Given up smoking? Take up gardening!

If you know anyone who has recently given up smoking, or is thinking of doing so, then there is some great news on a really substantial benefit if they will also take up a very specific form of physical exercise. Former smokers can decrease their risk of developing lung cancer by up to an amazing 45%, and if they also reform their diet they can reduce their risk even further. These findings came out of a study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research’s Sixth Annual International Conference in Philadelphia this month.

Researchers studied 3,800 women and men using a pairing system that sorts people according to smoking status. Therefore, smokers with lung cancer would only be compared to smokers without lung cancer, with the same pairing taking place for former smokers and those who have never smoked. Researchers compared those who had not developed lung cancer based on a variety of factors including exposure to secondhand smoke, dust exposure, family cancer history, personal respiratory history, diet and exercise.

The ‘exercise’ that is credited with this decrease in risk is gardening, because apparently that is one of the few activities that people with lung cancer report doing. So the former smokers who gardened reduced their lung cancer risk by 45% percent, while current smokers who gardened reduced their risk by 33%. Hopefully they were also growing their own vegetables because eating four or more salads a week reduced their risk by 67 percent, and for those still smoking who gardened and chomped on the green stuff they reduced their risk by 71% Time to get out the garden spade, rake and dibber and get planting.

Global warming effect on health

We are used to hearing about the dire effects global warming will have on the environment and the knock on effect on the animal and plant life of our planet. Now it seems that another animal is being affected: the human one. Apparently, as temperatures across the U.S. increase because of global warming, there is a suggestion that the prevalence of kidney stones is expected to grow.

Researchersat the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas have reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that if the temperature overall increases by just 2.38°C, then such climate change is expected to create 1.61 to 2.25 million new cases of kidney stones by 2050. This is an increase of 7% from 2000 and would add $947 million to $1.33 billion in annual healthcare costs, according to the researchers’ calculations. This represents a 25% increase over the $5.3 billion spent in 2000.

They predict the increase would either be in a band covering the southern half of the U.S. or the upper Midwest. The maximum climate-related risk increases would be found in cities such as New York, Detroit, Chicago, Salt Lake City and Sacramento although they predict new cases would occur mostly in the Midwest and Northeast.

The south east of the US already has a 50% higher incidence of kidney stones than other parts of the country, due to regional differences in temperature. Rising temperatures are believed to be associated with a greater risk of kidney stones, perhaps because of increased dehydration, the researchers said, although the link hasn’t been proven. It also appears that when people relocate from areas of moderate temperature to areas with warmer climates, a rapid increase in stone risk has been observed and it would be interesting to track whether has also been the case with the substantial number of UK residents who have relocated to Spain and the South of France.

Asthma spikes after thunder

Some interesting research has just come in from the University of Georgia Atlanta, and is worth passing on if you know someone with asthma. Apparently hospital emergency room data shows that there is about a 3% increase in asthmas cases coming for treatment the day after a thunderstorm.

The data was collected over the entire 20-county Atlanta region, and was studied initially because asthma is prevalent in the region so that even such a small relative increase could have a significant public health impact in the population.

It is certainly interesting and worth keeping an eye if you are susceptible to asthma attacks, but exactly why thunderstorms might have this effect remains unclear. However, one leading hypothesis is that pollen grains break up by osmotic shock in rainwater, releasing allergens, which are then spread by the gusty winds of the storm.

Oh really?!

Sometimes I really despair about the people who hand out research grants – then again sometimes I wish they would just give me the money because in a 30 second phone call I could give them the same conclusions for a lot less money – and so could you. This week’s prize goes to Aryeh D. Stein, M.P.H., Ph.D., of Emory University, Atlanta who has discovered that the if a baby is well fed for the first few years of life, they will be smarter as they grow up. No really? His study was based on children from poor and disadvantaged Guatemalan villages and he discovered that when said children were given a proper diet with sufficient protein and adequate nutrition they were able to think better – on average it related to the equivalent of 1.6 years of schooling, Having an inadequate diet has an effect on virtually every function of the body and certainly impacts the ability to think clearly – hunger can do that to you as you would have imagined the researchers could have guessed at for themselves. What really annoyed and upset me however was they based their trial on the children being provided twice daily with either fresco, a sugar-sweetened drink that provided 330 kcal/L but no fat or protein, or the dietary supplement atole — a traditional hot drink made with vegetable protein, dry skimmed milk, and sugar — that provided 6.4 g/100 mL protein and 900 kcal/L.

