Health Related articles updated on daily Basis.

[Night_Hawk]

Ground beef and chicken are riskiest meats

(AP) / 24 April 2013

An analysis of more than 33,000 cases of foodborne illness shows that ground beef and chicken have caused more hospitalizations than other meats.The report by the Center for Science in Public Interest says chicken nuggets, ham and sausage pose the lowest risk of foodborne illness.
The group used government data on 1,700 outbreaks over 12 years to analyze salmonella, E. coli, listeria and other pathogens that were definitively linked to a certain meat.
To calculate which meats were riskiest, CSPI ranked the foods in which contamination was most likely to cause hospitalizations. Some meats may have had more illnesses but were less likely to cause severe illness.
After ground beef and chicken, CSPI categorized turkey and steak as ‘high risk’ and deli meat, pork,roast beef and beef or pork barbeque as ‘medium risk.’
Salmonella and E. coli, pathogens that contaminate meat and poultry during slaughter and processing, accounted for a third of the illnesses surveyed. Clostridium perfringens, a lesser-known pathogen that usually grows after processing when foods are left at improper temperatures for too long by consumers or food establishments, accounted for another third.
While a large number of chicken illnesses were due to clostridium perfringens, chicken led to many hospitalizations partly because of the high incidence of salmonella in chicken that isn’t properly cooked.
Most of the ground beef illnesses were from E. coli, which is found in the intestinal tracts of cattle and can transfer to the carcass if the meat isn’t handled properly during slaughter. Ground beef can be riskier than steak and other beef products because pathogens are spread during the grinding process.
According to the report, listeria, salmonella and E. coli required the most hospitalizations.
The group noted that the data is incomplete because so many foodborne illnesses are not reported or tracked. The CDC estimates that as many as 48 million Americans get sick from food poisoning each year.
To reduce foodborne illnesses from meat, CSPI recommends what they call ‘defensive eating’ — assuming that meat can be unsafe. Safe handling includes not letting meat juices drip onto other food or counters, cleaning cutting boards and plates that have held raw meat, wearing gloves when preparing meat and washing hands often. Cooks should also make sure meat is heated to the proper temperature before eating it.

 

[Night_Hawk]

Sugary drinks can raise diabetes risk by 22%

(Reuters) / 25 April 2013

Drinking just one can of sugar-laced soda drink a day increases the risk of developing diabetes by more than a fifth, according to a large European study published on Wednesday.Using data from 350,000 people in eight European countries, researchers found that every extra 12 fluid ounce (340 ml) serving of sugar-sweetened drink raises the risk of diabetes by 22 percent compared with drinking just one can a month or less.
‘Given the increase in sweet beverage consumption in Europe, clear messages on the unhealthy effect of these drinks should be given to the population,’ said Dora Romaguera, who led with study with a team at Imperial College London.
A 12-fluid-ounce serving is about equivalent to a normal-sized can of Coca-Cola, Pepsi or other soft drink.
The findings echo similar conclusions from research in the United States, where several studies have shown that intake of sugar-sweetened drinks is strongly linked with higher body weight and conditions like type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes is a long-term condition characterised by insulin resistance that affects around 2.9 million people in Britain and, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 310 million people worldwide.
Romaguera’s team wanted to establish whether a link between sugary drinks and diabetes risk also existed in Europe.
For their study, they used data from 350,000 people from Britain, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Sweden, France, Italy, Netherlands who were questioned about their diet, including how many sugary and artificially sweetened soft drinks and juices they drank each day.
Writing in the journal Diabetologia, the researchers said their study ‘corroborates the association between increased incidence of Type-2 diabetes and high consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks in European adults’.
Fruit juice consumption was not linked to diabetes incidence.
Patrick Wolfe, a statistics expert from University College London who was not involved in the research, said the message from its results was clear.
‘The bottom line is that sugary soft drinks are not good for you - they have no nutritional value and there is evidence that drinking them every day can increase your relative risk for type 2 diabetes,’ he said in an emailed comment.

 

[Night_Hawk]

Definition of prostate cancer: Cancer that forms in tissues of the prostate (a gland in the male reproductive system found below the bladder and in front of the rectum). Prostate cancer usually occurs in older men. Estimated new cases and deaths from prostate cancer in the United States in 2013:

• New cases: 238,590
• Deaths: 29,720

See the online booklet What You Need To Know About™ Prostate Cancer to learn about prostate cancer staging tests, treatment, and questions to ask the doctor.

