Western Diet Killer:
From the UK Daily Mail Online:
The Western diet really IS a killer: People who eat white bread, butter and red meat are most likely to die young
- Those who ate fried and unhealthy food had doubled risk of early death
- Key culprits include red meat, white bread, butter, cream and sweet foods
- Findings ‘help explain’ why heart disease is still the UK’s biggest killer
PUBLISHED: 13:20 EST, 16 April 2013 | UPDATED: 02:08 EST, 17 April 2013
The typical Western diet, high in fat and sugar, really does lead to an early grave, new research suggests.
A study of more than 5,000 civil servants found those who ate the most fried and sweet food, processed and red meat, white bread and butter and cream doubled their risk of premature death or ill health in old age.
It adds to evidence that ‘Western style food’ is the reason why heart disease claims about 94,000 lives a year in the UK – more than any other illness.
The findings published in The American Journal of Medicine are based on a survey of British adults and suggest adherence to the diet increases the risk of premature death and disability later in life.
People who ate the most fried and sweet food, processed and red meat, white bread, butter and cream doubled their risk of premature death or ill health in old age
Lead researcher, Dr Tasnime Akbaraly, of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France, said: ‘The impact of diet on specific age-related diseases has been studied extensively, but few investigations have adopted a more holistic approach to determine the association of diet with overall health at older ages.’
She examined whether diet, assessed in midlife, using dietary patterns and adherence to the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI), is associated with physical ageing 16 years later.
The AHEI is an index of diet quality, originally designed to provide dietary guidelines with the specific intention to combat major chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
More…
Dr Akbaraly added: ‘We showed that following specific dietary recommendations such as the one provided by the AHEI may be useful in reducing the risk of unhealthy ageing, while avoidance of the “Western-type foods” might actually improve the possibility of achieving older ages free of chronic diseases.’
The researchers analysed data from the British Whitehall II cohort study and found following the AHEI can double the odds of reversing metabolic syndrome, a range of disorders known to cause heart disease and mortality.
The research adds to evidence that Western style food is the reason why heart disease claims about 94,000 lives a year in the UK – more than any other illness
They followed 3,775 men and 1,575 women from 1985-2009 with a mean age of 51 years.
Using a combination of hospital data, results of screenings conducted every five years, and registry data, investigators identified death rates and chronic diseases among participants.
At the follow up stage, just four per cent had achieved ‘ideal ageing’ – classed as being free of chronic conditions and having high performance in physical, mental and mental agility tests.
About 12 per cent had suffered a non-fatal cardiovascular event such as a stroke or heart attack, while almost three per cent had died from cardiovascular disease.
About three quarters were categorised as going through ‘normal ageing’.
The researchers said participants who hadn’t really stuck to the AHEI increased their risk of death, either from heart disease or another cause.
Those who followed a ‘Western-type diet’ consisting of fried and sweet food, processed food and red meat, refined grains, and high-fat dairy products, lowered their chances for ideal ageing.
Worst Drivers in the World: Traffic Fatalities by Country
Driving in the Middle East is a whole other world, a world of chaos until you realize that the rules are different, no matter what the published rules are. To drive in Qatar, I started at 0430 on a Friday morning, when there was little or no traffic (things have changed) and would drive until traffic began to thicken. Eventually, I knew the city and gained confidence that I could drive without getting killed. In Kuwait, for months, I would only drive to relatively nearby shopping areas, or drive only on back roads carefully plotted on the map during low traffic hours. After a while, you begin to get a sense of things, and the sensation of imminent death lessens.
Adventures in Qatar: a radiator dropping off a truck in front of me, being hit on purpose by a man who didn’t like women driving, being pushed into a round about by a Hummer, being nearly assaulted by two young Qataris who believed we had insulted them by being in the lane where they wanted to be, watching men drive up the wrong side of the ring roads because they were too important to wait in line, later standing and laughing at their crashed cars – Daddy would buy them another. It sounds crazy, but you get used to it.
