Depression in men could be reduced by 50%

There have been several studies linking folic acid (folate) intake specifically, and all the B vitamin group generally, to improved mood. Folate is a water-soluble B vitamin that occurs naturally in food and studies done by scientists at the University of York and Hull York Medical School reported that low levels of it in the body were linked to increased depression overall, but now a new study has made a specific link to depression in men

Researchers from the International Medical Centre of Japan, and the National Institute of Health and Nutrition, undertook a study involving 500 Japanese subjects. Of these, 36% of the men and 37% of the women were found to have symptoms of depression on starting the study. What they found was that the men with the highest average intake (235 micrograms per 100 kcal) of folate were 50% less likely to have depressive symptoms than men with the lowest average intake (119 micrograms per 100 kcal). They also found that increased levels of folic acid did not mean less depression in the women subjects, only in the men.

While it is clear that increased folate intake will help men, either from a dietary supplement or food such as dark leafy greens like spinach, citrus fruit and dried beans and peas, and because of it’s importance in pregnancy, you will find many foods such as breakfast cereals fortified with added folic acid, so check the labels.

It is important for both men and women’s health that there is a good supply of the entire B-complex vitamins in the diet, not just folic acid alone as they work together synergistically to provide the best ‘mood’ protection. If your diet contains dairy, whole grains, omega 3 and 6 oils and lean meats then you are probably getting a good variety. If in doubt, take a good B complex supplement from a reputable source.

Post festive fasting could it help your heart

With all the food we eat over the festive period, and much of it not too healthy, it may be time to try an ancient method of health care – fasting. New research reported in the American Heart Association™ Scientific Sessions in November 2007 seems to indicate that people who skip meals once a month are 40%less likely to have clogged arteries as those who do not fast on a regular basis.

This data was collected as a result of work done in Utah, where about 70 percent of the population are Mormons, who fast during the first Sunday of each month as part of their religious observance. The study was undertaken after researchers discovered that only 61% of Mormons had heart disease compared with 66% of non-Mormons. After surveying 515 people about Mormon’s typical religious practices, which included a weekly day of rest, not drinking alcohol or smoking, donating time and money to charity, avoiding tea and coffee, and monthly fasting, only fasting made a significant difference in heart risk.

Only 59 percent of those who skipped meals regularly were diagnosed with heart disease, compared with 67 percent of non- fasters. The researchers suggested that periodic fasting forces your body to burn fat and also gives it a break from making insulin to metabolise sugar. Fasting for one day a month may therefore help to re-sensitise insulin-producing cells and make them work better.

However, fasting does not work for everyone, and in fact can be counterproductive for some. If your diet consists of fast food, junk food and other processed items that are high in sugar and grains, then not eating those foods for a period will likely cause improvements to your health. This is because this type of diet is causing surges in your insulin and levels, and even giving your body a break from this cycle temporarily will be beneficial.

This is the principle that calorie restricted diets work on, because reducing calories definitely helps to slow down aging, reduce chronic diseases and even extend your lifespan. When you restrict your calories, as you do during fasting, it reduces your metabolic rate and oxidative stress, lowers your insulin levels and improves insulin sensitivity.

BUT, if you are already eating healthy foods designed for your nutritional type, then you will probably not experience benefits, and may even have some problems, such as hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar). Fasting seems to work best for those who thrive on a high-carbohydrate diet such as vegetarians and those who nutritionally thrive best with a high-protein diet don’t do nearly as well on a fasting regime.

Is there a middle way? Well, yes there is now increasing evidence that you’re actually better off on the ‘little and often’ diet plan where you nibble and graze small amounts frequently throughout the day. Eating small amounts of healthy foods at regular, frequent, intervals has been found to lower cholesterol, reduce appetite, and cause the least amount of disturbance to your body’s natural balance.

Microsoft develop camera to help with memory loss

Microsoft is collaborating with a number of UK and worldwide studies in developing the use of an automatic wearable camera that takes photos continuously through the day. Researchers claim it can transform the life of patients with memory loss, and they are developing the ‘SenseCam’ camera at Microsft’s Cambridge laboratory.

