Tea fights diabetes

I grew up in a family where several members drank black tea, meaning without milk, but really it just applies to the type of tea. Black tea, long known for its antioxidants, immune boosting and antihypertensive properties, could also help treat diabetes.

Researchers studied the polysaccharide levels of green, oolong and black teas because polysaccharides are a type of carbohydrate that includes starch and cellulose which help retard absorption of glucose.

The researchers found that of the three teas, the polysaccharides in black tea had the most glucose-inhibiting properties and their polysaccharides also showed the highest scavenging effect on free radicals, which are involved in the onset of diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.

In another recent study, participants who drank black tea had significantly reduced plasma glucose concentrations after two hours, compared to those who drank water or caffeine drinks. Drinking black tea also increased insulin levels, compared with the other drinks.

That study linked black tea’s diabetic benefits to polyphenols (naturally occurring antioxidants) and these compounds are thought to work by stimulating your B-cells — pancreatic cells responsible for insulin production — to produce insulin in your body. A growing body of research also suggests that the polyphenols in tea can lower your cholesterol, triglyceride levels and blood pressure, and even help to protect your bones. That study linked black tea’s diabetic benefits to polyphenols (naturally occurring antioxidants), including Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), of which more below!

My Green Tea Comment:

Although black tea was found to contain more glucose inhibiting polysaccharides, green tea may still be the most beneficial tea of them all, including for diabetics. A previous study found that EGCG in green tea worked as well in moderately diabetic mice as the diabetes drug Avandia, for example.

Another study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded that green tea-extract also had a positive impact on glucose abnormalities. In that study, daily supplementary intake of green tea-extract lowered the hemoglobin A1c level in individuals with borderline diabetes.

So for my money black tea is not as healthy as green tea as they undergo far more processing. Oxidation is the main deciding factor whether you have green, oolong, or black tea, and black tea undergoes the most amount of oxidation through application of high heat. Good green tea is not oxidized at all and, like the Irish fields, the greener it is the higher the quality.

Fluoride is a common contaminant in many black teas and this toxic substance can have profoundly negative effects on your body. Green tea is the least processed kind of tea, and therefore typically contains the least amount of fluoride and the most EGCG of all tea varieties, which is a very good thing for your health.

I am currently trying a new type of green tea, Matcha, which contains the entire ground tea leaf, and can contain over 100 times the EGCG provided from regular brewed green tea. I will let you know how I get on with it.

Hand transplants now a reality

Losing a hand, whether from accident or warfare, has profound psychological as well as physical implications. Now a viable form of hand transplantation is an option for selected amputees after the results of a small clinical trial with long-term follow-up. Normally amputees are offered either a prosthesis or tissue reconstruction, depending on their condition, neither of which is entirely satisfactory.

The trial followed five patients at the Louisville Center over a ten year period who had lost hands due to fireworks accidents, work-related accidents, and loss due to firearms. What is extraordinary to me is that the transplantation procedures occurred from two years to more than 30 years after amputation and since 1964, more than 40 hand transplantations have been performed worldwide, including 12 patients who received transplants of both hands.

Reasonable function does return to the hands and it has been made possible to have such prolonged survival of a transplanted hand because of the drugs that are used in kidney transplant recipients which were then developed for limb transplants. The only downside seems to be that all such transplant patients require lifetime immunosuppression regimes, but the benefits of having a ‘real’ working hand far outweigh that consideration for all the patients who have been treated.

Tobacco cure for ‘cruise ship virus’?

Anyone who regularly travels by plane or ship will probably have fallen victim to norovirus and its unpleasant symptoms of diarrhoea and vomiting. It is sometimes referred to as the “cruise ship virus”, as it has occurred with frightening regularity there, but this microbe can spread like wildfire through any place where people gather such as offices, schools and military bases.

Because of the large numbers of cases, a search has been on for a vaccine and this new certainly is unique in its origin as it was “manufactured” in a tobacco plant using an engineered plant virus. Science has always turned to nature when seeking cures – not always with the best results – but it has been effective in many cases. A study of the top 150 proprietary drugs used in the USA in 1993 found that 57% of all prescriptions contained at least one major active compound derived from plants and we would not have aspirin without white willow bark, or digoxin without digitalis, and many more examples.

Researchers are particularly turning to plants in the battle against fast spreading infectious diseases like norovirus, swine flu, and bird flu. They are doing so because plant biotechnology makes available more efficient and inexpensive ways to bring vaccines quickly to the public and this is especially critical in times when viruses mutate into unpredictable new strains as they are doing more and more today.

