Breastfeeding Can Help Women Prevent Heart Disease!

For years, scientists and researchers have known that breastfeeding is important for babies’ health, and now a new study has furnished evidence on the importance for mothers’ health as well.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences reported that postmenopausal women who have breastfed a child have a lower risk of heart attacks, stroke and cardiovascular disease. Their findings were published on April 21, 2009 in the May issue of 'Obstetrics and Gynecology.'

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the study was carried out under the United States Federal government's Women's Health Initiative study on chronic disease launched in 2004.

After studying 139,681 postmenopausal women, the researchers found that those participants who breastfed for at least one month had lower blood pressure, better cholesterol and less frequent diabetes. It also appeared that the longer the mothers breastfed, the more apparent cardiovascular benefit.

Women who performed breastfeeding for more than a year had their cardiovascular risk reduced by 10 percent. In fact, the longer a mother nurses her baby, the better for both of them.

According to the researchers, the study also provided another good reason for corporations to implement policies for encouraging women to breastfeed their infants.

High blood pressure, high blood cholesterol level and diabetes are all known risk factors for heart disease, which is also crowned as the leading cause of death for women. As such, it is paramount for women to aware that what they can do to protect themselves.

Is Calorie-burning Fat Just a Myth?

Have you ever heard about “calorie-burning fat”? If not, you may wonder does it really exist or just a science fiction.

In reality, adults do have small blobs of metabolism-regulating “brown fat”, which scientists believe it exist only in babies and children. Such finding was announced in a study conducted by researchers from the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

The paper, published on in April 9, 2009’s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, revealed that the brown fat or so-called good fat differs from white fat that makes up most body fat in such a way that the brown fat is active in burning calories and using energy. They also showed that the brown fat subsisted in adult humans and demonstrated, for the first time, that it is metabolically active.

According to the study, brown fat may have a role in regulating body weight metabolism. Therefore, by stimulating brown fat growth to control weight and improve glucose metabolism, the researchers believe that obesity, Type-2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders could be treated. Meanwhile, higher levels of brown fat might also help protect against obesity linked with aging.

By analyzing a database of 1,972 patients who had nuclear (PET) or X-ray (CT) imaging scans during a 3-year period for a variety of reasons, the researchers discovered that significant brown fat deposits in 7.5 percent of female patients and in over 3 percent of male patients. Most of the brown fat deposits were found in the patients' necks.

In the study, the tissue of 2 patients showing brown fat concentrations in their necks were tested and it was found that the cells had the protein UCP-1, which is unique to brown fat.

The study also found that the amount of brown fat presence depends on a variety of factors like age, glucose levels and, most importantly, level of obesity. For example, younger and thinner patients who had normal blood glucose levels had more brown fat, while brown fat was more active in cold weather as it helps in burning energy to produce heat.

It has been known that obesity, Type-2 diabetes and other disorders associated with obesity or overweight could eventually lead to heart disease. Such new discovery not only helps treat people with obesity but also helps them prevent heart disease.

Is There An Easier Way To Test Diabetes?

American Diabetes Association (ADA) reported that nearly 24 million American have diabetes, which can eventually develop heart disease and kidney disease, and cause blindness and force amputations. The majority of the diabetics are of Type-2 that is linked with a lack of exercise and poor diet.

Most doctors use one of two prevailing tests to diagnose diabetes. These are fasting plasma glucose and the oral glucose tolerance test. Both tests are considered clumsy, as they require the patient to prepare either by fasting or by drinking a sugary solution.

On June 5, 2009, researchers from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital announced at a meeting in New Orleans that a simple blood test, known as A1C test, that can indicate average blood sugar levels over the past several weeks has become the best way to diagnose diabetes. The new test, which the American Diabetes Association, International Diabetes Federation and European Association for the Study of Diabetes agree, does not require fasting.

What the new test does is to measure the damage to hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the stuff that makes blood red that is done by consistently high blood sugar levels. A hemoglobin A1C level of 5 percent is considered normal, while a level of 6.5 percent or higher should lead to a diagnosis of diabetes.

The A1C test needs only a small sample of blood. It is considered more convenient and easier for patients as they no longer need to perform a fasting or oral glucose tolerance test.

According to the American Diabetes Association, all adults who are overweight and have additional risk factors such as a family history of diabetes, high blood pressure, or abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels, should go for screening for diabetes. In fact, even people without any of these risk factors should go for the test beginning at the age of 45.

