo will fail to become a successful pregnancy. But the technology will not be able to eradicate most inherited diseases completely, the researchers behind the procedure said.

Professor Alan Handyside, from the London Bridge Fertility Gynaecology and Genetics Centre in London, who pioneered the technology, said it was right that patients should have access to karyomapping. “I believe passionately that it’s a question of patient choice,” he said. “These families know first hand what it’s like to suffer from these conditions. I don’t believe it’s for the Government or scientists and clinicians to debate. “The hope is that clinicians will be able to test embryos for specific genetic diseases and know that, with one test, they are transferring chromosomally normal embryos.” He added: “There are spontaneous mutations happening all the time, but at least now we can identify inherited mutations.”

However, he said that Huntington’s Disease, an incurable brain condition which affects around 8,000 people in Britain could be eventually eradicated because most mutations were inherited.

Prof Tony Rutherford, the chairmen of the British Fertility Centre, said that although the technology did raise the possibility of creating designer babies, those risks already existed because of previous technology such as PGD. He said: “One thing that is superb is that we are regulated (in Britain). The safeguards are there. “We are regulated; we’re not mad Frankensteins working away in our labs creating designer babies. We can only look for major disorders.” He added: “The big advantage of karyomapping is its reliability.”

The announcement was made at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) conference in Amsterdam.

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Diet claim: Eating food with a high water content, like soup, can help reduce your calorie intake

Another stupid theory put forward without testing. I have no doubt that people will habituate to such a diet and end up eating larger quantities. See the article following this one

It gives a whole new, and rather more healthy meaning to the liquid lunch. Eating food with a high water content could be the key to losing weight. Nutritionists believe that dishes such as rice, pasta, soups and stews, appear to keep you feeling fuller for longer. But the liquid must be part of the food. Drinking a glass of water while you eat will not have the same effect, said the British Nutrition Foundation.

The theory is based on studies which showed that although somebody will eat different foods on different days, the weight of food consumed will hardly vary. This means that if we eat foods that are just as bulky but contain fewer calories, we should feel just as full.

Water-rich foods tend to be low in calories or have a low energy density, a BNF conference heard. A spokesman said: 'Studies have shown that people tend to consume the same weight of food each day but not necessarily the same amount of energy or calories. 'So it is possible to trick ourselves into consuming less energy, without feeling hungrier, by eating a lower energy density diet which still makes up the same weight of foods overall throughout the day.'

To work out the energy density of a food, divide the number of calories by its weight. So a 40g bag of crisps with 200 calories has an energy density of five – putting it towards the high end of the scale. At the other end of the scale are most fruits and vegetables, as well as vegetable soups, low-fat yoghurt, baked beans, baked potatoes and cornflakes. Many of these are high in water and all have an energy density of 1.5 or less, making them good to fill up on.

Foods with a medium rating include strawberries and cream, lasagne, steak, pizza and chips.

Joining crisps at the high end of the scale, with ratings of four or more, are cheese, chocolate, mayonnaise and butter. Chocolate-lovers, however, can take some heart. The lightness of chocolate mousse means it has a lower rating – and so is more filling – than squares of chocolate. Weight for weight, a low-calorie mousse has around a quarter of the calorie count as the solid variety, but, according to the BNF, should be just as filling.

Dr Elisabeth Weichselbaum, a nutrition scientist at the foundation, advised including 'more foods with a low energy density, moderate amounts of foods with a medium energy density and small amounts with a high density'. She added: 'For instance, if you make spaghetti bolognese and make the sauce with mincemeat it might be a bit high in fat. 'If you put a lot of veg in the sauce, you will probably eat the same amount of sauce but a lot fewer calories.'

The idea that certain foods make you feel more full than others is the basis of several popular diets. The Atkins Diet, for example, works on the principle that protein satisfies hunger quicker than carbohydrates. So dieters who fill up on steak and eggs lose more weight – and keep it off for longer – than those who tuck into similar quantities of pizza and potatoes.

The British Dietetic Association said it was a good idea to eat lots of fruit and vegetables but that meat, fish and starchy foods should also have a place on our dinner plates.

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Why those oh-so-healthy diet foods make us eat even more

On a diet but struggling to shed the pounds, or - horror of horrors - actually gaining weight? Well it could be because you're on a diet, according to scientists. A study has shown that when faced with a healthy, low-calorie dish, we instinctively increase the portion on our plate or feel justified in going back for second helpings.

