Oh Really?!

You know I can’t resist howling at unnecessary research – and here’s another one. Bet you would never have guessed it, but older women, who sleep badly at night have a higher risk factor for falls. Apparently sleeping five or fewer hours a night significantly increased the odds of having two or more falls in any one year by 52%. Good old Katie L.Stone, Ph.D., of the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, and her colleagues have realised that people who sleep badly are more likely to be clumsy, fatigued and pay less attention than those who are razor sharp from a full 8 hours of good sleep. Who would have guessed it?

As all the subjects were over 70 and in nursing homes, I would have thought the study might have also highlighted that the main danger to the elderly from falls is through objects left on the floor or badly positioned furniture. However as Dr. Stone is a consultant for Sepracor – a pharmaceutical company who produce the blockbuster insomnia drug Lunesta, with sales of over $1 billion a year, I can see why she might want to promote an uninterrupted night’s sleep. The research was also part funded by them and five other major pharmaceutical companies.

Birth defects – How men can help

Women are encouraged in pregnancy to have a reasonably high intake of folic acid as it is known to help prevent neural tube birth defects, but now an important groundbreaking study shows that a father’s intake of the nutrient might also be just as important.

Men with a high intake of folic acid are significantly less likely to produce sperm with the chromosomal abnormalities that can lead to birth defects.

Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley analyzed sperm from 89 healthy, non-smoking men for a condition called aneuploidy, in which a sperm cell carries the wrong number of chromosomes. While in most cases, aneuploidy leads to either a failure to conceive or to miscarriage, sometimes the foetus can be carried to full term where conditions such as Down’s, Klinefelter’s or Turner’s syndrome (sexual chromosome abnormalities) occur.

Men who want to make the best contribution to having a healthy child should start making changes at least 3 months before they want to start a family as it takes that time to produce sperm. Although you can take folic acid supplements, a good place to start would be to make sure you are a non-smoker, and include plenty of folic acid rich foods such as liver, green leafy vegetables, broccoli, peas and brussel sprouts.

Never forget that drugs mean profit

I do know there are good, dedicated people out there developing medicines that will improve our lives. However, you have to remember that with the huge sums involved there is a tendency to cut corners when it comes to sales and marketing.

In fact, to outright lie, as has just been shown by a former FDA (Federal Drug Administration) official who has testified in court in Alaska that the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company knew as early as 1998 that Zyprexa increased the risk of developing diabetes, but did not issue warnings about those effects until 2007. As this drug alone brought the company $4.8 billion in 2007, and is sold in more than 80 countries worldwide, you can see why the company was so reluctant to be honest.

Now, the state of Alaska is suing them to recover the money that the state Medicaid system paid out to treat the serious health problems caused by the drug Zyprexa.

It’s a warning to consumers to think very carefully before taking any new medication that is still unproven because as soon as the drug was approved by the FDA in 1996, doctors quickly began to report that patients were experiencing severe weight gain, high blood sugar and diabetes. By 1998, the evidence from these reports and from clinical trials was overwhelming enough that Eli Lilly should have warned doctors about the side effects, and internal emails showed that company employees were aware of the risks, and that consultants had raised concerns about them.

In 2002, Japanese regulators imposed requirements that Eli Lilly warn doctors about Zyprexa’s diabetes risks, but even then the company’s U.S. policy was still to pretend the issue did not exist as this shows:

“We will NOT proactively address the diabetes concerns,” an internal company memo reads, instructing sales representatives to talk about diabetes only if doctors bring it up first and it was not until 2007 that Eli Lilly updated Zyprexa’s label to warn of severe increases to weight and blood sugar.

So if your doctor suggests a new drug to you, ask how long it’s been on the market and what the results have been. It never hurts to ask questions, and take more responsibility for your health.

Another chinese breakthrough in diabetes treatment

Nothing to do with the Olympics, but Chinese medicine is known to be a very rich source for finding new therapies for diseases and for over 500 years have used bitter melon as a treatment for diabetes. However, anecdotal evidence – that is when you have seen hundreds of years with thousands of people taking some natural remedy that is effective – is anathema to the scientific and medical community. Herbal medicine has stepped up to the challenge to ‘prove’ their remedies work and, in a collaboration with an Australian research institute, the scientists have isolated four compounds in bitter melon that may account for why this treatment is so effective.

