Six cups of coffee a day 'can slash prostate cancer risk'

According to one study. Other studies find differently. They also think below that coffee feminizes you!

What they probably found was that hard-driving middle class men drink more coffee and that middle class men are also healthier generally

Drinking cup after cup of coffee could more than halve the odds of developing a deadly prostate tumour, research suggests. A 20-year study of almost 50,000 men found those who drank at least six cups a day were 20 per cent less likely to get prostate cancer than those who never touched the stuff.

Strikingly, they were 60 per cent less likely than the non-coffee drinkers to die of the disease. Those who like to restrict their caffeine intake will be glad to know the study found decaffeinated coffee to be just as effective.

The research is significant because prostate cancer, the most common cancer among British men, affects 37,000 a year and kills more than 10,000.

However, the Harvard University researchers say that non-coffee drinkers shouldn’t change their habits based on this study alone.

The American team compared the coffee intake of men quizzed about their diets every four years between 1986 and 2006 with their medical records. Two-thirds of those taking part drank at least one cup of coffee a day and 5 per cent got through at least six, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute reports. Some 5,035 of the 47,911 men developed prostate cancer, with 642 of the tumours classed as lethal, meaning the men died from the disease or were expected to.

Even relatively small amounts of coffee – one to three cups per day – lowered the risk of lethal prostate cancer by 30 per cent. And bigger amounts had a bigger effect.

Importantly, the link cannot be explained away by the coffee drinkers having healthier lifestyles. In fact, they were more likely to smoke and did less exercise.

Caffeine is credited with a host of health benefits, including cutting the odds of asthma, Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis.

But in this case, the researchers believe that other plant chemicals in coffee are behind the benefits. They think compounds such as anti-oxidants may cut the odds of prostate cancer and reduce the likelihood of deadly tumours by altering levels of sex hormones, regulating blood sugar levels and cutting inflammation.

‘An association between coffee and lower risk of advanced prostate cancer is biologically plausible,’ they reported.

Kathryn Wilson, the study’s lead author, said: ‘If our findings are validated, coffee could represent one modifiable factor that may lower the risk of developing the most harmful form of prostate cancer.’ But British experts said other studies had failed to find that coffee protected against prostate cancer.

Dr Helen Rippon, head of research management at the Prostate Cancer Charity, said: ‘It is important to remember that studying diet is difficult because you are not studying a standardised product – coffee can be prepared in many different ways from many different varieties of bean.

‘That is why it is so important that studies like this are repeated by others, to see if the result stands up in other groups of men.

‘Although this study is a welcome addition to our knowledge, it is far from definitive and we would not recommend men who are not already habitual coffee drinkers to become so in the hope of preventing prostate cancer.’

She pointed out that heavy caffeine intake is associated with other health problems.

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Scientists find “master switch” to controlling human fat

Not those pesky genes again!

Scientists have found that a gene linked to diabetes and cholesterol is a "master switch" that controls other genes found in fat in the body, and say it should help in the search for treatments for obesity-related diseases.

In a study published in the journal Nature Genetics, the British researchers said that since fat plays an important role in peoples' susceptibility to metabolic diseases like obesity, heart disease and diabetes, the regulating gene could be target for drugs to treat such illnesses.

"This is the first major study that shows how small changes in one master regulator gene can cause a cascade of other metabolic effects in other genes," said Tim Spector of King's College London, who led the study.

More than half a billion people, or one in 10 adults worldwide, are obese and the numbers have doubled since the 1980s as the obesity epidemic has spilled over from wealthy into poorer nations.

In the United States, obesity-related diseases already account for nearly 10 percent of medical spending -- an estimated $147 billion a year.

Type 2 diabetes, which is often linked to poor diet and lack of exercise, is also reaching epidemic levels worldwide as rates of obesity rise.

Scientists have already identified a gene called KLF14 as being linked to type 2 diabetes and cholesterol levels, but until now they did know what role it played.

Spector's team analyzed more than 20,000 genes in fat samples taken from under the skin of 800 British female twin volunteers. They found a link between the KLF14 gene and the levels of many other distant genes found in fat tissue, showing that KLF14 acts as a master switch to control these genes.

They then confirmed their findings in 600 fat samples from a separate group of people from Iceland.

In a report of their study, the researchers explained that other genes found to be controlled by KLF14 are linked to a range of metabolic traits, including body mass index, obesity, cholesterol, insulin and glucose levels.

"KLF14 seems to act as a master switch controlling processes that connect changes in the behavior of subcutaneous fat to disturbances in muscle and liver that contribute to diabetes and other conditions," said Mark McCarthy from Britain's Oxford University, who also worked on the study.

"We are working hard...to understand these processes and how we can use this information to improve treatment of these conditions."

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Man set to consume his 25,000th Big Mac (and his cholesterol is GOOD



It's something that no one else in the entire world can truthfully say: I've eaten 25,000 Big Macs. Don Gorske can't say it yet either - but by tomorrow he will be able to.

Mr Gorske, 57, is set to eat his 25,000th McDonald's Big Mac on Tuesday, May 17 - the 39th anniversary of the first time he tasted the iconic burger. He's even timed it down to mark the exact moment he first bit into a McDonald's patty at 3pm on May 17, 1972.

Incredibly, his cholesterol is just fine. Perhaps less incredibly, his taste buds don't work. The Wisconsin man - who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and has kept every receipt for every Big Mac he's ever purchased - told reporters in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, that his taste buds have fluctuated in sensitivity since birth.

But the lack of taste has not dampened his unequivocal love of the Big Mac. 'A person like me, I just don't change too much,' he said. 'It's pretty much two Big Macs a day.' He's only missed that mark eight times since 1972 - and now he keeps burgers in his freezer just in case.

May 17 will also be his retirement party from the Waupun Correctional Institution, in Waupun, Wisconsin, where he spent 25 years as a scheduling officer.

In 2008 Guinness verified that Mr Gorske has consumed the most Big Macs ever - at the time, just 23,000.

The need to keep track of the total number of Big Macs he has consumed is part of the OCD that Mr Gorske has battled since childhood. It has made him a living legend, but he wondered what his children would do with his legacy - the receipts, cartons and calendars which are safely stored in bins in his home. 'Are these going to be worth anything because their dad was crazy?' he wondered.

If his cholesterol is anything to go by he won't have to wonder just yet. On April 26 this year Mr Gorske went to the doctor and found that he is in good health - with a cholesterol level of 156mg/dL. A number less than 200 is desirable.

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My broken leg healed in half the time... all because I meditated

A very fit man discovers the power of self-hypnosis

Meditation is often touted as a panacea for all manner of ailments, from chronic pain to anxiety, stress and even depression. Like most sensible people, I’d always taken such sweeping claims with a large pinch of salt. However, five years ago I learned the power of meditation for myself after an accident left me critically injured and in constant pain.

A freak gust of wind caught me off-guard as I was paragliding over the Cotswolds. One moment my paraglider was flying normally, the next its wing had collapsed, sending me tumbling into the hillside 30ft below. I was struck with the most agonising pain imaginable. The bone in the lower half of my right leg had been driven up through my knee and into my thigh. I could see the outline of my fractured shin bone sticking through the cloth of my jeans. I went into shock and my body was racked with violent uncontrollable spasms.

As I lay on the hillside, I remembered a form of meditation I’d been taught in the sixth form of my comprehensive school in Neston, Cheshire, as a way of tackling exam nerves. Over the years I’d used it to deal with the usual stresses and strains of daily life, but never in times of physical pain. But I knew that meditation (and self-hypnosis) had been used for pain relief and, as I lay on the hillside, in sheer desperation I tried them both.

I forced myself to breathe slowly and deeply, to focus on the sensations the breath made as it flowed in and out. I pictured myself in a beautiful garden and imagined myself inhaling its peaceful and tranquil air. Gradually, breath by breath, the pain became more distant. It felt less ‘personal’, almost as if I was watching it on TV.

In hospital it became apparent how seriously injured I was — and just how effective a painkiller the meditation had been.

My leg was so badly broken that I would need three major operations. I also needed a newly invented device, a Taylor Spatial Frame, to be surgically attached to my leg for up to 18 months to repair the damage. Consisting of four equally spaced rings that encircled my lower leg, the frame looked like a cross between a Meccano set and a medieval torture device.

Fourteen metal spokes and two bolts connected these rings to the shards of bone inside my leg, and allowed the surgeon to move the fragments around inside.

Life with the frame was intolerable. Sleep was virtually impossible, and the pain was controlled with powerful drugs that left me washed-out and jaded. I felt thoroughly wretched — anxious, irritable and highly stressed. So I decided to find an alternative way of coping with the pain and of maximising my chances of recovery.

I discovered the work of Mark Williams, professor of clinical psychology at Oxford University. He and his colleagues at the universities of Cambridge, Toronto, and Massachusetts had spent 20 years studying the phenomenal power of meditation for treating anxiety and even full-blown depression.

They had turned it into a therapy known as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) that was gaining the support of doctors and scientists. It had even been endorsed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and in Britain by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice).

One study, in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, has shown that it brings about long-term changes in levels of happiness and well-being, while a major study in Psychological Science revealed such changes help regular meditators live longer, healthier lives. It’s also been shown to be as effective as drugs for treating depression. In fact, it’s now one of the preferred treatments recommended by Nice.

