Chocolate ‘lowers’ blood pressure
A mouthful of dark chocolate each day could reduce blood pressure, cutting the risk of stroke, research suggests.
Forty-four people with raised blood pressure were put into two groups. One ate six grams of dark chocolate daily, the other the same amount of white.
The first group saw blood pressure fall slightly, but the others saw no change, researchers wrote in the Journal of American Medicine (JAMA).
The British Heart Foundation warned chocolate was a “treat not treatment”.
You can read the rest of the article at the BBC Health News here. Heh heh heh – sounds like a ‘treatment’ to me!
7 Million Muslims
In today’s Kuwait Times is an Independance Day message from the American Ambassador, Richard LeBaron, in which he states:
Numbering some seven million, there are more Muslims in America than in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE combined. In our more than 1,200 mosques that stand peacefully alongside churches and synagogues, you will find congregations as diverse as America itself. . .
I had no idea. I know in the Seattle area there are many mosques, many Moslems; Seattle is a city built on the energy and hope of new immigrants. But I had no idea we had seven million Moslems in the USA.
If you want to read the full text of the message you will have to buy the paper – it’s not on the website.
Word Press and Stats
On a quiet Thursday morning, I have some time to get an overview of what kind of articles my viewers like the best. It’s always a surprise to me. I put the most effort into my travel and book reviews. What, you, the viewer, likes best are recipes and photos.
In the last 30 days, the all time favorite has been – I hope you’re sitting down – Scalloped Potatoes. I mean like whoda thunk?? Second is Kuwaiti Customs, which I am guessing is of interest mostly to my non-Kuwaiti readers who are fascinated by the differences in our way of life, as well as the similarities, and third is one of my all time favorites Porn For Women. Fourth for the 30 day period is “Make This Case Go Away” where a Minister makes the police drop what appears to be an air tight case against two young men who abduct and rape a maid, and fifth, one of those anomalies, Tudo’s Vietnamese Restaurant in Pensacola.
What I like about WordPress is that there are options for all levels of users. I’m just a writer. My page is pretty vanilla, not a lot of bells and whistles, but the bells and whistles are out there if I go to the trouble of learning how to use them. I can include music, videos, and all kinds of other tools.
But it’s things like being able to look at the stats and track a post from birth to present, see what has had the biggest following in the last 30 days, and then in the last seven days, see how many people have me on feeds on a daily basis – all those things matter to me, and WordPress has them.
Best of all, it is just so easy. I don’t want to make a clock, I just want to know the time! WordPress is a great tool.
“Who Am I?”
As DNA testing becomes more and more common, surprises are popping up everywhere. This article from BBC is about two Englishwomen who discover they have Native American blood when they send their DNA in for testing.
It’s fascinating to think that migration and trade has left it’s traces generations later. I love the work that is being done with bloodlines these days.
Native American DNA found in UK
DNA testing has uncovered British descendents of Native Americans brought to the UK centuries ago as slaves, translators or tribal representatives.
Genetic analysis turned up two white British women with a DNA signature characteristic of American Indians.
An Oxford scientist said it was extremely unusual to find these DNA lineages in Britons with no previous knowledge of Native American ancestry.
Indigenous Americans were brought over to the UK as early as the 1500s.
It rocked me completely. It made think: who am I?
Doreen Isherwood
Many were brought over as curiosities; but others travelled here in delegations during the 18th Century to petition the British imperial government over trade or protection from other tribes.
Experts say it is probable that some stayed in Britain and married into local communities.
Doreen Isherwood, 64, from Putney, and Anne Hall, 53, of Huddersfield, only found out about their New World heritage after paying for commercial DNA ancestry tests.
Mrs Isherwood told BBC News: “I was expecting the results to say I belonged to one of the common European tribes, but when I got them back, my first thought was that they were a mistake.
“It rocked me completely. It made think: who am I?”
You can read the rest of the article at BBC Science/Nature News, here.
Uighur People
I had never heard of the Uighur people until I read The Kite Runner, a steady best-seller by Khaled Hosseini (available from amazon.com for $8.40 plus shipping) about Afghanistan, his Afghani childhood, his best friend – a Uighur – and the changes wrought in Afghanistan with the revolution.
(Edit: True Faith accurately points out that the best friend was Hazara, not Uigher)
This article is from BBC News April 12th, about the steady campaign against the Uighur in China.