For an overview of research advances, see Cancer Advances In Focus: Prostate Cancer.


[h=3]Treatment[/h] Information about treatment, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, and vaccine therapy

• Prostate Cancer Treatment
  [ patient ] [ health professional ]
• Clinical Trials to Treat Prostate Cancer
• Drugs Approved for Prostate Cancer
• Observation as Good as Surgery for Some Men with Prostate Cancer
• Abiraterone Improves Survival in Metastatic Prostate Cancer
• Panel Encourages Broader Use of Surveillance in Some Men with Prostate Cancer

More...
[h=3]Prevention, Genetics, Causes[/h] Information related to prevention, genetics, and risk factors

• Prostate Cancer Prevention
  [ patient ] [ health professional ]
• Clinical Trials to Prevent Prostate Cancer
• Genetics of Prostate Cancer
  [ health professional ]
• Prostate Cancer, Nutrition, and Dietary Supplements
  [ patient ] [ health professional ]
• The SELECT Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial
• Dutasteride Decreases Prostate Cancer Risk

More...
[h=3]Screening and Testing[/h] Information about methods of cancer detection including new imaging technologies, tumor markers, and biopsy procedures

• Prostate Cancer Screening
  [ patient ] [ health professional ]
• Clinical Trials to Screen for Prostate Cancer
• Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) Test
• Understanding Prostate Changes
• Long-Term Trial Results Show No Mortality Benefit from Annual Prostate Cancer Screening

More...

[h=3]Clinical Trials[/h] Information and current news about clinical trials and trial-related data

• Prostate Cancer Trial Results
• Clinical Trials for Prostate Cancer
• How to Find a Cancer Treatment Trial

[h=3]Cancer Literature[/h] Resources available from the PubMed database

• Cancer Topic Searches: Male Reproductive Cancers
• Cancer Topic Searches: Cancer Genetics
• Cancer Literature in PubMed

[h=3]Research and Related Information[/h] Includes NCI-supported research, funding opportunities, and special reports

• Snapshot of Prostate Cancer
• Prostate SPOREs
• NCI Funded Research Portfolio

[h=3]Statistics[/h] Information related to cancer incidence, mortality, and survival

• Cancer Stat Fact Sheet: Cancer of the Prostate
• Find Cancer Statistics
• Understanding Cancer Statistics

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/prostate

 

[Night_Hawk]

Brain scans show what pain looks like

(AFP) / 11 April 2013

Scientists said on Wednesday they have figured out how to recognize pain in brain scans, possibly paving the way for future tests that could accurately gauge its severity.‘Right now, there’s no clinically acceptable way to measure pain and other emotions other than to ask a person how they feel,’ said Tor Wager, lead author of the paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

For the study, magnetic resonance imaging brain scans were performed on 114 volunteers as heat was applied to the left forearm, ranging from warm to hot.
Researchers thought they would find a unique pain signature in each individual, since pain is measured differently among people and some are more sensitive than others.
However, they were surprised to find that the signals they found in the brain were transferable across different people, allowing scientists to predict how much pain a person was feeling with 90-100 percent accuracy.
‘We found a pattern across multiple systems in the brain that is diagnostic of how much pain people feel in response to painful heat,’ Wager said.
A subset of participants who had recently gone through a romantic breakup and were still heartbroken were shown an image of their ex.
Although past studies have suggested that the brain activity of a spurned lover is similar to a person experiencing physical pain, this study found that the heat-pain signature was absent in the lovelorn people.
Researchers also found that the brain signatures for pain decreased in patients who had been pretreated with painkillers.
While the technology is not yet widely available, researchers hope that in the coming years it could lead to the development of the first objective tests of pain, and perhaps help study and alleviate chronic pain.
The research was led by Wager, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at University of Colorado at Boulder, along with colleagues from New York University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Michigan.

 

[Night_Hawk]

Family history key to breast cancer diagnosis

Staff Reporter / 27 April 2013

It’s so important to know your family history so that you can act on it, according to Dr Zainab Abdelaziz, Specialist Oncologist, Zulekha Hospital, Sharjah.

