Hypertension and kidney disease beaten by a pea?

If you have high blood pressure there are several ways to reduce it naturally through exercise and diet. Now it seems you can also help by adding garden peas to the menu as recently reported by the American Chemical Society.

Researchers in Canada found that proteins found in yellow garden peas show promise as a way of fighting high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease. Peas are an amazing source of protein, dietary fibre, and vitamins and have the bonus of being both free of cholesterol and low in fat. Yellow peas are best known perhaps for their use in dhal and soups so adding them to your weekly menus could help delay or prevent the onset of kidney damage and potentially stabilise high blood pressure.

Eyestrain and Avocados

As we seem to be spending more time in front of computers these days, it’s worth paying attention to keeping your eyes fit and healthy and one of the essential ingredients for that is the antioxidant lutein as it acts as a light filter to protect the macula. The primary cause of blindness in people over the age of 50 is macular degeneration and lutein is to support our eye health and helps prevent age-related degeneration.

Although we are born with a small amount of lutein in the macula – the spot on the retina at the back of your eyeball where light is collected and similated for the optic nerve – we can’t produce any more of it in the body. Now a trial involving subjects who have long-term exposure to computer monitor screens has taken place at Peking University in Beijing. Three groups were being assessed for the effects of lutein supplementation, receiving either six or 12 grams daily, or a placebo.

After 12 weeks the results were positive. The two lutein groups had improved their visual function and contrast sensitivity and the placebo group had not. So how can you get the same benefits? Simply by including lutein rich foods in your diet such as spinach, eggs, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, oranges, lettuce and celery.

If you add in some avocados then you are also getting essential nutrients such as magnesium, folate, vitamins B, E, and K, omega-3fatty acids, and of course lutein. Avocados have one essential benefit; a 2004 study showed that they help your body absorb more than 4 times as much lutein from your food than if they are not present in a meal. The weather is getting warmer, so what about a salad with spinach, lettuce, celery, tomatoes and an avocado?

Fight mood swings with fish oil

A recent report in the American Journal of Nutrition offers some hope for women – and those who have to live with them – who sufferfrom the hormonal havoc that can occur with PMS and in the time running up to the menopause. It’s not just the hormones of course, other stresses such as work and family life also add their load, plus the emotional challenge for many women of approaching the end of their childbearing years.

Other than hiding in a cupboard during the time when you want to lash out at everyone and everything and no sensible partner is insane enough to ask if you are alright without running the risk of a clip round the ear or a torrent of weeping. Now hope is at hand in the form of supplementing the diet with omega 3 oil.

Two groups of women took part in the eight week study; one being given 1.2 grams of omega-3 from fish oil and the others a placebo of sunflower oil. The group who had the placebo showed no improvement, but those taking omega-3 had definite improvements in their emotional state.

To supplement to the level of the trial you would need 1200mg a day of omega 3 and 1,050 mg of EPA. If you are not keen on taking supplements then you could increase the amount of oily fish in your diet such as salmon, sardines, mackerel, herring and anchovies. Or turn to that childhood staple of cod liver oil if you can stand the taste. It contains large amounts of EPA and DHA.

A word of caution, most people can take fish oil supplements safely, but if you are any form of anti-coagulant, such as Warfarin please speak to your doctor. Fish oil supplements can thin the blood so you must check whether they are suitable for you before embarking on adding them to your diet.

New evidence of infection link to childhood Leukaemia

Every 20 minutes someone in the UK is diagnosed with cancers of the blood such as leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma. UK researchers have for the first time identified the molecule that stimulates leukaemia to develop in children, according to a study published in the April edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research have observed that pre-leukaemic stem cells multiplied substantially at the expense of normal cells when exposed to a molecule produced in the body called TGF.

TGF is triggered as a normal response by the body to infection and so the new finding provides the first experimental evidence as to how common infections might trigger childhood leukaemia.

“We had already identified that a genetic mutation occurring in the womb created these pre-leukaemic cells,” Dr Anthony Ford from The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) says. “But we have been looking for a trigger that could send these cells down the pathway to leukaemia. We believe TGF is part of that missing link.”

