Diabetes Updates

With over 2.3 million diabetics in the UK, and a further 750000 people who have the condition but don’t know it, I like to keep you updated and there are two new developments to report this week – both involving everyday food items.

First let’s do the positive and give you yet another reason to eat more fish. A UK study has found that in a study of 517 diabetics those who had fish less than once a week were four times more likely to have albumin in their system, a protein whose presence indicates kidney damage. This is a serious complication of diabetes and the study suggests that eating fish at least twice a week could help protect diabetics from this potential problem. The researchers didn’t single out any particular variety of fish, so help your diabetes, and your heart, by having oily fish like salmon and salt water fish like haddock at least twice a week to get the maximum benefit.

Fish is also of benefit for eye health, so keep reading.

AND A WARNING If you go to work, or play, on an egg then you want to rethink your breakfast options. Over twenty years of research funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute seems to indicate that people who eat eggs every day may substantially increase their risk of type 2 diabetes.

Men who ate seven or more eggs a week were 58% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who did not eat any eggs. However, the problem is potentially greater for women as they are 77% more likely to become diabetic if they ate an egg a day. The research was reported online in the magazine Diabetes Care.

A single egg contains about 200 mg of cholesterol and adds about 1.5 g of saturated fat to the diet, both of which increase diabetes risk, and the exact risk figures are:

Men
9% for less than one egg a week
9% for one egg a week
18% for two to four eggs a week
46% for five to six eggs a week
58% for seven or more eggs a week

Women
% for less than one egg a week
3% for one egg a week
19% for two to four eggs a week
18% for five to six eggs a week
77% for seven or more a week

This does not mean giving up eggs entirely, they are a beneficial food, but it might be wise to limit your intake if you have any other risk factors for diabetes. These include being overweight, not taking any exercise, and long term use of drugs such as diuretics and steroids as they can impair insulin secretion from the pancreas.

3D images of your arteries now on show!

I love science, it is amazing to see the developments and increase in our knowledge that would have seemed unimaginable a few years ago. You need healthy arteries, and up to now it hasn’t been possible to get an all round view of them to help your doctor and surgeon to get a complete picture of what is going on. Now, it is a reality according to a report this week from Massachusetts General Hospital. They have shown the first 3-D all round view of the lining of a patient’s right coronary artery and it revealed a recently placed stent and lipid deposits. No more guesswork for the surgeon as they will be able to see more clearly and check for areas of inflammation or the calcium or lipid deposits that can cause a heart attack. Mass General developed the optical frequency-domain imaging (OFDI) device to get the 3-D views inside a human artery. The previous imaging device made by the same investigators could only examine tissues one point at a time, but this one can look at more than 1,000 points of artery tissue. The surgeon uses the device to physically probe through the coronary artery and as wavelengths are emitted and reflected back, they can in seconds get the data they need to create the detailed microscopic images.

Dr. Gary Tearney, associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School sees very positive benefits for this new technology. “The wealth of information that we can now obtain will undoubtedly improve our ability to understand coronary artery disease and may allow cardiologists to diagnose and treat plaque before it leads to serious problems.” A further development is the combining of the OFDI probe with intravascular ultrasound as it is not able to penetrate deep into tissues. This was the first venture, and it is hoped to have it available to surgeons within 1-2 years.

Christmas caution

As a child I received a tin of Quality Street, a box of Black Magic, a chest of All Gold and various other chocolate treats every Christmas. After the war that kind of easy access to things we had done without was irresistible, now 60 odd years later we can see the dangers. A recent study in the USA of obese children as young as 10 showed that they had the arteries of 45-year-olds and other heart abnormalities that greatly raise their risk of heart disease. Currently about a third of American children are overweight and one-fifth are obese and although many parents think that this kind of puppy fat will melt away as they get older it is establishing eating patterns and health habits that are best avoided. Ultrasound tests on the children found that they also had more rigid arteries than was expected and this is a possible sign of plaque deposits starting to form. So if you are buying presents for children, exercise love with caution and cut down on the selection boxes and chocolate in general.

The power of potted plants

The idea that plants can help your health is not a new one. I can remember everyone in my office in the 1970′s bringing in spider plants as there was a theory that they would help to have near a computer. It’s not just a theory, as many users have claimed they are effective in removing potentially harmful chemicals-including those in paints, varnishes, dry cleaning fluids, car exhaust fumes and tobacco smoke-from the air in your home.

The top 9 Air Purifying Plants are:

Dragon tree
Ivy
Ficus
Philodendrons
Spider plants
Peace lilies
Ferns
Chrysanthemums
Palms

Till now this has been anecdotal evidence – the kind I most like as it means that real people have found real results with it – but now, Japanese scientists are developing genetically engineered plants that can absorb formaldehyde. This is a pungent chemical compound used as adhesive in building materials and furnishing and is seen as a major factor in what is known as sick-house syndrome. This is now more common as people experience headaches, dizziness and other health problems triggered by the chemicals now found in most homes.

Researchers expect the plants to absorb formaldehyde, along with carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, and they found that the level of toxic gas fell to around one-tenth of the original level. They are now trying to apply the technology to common foliage plants, but in the meantime I am going out to buy some more spider plants and a large bunch of chrysanthemums.