Kuwait was a whole different ball game, controlled chaos at high speeds. Adventures in Kuwait: the sleeping elderly man driving in the lane next to me who almost hit me, watching drivers drive through red lights as if they were green, sparks off the fenders of SUVs on Highway 30 as people wove quickly in and out of traffic, the dramatic crashed and burned out cars on the sides of the highways, the car impaled on a palm tree – 10 feet above the road. Kuwait was so surreal that I couldn’t even begin to imagine how some of the accidents happened; I learned to be a very prayerful driver.
So out of idle curiosity, today I looked up highest rate of traffic fatalities per country, and found this on Wikipedia. So here’s a surprise . . . Kuwait’s fatalities statistic is roughly equal to that of the United States. Qatar’s is significantly higher, and many countries are even double or triple Kuwaits fatality rate. I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around this.
List of countries Fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants
World 20.8
Afghanistan 39.0
Albania 13.9
Angola 37.7
Argentina 13.7
Armenia 13.9
Australia 5.71
Austria 8.2
Azerbaijan 13.0
Bahamas 14.5
Bahrain 12.1
Bangladesh 12.6
Barbados 12.2
Belarus 10.9
Belgium 10.1
Belize 15.6
Benin 31.2 1
Bhutan 14.4
Bolivia 16.7
Bosnia and Herzegovina 10.9
Botswana 33.8
Brazil 19.9
British Virgin Islands 21.7
Brunei Darussalam 13.8
Bulgaria 8.8
Burkina Faso 31.1
Burundi 23.4
Cambodia 12.1
Cameroon 28.1
Canada 9.2
Cape Verde 25.1
Central African Republic 32.2
Chad 34.3
Chile 13.7
China 5.1
Colombia 11.7
Comoros 30.3
Republic of the Congo 28.8
Cook Islands 45.0
Costa Rica 15.4
Croatia 9.1
Cuba 8.6
Cyprus 10.4
Czech Republic 10.4
Denmark 3.1
Dominican Republic 17.3
Ecuador 11.7
Egypt 42.0
El Salvador 12.6
Eritrea 48.4
Estonia 7.5
Ethiopia 35.0
Fiji 7.0
Finland 6.5
France 5.5
The Gambia 36.6
Georgia 16.8
Germany 4.5
Ghana 9.32
Greece 14.4
Guatemala 14.7
Guinea-Bissau 34.4
Guyana 19.9
Honduras 13.5
Hungary 9.9
Iceland 3.8
India 11.1
Indonesia 16.2
Iran 35.8
Iraq 38.1
Republic of Ireland 3.51
Israel 3.7
Italy 8.7
Jamaica 12.3
Japan 3.85
Jordan 34.2
Kazakhstan 30.6
Kenya 34.4
Kiribati 7.4
Republic of Korea 11.3
Kuwait 16.9
Kyrgyzstan 22.8
Laos 18.3
Latvia 8.7
Lebanon 28.5
Lesotho 26.7
Liberia 32.9
Libya 40.5
Lithuania 14.8
Luxembourg 9.0
Madagascar 33.7
Malawi 26.0
Malaysia 24.1
Maldives 18.3
Mali 32.1
Malta 3.4
Marshall Islands 7.4
Mauritania 35.5
Mauritius 11.1
Mexico 20.7
Federated States of Micronesia 14.4
Mongolia 14.5
Montenegro 14.6
Morocco 28.3
Mozambique 7.0
Myanmar 23.4
Namibia 28.6
Nauru 9.9
Nepal 15.1
Netherlands 3.9
New Zealand 8.6
Nicaragua 14.2
Niger 37.7
Nigeria 32.3
Norway 5.4
Oman 21.3
Pakistan 25.3
Palau 14.8
Palestinian territories 5.6
Panama 12.7
Papua New Guinea 14.2
Paraguay 19.7
Peru 21.5
Philippines 20.0
Poland 10.7
Portugal 7.9
Puerto Rico 12.8
Qatar 23.7
Republic of Macedonia 6.9
Republic of Moldova 15.1
Romania 9.4
Russia 19.5
Rwanda 31.6
Saint Lucia 17.6
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 6.6
Samoa 12.8
San Marino 0
Sao Tome and Principe 33.0
Saudi Arabia 29.0
Senegal 32.5
Serbia 9.8
Seychelles 18.5
Sierra Leone 28.3
Singapore 4.8
Slovakia 7.1
Slovenia 10.4
Solomon Islands 16.9
South Africa 33.2
Spain 6.9
Sri Lanka 13.5
Sudan 34.7
Suriname 15.8
Swaziland 26.3
Sweden 2.9
Switzerland 4.7
Syrian Arab Republic 32.9
Tajikistan 14.1
Thailand 19.6
Timor-Leste 16.1
Togo 28.1
Tonga 7.0
Trinidad and Tobago 15.5
Tunisia 34.5
Turkey 13.4
Turkmenistan 18.6
Tuvalu 9.5
Uganda 24.7
