Smoking harms mental health but quitters arrest decline, study finds

This study seems methodologically sound

SMOKING accelerates mental decline and damages parts of the brain linked to dementia, an Australian study has found. But there is good news for long-term smokers: quitting reverses the harmful effects on the brain.

The study assessed brain function using standard performance tests, matching the results to brain scans in 229 elderly smokers who were trying to give up and 98 non-smokers.

The research, repeated at six-monthly intervals for two years, was the first in the world to track changes in smokers' mental performance over a lengthy period.

It found the smokers, who were aged 68 and over, lost a disproportionate number of brain cells in regions important for memory and active thinking. "For the first time it shows what we see with our memory tests is confirmed by changes in the brain," said Osvaldo Almeida, professor of geriatric psychiatry at the University of Western Australia.

The smokers who failed to quit slid into mental decline twice as fast as non-smokers, but "those who quit, don't decline faster than those who never smoked", said Professor Almeida, a consultant at the Royal Perth Hospital where the patients were recruited.

"It's a good thing for your brain to quit," he said. "People who stop smoking, in terms of memory and cognitive function, do as well as people who never smoked."

While the quitters did show some grey matter loss 18 months after giving up, Professor Almeida said the damage was not significant and not in brain regions significant to cognitive impairment.

"The study suggests even later in life, if people stop smoking, it will have a positive effect on their brains," he said. The results, published in the journal NeuroImage, meant action could be taken to reduce the burden of Alzheimer's disease without waiting for a "magic pill".

"If people understand that smoking is an important risk factor … that contributes to progressive intellectual decline, this would hopefully reduce the burden of dementia in Australia."

Professor Almeida plans to continue testing participants at five-year intervals.

Kaarin Anstey, director of the dementia collaborative research centre at the Australian National University, said: "Before, people might have thought, 'it's too late for me … there's no point in me giving up because the damage is already done'. There's a very positive message in this research showing it's never too late and these quitters are getting a benefit, even in their 70s."

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Australia: Useless health regulators

If people knew they were on their own they might be more cautious -- but they have the illusion of being protected by government regulation

The Therapeutic Goods Administration is calling for submissions as to how it can improve its transparency. Which is not before time, given that a recent spot check of 400 so-called alternative medicine products found that nine out of 10 breached TGA regulations.

I decided to put my own two bobs' worth in. In the interests of transparency, I reproduce an edited version of my own submission to the review here. It's not as good as the more detailed submissions from Choice magazine and the Consumers Health Forum of Australia, but I found writing it to be, well, therapeutic. I wrote:

At the moment the TGA appears to operate as a rubber stamp for health fraud. It beggars belief that the "Aust L" "self-assessment" system allows people to sell untested products for medicinal use without having to provide so much as a jot of evidence for their efficacy.

The fact that a recent spot check found that 90 per cent of so-called complementary and alternative medicine products do not comply with regulations shows that the system is broken.

To help with transparency:

* All "Aust L" listed products should carry a warning box stating something to the effect of "The makers of this product have shown zero evidence that this product works for any disease or condition or that it can improve your general health or wellbeing."
Products that are known to be scientifically implausible should be labelled as such. The labelling should explain that scientific implausibility doesn't mean that "it works but we don't know how"; that it means "it can't possibly work as claimed unless much of our accumulated knowledge of physics, chemistry and physiology is completely wrong".

* The complaints process should not be so completely opaque. Some weeks ago I used the TGA's online complaints submission to submit a complaint (about the sale of colloidal silver for human consumption and the treatment of serious diseases in what seems a clear breach of the Therapeutic Goods Act). When I called to check up on the complaint a week later I was told it had never arrived so I had to re-submit it by email. Complaints submitted online should get a receipt number, like you do when you pay a bill online.

* People who make complaints should be informed of the result of the investigation - if indeed any investigation takes place. I have no idea whether my complaint will be investigated, and I get the impression that I will never find out unless I keep hassling people to check up on it.

