MSG by any other name?

If you love the flavour – but not the accompanying headaches – of MSG (mono sodium glutamate), then here is a natural recipe to duplicate the flavour enhancing effect. Just mix together equal parts of Celery salt, Dill, Turmeric, Cayenne pepper and Paprika and use it to coat meat before cooking.

Help with inflammation

I am indebted to Julie for contacting me about a natural product she has found very helpful to reduce inflammation, pain and swelling in both adults, children and animals. It’s name is serrapeptase and as most diseases have inflammation as a major factor then it could have a number of applications and clinical use. This natural anti-inflammatory is derived from silkworms has been in use for over twenty-five years throughout Europe and Asia as a viable alternative to salicylates, ibuprofen and the more potent NSAIDs. Unlike these drugs, Serrapeptase is a naturally occurring, physiological agent with no inhibitory effects on prostaglandins and is devoid of gastrointestinal side effects.

For more information, and a free report on what serrapeptase can do, then visit the website at www.Serrapeptase.info

Mother-daughter breast cancer link

It was reported by the MLA University Health Network on 3 May that a unique mother-daughter study shows that the percentage of water in the breast could be linked to the risk of breast cancer in older women.

Breast density is an inheritable characteristic that is known to be a cancer risk factor and by using magnetic resonance to measure breast density in younger women the Canadian researchers at The Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research at Princess Margaret Hospital in Ontario. Higher blood growth hormone concentrations were also linked to higher percent breast water and results showed that each 5cm difference in height in daughters was associated with 3% increase in percent breast water, which suggests a mechanism by which growth might affect the risk of cancer. They believe this could help in developing prevention methods as breast density is a strong risk factor for breast cancer in middle aged and older women as the breast is most susceptible to the effects of carcinogens at early ages. Their findings suggest that by identifying the environmental and genetic factors that influence breast tissue composition in early life they may be able to develop safe and effective methods of prevention.

Childen and vaccination pain levels

If you have ever sat with a child having multiple vaccinations then you will know it can be a traumatic experience for all concerned. Now some new research may help reduce the pain levels, and make it an easier experience all round.

The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto has carried out a study that reveals that if you give a child the least painful vaccine first, then that can reduce overall pain from multiple injections. If you want to pass this on to your doctor or clinic, the order they found most effective was to give the primary vaccine for diphtheria, polio, tetanus, pertussis, and Haemophilus influenzae type b (DPTaP-Hib) and the final shot was the pneumococcal conjugatevaccine. Giving them in this order definitely resulted in less overall pain than getting the pneumococcal vaccine first as this one causes most pain reaction.

As some parents do refuse vaccinations for their children because of the pain they cause, this could be a simple way of overcoming this problem. If you are interested, they measured the pain levels in two ways; first using the child’s facial expressions, body movements, and crying and also asked the parents to rate their child’s pain. Based on my own experience, I would just have used a sound meter!

Prostate and pomegranates

There’s new hope for men with prostate cancer when their disease doesn’t respond adequately to standard medical care. According to the results of a six year study just published in the Journal of Urology, pomegranate juice can lower PSA levels and slow down the progress of prostate cancer.

This was a two-stage clinical trial where each research subject had a rising prostate specific antigen (PSA) level after surgery or radiation therapy greater than 0.2 ng/ml and less than 5 ng/ml. The study participants were given eight ounces of pomegranate juice to drink daily for several years. Then patients who remained in the study and drinking pomegranate juice were compared to those no longer participating in the juice regimen.

Though both these groups of men with prostate cancer had demonstrated similar mean PSA doubling times at baseline when the study began, there was a clear and important difference in the groups after 56 months. The researchers are cautious about suggesting pomegranate juice could prevent prostate cancer, but anyone receiving treatment could add it to their diet and be getting a range of other health benefits.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK and over the last 30 years rates in Great Britain have almost tripled, although much of the increase is due to increased detection through widespread use of the PSA test. Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in UK men, after lung cancer, though happily the survival rate has more than doubled. Around 7 in 10 newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients now survive beyond five years whereas in the 1970s it was only 3 in 10.

Pomegranate juice benefits for everyone As it has very good antioxidant properties, it has been evaluated for its usefulness in fighting certain forms of cancer and been tentatively shown to reduce incidence of breast and skin cancer. It has many health benefits particularly for heart disease, heart attacks and stroke.

These include:

• it works well as a blood thinner
• is an agent for promoting blood flow to the heart
• reduces plaque in the arteries
• raises “good” levels of cholesterol
• helps lower “bad” cholesterol

Gold particles to treat tumours

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) researchers have been working on a difficult problem. Heat is an effective weapon against tumour cells, but the difficulty has been to heat patients’ tumours without damaging nearby tissues. The solution turns out be golden – in fact tiny gold particles that can home in on the tumour, and then, by absorbing energy from near-infrared light and emitting it as heat, destroy them with virtually no side effects.

