Genes are the reason for middle aged spread

Staying with the theme of unwanted weight, it seems almost inevitable, middle aged spread is something we associate with getting older and we either accept it or take action to prevent it. Often thought of as being a result of being less active, it now seems that it is a result of the key appetite control cells in the human brain degenerating over time. This causes increased hunger and the potential for putting on weight, but read on and see how you can slow down this process.

Dr Zane Andrews, a neuroendocrinologist with Monash University’s Department of Physiology in Australia, has published his research in Nature magazine which indicates that what you eat has a great effect on how much the cells decay. He found that appetite-suppressing cells are attacked by free radicals after eating, and that the degeneration is more significant following meals rich in carbohydrates and sugars. So a Big Mac with large fries and a coke – for example – is one of the worst offenders as a meal loaded with carbohydrates and sugars attacks the appetite suppressing cells, which in turn creates a cellular imbalance between our need to eat and the message to the brain to stop eating.

WHO IS AT RISK?
People in the age group of 25 to 50 are most at risk because the neurons that tell people in the crucial age range not to over-eat are being killed-off. When the stomach is empty, it triggers the ghrelin hormone that notifies the brain that we are hungry. When we are full, a set of neurons known as POMC’s (which are produced in the hypothalamus) kick in. However, free radicals created naturally in the body attack the POMC neurons and this process causes them to degenerate overt time, and this in turn affects our judgement about when our hunger is satisfied.

Dr Andrews believes that the reduction in the appetite-suppressing cells could be one explanation for the complex condition of adult-onset obesity. Our diets have changed radically over the last 30 years as we now do consume far more sugars and complex carbohydrates than ever before and this has placed so much strain on our bodies that it’s leading to premature cell deterioration. The answer? Cut down on carbohydrates and sugars as much as you can, otherwise that slice of ‘Death by Chocolate’ cake might prove all too apt when applied to your waistline.

Penalty in the pay packet for being overweight?

It is often said that where the US leads the UK follows, but a disturbing trend has just hit overweight workers in the state of Alabama. It sometimes seems that the US produces more than its share of fanatics in all areas. I am not a smoker, or in favour of it on health grounds, but I also believe in the right to choose and reports of people having cigarettes struck out of their mouths or being unable to smoke anywhere just don’t sit right with me. There has been moves to curtail health services for people who are overweight, and I understand the logic but the US state of Alabama is taking it to a whole new level. Alabama already charges workers who smoke — and has seen some success in getting them to quit, but now are turning their attention to overweight workers. The state currently ranks second in national obesity rankings partly from a fondness for by deep-fried Southern food favorites and a high consumption of sugary drinks and foods. Currently they get free health insurance as part of their job, but unless they agree to free health screenings to show up health problems, and then adopt measures to improve them, they will have to pay a $25 monthly insurance fee from their salaries.

If the screenings turn up serious problems with blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose or obesity, employees will have a year to see a doctor at no cost, enroll in a wellness program, or take steps on their own to improve their health. If they show progress in a follow-up screening, they won’t be charged. But if they don’t, they must pay.

As we already have a free health service, there isn’t the same incentive to adopt such drastic measures here – but some form of restriction of service for those who persistently abuse their bodies through food, alcohol or drugs is not that unlikely, and is informally in place in some hospitals already.

OJ – Not for women?

This is OJ as in juice, not as in Simpson, because starting the day with a glass of orange juice is seen as healthy habit, high in vitamin C and good for you. However, there are some reasons you might want to switch to another juice in the mornings – particularly if you are a woman. Recent research suggests that drinking orange juice frequently may put women at an increased risk of developing type two diabetes – a serious and debilitating disease that becomes progressively more common with age and obesity.

This is yet another study from the US, the home of OJ as they refer to their juice, and was done at Tulane University School of Public Health, in New Orleans. Over 70,000 women enrolled in the study, and dietary and medical records were analysed with these results:

Diabetes risk is LOWERED by 18% if the subjects added three daily servings of whole fruit because this slows down the rapid absorption of the natural sugars found in fruit as the fibres take longer for the stomach to digest. If you add in just one additional serving of leafy green vegetables then the risk was LOWERED AGAIN by 9%

Diabetes risk is INCREASED by 18% if one additional daily serving of orange juice is taken. This is because the natural sugars in juice are absorbed too rapidly in the stomach, causing a surge in blood sugar levels. Since the research was carried out only on women, it is not yet known whether men are at the same risk of getting diabetes if they drink orange juice. BUT, drinking large quantities of neat juice is not something to recommend as you are getting a large sugar load in one hit comes and because it comes in a liquid form it is absorbed rapidly into the body. People are not always aware either, that many types of fruit juices like orange, grapefruit and grape, contain as much sugar per serving as many fizzy drinks. That amount of sugar will help you put on weight, and that is another factor in promoting diabetes.