* The TGA should be issuing a hell of a lot more advisories. The list of advisories is very short and threadbare. For instance, there is only one mention of homeopathic "immunisations" - a warning from 2002 not to use homeopathic "vaccines" for meningococcal disease. There is no warning about homeopaths selling useless "immunisations" for other diseases (including whooping cough, a serious respiratory infection that has been killing Australian children again in recent years). Also, there are no warnings about colloidal silver, ear candling and countless other things on which Australians are wasting their money and risking their health every day.

* There should be real consequences for breaching the Act. As long as the manufacturers and retailers of alternative nostrums feel free to scoff at the TGA they will continue to put people's health at risk.

What do you think? Do you think the TGA should do more to tell consumers that there is no evidence to support many of the remedies being sold in pharmacies, supermarkets and health-food stores? Do you think people who want to sell alternative remedies should have to prove that they work before they can be approved for sale? Submissions to the TGA review close tomorrow, by the way.

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Study links junk food to lower IQ

Predictable rubbish. Without control for parental IQ it is meaningless. High IQ people might well have different diets. The journal article is: "Are dietary patterns in childhood associated with IQ at 8 years of age? A population-based cohort study". See also here

TODDLERS who have a diet high in processed foods may have a slightly lower IQ in later life, according to a British study described as the biggest research of its kind.

The conclusion comes from a long-term investigation into 14,000 people born in western England in 1991 and 1992 whose health and wellbeing were monitored at the ages of three, four, seven and eight and a half.

Parents of the children were asked to fill out questionnaires that, among other things, detailed the kind of food and drink their children consumed.

Three dietary patterns emerged: one was high in processed fats and sugar; then there was a "traditional" diet high in meat and vegetables; and finally a "health-conscious" diet with lots of salad, fruit and vegetables, pasta and rice.

When the children were eight and a half, their IQ was measured using a standard tool called the Wechsler Intelligence Scale.

Of the 4000 children for which there were complete data, there was a significant difference in IQ among those who had had the "processed" as opposed to the "health-conscious" diets in early childhood.

The 20 per cent of children who ate the most processed food had an average IQ of 101 points, compared with 106 for the 20 per cent of children who ate the most "health-conscious" food.

"It's a very small difference, it's not a vast difference," said one of the authors, Pauline Emmett of the School of Social and Community Medicine at the University of Bristol. "But it does make them less able to cope with education, less able to cope with some of the things in life."

The association between IQ and nutrition is a strongly debated issue because it can be skewed by many factors, including economic and social background. A middle-class family, for instance, may arguably be more keen (or more financially able) to put a healthier meal on the table, or be pushier about stimulating their child, compared to a poorer household.

Dr Emmett said the team took special care to filter out such confounders. "We have controlled for maternal education, for maternal social class, age, whether they live in council housing, life events, anything going wrong, the home environment, with books and use of television and things like that," she said.

The size of the study, too, was unprecedented. "It's a huge sample, it's much much bigger than anything anyone else has done," she said in an interview with AFP.

Dr Emmett said further work was needed to see whether this apparent impact on IQ persisted as the children got older.

Asked why junk food had such an effect, she suggested a diet that was preponderantly processed could lack vital vitamins and elements for cerebral development at a key stage in early childhood. "A junk food diet is not conducive to good brain development," she said.

The paper appears in the peer-reviewed Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, published by the British Medical Association.

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Testosterone in womb linked to autism risk

This is pure speculation. They had NO DATA on testosterone!

PERTH researchers have uncovered further evidence of a link between testosterone and autism, backing a theory that high testosterone exposure in the womb increases the risk of the disorder.

Researchers at Fiona Stanley's Telethon Institute for Child Health Research found that girls with autistic-like behaviours at age two had their first period about six months later than girls without the disorder's symptoms, The Australian reports.

"These findings indicate that exposure to testosterone in the womb may be regulating both autism-like behaviours and the age of first period and that this may play a role in clinical autism," lead researcher Andrew Whitehouse said.

He said the findings were linked to the so-called "male brain theory" of autism, which suggests the behaviour disorder is an extreme form of male mental traits.

"Autism is a real male-dominated condition; it affects around four males to one female, but there are also characteristics of people with autism that are more male-like," he said. "People have started thinking what might cause that, and the obvious candidate is male-type hormones and the most biologically active is testosterone."

