Junk food with less health risks soon!
Hamburgers and drinks may soon come to be marketed with reduced risk of heart disease and deep-vein thrombosis as their USP.
The Australian research body CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) is developing some of such "super-foods", which they claim have medical benefits.
The functional foods will come up for discussion at an international food safety conference, to be held this month in
Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), a governmental body responsible for developing food standards for
The standards body will detail its plans at the second Food Safety Conference, New Directions 2007, to be held on September 19-21.
Lydia Buchtmann, the spokeswoman for FSANZ, admits that it is illegal to make any "high-level" health claims of food, such as its reducing the risk of cancer or heart disease. She, however, claims that many products are "sailing pretty close to the wind" with general health claims.
She says that the only exception to the laws is folic acid, which is proven to decrease the risk of having a baby with spina bifida.
"Functional foods are moving from food that fills you up and are good for you to something that will prevent cancer and urinary tract infection (for example)," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Buchtmann as saying.
She says that foods claimed to be low in saturated and tarns fats, or fruits and vegetables said to decrease the risk of heart disease, are likely to get the legal nod. But, she adds, any association between eating fruit and vegetables and reduction in the risk of cancer will not be approved because it lacks evidence.
According to Buchtmann, general health claims like sugarless products promoting dental health or cranberry juice assisting recovery from urinary tract infection or calcium intake improving bone strength may be legalised.
Manufacturers must have scientific proof, and the food's ingredients will be put through a computerised "nutrient profiler" to measure good and bad ingredients.
Dr. Bruce Lee, the director of CSIRO Food Futures who will speak at the conference, said that scientists were working on developing a glycoprotein with a "satiating effect" and potential to control weight.
Other additives with a health benefit above nutrition include an "anti-thrombic" ingredient to help prevent deep-vein thrombosis, a glucosamine/chondroitin-like compound to help prevent arthritis, and an antioxidant from Australian native fruits to combat the effects of ageing, he said.
He also said that scientists were researching how to make tasty, healthy, high-energy foods.
"It would be to take a hamburger that tastes like a hamburger, will give you the same eating experience, but doesn't give you all the calories we hope that this will happen in the next five years," he said.
Dr. Lee said that scientists could achieve their object by using "fat replacers" such as a modified protein, perceived to have the same taste properties as saturated fat but without any harmful effects.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Drink water for good health
Ways to increase and maintain the quantity of the drinking water.
Keep a Log This can be as simple as a little piece of paper on the fridge, or a page in your day planner. Just make a little checkmark, or dash on the piece of paper every time you drink a glass of water. The log will help you keep track of how much water you have had in any given day. You'll also be surprised at how motivating it is to try to get those eight little checkmarks on there every day. Another idea would be to use little stickers instead. Add Some lemon juice One tends to get bored with drinking just water after a few days. Change things up and add a little flavour by adding a teaspoon or less of lemon to your water. You can also try some other fruit juices. Carry a water bottle It's much easier to drink water when you have it readily available. Carry a bottle of water around with you in the car, at work, while running errands, in the yard, and even while you are working around the house. You'll be sipping away the water without even noticing it. Your body will thank you for it in the long run.
Ways to increase and maintain the quantity of the drinking water.
Keep a Log This can be as simple as a little piece of paper on the fridge, or a page in your day planner. Just make a little checkmark, or dash on the piece of paper every time you drink a glass of water. The log will help you keep track of how much water you have had in any given day. You'll also be surprised at how motivating it is to try to get those eight little checkmarks on there every day. Another idea would be to use little stickers instead. Add Some lemon juice One tends to get bored with drinking just water after a few days. Change things up and add a little flavour by adding a teaspoon or less of lemon to your water. You can also try some other fruit juices. Carry a water bottle It's much easier to drink water when you have it readily available. Carry a bottle of water around with you in the car, at work, while running errands, in the yard, and even while you are working around the house. You'll be sipping away the water without even noticing it. Your body will thank you for it in the long run.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years
Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they’re getting closer. Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life". "It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict," Mark added. That first cell of synthetic life — made from the basic chemicals in DNA — may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see it. "Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our place in the universe," Bedau said, adding, "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role." And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste. Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life: A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply; A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes; A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy. One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step — creating a cell membrane — is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort. Szostak is also optimistic about the next step — getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system. His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over. “We aren’t smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened,” Szostak said. In Gainesville, Florida, Steve Benner, a biological chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution is attacking that problem by going outside of natural genetics. Normal DNA consists of four bases — adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (known as A,C,G,T) — molecules that spell out the genetic code in pairs. Benner is trying to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet. Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could "run amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem. "When these things are created, they’re going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab," he said. "But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen," he added.