“While receiving my chemotherapy for breast cancer I discovered that my grandmother had died of ovarian cancer. I had always thought that it was cervical cancer..”
Does it make a difference whether my grandmother had ovarian or cervical cancer? Well, yes it does because ovarian cancer can be linked to breast cancer unlike cancer of the cervix, explains the doctor.
“Not only that but knowing the age at which your grandmother developed the disease is also important thing.”
Up to 90-95 per cent of all breast cancers have nothing to do with family history, 5-10 per cent of breast cancers occur in women whose families have a gene fault that is passed down through the family and puts them at greater risk.
“The good news is that more than 8 out of 10 women who have a close relative with breast cancer will never develop it.”

When compared to the risk of the general population, you may have some increase in breast cancer risk if you have one of the following in your family:

• A mother or sister diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 40.
• Two close relatives from the same side of the family diagnosed with breast cancer — at least one must be a mother, sister or daughter.
• Three close relatives diagnosed with breast cancer at any age.
• A father or brother diagnosed with breast cancer at any age.
• A mother or sister with breast cancer in both breasts — the first cancer diagnosed before the age of 50.
• One close relative with ovarian cancer and one with breast cancer; diagnosed at any age- at least one must be a mother, sister or daughter.

There are lifestyle choices you can make to keep your risk of developing breast cancer ‘as low it can be’

• Maintaining a healthy weight
• Exercising regularly
• Limiting alcohol
• Eating nutritious food
• Never smoking (or quitting)

Recommended screening guidelines include;

• A monthly breast self-examination beginning at the age of 20 years.
• Clinical breast examination every three to six months starting no later than 10 years earlier than the age at which the youngest family member was diagnosed with breast cancer
• A mammogram every year starting 10 years prior to the age of the youngest family member with breast cancer (but not earlier than the age of 25 and no later than the age of 40).
• MRI of the breast.

Ask your doctor about online breast cancer risk assessment tools to calculate your life time risk of developing breast cancer. - [email protected]

 

[Night_Hawk]

Newfound hormone holds hope for diabetes treatment

(AP) / 28 April 2013

Scientists have identified a hormone that can sharply boost the number of cells that make insulin in mice, a discovery that may someday lead to a treatment for the most common type of diabetes.

People have their own version of this hormone, and the new work suggests that giving diabetics more might one day help them avoid insulin shots.
That would give them better control of their blood sugar levels, said Harvard University researcher Douglas Melton, senior author of a report published by the journal Cell.
Experts unconnected with the work cautioned that other substances have shown similar effects on mouse cells but failed to work on human ones. Melton said this hormone stands out because its effect is unusually potent and confined to just the cells that make insulin.
An estimated 371 million people worldwide have diabetes, in which insulin fails to control blood sugar levels. High blood sugar can lead to heart disease, stroke and damage to kidneys, eyes and the nervous system. At least 90 percent of diabetes is “Type 2,” and some of those patients have to inject insulin. Melton said the newly identified hormone might someday enable them to stop insulin injections and help other diabetic patients avoid them.
As for its possible use to treat Type 1 diabetes, Melton called that a “long shot” because of differences in the biology of that disease.
Insulin is produced by beta cells in the pancreas.
Melton and co-authors identified a hormone they dubbed betatrophin (BAY-tuh-TROH-fin) in mice. When they made the liver in mice secrete more of it by inserting extra copies of the gene, the size of the beta cell population tripled in comparison to untreated mice. Tests indicated the new cells worked normally.
Melton said it’s not known how the hormone works. Now the researchers want to create an injectable form that they can test on diabetic mice, he said. If all goes well, tests in people could follow fairly quickly.
Dr. Peter Butler, a diabetes researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who had no role in the new work, cautioned in an email that no evidence has been presented yet to show that the hormone will make human beta cells proliferate.
But Philip diIorio, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, said he found the work to be “quite promising” because it offers new leads for research, and that it might someday help in building supplies of human beta cells in a lab for transplant into patients.

 

[Fursan]

Benefits of green tea

 

[Fursan]

Effective times of drinking water

 

[fiazpk]

Re: Effective times of drinking water

A glass of water before polling your vote,,
it helps in making wise decision,

do not follow media,, follow your heart.
apne zihn ko media ke propagande se mehfooz rakhein, bad ihtiyati ki sorat mein apne zameer ko aawaz dein aur apne aap ko tabahi se bachain,, zimadari ka muzahira karein,

 

[Night_Hawk]

Food, skin allergies increasing in children

(AP) / 2 May 2013

Parents are reporting more skin and food allergies in their children, a big US government survey found.Experts aren’t sure what’s behind the increase. Could it be that children are growing up in households so clean that it leaves them more sensitive to things that can trigger allergies? Or are mom and dad paying closer attention to rashes and reactions, and more likely to call it an allergy?