Blood test to detect early Alzheimer’s

There is no doubt that the fear of Alzheimer’s is a major concern for many people as they get older. A natural, and normal slight memory loss – those ‘senior moments’ – can develop into a genuine worry about the development of the disease. Part of the problem has been that there is no foolproof way of predicting who is vulnerable, no reliable test, or how to spot the disease in its very early stages. Now there may be a way to overcome this through a simple blood test.

Scientists at a California biotech company claim that the test is about 90% accurate and can detect Alzheimer’s two to six years before the onset of symptoms. It works through the signals the brain sends to the body’s immune system. These signals pick up changes in the blood proteins in the brain and certain changes in these proteins produce a pattern that’s characteristic to Alzheimer’s.

There are more than 100 different types of dementia, but Alzheimer’s is the most common and there are 417,000 people diagnosed with it in the UK – predicted to rise to over 1 million by 2025.

It will be a few years before this test is available for use by doctors and it would be offered first to those whose close relatives have the disease and who may be suffering memory loss themselves. It may be that you don’t want to know in advance if you have this disease, but an early diagnosis can give patients a chance to make changes to their diet and exercise more in an effort of slowing or staving off chances of getting the disease.

SELF HELP PROGRAMME
Despite common belief, heredity only plays a part in getting Alzheimer’s and it is more likely that environmental factors play a part – particularly the role of free radicals as they cause damage to cells. Cortisol, a stress hormone, may be a causative factor, particularly when produced over a long period of time and good nutrition and herbal treatments prevent and fight damage from free radicals and reduce stress. Toxins such as aluminium and mercury are also a problem since they can be taken into the body and remain in the tissues.

There are a number of things you can do to help lessen some of the symptoms, or the onset, of Alzheimer’s and these are just a few of the supplements that have been found to be effective in many cases:

*Ginkgo biloba for improved memory, attention and mood.

*B vitamins, particularly Folate, which is important to the nervous system and helps eliminate homocysteine from the blood.

*Vitamin E is a scavenger of free radicals and it is fat soluble so readily enters the brain where it is thought to slow cell damage.

*The Ayuredic herb Ashwagandha (Withania somniferum) is used as a brain tonic and reduces stress hormone levels

*DHEA is a hormone used to help cognitive function

*Chlorella aids in the detoxification process of heavy metals.

For more information on Alzheimer’s and dementia, visit www.alzheimers.org.uk

Music on the move may not be good for your heart

Music has great power to soothe and de-stress, and is very beneficial to those recovering from illness or surgery or just needing to relax, but a new study reported at an American Heart Association meeting may mean rethinking that. It seems that an mp3 player could potentially cause interference and affect heart devices like pacemakers or implanted defibrillators. Apparently it is not the player itself that is the problem, it’s the earphones as many makes have the magnetic substance neodymium, which helps with sound reproduction. It is this that may interfere with the devices if placed directly on your chest above heart level.

It’s not about the listening, but about where you store the headphones while carrying the mp3 player around with you. Dr.William H. Maisel, director of the Medical Device Safety Institute in Boston, USA ran extensive tests and found that the biggest concern was for defibrillator patients, because the magnet can temporarily deactivate it. However, pacemakers are not exempt from concern as they are designed to boost slow heart rhythms, and when exposed to magnets, they may deliver signals that tell the heart to beat faster, whether it needs to or not.

In the new study, the researchers attached eight types of headphones to iPods and mp3 players. These were either earbuds or clip-ons, not the larger noise-cancelling varieties favoured by business travellers to also exclude external noise. Around 23% of the participants experienced electromagnetic interferencewhen the headphones were placed on the chest – directly over the heart. However, there weren’t any problems if the headphones were 3 centimetres, or about 1.2 inches, or more above the skin’s surface.

This is not a conclusive study, but if you have a pacemaker or defibrillator it is sensible advice to not tuck the headphones into the front pocket of your jacket or let them trail over your shoulders near the heart area when they are not in use.

Purple tomatoes

I mentioned the benefits of the Mediterranean diet for children with Asthma, and one of the main ingredients of that are tomatoes. However, not content with letting mother nature get on with it, scientists have grown genetically-engineered purple tomatoes in an attempt to promote healthy food. I wasn’t aware tomatoes were not already a healthy food, but you know these scientists, they can’t let a good thing alone.

The research was done at the John Innes Centre, a biotechnology institute in Norwich – and presumably grown in their own compost. They took two genes from the snapdragon flower (Antirrhinum majus) which gave them anthocyanin, the purple pigment that makes blackberries almost black. Anthocyanins can protect against certain cancers, heart and degenerative diseases, and may delay the development of inflammation, obesity and diabetes.

I may be wrong, but I think I grew purple tomatoes in my greenhouse around ten years ago – just for the colour as it turned out because the taste wasn’t that great. They were more black than purple and if anyone remembers them do let me know the variety and I will pass it on to the John Innes Centre to save them wasting any more time – and compost.

How stress affects learning

Stress has the ability to affect so many areas of our lives.Our ability to function healthily, make effective decisions, avoid illness and infections are all dependent on how well we cope with stress.