Ukraine 11.2
United Arab Emirates 37.1
United Kingdom 3.59
United Republic of Tanzania 34.3
United States of America 12.3
Uruguay 12.8
Uzbekistan 9.7
Vanuatu 18.6
Venezuela 21.8
Vietnam 16.1
Yemen 29.3
Zambia 25.6
Zimbabwe 27.5
Like all statistics, I think some are honest, and some need to be taken with a grain of salt. I found reading through them fascinating. You can get more information, accidents per thousand cars, total accidents, etc.
Undoing Public Disclosure, One Small Move at a Time
I am appalled. I have scoured the TV News, have looked through newspapers – not a word! I steam at corruption in Kuwait and Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and then a small NPR Report on yesterday’s news alerts me to a measure, passed in Congress, WITHOUT A WHISPER!
(oh? I was shouting? Sorry. Carried away. Outraged) You can access the NPR station and listen to the entire repulsive report by clicking here.
Congress Repeals Financial Disclosure Requirements For Senior U.S. Officials
by EYDER PERALTA
A tourist takes cover underneath an umbrella while snapping a photo of the U.S. Capitol on March 6, 2013 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Joining the Senate, the House of Representatives approved a measure today that repeals a requirement that top government officials post financial disclosures on the Internet.
The House, like the Senate, acted quietly without a vote. Instead, they sent the measure to the president’s desk by unanimous consent.
The provision was part of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (Stock), which became law in March of 2012. The act was intended to stop members of congress from profiting from nonpublic information.
As NPR’s Tamara Keith reported, at the time, Sen. Joe Lieberman called the law “the most significant congressional ethics reform legislation to pass Congress in at least five years.”
“That law mainly addressed conflict-of-interest policies for members of Congress and their staffs, but it also included a requirement that the financial disclosure forms filed by some 28,000 high-ranking federal employees be posted online.
“While those forms are public records, they must be requested individually from employing agencies. The Stock Act envisions online posting first on agency sites and later in a central, searchable database.
“The posting requirement was delayed three times out of concerns about the potential for identity theft and other crimes against career employees, as well as security risks to the government.”
The Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for a more open government,called today’s repeal an “epic failure.”
The foundation explained that instead of addressing specific security concerns, Congress has acted broadly.
For instance, they note, the president, vice president, members of Congress, congressional candidates and individuals subject to Senate confirmation are still required to make their financial disclosures public. But the change in law now makes the posting of those disclosures on the Internet optional.
Sunlight adds:
“Not only does the change undermine the intent of the original bill to ensure government insiders are not profiting from non-public information (if anyone thinks high level congressional staffers don’t have as much or more insider information than their bosses, they should spend some time on Capitol Hill) but it sets an extraordinarily dangerous precedent suggesting that any risks stem not from information being public but from public information being online.