“We don’t really have the answer,” said Dr. Lara Akinbami of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the senior author of the new report released Thursday.
The CDC survey suggests that about 1 in 20 US children have food allergies. That’s a 50 percent increase from the late 1990s. For eczema and other skin allergies, it’s 1 in 8 children, an increase of 69 percent. It found no increase, however, in hay fever or other respiratory allergies.
Already familiar with the trend in food allergies are school nurses, who have grown busier with allergy-related duties, like banishing peanuts at school parties or stocking emergency allergy medicine.
Sally Schoessler started as school nurse in 1992 in New York state, and didn’t encounter a child with a food allergy for a few years. But by the time she left school nursing in 2005, “there were children in the majority of classrooms” with the disorder, said Schoessler, who now works at the National Association of School Nurses in Silver Spring, Md.
Food allergies tend to be most feared; severe cases may cause anaphylactic shock or even death from eating, say, a peanut. But many food allergies are milder and something children grow out of. Skin conditions like eczema, too, can be mild and temporary.
It’s been difficult getting exact numbers for children’s allergies, and the new report isn’t precise. It uses annual surveys of thousands of adults interviewed in person. The report compares answers from 1997-1999 to those from 2009-2011.
Parents were asked if — in the previous year — their child had any kind of food or digestive allergy, any eczema or skin allergy, or any kind of respiratory allergy like hay fever.
The researchers did not ask if a doctor had made the diagnosis or check medical records. So some parents may have been stating a personal opinion, and not necessarily a correct one.
“We see a lot of kids in clinic that really aren’t” allergic to the foods their parents worry about, said Dr. Morton Galina, a pediatric allergist at Atlanta’s Emory School of Medicine.
For example, hives are sometimes blamed on a certain food when a virus was the actual cause, he added.
But experts also said they believe there is a real — and unexplained — increase going on, too.
One of the more popular theories is “the hygiene hypothesis,” which says that exposure to germs and parasites in early childhood somehow prevents the body from developing certain allergies.
The hypothesis argues that there is a downside to America’s culture of disinfection and overuse of antibiotics. The argument has been bolstered by a range of laboratory and observational studies, including some that have found lower rates of eczema and food allergies in foreign-born children in the U.S.
There could be other explanations, though. Big cities have higher childhood allergy rates, so maybe some air pollutant is the unrecognized trigger, said Dr. Peter Lio, a Northwestern University pediatric dermatologist who specializes in eczema.
Some suspect the change has something to do with the evolution in how foods are grown and produced, like the crossbreeding of wheat or the use of antibiotics in cattle. But Lio said tests haven’t supported that.
Emory’s Galina said the new CDC statistics may reflect a recent “sea change” in the recommendations for when young children should first eat certain foods.
In families with a history of eczema or food allergies, parents were advised to wait for years before introducing their young children to foods tied to severe allergies, like peanuts, milks and eggs. But professional associations changed that advice a few years ago after research suggested that allergies were more likely in those kids when the foods were delayed.
The old advice “was exactly the wrong thing to do,” and could have contributed to some of the increased cases, Galina said.
The CDC report also found:

• Food and respiratory allergies are more common in higher-income families than the poor,
• Eczema and skin allergies are most common among the poor.
• More black children have the skin problems, 17 percent, compared to 12 percent of white children and about 10 percent of Hispanic children.

The mother of a 13-year-old girl, who is black, runs an eczema support group in suburban Washington, D.C. Renee Dantzler says roughly half the families in her group are African-American. Eczema is an itchy skin condition, which often occurs on the arms or behind the knees. The cause isn’t always clear.
Her daughter, Jasmine, started getting rashes at 6 months and got much worse when she was 4.
“Her whole body would flare. If she ate something, you would kind of hold your breath,” Dantzler said. “And she’s allergic to every grass and tree God made.”
Her daughter took to wearing long sleeves and pants, even in hot weather, so people wouldn’t see her skin scarred — and whitened in spots — from scratching. She began to improve about four years ago with steroid creams and other treatments and has gradually become less self-conscious about her skin, Dantzler said.
She’s now on a school track team, which means wearing shorts.
“She’s the only one on the team with long socks,” her mom said.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-arti...ealth/2013/May/health_May4.xml&section=health

 

[Night_Hawk]

Treatment for grey hair possible

(IANS) / 5 May 2013

Researchers have developed a remedy for grey hair and a skin condition called vitiligo, a study says.In a research report published online in The FASEB Journal, people whose hair is turning grey develop massive oxidative stress via accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in hair follicles, which causes hair to bleach itself from the inside out.

