Omega-3 health benefits for babies

Despite the known benefits of omega-3 for a healthy heart, immune support and guarding against dementia, less than a quarter of British adults fail to reach even their basic requirement needs.

Now it seems that it is even more important for babies, but they need to have their supply from their mother while in the womb. In a detailed review of existing published scientific papers, published in Nutrition and Food Science Journal, leading dietician Dr Carrie Ruxton and Dr Emma Derbyshire, senior lecturer in Human Nutrition at Manchester Metropolitan University, examined the role and scope of omega-3 EFAs on health, as well as the likely intake needed to produce good results.

Baby asthma and eczema can be very distressing for new parents, and one discovery from their research has suggested that women who take fish oil capsules during pregnancy, and while breast feeding, may reduce the risk of asthma and eczema in their babies and aid normal brain and eye development. It also has benefit for the mother as having a good intake of Omega-3 can also reduce post-natal depression.

The benefits for the baby continue into childhood as it seems that children whose mothers had taken cod liver oil capsules (containing DHA and EPA) during later pregnancy scored considerably higher on mental processing tests than children whose mothers had taken a placebo during the research.

You may think you get enough Omega-3 from your diet, but the omega-3 content of certain foods is becoming more limited due to changes in farming practice, and if you eat fortified foods then they contain very little. Additionally, in the UK we are not meeting the Food Standards Agency’s recommended levels of fish intake by a long margin – and that’s another good source of Omega-3. Most adults would benefit from an Omega-3 supplement, and certainly anyone planning a family, or pregnant, needs to be its benefits in mind.

Adult obesity drugs given to children

Drugs that are licensed in the UK to be used only in adults for obesity are apparently being increasingly prescribed for children. Adolescents and children are being prescribed these drugs, and there has been a 15-fold rise since 1999. The fact they are not licensed for children is a cause for concern, but on the upside it seems that most stop using them before they could expect to see any benefit, usually after 3 months.

A recent study, published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, shows under 18′s being given prescriptions for Orlistat, also known as Xenical or Alli. Orlistat has been approved for children as young as 12 in the US, but only for adults in the UK. It’s not known why they stop talking them so soon, but one theory by Russell Viner, one of the authors of the study based at the General & Adolescent Paediatrics Unit at University College London, is either they have excessive side effects or those taking them they could be expecting the drugs to deliver a miracle quick fix and stop using them when sudden, rapid, weight loss does not occur.

One form of Orlistat, Alli, is available now in the UK over the counter as a weight loss aid, but one of the potential side effects that occur is loose, oily stools if the overall fat intake is not reduced. The issue here, particularly for children, is that anti-obesity drugs are not the sole answer; they need to be used as part of a comprehensive weight-loss programme which includes both exercise and good nutrition.

Hard to die from a heart attack today

I have always thought that you have to a touch arrogant to be a consultant, and proof is in this week from Barcelona where the European Society of Cardiology have been meeting. Their President, Roberto Ferrari MD, claimed that adults today can expect to live 10 years longer than the average adult 30 to 40 years ago. Nothing too surprising about that, but he has set the cat among the pigeons by claiming that most of that extra decade resulted from advances in cardiovascular medicine, especially the treatment of heart attacks. Fine if he had left it there, but he went on to say “In cardiology, we have contributed seven of those 10 years of life, while oncologists have contributed 2.4 months,” and we are awaiting a response from the various Cancer Societies in Europe and the USA on that one.

However it might reassure you to know that he is confident that “it is difficult to die from a heart attack today.” Let’s hope his own heart is a strong one or he might keel over from the adverse publicity if he ever did have a heart attack!

Bees can fight tumours

The poor old bees, they are already under threat as their habitat is destroyed and now science has found a new use for them there may be even fewer. It’s down to their sting, because they pump toxic venom into their victims which has been analysed and now harnessed to kill tumour cells by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers attached the major component of bee venom to nano-sized spheres that they call nanobees. Good to know scientists have a sense of humour, bless them, and they found that in mice the bee toxin melittin stopped tumours from growing or shrank them. Hopefully this means they will have a good incentive to also start working out a way to prevent the bees from dying out altogether.

Music therapy helps stroke patients

By now, you all know my feelings on the healing power of music and a new study from Italy gives you another tool to use for anyone who has had a stroke.

The researchers examined the effects that different types of opera and classical music have on cardiovascular measures and they saws distinct physical changes. A fast tempo prompted increased blood pressure and faster breathing and heart rates. Slower tempo lowered blood pressure and brought down heart and breathing rates.

Despite what you might assume, it seems that quiet, soothing music is actually not the best music for the heart. You want something that alternates tempo between slower and faster, as well as lower and higher volumes. They recommend Nessun Dorma as being ideas as it is beneficial for both heart rate and general circulation.

Specifically for stroke patients, Diana Greenman (who heads up a UK charity that brings live music to hospitals and hospices) has said that she hears time and again of stroke patients who suddenly are able to move in time to the music after previously being paralyzed. Sounds pretty amazing, and there is proof to back it up in a study from the University of Helsinki.

Researchers there recruited 60 stroke patients who were divided into three groups; some listened to whatever music they liked, some to audio books, and some had no specific listening plan. All the patients were also receiving standard treatment for stroke rehabilitation. After three months, testing showed that focused attention and mental operation abilities improved by 17 per cent in the music group, but didn’t improve at all in the other two groups. Verbal memory scores were even more impressive: Music group: 60 per cent improvement. Audio books group: 18 per cent. Non-listening group: 29 per cent. Subjects in the music group also tended to be less confused and less depressed than subjects in the other two groups.