Gold nanoparticles can absorb different frequencies of light, depending on their shape. Rod-shaped particles, such as those used in the research, absorb light at near-infrared frequency; this light heats the rods but passes harmlessly through human tissue. Once the nanorods are injected, they disperse uniformly throughout the bloodstream and then into blood vessels located near tumours which have tiny pores just large enough for the nanorods to enter. The nanorods then accumulate in the tumours, and within three days, the liver and spleen clear any that don’t reach the tumour itself.

During a single exposure to a near-infrared laser, the nanorods heat up to 70 degrees Celsius, hot enough to kill tumour cells, and at a lower temperature they weaken tumour cells enough to enhance the effectiveness of existing chemotherapy. Another use for this treatment is to kill tumour cells left behind after surgery. The nanorods can be more than 1,000 times more precise than a surgeon’s scalpel, and so could potentially remove residual cells the surgeon can’t get at.

The statistics on cancer are daunting. There are currently around 7 million people worldwide diagnosed and that number is projected to grow to 15 million by 2020. As the majority are treated with a combination of chemotherapy and/or radiation, they are subject to debilitating side effects because of the difficult in accurately targeting tumour tissue. At present, 99 percent of chemotherapy drugs are estimated to not reach the tumour, but the gold nanorods can specifically focus heat with a much greater accuracy to destroy the tumour.

Folic acid may help treat allergies and asthma

This is the season when allergies can begin to make themselves felt and among natural remedies available, including bee pollen, there is now new evidence that folic acid, or vitamin B9, may also suppress allergic reactions and lessen the severity of allergy and asthma symptoms. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, carried out at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in the US, and reported in the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology.

The link between blood levels of folate – the naturally occurring form of folic acid — and allergies adds to increased evidence that folate can help regulate inflammation which is at the root of allergic reactions. This research showed that people with the lowest folate levels had a 30 percent higher risk of developing allergies and a 31 percent higher risk of allergic symptoms than people with the highest folate levels. On the asthma front, there was a 16 percent higher risk of having asthma in those with the lowest folate levels.

Asthma affects more than 5 million adults and children in the UK, and is the most common chronic condition among children. Environmental allergies have an even wider reach so anything that helps strengthen your system to resist them has to be worth considering, particularly if you are already suffering from allergies.

The researchers say it’s too soon to start recommending folic acid supplements to prevent or treat people with asthma and allergies, but you could check how many of the folic-deficiency symptoms you have from this list:

* Irritability
* Mental fatigue, forgetfulness, or confusion
* Depression
* Insomnia
* General or muscular fatigue
* Gingivitis or periodontal disease

Adult men and women (except during pregnancy) are recommended to have 400 micrograms of folate a day and many cereals and grain products are already fortified with it so you may be getting enough. If you think you might be deficient then you might want to increase, or add, excellent food sources such as broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, spinach, green peas, avocado, banana, lentils and nuts.

The coldest remedy for Asthma?

Asthma sufferers usually have a variety of remedies available to them to help cope with their condition, but this week I read of one that is so simple, and a trifle bizarre, that I had to share it with you. A sufferer wrote in a forum that when they were having a really bad day and their eyes were really sore, they would open their freezer, put their head in, and take in a few big deep breath. That cold air really seemed to help them – let me know if it works for you too.

MSG by any other name?

Chinese restaurants many years ago got a bad reputation for over use of MSG (mono sodium glutamate), with people reporting symptoms such as headache, numbness in the arms, palpitations and increased risk of asthma attacks. None of these have ever been scientifically verified, though I certainly had a headache or two from some Chinese restaurants, which made me avoid the flavour-enhancing additive wherever possible.

If you are similarly sensitive, it may help you to know that MSG, or E621 to give it the chemical label, may have vanished from restaurants or food products but in many cases has been replaced with other substances have the same effects, but you may not be familiar with their names.

You may not be as sensitive to some, or all of these, but it is worth checking labels for these added ingredients if you want a headache-free dining experience: yeast extract, torula yeast, autolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, calcium caseinate, sodium casinate, and textured protein.

Eggs are eggselent!

I was talking to a friend recently who seemed unaware that the great debate on the cholesterol contained in eggs had been overturned. As she loves her egg and toast soldiers she was limiting herself to one a week but it is now over two years since the British Heart Foundation (BHF) accepted that the evidence on eggs contributing to high blood cholesterol was unfounded.

Research at the University of Surrey has also recently confirmed that the evidence that eggs raise cholesterol levels is based on out-of-date evidence from research done on powdered eggs.

Eggs are little powerhouses of nutrition, containing protein, essential amino acids, vitamins B, D, A, and riboflavin, and minerals, including calcium, potassium, and iron. They are also one of the few good sources of sulphur, which is essential for oxygen transport in the cells – see the story on swine flu. A lack of oxygen can lead to increased cancer risk as well as encouraging fungus, bacteria and mould in the body as they cannot survive when good supplies of oxygen are present.

Yet another reason to have a healthy, real, diet and why were they testing powdered eggs anyway and not actual eggs? Those previous finding for high cholesterol were based on the fact that the problem has always been oxidised cholesterol – cholesterol heated and exposed to air for an extended period. So a boiled egg presents no problem because the yolk sac insulates the cholesterol from oxidation – line up those toast soldiers and plan a long campaign!

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