“Are we going to return to the days when the public can use the Internet to research everything exceptwhat their government is doing? Will Congress, in its twisted wisdom, decide that information is public if journalists, academics, advocates and citizens are forced to dig through file cabinets in basements in Washington, DC to find it? And does anyone think that makes us safer?
“As my colleague Tom Lee noted, ‘This approach is known as ‘security through obscurity.’ Essentially, the idea is that rather than fixing a system’s flaws, you can just make the system opaque or unusable or unpopular enough that those flaws never surface.'”
Update at 5:35 p.m. ET. 30 Seconds:
NPR’s Tamara Keith tells us the House procedure took exactly 30 seconds.
Correction at 5:29 p.m. ET. An earlier version of his post said the House followed the Senate. In fact, the Senate voted Thursday and the House voted today.
Green Tea and Coffee Really Do Cut Stroke Risk!
I found the report of this newest survey on National Public Radio’s The Salt:
A Daily Habit Of Green Tea Or Coffee Cuts Stroke Risk
by ALLISON AUBREY
March 15, 2013
Whether it’s green tea that warms you up, or coffee that gives you that morning lift, a new study finds both can help cut the risk of suffering a stroke.
The study, published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke, included 82,369 men and women in Japan.
Researchers found that the more green tea a person drank, the more it reduced the risk of suffering a stroke.
“It’s almost a 20 percent lower risk of stroke in the green tea drinkers” who drank four cups a day, compared with those who rarely drank green tea, explains Dr. Ralph Sacco of the University of Miami. (He’s the past president of the American Heart Association, and we asked him to review the study for us.)
And with coffee, researchers found just one cup per day was also associated with about a 20 percent decreased risk of stroke during a 13-year follow-up period.
“I was still feeling rather surprised” about the findings, Dr. Yoshihiro Kokubo, the study’s lead author, tells The Salt in an email. Kokubo is a researcher at the Department of Preventive Cardiology, National Cerebra and Cardiovascular Center in Osaka, Japan.
Kokubo says that green tea contains compounds known as catechins, which help regulate blood pressure and help improve blood flow. The compounds also seem to promote an anti-inflammatory effect. Kokubo says coffee, which contains caffeine and compounds known as quinides, likely influences our health through different mechanisms.
It’s not just the Japanese who seem to benefit from drinking coffee and green tea. Over the past few years, researchers in the U.S. have documented similar reductions in heart disease risk among Americans.
“The accumulating evidence from a variety of studies is suggesting that green tea and coffee may be protective,” says Sacco.
And, in addition, recent studies have linked a regular coffee habit to a range of benefits — from a reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes to a protective effect against Parkinson’s disease.
It’s interesting to note how much the thinking about caffeine and coffee has changed.
In the 1980s, surveys found that many Americans were trying to avoid it; caffeine was thought to be harmful, even at moderate doses.
One reason? Meir Stampfer of the Harvard School of Public Health says back then, coffee drinkers also tended to be heavy smokers. And in early studies, it was very tough to disentangle the two habits.
“So it made coffee look bad in terms of health outcomes,” says Stampfer.
But as newer studies began to separate out the effects of coffee and tea, a new picture emerged suggesting benefits, not risks.
Researchers say there’s still a lot to learn here — they haven’t nailed down all the mechanisms by which coffee and tea influence our health. Nor have they ruled out that it may be other lifestyle habits among coffee and tea drinkers that’s leading to the reduced risk of disease.
And experts say when it comes to preventing strokes and heart attacks, no food or drink is a magic bullet. It’s our overall patterns of eating and exercise that are important.
“It’s a whole lifestyle approach, and we need to remember that,” says Sacco.
So if you are already in the habit of drinking coffee or green tea, this study is one more bit of evidence that you can go ahead and enjoy it.
Distracted Driving #1 Killer of U.S. Teens
Horrifying article. I would have thought they would be talking about texting, which we can see for ourselves has people, young and old, swerving all over the highway, but no – the culprit is PASSENGERS! The death rate for teens in cars increases with each additional passenger!