How do you justify giving deprived kids a sugar loaded drink with no benefit to them just to test a theory that anyone with half a brain could have predicted the results of? The supplemented kids who got atole showed improved growth and less stunting at age three years as well as better cognitive ability. Great, but what about the rest? This is research for its own sake and how it was justified is a mystery to me but presumably it made sense to the people who paid for it; namely the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Thrasher Fund and the Nestle Foundation. The latter was set up to provide initiates and supports research in human nutrition with public health relevance in low – and lower middle-income countries, and presumably to sell more of their products from coffee to baby milk – wonder if they also make fresco?

The researchers did not report any conflicts of interest.

Primary source: Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine

Source reference: Stein AD, et al “Nutritional supplementation in early childhood, schooling, and intellectual functioning in adulthood: a prospective study in Guatemala” Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2008; 162: 612-618.

Natural baby products

As you saw in last week’s item about shampoo, products for babies and children are not always as pure as we imagine them to be. If you do want to have an entirely natural, organic range of products then specialist online company Bebeco would be a good place to look.

They produce a nappy balm that is super sensitive on baby’s skin and contains only organic sunflower oil, cocoa butter, carrot oil, coconut oil, olive oil, and local beeswax. If your baby has a real problem with dry skin and eczema, then their problem skin cream helps soothe it with all-natural ingredients of organic sunflower oil, organic calendula petals, local beeswax, and lavender essential oil. If cradle cap is the problem then try their treatment oil with organic jojoba oil, organic calendula, marshmallow root, and almond oil. It also makes a lovely massage oil for baby, and presumably Mum too. www.bebeco.co.uk for details.

Oh, and by the way, on the subject of babies, it has always been know that breastfeeding gives much greater protection against infection and helps build the immune system, but now it turns out there is another good reason to keep off the bottle where possible.

A massive survey carried out by doctors of 13,889 children and their mothers has revealed that breastfed babies are more intelligent than those weaned on formula milk.

Of those mothers, around half had attended clinics promoting breastfeeding and 43% of them fed their babies only on breast milk until the age of three months, compared with 6.4% of women at other clinics that didn’t promote breastfeeding. At the age of six and a half, children who had been exclusively breastfed scored 7.5 points higher in verbal intelligence tests and 5.9 points higher in overall IQ tests.

As a significant number of babies are actually allergic to cow’s milk, this is another reason to add to the file of pluses for breastfeeding, where that is possible for mother and baby.

Progesterone’s role in mental health

Last week I talked about testosterone and this week there is more news on the hormone front – but this time about progesterone. This is one of the key reproductive hormones in women, but it also has a host of other functions; one of the most important being it’s effect on brain chemistry and function. Dr. John Lee, the American pioneer of natural progesterone usage for osteoporosis, once was quoted as saying famously said that if anyone in his family had a brain injury, he would slather them with progesterone cream. He said that over ten years ago, and as ever he was ahead of his time, as new research has vindicated what must have seemed a completely lunatic idea.

Sadly Dr Lee was not given the respect of his peers, but I was privileged to host several seminars for him in London and he was certainly one of the most generous and compassionate of men, as the many thousands of women who benefited from his research have proved. He has been vindicated on the brain chemistry front by a fellow doctor working in an ER department and who saw a lot of saw a lot of head injuries. He was curious about why brain injuries were worse in men than in women, and got approval to do a study in which brain injury patients were given injections of progesterone when they arrived in the ER. His research showed that those who received the progesterone did significantly better than those who didn’t and later studies have also shown the same result.