A typical meditation session consists of focusing on breathing and the sensations it creates. This reduces the levels of stress hormones in the body which, in turn, enhances healing and boosts physical health. It helps partly by teaching you to live in the present moment rather than worrying too much about the past or the future.

Faced with the evidence, I decided to try mindfulness meditation. I began each day with a ten-minute breathing meditation to calm the mind. At bedtime, I would meditate for 30 minutes while visualising a warm, white, healing light sweeping up and down my leg.

This simple meditation programme worked to an astonishing degree. My pain gradually subsided and I slashed my intake of painkillers by two-thirds. I also developed a more contented outlook, seeing my injuries as temporary problems that would gradually subside rather than as limb-threatening ones that might confine me to a wheelchair.

The MBCT is, I’m convinced, why I recovered in double-quick time: the leg frame was removed after just 17 weeks rather than the normal six to 18 months. My progress astonished my doctors. Just after the final operation I joked with my surgeon that maybe my injuries hadn’t been as bad as I’d thought. He looked at me aghast and said: ‘Your leg was in the Top Five leg injuries I’ve treated with a Taylor Spatial Frame — and possibly higher.’

I still meditate for 30 minutes each day. So convinced am I by its benefits that I’ve written a book, with Professor Williams, that teaches mindfulness meditation.

And my recovery continues apace. Two years ago, at the age of 42, I took up running, and I’m currently hiking the 630-mile South West Coast Path in 50-mile sections. Given the severity of my injuries, that’s astonishing.

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Regulation Cannot Control Malignant Melanoma

As we move into the summer season, not only do temperatures increase, so do exposure to the Sun, sunburns, and concern about the ozone layer and skin cancer. But there are also some important policy issues to think about.

Malignant melanoma is the most-feared type of skin cancer and has been discussed widely in the (non-medical) scientific literature dealing with the stratospheric ozone layer. It turns out, however, that melanoma may have nothing to do with the alleged depletion of the ozone layer or with the Antarctic Ozone Hole (AOH). Melanoma shows distinct differences from the more common and less dangerous forms of skin cancer, Basal-cell and Squamous-cell carcinomas. As a consequence, EPA regulations can do little to stem the growing incidence of this malignant skin cancer—even though EPA regularly (mis)uses "lives saved from melanoma" in the benefit-cost data it presents to Congress.

First, there is no doubt that CFCs ("Freons") can deplete the stratospheric ozone layer. However, they are most effective at altitudes above 40 km, where there is little ozone; so that they have little influence on the total column amount of ozone and therefore on the amounts of cancer-causing solar ultra-violet radiation. At the 20 to 25 km level, where most of the stratospheric ozone is located, there are also other chemical species that deplete ozone, derived from water vapor (WV) and from nitrogen oxides [see Ravishankara et al in Science 2005].

Such depletions had been under discussion since about 1970, in connection with planning for a Supersonic Transport (SST) aircraft. Long before there was any mention of Freons, the National Academy was publishing depletion estimates that ranged all the way up to 70 percent! It came as a great shock, therefore, when published calculations showed that cattle raising and rice growing agriculture already generate large amounts of atmospheric methane that eventually lead to as much stratospheric WV as a fleet of 500 SSTs.

In fact, to become important for ozone destruction, the chlorine atoms released from CFCs require the presence of particles (for so-called heterogeneous reactions) and therefore are most effective following volcanic eruptions—or as is the case in the Antarctic Ozone Hole (AOH), when stratospheric temperatures become cold enough to form ice particles, called polar stratospheric clouds.

Chlorine is a natural constituent of the stratosphere, injected by volcanoes and likely also by the dissociation of salt particles convected upward from the ocean. Up until 1988, a year after the Montreal Protocol was ratified, the published data still showed no increasing trend of stratospheric chlorine compounds. This would indicate that the human contribution from CFCs was negligible. However, the data changed after 1988 and so did even skeptical scientific opinion about the contribution from CFCs.

We know from many lines of evidence that Basal-cell and Squamous-cell cancers are produced by UV-B, the region of the sun's ultraviolet spectrum between 280 and 320 nanometers. This is also the region in which ozone absorbs strongly. As a result, the incidence of those cancers increases greatly in going from the pole to the equator—not only because of changes in the ozone layer but because of the change in the solar zenith angle. As it becomes steeper, it traverses less stratospheric ozone, and therefore the UV-B intensity at the surface should be greatest around local noon at low latitudes.

It is interesting to note that there have been no observations in the last 40 years that would demonstrate an actually increasing trend in UV-B at the surface. This may be due to various atmospheric interferences or even the presence of ozone pollution in most areas. It has been hypothesized that if all of the smog over Los Angeles were to disappear, skin cancer rates there would approach those seen in El Paso, TX.

At US latitudes, the average UV-B is calculated to increase by 5% to 10% for every 60 miles (100 km) move to the south—and so does the observed skin cancer rate. Note, however, that these skin cancers affect primarily Caucasians and other fair-skinned individuals and that the incidence may be increased by the fact that people dress more lightly in warmer climates.

Melanoma is a very different beast. First, laboratory studies by Dr. Richard Setlow at Brookhaven National Laboratory have shown that UV-A is much more important than UV-B in initiating melanoma. UV-A covers the region from 320 to 400 nanometers of the solar spectrum, where ozone does not absorb.

Medically, it has been observed, that melanoma can occur on many parts of the body that are not exposed to solar radiation at all. It does not show the strong preference for Caucasians of other forms of skin cancer. It seems that there is an association between melanoma and childhood exposure to solar UV causing sunburn; but this association is not certain.

The upshot: Melanoma has little to do with ozone or Freons. The Montreal Protocol will do nothing to stop the rise in melanoma cases. EPA's benefit-cost calculations, used to support the regulation of important chemicals, like methyl bromide (MeBr), are essentially fraudulent if they include avoidance of melanoma cases.

And some personal advice: Exposure to the sun without proper protection is unwise, particularly when the sun is near the zenith, around 2 to 4 PM. Sun creams can help but they should also screen against UV-A and not just UV-B. Remember Noel Coward's cabaret song "Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun."

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FDA bureaucracy caused the “American thalidomide” tragedy

Enforcement of the deadly 1962 Kefauver-Harris amendments, in particular

In the early 1980s, several reports in medical journals indicated that folic acid taken early in pregnancy could prevent a number of birth defects. Naturally, folic acid manufacturers wished to advertise the benefit of this vitamin. However, to be consistent, the FDA could not allow them to make an efficacy claim without going through the expensive development process.

In 1992, the Center for Disease Control, another government agency, began recommending that all women of childbearing age take folic acid supplements, as they worked best early in pregnancy, when a young woman might not be aware of her condition. The FDA warned folic acid manufacturers not to refer to the Center’s recommendation, as this would be considered a form of advertising a drug for effectiveness against disease. Such advertising was not permitted under the amendment-driven FDA regulations.

Consequently, over a decade past before most young American women were made aware of folic acid’s benefits. About 4,000 babies are conceived each year with these birth defects; folic acid would prevent about 85% of them. Thus, in the years during which manufacturers were forbidden to educate the public, thousands of children, perhaps tens of thousands, were born deformed or unnecessarily aborted. Ironically, the amendments, which were passed to protect the public from thalidomide-like tragedies, created an American equivalent of the thalidomide tragedy which probably harmed more children than the 10,000 affected by its European counterpart!

The cost of keeping life-saving information from the public falls primarily on the poor. Advertising is the primary way by which many people, especially the poor, get new medical information. Educated and affluent individuals visit and converse with doctors, read health-related magazines, and spend more time tracking down life-saving information. The poor, on the other hand, see their doctors sporadically, read less, and often depend upon television news and advertising to inform them of new medical findings. Had folic acid manufacturers been permitted to advertise the health benefits of this vitamin, many more young women, especially among the disadvantaged, would have known about this inexpensive way to protect their unborn children.

Summary

In conclusion, the 1962 Kefauver-Harris amendments are the deadly secret behind soaring pharmaceutical prices. Most industry insiders are well aware that the “regulatory creep” stemming from the amendments has greatly increased new drug R&D, manufacturing, and advertising costs.

As a result of these regulation-driven factors, the rate at which pharmaceutical prices rise increased by a factor of 13 after the passage of the 1962 amendments. Consumers pay 700% more for their new drugs than they would in the absence of the amendments.

Because companies must spend more on development, they spend less on research. Consequently, we have only half as many innovations as we otherwise would. Instead, we must turn to more expensive forms of health care (e.g., surgery), adding further to our monetary burden.

The costs of the amendments are measured in lives as well as money. The amendments have tripled the time needed to develop a new drug. Millions of terminally-ill patients have died while the drug which could have saved them languished in regulation-mandated testing.

An equal or greater number of people have died because the drug that would have saved their lives is never developed and marketed. The amendments have made development so expensive that only about 50% of new, innovative drugs can be developed.

As many as 1 out of 3 individuals who have died from disease since
1962 were victims of the Kefauver-Harris amendments. They died waiting for a cure that was held up by regulatory testing or never reached the pharmacy shelves.