The papers are full of heartbreaking obituaries, young people, men and women, who had so much potential, so much life ahead of them, and now they are gone. Heartbroken parents think of the years of joy they will miss.
Fatal Distraction: Teen Drivers And Passengers Are A Deadly Mix
Studies show that one passenger in a teen driver’s car increases fatality risk by 44%, two passengers doubles the risk
Sharon Silke Carty
AOL Auto News
Teen driving safety is one of those problems that is easy to ignore: So often the tragedies are spread out throughout small towns around the country. One lost life here, two lost there. We don’t often piece all those crashes together and realize what’s happening to our children.
Sometimes to get change, you need a tipping point. Maybe this week will be it: Since Sunday, 15 teenagers have died in major car accidents around the U.S. Six died after crashing into a pond in Ohio. Five died when they crashed into a tanker truck in Texas. Four died when they crashed into a creek in Illinois.
And that’s just the crashes that were major and notable enough to make national news. One teen in Colorado died Sunday when the teen driver of a car he was in crashed into the side of a mobile home. Three died in Indiana when the drivers, in two trucks, ran stop signs and collided head-on. A 15-year-old driver in Maryland died when he was fleeing police in a car. And there are others, many which don’t make the news. Crashes that don’t end in fatalities but left serious damage: traumatic brain injuries, crippling spinal cord issues.
“The numbers are so small and spread out geographically,” said Timothy Hollister, a teen driving safety advocate in Connecticut whose book, “Not So Fast: Parenting Teen Drivers Before They Get Behind The Wheel”, comes out in September. “It’s only when you put the numbers together nationally that people even begin to take notice.”
Driving is the No. 1 killer of teens in this country, accounting for about 25 percent of teen deaths each year. About 3,000 to 5,000 teens die annually in car wrecks, enough to fill the halls of a large high school. Or two.
Recently, the Governor’s Highway Safety Association release preliminary figures for 2012 that show a troubling trend: After 10 years of declining, teen driving deaths are on the rise.
Although teen crashes seem random and unpredictable, they actually often follow a predictable pattern: It’s likely a group of teens heading nowhere in particular, probably late at night, and going fast. Often, they’re not wearing seatbelts.
Researchers have identified the dangerous habits of young drivers, who can’t ever be considered safe behind the wheel because they are simply too novice. There’s a common thread for many fatal crashes: More than one passenger in the car, especially if those passengers are male.
The Passenger Effect
A study released last year by AAA said passengers have a huge impact on fatalities: Fatality rates went up 44 percent with one passenger under 21 years old, doubled with two passengers, and quadruples when carrying three or more passengers who are under 21 years old.
Many graduated drivers license (GDL) laws regulate how many passengers teens can have in the car before they are awarded a full license. Parents who are concerned about their teens behind the wheel want to pay close attention to this rule: Make sure your teens are driving alone mostly, with no more than one passenger. Don’t let them carpool to and from school events. Don’t let them head out for the evening with a bunch of other kids teens in one car. Remember that other passengers are a huge distraction that can turn into a fatal distraction.
Laws regarding passengers in vehicles driven by teens are “the single least enforced and most ignored rule,” Hollister said. “It’s the one piece that could make a difference. That’s parents putting convenience ahead of safety, and not understanding the dangers that every passenger in a teen driver’s car adds an additional risk.”
Catastrophic Vanishing Water in Middle East
I found this article in the Weather Underground News this morning:
DOHA, Qatar — An amount of freshwater almost the size of the Dead Sea has been lost in parts of the Middle East due to poor management, increased demands for groundwater and the effects of a 2007 drought, according to a NASA study.
The study, to be published Friday in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, examined data over seven years from 2003 from a pair of gravity-measuring satellites which is part of NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment or GRACE. Researchers found freshwater reserves in parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins had lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of its total stored freshwater, the second fastest loss of groundwater storage loss after India.