Researchers at the University of Bristol discovered those on low-calorie diets believe you can't have too much of a good thing and end up consuming just as many calories as if they were eating regular dishes. 'A person's perception of how full a meal will make them feel will no doubt affect portion size,' said Lisa Miles, of the British Nutrition Foundation. 'It's so important to be aware of behavioural triggers for overeating.'

The Bristol team, led by Dr Jeff Brunstrom, looked at the responses of 76 adults to 18 foods and found they quickly learnt their calorie values and over-compensated accordingly. The findings back up a 2007 Canadian research paper on the causes of childhood obesity, which found that rats given low-calorie food also tended to over-eat.

In a second study, Dr Brunstrom found children whose parents regulated sugary snacks, such as chocolate or crisps, ended up bingeing on them when given a chance. The researchers tested 70 children aged between ten and 12 years old, presenting them with six unhealthy treats. A child who was rarely allowed the snack was more likely to over-estimate how much they should eat, miscalculating a 250kcal portion as a 120kcal one. Meanwhile, a youngster who had eaten the foods previously would be able to assess accurately how calorific it was, on average guessing that a 250kcal portion contained 230kcal.

Dr Brunstrom, a lecturer in experimental psychology, will present his work at a BNF conference this week. He said: 'These findings suggest that limiting access to certain snack foods limits learning about their properties. Thus, when snack foods are eventually encountered they might tend to be selected in larger portions.'

This could be bad news for parents who believe they are doing their children a favour by placing sweet treats off-limits. Tam Fry, chairman of the Child Growth Foundation and a member of the National Obesity Forum, said: 'Early in a child's life they need to be introduced to portion size as a positive measure, otherwise it becomes forbidden fruit. 'It isn't just the ignorant affected by obesity, it goes across all social classes.'

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More on boy's peanut death

It seems that the army has unfairly taken the rap for this. It was entirely a school responsibility. Apparently the boy's parents did the right thing but the school failed to pass on the info to the relevant staff. I would still call it "death by misadventure", though, and it may still motivate the army and others to ban peanut products across the board. South-East Asian cuisine (Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian) could be badly hit as they use peanuts in almost everything

The role of an elite private school in the death of a 13-year-old student on an army cadet camp should be examined by an inquest, a Federal Court judge has recommended.

Nathan Francis, a student at Melbourne's Scotch College, died on March 30, 2007, after suffering a severe allergic reaction to peanut butter, which was in a beef satay army meal supplied on the Australian Defence Force camp. The camp, in the Wombat State Forest in central Victoria, was run by staff and teachers at the school.

The school had told parents not to provide food as they were using ADF meals, but asked to be alerted to any food allergies. Nathan's mother, Jessica Francis, wrote that her son had a severe allergy, stating: "PEANUTS -- but all nuts must be avoided."

However, a list of students with food allergies did not reach the staff member who issued the meals and Nathan was given beef satay. After a mouthful, the boy was helped by a fellow student to the camp's headquarters and he died on the way to hospital.

"There has so far been no opportunity for the role of Scotch College in the death of Nathan to be examined in public," judge Tony North said. "The circumstances presented to this court raise a question whether Scotch College, through its teachers and staff, bear some responsibility."

His recommendation came as he passed judgment on civil action against the ADF and the chief of the army over the boy's death. Comcare, on behalf of Nathan, who was considered an employee of the ADF, had sued the commonwealth for breaching its duty of care. The commonwealth admitted liability and the ADF was fined $210,000.

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Wine, veg and little meat 'a recipe for long life' (?)

Finally, a hint of skepticism about the much-hyped Mediterranean diet is creeping in. Since the very un-Mediterranean Australians live longer than Greeks, it is about time. To put the raw numbers below into perspective: 4% of the group who had a highly Mediterranean diet died versus 5% of those who were low on a Mediterranean diet. It's not a lot to hang your hat on and could easily be accounted for by extraneous variables. Perhaps, for instance, the most Mediterranean eaters tended to be country folk who got more exercise. Amusing, though, that "Drinking wine had the most benefit on life span". I'll drink to that!

It has long been heralded as the perfect recipe for a long life but a new study suggests that not all foods that make up the Mediterranean diet carry the same benefits. Researchers found that eating large amounts of fish and seafood or the low levels of dairy traditionally associated with the diet did little or nothing to lengthen life span.

However, drinking a glass of wine or two a day as well as large amounts of fruit, vegetables and olive oil while keeping red meat consumption to a minimum did add up to a recipe for a longer life.