Link timesofindia
Link timesofindia
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Introverts prone to heart problems
Are you an introvert? Do you find it difficult to express your feelings? You better step out of your cocoon and start to socialise more. According to a 30-year-study, men and women who bottle up their emotions are 50% more likely to die from a heart disease or stroke. Researchers from Chicago's Northwestern University followed 2,000 men over three decades and recorded all possible health changes they underwent. At the beginning of the study, the men, aged 40-55 years, filled in questionnaires designed to gauge their levels of sociability. By the end of the study, almost 1,000 had died of heart problems and 412 from other causes. Heart deaths included 404 from coronary heart disease such as heart attacks and strokes and 541 from cardiovascular diseases, which include other heart and circulation illnesses. Scientists then tabulated the accumulated data over the 30-year period keeping in mind other factors like high cholesterol, diet and smoking and found a direct link between shyness and onset of heart disease. The conclusion was that sociable men have healthier hearts than their more reserved friends. The researchers, who announced their research in the journal 'Annals of Epidemiology', however, failed to explain why unsociable men should have more heart problems. According to them, one reason could be that introverts lead more sheltered lives and so find new situations more stressful. Alternatively, the part of the brain that controls the day-to-day running of the heart may also be involved in setting personality traits. According to cardiologist K K Aggarwal, humans have three types of emotions — suppressive emotion when one keeps things to themselves, expressive emotion like throwing tantrums and showing anger and neutralising emotion in which a person balances the situation and expresses anger or sadness at the appropriate time.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Diets just don’t work in the long run
Asian News international
Asian News international
Writes
No matter how much weight you loose dieting, it will always come back, warn researchers.
And, to make matters worse for people who keep going on diets to get rid of those extra pounds, the researchers also warn that when the weight comes back, it’s highly likely that you will be a few kilos heavier that you were before you went on the diet.
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, led by Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology.
Mann insisted that though dieting could see a persons weight drop by 5 to 10 percent, the loss was not sustainable in most cases.
"You can initially lose 5 to 10 per cent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back. We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more," she said.
"Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people," Mann added.
The researchers, whose findings are based on an analysis of 31 long-term diet studies, found that while people on diets typically lose 5 to 10 percent of their starting weight in the first six months, at least one-third to two-thirds of people on diets regain more weight than they lost within four or five years, and the true number may well be significantly higher.
"Although the findings reported give a bleak picture of the effectiveness of diets, there are reasons why the actual effectiveness of diets is even worse," Mann said.
The researchers also noted that certain factors biased the diet studies to make them appear more effective than they really were. For one, many participants self-reported their weight by phone or mail rather than having their weight measured on a scale by an impartial source.
Also, the studies have very low follow-up rates — eight of the studies had follow-up rates lower than 50 percent, and those who responded may not have been representative of the entire group, since people who gain back large amounts of weight are generally unlikely to show up for follow-up tests.
"Several studies indicate that dieting is actually a consistent predictor of future weight gain," said Janet Tomiyama, a UCLA graduate student of psychology and co-author of the study.
One study, which examined a variety of lifestyle factors and their relationship to changes in weight in more than 19,000 healthy older men over a four-year period, found that "one of the best predictors of weight gain over the four years was having lost weight on a diet at some point during the years before the study started," Tomiyama said.
So if dieting doesn't work, then the question becomes - what does? The answer is eating in moderation and getting regular exercise.
"Eating in moderation is a good idea for everybody, and so is regular exercise. That is not what we looked at in this study. Exercise may well be the key factor leading to sustained weight loss.
Studies consistently find that people who reported the most exercise also had the most weight loss," Mann said.
Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function.
The researchers now recommend that more research be conducted on the health effects of losing and gaining weight, noting that scientists do not fully understand how such weight cycling leads to adverse health effects.
No matter how much weight you loose dieting, it will always come back, warn researchers.
And, to make matters worse for people who keep going on diets to get rid of those extra pounds, the researchers also warn that when the weight comes back, it’s highly likely that you will be a few kilos heavier that you were before you went on the diet.
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, led by Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology.
Mann insisted that though dieting could see a persons weight drop by 5 to 10 percent, the loss was not sustainable in most cases.
"You can initially lose 5 to 10 per cent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back. We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more," she said.
"Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people," Mann added.
The researchers, whose findings are based on an analysis of 31 long-term diet studies, found that while people on diets typically lose 5 to 10 percent of their starting weight in the first six months, at least one-third to two-thirds of people on diets regain more weight than they lost within four or five years, and the true number may well be significantly higher.
"Although the findings reported give a bleak picture of the effectiveness of diets, there are reasons why the actual effectiveness of diets is even worse," Mann said.
The researchers also noted that certain factors biased the diet studies to make them appear more effective than they really were. For one, many participants self-reported their weight by phone or mail rather than having their weight measured on a scale by an impartial source.
Also, the studies have very low follow-up rates — eight of the studies had follow-up rates lower than 50 percent, and those who responded may not have been representative of the entire group, since people who gain back large amounts of weight are generally unlikely to show up for follow-up tests.
"Several studies indicate that dieting is actually a consistent predictor of future weight gain," said Janet Tomiyama, a UCLA graduate student of psychology and co-author of the study.
One study, which examined a variety of lifestyle factors and their relationship to changes in weight in more than 19,000 healthy older men over a four-year period, found that "one of the best predictors of weight gain over the four years was having lost weight on a diet at some point during the years before the study started," Tomiyama said.
So if dieting doesn't work, then the question becomes - what does? The answer is eating in moderation and getting regular exercise.
"Eating in moderation is a good idea for everybody, and so is regular exercise. That is not what we looked at in this study. Exercise may well be the key factor leading to sustained weight loss.
Studies consistently find that people who reported the most exercise also had the most weight loss," Mann said.
Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function.
The researchers now recommend that more research be conducted on the health effects of losing and gaining weight, noting that scientists do not fully understand how such weight cycling leads to adverse health effects.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
World first spinal transplant carried out
A report in Lancent says the pioneering treatment carried out in China offers hope for thousands of sufferers of severe disc problems particularly young people.
The disc transplantation was carried out by doctors at the Navy General Hospital, Beijing and the University of Hongkong. Although disc transplants have been carried out in primates, it is first time doctors have reported such surgery in humans. The Chinese doctors used 13 discs, which were frozen and thawed out prior to transplant. With in three months, the donor discs had successfully bedded in with existing spinal disc tissue.
Daily mail writes
Victims of chronic back pain were offered fresh hope with news of successful”spinal transplant”surgery. Spinal discs from accident victims were transplated into patients with disc degeneration in the cervical spine,the area nearest the neck. All reported improvements in their mobility and areduction in symptoms such as weakness of legs and bladder.
Victims of chronic back pain were offered fresh hope with news of successful”spinal transplant”surgery. Spinal discs from accident victims were transplated into patients with disc degeneration in the cervical spine,the area nearest the neck. All reported improvements in their mobility and areduction in symptoms such as weakness of legs and bladder.
A report in Lancent says the pioneering treatment carried out in China offers hope for thousands of sufferers of severe disc problems particularly young people.
The disc transplantation was carried out by doctors at the Navy General Hospital, Beijing and the University of Hongkong. Although disc transplants have been carried out in primates, it is first time doctors have reported such surgery in humans. The Chinese doctors used 13 discs, which were frozen and thawed out prior to transplant. With in three months, the donor discs had successfully bedded in with existing spinal disc tissue.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
SOON BLOOD MAY SHED ITS GROUPISM
Danish team converts A, B and AB into type O
Times of India April 3, 2007writes
The blood group barrier set to come down. In a break through that can make all humans universal donars. Danish scientists have successfully converted A,B and AB blood type into type O, the universal donar blood which can begiven to any one in need of a transfusion.