SenseCam is a wearable digital camera that is designed to take photographs passively, without user intervention, while it is being worn. Unlike a regular digital camera or a cameraphone, SenseCam does not have a viewfinder or a display that can be used to frame photos. Instead, it is fitted with a wide-angle (fish-eye) lens that maximizes its field-of-view which ensures that nearly everything in the wearer’s view is captured by the camera.

It was in 2005 that Microsoft first started a trial with a 63-year -old patient from the Memory Clinic and Memory Aids Clinic at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge. This patient had amnesia resulting from a brain infection and typically would forget everything about an event within five days or less of it happening.

The patient was given a SenseCam and asked to wear it whenever the sort of event that she would like to remember was happening. After wearing SenseCam for the duration of such an event, she would spend around one hour reviewing the images every two days, for a two-week period. During the course of this period of assisted recall using SenseCam, her memory for the event steadily increased, and after two weeks she could recall around 80 percent of the event in question. What is perhaps more remarkable is that following the two-week period of aided recall, Mrs. B appears to have a lasting ability to recall the event even without reviewing the images.

Following the success of this first trial and the excitement it generated in both the research and clinical rehabilitation communities, Microsoft initiated a number of additional trials and are currently working with over half-a-dozen patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, and while these trials are ongoing the results to date are promising.

The programme has been funded with grants worth £220,000 for academics to investigate its health and medical applications. Among others, the money is going to the University of Exeter for a study of memory in Transient Epileptic Amnesia and to the Medical Research Council in Cambridge and the University of Bangor, Wales to study facilitated recollection in patients with dementia. Overseas, the University of Toronto and Columbia Medical School are collaborating on a trial with Sensecam to see if it could enhance quality of life in Alzheimer’s patients and the Centre for Mental Health and Brain Injury in Alberta, Canada is studying if it could help with Memory recovery in brain injury patients.

Is your surgeon made of steel?

No, I am not talking about his personality. Surgeons are renowned for being a bit aloof but the ultimate model made an appearance performing radical tonsillectomies on 27 patients with squamous- cell carcinomas of the tonsil. This new model is not tall dark and handsome, but is a four armed robot that was used in a pilot study that has been reported in the December issue of Archives of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery.

This computerised surgeon is not likely to turn up in your operating theatre any day soon, and is in fact operated from a computer console by a real surgeon, but is it a sign of things to come? Reporting on the operations, Dr Weinstein who undertook the trial said that using robots had definite advantages and is looking for funding to conduct a much larger trial. Let’s face it robots can’t have a worse bedside manner than some surgeons I have encountered.

Antiseptic Health Wipes – Proof Positive?

You know that theory that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction? It certainly seems to apply to any new product development as the report in the British Medical Journal of 1 December seems to prove. Because there is such a prevalence now of bugs and viruses, the incidence of using antiseptic hand cleansing products has become much more widespread in public buildings and in our homes. However these various products from hand wipes to hand washing solutions usually contain alcohol in one form or another and there is now concern that they could be a problem to alcoholics.

Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust did a study after investigating a case report on a patient known to have a history of alcohol dependence who displayed withdrawal symptoms even though he had not consumed alcohol for 24 hours. The patient arrived at the hospital and during admission was found collapsed, having vomited in the bathroom. He was holding an empty 500 ml bottle of alcohol hand rub with another such bottle next to him. His blood ethanol concentration at the time of collapse was nine times over the legal British driving limit and a potentially fatal concentration

The Trust then looked at hospital admissions related to children and adults exposed to alcohol hand wipes and it was found that during the 18 month period after alcohol hand wipes and hand rubs became widespread in use that 66% of the admissions were thought to result from intentional abuse. These cases all occurred within hospitals or nursing homes where their use ought to be strictly monitored, though it appears that in a normal adult as little as 360 ml of an alcohol hand rub containing 80% ethanol might potentially lead to life-threatening complications.