China ‘crushing Muslim Uighurs’
China has been accused by two US-based human rights groups of conducting a “crushing campaign of religious repression” against Muslim Uighurs. It is being done in the name of anti-separatism and counter-terrorism, says a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Human Rights in China.
It is said to be taking place in the western Xinjiang region, where more than half the population is Uighur.
China has denied that it suppresses Islam in Xinjiang.
It says it only wants to stop the forces of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism in the region, which Uighur separatists call East Turkestan.
Detentions and executions
The report accuses China of “opportunistically using the post-11 September environment to make the outrageous claim that individuals disseminating peaceful religious and cultural messages in Xinjiang are terrorists who have simply changed tactics”.
The authors of the report say it is based on previously undisclosed Communist Party and Chinese government documents, local regulations, press reports and local interviews.
The report says the systematic repression of religion in Xinjiang was continuing as “a matter of considered state policy”.
Such repression ranges from vetting imams and closing mosques to executions and the detention of thousands of people every year, it claims.
“Religious regulation in Xinjiang is so pervasive that it creates a legal net that can catch just about anyone the authorities want to target,” said Sharon Hom, Executive Director of Human Rights in China.
The report also reveals that almost half the detainees in Xinjiang’s re-education camps are there for engaging in illegal religious activities.
Uighurs make up about eight million of the 19 million people in Xinjiang.
Many of them favour greater autonomy, and China views separatist sentiments as a threat to the state.
Drinking Green Tea Might Prevent Absorption of Cholesterol
Found this fascinating and hopeful article on drinking green tea at E-zine articles.com.
There are many studies being conducted on the effects of drinking green tea and how it can benefit the body. Along with its possible antioxidant qualities, there are also studies pointing to the possibility that green tea can help you maintain and even lower your cholesterol levels.
Cholesterol comes in two forms, ‘good’ or HDL-cholesterol and ‘bad’ or LDL-cholesterol. Doctors are very concerned about the balance of these two types of cholesterol. Ideally, there should be more good cholesterol than bad. Also, there should only be very small amounts of the bad cholesterol in your blood.
Imbalances in your levels of cholesterol can lead to many diseases, one of which is atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a hardening of the arteries caused by damage caused by high levels of bad cholesterol and other factors.
Studies revealed that green tea consumption in rats appears to lower their levels of bad cholesterol and even prevents them from getting high cholesterol when they are on high cholesterol diets. This has significant implications for the use of green tea in humans to prevent high cholesterol and heart disease. There are still more studies and research to be done before researchers can confirm that green tea indeed has such benefits.
Now here’s the rub:
The author of this article is John Stout.
Jon M. Stout is the Chairman of the Golden Moon Tea Company.
You can read more about how the study was conducted, and the positive results it found to drinking green tea and lowering cholesterol here, and keep in mind, the author sells green tea.
U.S. Continues Proud Tradition Of Diversity On Front Lines
Funny in a very sad way . . .from The Onion. Note the Kuwait dateline – folks, this is satire, one of the bleakest forms of humor.
CAMP COYOTE, KUWAIT—With blacks and Hispanics comprising more than 60 percent of the Army’s ground forces in Iraq, the U.S. military is continuing its long, proud tradition of multiculturalism on the front lines of war. “Though racism and discrimination remain problems in society at large, in the military—especially in the lower ranks where you find the cannon fodder—a spirit of inclusiveness has prevailed for decades,” Gen. Jim White said Monday. “When it comes to having your head blown off by enemy fire, America is truly colorblind.”
Oops – Hershey Sponsored the Study?
If you will remember, one of my key themes is “Who sponsors the study?” I love studies, and I also love going behind the scenes to find out where the funding is coming from (ok, ok, grammar-nazis, from where the funding is coming.)
So, checking around for the credentials on my previous story about chocolate being good for your heart, I found the below, which I excerpted from The International Herald Tribune. Let the chocolate buyer beware!
During a talk with analysts in October, the Hershey chief executive, Richard Lenny, called the dark-chocolate category a “major growth platform.” He told of a new Yale study sponsored by Hershey’s, and yet to be put through peer reviews, that found that eating Hershey’s Extra Dark chocolate improved blood pressure and blood flow because of the candy’s level of natural flavanol antioxidants.
In the study, 45 people were fed 2.6 ounces, or two servings, of Extra Dark, which also contained 26 grams of fat.