Without the 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendments, we would have likely enjoyed longer and healthier lives, with more emphasis on prevention and natural products. We would have used drugs with a known safety profile for multiple uses, rather than wastefully developing new drugs for secondary indications. We would have had twice as many drugs, some of which would treat diseases that we currently think of as incurable. We would have emphasized prevention instead of treatment. We would have all this for a fraction of what we pay today for pharmaceuticals. Health care costs would be greatly lower too.

In 1962, we lost a golden opportunity to take a quantum leap in our health and well-being. It’s not yet too late to regain that opportunity. We can repeal the 1962 amendments and the excess regulations that they spawned. The first step in changing the law is changing our minds. Share this Special Report with your friends, your family and congressional representatives. The life you save may be your own!

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Big brother is a food freak

Texas School Camera Program to Monitor Schoolchildrens' Eating Habits

Smile, Texas schoolchildren. You're on calorie camera. That's the idea behind a $2 million project being unveiled Wednesday in the lunchroom of a San Antonio elementary school, where high-tech cameras installed in the cafeteria will begin photographing what foods children pile onto their trays — and later capture what they don't finish eating.

Digital imaging analysis of the snapshots will then calculate how many calories each student scarfed down. Local health officials said the program, funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, is the first of its kind in a U.S. school, and will be so precise that the technology can identify a half-eaten pear left on a lunch tray.

"This is very sophisticated," said Dr. Roberto Trevino, director of the San Antonio-based Social & Health Research Center, which will oversee the program.

Parents will be required to give consent for their children to participate, and receive regular reports showing what foods their kids are filling up on at lunch. Trevino said only the trays, and not students, will be photographed.

Here's how it works: students are assigned lunch trays with a unique bar code. After the children load up their plates down the line — mashed potatoes or green beans? french fries or fruit? — a camera above the cashier takes a picture of each tray.

When lunch is over and the kids return their plates to the kitchen, another camera takes a snapshot of what's left on the tray. Software then analyzes the before and after photos to calculate calories consumed and, according to Trevino, a report of nutrients in the foods.

Researchers hope parents will change eating habits at home once they see what their kids are choosing in schools. The data also will be used to study what foods children are likely to choose and how much of if they're eating.

Five San Antonio elementary schools will take part in the program. Researches selected poor, minority campuses where obesity rates and students at risk for diabetes are higher.

The grant from the USDA will fund the study for four years. Trevino said the coming school year will be very experimental, with programmers fine-tuning the cameras and imaging software to accurately identify what's a pear and what's an apple. He expects the "prototype" to be in place by the second year.

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New arthritis drug given green light in Britain

Hundreds of thousands of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) sufferers could benefit from a new treatment after the drugs spending watchdog changed its mind about prescribing it on the NHS.

Those with moderate to severe RA will now be able to get Simponi, the brand name of the drug golimumab, in some situations where similar treatments have not worked.

Ailsa Bosworth, chief executive of the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society (NRAS), described it as "excellent news". "It is vital that we have options when it comes to biologic therapies as people react differently to drugs even within the same class," she said.

Simponi is what is known as a tumour necrosis factor inhibitor, or anti-TNF, drug. These work by blocking the action of TNF, a naturally occurring chemical, which plays an important role in triggering inflammation and tissue damage. Others in this class have already been given the green light by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), including Humira, Endrel, Remicade and Cimzia. However, sometimes they stop working in patients.

Last October, Nice turned down Simponi but, in final draft guidance published today (FRI), the body has changed its mind. A Nice spokesman said the decision was due to new clinical and cost evidence put forward by the manufacturer, Merck. He emphasised that final guidance was still to come.

Almost 700,000 people in Britain suffer from RA, making it the second most common form of rheumatic disease after osteoarthritis. Of those, some 400,000 suffer from moderate or severe symptoms.

Three quarters are diagnosed while still of working age. More than one in four of them have to give up employment within a year of diagnosis. The NRAS has calculated it costs the economy £8 billion a year due to lost productivity.

Exactly how RA is treated depends on its severity: those with mild arthritis are often advised to start by taking paracetamol, and move on to ibuprofen or other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Exercise is also essential to keeping joints mobile.

However, the disease tends to be progressive. As it gets worse more powerful medicines including disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and anti-TNFs come into play.

Neil Betteridge, chief executive of the charity Arthritis Care, welcomed Nice's change of tune. He said: "Rheumatoid arthritis is an awful disease affecting people of all ages which clinicians often compare with having cancer of the joints.

"Unless treated and managed effectively it invariably leads to great pain and can render people immobile and unable to work. Having another treatment option available, therefore, is terrific."

One benefit of Simponi is that patients can self-inject the drug, and need only do so once a month. However, it "can lower your ability to fight infections", warns Merck, and there have been reports of "serious infections" including tuberculosis, some of which have been fatal.

Peter Taylor, professor of experimental rheumatology at Imperial College, London, said: "I am excited by the launch of ‘Simponi’ as it represents a valuable additional choice for the treatment of these debilitating rheumatoid conditions, and any new therapy that improves quality of life for patients is most welcome.

"Early and effective management is important in reducing disease progression and the extensive joint damage associated with it, but it's also important for patients to have a say in the choice of treatment they receive."

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Caesarean risk: New research finds C-section babies are more likely to become obese in later life

Probably just the usual class effect: Poorer people are more likely to be obese and more likely to have poor health generally -- thus necessitating more Caesars. But the explanation highlighted below is reasonable too. Either way it's not the Caesar itself that causes obesity

Babies born by caesarean section are at greater risk of becoming obese in later life than those delivered naturally, researchers have found. The obesity epidemic could be partly driven by rising rates of surgical deliveries, although the reasons for this are unclear, their study suggests.

The report, in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, says lack of exposure to beneficial bacteria in the birth canal could explain the link.

However, the children of fatter mothers are also more likely to have weight problems. Given that obesity in pregnancy is a risk factor that leads to more caesarean section births, it may be that this relationship between the weight of mother and child explains the findings.

In the study, Brazilian researchers looked at obesity rates in 2,000 people aged 23 to 25. They found 15 per cent of those delivered by caesarean were obese compared with 10 per cent of those born naturally.

The study analysed a number of factors that might explain the connection, including heavier birthweight, income and education levels, because women with more qualifications had a higher caesarean rate. But even after accounting for these factors, being born by caesarean was linked to a 58 per cent increase in the risk of obesity in adulthood.

Dr Helena Goldani, who carried out the study with colleagues at the Universidade Federal de Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, said the findings did not prove a causal link between surgical deliveries and weight problems.

But she explained that, because infants born surgically are not exposed to beneficial bacteria in the birth canal, they might take longer to accumulate good bugs which affect the metabolism. Obese adults tend to have fewer of these friendly bacteria in their digestive tract than normal-weight people.

The theory is that having fewer good intestinal bugs leads to the body burning fewer calories and storing more of them as fat. But other experts said there was a ‘huge gap in the data’. They said it was difficult to interpret the study because it did not include any information on the mother’s weight while pregnant.

Dr Ian Campbell, medical director of Weight Concern, said the study ‘raises more questions than it answers’. He said: ‘This is a very interesting finding, which is difficult to interpret without knowing the weight of the mothers while pregnant.

‘However, women who have a caesarean are less likely to breastfeed, which helps prevent obesity in children by establishing a healthier weight in childhood.’ ‘There are many different ways of influencing obesity in adulthood and this is another area for research,’ he added.

Around 23 per cent of all births in the UK are by caesarean section. The World Health Organisation recommends the figure should be around 15 per cent.

Brazil, where the study was done, has around 44 per cent of babies delivered by caesarean section. Many of those procedures are thought to be medically unnecessary.

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Depressed and anxious? You could have had stomach problems as a baby

This is drawing a very long bow indeed. All that they found was that giving rats stomach irritation stressed them. They then found that giving them an antidepressant relieved the stress. What is new or surprising in that I fail to see

Stomach complaints such as irritable bowel syndrome could result in depression, a surprising study suggests. Scientists at Stanford University found short-term digestive irritation early in life could have massive implications for mental health later on.

'A lot of research has focused on understanding how the mind can influence the body,' said lead author Dr Pankaj Pasricha. 'But this study suggests that it can be the other way around. Gastric irritation during the first few days of life may reset the brain into a permanently depressed state.'

As not all stomach upsets lead to lifelong psychological problems the impact may depend on when it occurs during a person's development. It could also be related to their genetic makeup.

About one in five people experience persistent or recurring pain in the upper abdomen, suffering from conditions such as IBS. Researchers have long noted that these people are also more likely than their peers to be anxious or depressed.

Up until now it was assumed that stress hormones associated with a patient's altered mood were responsible for their digestive problems. However, Dr Pasricha believes the opposite could be true noting that many patients date their gastrointestinal problems back to early childhood, before their psychological symptoms started. Therefore he suggests these digestive disturbances could cause mood disorders.

His theory has been bolstered by recent research that has linked depression and anxiety in humans to changes in the composition of gut bacteria. 'The gut and the brain are hardwired together by the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain to the body's internal organs,' Dr Pasricha said. 'The communication between the gut and the adult brain is elaborate and bi-directional, and changes in the gut are signaled directly to the brain.'