About 60 percent of the loss resulted from pumping underground reservoirs for ground water, including 1,000 wells in Iraq, and another fifth was due to impacts of the drought including declining snow packs and soil drying up. Loss of surface water from lakes and reservoirs accounted for about another fifth of the decline, the study found.
“This rate of water loss is among the largest liquid freshwater losses on the continents,” the authors wrote in the study, noting the declines were most obvious after a drought.
The study is the latest evidence of a worsening water crisis in the Middle East, where demands from growing populations, war and the worsening effects of climate change are raising the prospect that some countries could face sever water shortages in the decades to come. Some like impoverished Yemen blame their water woes on the semi-arid conditions and the grinding poverty while the oil-rich Gulf faces water shortages mostly due to the economic boom that has created glistening cities out of the desert.
In a report released during the U.N. climate talks in Qatar, the World Bank concluded among the most critical problems in the Middle East and North Africa will be worsening water shortages. The region already has the lowest amount of freshwater in the world. With climate change, droughts in the region are expected to turn more extreme, water runoff is expected to decline 10 percent by 2050 while demand for water is expected to increase 60 percent by 2045.
One of the biggest challenges to improving water conservation is often competing demands which has worsened the problem in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins.
Turkey controls the Tigris and Euphrates headwaters, as well as the reservoirs and infrastructure of Turkey’s Greater Anatolia Project, which dictates how much water flows downstream into Syria and Iraq, the researchers said. With no coordinated water management between the three countries, tensions have intensified since the 2007 drought because Turkey continues to divert water to irrigate farmland.
“That decline in stream flow put a lot of pressure on northern Iraq,” Kate Voss, lead author of the study and a water policy fellow with the University of California’s Center for Hydrological Modeling in Irvine, said. “Both the UN and anecdotal reports from area residents note that once stream flow declined, this northern region of Iraq had to switch to groundwater. In an already fragile social, economic and political environment, this did not help the situation.”
Jay Famiglietti, principle investigator of the new study and a hydrologist and UC Irvine professor of Earth System Science, plans to visit the region later this month, along with Voss and two other UC Irvine colleagues, to discuss their findings and raise awareness of the problem and the need for a regional approach to solve the problem.
“They just do not have that much water to begin with, and they’re in a part of the world that will be experiencing less rainfall with climate change,” Famiglietti said. “Those dry areas are getting dryer. They and everyone else in the world’s arid regions need to manage their available water resources as best they can.”
New Study Shows Taking Folic Acid Cuts Autism Risk 40%
I heard this yesterday on NPR and found this article today on the Huffpost/AOL News. The critical factor is that a woman needs to be taking folic acid supplements BEFORE she gets pregnant:
With autism now affecting one in 88 children in the U.S., many parents are searching for any step they can take to help lower their child’s risk of developing the disorder. A new Norwegian study joins a small but growing body of research that suggests a simple, low-cost option already exists: Taking folic acid during the earliest stages of pregnancy could lower a child’s odds of developing autism by nearly 40 percent.
“This is a relatively inexpensive way that parents can take action to possibly prevent risk of tube birth defects and autism,” Alycia Halladay, senior director for environmental and clinical Sciences for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, told The Huffington Post. Halladay did not work on the new study, which was published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday.
Researchers analyzed a sample of more than 85,000 children born in Norway between 2002 and 2008 to study the effect of taking a folic acid supplement — typically between 200 and 400 micrograms per day — from one month before a woman got pregnant to two months after. Some .10 percent of children whose moms took folic acid supplements were diagnosed with autism, compared to .21 percent of those whose moms did not — which is equal to 39 percent lower odds.
The study does not establish a cause and effect relationship between the vitamin and subsequent autism, and its authors do not know why folic acid may have a protective effect. Study researcher Pal Suren of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health told HuffPost that folic acid is critical to the synthesis of DNA, which could play some role in the connection. Folic acid may also affect how certain genes are turned on and off in the body, he hypothesized, saying it was “not biologically implausible” that folic acid supplementation has certain epigenetic effects.