Why Do People Prefer Wine?

With hot and humid climate in Singapore, people used to have an ice-cold beer in pub, party or in their own home with friends, colleagues, or family members. However, the choice has gradually shifted to wine instead. Just look at the statistical figures. In 2006, Singapore imported some US$136 million worth of wine, which was an increase of US$25 million over 2005.

You may wonder why people give up the relatively cheaper beverage choice? Is it because wine is a trendy choice or is there any other reason behind this?

Numerous studies have pointed out that the beneficial qualities of wine are somehow good for our health. The cardio-protective properties of red wine can help prevent heart disease, while the antioxidants in white wine would improve lung function. Israeli researchers had even developed a way to increase white wine’s antioxidant content to raise its health benefits.

By making use of the health benefits revealed, wine producers are able to boost their sales. Ask yourself, do people really choose wine because it is a healthy alternative, or otherwise? Perhaps, researchers might want to conduct study to find out more on this.

Nevertheless, judging from the huge quantity of red, white or rose wine consumed, are people drinking too much of the alcoholic beverage in such a way that it might just cause more harm than good to the body? Remember this, too much alcohol consumed can only damage the organs especially liver inside the body, as already proven by research in the past.

Because of allergy problem, I cannot consume alcohol, not even a can of beer. After learning the health benefit of wine, I however started consuming wine since early last year. Strangely enough, I no more have the skin allergy, as I did when I drank cognac, whisky or even beer. I cannot figure out the rationale. Maybe the quantity I consume is rather small or my body does not reject wine any more.

Drinking a small glass of wine after dinner with my wife while sitting in front of the television seems creating a very relax and pleasant atmosphere for us. We drink just a small glass once or twice a week. If you ask me if there is any health benefit, frankly I cannot see any yet. Perhaps time will tell.

Why Did Obese Individuals Tend To Eat More?

Modern lifestyle and unhealthy diet have made obesity to fast becoming an epidemic that worries many health professionals. This is because obesity will eventually lead to many undesired medical disorders like heart disease, diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), and even certain types of cancer.

Meanwhile, it seems that obese individuals tend to take in more food to the contrary that they are supposed to eat less to cut down their weight. Such phenomenon has aroused the curiosity of scientists and prompted them to find out the cause behind that.

Researchers from the University of Texas (UT), the Oregon Research Institute, and the Yale University School of Medicine, Connecticut, jointly found that obese persons may have fewer pleasure receptors in their brains, which require them to feed themselves with more of a rewarding substance like food or drugs so that they could experience the same level of pleasure as other people.

The findings of the study, which is one of the first to positively identify factors that increase people's weight gain risk in the future, were published in the month of October 2008 in the journal Science.

According to the researchers, human brain releases the so-called pleasure chemical dopamine, which is believed to be a reward to the body for consuming life-sustaining nutrition. They suspected weak reward centers in the brain prompt obese people to eat more, and they believed obese people might have fewer dopamine receptors causing them to overeat so as to compensate for this reward deficit.

A technique known as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was used to examine the extent to which pleasure receptors in individuals were activated in response to a taste of chocolate milkshake versus tasteless solution. The participants were then tested for the presence of a genetic variation that was linked to a lower number of the dopamine receptors. Changes in the participants’ BMI (body mass index) were tracked over a one-year period.

The researchers believed the results from the study are key for understanding weight gain and to helping at-risk obese individuals. By identifying changes in behavior or pharmacological options, it is hoped that the reward deficit could be corrected to prevent and treat obesity.

Tobacco Can Be Useful, Are You Sure?

Smoking and tobacco have always been linked to unhealthy news. Smokers not only have the higher chance of getting heart disease, lung cancers, and other ailments, the secondhand smoke originated from them could also cause harmful effects to the people around them. Many studies have confirmed the claim.

However, an interesting finding by researchers from the University of Verona have found a healthy use for tobacco after they genetically bled modified plants containing a medicine that could stop Type-1 diabetes.

They published their findings on March 19, 2009 in the journal BMC Biotechnology and indicated out that they had produced tobacco plants containing a potent anti-inflammatory protein known as interleukin-10 (IL-10), which could help patients with insulin-dependent Type-1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases.

Agrochemical companies such as Bayer and Syngenta have been searching ways to produce complex protein drugs in plants but the progress has been slow.

The new finding is believed to mark the latest advance in the emerging field of molecular farming that might offer an alternative way of producing biotech drugs and vaccines at a cost cheaper than traditional factory systems do.