To test their hypothesis they subjected 10-day-old laboratory rats to mild stomach irritation daily for six days. 'We hypothesized that this treatment might also be affecting the development of central nervous system, and driving the animals to anxiety and depression,' said Dr Pasricha.

Eight weeks later researchers found that the treated rats were far more likely than their peers to display depressed and anxious behaviors, including drinking less sugar water, less-active swimming and keeping to dark areas in a maze. They also had increased levels of the stress hormones corticosterone and corticotrophin.

Blocking the animals' ability to perceive sensation from their gut with a drug did not affect their behavior, indicating that the rats were not responding to ongoing pain. However, inhibiting the activity of a hormone known to be associated with depression in humans and animals, caused the treated rats to behave more normally in the tests.

'It seems that when the rats are exposed to gastric irritation at the appropriate point in time,' said Dr Pasricha. 'There is signaling across the gut to the brain that permanently alters its function.'

The researchers are now planning to investigate exactly how that signaling is initiated and acts in the brain, and whether it might be possible to develop new ways to treat depression and anxiety in humans. 'We'd like to know whether the vagus nerve is involved, and confirm what changes may occur in the brain in response to this signal,' said Dr Pasricha.

'The vast majority of humans don't experience any long-lasting consequences from transient infections. But there may be subset of patients who are genetically predisposed to this effect by mechanisms we don't yet understand yet. '

In particular, electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve has recently been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment-resistant depression; this research may help researchers better understand and optimize this new approach .

The study has been published in PLoS One.

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Forever young? Why being a musician can slow effects of ageing

The heading above is the original but is greatly exaggerated. What the study showed was that musicians were better at separating one sound from another -- and the explanation given for that is entirely reasonable

Learning to play a musical instrument helps keep people young, according to a new study. Researchers found that musicians aged 45 to 65 excel in memory and hearing speech in noise compared to non-musicians.

While a growing body of research finds musical training gives students learning advantages in the classroom, a new study has found musical training can also offset some of the negative effects of growing old.

Study co-author Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University in the United States, said: “Lifelong musical training appears to confer advantages in at least two important functions known to decline with age - memory and the ability to hear speech in noise.

“Difficulty hearing speech in noise is among the most common complaints of older adults, but age-related hearing loss only partially accounts for this impediment that can lead to social isolation and depression. “It’s well known that adults with virtually the same hearing profile can differ dramatically in their ability to hear speech in noise.”

To find out why, researchers at the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory tested 18 musicians and 19 non-musicians, aged 45 to 65, for speech in noise, auditory working memory, visual working memory and auditory temporal processing.

The musicians who began playing an instrument at age nine or earlier and consistently played an instrument throughout their lives bested the non-musician group in all but visual working memory, where both groups showed nearly identical ability.

Doctor Kraus said the experience of extracting meaningful sounds from a complex soundscape - and of remembering sound sequences enhances the development of auditory skills. She said: “The neural enhancements we see in musically-trained individuals are not just an amplifying or ‘volume knob’ effect. “Playing music engages their ability to extract relevant patterns, including the sound of their own instrument, harmonies and rhythms.”

Dr Kraus said music training “fine-tunes” the nervous system. She added: “Sound is the stock in trade of the musician in much the same way that a painter of portraits is keenly attuned to the visual attributes of the paint that will convey his or her subject. “If the materials that you work with are sound, then it is reasonable to suppose that all of your faculties involved with taking it in, holding it in memory and relating physically to it should be sharpened. “Music experience bolsters the elements that combat age-related communication problems.”

The study was published in the latest issue of the online science journal PLoS One.

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Always feeling cold? You are destined to live a long life

Again the inferences from the research below are quite florid. What they found was that people with a slowed metabolism had slightly lower body temperatures. The same is seen in older people. Older people have slower metabolisms and also tend to feel the cold more. None of that is remarkable and there was NO evidence of any linkage to lifespan

They take a hot water bottle to bed in summer and are ridiculed for wearing their coat indoors. But those who constantly feel cold may have the last laugh, with a study linking low body temperature to a long life. Scientists suspect that the hormonal changes that conserve energy and heat – by slowing down metabolism – also extend life.

The U.S. research could pave the way for a pill to increase lifespan. It builds on decades of studies linking extreme diets in animals with extra months and years of life. For example, cutting a mouse’s calories by 30 per cent can lead to it living 50 per cent longer than usual.

Scientists are trying to work out what it is about near starvation that extends life, in the hope of creating a pill that mimics the process without drastic changes to diet.

The latest study, from Washington University, St Louis, looked at how cutting calories affects core body temperature – an internal measure that is on average 37c (98.6f) and usually higher than skin temperature. Scientists gave thermometer ‘pills’, which record core body temperature when swallowed, to 24 people in their mid-50s who had cut their calorie intake by at least 25 per cent for up to 15 years. They also gave them to people of the same age who ate normally and a group of long-distance runners.

Those on calorie restriction diets were found to have the lowest core temperatures, the journal Aging reports.

Lead researcher Dr Luigi Fontana said: ‘The people doing calorie restriction had a lower average core body temperature by about 0.2c, which sounds like a modest reduction but is statistically significant and similar to the reduction we have observed in long-lived, calorie-restricted mice.

‘What is interesting about that is endurance athletes, who are the same age and are equally lean, don’t have similar reductions in body temperature. ‘We know that people on calorie restriction diets feel colder than normal people because there is a lower metabolism and lower body temperature.’

Dr Fontana says it is not clear whether severe calorie reduction, or something else, is lowering core temperatures. But he believes a reduced temperature holds one of the keys to living to a ripe old age.

He stressed that any pill to lower body temperature could not compensate for a poor lifestyle, but added: ‘What may be possible, however, is to do mild calorie restriction, to eat a very good diet, get mild exercise and then take a drug of some kind that could provide benefits similar to those seen in severe calorie restriction.’

Sadly for those hoping for a short cut, it is unlikely that opening your windows or taking cold showers will have the same effect.

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Could five cups of coffee a day protect against breast cancer?

The pattern of conflicting findings in this field suggests that we are looking at random effects. This is to be expected in studies of coffee. Such studies are very frequent. And where studies are very frequent, we can expect that some positive findings will emerge by chance alone

Women who drink coffee could be protecting themselves against an aggressive form of breast cancer, research suggests. Those who regularly enjoy the hot drink are far less likely to develop oestrogen-receptor negative breast cancer – particularly if they drink five cups or more a day.

These types of tumours do not react to a wide range of drugs, meaning chemotherapy is often the only option.

In the study, experts from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found coffee drinkers had a lower incidence of breast cancer than women who rarely drank the beverage.

They analysed data from almost 6,000 women who were past the menopause. Those women who drank five or more cups a day had a 57 per cent reduced risk of breast cancer compared with those who drank less than one cup a day.

Writing in the journal Breast Cancer Research, the scientists concluded: ‘A high daily intake of coffee was found to be associated with a statistically significant decrease in oestrogen-receptor negative breast cancer among post-menopausal women.’

The authors also found a small reduced risk for all types of breast cancer, although this link was not significant when factors such as age and weight were taken into account. Previous studies have suggested coffee cuts the risk of other cancers, including those targeting the prostate and liver.

However, experts are divided on the benefits of coffee and some studies have shown it could even promote cancer. Research has suggested coffee may in fact cause cells to proliferate or prevent them from being repaired.

The Karolinska Institute experts said they suspected coffee could contain compounds that affect different types of breast cancer in different ways. It is possible that the drink fuels oestrogen-receptor positive breast cancers but reduces the risk of oestrogen-receptor negative breast cancer, they said. This would match the finding that drinking coffee could reduce the risk of breast cancer overall, although the experts said further studies were needed.

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Taking a nap

The afternoon nap, or siesta, is woven into human history. Almost every culture and climate has its own tradition of this healthful practice. Only recently has it gone out of favor for anyone except young children and the elderly, but once it was common all over the world at almost any age.

Sadly, in far too many cases, our hectic lifestyles even rob the children of their necessary and healthful naps. Between overstimulation - on so many fronts - to serious emotional trauma and family instability, children are increasingly faced with troubled lives; no time or place for peace, security and a quiet nap. Symptoms include ongoing irritability, increased conflict with peers and adults, poor eating and elimination, nightmares and refusal to go to bed at all. Eventually, they do fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion, but they are highly unlikely to get the deep and peaceful sleep they need in that case.

There seems to be some controversy about naps for the elderly, but centuries of common practice would seem to indicate that most people would not have any problems, let alone danger from taking a nap. As a nurse, visiting mostly elderly people in every sort of environment, I saw very little in the way of problems that could even remotely be connected to napping. Just as with children, a late nap might well result in a late bedtime and become a problem to the caregivers, but that is not the same thing at all.

The National Sleep Foundation has some interesting information on the subject:

"As a nation, the United States appears to be becoming more and more sleep deprived. And it may be our busy lifestyle that keeps us from napping. While naps do not necessarily make up for inadequate or poor quality nighttime sleep, a short nap of 20-30 minutes can help to improve mood, alertness and performance."

I suffered from serious sleep deprivation for many years, partly due to pain issues, and partly due to irregular scheduling from shift and "on call" work. Medications of all kinds were tried and failed, and naps were simply not an option most of the time, but even a brief nap - when pain could be controlled - was a blessing and relief.