In a study of identical twin girls last year, ICR scientists discovered a genetic mutation – the fusion of the TEL (ETV6) and AML1 (RUNX1) genes – was responsible for initiating childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in the womb.

This mutation means pre-leukaemic cells grow in the bone marrow as a silent time bomb that can stay in the body for up to 15 years, but requires other factors to convert into leukaemia. Evidence suggests the mutation may be present in as many as one in 100 babies,but only about one in 100 of those children with the mutation then go on to develop leukaemia.

The latest ICR study, funded by Leukaemia Research, found TGF creates conditions that allow the pre-leukaemic cells to multiply. This increases the chance that some will become even further damaged in a way that results in the child developing leukaemia. Before this study, there had been only circumstantial evidence to implicate infections in the progression from a child carrying pre-leukaemic cells to actually having leukaemia. There was no evidence of the mechanism by which this might happen. While infection is clearly only one factor in triggering progression, this study greatly increases the strength of evidence for its role in the commonest form of childhood leukaemia.

It also gives hope for the development of more effective early diagnosis and treatment for childhood leukaemia.

How your body clock affects how you age

We all have an internal body clock, or circadian rhythm that dictates whether we are an owl or a lark and governs many of our normal functions such as body temperature, brain activity, hormone production and metabolism. These things are well known and we can study our own rhythms to help us balance our lives better so we don’t study at a time when our body is not at its mental best, or try to sleep when it is naturally ready to go out and party.

Now it also appears to affect how we age, at least according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who have discovered that our inner biological clock actually communicates directly with the processes that govern aging and metabolism.

As we age, our circadian rhythm declines and the researchers believe that this could be a contributing factor to age-related disorders such as type 2 diabetes and is linked to a gene called SIRT1 which at the center of a network that regulates aging, coordinates metabolic reactions throughout the body and manages the body’s response to nutrition. This biochemical mechanism can directly drive the oscillation of the body’s daily clock and is potentially a way to correct metabolic disorders and improve health as people age.

Why a bump on the head is never trivial

I am indebted to Dr Ben Kim for the following information, as it serves as a timely reminder never to shrug off any injury to the head as trivial and to alert you to what to look out for. It has been prompted by the death of the actress Natasha Richardson, on the 18th of March from what initially seemed like a minor bump when on a nursery ski slope in Quebec. She laughed off the incident, felt fine with no symptoms, and refused any medical treatment, but that minor blow to her head had caused internal bleeding which formed a clot (an epidural haematoma) which in turn placed pressure on her brain and within a short period of time caused her death.

Along the sides of your head in the area around your temples, your epidural space houses an artery called your middle meningeal artery, whose job is to provide steady blood supply to your meninges. The portion of skull that protects this area is quite thin and weak compared to the rest of your skull which is why even a low force blow to this area could lead to a fracture and tearing of your middle meningeal artery. If this happens then blood can quickly begin to pool in your epidural space and because your heart would continue to send blood to the area, and this blood wouldn’t be drained by your veins, the result is increased pressure on your brain tissues, which could lead to death of brain cells from oxygen deprivation.

What to look out for: A fall, a casual blow to the head, that may seem unimportant can be fatal and it always pays to be checked out. About 50% of people who experience epidural hematomas briefly lose consciousness, but appear to be just fine when they come to. If pressure in the head continues to build, then over a period of just a few hours, a searing headache tends to develop as increased intracranial pressure causes the dura mater to tear away from the skull. Other signs and symptoms that may develop include:

* Lethargy
* Nausea
* Dizziness
* Drowsiness
* Weakness on one side of the body

Vigilance is the only safeguard; you need to be carefully monitored after any blow to the head and be prepared to seek immediate medical help. However fine you feel, don’t ignore it.

Lack of vitamin D weakens young girls’ muscles

Another reason not to neglect eggs, particularly for teenage girls, is that new research in the USA and Germany has found that having insufficient vitamin D may cause weaker muscles.

