Research & Lifestyle
Quack Medicine: Peking Duck is better for your Heart than 'Statins'
Posted on 11/06/2008
The ingredient used to colour Peking duck can cut the risk of dying from heart disease by a third and cancer by two-thirds, scientists say. The ingredient used to colour Peking Duck can cut the risk of dying from heart disease by...
Red yeast rice lowers LDL cholesterol in patients who cannot tolerate statins, reports Annals of Internal Medicine.
Posted on 11/06/2008
Red yeast rice lowers LDL cholesterol in patients who cannot tolerate statins, reports Annals of Internal Medicine. Some 60 patients who had discontinued statins owing to myalgia wererandomized to receive red yeast rice...
Bacteria and Human Cells
Posted on 06/06/2008
Humans Have Ten Times More Bacteria Than Human Cells: How Do Microbial Communities Affect Human Health? Science Daily (Jun. 5, 2008) - The number of bacteria living within the body of the average healthy adult human are estimated...
Chocolate, Chocolate....and More Chocolate!
Posted on 04/06/2008
Cocoa, a key ingredient in most chocolate products, is rich in flavonoids - a natural plant substance that has antioxidant properties. Some flavonoids may have anti-inflammatory effects similar to aspirin. Low concentrations of these flavonoids can reduce platelet activity in the blood, thereby lowering the risk of blood clots. In a study of healthy, nonsmoking adults with no history of heart disease, researchers at the University of California, Davis, found that platelet activation was inhibited 2 hours and 6 hours after ingestion of a cocoa-enriched beverage. These results suggest that for healthy people, moderate intake of chocolate over the long-term may inhibit platelet activity and ultimately reduce the risk of heart disease.
Benefits of Alcohol
Posted on 04/06/2008
Drinking small quantities of alcohol at least three or four times a week could protect men from having a heart attack. Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard School of Public Health Study have found that men who drank moderate amounts of alcohol three or more times a week were up to 35% less likely to have a myocardial infarction than non-drinkers. The researchers tracked the drinking habits of nearly 40,000 men over a 12-year period and looked at the effects of drinking red wine, white wine, beer and spirits. They found that no single type of beverage was better than the other, and drinking with meals made no difference. Frequent consumption was thought to be more effective because alcohol"s effect on clotting and platelets was short-lived. (New England Journal of Medicine. 2003 Jan 9;348(2):109-118)
Love Is All You Need
Posted on 04/06/2008
According to the great Chinese physician Sun Simiao (581 to 682 CE) people have illness "because they do not have love in their life and are not cherished". Now Dr. Dean Ornish (author of Love and Survival), a surgeon who gave up traditional approaches to heart disease in favor of a holistic programme of low-fat diet, exercise and support groups states "those who feel lonely, depressed or isolated are three to five times more likely to suffer premature death or disease. I don't know of anything else across medicine that has such a broad and powerful impact."
Adverse Drug Reactions
Posted on 04/06/2008
According to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association written by a team led by Bruce Pomeranz, adverse drug reactions (ADR) have become the USA's fourth-biggest killer. The results of 39 studies of adverse drug reactions suggest that they could affect as many as 2.2 million hospital patients a year, causing 106,000 deaths. This is equivalent to 4.6 per cent of all recorded deaths. An average 6.7% of all hospitalised patients experience an ADR every year, according to the investigators. And these incidence figures are probably conservative, the researchers add, since their ADR definition did not include patient outcomes linked to errors in drug administration, overdoses, drug abuse and therapeutic failures. Another US study has estimated that the overall cost of treating ADRs is up to $4 billion per year.
Laughing It Off
Posted on 04/06/2008
A dose of comedy taken daily for four weeks has been found to significantly reduce the symptoms of depression. Some of the patients who were told to spend 30 minutes a day listening to therapeutic tapes of comedians were cured, while others found that the severity of their symptoms had been halved. Laughter has previously been found to boost the immune system, increase natural disease-fighting killer cells and lower blood pressure, as well as having a beneficial effect on conditions as diverse as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. One group of researchers has reported that skin reactions triggered by allergies were significantly reduced among patients after they watched a Charlie Chaplin film, while another team found that people who don"t have a sense of humour are more at risk of heart disease. Physical laughter has been found to trigger the release of endorphins, the body"s natural painkillers, and produce a general sense of well-being. One study found that laughing during a 60-minute humorous video decreased blood cortisol levels and increased natural killer activity in a healthy audience.
Bring Me Sunshine
Posted on 04/06/2008
Sunshine has had a bad press recently. However a new study shows that insufficient exposure to ultraviolet radiation may be an important risk factor for cancer in western Europe and North America. When US mortality rates for cancer were examined, it was found that a range of cancers of the digestive and reproductive systems in New England were close to double those in the south west US, despite only minor variations in dietary habits. Looking at 506 different regions of the US it was found that there was a close inverse correlation between cancer mortality and levels of ultraviolet B light. It is suggested that the protective effect of sunlight is a stimulus to the body to synthesise vitamin D. The strongest correlation with lack of sunlight was found with cancers of the breast, colon, and ovaries.
Forty Winks
Posted on 04/06/2008
The metabolic and endocrine hormonal changes resulting from sleep deprivation have a similar impact on the body to the ageing process and may increase the severity of age-related chronic disorders such as heart disease and diabetes, according to researchers at the US Department of Medicine in Chicago. Over the last hundred years, the average number of hours people spend asleep per night in the more developed countries has decreased from nine hours to seven-and-a-half hours. It is thought eight hours is the amount of sleep the average person requires for the body to be fully rested.