Around the same time, researchers discovered that progesterone was a key component of the myelin sheath that protects or insulates the nerves-so important in fact that progesterone is made in the myelin sheath. Other research showed that progesterone stimulates the brain’s GABA receptors, those feel-good, calming neurotransmitters. Now we know, according to this review paper, that “…progesterone has multiple non- reproductive functions in the central nervous system to regulate cognition, mood, inflammation, mitochondrial function, neurogenesis and regeneration, myelination and recovery from traumatic brain injury.” Furthermore, progesterone is everywhere in the brain: “Remarkably, PRs [progesterone receptors] are broadly expressed throughout the brain and can be detected in every neural cell type.”

Those who have experienced the mental fog of hormone imbalances – otherwise known as the ‘what did I come into this room for ‘syndrome – can now point to their brain and say, “It’s not me that’s confused, it’s my brain!”

Are you allergic to wireless internet?

Today wi-fi is everywhere with many cafes and pubs offering a free connection service so it has never been easier to access the internet while on the move. However, it may not be without its health hazards. Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome (EHS) is a condition in which people are highly sensitive to electromagnetic fields and in an area such as a wireless hotspot, they experience pain or other symptoms.

Symptoms can include headache, fatigue, nausea, burning and itchy skin, and muscle aches and because there is such a variety of symptoms – and how widely their effects vary from one person to another – experts are divided about the validity of such claims.

There have been more than 30 studies to determine what link the condition has to exposure to electromagnetic fields from sources such as radar dishes, mobile phone signals and Wi-Fi hotspots but claims that there is such a thing as EHS is still viewed with scepticism by most scientists and medical professionals.

Sweden is among those countries that do take it seriously, and they even have an official association for the electronically sensitive that produces and distributes educational literature to raise awareness about the phenomenon around the world. In the UK, Mast Action is doing similar work and there are signs that acceptance is spreading, especially in Europe. Just last week, the French magazine Connexion reported that four libraries in Paris have turned off the WiFi connections they installed at the end of 2007 after staff claimed they were causing health problems.

Why is WiFi Potentially Worse than Other Radiation?

Electomagnetic fields are all around us from power lines, televisions, household electrical wiring, appliances and microwaves. Then you have the information -carrying radio waves of cell phones, cell phone towers and wireless internet connections. WiFi is a kind of radio wave that operates at either 2.4 or 5 gigahertz – slightly higher than your cell phone. Since they’re designed to allow for transmission of very large amounts of data, WiFi radio waves also emit greater amounts electromagnetic radiation.

Who is most at risk?

If you are highly sensitive to chemicals, have chronic fatigue syndrome, and have experienced mercury toxicity from dental amalgams then you are more at risk. Logically, this makes sense as your nervous system is a primary site impacted by both chemicals and electromagnetic fields. And if your nervous system has been damaged from toxic exposures you may also be more susceptible to EHS as well.

Common symptoms of EHS include:

1. skin itch/rash/flushing/burning, and/or tingling 2. confusion/poor concentration, and/or memory loss 3. fatigue and weakness 4. headache 5. chest pain and heart problems 6. Less commonly reported symptoms include: nausea panic attacks insomnia seizures ear pain/ringing in the ears feeling a vibration paralysis dizziness

Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt is convinced that there is a real problem here as he believes that it’s possible that some 50 percent of chronic infections are caused, and/or aggravated, by electromagnetic field exposure, leading to syndromes like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and other chronic pain syndromes.

Why Your Laptop May be More Harmful than Your PC

If you have ever worked on a laptop for some time, you will know that one of their drawbacks is that they get pretty hot, apparently due to the size of the casing and fans that are built into them – the new Apple Air notebook is so thin you can’t imagine how there is room in there for the hard drive, let along fan – but that’s another story. Apparently, as your laptop heats up, the circuitry board out-gasses metals such as beryllium, and as the plastic warms it out-gasses flame retardants like PBDE, all of which adds to your toxic load.

The suggestion is that you only use your laptop short-term, such as when travelling, which is no help to me as that is what I do more of than anything else. However, one practical idea is that you position a desk fan near your laptop and adjust it so that is blowing air away from where you sit. The exact opposite in fact to what we normally do. Let’s hope the summer doesn’t get too hot!