Serious sleep problems may need other solutions. It might be as simple as learning relaxation techniques, making some needed changes in your sleep environment,or dealing with family or financial problems in a meaningful way. Only you know what produces the stress in your life, but refusing to seek real solutions might just be leaving you sleep deprived. And choosing not to deal with it is still making a choice. Why not choose health?

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How a good education can keep you younger for longer

As usual, we have below hasty assumptions about the direction of causation. A more reasonable explanation comes from the fact that IQ seems to be one aspect of general biological fitness. On average, high IQ people have it all healthwise and live longer too. And IQ is highly correlated with educational success. So high IQ people stay longer in the educational system but it is not education that leads to longer life. High IQ does

Your parents and teachers will no doubt have lectured you on the value of a good education. But it seems the advice may apply to more than just career prospects. Those who pass more exams before leaving formal education stay biologically younger than their years, according to researchers.

In contrast, those who leave education with fewer qualifications are prone to age more quickly, with their lack of achievement leaving a lifelong mark.

The pattern is not changed by social and economic status later in life, the findings suggest. The study, by researchers from University College London, examined the length of ‘telomeres’ from around 450 office workers. Telomeres are protective strips of DNA that form tiny ‘caps’ on the ends of chromosomes, protecting against ageing processes.

They have been called the ‘chromosomal clock’ because they appear to be central to biological ageing. Longer telomeres are a sign of being biologically younger and healthier.

Participants were separated into four groups according to whether they had no qualifications, or, when leaving formal education, had O-levels, A-levels or a degree. The results showed people with lower educational attainment had shorter telomeres, suggesting they may age faster.

The study found telomere length increased with each stage of educational attainment, suggesting ageing slows and health improves the more qualifications are attained.

The study, funded by the Medical Research Council and the British Heart Foundation, is published online today in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.

Professor Stephen Holgate, chairman of the MRC’s Population and Systems Medicine Board, which funded the research, said the study backed up the longstanding message that ‘your experiences early in life can have important influences on your health’.

Andrew Steptoe, BHF professor of psychology and the lead author of the study, added that ‘long-term exposure to the conditions of lower status’ was behind faster cellular ageing, not current income.

The researchers were based primarily at UCL, but also collaborated with Professor Jorge Erusalimsky from the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff and Professor Elizabeth Blackburn from the University of California, San Francisco.

The subjects of the study were drawn from participants in the Whitehall II study, set up in 1985 to investigate the importance of social class for health by following more than 10,000 men and women working in the civil service.

Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the BHF, said: ‘This research reinforces the need to tackle social inequalities to combat ill health.’

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Paracetamol (acetaminophen) found to have link to blood cancers

aka Panadol, Tylenol etc.

Regular users of paracetamol have an increased risk of developing blood cancers, researchers have found. The tablets contain a chemical called acetaminophen which has been linked to cases of cancer in a number of individuals who were taking the drug.

The findings will terrify the millions in America and worldwide who pop the pills to cure minor ailments without so much as a second thought.

Earlier work has shown that aspirin use might lower the odds of dying from colon cancer but increase the risk of bleeding ulcers. The picture has been less clear for blood, or haematologic, cancers, however.

The finding adds another twist to the complicated evidence linking cancer and painkillers, and hints acetaminophen might be different from the rest. 'Prior to this study there was very little evidence that aspirin reduces your risk of haematological cancers,' said Emily White of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who worked on the new research.

There were some suggestions that acetaminophen might increase the risk of the cancers, on the other hand, but those were based on individual cases of blood cancer.

Studies of individual patients aren't considered as strong as the new one, which tracked a large population of healthy people over time. 'We have the first prospective study,' White said.

Still, she warned, there is no proof that acetaminophen causes cancer, and the new results need to be confirmed before they are used in any treatment decision.

Earlier work has linked acetaminophen to asthma and eczema as well, but scientists still don't agree on whether the drug is the actual culprit or just an innocent bystander.

The new study suffers from the same limitations, in that people who use lots of painkillers could be dealing with medical problems that set them up for cancer down the road.

The scientists followed nearly 65,000 older men and women in Washington State. At the outset, they asked the participants about their use of painkillers over the past ten years and made sure that no one had cancer (except skin cancer).

Over some six years on average, 577 people -- or less than one percent -- developed a cancer involving the blood cells. Examples of such cancers include lymphoma and myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS.

More than nine per cent of people who developed one of these cancers used high amounts of acetaminophen, compared to only five percent of those who didn't get sick.

After accounting for things like age, arthritis and a family history of certain blood cancers, chronic acetaminophen users had nearly twice the risk of developing the disease.

'A person who is age 50 or older has about a one-percent risk in ten years of getting one of these cancers," White said. "Our study suggests that if you use acetaminophen at least four times a week for at least four years, that would increase the risk to about two percent.' No other painkillers -- including aspirin and ibuprofen -- were tied to the risk of blood cancers.

Dr. Raymond DuBois, a cancer prevention expert at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said acetaminophen works very differently than other painkillers and so might be expected to have different effects on cancer. 'It was quite surprising to see that acetaminophen use increased the risk of blood cancers,' said DuBois, who was not involved in the study.

McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the Johnson & Johnson subsidiary that sells Tylenol, did not respond to requests for comment.

White said it is too soon to make any recommendations based on the new study, and that none of the painkillers is free of side effects. 'Long-term use of any over-the-counter drug might have adverse effects," she said. 'You have to weigh the benefits against the risk of all the drugs.'

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'Breastfed babies grow to be better behaved children'

This is real old chestnut. And the research is pathetic. What the authors have most likely shown is that higher IQ and middle class mothers are more likely to breastfeed and the children concerned inherit their mothers' characteristics genetically. Even that is uncertain as the data was a garbagy retrospective self-report questionnaire: The lowest of the low in methodology

Just four months of breastfeeding can cut the risk of children becoming badly behaved by almost a third, a study suggests.

It found 16 per cent of children brought up on formula milk had problems including anxiety, lying, stealing and hyperactivity – more than double the proportion breastfed for at least four months.

When other influences are taken into account, such as social and economic background, the reduction in the risk of behavioural problems at age five brought about by breastfeeding is 30 per cent, according to the Oxford University study.

New mothers are advised to breastfeed for the first six months to protect their babies against stomach bugs, chest infections, asthma, eczema and allergies. It also has health benefits for mothers.

But the UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Europe, with almost one in three new mothers never attempting it, compared with 2 per cent of mothers in Sweden.

The study of 9,500 mothers and babies was led by Dr Maria Quigley of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University.

Dr Quigley said possible reasons for the findings included greater interaction between mother and child because of close physical contact from an early age.

In the study of infants born in the UK over a 12-month period between 2000 and 2001, 29 per cent of children born after a full-term pregnancy and 21 per cent of those born prematurely were breastfed for at least four months.

Parents were asked to complete questionnaires designed to assess the behaviour of their children at the age of five.

The results showed that 16 per cent of formula-fed children and 6 per cent of breastfed children were given abnormal scores, indicating behavioural problems.

For full-term babies, the pattern persisted after taking account of social and economic factors, says a report in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Dr Quigley said: ‘We found that children who were breastfed for at least four months were less likely to have behavioural problems at age five. However, that observation might not have been the direct result of breastfeeding – it could have been down to a number of factors.

'Fewer behavioural problems are another potential benefit of breastfeeding' ‘As a group, mothers who breastfed for four months were very different socially to those who formula fed. They were more likely to be older, better educated and in a higher socio-economic position.’

Dr Quigley added: ‘We just don’t know whether it is because of the constituents in breast milk which are lacking in formula, or the close interaction with the mum during breastfeeding. ‘But it does begin to look like we can add fewer behavioural problems as another potential benefit of breastfeeding.’

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Painkillers like ibuprofen 'increase second heart attack risk'

I would like to know WHY some patients were given NSAIDS and some were not. Were they more disressed to start with? That could explain the outcomes noted

Ibuprofen and other similar painkillers can significantly increase the risk of heart attack patients suffering a second incident soon after the first, a study has found.

Heart attack survivors on prescription doses of a group of painkiller called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which include ibuprofen, were 45 per cent more likely to suffer a second attack within a week of the first as those taking none, found Danish researchers.

Those taking one in particular, called diclofenac, were three times more likely to suffer another heart attack within a week of the first.

The results were from a study almost 84,000 Danish heart attack survivors, whose average age was 68. Almost half (42 per cent) were taking a prescription NSAID.

According to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), "some standard NSAIDs have been shown to be associated with a small increased risk of heart attack and stroke, especially when used in high doses and for long periods".

But Anne-Marie Schjerning Olsen, from Copenhagen University, who led the study, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, said: "What we show is that even for the shortest time periods, these can be dangerous."

For those on prescription ibuprofen - with the average dose being 1,600mg per day - there was no increased risk of a recurrent heart attack within seven days, she said. However, between eight days and 14 weeks the risk was raised by 50 per cent, compared to taking nothing.

It is not known exactly why NSAIDs increase heart disease risk, although Olsen said they appeared to increase blood clot formation and systemic blood pressure.