The report shows that this massive accumulation of hydrogen peroxide can be remedied with a proprietary treatment developed by the researchers described as a topical UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS (a modified pseudocatalase).

The study also shows that the same treatment works for the skin condition vitiligo, reports Science Daily.

‘It is beyond any doubt that the sudden loss of the inherited skin and localised hair colour can affect individuals in many fundamental ways,’ said Karin U. Schallreuter.

Schallreuter is a study author from the Institute for Pigmentary Disorders in association with E.M. Arndt University of Greifswald, Germany, and the Centre for Skin Sciences, School of Life Sciences at the University of Bradford, Britain.

‘The improvement of quality of life after total and even partial successful repigmentation has been documented,’ Schallreuter said.

 

[Night_Hawk]

Exercise cuts kidney stone risk in women

(AP) / 6 May 2013

Women have another reason to exercise: It may help prevent kidney stones. You don’t have to break a sweat or be a super athlete, either.Even walking for a couple hours a week can cut the risk of developing this painful and common problem by about one-third, a large study found.
‘Every little bit makes a difference’ and the intensity doesn’t matter — just getting a minimum amount of exercise does, said Dr. Mathew Sorensen of the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.
He led the study, which was to be discussed Friday at an American Urological Association conference in San Diego.
About 9 percent of people will get a kidney stone sometime in their life. The problem is a little more common in men, but incidence has risen 70 percent over the last 15 years, most rapidly among women.
Obesity raises the risk as do calcium supplements, which many women take after menopause. A government task force recently advised against supplements for healthy older women, saying that relatively low-dose calcium pills don’t do much to keep bones strong but make kidney stones more likely.
The new research involved nearly 85,000 women 50 and older in the government-funded Women’s Health Initiative study. All had an exam to measure weight and height so doctors could figure out their body mass index, a gauge of obesity. They also filled out annual surveys on what they ate, so researchers could take into account things known to lower the risk of kidney stones, such as drinking a lot of fluids and eating less salt or meat.
Participants said how much exercise they usually got and that was translated into ‘METs’ — a measure of how much effort an activity takes. For example, 10 METs per week is about 2 hours of walking at a moderate pace, four hours of light gardening or one hour of jogging.
After about eight years, 3 percent of the women had developed a kidney stone. Compared to women who got no leisure-time exercise, those who got up to 5 METs per week had a 16 percent lower risk for stones. The risk was 22 percent lower with 5 to 10 METs per week and 31 percent lower for 10 METs or more. Exercise beyond 10 METs added no additional benefit for kidney stone prevention.Exercise intensity didn’t matter — just how much women got each week.
‘We’re not asking people to run marathons. This is just a very mild to moderate additional amount of activity,’ Sorensen said.
Why might exercise help? It changes the way the body handles nutrients and fluids that affect stone formation. Exercisers sweat out salt and tend to retain calcium in their bones, rather than having these go into the kidneys and urine where stones form. They also tend to drink water and fluids afterwards, another plus for preventing stones.
‘There’s something about exercise itself that probably produces things in your urine that prevent stone formation,’ said one expert not involved in the work, Dr. Kevin McVary. He is chairman of urology at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Ill., and a spokesman for the urology group. ‘It’s not just being skinny or not being fat, it’s something about the exercise that protects you.’
Exercise is known to cut the risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and other conditions that raise the risk of kidney stones. Next, researchers want to study men and younger women to see if exercise helps prevent kidney stones in them, too .

 

[Night_Hawk]

Dark choco a day, keeps doctor away

(IANS) / 18 May 2013

Craving for chocolates, but don’t want to gain those extra pounds? Worry not! Go for a dark chocolate, which contains a good amount of vitamins, minerals, iron, potassium and magnesium.Physicians suggest dark chocolates are good for the heart, and they help reduce cardiovascular ailments as they contain potassium and copper. High in iron content, dark chocolates also cure anemia. Whereas, magnesium prevents high blood pressure, and diabetes.