Any ill effects generally occur within one to two hours after ingestion and usually have symptoms of gastric pain and vomiting. More serious effects involve central nervous system depression, leading to aspiration and respiratory arrest. According to the toxicologists who wrote the report, the more serious effects are seen in those who ingest more than 500 ml of hand rub, and this is most likely to occur in confused patients and alcohol abusers seeking the desired effect.

Diabetes and the Younger Generation

First the bad news: the onset of type 2 diabetes appears to be rapidly increasing for people in their twenties. This is an age group that most doctors traditionally wouldn’t think about diagnosing for diabetes, but the evidence shows that it is now a serious factor.

Diabetes Care magazine this week ran a report from the University of Michigan study that showed there had been a 40 per cent increase in hospitalisations related to diabetes among those aged 20 to 29. Joyce Lee, M.D. and her colleagues studied data from the period 1993 to the end of 2004 and one of the conclusions they reached was that this huge increase probably was reflecting the physiological connection between obesity and type 2 diabetes. Throughout the Western world, and particularly in the USA and UK, there has been an unprecedented rise in childhood obesity. This is due to the change in diet, which has many youngsters consuming far more empty calories from snacks such as crisps and carbonated soft drinks, and this has unfortunately been mirrored by a corresponding decrease in physical exercise and activity.

Interestingly the rate of increase of childhood diabetes has remained fairly stable, leading to the possible conclusion that damage done in childhood from diet takes some time to take effect, and that most people on leaving school undertake far less exercise than they did when younger.

Now the good news: do you know anyone under the age of 30 without a mobile phone? Texting is as automatic as breathing to most young people, so some health practices are taking advantage of this to track individuals with acute and chronic medical conditions such as asthma and diabetes. This group may not respond well to conventional follow up methods, but they always check their messages so this one way to ensure that the message about medication and specific health practices is getting through. For example, in one study in Scotland, young diabetics could send a text message to their doctor to check how to modify their insulin treatment after eating certain foods, or drinking alcohol at a party.

Mobile phones and Autism Link

Do you know a child who doesn’t have, or want, their own mobile phone? There are good practical reasons for giving children a way of being in touch when away from home, but there is now new research that links mobile phone use and autism. Rates of autism, a disabling neurodevelopmental disorder, have increased nearly 60-fold since the late 1970s, with the most significant increases occurring in the past decade. The cause of autism is unknown, although theories include such potential causes as:

* Genetic predisposition

* Inability to clear heavy metals

* Increased vulnerability to oxidative stress

* Environmental exposures including mercury preservatives in vaccines

* Trans-generational accumulation of toxic heavy metals

Now a groundbreaking new theory has been suggested by a study published in the Journal of the Australasian College of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine. They believe that it is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from cell phones, cell towers, Wi-Fi devices and other similar wireless technologies that are an accelerating factor in autism.

The study involved over five years of research on children with autism and it found that EMR negatively affects cell membranes, and allows heavy metal toxins, which are associated with autism, to build up in the body. The researchers pointed out that autism rates have increased concurrently along with the proliferation of cell phones and wireless use. EMR from wireless devices (such as laptops, bluetooth etc) works in conjunction with environmental and genetic factors to cause autism.

EMR, the researchers say, could impact autism by facilitating early onset of symptoms or by trapping heavy metals inside of nerve cells, which could accelerate the onset of symptoms of heavy metal toxicity and hinder therapeutic clearance of the toxins.

What’s the solution? At present there doesn’t seem to be one. Research on the potential health effects from mobile phone technology is evaluated periodically by the Government’s Health Protection Agency s Radiation Protection Division after the Stewart Report in 2000 recommended further research as part of an overall precautionary approach to the use of mobile phone technology. The independently managed Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR) programme, jointly funded by Government and industry, was set up in 2001 in response to the Stewart Report recommendations. It is currently supporting a number of studies into the possible health effects but there is no definitive answer as yet. My suggestion? Seriously limit mobile phone use – especially for children – and my feeling is that being available 24/7 by phone is hugely stressful and is a health hazard in itself so switch it off unless it is an essential call! My mobile is off until I need to check my messages or call ahead about a delayed appointment.

In fact my mobile message is very specific it says ‘I do not leave this mobile switched on so do not leave a message unless you are prepared for it not to be picked for several days. Leave a message on my home phone instead’. Worth a try?