It is less expensive than developing conventional vaccines because purification from plant extracts is simpler as there are no infectious agents to clean up. There are no viruses in plants which can infect humans, so you don’t have to worry about viral removal.

Noroviruses are always mutating, making it difficult to produce an effective vaccine in the time scale required. The costs involved in this are huge so it is a great development to be able to use plant biotechnology to create a cheaper, quicker vaccine that is uniquely suited to combat mutating viruses like norovirus and the flu. Plant-based vaccines can be produced and put into clinical tests within eight to 10 weeks and for commercial use that means a fast turnaround of two to four months.

And where does tobacco come in? Well the scientists involved re-engineered plant viruses to produce high levels of specially designed “virus-like” nanoparticles in tobacco plants. These particles are the same size as the norovirus, but they consist only of the outer surface protein — that is the portion of the virus recognized by the human immune system. The particles contain none of the infectious material of the original virus, but they stimulate a robust immune response to fight off an actual infection.

So a good use for tobacco plants, and good news for tobacco farmers who must have seen a serious downturn in profits in the last few years. After successful experiments, a nasal delivery system for the virus-like particles is being developed and will start clinical trials in late 2009.

Get your water from the source

I know, here I am banging on again about drinking enough water, but this time not from a bottle.  Water is, of course, crucial for good health, but the very best source comes from the water that is stored in plants.

To really hydrate your body get out the juicer and drink fresh, living juices of water-rich plants like apples, celery, carrots, cucumbers, and citrus fruit.

Ginseng reduces inflammation

Researchers from the University of Hong Kong have treated human immune cells with different extracts of ginseng and found that it inhibits and reduces inflammation.

Panax ginseng is a medicinal herb much used in traditional Chinese medicine and further studies are now needed to see if it can help manage inflammatory-based diseases in human beings, including Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular conditions and various cancers.

Antioxidants OK in the sun

Antioxidants help our skin stay healthy and younger looking and skin is adversely affected by being exposed unprotected to the sun. You want to avoid wrinkles, and you want a healthy glow so what do you do? Many people take antioxidant supplements but there have been previous alerts that they could increase the risk of melanoma, particularly in women.

This is now shown not to be true, based on an analysis of data from a population study of almost 70,000 participants. So no need to give up a healthful supplement, but don’t give up using sun protection please!

HEALTH ALERT!! Death risk is doubled with this type of surgery and ACE inhibitors

There are so many people on blood pressure medication that this warning needs passing on if you know they are about to have heart surgery. There is a very real danger associated particularly with coronary artery bypass graft surgery and ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme) inhibitors.

This information comes from a study done at the Bristol Heart Institute and your GP and surgeon should both be aware of it, but I believe in being proactive when it comes to healthcare so make sure you discuss it with them.

The recommendation is that you stop taking ACE inhibitors for 2-5 days before the surgery, then restart a few days afterwards the operation. You might also like to consider that ACE inhibitors can have severe side effects such as kidney failure, dangerous potassium overload, and angioedema that can lead to fatal airway blockage.

There are other ways of dealing with hypertension including diet, exercise and stress reduction and it is worth exploring these so that you could be able to reduce the dosage of the ACE inhibitors or dispense with them altogether.

Mindfulness and weight loss

Still on the weight loss front, it is probably the sight of myself in a bikini in the holiday snaps that has made this so much in the forefront of my mind, but here’s another good reason to take up yoga. A study done at a cancer centre has shown that regular yoga practice is associated with mindful eating, and people who eat mindfully are less likely to be overweight.

If you are concerned about middle-age spread, then it seems that regular yoga practice may help prevent it. An earlier study found that middle-age people who practice yoga gained less weight over a 10-year period than those who did not. This was independent of physical activity and dietary patterns and the researchers suspected that the weight-loss effect had more to do with increased body awareness, specifically a sensitivity to hunger and satiety than the physical activity of yoga practice itself.

Mindfulness is a skill learned either directly or indirectly through yoga and it does seem to affect eating behaviour according to the Head of a Cancer Prevention Program.

What does it mean?

Eating mindfully means being aware of why you eat, and stopping eating when full. Non mindful eating occurs when we eat when we are not hungry or in response to anxiety or depression. The way that eating a chocolate from a box is fine, but looking at the box and not remembering you ate them all definitely fits into the concept of mindless eating.