The study looked at 383 girls who had no diagnosis of autism. At age two they were each given a rating for showing autistic-like behaviours such as avoiding looking people in the eye.

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Even "junk" food can provide your daily dose of vitamins

The mountain of food ­surrounding me would send shivers up the spine of any right-thinking foodie. On my kitchen table sits an ­awesome pile of junk: frozen pizzas, long-life naan breads, industrial cheese, instant mashed potato, chocolate, peanuts and burgers, all of it amounting to four times my usual daily calories.

A diet made up solely of this stuff could, in the long-term, endanger your health by sheer volume of fat, salt and sugar. But it also has something very important going for it: this mountain of junk contains your entire Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of the 18 vitamins and minerals your body needs.

We’ve all seen RDAs on cereal packets and vitamin-supplement bottles, listing substances such as iron, niacin and ­pantothenic acid. If you’re anything like me, you’ve felt a warm glow of smugness when you’ve read on the side of your ­Cheerios that ‘one 30g serving provides 25 per cent of your RDA of riboflavin’. How lovely, we think — until it dawns on us that we have no idea a) what riboflavin is, b) what it’s for and c) what other food we’d find it in.

So, many of us throw money at the problem in the form of expensive multivitamin pills in a desperate attempt to hit our RDAs, which is why the supplement industry in the UK is worth £396 million a year.

But do we really need RDAs? I set out to investigate what they mean, and whether it’s really possible to hit these nutritional targets with daily diet.

It turns out that RDAs are of questionable use, and have largely ended up as a way for food manufacturers to boost sales. And incredibly, you can get all your RDAs from junk food — as illustrated by the U.S. study, out this week, that found dark chocolate contained more antioxidants and healthy plant compounds than fruit juice.

RDAs were first cooked up in the darkest days of World War II by U.S. doctors who wanted to know the minimum rations their servicemen could live on while based in England, preparing for D-Day. Food was shipped over in convoys braving the U-boat infested Atlantic, so it was imperative ­sailors’ lives were not risked unnecessarily.

At the end of the Forties, British doctors went a step further, concocting an average required intake of vitamins to maintain daily health based on post-war rationing.

Since then, the guidelines have been reviewed several times. They were formalised by the European Commission in 1991, but in the same year the Department of Health replaced them with a much more comprehensive but slightly baffling system that uses DRVs (Dietary Reference Values), which give recommendations based on age, sex and health.

But it’s RDAs that are still used on the side of your cereal packet — even though all those percentages and milligrams are outdated and, for many people, completely misleading. For instance, a healthy male adult needs eight times more iron than a three-month-old baby (and an iron overdose can kill).

I asked Nestle, who make my Cheerios why they still include RDAs on their packaging, but they failed to respond before going to press. But, I hear you cry, RDAs are on food labels because they’re legally required, so surely they must be right?

When I contacted the Food and Drink Federation about this, they said it’s only if food manufacturers state the amount of vitamins and minerals on the packaging that they’re legally required to provide them as a percentage of the RDAs. RDAs are actually compulsory only for a limited range of products such as supplements and infant formula, says Peter Berry Ottaway, a leading British consultant in food sciences for more than 30 years. ‘Major supermarket groups have been forcing suppliers to put labelling on everything, as they believe that it improves sales,’ he adds.

So how much notice should we take of RDAs?

After I had chased various different agencies, the Department of Health finally responded to my questions. Basically, RDAs do exist, but officially we don’t really use them any more.

It’s all very confusing — there’s no easy-to-access information that the public can find. Official dietary advice tells us that we should be able to get all our vitamins and minerals from a healthy diet and shouldn’t need supplements.

I wanted to find out if it’s really possible to eat my full wallop of RDAs — not just from the oyster and guava fantasy diets dreamt up by advertising executives, but from the food real people like you and me eat when we’re busy, tired at the end of a long day, or desperate for a snack. Which is why I find myself heading for Morrisons in North London to buy my RDA.

One of the first things I discover is that many of these vitamins and minerals can be pretty tricky to get from a normal, healthy diet. For example, I’d have to eat 14 large portions of peas to get my daily intake of magnesium — or 300g of dark chocolate. Hmm, I know which one I think I can manage.

