Mobile phones, skin rashes and tumours

I know I have flagged up plenty of potential problems with the over use of mobile phones, but there are two new developments here. First, the minor one, and according to the British Association of Dermatologists, mobile phones are causing an outbreak of facial rashes, particularly to the cheek and ear where you normally hold the phone. It’s due to the nickel coating on the casing and buttons and is the result of an allergy to the nickel.

You may have already been aware of this effect, particularly if you go in for cheaper and more ‘fun’ jewellery, because nickel is the most common contact allergy in Britain, affecting 30% of the population.

Now it won’t damage your health, but a skin rash can be very irritating and upsetting so if you have noticed this yourself then just hang up your mobile for a few days and see if the rash goes away. A natural remedy is to try bathing the irritation in a mixture of one part vinegar to 15 parts water, and dab it on the affected area. It’s something my mother used on me as a child for sunburn, and it seems to help clear up many skin irritations.

Now for the more serious problem and it comes from a report in the latest issue of the American Journal of Epidemilogy. An Israeli study of more than 500 people has revealed that you could be 50% more likely to develop a tumour in your salivary gland if you constantly use your mobile phone. They studied people who had developed this condition and then compared their mobile phone habits with those of a group of 1,300 healthy people.

The Doctor in charge of the study said that it was ‘preliminary’, but he also said that until more evidence became available, a “precautionary” approach was best, particularly when it comes to children’s use of mobile phones. I couldn’t agree more, and as so many people now spend their working day constantly on their mobile, without using a land line at all, it’s worth considering having at least one ‘mobile-free’ day a week. Sunday might be good, after all it wasn’t called a ‘day of rest’ for nothing.

Can thinking make you fat?

As someone who spends at least 80% of her waking hours with the brain on full alert, I found this news item a bit worrying. Apparently a research team has demonstrated that intellectual work can lead to a substantial increase in appetite and, therefore, calorie intake. After a hard day of mental work, you can be just as physically exhausted as if you had spent the day doing physical work – just ask my cats if you don’t believe me.

A small study of 14 students were given three tasks: relaxing in a sitting position, reading and summarizing a text, and completing a series of memory, attention, and vigilance tests on the computer. Although the intellectual work required only three calories more than the rest period, the students consumed 203 more calories after summarizing a text and 253 more calories after the computer tests than they did after relaxing.

Blood samples taken before, during, and after each session revealed that intellectual work caused bigger fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels, effectively destabilising the levels of insulin and glucose. This in turn stimulates the appetite, apparently in response to a need to restore the body’s energy balance, though why it always has to be with chocolate biscuits (or is that just me?) science has yet to explain.

Now, if you do a lot of mentally challenging tasks it’s a good idea to eat plenty of the foods that are known to nourish your brain. From what we know about brain-boosting foods, the ideal post-thinking snack would seem to be a chicken and spinach omelette with a cup of green tea – but I don’t see many students opting for that!

Testicle stem cell development

Don’t all rush off chaps, with your eyes watering, this is actually a potentially huge medical breakthrough. German researchers believe this may provide an alternative way to generate powerful stem cells that could be used to repair or replace damaged tissue in male patients with hard-to-treat diseases. Currently, scientists create stem cells by extracting them from embryos or genetically manipulating adult cells to enable them to become many other cell types.

Thomas Skutella, Director of the Centre for Regenerative Biology and Medicine, in Tuebingen, Germany, was able to isolate stem cells from the testicles of adult men and turn them into bone, muscle, neural and other kinds of cells. The advance was reported in the journal Nature, who also said that the use of testicle cells also represents a new way to take biopsies from people with Parkinson’s – or any kind of inherited disease- and study the cells to learn how they function and respond to drugs. One advantage of Skutella’s method is that if a man’s own cells were used to make a therapy, they could be used to treat him without fear that his body would reject the cells.

Further research is continuing, and while at the moment they have only succeeded in making the stem cells when they had an entire testicle to use for extracting cells, they are confident that improvements in the process would enable it to work using just a small bit of testicular tissue taken in a biopsy. Currently they are obtaining the necessary tissue from organ donors and men being treated for infertility or had their testicles removed in the course of surgery to change or to treat prostate cancer.

Reflux drugs can increase hip fracture risk

If you suffer from stomach upsets and are taking reflux drugs on a regular basis, you might want to rethink your options. A very large Canadian study has confirmed that taking such drugs for several years will enormously increase your chances of having a hip fracture – by nearly five times – and can lead directly to osteoporosis.