An online study inducates that a person should consune two or three grams of sweet candies a week to reap its health benefits. The research also suggests that if you eat a bit of dark chocolate as a dessert after your meals, it is likely to curb weight gain.

Following are benefits of dark chocolates:

Controls blood pressure: Having little amount of dark chocolates at least thrice a week improves blood flow and prevents blood clotting,” says Sonal Arora, a Delhi-based dietician. “It also lowers blood pressure and arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries),” she adds.

Good for brain: Since it improves the blood flow in the body, it helps improve cognitive function, and also reduces the risk of a stroke. Arora also said dark chocolates contain Phenylethylamine (PEA). It’s the same chemical that our brain creates when a person falls in love. The chemical helps brain to release endorphins, which results in making a person happier.

Controls blood sugar: Dark chocolates keep blood vessels healthy and help control diabetes. “Dark chocolates contain a chemical called flavonoids which reduces insulin resistance and encourage body cells to function normally,” adds the dietician.

Loaded with antioxidants: Antioxidants help release free radicals, which damage cells. A human body develops free radicals when a person grows old. These radicals can also cause cancer. Dark chocolates lower down the signs of ageing and reduce cancer risks.

Reduces stress: “Dark chocolates help reducing stress as it contain good amount of cocoa, and cocoa helps reduces stress hormones,” says Arora.

 

[Night_Hawk]

People choose larger portions of ‘healthy’ foods

(Reuters) / 22 May 2013

People will choose larger portions of food if they are labeled as being “healthier,” even if they have the same number of calories, according to a new study.“People think (healthier food) is lower in calories,” said Pierre Chandon, a marketing professor at the INSEAD Social Science Research Center in France, and they “tend to consume more of it.”

That misconception can lead to people eating larger portion sizes of so-called healthy foods, and therefore more calories.
“Foods are marketed as being healthier for a reason, because food producers believe, and they correctly believe, that those labels will influence us to eat their products and perhaps eat more of their products,” said Dr. Cliodhna Foley Nolan the director of Human Health and Nutrition at Safefood, a government agency in Ireland.

Safefood commissioned the study, led by Barbara Livingstone, a professor at the University of Ulster.
Foley Nolan said that the portion sizes of food have become larger over the years, and Safefood wanted to see whether health and nutrition claims had any influence.
The researchers asked 186 adults to assess the appropriate portion sizes of foods.
Given a bowl of coleslaw, the participants served themselves more of the coleslaw labeled “healthier” than the coleslaw labeled “standard.”
For instance, obese men served themselves 103 grams of healthy coleslaw and 86 grams of standard coleslaw.
In reality, the healthy-labeled coleslaw had just as many calories - 941 kilojoules (or 224 calories) for every 100 grams - as the “standard” coleslaw, which had 937 kilojoules (or 223 calories).
Additionally, people tended to underestimate how many calories were in a serving for the “healthier” coleslaw.
The participants most often thought the “healthier” coleslaw contained 477 kilojoules, or 113 calories.
In contrast, they were not far off in estimating the calories in the “standard” coleslaw.
‘A certain license to overeat’
Chandon, who was not part of this study, said people tend to stereotype food that might be healthy in one aspect, say, lower in fat, as being healthy in every dimension.
But in fact, food labeled as being healthy is not always lower in calories.
He said one reason why people might overeat healthier foods is because they feel less guilt when they choose a healthier option.
“We think that these kinds of marketing means…of labeling things as being healthier, that it gives us a certain license to overeat and it can be dangerous” with regard to weight gain, Foley Nolan told Reuters Health.
She said the findings will be useful in developing nutrition policies and education campaigns to help people make healthy food choices.
Foley Nolan recommended that people bulk up on fruit and vegetables, rather than processed foods, even if they are labeled as healthy.
Chandon added that shoppers should also look at nutrition labels and calorie content.
“Just pay attention to those (health) claims and don’t generalize or stereotype on one (type of) nutritional information,” he said.