“These results enable us to better communicate with consumers the positive aspects of antioxidants and dark chocolate,” Lenny said.
Such claims are troubling to Mars’s chief scientist, Harold Schmitz, a driving force behind the development of CocoaVia. He said competitors were potentially misleading consumers by talking about antioxidants in chocolate when it was the level of flavanols that really made a difference.
Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that when it came to flavanols, “the marketing is getting ahead of the science.” She noted that two recent studies, including one from Harvard, had found no link between flavanols and any reduced risk of breast cancer or heart disease.
A spokeswoman for Hershey, Stephanie Moritz, denied that the company was exploiting the excitement over flavanols and said that a range of studies had linked dark chocolate to health benefits for the heart.
Bottom line: Sponsored by Hershey’s.
Bacteria Helpful, Not Harmful
You might think I am obsessed with bacteria, but I am not. I think we are overly fearful, and overly protective of ourselves. Washing hands frequently is proven to help prevent frequent colds, but disinfecting our work place, etc. on a daily basis is probably not so productive. This article says, essentially, that we can disinfect all we want; we carry the stuff with us.
Bacteria on our skin natural, so stop obsessing with the hygiene
March 17, 2007
FEAR of common bacteria stoked by incessant advertising of antimicrobial soaps and cleaners may be misplaced. Researchers say that while they have discovered nearly 200 different species of bacteria living on human skin, many of these have evolved along with us for so long that they should be considered part of us – and many are helpful rather than harmful.
Some of 182 species identified on the skin appeared to be permanently in residence, while others were temporary visitors, according to the researchers from New York University School of Medicine.
In research published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr Martin Blaser and his colleagues took swabs from the forearms of six healthy people to study the bacterial populations in human skin – our largest organ.
“We identify about 182 species,” Blaser said in an interview. “And based on those numbers, we estimate there are probably at least 250 species in the skin.
“In comparison, a good zoo might have 100 species or 200 species. So we already know that there are as many different species in our skin, just on the forearm, as there are in a good zoo.”
Bacteria are single-celled micro-organisms believed to have been the first living things on Earth.
While some cause disease, bacteria also reside normally in our bodies, for example in the digestive tract, performing useful chores.
“Without good bacteria, the body could not survive,” added Dr Zhan Gao, a scientist in Blaser’s lab involved in the study.
The researchers noted that microbes in the body actually outnumber human cells 10-to-1.
“Our microbes are actually, in essence, a part of our body,” Blaser said. “We think that many of the normal organisms are protecting the skin. So that’s why I don’t think it’s a great idea to keep washing all the time because we’re basically washing off one of our defence layers,” Blaser added.
It has long been known that bacteria reside in the skin, but Blaser and his colleagues used a sophisticated molecular technique based on DNA to conduct a rigorous census.
The inhabitants proved to be more diverse than had been thought, with about 8 per cent of the species previously unknown, the researchers found.
Some bacteria seemed to be permanent residents of the skin, with four genera – Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Propionibacteria and Corynebacteria – accounting for a bit more than half the population. Others were more transient.
In each person, the population of bacteria changed over time although a core set existed for each.
The volunteers included three men and three women, and the findings suggested the two sexes may differ in the bacteria they tote along.
The researchers previously had studied bacteria in the stomach and esophagus. With this research, they found that the insides of the body and the skin had major differences in bacterial populations.
“Microbes have been living in animals probably for a billion years. And the microbes that we have in our body are not accidental. They have evolved with us,” Blaser said.
Reuters
This article is from The Australian: Health and I found it on Google News.
Who Knew? Skimmed Milk Gets Top Post
When I blog, I know what I think is important. I don’t just blog what I think is important, I also blog what I think is funny, what catches my eye, what I want people who don’t live in Kuwait to know about how life here is different from their life, and then.. . things in the news that might be obscure, but interesting.
Every day, the Who Knew? Skimmed Milk Affects Fertility post gets hits. Although I only posted it two weeks ago, it is the leader for the last thirty days, way ahead of the next most popular post.
I never know. Mostly I blog because I have things ( originally wrote “thinks” which must be truly Freudian) I want to say, but in any kind of communication, you need feedback. Feedback, for me, is a combination of what you comment, and what you read – my statistics. It just cracks me up, what you, the reader, find most interesting in my posts as opposed to what I am thinking when I post. Go figure!
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