A couple of suggestions are either to cut your juice with water about 50/50 or switch to apple juice and cranberry juices – real juice, with bits and no added sugar because they have a much better sugar/nutrients ratio than citrus and grape- based juices.

Ayurvedic herb relieves osteoarthritis

It now seems that an Ayurvedic herb known as the ‘Indian Frankincense’ can dramatically improve the symptoms of the most common form of arthritis — osteoarthritis. No surprise to me as I have found all forms of herbal medicine to be effective, whether English, Chinese or Ayurvedic, but what is amazing is that treatment appears to provide relief within just one week.

I discovered this in the journal Arthritis Research & Therapy where scientists from the University of California at Davis published their research conclusions when they tested an extract dubbed AKBA (3-O-acetyl -11-keto-beta-boswellic acid) from the herb Boswellia serrata on 70 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. Boswellia is the gummy resin of the boswellia tree, which is native to India, and used for centuries by Ayurvedic doctors as it contains anti-inflammatory terpenoids called boswellic acids. Boswellia is often included in arthritis remedies, and has been used for thousands of years by Ayurvedic practitioners.

The research subjects were suffering from pain, limited movement, stiffness and other symptoms of osteoarthritis, which most commonly affects weight- bearing joints like knees and hips, as well as the hands, wrists, feet and spine. Symptoms were relieved in about seven days in this study — which is the first to show that an enriched extract of Bowellia serrata be used as a successful treatment in humans. The researchers concluded that its anti-inflammatory properties can be an effective treatment for osteoarthritis of the knee and was shown to have no major adverse effects in osteoarthritis patients and so was safe for human consumption and even for long-term use.

Soy reduces sperm count

With the increased interest in vegetarian and vegan diets a number of young men are turning to alternative foods such as soy, but if you are planning a family it might not be such a good idea. According to a new report in the Journal of Human Reproduction, consumption of even small amounts of soy products can lower a man’s sperm concentration.

Harvard School of Public Health conducted a study and found that the men who ate the most soy had sperm counts far lower than those who reported eating no soy at all. On average, the soy eaters had 41 million fewer sperm per milliliter. The study found that the soy eaters consumed a relatively low amount of 15 soy-based foods including tofu, soy burgers, soy ice cream, soy energy bars, and miso soup — with an average of just one serving of every other day. Now, this may not be significant enough to cause fertility problems, but if you are planning a family then it seems sensible to take every precaution. The study’s lead researcher Jorge Chavarro feels that the evidence is not strong enough one way or the other to deter men from eating soy, but it is known that the isoflavones in soy have long been tied to infertility in animal studies and it seems reasonable to infer they could also affect humans.

The fertile gender difference

When it comes to planning a family, looking at the couple’s diet is often a first step but this usually comes down to having a balanced, healthy diet of lots of fruit and vegetables and with minimum potential risks such as additives, fats, alcohol and smoking. However, some preliminary research from Australia seems to indicate that there may be a different factor to consider when looking at fertility and reproductive success.

This research is based on long-term studies on Australian black field crickets, so no tests on humans yet, but its finding could be highly relevant. Lead researcher Rob Brooks and his team have discovered that the lifespan of both male and female crickets is maximized on high-carbohydrate, low-protein diets, and reported this finding in the latest issue of Current Biology. But the interesting fact to emerge is that reproductive success differs dramatically between the sexes when the carbohydrate-protein balance is changed. Males have the greatest reproductive success with a diet that favours carbohydrates to protein by eight-to-one. Females have greatest success when the protein/carbohydrate ratio is just one-to-one.

More research is clearly needed, but to maximise fertility in the meantime, the best course is to follow the anti-inflammatory or wellness diet. This is based on principles that have been shown to promote longevity and reproductive health in both men and women throughout their lives, and if you would like a copy of it please contact us.

Zap that verruca

In and out of swimming pools or public showers? An unfortunateside effect can be the development of a verruca, and if you don’t want to wear jelly shoes – or it’s too late – then you might be interested in a new product to treat the problem.

The ingredient most favoured for treating a verruca is salicylic acid, but so far this is not been available in an over the counter product that you can pop into the chemist and buy for yourself. The next most favoured method is to freeze it, also used for warts, and one enterprising company has introduced a product called Bazuka Sub-Zero which allows the user to see when the foam applicator is frozen and direct the treatment quickly and accurately on to the wart or verruca.

Why is this a breakthrough?
Because some freezing treatment formats are hard to target directly at the verruca and wart and can cause damage to the surrounding nerve endings as the freezing treatment hits other skin areas. This is backed up by research taken from the data of doctors and chiropodists, who expressed this concern and said they had seen patients where damage, especially to nerve endings, had occurred.