Why are these drugs having such an effect? The problem is that you need acid to absorb calcium and if you reduce the amount of available stomach acid after you’ve eaten by taking reflux drugs then the calcium you can’t absorb, but need, has to be taken directly out of your bones. The study shows that over just a few years this can more than double your risk of fracture, and the odds keep climbing steeply the longer you take them. Some patients have been taking them for many, many years and ironically one of the results of a lack of calcium is acid reflux – for which the drugs were prescribed in the first place.

Calcium is essential for many functions in the body, one of which is to increase gut mobility, and that’s important because medical researchers say that reflux is primarily a motor disorder. This means that if you aren’t absorbing much calcium due to the reflux drugs you’re taking, and don’t have calcium to spare, you’re back to reflux and that means you take more of the drug, or a stronger dose. That may be fine for the drug company, but it isn’t doing much for your bones. Even after you stop the drugs, it may be years before your body can restore a proper calcium balance so that your reflux vanishes on its own.

There are natural alternative treatments for reflux such as Apple Cider Vinegar, having a diet with plenty of greens and vegetables, and supplements such as spirulina and calcium and for me, a cup of peppermint tea after a meal can settle the stomach, rather than the more usual coffee, which is in itself acid.

What is probably even more important is to get your ‘body clock’ working properly. One of the most common symptoms of jet lag is reflux, because flying half-way around the world upsets your biological clock, just as staying up until the early hours and ‘fooling’ your body with artificial electric light does.

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS:

** Have a fixed time for going to bed as often as you can and is possible for you.

** Make sure your bedroom is totally dark, with no lights left on or even natural moonlight through the curtains.

** If you get up during the night to go to the bathroom, have a low watt red light bulb to show you the way.

** Try to increase your period of total darkness to an ideal nine or ten hours a night.

** A nightcap is often favoured before bed, but it won’t help you sleep, or your acid reflux, so drink earlier in the day, and if you smoke that will also increase your reflux symptoms so reduce or stop that habit if you can.

Personal portable superbug protection

There have been so many stories in the press about ‘superbugs’ and the danger of infection in hospitals, or anywhere you are away from home and staying in a public environment. I am a great believer in being proactive, and I have a close friend who has been in hospital 6 times over the last 5 years, and got infected each time – so I was happy to pass on to him some news that came my way this week.

If you are concerned for yourself, or a friend or relative in hospital, or care home, then you could buy them something that will be a lot more welcome than flowers or fruit. Just launched is a product called PatientPak which the manufacturers claim will help protect people when they visit hospital as it is proven to kill pathogens, including MRSA, and is effective within 10 seconds. It is also proven to kill a wide spectrum of viruses and bacteria including E Coli, Norovirus, Campylobacter, Salmonella, Listeria and Avian Flu (H5N1), and can also be used in the home or when travelling.

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, has proposed that the NHS constitution gives patients responsibilities as well as rights, and that means you are going to be responsible for high standards of personal hygiene in order to avoid bringing infections on to a hospital ward – and also presumably to discourage you from suing them if you do fall ill.

The PatientPak consists of a number of items formulated and developed by medical doctors, which has only been available so far in hospitals. They work by stopping harmful bacteria building up resistance to the active ingredients and this is what you get in the Pak:

** Two types of antimicrobial wipes: one for surfaces for cleaning surfaces and killing germs on door handles, bed frames, toilet seats, food tables, work surfaces and taps and a gentler one for your face and body.

** An antimicrobial sanitising hand spray to use before handling food, after using the toilet and after any physical contact with others, together with a hair and body wash.

** A fabric spray that kills germs that can survive on fabric and can be used on clothes, curtains or bed linen.

** A pH-neutral cleansing soap and nail brush which are essential for removing spores and other pathogens, including C difficile. Your mother was right about always thoroughly washing your hands, it’s the first line of defence against germs.

** Finally, they include a toothbrush plus toothpaste, lip balm and pen.

The pack is a one-off item, you use it and dispose of the contents at the end of your hospital visit to minimize the transfer of bugs when you get back home. All that, plus a leaflet full of advice on good hygiene practice and how you can protect yourself from superbugs. There’s also a polite notice that patients can place next to their hospital bed, which requests that people check that their hands are clean before treatment is given – and includes your visitors who pick over the fruit they have brought you and then leave you with their germs! This note was apparently suggested by the leading charity, MRSA Action UK, to help if you are too shy, embarrassed, or ill, to ask people to wash their hands before approaching you.