Danish team converts A, B and AB into type O
Times of India April 3, 2007writes
The blood group barrier set to come down. In a break through that can make all humans universal donars. Danish scientists have successfully converted A,B and AB blood type into type O, the universal donar blood which can begiven to any one in need of a transfusion.
The inexpensive and efficient technique involves isolating bacterial glycosidase enzymes the safely remove sugar molecules from red blood cells(RBC).RBCs havecomplex sugars on their surfaces that determine the blood type.
Link Times of India.com
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Workout and dodge the pain of arthritis
India Times writes
ANI
Washington: A new research has revealed that women in their 70s who keep active could escape painful arthritis symptoms. The research was conducted by Kristiann Heesch and colleagues at the University of Queensland, Australia. As part of the research data on middle-aged (48-55) and older (72-79) women was collected using surveys over three years as part of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health. Women who reported arthritis symptoms at the beginning of the study were excluded, and the authors examined those who began reporting stiff or painful joints 'often' and the amount of exercise they undertook. Researchers found that for women in the older age bracket, a little over an hour of moderate physical activity each week will lessen the chances of developing frequent arthritis symptoms in the next three years. Pushing that up to 2 ½ hours per week is even more likely to prevent arthritis symptoms appearing. These results were not seen for the middle-aged group. Exercising into old age could ensure movement without stiffness and pain for longer, and could reduce the burden of arthritis on the healthcare system. The research was published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.
Link India times
Washington: A new research has revealed that women in their 70s who keep active could escape painful arthritis symptoms. The research was conducted by Kristiann Heesch and colleagues at the University of Queensland, Australia. As part of the research data on middle-aged (48-55) and older (72-79) women was collected using surveys over three years as part of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health. Women who reported arthritis symptoms at the beginning of the study were excluded, and the authors examined those who began reporting stiff or painful joints 'often' and the amount of exercise they undertook. Researchers found that for women in the older age bracket, a little over an hour of moderate physical activity each week will lessen the chances of developing frequent arthritis symptoms in the next three years. Pushing that up to 2 ½ hours per week is even more likely to prevent arthritis symptoms appearing. These results were not seen for the middle-aged group. Exercising into old age could ensure movement without stiffness and pain for longer, and could reduce the burden of arthritis on the healthcare system. The research was published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.
Link India times
Friday, February 23, 2007
If you invest in Good health, Wealth follows........
Improved health in the world's poorest countries can benefit both companies and global economic growth, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, told BBC News Online's Jorn Madslien in an exclusive interview during 23 March, 2001,which hold good even now.
Invest now in improved health in the developing world, and you will reap massive returns later.
“It is not only a direct investment in healthier people who are more productive. You also create a market which, globally, is important”
Dr Gro Harlem BrundtlandWHO
"If you invest in health, you increase economic growth and economic development," Dr Brundtland said. And this, she argued, is true both for companies motivated by profits and for struggling nations trying to escape poverty.
"If you invest in health, you increase economic growth and economic development," Dr Brundtland said. And this, she argued, is true both for companies motivated by profits and for struggling nations trying to escape poverty.
"Enlightened self interest compels both industrialised country governments and private corporations to do what it takes to drastically reduce the current burden of disease in the developing world," Dr Brundtland said. Healthy workers are efficient workers .
"The people that you have as your staff in your company are of course an investment. You train them, you need them. If they are healthy, they will be at work and they will be more productive," Dr Brundtland reasoned.
"So in the same way that you invest in machines and technology and other goods that create your wealth, you certainly have to invest in the people that you have as your staff".
Personnel managers in the political West, which comprises the rich countries in the world, have known this for a long time. Now, says Dr Brundtland, the message is beginning to reach companies in Africa, South America and Asia as well. Many European and US companies operating in these regions are beginning to invest in their staff, in their staff's families, and in the communities in which they work, she said.
"A healthy environment and more healthy staff is an asset for the company. Not only for their image, but even in more complete terms in the way they are able to make profits," Dr Brundtland said.
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