The European researchers believe the antibody medicines and vaccines, which are produced in cell cultures inside stainless steel fermenters, could eventually be grown more efficiently in fields. This is because plants are the world's most cost-effective protein producers. They have studied several different plants around the world, but tobacco is their firm favorite.

The researchers’ work has drawn the attention from tobacco giant Philip Morris, which is supporting a conference on plant-based medicine in Verona in June 2009.

Meanwhile, Swedish biotech company Diamyd has already been testing a conventionally produced GAD65 vaccine against diabetes in clinical trials. On the other hand, Protalix plans to submit its drug for regulatory approval in the United States and Israel in the 4th quarter of 2009.

What Is Piggyback Transplant for Heart Disease Patients?

Before knowing what piggyback transplant is, perhaps it is best to understand a term called cardiomyopathy.

Cardiomyopathy is a serious heart disease in which the heart muscle becomes inflamed and does not work as well as it should. In other words, the functions of the heart muscle are deteriorating. It can be caused by viral infection, heart attack, long-term and severe high blood pressure, alcoholism or other reasons that have not been identified yet. It is common in children in the first year of their life.

Simply replacing the ailing heart with a donor’s heart could not solve the problem. This is because the new heart could not adjust fast enough to handle the excess pressure built up in the lungs and it will fail.

One way the heart surgeon can do is to link the existing heart with a donor’s heart. In this so-called piggyback heart transplant, the surgeon inserts the new heart to the right side of the chest and attaches it parallel to the patient’s own heart. The 2 upper chambers on the left side of each heart must be lined up so that they could be merged.

The risks involved in such operations are similar to the traditional heart transplant, which include immune suppression problems and a chance of chronic rejection.

A British girl, who is now 16, is the world’s first heart transplant patient to recover fully after having her donor’s heart removed and functions restored to her original heart.

When she was 2 in 1995, she underwent a piggyback heart transplant and a new heart was inserted in parallel to her own failing heart. In 2006, she contracted cancer because of the immunosuppressant drugs she was taking to avoid organ rejection and the doctor removed the donor’s heart. At that time, her own heart had recovered sufficiently to work on its own. On July 14, 2009, her doctor reported in the Lancet medical journal that the girl has recovered fully from cancer since the surgery and has a normal cardiac function.

The girl’s success story certainly sparks hope for other patients with heart failure. The success indeed highlights the possibility for the patient’s own heart to make a full recovery if it is given adequate support to do so. Nevertheless, the road to recovery can never be an easy one. At one stage, the girl was forced to take 16 different medications to control her illness.

Why Should People Walk or Bike to Work?

Exercise forms an integral part in the prevention of heart disease and many other ailments. However, many of the working people are being pressured by heave workload that they can hardly find time to engage in any form of exercises or physical activities.

A large study in United States for health and commuting found that walking or biking to work, even partway, can boost physical fitness but sadly, very few Americans actually do it. In fact, only about 17 percent of workers walked or bicycled any portion of their commute.

According to experts, things like crumbling sidewalks, lack of bike paths and long distances have prevented American commuters from walking or biking to work.

Researchers from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill examined the tests and questionnaires from 2,364 workers (middle-aged city dwellers) who were part of a larger federally funded study on heart disease risk. These participants, who lived in Chicago; Minneapolis; Birmingham, Alabama; and Oakland, California, were asked in 2005-2006 about their commuting habits in the past 12 months

It was found that those active commuters did better on treadmill tests of fitness, even after accounting for their leisure-time physical activity levels. This indeed suggested that commuter choices do make a difference.

In the study, the male active commuters also had healthier numbers for body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, insulin and blood fats (known as triglycerides). On the other hand, the researchers speculated that women walked or biked shorter distances and they may have done so less vigorously

The researchers acknowledged that the study has a chicken-and-egg problem. People, who are already active, could be the ones who walk or bike to work. In other words, fitness contributes to wanting to walk to work; nevertheless, the reverse might also be true.

Prior research has found that those countries having the highest levels of walking and biking also have the lowest levels of obesity. Nevertheless, little research has done to examine the health of Americans who walk or bike to work. The new study may be the first large US study of health and commuting.

Many cities in United States, workplaces are separated from homes that lengthen commutes. However, cities like Portland, Oregon, that build bike paths have higher rates of cycling. Meanwhile, companies can provide showers, changing areas and secure bike parking to encourage active commuting.