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Healthier lifestyle ‘could save 20,000 from breast cancer’ (?)

I knew as soon as I saw the headline that this would be another emission of bullsh*t from the WCRF. They are notorious for this stuff. It is just a fundraiser for them -- based on dubious epidemiological assumptions and selective attention to the evidence

Almost 20,000 breast cancer cases could be avoided every year in Britain if women drank less alcohol, improved their diets and exercised more, experts claim. The World Cancer Research Fund said about two in five cases would be prevented if people adopted healthier lifestyles.

Studies show being more physically active, reducing alcohol consumption and keeping to a healthy weight can minimise the risk of developing the disease.

More than one in five British women is classified as obese, and research has found those affected are almost 50 per cent more likely to die from breast cancer than women carrying less weight. [This is a straight-out deception. Some big studies show that fat women get LESS breast cancer. See also here and here] It is unclear exactly why larger women are more prone to the disease. Changes in sex-hormone levels triggered by weight gain may be behind oestrogen-dependent tumours, which form the majority of cases.

Drinking just one large glass of wine a day also increases the chance of developing breast cancer by a fifth, say experts. Again, the exact reason is unclear but it is thought alcohol raises levels of oestrogen in the body.

Dr Rachel Thompson, deputy head of science at the WCRF, said: ‘We still have a long way to go to raise awareness about what women can do. ‘It is very worrying that in the UK there are tens of thousands of cases of breast cancer which could be prevented every year. People can do a lot to reduce their chances of developing cancer. ‘Overall, we estimate about a third of the most common cancers could be prevented through a healthy diet, being physically active and maintaining a healthy weight.’

The proportion of breast cancer cases believed to be avoidable is considerably higher.

The charity has produced a revised estimate of the number of avoidable breast cancers which is 2,000 cases higher than its 2009 figure, to reflect the rising number of cases. The most recent figures available show there were 47,600 new instances of breast cancer in the UK in 2008. The WCRF estimates about 42 per cent of these – roughly 20,000 – could have been prevented through healthier lifestyle choices.

The charity recommends women should attempt to be as lean as possible without becoming underweight, be physically active for at least 30 minutes a day, and limit alcoholic drinks, if consumed at all, to one a day.

Dr Lisa Wilde, director of research at the Breast Cancer Campaign, agreed that ‘diet and lifestyle are significant breast cancer risk factors’. She said: ‘We would recommend that people who want to lower their risk of developing the disease reduce their alcohol consumption, take exercise whenever possible and maintain a healthy weight.

‘However, it is important to remember that there are many other breast cancer risk factors and we cannot control two of the biggest – age and family history of the disease. ‘Therefore, finding breast cancer early when most treatable gives the best possible chance of survival – so it is vital to be breast aware and report any changes to your GP.’

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Intolerance to lactose: Why your aversion to dairy foods may be all in the mind

The mere thought of a latte or cappuccino brings some people out in a cold sweat and they like nothing more than to bore others with the virtues of soy milk. But researchers say lactose intolerance may be all in the mind.

Many people who claim to be intolerant to the milk sugar lactose are simply stressed, anxious or depressed. While their symptoms are real, the cause is in their mind, rather than in their coffee cup.

The discovery by Italian researchers has important implications for health, because many people who believe they are lactose intolerant cut out dairy products from their diet. This could leave them severely short of calcium, raising the odds of brittle bones and falls and fracture in old age.

The study is the latest to question whether many of the millions of people who claim to have food intolerances are actually fussy eaters. Previous research concluded that nine in ten Britons who believe they have a food allergy or intolerance are actually perfectly healthy.

Twenty per cent of men and women – some 10million British adults – claim to be unable to eat foods from milk to mustard, but fewer than 2 per cent actually have a problem.

It is thought many people decide they have an intolerance after hearing a celebrity’s experience of a certain food. Those who have talked of their problems with lactose include Rod Stewart’s ex-wife Rachel Hunter.

In the latest study, Guido Basilico, of the University of Milan, tested more than 100 people who had stomach pain, bloating and diarrhoea and believed they were lactose intolerant, to see if they really did have problems breaking down the sugar and absorbing it into their blood.

He also asked them about their mental and physical health, including whether they were depressed or anxious or suffered from general aches and pains.

This revealed their stomach troubles to have little to do digestion of lactose. But mental state did seem to be to blame, the Digestive Disease Week conference in the U.S. heard yesterday.

Dr Basilico said there was no doubt that some people’s genes make it difficult for them to digest lactose and this causes stomach problems when they drink large amounts of milk. But many of the people who claimed to suffer problems from a cup of coffee or a hot chocolate were perfectly capable of digesting lactose.

He believes that rather than being intolerant, their symptoms have a psychological basis. Just as stress can cause headaches, it can also cause tummy trouble.

Dr Basilico said people should not to be too quick to cut dairy products out of their diets and doctors should think twice about subjecting patients who claim to be lactose intolerant to lots of physical tests. He added: ‘Excluding dairy products should be discouraged and doctors should pay more attention to the psychological problems of their patients.’

The problem of imaginary food allergies and intolerance is not confined to adults, with researchers previously warning that new mothers are too quick to decide their children have food allergies or intolerances.

More than half of the babies studied by British experts had at least one food cut out of their diet by the age of one. Yet, tests showed the true rate of allergies and intolerances was lower than 4 per cent. The Portsmouth University researchers said the issue was being ‘blown out of all proportion’ by anxious mothers.

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Study: Fat Rats Live Longer‏

Since the 1930s scientists have proposed food restriction as a way to extend life in mice. Though feeding a reduced-calorie diet has indeed lengthened the life spans of mice, rats and many other species, new studies with dozens of different mouse strains indicate that food restriction does not work in all cases.

Diet and fat loss

Researchers at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio's Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, with colleagues at the University of Colorado, studied the effect of food restriction on fat and weight loss in 41 genetically different strains of mice. The scientists then correlated the amount of fat reduction to life span.

The answer: Mice that maintained their fat actually lived longer. Those that lost fat died earlier.

Contrary to view

"Indeed, the greater the fat loss, the greater the likelihood the mice would have a negative response to dietary restriction, i.e., shortened life," said James Nelson, Ph.D., professor of physiology at the Barshop Institute. "This is contrary to the widely held view that loss of fat is important for the life-extending effect of dietary restriction. It turns the tables a bit."

The results are expected to be published in the June issue of Aging Cell.

More study needed

Dr. Nelson's graduate student, Chen-Yu Liao, who will soon receive his Ph.D. and advance to a postdoctoral fellowship at California's Buck Institute for Research on Aging, cautioned that the new findings cannot be directly applied to people until similar studies are done in humans.

People are best advised to adopt a moderate approach, not losing all fat but definitely not keeping unhealthy amounts of fat, either. "None of the mice in this study were what we would consider to be obese," Liao said.

Genes impact effect

The findings bear out what geneticists long have said: there is nothing that works for every genotype, which is an organism's specific and unique set of genes.

"We know that humans respond to diet very differently as individuals based on their genetics," Dr. Nelson said. "Some have great difficulty losing weight while others have difficulty maintaining weight. If these results translate to humans, they would suggest that individuals who have difficulty losing weight may benefit from the positive effects of dietary restriction more than those who lose weight easily."

More information: "Fat Maintenance Is a Predictor of the Murine Lifespan Response to Dietary Restriction". Chen-Yu Liao, Brad A. Rikke, Thomas E. Johnson, Jonathan A.L. Gelfond, Vivian Diaz, James F. Nelson DOI:10.1111/j.1474-9726.2011.00702.x

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Mired in the socialist muck

Dependance on the State leads to control by the State

A controversy over food stamps in New York City shows what happens when people plunge into the muck of socialism.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying to prohibit food-stamp recipients from using their food stamps to purchase sugar-sweetened beverages.

The mayor’s rationale? You guessed it! Paternalism, the ism that goes perfectly with socialism. The mayor says that sugar is bad for people and, therefore, as mayor of New York he wants to serve as the daddy for every food-stamp recipient in New York. He wants the local government to prevent people from ingesting sugar because, he says, sugar is bad for people.

Not surprisingly, lobbyists have arrived onto the scene. They represent the soft-drink industry. They say that the government shouldn’t be in the business of telling people what they should and shouldn’t buy. (No, the lobbyists didn’t issue a peep about the drug war.) The lobbyists say that they’re fighting for “preservation of choice” in the food-stamp program.

Why are the lobbyists and their clients really so concerned? You guessed it! There is lots of money involved here. According to an article in the New York Times about the controversy, an estimated $75 million to $135 million is spent on sugared beverages in New York City each year.

Needless to say, no one is challenging the existence of the food-stamp program itself. Most everyone (libertarians excepted) has come to simply accept this socialistic program as a given (just as they do with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education grants, farm subsidies, corporate bailouts, and other socialistic programs).

How extensive is the food-stamp program? According to the Times, “More than 44 million people — one in seven Americans — receive aid through the program.”

Public-health groups and academics are also weighing into the controversy, taking the side of the mayor. Their argument? They say that government has a legitimate role in controlling people’s diet because obesity and diabetes cost taxpayers billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid expenses.

Are you getting a sense of how insidious socialism is? It’s like a cancer that continues to metastasize over the body politic.

