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By Melinda Wenner, Scientific American Magazine , September 18, 2008
It afflicts every creature on this planet, and everyone dreams of an antidote. But even after decades of research, aging largely remains a mystery. Now new research findings suggest there is a good reason for this impasse: scientists may have been thinking about the causes of aging all wrong. Instead of being the result of an accumulation of genetic and cellular damage, new evidence suggests that aging may occur when genetic programs for development go awry.
The idea that stress and reactive forms of oxygen—“free radicals” that are the normal by-products of metabolism—cause aging has dominated the field for 50 years. Studies on the worm Caenorhabditis elegans have shown that reducing exposure to reactive oxygen species increases life span, and worms that have been bred to live longer are also more resistant to stress. But few studies have definitively linked oxidative damage to altered cellular function.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness, Recent Posts, Science on September 18, 2008 - י"ח אלול תשס"ח at 11:06 pm
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By Jo-Ann Heslin, Health News Digest, Aug 17, 2008
(HealthNewsDigest.com) - Bananas are an inexpensive, readily available, favorite fruit that requires no refrigeration and comes packaged in its own handy wrapper. But, before the early 1900’s, the average American had never eaten a banana, considered an exotic, expensive fruit. Introduced into the US at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, each banana sold for 10 cents, a hefty price for the time.
Today, Americans eat more than 25 pounds of bananas per person per year. They are a staple fruit found in most kitchens with 96% of households purchasing bananas at least once a month. Bananas are most commonly eaten fresh or as a topping on cereal, but in the early 1900s an advertisement showed a bowl of sliced bananas with a small amount of cereal sprinkled on top, minus the milk. Trends in eating bananas have changed along with the price. Currently bananas are one of our least expensive fresh fruits, available year round.
Bananas grew in popularity in the US at the same time that discoveries were being made about calories, vitamins, and bacteria. The American Medical Association recommended bananas as a healthy food for the general public in 1931 because they came in a “germ proof” wrapper. They were promoted for the treatment of diarrhea, ulcers, tuberculosis, diabetes, obesity, malnutrition, infertility, scurvy and gout. Though not a magic cure-all as once believed bananas are a nutrition powerhouse.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness, Recent Posts on August 18, 2008 - י"ז אב תשס"ח at 5:56 am
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Left: Heart muscle cells in untreated rats bred to develop heart failure show signs of disease: Cells are irregular in size and shape and show fibrotic lesions (areas in purple). Right: Heart muscle cells remain healthy in rats treated with calcitriol, the hormone that Vitamin D becomes in the body. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Michigan Health System)
ScienceDaily (Jun. 12, 2008) — Strong bones, a healthy immune system, protection against some types of cancer: Recent studies suggest there’s yet another item for the expanding list of Vitamin D benefits. Vitamin D, “the sunshine vitamin,” keeps the heart, the body’s long-distance runner, fit for life’s demands.
University of Michigan pharmacologist Robert U. Simpson, Ph.D., thinks it’s apt to call vitamin D “the heart tranquilizer.”
In studies in rats, Simpson and his team report the first concrete evidence that treatment with activated vitamin D can protect against heart failure. Their results appear in the July issue of the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology.
In the study, treatments with activated vitamin D prevented heart muscle cells from growing bigger – the condition, called hypertrophy, in which the heart becomes enlarged and overworked in people with heart failure. The treatments prevented heart muscle cells from the over-stimulation and increased contractions associated with the progression of heart failure.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness, Recent Posts on June 12, 2008 - ט' סיון תשס"ח at 7:49 am
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Fill your diet with veggies, fiber, vitamin D and calcium to prevent disease
By Shannan Rouss, Self, Oct 15, 2007
When it comes to the question of whether you’ll get cancer, it often seems that your fate is a mysterious combination of factors beyond your control. We all know someone who smoked, drank and ate bacon every day yet escaped a diagnosis. And far more disheartening, we also know people who lived a virtuously healthy life only to develop the disease. Add to that the confusion over what actually is the right way to avoid the Big C. In fact, three in four people believe there are so many recommendations about preventing breast, colon, lung and other cancers that it’s hard to know which guidelines to follow.
The area that probably generates the most debate? Knowing what to eat. There is such an abundance of contradictory studies about food and cancer that it’s nearly impossible to consider any one definitive, let alone keep them all straight. So how do you sort through myriad studies, complete with caveats and exceptions? Well, you don’t, because we did it for you. SELF went to the experts and scrutinized the latest research to summarize the best cancer-fighting eating advice so far. We also looked at the news on other lifestyle factors such as stress and exercise to generate a guide that can help cancer-proof your body from head to toe. But first, a list that tells you what to forgo and what to fill up on. Let’s eat! Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness on October 15, 2007 - ג' חשון תשס"ח at 9:14 am
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Science Daily — Copper helps move telecommunications signals across phone wires, allowing people to talk to one another across long distances. Tiny amounts of copper, within certain enzymes in the brain, also help form key neurotransmitters that allow brain cells to “talk” to one another.