What can you do?

Well apart from investing in a fan if you have a laptop, it’s important to have as uncontaminated a diet as possible to reduce your toxic load. Try having a day a week when you allow your system to detox by drinking only water and eating only fruit, if that’s not possible then aim for once a month or as often as you can manage. Two other factors that play a vital role here are: sleeping well and getting plenty of sensible sun exposure.

Why? Because sleep and sunlight have a direct impact on your melatonin levels, and melatonin is actually one of the most potent detox agents that eliminate metals from your brain naturally.

Increasing your melatonin production can be done in three ways:

1.Sleeping in absolute darkness

2.Getting at least an hour of safe exposure to bright daylight each day

3. Reducing the electro-pollution in your bedroom by removing as many electrical devices as you can. This would include your television, electric alarm clock, cordless and wireless phones.

Don’t believe me? Well a 1997 Australian Senate Discussion Paper found that even low level (12 milliGauss) exposure to 50-60 hertz electromagnetic fields can significantly reduce your melatonin production.

Risk of baby bottles – FDA keeps quiet

Information from the USA claims that plastics used in baby bottle feeders which contain the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) may cancer and diabetes. This is obviously a major concern but what is even more worrying is that America’s health regulator – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – has been suspected of sitting on the data and may be subpoenaed to release records about the safety of the bottles and infant formula liners.

The FDA has claimed the products are safe, but critics claim this is based on just two studies, which were both funded by the American Plastics Council – and you may be forgiven for thinking they would say that wouldn’t they? Only one of the studies was ever published and peer reviewed and many independent studies into BPA have linked the chemical to cancer, diabetes and obesity. Bart Stupak, a member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce that is considering the subpoena, said: “While many scientists have raised concerns about the safety of bisphenol A, the FDA seems to have relied only upon science paid for by the plastics industry’s lobbying group.”

Cancer survival – Surprising findings

It has just been reported in the May issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology that a study done in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has shown – perhaps surprisingly – that many cancer survivors don’t follow healthy lifestyles.

Apparently they are more likely to be non-smokers (82.6% to 91.6%) than adults in the general population (79.5%) which with the worldwide smoking ban is not so surprising, but the fact that they are not more prone to exercise to recommended levels, or to have a healthy diets with the recommended ‘five a day’ of fruit and vegetables, certainly is.

In a study of more than 9,000 patients with a history of various cancers, it was seen that a staggering 80.9% to 85.2% were not following the healthy eating guidelines. This is despite evidence that shows that those patients with a history of cancer had a significantly improved quality of life if they followed the three golden rules of survival: exercise, no smoking and plenty of fruit and vegetables. In fact, only about one in 20 of all the patients were following all three recommendations, so if you have a cancer survivor in your family make it a point to see they understand how important a healthy diet is to live a longer, and better lifespan.

Frog skin and lizard spit?

No it’s not an attempt to take you into Shakespearean realms with the Witches in Macbeth, but what is actually being touted as the latest treatment for diabetes. There is a growth market in diabetes because it has reached epidemic proportions, and the buzz word in all product areas at the moment is ‘natural’ but in this instance, happily for the frogs, the scientists have yet again identified an active natural ingredient and then set to and produced a synthetic version. No problem for that on the frog front, but this is exactly what happened with white willow bark whose active ingredient is salicylic acid and together with all its other component parts helps cure headaches. Science isolated the salicylic acid and gave us aspirin, but without the natural buffering ingredients that ensured that it didn’t upset the stomach.

So what’s so special about frog skin? Researchers found that a substance, called pseudin 2, secreted in the skin of the South American shrinking frog stimulates the release of insulin in the body. From there, they created a pseudo-pseudin that they claim has the same benefits and no side effects. The researchers also claim that the synthetic version of pseudin is actually better than the natural version.  Well that’s what they said about aspirin, and if this goes on that poor shrinking frog is going to shrink out of existence as they keep using it for research.

Type 2 diabetes can be handled through managing diet and lifestyle, unless you really want to kiss a frog or deprive it of its skin?

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