A lack of the vitamin causes problems with calcium absorption, and can lead to bone weakness, fractures and osteoporosis as well as increasing the risk of cancer, heart disease and autoimmune disorders. Certainly it is known to impact our muscular and skeletal system and cause weakness, but what’s news it that it can also affect muscle power and force. The researchers tested their theory on nearly 100 girls between 12 and 14 at inner city schools and found that overall 75 percent of them had less than ideal levels of vitamin D, but were not showing any symptoms related to deficiency.

The girls were put through a variety of sport exercises, mainly involving jumping, and it was found that there was a direct correlation between vitamin D blood levels and the girls’ performance on the muscle strength tests. Recent studies suggest that as many as 55 percent of apparently healthy U.S. adolescents might be vitamin D deficient and so it would be worth making sure that girls include the best sources every day such as oily fish, eggs and fortified foods like breakfast cereals and powdered milk. Plus that basic, free source good old fashioned sunlight.

New hope for infertility treatment

It has just been reported in the Society for Endocrinology journal that the hormone kisspeptin shows promise as a potential new treatment for infertility. Research carried out at Imperial College London, have shown that giving kisspeptin to women with infertility can activate the release of sex hormones which control the menstrual cycle. For women with low sex hormone levels this could be a breakthrough for a new fertility therapy. Kisspeptin sounds like a loving form of antacid, but is actually a product of the KISS-1 gene and a key regulator of reproductive function. If we do not have this then gene, then puberty does not occur and we do not achieve sexual maturity.

The research was primarily concerned with a small group of ten women whose periods had stopped due to a hormone imbalance and who were injected with either kisspeptin or saline as a control measure. All the women gave blood samples to measure their levels of the two sex hormones essential for ovulation and fertility: luteinising hormone (LH) and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH).

The group who were given the kisspeptin showed to a 48-fold increase in LH and a 16-fold increase in FSH, when compared to the control group who were given only saline. The lead researcher, Dr Waljit Dhillo, said that this discovery offers huge promise as a treatment for infertility as it suggests that kisspeptin treatment could restore reproductive function in women with low sex hormone levels.

Oxygen therapy showing hope for autistic children

Many studies have suggested treatment that might help autistic children but the majority of them are anecdotal and not generally provable or applicable. Each child is different, but a new oxygen therapy has been put through a controlled trial and is reporting definite clinical improvements.

Six centres in the US that specialise in treating autistic children have been running a controlled trial on 62 children aged from two to seven. They have been using something they call hyperbaric therapy which involves the child being put into a pressurized chamber and then breathing in pure oxygen.

The children were divided randomly into two groups; one who got 40 hours of treatment in the chamber with an atmospheric pressure of 1.3 atm and the second group who had a much less pressured chamber and a lower dose of oxygen. Changes in their behaviour were monitored using three different criteria; the Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale, the Aberrant Behavior Checklist (ABC), and the Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist (ATEC).

Those children who had the treatment level of oxygen and pressure were found to have experienced significant benefits in terms of their overall functioning, eye contact, and social interaction when compared to the children in the non-treatment group.

As this is the first control study to be reported, it is worth investigating whether similar treatment is available in the UK. If your doctor or specialist wishes further information this report appeared in MLA BMC Pediatrics (2009, March 16). As Hyperbaric Treatment For Autism Reports Significant Clinical Improvements.

Astrological health profiles – Sagittarius

Sagittarius 23 November-21 December

Sagittarians pride themselves on their brain power, but you need to balance this with physical activity. Watch out for: * Being a fire sign, with all the impulsiveness that goes with that element, minor accidents can be a problem

* You are most likely to damage your hips and thighs – especially through sporting accidents.

* Sagittarians need to watch their diet as you do enjoy eating, drinking and being merry. Over-indulgence can lead to liver problems

* Freedom is important for your wellbeing and if you feel restricted then physical symptoms can arise

Care seems to be the watchword here; being aware of your surroundings to avoid those minor accidents and not overstraining your body with over vigorous exercise. Food lovers that you are do need to be kind to your liver and not overload it with too much rich food and drink and monthly detox of a day just on a single type of fruit would give your body the rest it probably needs.

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