The new study also raises questions about how much folic acid may be needed to lower autism risk, as well as what form it must come in.
“We do not know how other dosages would have affected the risk of autism, or whether it matters if folic acid is taken as single tablets or as part of a prenatal multivitamin supplement,” Suren said.
The researchers took steps to ensure that the decreased risk was not just because women who took folic acid were also engaged in other healthy behaviors. To control for that, they looked at fish oil use (assuming women who took fish oil were also likely to be healthy in other ways) and found no link between lower autism risk.
Since the early 1990s, groups like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Public Health Service have recommended that all women of childbearing age take 400 micrograms of folic acid daily to help prevent neural tube defects — birth defects of the brain and spinal cord including spina bifida and anencephaly. Since folic acid was added to the grain supply in 1998, the U.S. has seen a 26 percent decrease in those neural tube disorders, according to figures compiled by the March of Dimes.
The possibility of a link between folic acid consumption and lower autism risk is far more preliminary. A 2011, California-based study in the journal Epidemiology found that mothers of children with autism were less likely to have taken a prenatal vitamin in the three months before pregnancy or in the first month after getting pregnant, suggesting that so-called “periconceptional” use of prenatal vitamins may reduce autism risk. In the U.S., prenatal vitamins typically include between 400 and 800 micrograms of folic acid.
But folic acid is by no means a magic pill, experts caution. The fact that rates of autism diagnosis have skyrocketed in the past several decades despite more and more women taking folic acid shows how complex the origins of autism are. The exact causes of the disorder, which is characterized by social and communication difficulties and repetitive behaviors, are still unknown.
“This is one way that risk may be reduced, but this isn’t the only way,” said Halladay. “It’s an inexpensive way to potentially reduce the risk of autism, but there are a number of risk factors — genetics and other environmental factors — that solidly contribute to risk.”
Green Tea Fights Dementia
Green Tea Could Aid Fight Against Dementia, Study Suggests
PA | Posted: 06/02/2013 11:18 GMT | Updated: 06/02/2013 11:18 GMT
Chemicals in green tea and red wine may block the brain damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease, an early study suggests.
Scientists targeted a process that allows harmful clumps of protein in the brain to kill off neurons.
Using purified extracts of the chemicals EGCG in green tea and resveratrol in red wine, they were able to stop nerve cells from being harmed.
The findings, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, could pave the way for new drugs to treat Alzheimer’s, say the researchers.
Lead scientist Professor Nigel Hooper, from the University of Leeds, said: “This is an important step in increasing our understanding of the cause and progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
“It’s a misconception that Alzheimer’s is a natural part of ageing; it’s a disease that we believe can ultimately be cured through finding new opportunities for drug targets like this.”
Alzheimer’s is characterised by a build-up of amyloid-beta protein in the brain which clumps together to form toxic, sticky balls.
The amyloid balls latch on to molecules called prions on the surface of nerve cells. As a result, the nerve cells start to malfunction and eventually die.
“We wanted to investigate whether the precise shape of the amyloid balls is essential for them to attach to the prion receptors, like the way a baseball fits snugly into its glove,” said Dr Jo Rushworth, another member of the Leeds team.
“And, if so, we wanted to see if we could prevent the amyloid balls binding to prion by altering their shape, as this would stop the cells from dying.”
Previous research had shown that the red wine and green tea compounds are able to reshape amyloid proteins.
When they were added to amyloid balls in a test tube, the toxic clumps of protein no longer harmed human and animal brain cells.
“We saw that this was because their shape was distorted, so they could no longer bind to prion and disrupt cell function,” said Prof Hooper.
“We also showed, for the first time, that when amyloid balls stick to prion, it triggers the production of even more amyloid, in a deadly vicious cycle.”
The next step for the team is to uncover exactly how the amyloid-prion interaction destroys neurons.