It’s the role of cortisol, what we know as the “stress hormone” that is crucial in coping with stress. It now appears that high levels of cortisol in the body over a prolonged period of time impairs learning ability in young people, and also weakens memory as we get older.

It has already been demonstrated in 2001, by researchers at Utrecht University in Holland, that high stress levels can delay puberty, and a new study links stress and memory impairment. McGill University in the US has a well-respected Human Stress Research Laboratory and they have been running a study for the past six years to test memory on both young people and older adults. What they found was that long-term stress creates sustained high levels of cortisol, and when cortisol levels remain high with only brief periods of relaxation, the resulting chronic stress may help trigger problems with memory as well as possible blood sugar imbalance, high blood pressure, and decreased bone density and muscle tissue.

Cortisol is not a villain, when it is released in small amounts, it can sometimes briefly improve memory, and even supply a burst of energy, but it is prolonged exposure to stress that causes the real problem. Approximately 30% of elderly people start to produce too much cortisol and the first way to deal with it is to find out what is causing the major stress. Obviously there are many factors, but a key one turns out to be environmental. Those who do not have adequate social support, are far more likely to have cortisol levels than those who don’t.

Obviously there is no one, quick answer, and it can’t be solved by taking a pill. It’s about lifestyle examination, good nutrition, exercise and an enjoyable social life. Get those in balance and you are a long way forward on resolving your stress issues. If you need to find out why, you will find helpful tips and suggestions in my book ‘How To Cope Successfully With Stress’ and you will find more information about it at www.sortingstressout.com

Omega 3, dieting and depression

Studies in the US have linked a low dietary intake of omega 3 fatty acids and dieting with growing rates of depression. Interestingly, the risk of developing depression has increased at a rate similar to the rise in consumption of omega 6 fatty acids from sources like vegetable seed oils and is relative to the decrease in omega 3 fatty acids from fish, walnuts, and flaxseed. Many nutritionists feel that this is a direct result of the increased consumption of processed foods as opposed to eating ‘real’ food.

The study gave either a fish oil capsule or a sugar pill in addition to their antidepressant medication to the participants. Just two weeks into the study, there was an improved sense of well being and sleeping patterns in the omega 3 supplement group. After four weeks a substantial had a significant reduction in the symptoms of depression as compared to those taking the sugar pill. The study concluded that the fatty acid EPA may be used as an antidepressant booster, but I would go further and suggest that it can be used proactively to help anyone with a tendency to depression before they start medication. Dietary changes have already been substantiated as helping depression, and adding in adequate amounts of Omega 3 can definitely help.

Plastic Problems

Plastics are one of those wonderful technical breakthroughs that have proved a huge boon – but we are starting to see the downside, particularly for health. We now have plastic products all around us and as well as being bad for the environment, they do you no favours either. Don’t think you are affected? Do you have a DVD or computer and have any plastic kitchen appliances? Do you wear spectacles or have contact lenses, use reusable plastic containers for your water on the move or use plastic feeding bottles for your baby? Plastics are used in construction materials, paints, as well as in linings for food and drink cans. You literally cannot avoid them.

The health culprit is Bisphenol A, (BPA), an organic chemical which is the essential basic building block for high performance polymer plastics and coatings. Scientists first synthesized it in the late 1800s and just 40 years later it was found to have oestrogenic properties which we now know are linked to cancer. Scientists continued to develop ways to use BPA in making plastic containers and resins that now line most food and soft drink cans.

The problem is that BPA polymer decays over time, so traces of the synthetic oestrogen are released into canned foods, water in plastic bottles and even baby formulas and the dummies and plastic cutlery that children are often given. Research continued into the effects of BPA on animals, and the results showed reproductive and hormone-related problems. It wasn’t at this stage being tested on humans, but the use of plastics was becoming increasingly popular.

In the updated 2008 Risk Assessment Report on BPA published last June, the European Commission concluded that products made from BPA, were safe for consumers and the environment when used as intended. Worldwide, that has been the conclusion of other regulatory bodies including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

So everything is ok – except that it isn’t. In September, in the Journal of the American Medical Association they published a study which concluded that high urinary BPA concentrations might be linked to increased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and abnormal concentrations of liver enzymes. Is this relevant? Well, according to a Columbia University scientist, more than 90% of Americans have detectable levels of BPA in their urine and I don’t imagine we are that far behind in the UK.

The Journal’s editorial does not hold out any hope of things changing in the near future. They said: “One factor that may be contributing to the refusal of regulatory agencies to take action on BPA in the face of overwhelming evidence of harm from animal studies…is an aggressive disinformation campaign using techniques (‘manufactured doubt’) first developed by the lead, vinyl, and tobacco industries to challenge the reliability of findings published by independent scientists.”

That’s fairly clear, and once again the responsibility for taking care of our health and wellbeing is placed squarely back on the individual’s shoulders. A simple first step is just to eliminate the use of plastics wherever possible, particularly for children, so buy bottled water in glass containers and avoid canned food. China, glass and metal containers offer you a safer alternative for your food and drink so pack away the picnic plates and upgrade to the china ones!

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