Think about how many Americans have become dependent on Medicare and Medicaid (and Social Security), most of them unable to fathom life without these socialistic programs. It’s no different with those 44 million Americans on food stamps. Most of them (and their supporters) are convinced that they would die of starvation without the stamps.

The government then expands its paternalistic control over the food-stamp recipients, citing concern over their health, while statist supporters offer support for the paternalism by citing how obese or sick people place a burden on Medicare and Medicaid.

Meanwhile, the soft-drink industry sends its lobbyists into the fray, who purport to defend “freedom of choice” by fighting for the right of food-stamp recipients to spend their tax-collected loot on whatever they want. Of course, the last thing the lobbyists acknowledge is that their clients have become as dependent on the welfare-state largess as the food-stamp recipients themselves.

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Fat is Good for Damaged Hearts

Contrary to what we’ve been told, eliminating or severely limiting fats from the diet may not be beneficial to cardiac function in patients suffering from heart failure, a study at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine reports.

Results from biological model studies conducted by assistant professor of physiology and biophysics Margaret Chandler, PhD, and other researchers, demonstrate that a high-fat diet improved overall mechanical function, in other words, the heart’s ability to pump, and was accompanied by cardiac insulin resistance.

“Does that mean I can go out and eat my Big Mac after I have a heart attack,” Dr. Chandler says “No, but treatments that act to provide sufficient energy to the heart and allow the heart to utilize or to maintain its normal metabolic profile may actually be advantageous.”

The research, published in American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, suggests that for a damaged heart, a balanced diet that includes mono- and polyunsaturated fats, and which replaces simple sugars (sucrose and fructose) with complex carbohydrates, may be beneficial.

In a healthy person, the heart uses both fats and carbohydrates to obtain the energy it needs to continue pumping blood 24/7. Ideally, fats are utilized because they yield more energy.

However, if a person develops heart failure (or suffers from ischemia – a lack of blood supply), the heart seems to prefer using glucose for fuel, because glucose requires less oxygen to produce energy.

While heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, more people are surviving heart attacks that ever before. Survivors though pay a price for this improved survival, living with a damaged heart that usually progresses to heart failure. And unfortunately, medications and procedures have yet to “cure” heart failure, or halt the deterioration of heart function.

Upon initiation of these dietary intervention studies, researchers previously thought a high-fat diet fed to animal models that have suffered a heart attack, would overload their tissues with fat, which in turn would have a toxic effect on their hearts.

Surprisingly, the heart’s pump function improved on the high-fat diet. Through further testing, the researchers found that animal models suffering from heart failure and receiving a low fat diet were able to produce insulin and take up glucose from the blood, just as healthy hearts do. However, the biological models with heart failure that were fed high-fat diets showed signs of insulin resistance, exhibited by a decreased amount of glucose taken up by the heart, as might be expected in a diabetic patient.

One of the main implications of these findings is that contrary to previously held beliefs, a state of insulin-resistance might actually be beneficial to a failing heart. The hypothesis, according to Dr. Chandler, is that because the heart is being provided with excess amounts of fats, it is forced to utilize its preferred energy source.

After suffering an injury that leads to failure, the heart cannot do this on its own, so the researchers have to manipulate its metabolism to use the energy source that maximizes or maintain its function as near to “normal” as possible.

“We want to provide an environment for the heart which allows it to be as effective and efficient a pump as possible, regardless of the damage it has undergone,” Dr. Chandler says.

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Princely incomprehension of the market in food

Yesterday, Prince Charles gave a speech in Washington on ‘sustainable farming’. Specifically, he criticised America’s taste for beef, and promoted organic food. But Charles’ comments betray a – perhaps unsurprising – lack of free market understanding and, if put into practice, would amount to an assault on the consumer.

Firstly, the Prince claimed that, “For every pound of beef produced in the industrial system, it takes two thousand gallons of water. That is a lot of water and there is plenty of evidence that the Earth cannot keep up with the demand”.

However, it is a simple law of markets that the Earth can keep up with any level of demand, for any product. If demand exceeds supply at a given price, prices will rise, until supply and demand are re-equilibrated. Increasing water prices will mean that beef is more expensive, naturally regulating the American consumption that Charles is so worried about.

Water goes to beef production because steak, burgers and so forth are highly valued; if we were to ration the amount of water used in making beef, it would go to some other good which is less valued. Since water rationing would also necessarily mean beef rationing, prices would increase nonetheless. The consumer, and in particular the less well-off consumer looking for cheap food, would be hit the hardest.

Prince Charles’ next target was the building on rural land. He criticised the US for allowing such activities, saying that, "Here in the United States I am told one acre is lost to development every minute of every day, which means that since 1982 an area the size of Indiana has been built over".

But what does the transforming of rural land into built up areas show? It shows that the built up areas are valued more highly by the public; people are prepared to pay more for, say, hiring an office block for a year, than they are for the food which could be produced in that land in a year. By placing restrictions on building, the land will be used for something less valued by the public, and the supply of housing will be reduced; leading to an increase in prices. Again, we see consumers, and especially poor consumers in need of housing, taking the hit for such a change.

Lastly, Charles argued for subsidies to organic farming. But all subsidies do is force people to pay towards the production of a good they don’t want. Organic food is expensive because it inefficiently uses resources. If people are prepared to pay for its possible health benefits – fine. But by subsidising organic food, all we’re doing is encouraging resource inefficiency to make food people don’t want.

The land, labour and capital which would have been used to produce a large amount of non-organic food would then be used to make a small amount of organic food. Supply falls, prices goes up, and who loses out? The consumer.

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The fruit-juice/antioxidant religion gets another outing

Juice tested on pig arteries in laboratory glassware. People are too pesky

A HEART-healthy fruit cocktail devised by scientists could be just what the doctor ordered. The mix of berry, grape and apple juices provides the "ideal blend" of ingredients for lowering the risk of heart disease, experts claim.

Numerous studies have suggested that "polyphenol" plant compounds can improve the functioning of arteries and protect the heart. Now French scientists have come up with what they say is the healthiest and best-tasting combination of 13 different fruit juices.

Among the ingredients are grape, apple, blueberry, strawberry and lingonberry as well as more exotic additions such as acerola - a cherry-like fruit from the West Indies - and aronia, also known as chokeberry, from America.

Various blends of fruit juices or purees were first studied in a laboratory for their effects on isolated pig arteries.

The final recipe was chosen after a "taste test" by 80 volunteer consumers.

The "healthy heart" fruit cocktail consists of about 60 per cent grape juice, about 10 per cent apple, strawberry and blueberry, and smaller amounts of lingonberry, acerola, and aronia.

Lead researcher Dr Cyril Auger - from the University of Strasbourg, France's largest uni - said: "Among the various fruits investigated, the most active ones were predominantly berries ... characterised by the presence of high levels of anthocyanins, which are pigments responsible for the blue-red colours of fruits."

Laboratory tests showed that exposure to the fruit juice blend caused heart artery walls to relax. In a living animal this would improve blood flow to the heart and help to prevent it being deprived of oxygen and nutrients.

Measurements also were taken of the antioxidant power of different cocktail recipes, highlighting their ability to neutralise harmful molecules that can damage cells and DNA. The tests showed that some polyphenols were more potent than others, and this was more important than the amount found in each fruit.

The research was published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Food and Function.

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Starting solid foods BEFORE four months could cut risk of peanut allergy

Early introduction of peanut products is certainly the key preventive of peanut allergy

Parents who feed their infants solid foods or cow's milk before the age of four months could put them at lower risk for peanut allergy, according to a new study. Researchers said introducing solids early on could 'kick-start' the immune system, making children with a family history of allergies about five times less likely to develop sensitivity.

In contrast, experts generally recommend mothers breastfeed infants for the first six months because it is the best form of nutrition.

The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology last month, was conducted on 594 children, whose mothers were interviewed about feeding practices when they were one, six, and 12 months old.

Reuters Health reports blood samples were taken from children ages two and three years old and tested for antibodies against peanut, egg and milk. 'Eleven per cent of those tested were found to be at an increased risk of developing an allergy to peanut. 'The risk of sensitivity was lower among children whose parents had allergies or asthma, if they had been started on solid food or cow's milk before the age of four month,' according to reports.

Just under six per cent of those tested had peanut sensitivity, compared to 16 per cent of those whose mothers introduced solid foods or cow's milk later.

The findings were not consistent among children who did not have a family history of allergy.

Lead researcher Christine Joseph, an epidemiologist at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, said the study did not, however, prove early introduction of solid foods prevents peanut allergies.

Ms Joseph told Reuters Health: 'Intuitively, it does seem like the opposite of what you'd expect.' She explained early exposure to solids and cows milk could 'kick start' the immune system and make children more tolerant of peanuts.

Controversy over what infant feeding methods might cut risk of food allergies has long been subject to debate. Until recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended parents not feed children cow's milk until age one. That decision was reversed in 2008, after studies showed no evidence it lowered allergy risks. It's estimated that just over one percent of U.S. children are allergic to peanuts.

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Salt is GOOD for you: Eating more could even lower the chances of heart disease

I guess I shouldn't say. "I told you do" -- but I did. See my sidebar. The study below is not of course conclusive but nor are the studies used to condemn salt.