Science Fiction Comes to Life

In my teens I was a great science fiction fan, particularly the ‘golden age’ of the 1930′s to the 1950′s. I have watched bemused as so much they wrote about has come true. The idea of a meal in a box ready in minutes in a small microwave was laughable in the 1950′s and the replacing of currency with plastic was another source of entertainment. These guys were clearly highly creative, and mad as hatters. However, one of the final areas of their predictions is now in sight. Personalised medicine, where you get treatment specifically tailored to your unique genetic profile, has been one of the main dreams of the gene revolution and it was hoped that, but putting it into practice is proving tough. The decoding of the human genome in 2000 sparked hopes that a new era of tailored medicine was just around the corner and although small advances have been made it is now looking like another 20 years before it is a true reality. In fact, uncovering the genetic differences that determine how a person responds to a drug, and developing tests, or biomarkers, for those differences, is proving more challenging than initially hoped. At the Reuters Health Summit in New York last week, major drug manufacturers met to discuss this new field of Pharmacogenetics and although they could not promise widespread innovation in the short term they are optimistic that there will be very specific examples available that are currently being developed.

We are all aware of the ‘hit and miss’ prescribing that goes on – particularly for complex diseases like depression – where an individual’s reaction to the prescribed drugs are so variable and that frequently many different prescriptions have to be tried before finding the combination, or single drug, that makes the difference.

It will make future prescribing infinitely more accurate, with no risk of adverse drug reactions, so although it is not here yet, it really is on the way.

Alternative Screening for Colon Cancer

A colonoscopy is the normal method of screening for colon cancer, but it is invasive and unpleasant.

Now there is news of an alternative method called computed tomographic colonography (CTC) which has been developed over the past few years. This method is also known as “virtual colonoscopy” because it’s minimally invasive, requiring a catheter to be inserted into the rectum to fill the colon with air, followed by non-invasive optical scan. It may be less invasive, but is it as effective in detecting colon cancer? A study in the New England Journal of Medicine reported this month on US researchers at the University of Wisconsin Medical School who set out to find the answer. They compared similar numbers of patients who had undertaken one or other of the screening methods and found that with traditional colonoscopy screening 123 advanced tumours were found, compared to 121 in the CTC group which is not a significant difference statistically, but vital to the two people whose tumours were detected.

There is a drawback to traditional screening in that perforating the colon during the procedure is a risk, and in fact this occurred on 7 occasions during the study while it is obviously not a risk with CTC.

Another difference is that traditional colonoscopy routinely removes all polyps that are detected, and in fact 2,434 were removed as against only 561 for those having CTC screening. This huge difference is not about whether the polyps are detected, but arose from the fact that patients were given the option of leaving very small polyps in place or undergoing an additional procedure to remove them. It’s certainly true that very small polyps may never become a problem, but with a traditional colonoscopy they are automatically removed before they can develop further. However, in the Wisconsin study 8% of the patients underwent a follow-up colonscopy after undergoing CTC.

On balance the researchers concluded that traditional colonoscopy was still the safest and most effective screening treatment at the moment.

Preventing Childhood Allergies

As any parent will tell you, the rise of allergies amongst children is almost epidemic with asthma being a particular concern. To avoid lengthy testing and treatment prevention has got to be the better option.

There is now evidence from a Spanish study on children from birth to 6 years of age that if their diet has over 40 grams of vegetables daily (about a third of a cup) then they were less likely to suffer with symptoms of childhood asthma.

The study showed that some vegetables were more effective than others and these included cucumber, tomato, aubergine, green beans and courgettes. If you want to really protect children from inherited childhood allergies, the study done in Menorca also showed that if the same children were given small, regular, helpings of omega-3 fish such as mackerel, tuna, herring, sardines or salmon then they were less likely to from genetically inherited childhood allergies.

How do they do that? These vegetables and the oily fish contain high levels of antioxidants and are also anti-inflammatory. This means that they produce a protective and healing effect on the bronchial passageways thus offering some protection from allergies and asthma.

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