Studies at the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center have shown that copper and zinc are important for brain function. Here, psychologist James Penland performs an electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures responses from a volunteer’s brain during a dietary study. (Credit: ARS Information Staff)
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists now have described how adequate amounts of copper are important to brain function. Their animal model studies suggest that levels of copper intake are critical to the fetus during pregnancy—a concept called “nutritional programming.”
An early animal study led by biologist Curtiss Hunt showed that even moderate copper deprivation in pregnant rats led to underdevelopment of memory-control areas of their pups’ developing brains. He is a lead scientist at the ARS Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center (GFHNRC) in Grand Forks, N.D. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness on October 9, 2007 - כ"ז תשרי תשס"ח at 12:58 pm
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Reuters, Sept 18, 2007
WASHINGTON - Weight training works just as well as running on a treadmill or biking to help the most important symptom of type-2 diabetes — long-term control of blood sugar — Canadian researchers said on Monday.
Doing both aerobic and resistance training lowered blood sugar levels better than either alone, researchers said — and both appeared to be safe.
At least 194 million people worldwide have diabetes, and the World Health Organization expects the number to rise to more than 300 million by 2025.
Most have type-2 diabetes, caused by a combination of genetic predisposition, lack of exercise and rich diet.
Exercise — the type that makes people breathe a little heavily — is known to reduce the risk of type-2 diabetes and can improve the body’s control of sugar. But there were doubts about the safety and effectiveness of weight training. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness on September 18, 2007 - ו' תשרי תשס"ח at 8:34 am
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Those of childbearing age risk neural tube defects in babies without it, study says
THURSDAY, May 10 (HealthDay News) — There are racial and ethnic differences among U.S. women of childbearing age in the intake of folic acid, which can prevent serious neural tube defects that affect the brain and spinal cord.
That finding is published in the May issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness, Recent Posts, Special Education, Women's Health on May 11, 2007 - כ"ג אייר תשס"ז at 12:14 pm
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In the fight against breast cancer, researchers are discovering the benefits of regular exercise before and after the dreadful diagnosis
By Carolyn M. Kaelin, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.S., and Francesca Coltrera
Newsweek, March 26, 2007 Issue
Four times a week, Anne Rinn, 28, a psychology professor in Bowling Green, Ky., whose mother died of breast cancer, goes to kickboxing, aerobics or Pilates classes. Liz Usborne, a 64-year-old breast-cancer survivor, lobs tennis balls over the net and circuit-trains at a women’s gym near her home in Bonita, Calif. The thread binding them? Concern about getting—or surviving and thriving after—breast cancer.
The American Cancer Society estimates that this year, 241,000 women will learn they have breast cancer and 40,000 women will die of it. Fortunately, a growing list of effective therapies developed during the past decade has helped extend lives, one reason that deaths from breast cancer have been dropping slowly since 1990. Living among us are more than 2 million women who have undergone breast-cancer treatments. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness, Recent Posts, Women's Health on March 23, 2007 - ד' ניסן תשס"ז at 11:19 am
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Your gut bacteria may help to determine your holiday weight gain.
By Helen Pearson, http://www.nature.com/, December 20, 2006
The obese are often blamed for their own corpulence. But perhaps, just perhaps, some of the blame should be placed on another type of organism entirely: bacteria.
Researchers have shown that the intestines of obese people are swimming with a different make-up of microbes compared with those of slim people. And this microbial population could actually be helping them gain weight: bugs taken from an obese mouse and transplanted into another animal’s intestine made the animals gain more fat than normal.
The researchers propose that the obese-prone microbes glean more calories from food, which are sucked up by the body and deposited as excess fat. “Minor differences in the calories you can harvest might play an important role in predisposition to obesity,” says Jeffrey Gordon at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, who led the studies. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness, Recent Posts on December 21, 2006 - ל' כסלו תשס"ז at 9:21 am
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from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/
The Internet has been flooded with email warnings to avoid freezing water in plastic bottles so as not to get exposed to carcinogenic dioxins. One hoax email has been erroneously attributed to Johns Hopkins University since the spring of 2004. The Office of Communications and Public Affairs discussed the issue with Rolf Halden, PhD, PE, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the Center for Water and Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Halden received his masters and doctoral degrees researching dioxin contamination in the environment. We sat down with him to set the record straight on dioxins in the food supply and the risks associated with drinking water from plastic bottles and cooking with plastics.
Office of Communications and Public Affairs: What are dioxins?
Rolf Halden: Dioxins are organic environmental pollutants sometimes referred to as the most toxic compounds made by mankind. They are a group of chemicals, which include 75 different chlorinated molecules of dibenzo-p-dioxin and 135 chlorinated dibenzofurans. Some polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) also are referred to as dioxin-like compounds. Exposure to dioxins can cause chloracne, a severe form of skin disease, as well as reproductive and developmental effects, and more importantly, liver damage and cancer.
OC&PA: Where do dioxins come from?
RH: We always thought dioxins were man-made compounds produced inadvertently during the bleaching of pulp and manufacturing of pesticides like Agent Orange and other chlorinated aromatics. But dioxins in sediments from lakes and oceans predate these human activities. It is now generally accepted that a principal source of dioxins are various combustion processes, including natural events such as wild fires and even volcanic eruptions. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness on November 7, 2006 - ט"ז חשון תשס"ז at 12:47 pm
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