One stroke expert has said that more research is needed before widespread use of music as therapy can be recommended for stroke victims. As there are no side effects and plenty of benefits you have to wonder how much more research is needed. If you are in contact with a stroke patient, music therapy is best started as soon as possible, so go out and get a copy of Nessum Dorma and it will lift everybody’s spirit.

Antioxidants not a risk for melanoma

A recent study set up a scare that supplements such as vitamins C and E, beta carotene, selenium and zinc which are used for cancer prevention. It seemed to suggest that daily supplementation with these antioxidants increased the risk of melanoma in women four-fold. This was very worrying as nearly 50 percent of the UK and US populations regularly use supplements so a new study was set up at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland.

Researchers there examined the association between antioxidants and melanoma among 69,671 women and men who were participating in the Vitamins and Lifestyle (VITAL) study, designed to examine supplement use and cancer risk. Their exhaustive study of the records showed that they did not find any link between blood levels of beta carotene, vitamin E and selenium and any subsequent risk of melanoma.

So if you are a regular supplement user, the fear of melanoma has just been debunked.

Cocoa and high blood pressure

Now, I would have thought that a good cup of cocoa would certainly make you feel better but because of its high caffeine content I wouldn’t have thought of it as a treatment for high blood pressure.

But who am I to disagree with researchers from Harvard? It seems that although 3 in 10 of us in the UK suffer from the condition there is one place in the world where it is virtually unknown. The Kuna Indians live on a group of islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama and hypertension does not exist there. Once the islanders reach 60, they have a perfect average blood pressure of 110/70 which is something to be envied and they also have much lower death rates from heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, and cancer.

So what’s their secret? It is certainly not their salt intake as that is as high as in the UK, but because they drink 5 cups of cocoa every day. WE know that the flavonols in cocoa stimulate your body’s production of nitric oxide and that boosts blood flow to your heart, brain, and other organs. If you are taking a daily aspirin to thin your blood you might like to know that one study found cocoa thins your blood just as well. Certainly tastes better, and one Harvard Medical School professor claims cocoa can also treat blocked arteries, congestive heart failure, stroke, dementia, and even impotence.

No more to be said really, but I would stick to organic cocoa and I am not sure if the islanders make it with milk or not, but if you do then make sure that’s organic too so you get the maximum benefit

How competitive is your nose?

How competitive is your nose? Did you know, and do you care, that when the nose encounters two different scents simultaneously, the brain processes them separately through each nostril in an alternating fashion? This means your nostrils are competitive and act almost as rivals in tracking down different odours. We are indebted to those find fellows at Rice University in Houston for looking at this as part of a psychology study.

They took 12 volunteers and got them to sample smells from two bottles; one contained phenyl ethyl alcohol, which smells like a rose, and the other had n-butanol, which smells like a marker pen. The bottles were fitted with nosepieces so that volunteers could sample both scents simultaneously, one through each nostril. During 20 rounds of sampling, all 12 participants experienced switches between smelling predominantly the rose scent and smelling predominantly the marker scent. In the laboratory setting in which each nostril simultaneously received a different smell, the participants experienced an ‘olfactory illusion,’ so that instead of perceiving a constant mixture of the two smells, they perceive one of the smells, followed by the other, in an alternating fashion. It is as if the nostrils were competing with one another, and although both smells are equally present, the brain attends to predominantly one of them at a time.

This sort of rivalry is not new apparently as our eyes do the same thing. When they simultaneously view two different images, one for each eye, they are seen alternately one at a time. The same goes for your hearing as when alternating tones an octave apart are played out of phase to each ear, most people experience a single tone that goes back and forth.

This research is aimed long term at contributing to the assessment and cure of olfactory disorders in patients and, in particular, the elderly.

Weight loss doubled with a journal

I am keen on journals for all kinds of reasons: they improve mental health if you ‘mind dump’ your thoughts every day, expand your creativity and put you in touch with your deeper feelings and processes.

Now it seems it can also help you lose weight – in fact it can double your weight loss. By keeping a simple food diary, you can see clearly what you are eating rather than ‘guessing’. Strangely, guessing results in you thinking you are eating less and exercising more but by using whatever method works best for you – email, pen and paper, a spreadsheet – you get a realistic estimate of how you are really doing.

A US study showed that after 20 weeks of journaling, reducing calories by 500 a day and exercising moderately the participants had an average weight loss of around 13 pounds. But, the more that they wrote in their journals, the more weight they lost and that meant about twice as much as a control group who didn’t write a journal.

Reflexology gets approval

The Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC) has approved reflexology practitioners to register with them. The Council’s aim is to establish and maintain a voluntary register of complementary healthcare practitioners in the UK who meet its standards of competence and practice and make that available to the general public.

The voluntary register will open over the course of this year to a wide range of complementary and natural healthcare practitioners. Reflexology is the fourth discipline for which the register has opened this year, joining massage therapy, nutritional therapy and aromatherapy.

It’s always sensible to get a recommendation when using any practitioner, and to check their training and credentials with their regulating body. To contact CNHC for a register go to www.cnhc.org.uk

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