For years, doctors have been telling us that too much salt is bad for us. Until now. A study claims that cutting down on salt can actually increase the risk of dying from a heart attack or a stroke. The research has left nutritionists scratching their heads.

Its findings indicate that those who eat the least sodium – about one teaspoon a day – don’t show any health advantage over those who eat the most. In fact, those with less salty diets actually had slightly higher death rates from heart disease.

The study, which followed 3,681 healthy European men and women aged 60 or younger, for about eight years, also found that above-average salt intake did not appear to increase the danger of developing high blood pressure.

The report, in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, was released just three months after the U.S. government launched a public health campaign urging restaurants and food manufacturers to cut down on their use of salt.

Sodium was measured in the urine of those taking part, at the beginning and end of the study.

A little more than six per cent of the participants suffered a heart attack, a stroke or some other cardiovascular emergency during the eight years. About a third of these were fatal.

Those who consumed the least salt had a 56 per cent higher risk of death from a heart attack or stroke compared with those who consumed the most. This was even after obesity, cholesterol levels, smoking, diabetes and other risk factors were taken into account.

There were 50 deaths in the third of participants with the lowest salt consumption, 24 in the third with medium intake and just ten deaths in those with the highest salt levels.

Lead researcher Jan Staessen, head of the hypertension laboratory at the University of Leuven, in Belgium, said: ‘Our findings do not support a generalised reduction of salt intake in the population.’

The scientists did not have a firm explanation for their results, but they reportedly speculated that low levels of salt in the body could cause more stress in the nervous system, decrease sensitivity to insulin and affect hormones that control blood pressure and sodium absorption. But they stressed that those with high blood pressure – who were not included in the study – should still stick to a low-salt diet.

Some experts claimed last night that the findings should be taken with, well, a pinch of salt. They argue that the volunteers used in the study all started out with normal blood pressure, were white, relatively young and reasonably healthy.

Past research has shown that those with hypertension, black people, the elderly and the obese tend to react more negatively to ingesting more salt.

Many other studies have shown salt can be bad for you. In March, Australian scientists reported that it takes only 30 minutes for a salty meal significantly to impair the arteries’ ability to pump blood around the body.

Health experts estimate that cutting average consumption by just a couple of grams a day would slash strokes by 22 per cent and heart attacks by 16 per cent, saving 17,000 lives in the UK. Research last year suggested heart disease could be cut by almost a fifth if food companies were banned from adding too much salt to their products.

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Paracetemol (acetaminophen) taken out of US infant drops

A small chip out of the undeserved good reutation of this medication

JOHNSON & Johnson and other makers of cold and fever medications in the Unites States say they will discontinue infant drops of medicines containing paracetemol in an effort to avoid confusion that can lead to dangerous overdoses.

The industry association for over-the-counter medicine companies in the US says its members will only sell a single formula for all children under the age of 12.

Currently, J&J and other companies sell infant formulations that contain half the amount of paracetemol as that found in regular children's formula.

Paracetemol is a ubiquitous pain reliever found in Tylenol, Nyquil and thousands of other medicines used to treat headaches, fever and sore throats.

While safe when used as directed, paracetemol is the leading cause of liver failure in the US and sends thousands to the emergency room annually.

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LOL! Omega 3 is bad for you and trans fats are good for you

What fun the report below is. It neatly reverses the current wisdom -- and yet it is as creditable a study as any in the field.

What it shows is the importance of looking at the big picture (all-cause mortality). Something that appears to be beneficial in one way may be harmful in another.

The largest study ever to examine the association of dietary fats and prostate cancer risk has found what's good for the heart may not be good for the prostate.

Analyzing data from a nationwide study involving more than 3,400 men, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that men with the highest blood percentages of docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, an inflammation-lowering omega-3 fatty acid commonly found in fatty fish, have two-and-a-half-times the risk of developing aggressive, high-grade prostate cancer compared to men with the lowest DHA levels.

Conversely, the study also found that men with the highest blood ratios of trans-fatty acids - which are linked to inflammation and heart disease and abundant in processed foods that contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils - had a 50 percent reduction in the risk of high-grade prostate cancer. In addition, neither of these fats was associated with the risk of low-grade prostate cancer risk. The researchers also found that omega-6 fatty acids, which are found in most vegetable oils and are linked to inflammation and heart disease, were not associated with prostate cancer risk. They also found that none of the fats were associated with the risk of low-grade prostate cancer.

These findings by Theodore M. Brasky, Ph.D., and colleagues in the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division were published online April 25 in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

"We were stunned to see these results and we spent a lot of time making sure the analyses were correct," said Brasky, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Hutchinson Center's Cancer Prevention Program. "Our findings turn what we know - or rather what we think we know - about diet, inflammation and the development of prostate cancer on its head and shine a light on the complexity of studying the association between nutrition and the risk of various chronic diseases."

The researchers undertook the study because chronic inflammation is known to increase the risk of several cancers, and the omega-3 fatty acids found primarily in fish and fish oil supplements have anti-inflammatory effects. In contrast, other fats, such as the omega-6 fats in vegetable oil and trans-fats found in fast foods, may promote inflammation. "We wanted to test the hypothesis that the concentrations of these fats in blood would be associated with prostate cancer risk," Brasky said. "Specifically, we thought that omega-3 fatty acids would reduce and omega-6 and trans-fatty acids would increase prostate cancer risk."

The mechanisms behind the impact of omega-3s on risk of high-grade prostate cancer are unknown. "Besides inflammation, omega-3 fats affect other biologic processes. It may be that these mechanisms play a greater role in the development of certain prostate cancers," Brasky said. "This is certainly an area that needs more research."

Currently there is no official recommended daily allowance for omega-3 fats for adults or children, although many nutrition experts and physicians recommend 450 milligrams of omega-3 DHA per day as part of a healthy diet.

The study was based on data from the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial, a nationwide randomized clinical trial that tested the efficacy of the drug finasteride to prevent prostate cancer. While the trial involved nearly 19,000 men age 55 and older, the data in this analysis came from a subset of more than 3,000 of the study participants, half of whom developed prostate cancer during the course of the study and half of whom did not. The clinical trial was unique in that prostate biopsy was used to confirm the presence or absence of prostate cancer in all study participants.

Among the study participants, very few took fish oil supplements - the most common non-food source of omega-3 fatty acids, which are known to prevent heart disease and other inflammatory conditions. The majority got omega 3s from eating fish.

So based on these findings, should men concerned about heart disease eschew fish oil supplements or grilled salmon in the interest of reducing their risk of aggressive prostate cancer? Brasky and colleagues don't think so.

"Overall, the beneficial effects of eating fish to prevent heart disease outweigh any harm related to prostate cancer risk," Brasky said. "What this study shows is the complexity of nutrition and its impact on disease risk, and that we should study such associations rigorously rather than make assumptions," Brasky said.

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HIV drug could prevent 'cervical cancer by killing off virus that causes disease'

A study in laboratory glassware only so far

A simple treatment using a widely prescribed HIV drug could prevent cervical cancer, research suggests. It raises new hope for victims as the number of cervical cancers caused by the sexual transmission of human papilloma virus (HPV) soar - while the number of new cases of HIV are falling across the globe.

HPV is now the most common sexually transmitted infection and the most common cause of cervical cancer. It also triggers significant numbers of mouth and throat cancers in both men and women after it is transmitted through oral sex.

Earlier research suggests that one in six British women have HPV. Around 3,000 women in the UK each year contract cervical cancer and it accounts for more than 900 deaths.

The drug lopinavir kills cells infected by the HPV while leaving healthy cells relatively unharmed, scientists have found. Researchers from the University of Manchester, working with colleagues in Canada, made the discovery after carrying out laboratory tests on cell cultures.

Dr Ian Hampson, from the university's school of cancer and enabling sciences, said: `This is a very significant finding as these cells are not cancer cells but are the closest thing to being like the cells found in a pre-cancerous HPV infection of the cervix. `In addition we were also able to show that lopinavir kills these HPV-infected cells by re-activating a well-known antiviral system that is suppressed by HPV.'

To be effective as a treatment, the drug would have to be administered in doses 10 to 15 times that taken by HIV patients. This would mean applying it as a cream or pessary, rather than swallowing a tablet, said Dr Hampson.

The research is published today in the journal Antiviral Therapy.

Co-author Dr Lynne Hampson said: `These results are very exciting since they show that the drug not only preferentially kills HPV-infected non-cancerous cells by re-activating known antiviral defence systems, it is also much less toxic to normal non-HPV infected cells. `Lopinavir is obviously safe for people to take as tablets or liquid but our latest findings provide very strong evidence to support a clinical trial using topical application of this drug to treat HPV infections of the cervix.'

Although HPV vaccines are already in use, they suffer from a number of drawbacks, the scientists pointed out. Vaccines are not effective in women already infected with the virus, and they do not protect against all HPV strains. In addition they are prohibitively expensive, limiting their use in poorer countries.

HPV-related cervical cancer is one of the most common women's cancers in developing countries, accounting for around 290,000 deaths per year. A cheap, self-administered treatment which could eliminate early-stage HPV infections would have distinct advantages, say the researchers.

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