The pack retails at £15.99, which sounds like a bargain to avoid all those bugs, and you can buy it in main branches of Boots, Holland & Barret and the pharmacies in major supermarkets. If you can’t find it then you can buy online from www.patientpak.com.

Avoiding cot death

The tragedy of cot death (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) is horrendous for any family, and anything that might help avert this tragedy is worth passing on. The best-accepted advice, and most effective, is that of always placing infants to sleep on their backs, but now new research offers another method to back that up.

There is a new study by researchers in Northern California, based on data collected from nearly 500 mothers that seems to indicate that the use of a fan in a baby’s room may reduce the likelihood of sudden death by 72%. HOWEVER, this data suggests that the protective effect applies mostly to babies in poor sleeping environments, that is those who sleep on their stomachs or in overheated rooms.

The benefit of using a fan at night became apparent when the researchers tracked those families where there seemed to be a higher risk of cot death. The figures are certainly impressive:

** 94% reduction in risk for babies who slept in rooms that exceeded 70 degrees F (21 degrees C)

** 85% reduction in risk for babies in rooms with closed windows

** 86% reduction among babies placed on their sides or stomach to sleep

** 78% reduction among those who did not use a pacifier or dummy (the handle is believed to help maintain babies’ breathing space under a blanket or in soft bedding).

It is already known that there is a link between cot death and rebreathing exhaled air, as can happen if the baby’s nose is under the covers or restricted by sleeping on their stomach. This means they are taking in an increased amount of carbon dioxide and that is dangerous because it can hurt the baby’s ability to arouse during sleep. If you decrease the chance of rebreathing air, then the cot death risk reduced, and using a fan is one way to help that. Sadly, the definitive cause of cot death is still largely a mystery. To date, perhaps the best evidence of its cause comes from a 2006 study led by researchers at the Children’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts who examined the brain tissue of babies who died from cot death and those who died from other causes. Researchers found that the cot death babies often have a brain weakness in a region of the brain that controls breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. The abnormality appears to weaken the responsiveness of certain functions, including arousal from sleep when the body fails to get enough oxygen. Researchers think the defect may be genetic in origin, although there are no biological tests yet to determine risk.

Stronger bones for men

Over the years of working with natural progesterone for osteoporosis, I was often asked about whether men also suffered from this painful bone condition – and the answer is a resounding yes. Because you don’t get any early warning symptoms with osteoporosis, it is vital for men to keep track of their health. I talked with a man in his 30′s who played rugby every Saturday and kept getting more frequent bone breaks than average. When he had a bone scan, he had advanced osteoporosis and all the fractures had been his ‘early warning’ signs.

Certainly men do benefit from taking natural progesterone for osteoporosis, but there now seems to be another factor, certainly in older men. Getting plenty of vitamin C from foods and supplements seems to boost bone strength in the over 70′s, according to research at Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA. They found that men whose had the highest intake of vitamin C intake also had the least bone loss in the hip. On an average dose of 314mg those didn’t lose bone density in the hip- even when their calcium intake was low – but men who got the least vitamin C of only 106 mg per day lost 5.6 percent of their bone over the four years.

Sadly the same effects were not seen in the women in the study, but it’s a good reason for getting at least 500mg of C a day to help protect bone health.

Is chocolate good for your heart?

Well, knowing me as you do you can bet the answer is yes – in fact I haven’t found anything it isn’t good for – though to be honest I haven’t looked very hard! You can imagine my delight when some wonderful Italian researchers recently calculated how much chocolate we need daily to protect against heart disease. Sadly, it’s not much – only 6.7 grams – about the amount you would get from eating two or three small squares of dark chocolate per week = as if that were possible! However, as part of one of the largest health studies ever conducted in Europe, they checked participants’ levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker for chronic inflammation in the body that indicates an increased risk of heart disease. Then they related CRP levels to chocolate intake and found that participants who ate moderate amounts of dark chocolate regularly had significantly lower levels of CRP. Sadly, I feel must also point out that if you do eat more than the equivalent of 6.7 grams of chocolate per day, the beneficial effects on CRP levels seem to disappear. That’s a plus for those self-disciplined souls who can open a bar of chocolate and not consume it all, and a blow for those who can’t!