In addition to relieving the symptoms of diabetes, bitter melon is used in traditional Chinese medicine to promote digestion, brighten the eyes and cool the body. A spokesman for the Australian Chinese Medicine Association further claims that it helps people keep slim, lose weight and regulate cholesterol levels.

The researchers identified four compounds that appeared to stimulate the activity of a chemical known as AMPK, which is known to help regulate blood sugar levels.

In people with diabetes, the body is not able to move enough sugar from the blood and into the cells where it can be burned for energy, and exercise is normally prescribed as a part of diabetes treatment. This is because it activates AMPK, which is known to help move glucose transporters to the surface of cells, where they can then grab the sugar out of the blood..

In the current study, if bitter melon was taken before a meal, it helped by more efficiently removing glucose from the blood and had the same effect on AMPK as exercise.

As type 2 diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases in the world, with an estimated 171 million people currently so diagnosed, then anything that can help stem this could be invaluable and the researchers are planning on full scale trials on people next year.

The researchers want to develop new drugs based on these compounds, but if you want to stay with the natural route – and there isn’t much bitter melon in my local supermarket – then talk it over with your doctor if you already are on diabetes medication, then either consult a traditional Chinese herbalist, or consider taking it in supplement form as several companies now market it in this way.

Brain probes could help alzheimer patients

One of the most lucrative markets these days is for anything that help people lose weight, and much of that research is in the field of appetite suppression – and there is a large pot of gold for anyone who finds one with no side effects. However, a startling by product of such research being done at Toronto Western Hospital in Ontario, Canada, has accidentally discovered a way to trigger vivid memories.

The hero of the piece is an obese man who had volunteered to help scientists as they attempt to find a part of the brain that could suppress the appetite when stimulated electrically.

When the scientists stimulated the hypothalamus, which has been associated with hunger, the man suddenly experienced a vivid memory from 30 years before. It was complete in all details, the people, the place, the colours exactly as if he were back there. While the hypothalamus has not previously been associated with memory, it borders a part of the brain that is known to influence memory and emotion so it seemed like a logical area to explore.

The researchers then implanted a device in his brain that would constantly stimulate that section of the hypothalamus. The device is similar to ones that have been implanted in other parts of the brain to control tremor in Parkinson’s disease.

After three weeks of stimulation at a low level, the man’s performance on two memory tests improved significantly and this leads researchers to hope that they can develop the technique into a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. They are now testing the device to see if it can stem the memory loss that can be such a distressing part of Alzheimer’s disease.

Retrain your brain after stroke

Apparently just walking on a treadmill every day for six months can really help stroke victims regain control of mind and body – even years after their stroke. A German study of stroke victims, half of the whom could walk without assistance with the rest used a cane, a walker, or a wheelchair, has found that using a treadmill not only improved walking speed and fitness, but appeared to rewire their brain circuits. The repetitive walking action seemed to recruit unused brain circuits to take over for those destroyed by the stroke and MRI scans showed greater activity in other parts of the brain too. Stroke patients are typically told to learn to live with their disabilities, and most rehabilitation programmes focus on short-term improvement, ending just a few months after the stroke, so that over time the patients’ improvement plateaus and fitness often wanes. But this study suggests that it’s never too late for the brain and body to recover, the researchers said, noting that patients in the study had significant improvement even nine years after a stroke.

Statins update

A new trial has shown that taking an omega-3 fish oil capsule outperforms a statin drug in reducing mortality and hospital admissions for chronic heart failure.

The results of the recent Italian study were given at the European Society of Cardiology meeting and published online by The Lancet on 31 August 2008. The patients on omega-3 supplements showed a lowered risk of mortality compared to those heart failure patients who received 10 mg/day of a potent statin drug and others given a placebo. The patients given the statin showed no benefit and in fact had the same outcome as taking the placebo.

What this study suggests is that a daily intake of omega-3 fatty acid supplement for close to four years may provide a slight reduction in mortality or hospitalizations for patients with chronic heart failure and that treatment with statins does not appear to be beneficial in patients with chronic heart failure. The American College of Cardiology has predicted that the results would soon be rapidly incorporated into their guidelines on heart failure. This is the second trial to demonstrate benefit for omega-3 in cardiovascular disease: the first trial found that omega-3 reduced the risk of major cardiovascular events following a heart attack whereas the second appears to lower the risk of mortality from heart disease.

If you are concerned about your risk for heart disease and want to take preventive measures, the suggested supplemental daily dose of omega-3 is equivalent to a gram day, taken for at least four years continuously – or seriously increase your intake of sardines and other oily fish!