Prof Hooper added: “I’m certain that this will increase our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease even further, with the potential to reveal yet more drug targets.”
Dr Simon Ridley, from the charity Alzheimer’s Research UK which part-funded the study, said: “Understanding the causes of Alzheimer’s is vital if we are to find a way of stopping the disease in its tracks.
“While these early-stage results should not be a signal for people to stock up on green tea and red wine, they could provide an important new lead in the search for new and effective treatments. With half a million people affected by Alzheimer’s in the UK, we urgently need treatments that can halt the disease. That means it’s crucial to invest in research to take results like these from the lab bench to the clinic.”
Food Trends for 2013
Found this on AOL News/Kitchen Daily.com
FOOD TRENDS FOR 201
KITCHEN DAILY 11/25/12
The Sterling-Rice Group recently announced its predictions for 2013’s top ten food trends. The list was compiled by the group’s culinary council, which is made up of chefs, restaurateurs and foodies, and it included the following:
Sour Foods -Tart and bitter flavors, such as fermented cherry juice and vinegars will take the stage.
Healthy Dining Out – Chefs will work behind the scenes to make your meals healthier by using ingredients like brown rice and vegetable stock.
Asian Comfort Foods – Thai, Vietnamese and Korean flavors will work their way into traditional American menu items.
Vegetables as Main Dishes – Veggies will take over entrées–options such as cauliflower steaks and squash noodles are becoming more common.
Kid-Friendly Versions of Adult Foods – Kids’ menus will focus less on hot dogs and grilled cheese and more on fruits, grains and authentic Asian flavors.
Local Artisans – American artisan shops will become destinations for foodies that used to travel to Europe for exotic flavors.
Individualized Servings – Menus will offer singular servings for perfectly-sized meals.
Savory Fruit – Chefs will be less interested in sugary tastes than in adding savory touches to their recipes.
All-Inclusive Menus – No diner will be left behind as restaurants offer options to accommodate all eaters.
Popcorn – Popcorn will be the snack of 2013–it will pop up in all types of food!
Gene Predicts Your Time of Death
This is absolutely fascinating to me – and no, it does not predict the day you will die, but the time of day that in all probability you will die. It’s fascinating, and you probably don’t even have to take a genetic test to make a good guess as to what time of day you might likely expire. This is from HuffPost Science:
Gene Predicts Time Of Death Down To Hour, Study Suggests
The Huffington Post | By Ryan Grenoble
Posted: 11/19/2012 2:39 pm EST Updated: 11/19/2012 3:05 pm EST
In an study published in the November 2012 issue of the Annals of Neurology scientists studying the body’s biological clock (a.k.a. the circadian rhythm) report the discovery of gene variant that not only determines the likelihood of your being a morning person, but also predicts, with unsettling accuracy, your likely time of death.
The gene typically allows for three possible combinations of nucleotides (the four molecular building blocks of DNA): adenine-adenine (A-A), adenine-guanine (A-G), and guanine-guanine (G-G), according to a written statement released by Harvard Medical School.
“This particular genotype affects the sleep-wake pattern of virtually everyone walking around,” Dr. Clifford Saper, chief of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, wrote in the statement. “And it is a fairly profound effect so that the people who have the A-A genotype wake up about an hour earlier than the people who have the G-G genotype, and the A-Gs wake up almost exactly in the middle.”
Moreover, investigators realized as some of the 1,200 older subjects in the project died that these nucleotide sequences were accurate predictors of their time of death, within a range of only a few hours. Patients with the A-A and A-G genotypes typically died just before 11 a.m., while subjects with the G-G combination tended to die near 6 p.m.
“So there is really a gene that predicts the time of day that you’ll die. Not the date, fortunately, but the time of day,” said Saper.
The Atlantic reports researchers believe their results may be due to the human body reverting to its more natural, circadian rhythm-induced state as death approaches, instead of the cycle created by social commitments.
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