Yoga cultivates mindfulness in a number of ways, such as being able to hold a challenging physical pose by observing the discomfort in a non-judgmental way, with an accepting, calm mind and focus on the breath. This ability to be calm and observant during physical discomfort teaches you how to maintain calm in other challenging situations, such as not eating more even when the food tastes good and not eating when you’re not hungry.

Practice:

If you want to practice mindfulness around food, try looking at these points when eating:

** awareness – look at your food and observe how it looks, tastes and smells

** emotional response – are you hungry, or eating in response to sadness or stress

** disinhibition – are you continuing to eat even though you are full?

** external cues – have you chosen the food in response to advertising or peer pressure

** distraction – are you just focusing on your food, or on other things like making or taking a phone call or watching TV

Cognitive therapy helps insomnia & pain

Sufferers from osteoarthritis often experience sleeplessness and around 60 percent report feeling pain at night due to their condition. Now some new research suggests cognitive behavioural therapy could be an effective way of dealing with the problem.

The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine has reported on a study done at the University of Washington, USA that specifically tested behavioural therapy on patients with arthritis. The majority of the test subjects were female, so it can’t be deemed conclusive for men as well, but the older adults in the study initially reported sleeping 21 minutes longer per night on average and 27 minutes longer a year after treatment.

That might not sound like much, but for anyone who has known the exhaustion of sleep deprivation then any increase is a bonus. Further, the patients also experienced a significant reduction in arthritis pain compared to those in a control group.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a well established method for helping facilitate behavioural change and attitude. For the study the subjects took part in for two months in weekly two-hour group classes led by an experienced clinical psychologist. They were put on a strict schedule of bedtimes and waking times, beginning with the amount of time they were actually sleeping told to lie in bed awake no longer than 15 minutes and to engage in no activities in bed other than sleep and sex. If they began to spend more of their time in bed asleep, their hours of sleep were increased by a maximum of one-half hour each week.

Cognitive restructuring techniques helped participants change unrealistic beliefs and irrational fears regarding sleep or lack of it. They also received relaxation training and instruction about other factors that might affect their sleep, such as getting enough sunlight and exercise and avoiding alcohol and caffeine.

They kept both sleep and pain logs and for the majority in the study there was a definite, and continued, improvement in both these areas. since most of the participants were women.

Men are better than women at dieting

Most men do not embrace the concept of dieting unless pushed to it by a health problem or a few gentle (ie nagging) remarks from their partner. But research shows that when they do decide to got it they are better at it than women.

Men have not been well served by the diet industry, partly because of inertia, but also because of embarrassment. The traditional dieting aids for women like slimming groups just do not attract men. Do not despair though because I have found a couple of resources that can really help.

First is a clever woman who realised men don’t like dieting in public, for example asking for a gin and slimline tonic still isn’t quite the thing – and actually from a health point of view that slimline tonic is worthless. It may have fewer calories but it also has a cocktail of chemicals in it – go for the real thing and get the benefit!

Jeni Blaskett decided to create a slimming group in which men would flourish and lose weight. One that meant that men could go about their daily routines without feeling they were losing face so she set up a website www.Beltdown.com exclusively for men

Beltdown’s key diet plan principle is unique, and couldn’t be easier to follow – ‘If you can’t wash it, try to avoid it’. So a cooked breakfast of eggs, bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms makes it onto the tick list, cake and biscuits do not. The website has plenty of info aimed specifically at men, such as which are the lowest calorie beers and curries, and the format allows for men to stay totally anonymous, whilst still getting the challenge, competitiveness and interaction of a group – but online.

If you have an internet connection, it costs £8 a month membership and is available 24/7 – so no more excuses skip over to www.beltdown.com

Men only

If you want a programme designed by a man who has been there and done that himself, then I can recommend Robert Paterson’s book ‘Warriors’. He found the same problems in going to slimming groups as Jeni describes so he put together a very successful programme that has all the elements needed for successful weight loss. It is particularly aimed at those who have found success in their careers but who, due to hectic lifestyles and lack of time, have lost their healthy body in the process.

He created a specially developed ‘business plan’ to show you how to: – Set targets you can meet – Devise sensible day-to-day eating plans – Motivate yourself when the going gets tough – Achieve long term success – Treat your body as your business

Robert was an international banker weighing 22 stone who lost 8 stone on his regime, and kept the weight off. He is now Chairman of the Emerging Markets Group and Chairman of Performance Consultants, Brasil. He is a spokesman for the British Heart Foundation and regularly competes in events to raise funds for them. You will find his book on Amazon by typing in his name and Warriors in their search box.

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