InterWined.com

Liquid Refreshment

8

Apr

Health Beat Bullet Points: Advice You Can’t Afford to Miss

Jacob Gaffney  in Health, Living , , , , , , , , , ,

Every Tuesday, or other days if news is embargoed, InterWined brings a bit of health news to the table. Call it well being, call it being well… call it what you will; if it impacts our lives, it gets reported. It’s a feast or famine responsibility. Some weeks there is little to speak of that appeal to the general public’s desire to live longer and healthier.

Today, there are many new reports circulating, and so in the spirit of being reasonably brief, here are the main bullet points of health news:

An Apple a Day

Hot off the press… Adults who eat apples, apple juice and applesauce have a significantly reduced risk of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of health problems that are linked to numerous chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The study results, presented at the Experimental Biology 2008 meeting this week, were derived from an analysis of adult food consumption data collected in the 1999-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the government’s largest food consumption and health database.

Dr. Victor Fulgoni analyzed the data, specifically looking at the association between consumption of apples and apple products, nutrient intake and various physiological parameters related to metabolic syndrome. When compared to non-consumers, adult apple product consumers had a 27% decreased likelihood of being diagnosed with metabolic syndrome.
Fulgoni notes, “We found that adults who eat apples and apple products have smaller waistlines that indicate less abdominal fat, lower blood pressure and a reduced risk for developing what is known as the metabolic syndrome.”

Catching Spring Fever

Allergies are becoming more common and more of a problem for many people. Living in London and running a wine blog have shown to be in conflict, as the pollen and pollution tend to clog the nose, thus reducing sensory abilities to rate wines. A solution? Well, it’s not that alluring.
One of the best methods for relieving the symptoms is nasal irrigation, says Melissa Pynnonen, M.D., co-director of the Michigan Sinus Center and assistant professor in the U-M Department of Otolaryngology.

Nasal irrigation refers to rinsing the nose and nasal passages with a solution, typically salt water. The solution can be as simple —and cheap — as a quarter-teaspoon of kosher salt, eight ounces of warm tap water and a quarter-teaspoon of baking soda.

Pynnonen recommends that patients who are new to nasal irrigation use an eight-ounce squeeze bottle, and squirt four ounces of the mixture into each nostril. The solution exits through the opposite nostril. To prevent the solution from coming out of your mouth, Pynnonen recommends that you open your mouth and make a “K” sound, which closes off the mouth and throat.

“It’s like a power washer for your nose,” Pynnonen says.

KIDS! Turn it off

Advice for parents, especially of the very young, always gets some space on InterWined.com. Maybe it’s because childhood obesity is growing into a major crises, but really it’s because parents rarely listen and need info drilled into them.

Infants and toddlers who sleep less than 12 hours a day are twice as likely to become overweight by age 3 than children who sleep longer. In addition, high levels of television viewing combined with less sleep elevates the risk, so that children who sleep less than 12 hours and who view two or more hours of television per day have a 16 percent chance of becoming overweight by age 3.

“Mounting research suggests that decreased sleep time may be more hazardous to our health than we imagined,” says Elsie Taveras, MD, assistant professor in Harvard Medical School’s Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention and lead author on the study. “We are now learning that those hazardous effects are true even for young infants.”

Results are published in the April 2008 issue of Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

Did We Neglect to Mention Neglect

Child abuse? Isn’t that something poor people do to their kids? OK, so who’s being naïve now? It’s one thing to slap a child around, we all know that’s bad. But, coming home after 12 hours of working when you have an under two is also a form of abuse?

Children who are neglected before their second birthday display higher levels of aggressive behavior between ages 4 and 8, according to a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study, published today in the journal Pediatrics.

Early child neglect may be as important as child abuse for predicting aggressive behavior, researchers say. Neglect accounts for nearly two-thirds of all child maltreatment cases reported in the United States each year, according to the Administration for Children and Families.

“The lack of attention devoted to the problem of neglect — the so-called ‘neglect of neglect’ — is a long-standing concern in the child welfare field,” said study co-author Jon Hussey, research assistant professor of maternal and child health in the UNC School of Public Health and a fellow at the Carolina Population Center. “Despite being more common than abuse, we know relatively little about the impact of neglect on children.”