Heart disease and depression link

Being diagnosed with coronary heart disease can be frightening and stressful, however optimistic the prognosis. It can be a time to revaluate lifestyle, relationships and work and can place enormous pressure on the individual and their family, affecting all aspects of life – including mental health. Now, the American Heart Association has recommended that coronary patients should also be screened early and regularly for depression. They have spoken out because of the growing body of evidence that shows a link between depression in cardiac patients and a poorer long-term outlook.

Many studies have now shown that major depression is associated with worse prognosis in patients with coronary disease. What has also now been confirmed is that more severe depression is associated with the patient having earlier and more severe cardiac events.

In many cases, depression can often be treated with exercise, counselling, good nutrition and cognitive-behavioural therapy. American Psychiatric Association suggests that two questions can identify patients who may need further follow up and treatment. The doctor should ask: ‘Over the past two weeks, how often have you been bothered by the following two symptoms?

1. Little interest or pleasure in doing things

2. Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless

If the answer to either question is yes, they have been bothered by those symptoms then the follow up questions are: ‘how often have you been bothered in the past two weeks by:

1. Trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or sleeping too much

2. Feeling tired or having little energy

3. Poor appetite or overeating

4. Feeling bad about yourself, that you are a failure, or that you have let yourself or your family down

5. Trouble concentrating on things such as reading the newspaper or watching television

6. Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed or being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual

7. Thinking that you would be better off dead or that you want to hurt yourself in some way.

This is not a definitive way to define depression, but it is a useful tool to evaluate how someone is coping after having a coronary and can help you decide whether or not help is needed.

Often used strategies for patients who have coronary disease and depression are antidepressant drugs, cognitive behavioural therapy, and physical activity, such as aerobic exercise. Diet can also play a part, and most nutritionists would recommend a diet that excluded sugar, caffeine and alcohol.

Natural options for childhood eczema

Eczema is a distressing condition, for the child and for the parents as it is a constant, visible, reminder of something that’s wrong in the body. Eczema is one of the first signs of allergy during the early days of life and is said to be due to delayed development of the immune system. It can affect 10-20% of all infants, and steroid treatment is often suggested. However, there are many harmful side effects, both short and long-term, associated with steroids and these are just a few of them:

** Corticosteroids mimic hormones produced by the adrenal glands and they interfere with the metabolic balance. This results in knock-on effects throughout the body and the damage is cumulative.

** They are anti-inflammatory and can suppress many symptoms, including pain and eczema. However, they also affect our fight-or-flight response and thus alter our blood flow. This can be positive in the right circumstances, but on a long term basis redirecting blood away from digestion towards the heart, lungs, and limbs means blood is less available to absorb nutrients. A lack of nutrition leads to conditions like osteoporosis developing.

** Nearly all the diseases and conditions on the list of steroid side effects can be explained by the disruption of the body’s hormone system.

** Others, such as liver damage, are the result of the excess stress placed on the organ as it attempts to detoxify the harmful substance from the body.

It is no wonder that so many parents turn to alternative medicine. But how effective is it?

Complementary Therapies in Medicine is a peer-reviewed journal that recently reported a German study showing that homeopathy has better results than steroids for eczema. The study’s focus was on patients’ and doctors’ perceptions of improvement, both in terms of the eczema itself and quality of life over a one year period. The participants were patients aged 1-16 year-olds with eczema, and those that were treated with homeopathy had equal or better results than those treated with corticosteroids. Further, that those children whose conditions were worse at the beginning of the study had greater degrees of improvement with the homeopathic treatment.

Questionnaires were filled out by doctors and their patients, or when necessary, by their parents at the beginning of the study, at six months, and again at 12 months. The study focused on subjective results, not clinical tests, because although clinical tests may show differences in children with eczema and asthma in a biomarker like immunoglobulin E, it doesn’t have any bearing on the patient’s well-being.

Homoeopathy is a standard practice among doctors in both Germany and France, and often included in their medical training. Two groups of patients were studied, one who only had homeopathic treatment and the other who only received conventional medical treatment. The children treated with homeopathy started with worse symptoms than the control group and both groups showed significant improvements over 12 months. Here are the percentages of improvement reported by patients and their doctors after 12 months, and interesting the patients rated their improvement at lower levels than their doctors did.

Self Assessment Improvement:

* Homeopathy, 27% * Conventional, 38%

Doctor’s Assessment of Improvement:

* Homeopathy, 91% * Conventional, 75%

The study also bore out previous research which indicated that people with a higher educational level are more likely to opt for alternative treatments such as homeopathy. 64% of the homeopathic parents’ had almost double to the level of education than the parents who opted for the conventional medical option.

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