You can get your full dose of ­vitamin C from two-and-a-half ­portions of chips — or one-and-a-quarter bags of watercress. In fact, the junk food often has a gratifying amount of good stuff.

Once home, I begin my challenge with lunch, cracking open my pint of Guinness (for my full RDA of vitamin B12).

Next, I start work on two portions of breaded haddock (for my phosphorus RDA) and two-thirds of a pizza (the dough gives me my full dose of calcium). I also have my first of the day’s Burger King Whoppers (iron) and a large portion of spinach (folic acid).

Still feeling full, I sit down to tea. Two-and-a-half slices of Victoria sponge (vitamin D), a pint of milk (riboflavin) and a thick sarnie of salmon paste (iodine) later, I’m feeling listless and slovenly.

At supper, I plod through four naan breads (vitamin E) and four scoops of instant mash (fortified with vitamin C) as my two young daughters watch in awe. This turns to irritation as I refuse to let them help me with three bars of dark chocolate (magnesium).

I put three tablespoons of cream cheese (vitamin A) into the remaining one-and-a-half ­Whoppers. A slice of liver gives me a tasty whack of zinc, and I wash it all down with a nice cup of Bovril (thiamin). I snack on six bananas for my vitamin B6 (one vitamin it’s hard to find in junk food) as I watch a movie, and by 11pm I think I’ve made it — an hour early.

But then I spot a large pack of roasted peanuts I’d forgotten. I’m tempted to skip them until I realise I have to eat them for the biotin, pantothenic acid and niacin. A shade before midnight, I raise my arms in a silent cheer: I’ve done it!

The next morning, as I sat down to write up the whole sorry ­episode, I felt pain, shame, lethargy and a fair amount of flatulence. But on the positive side, I have been enlightened. The extraordinary thing about my day’s diet was not just that I had managed to eat my entire RDA of all 18 vitamins and ­minerals, but that those nutrients came from unlikely sources.

Nutritionists may dismiss ­convenience food and naughty snacks as rubbish food with ‘empty calories’, but that’s often not the case. As it turns out, loads of foods have lurking goodness, even though they also have high concentrations of fat, salt or sugar.

So should we ignore RDAs? Yes. If looking at the side of your cereal packet makes you feel happy, that’s great, but, weirdly, a good chunk of our minerals and vitamins can be in ‘junk food’ — so a bag of chips can be part of a well-balanced diet.

As for supplements, it may be ­useful to take notice of RDAs if you’re pregnant, sick or elderly, but unless your doctor says you need them, don’t throw your money away. Spend it on better food, instead.

Now, I don’t want people to eat more burgers and chips than they already do, considering obesity ­levels. But I’m also wary of the nutritional Nazis who try to spread fear and guilt, while flogging expensive nuts, snake oil and supplements.

A good diet is one that covers a broad range of food groups, doesn’t make you overweight, and makes you happy. So eat well and broadly and certainly don’t take too much notice of RDAs — they’re all going to change again in November.

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Homosexuals to be immunized against anal cancer

The immunisation program that protects girls against the virus linked to cervical cancer should immediately be extended to boys to prevent other cancers, a leading epidemiologist says.

Vaccinating boys against the human papillomavirus (HPV) would help stem a drastic rise in some cancers, particularly among homosexual men, said Andrew Grulich, the head of the epidemiology and prevention program at the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research at the University of NSW.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee will consider next month an application to provide the Gardasil vaccine free to boys.

About 90 per cent of all anal squamous cell carcinomas are caused by infection with HPV. But an unwillingness to discuss the disease had led to a lack of awareness and research, said Professor Grulich, the senior investigator on the project.

Anal cancer had increased by about 3.4 per cent annually in men and 1.9 per cent in women since 1982, according to the study published in the journal Vaccine.

Unpublished research by Professor Grulich and his team indicated that in some inner-city suburbs the rate of anal cancer was up to 30 times higher than in the general population.

He said the federal government should immediately include boys in its free HPV vaccination program. "But we do have to recognise that even if we do that, just as it is for women, it could be 20 to 40 years before the maximum benefit is obtained," he said.