The scientists behind the study claim that it is the first to identify which individual parts of the diet might contribute the most to longevity. Previous research has found that sticking to the diet can protect the brain against developing Alzheimer's and other memory problems, cut the chances of developing heart disease and even reduce the risk of being diagnosed with cancer.

The latest study, which followed 23,000 people, found that those who adhered most closely to a typical Mediterranean diet were 14 per cent more likely to still be alive at the end of eight years.

Prof Dimitrios Trichopoulos, from the Harvard School of Public Health, who led the study, said: "The analysis suggests that the dominant components of the Mediterranean diet... are moderate consumption of alcohol, mostly in the form of wine during meals, as it traditional in the Mediterranean countries, low consumption of meat and meat products, and high consumption of vegetables, fruits and nuts, olive oil and legume."

Drinking wine had the most benefit on life span the findings suggest, followed by reducing meat consumption and then eating high numbers of fruit, vegetables and nuts. There was also "clear" benefits in combining key components of the diet, such as lots of vegetables and olive oil, the researchers found. However, the findings, published online by the British Medical Journal, do not mean that eating fish carries few health benefits.

Previous studies have suggested that the omega three "good" fatty acids found in fatty fish like tuna and Salmon can help protect the mind against decline and even cut the risk that men will develop prostate cancer.

The study gave patients a score for how closely their diet resembled that of a typical Mediterranean diet, which contains lots of fish, vegetables, fruits and cereals, as well as low levels of dairy, meat and saturated fats, and just small amounts of alcohol.

Earlier this year scientists found that older people who ate a Mediterranean diet were less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease over five years.

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Journal abstract follows:

Anatomy of health effects of Mediterranean diet: Greek EPIC prospective cohort study

By Antonia Trichopoulou et al.

Objective: To investigate the relative importance of the individual components of the Mediterranean diet in generating the inverse association of increased adherence to this diet and overall mortality.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Greek segment of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and nutrition (EPIC).

Participants: 23,349 men and women, not previously diagnosed with cancer, coronary heart disease, or diabetes, with documented survival status until June 2008 and complete information on nutritional variables and important covariates at enrolment.

Main outcome measure: All cause mortality.

Results: After a mean follow-up of 8.5 years, 652 deaths from any cause had occurred among 12,694 participants with Mediterranean diet scores 0-4 and 423 among 10,655 participants with scores of 5 or more. Controlling for potential confounders, higher adherence to a Mediterranean diet was associated with a statistically significant reduction in total mortality (adjusted mortality ratio per two unit increase in score 0.864, 95% confidence interval 0.802 to 0.932). The contributions of the individual components of the Mediterranean diet to this association were moderate ethanol consumption 23.5%, low consumption of meat and meat products 16.6%, high vegetable consumption 16.2%, high fruit and nut consumption 11.2%, high monounsaturated to saturated lipid ratio 10.6%, and high legume consumption 9.7%. The contributions of high cereal consumption and low dairy consumption were minimal, whereas high fish and seafood consumption was associated with a non-significant increase in mortality ratio.

Conclusion: The dominant components of the Mediterranean diet score as a predictor of lower mortality are moderate consumption of ethanol, low consumption of meat and meat products, and high consumption of vegetables, fruits and nuts, olive oil, and legumes. Minimal contributions were found for cereals and dairy products, possibly because they are heterogeneous categories of foods with differential health effects, and for fish and seafood, the intake of which is low in this population.

BMJ 2009;338:b2337






Australian army fined for cadet's peanut allergy death

This is pretty ridiculous. Its undoubted outcome will be to remove peanuts from all military rations and all foods sold to children. But peanuts and peanut butter are favourite foods for kids. Why should one kid with a problem be allowed to deprive all kids of something? I would have called the death a "death by misadventure". The kid surely knew he had an allergy and should have been more careful. And the parents should have made enquiries about what rations he would be served

THE Australian Defence Force has been fined more than $210,000 over the death of a teenage cadet who had an allergic reaction to peanuts in a ration pack meal. Scotch College student Nathan Francis, 13, died after suffering a severe allergic reaction to peanuts in his meal on March 30, 2007. The Melbourne boy was taking part in a Scotch College army cadet unit exercise in the Wombat State Forest in western Victoria.

Comcare, the Commonwealth occupational health and safety authority, took action in the Federal Court against the Australian Defence Force, lodging a writ last June. Justice Tony North said the case was "every parent's worst nightmare".

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