 

[Night_Hawk]

Walnuts boost blood vessel functioning

(IANS) / 10 May 2013

Scientists now know the additional ways the components of walnuts and their extracts lower risks of heart diseases.Consumption of whole walnuts or their extracted oil can reduce cardiovascular risk through a mechanism other than simply lowering cholesterol, according to a team of Penn State, Tufts University and University of Pennsylvania researchers.

“We already know that eating walnuts in a heart-healthy diet can lower blood cholesterol levels,” said Penny Kris-Etherton, distinguished professor of nutrition, Penn State.
“But, until now, we did not know what component of the walnut was providing this benefit. Now we understand additional ways in which whole walnuts and their oil components can improve heart health.”
Results - which will appear in the June 1 issue of the Journal of Nutrition and are now online - showed that a one-time consumption of the oil component in walnuts favourably affected vascular health.
In addition, consumption of whole walnuts helped HDL - good cholesterol - perform more effectively in transporting and removing excess cholesterol from the body, reports Science Daily.
“Our study showed that the oil found in walnuts can maintain blood vessel function after a meal, which is very important given that blood vessel integrity is often compromised in individuals with cardiovascular disease,” said Claire Berryman, graduate student in nutritional sciences, Penn State.
“The walnut oil was particularly good at preserving the function of endothelial cells, which play an important role in cardiovascular health,” said Berryman.

 

[Night_Hawk]

More evidence adding nuts is a healthy choice

(Reuters) / 27 April 2013

People can safely add a few nuts to their diet - or replace other foods with the high-unsaturated fat, high-fiber snacks - without gaining weight, a new review of past studies suggests.Researchers combined data from 31 trials conducted across the globe and found that on average, there was very little difference in changes in weight or waist measurements between people who were put on a normal or nut-supplemented diet.

“Most of the nut-enriched studies don’t show that patients gain a significant amount of weight, in contrast to what one might think,” said Dr. David Bleich, head of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark.
Gemma Flores-Mateo from the Institut Universitari d’Investigacio en Atencio Primaria Jordi Gol in Tarragona, Spain and colleagues said previous research has tied nut-containing diets to a lower risk of death, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Bleich, who wasn’t involved in the new report, said his own work has shown measures of insulin resistance - a diabetes predictor - were lower when people added nuts to their diets.
“One would generally think if you’re increasing the ‘fat content’ of the diet, you might in fact make insulin resistance worse,” he told Reuters Health. “It speaks to this issue of the quality of the fats that we consume.”
Nuts may also suppress hunger because of their unsaturated fats, fiber and protein, the researchers noted.
In the trials they looked at, participants were randomly assigned to a normal diet or one that included extra nuts - or, more often, nuts substituted for other food items - and followed for anywhere from two weeks to five years.
At the end of follow-up, people on nut diets had dropped about 1.4 extra pounds and lost close to half an inch off their waists, compared to those in the nut-free groups. However, the differences could have been due to chance.
“Although the magnitude of these effects was modest, the results allay the fear that nut consumption may promote obesity,” Flores-Mateo’s team wrote last week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
“Our findings support the inclusion of nuts in healthy diets for cardiovascular prevention.”
However it’s not simply a matter of “throwing additional nuts into your already poor-quality diet,” Bleich said. He said heart protection comes from looking at a fuller picture of the diet - and adding fruits, vegetables and olive oil, for example, in addition to nuts.
Dr. Adam Gilden Tsai, an obesity researcher from the University of Colorado in Denver, said he wouldn’t recommend people eat nuts on top of their normal diet, but that substituting them for other foods may lead to some benefits, such as on cholesterol levels.
“It’s fine to eat nuts if you can still limit your calories,” Tsai told Reuters Health. But he cautioned that it can be hard for people to eat just one serving.
“Normally what I would say to a patient is, ‘A small handful of nuts can be a very good and filling snack, but you have to be very careful because it’s high in calories.’”

 

[angryoldman]

کھجور کے فوائد

 

[PATRIOTIC_PAKISTANI]

Re: کھجور کے فوائد

Aaj kul ye Altaf hussain ko khilaoo :P

 

[ranaji]

Re: کھجور کے فوائد

Aaj kul ye Altaf hussain ko khilaoo :P

kaloo ka ilajj to abb hakeem tara masih ke hathon hogaa aur bohatt jaldd

 

[Urooj_lbw]

Re: کھجور کے فوائد

Immi bhai ko khilao taake jaldi jaldi shifa paa jain oor aik baar phir chakke lagaei inshALLAH