Soft drinks & gout

MEN who drink five or six sweetened soft drinks a week have a 29% higher chance of developing gout (a form of arthritis), when compared with men who have less than one soft drink a month. If a daily soft drink is on the menu then the risk increases to 45%, and thirsty chaps who have two or more a day have a staggering 85% higher risk of developing gout. The study was reported in the British Medical Journal and pointed out that gout particularly tends to affect men over the age of 39 – so if you are past that birthday it might be time to switch drinks, and don’t switch to low calorie drinks as they use artificial sweeteners which are known to aggravate gout.

Warning on fruit juice and drug interactions

Sorry to be still on the fruit juice trail, but news this week had a real deja-vu quality about it for me. In the 1980′s, I was involved with a naturopath in the writing of a book called ‘The Medicine Chest’ which looked at the relationship and interaction between foods, vitamins and medicines. One of the things we flagged up then was how food can affect your medication. One example of this is the drug warfarin which interacts with vitamin K, which we get from food, and from the bacteria in our gut. Vitamin K is involved in the formation of special liver proteins, known as coagulation factors, which reduce the risk of haemorrhage or bleeding. Conversely, if you are susceptible to blood clotting, warfarin (because of how it interferes with the formation of these vitamin-K-dependent factors) may be prescribed for you. So you can see that if you increase the amount of vitamin K-rich foods then you can alter the effect that the warfarin will have in your body. Such foods include everyday items like spinach, lettuce, beef, broccoli and soy beans – good foods in themselves but to be discussed with your doctor if you are on warfarin.

Now the scientific world seems to have caught up with the research done by naturopaths over the years, which has always treated food as ‘medicine’ and been much more aware of its effects. Recent research presented at a US conference has now suggested that a chemical in grapefruit, orange, and possibly also apple juice, could stop anti-allergy drugs being absorbed properly. Grapefruit juice is already known to interfere with blood pressure drugs and indeed some medicines carry a warning that taking them alongside grapefruit juice could cause an overdose and normally your pharmacist will point this out to you. However, the latest finding shows that grapefruit juice had the reverse effect on fexofenadine, an antihistamine drug, making it less rather than more potent. Volunteers took the drug with either a single glass of grapefruit juice, or just water.

When it was taken with juice, only half the drug was absorbed, potentially reducing its effectiveness. The active ingredient of the juice, naringin, appears to block a mechanism which moves drug molecules out of the small intestine into the bloodstream and this substantially decreases the absorption of certain drugs.

The three juices mentioned have also been found to affect etoposide, a chemotherapy drug, some beta-blocker drugs used to treat high blood pressure, and cyclosporine, taken by transplant patients to prevent rejection of their new organs. Dr David Bailey of the University of Western Ontario, the study’s author, said: “This is just the tip of the iceberg – I’m sure we’ll find more and more drugs that are affected this way.”

Adult snorers – It starts in childhood

If you have ever dug your partner in the ribs, or tried every brand of ear plugs on the market, it may help to know that really they can’t prevent it. Actually, it may not help at all, but a new study has shown that adult snoring may be rooted in early snorers .

This is based on a study of more than 15,000 adults ages 25 to 54 in Northern Europe, specifically in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and Estonia. They were asked questions about their early life environment, childhood history and adult medical problems. The result was that they concluded that there are several factors in early childhood that are associated with adult snoring.

So what are the risk factors so you can identify if your child is going to disturb someone’s sleep in later life? First clue was that adult snorers were more likely to have been hospitalized for a respiratory infection before they were two, had recurrent ear infections such as glue ear or inflammation or have large tonsils that can compromise the upper airways. On the environment front, the child was more likely to have grown up in a large family, or to have been brought up as a baby in a household with a dog.

Karl Franklin, M.D., Ph.D., who carried out the research, speculated that these factors may enhance inflammatory processes and thereby alter upper airway anatomy early in life, causing an increased susceptibility for adult snoring.

Typically the habitual snorers in the study (defined as more than 3 times a week) were more likely to be male, overweight and had a higher prevalence of asthma and chronic bronchitis and were smokers. You may not be able to do anything about their childhood, but those other factors also contribute so tackling the weight, smoking and asthma certainly couldn’t hurt and might help to reduce the frequency and volume. Sadly there is no real cure for snoring, but a good website for general information on what causes it, and what can help, can be found at www.britishsnoring.co.uk

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