It’s just one application, and it freezes the wart or verruca to the core. After 10 days or so, the treated wart or verruca will fall off revealing new skin that has formed. Apparently it is easy to use, allowing the user to actually see when the applicator is clearly frozen and ready to apply.

If you want to find it, apparently it is available from pharmacies, Superdrug and Morrisons supermarkets and costs £12.95.

Stem cells created for 10 genetic disorders

It was reported back in November 2007 last year that research teams in Wisconsin and Japan had reprogrammed skin cells, and that the cells had behaved like stem cells in a series of lab tests. This new technique could lead to treatments for diseases including Parkinson’s and more developments keep coming in.

Just last week, Harvard team of scientists said they had reprogrammed skin cells from two elderly patients with ALS, (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) a degenerative motor neuron disease, and grew the reprogrammed skin cells into nerve cells.

Now, scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in the USA say they have created stems cells for 10 genetic disorders, which will allow researchers to watch the diseases develop in a lab dish and watch what goes right, and wrong. This early step, using a new technique, could help speed up efforts to find treatments for some of the most confounding ailments and was reported online Thursday in the journal Cell.

Dr. George Daley and his colleagues used ordinary skin cells and bone marrow from people with a variety of diseases, including Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Down syndrome to produce the stem cells. Like the previous research, this technique reprogrammed the cells, giving them the chameleon-like qualities of embryonic stem cells, which can morph into all kinds of tissue, such as heart, nerve and brain. As with embryonic stem cells, the hope is to speed medical research into the degenerative diseases for which there are currently no good treatments and, more importantly, no good animal models for the most part in studying them.

Rose hips & arthritis

I have mentioned the benefits of rosehips before, and now a new study shows that it could be a more effective pain-reliever than standard drugs for people with arthritis, a new study suggests.

A powder form of the wild variety of rosehip, Rosa canina, is better at relieving pain among osteoarthritis patients than paracetamol and the nutritional supplement, glucosamine according to researchers from Frederiksberg Hospital in Copenhagen.

All three therapies were tested on a group of 300 patients, who tested each in turn for three months. Overall, the patients reported that the rosehip preparation was almost three times more effective than paracetamol, and 40 per cent better than glucosamine. Rosehip also didn’t come with the side effects associated with paracetamol, including constipation and drowsiness. The researchers concluded that rosehip is so effective because it also reduces the inflammation in the joints, which is characteristic of osteoarthritis.

If you want to try it, I did a quick Google search and came up with two websites for you to look at – though there are undoubtedly plenty more – and you might also find it in your local health store. These are what I came across: www.dennisthechemist.com and www.JustVitamins.co.uk.

Mobile phones and children

There has been plenty of media coverage about the over use of mobile phones, particularly in adults, and the potential health hazards. It is the radiation emissions from the phones that could place users at risk of brain conditions including Alzheimer’s disease, and they have also been linked to cellular DNA damage, and children and teenagers are particularly vulnerable. Nor does the phone have to be switched on to cause a problem: even on standby mobile phones (and cordless phones) create a magnetic field.

It was in 2005 that research by the Irish Doctors Environmental Association (IDEA) first claimed to have found the first proof of health problems caused by mobile phones. They estimated that up to five per cent of the population could be suffering headaches, mood swings and hearing problems caused by radiation from handsets. At that time too, experts advising the Government warned that children under eight should not be given mobile phones because of the potential health risks. Now news is in from Canada where the Toronto department of public health has announced that children under the age of eight should not use a mobile, or cell, phone only in an emergency and young teenagers should restrict their use to just 10 minutes a day. Loren Vanderlinden, a health department supervisor and author of the report, has said that new studies are starting to suggest that long-term mobile phone usage may increase the risk of brain tumours, and this goes much further than the more tentative position of the UK health officials a few years ago when they also warned parents not to let children use a mobile.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

It may be hard, if not impossible to wean a teenager from their mobile phone or to restrict the time they are on it. However, there are some options for reducing the radiation that can help anyone who has prolonged use of a mobile. First it might be helpful to know what are the symptoms of over use:

** “Hot ear” effect / feel your brain is heated up
** Headache Fatigue / tiredness
** Nausea
** General discomfort
** Blurred vision

One of the ways to counteract the radiation is to have a device attached to the phone to affect how cells “receive / react” to wave radiations and usually this is done through some form of magnet. There is a website that offers Biophone and Bioguard – a unique technology that they claim is scientifically proven and works with a number of phones including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, and others – so if you want to know more visit them at www.biofona.co.uk and browse through the site.

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