More than 1,300 children from four cities and one Southern state are participating in the longitudinal study, which is coordinated by the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC). All were known to have been maltreated or were at risk of maltreatment. They were monitored from birth through age 8. A child was considered neglected if his parents or caregivers did not provide adequate supervision or failed to meet the child’s minimum physical needs for food, clothing and shelter. Abuse was defined as either sexual or physical.

Aggression —arguing, cruelty to others, destruction of property, disobedience, threatening people and fighting or physically attacking others — was based on perceptions of the child’s primary caregiver, who was interviewed when the child was aged 4, 6 and 8.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve seen evidence suggesting that in some circumstances, neglect can be as harmful to children as abuse,” said Hussey, who published a study in Pediatrics in 2006, linking neglect to teenage violence, depression and drug use. “Understanding the consequences of early childhood neglect will help us plan programs and other interventions to benefit these children throughout their lives.”

A Cherry of Advice

OK; so laying off parenting for now. When eating, it’s important to consider the nature of a substance. If a lemon isn’t sour, it’s no good. Yoghurt that taste sweet is likely filled with sugar. A bottle of so-called ‘Feel Good’ Gorgeous Cloudy Lemon Juice Drink (which cost me £1.50 BTW) was tarnished because of its additional stabilizers: Pectin and Carob Gum. So, when eating cherries, go for the tartness.

Tart cherries — frequently sold dried, frozen or in juice — may have more than just good taste and bright red color going for them, according to new animal research from the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center.

Rats that received whole tart cherry powder mixed into a high-fat diet didn’t gain as much weight or build up as much body fat as rats that didn’t receive cherries. And their blood showed much lower levels of molecules that indicate the kind of inflammation that has been linked to heart disease and diabetes. In addition, they had significantly lower blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides than the other rats.

The results, which were seen in both lean and obese rats that were bred to have a predisposition to obesity and insulin resistance, were presented Sunday at the Experimental Biology 2008 meeting in San Diego, CA by a team from the U-M Cardioprotection Research Laboratory.

In addition, the obese rats that received cherry powder were less likely to build up fat in their bellies – another factor linked to cardiovascular disease. All the measures on which the two groups of animals differed are linked to cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.

Don’t make Unprotected Lips Worse

Wear sunscreen on your face everyday? Think you’re covered? Well think again.

How do you protect your lips from the sun? Most women think their balms and glosses have got them covered, but experts say they’re dangerously mistaken.

Certain Lip balms and glosses can actually increase your chances of developing a skin cancer.
“Many people do use sunscreen; however they tend to forget their lips,” says Christine Brown, M.D., dermatologist on the medical staff at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.

According to a recent study, less than one-in-four Americans wear some form of lip protection. Experts say this is concerning since the lips are not only more susceptible to aging from chronic sun damage, but are also more prone to developing serious cancers.

“When skin cancer occurs on the lower lip it has the potential to be much more aggressive and metastasize to surrounding lymph nodes,” adds Dr. Brown.

What’s worse —any of us unknowingly attract the sun’s rays to our lips by using balms and glosses.

“What most people don’t realize is they’re actually increasing light penetration through the lip surface by applying something clear and shiny to them,” explains Dr. Brown.

Like what you've read? Why not subscribe to InterWined.com and get the lastest posts delivered fresh to your feeder.

neha
neha said: April 9th, 2008 at 7:10 am

hi,

may i know from where u got this statistics???

Jacob Gaffney
Jacob Gaffney said: April 9th, 2008 at 10:19 am

Hi Neha, thanks for leaving a comment on InterWined. I get my information from the most up-to-date, peer-reviewed medical journals. The science is factual, and at times, ground breaking.

In most cases, I include the citation necessary for readers to look up the study they wish, many of these publications offer a pay-per article system for those who wish to delve further.

If you tell me more specifically which piece interests you, I will be more than happy to send you as much info that’s publically available, that I can.

Thanks,
Jacob

kosher wines
kosher wines said: May 6th, 2008 at 11:10 pm

kosher wines

Wine is funny. For example, some wines at 14% a.c. appear to be hot, while others at the same a.c. don\’t. Paraiso Springs Vineyards 1997 Syrah does seem a bit hot at 14%

Respond To This Topic

Subscribe to this post's comment rss or trackback url

Please Note: Comments are often subject to moderation to help reduce spamming.