Public Health

Here’s a nice post about dietary puzzles in which a group of people who should have a high or low rate of heart disease don’t. For example, Spanish paradox. Those naughty Spaniards are eating more fat and less carbs and getting LESS heart disease, now there’s a surprise. Good thing their medical system is so marvelous. Sri Lanka paradox. In Sri Lanka they eat 25% calories from fat and still get lots of heart disease. Tut tut. I have blogged about the Israeli Paradox. These paradoxes go away, the author notes, “when you realize saturated fat is not the cause of heart disease.” Elsewhere on…

Crohn’s is a condition that affects one in 800 people in the UK and causes chronic intestinal inflammation, leading to pain, bleeding and diarrhoea. The team found that a bacterium called Mycobacterium paratuberculosis releases a molecule that prevents a type of white blood cell from killing E.coli bacteria found in the body. E.coli is known to be present within Crohn’s disease tissue in increased numbers. It is thought that the Mycobacteria make their way into the body’s system via cows’ milk and other dairy products. In cattle it can cause an illness called Johne's disease - a wasting,…

Gary Taubes spoke at Berkeley a few weeks ago; the title of his talk was “The Quality of Calories: What Makes Us Fat and Why No One Seems to Care” (webcast). Did you know that the last edition of Dr. Spock’s baby book advocated a vegan diet? One of many fascinating details. Also this: There’s a group at the University of Cincinnati that did an Atkins vs. low-fat study and they found that the Atkins people lost twice as much weight and they liked the diet much better. I was interviewing the dietitian who did the study. She had agreed to talk to me but she was very hesitant — she didn’t offer…

Elite athletes - often perceived as the epitome of health and fitness – may be more susceptible to common illness and are therefore proving useful in helping scientists understand more about the immune system. Nic West, a PhD candidate at Griffith University, has enlisted elite rowers to help him study the role of salivary proteins that act as a barrier to infectious agents such as respiratory viruses. He said salivary proteins such as lactoferrin and lysozyme act to prevent microbes from infecting the body and typically increase as the body fights off infection. They have a direct…

A new study from the Karolinska Institutet states that consumers of Swedish moist snuff – a smokeless tobacco called 'snus' – run a higher risk of dying from cardiac arrest and stroke. Snus also increases the risk of high blood pressure, a known factor of cardiovascular disease. The use of snus has increased markedly in Sweden in the past few decades, so much so that it now accounts for half of all tobacco consumption in the country. Over 20 per cent of men between the ages of 18 and 79 are daily users. Consumers of snus absorb as much nicotine as smokers but are spared many of the toxic…

Two papers in the latest issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition provide more support for the idea that omega-3s improve brain function. The first was a cross-sectional study involving about 2000 persons 70-74 years old in Norway. Their fish consumption was measured and they took a battery of cognitive tests. The more fish you ate, the better your score on every test, even after adjustment for several things. The second used data collected as part of a 3-year experiment about something else (the effect of folic acid) with 800 persons aged 50-70. They measured the omega-3…

A diet rich in fish, omega-3 oils, fruits and vegetables may lower your risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, whereas consuming omega-6 rich oils could increase chances of developing memory problems, according to a study published in the November 13, 2007, issue of Neurology®. The study did not find any association between consuming corn oil, peanut oil, lard, meat or wine and lowering risk of dementia. For the study, researchers examined the diets of 8,085 men and women over the age of 65 who did not have dementia at the beginning of the study. Over four years of follow-up, 183 of the…

Foregoing food for a day each month is one of the religious practices of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormons), who have lower rates of heart disease than other Americans, researchers reported at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2007. “People who fast seem to receive a heart-protective benefit, and this appeared to also hold true in non-LDS people who fast as part of a health-conscious lifestyle,” said Benjamin D. Horne, Ph.D., M.P.H., study author and director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology at Intermountain Medical Center…

Here’s a nice essay about the Women’s Health Initiative, a nine-year mega-million-dollar experiment to measure the effect of “healthy eating” especially a low-fat diet. 48,835 postmenopausal women . . . were randomly assigned . . . to either their regular unrestricted diet or to a “healthy” diet that was low-fat (20% fat) and high fiber, with at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, and 6 servings of grains a day. The “healthy” eaters endured an “intense behavioral modification program by specially trained and certified professionals” to keep them on their diets. While they backslide a…

A new study led by Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute senior scientist, Elizabeth Theil, Ph.D., is the first to suggest that a small protein or heptapeptide (seven amino acids wrapped into one unit) could be used to accelerate the removal of iron from ferritin. The results of this study may help scientists develop new medications that dramatically improve the removal of excess iron in patients diagnosed with blood diseases such as B-Thalassemia (Cooley's anemia) or Sickle Cell Disease. The study appears in this month's issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and was conducted…