He was developing a screening program to detect the early signs of problems caused by HPV.

Anal cancer linked to HPV infection occurred most commonly among women, many of whom said they did not have anal sex, Professor Grulich said.

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Some babies' brains damaged by mothballs

So they want to ban a very common and very effective household precaution. Why do we all have to suffer for the benefit of a few? Should not the at-risk groups be responsible for avoiding whatever is harmful to them? And whatever the do-gooders suggest in place of napthalene will undoubtedly be found to be also problematical eventually (as with trans fats). I'm going to stock up on mothballs. I have been using them to good effect for decades

EXPERTS have called for a ban on the sale of mothballs containing the chemical naphthalene, warning that they pose a risk of severe blood problems and even brain damage for significant numbers of Australian babies.

About 5 per cent of Australians of Asian, African, Middle Eastern or Mediterranean descent have an inherited enzyme deficiency, and affected babies can suffer blood-cell breakdown if placed too close to fabrics stored with naphthalene mothballs.

In severe cases this causes jaundice and the yellow pigment linked to jaundice, called bilirubin, can build up in the brain. This causes a condition called kernicterus, triggering neurological problems and sometimes brain damage, The Australian reports.

Australians of predominantly Anglo-Saxon or indigenous background are less commonly affected, but naphthalene can also cause red cell breakdown in those without the G6PD deficiency.

In a letter to the Medical Journal of Australia published today, three pediatric experts from Sydney and one from Christchurch say at least three babies suffered from the brain complications in the past three years. One of them died.

William Tarnow-Mordi, director of the Westmead International Network for Neonatal Education and Research at the University of Sydney, said affected babies could develop massive breakdown of their red blood cells within hours of being wrapped in clothing stored with mothballs containing naphthalene.

"The lifetime costs of caring for a baby with kernicterus are many millions of dollars," Professor Tarnow-Mordi said.

The European Union banned the supply of naphthalene products in 2008, and Professor Tarnow-Mordi said he and other experts were working with the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to see whether similar action should be taken in Australia.

"Health authorities in Australia already inform parents about the dangers of mothballs with naphthalene. Without further measures, more babies could sustain brain damage or die," he said. "A total ban on mothballs with naphthalene may now be the safest course."

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A gene protects some U.S. blacks from heart disease

Some black Americans have a gene that protects them from heart disease, researchers said on Thursday. About a quarter of African-Americans carry the protective gene, and if they are lucky enough to have two copies, one from each parent, their risk of heart disease is 10 times lower that of other blacks.

People with just one copy have five times lower the risk of heart attacks, blocked arteries and other symptoms of heart disease, the team reported in the Journal of Human Genetics.

"What we think we have here is the first confirmed hereditary link to cardiovascular disease among African-Americans and it is a protective one," Diane Becker of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said in a statement.

The same gene has been studied in people from Japan, South Korea, Europe and elsewhere but not in black people. In fact, few such genetic studies have been done in blacks at all, the researchers said.

The gene is called CDKN2B, and certain mutations raise the risk of heart disease. For instance, Swedish people with one version of the gene were more likely to have strokes if they also had high blood pressure.

Becker's team studied 548 healthy African-American brothers or sisters of people with documented heart disease. They had their genes sequenced and were followed for 17 years.

The researchers noticed a certain type of mutation called a single nucleotide polymorphism, SNP (pronounced "snip") for short, on a gene that had been linked to heart disease in studies of people in Korea, Italy and elsewhere. About 25 percent of the volunteers in Becker's study had this protective version of the gene, and 6 percent had two copies.

Becker's team said when genetic tests became more common it might be worth testing blacks for which version of the gene they have, so those without the protective mutation could be more closely monitored for heart disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States and most other developed countries.

It is becoming more common to use ethnic origin to define disease risks. In 2005, Nitromed Inc. got U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to market its heart drug BiDil specifically to blacks after it was shown to benefit African-Americans more than whites.

Studies have shown that African-Americans are less likely than whites to be prescribed heart drugs or receive bypass surgery, although blacks have an overall greater risk of heart disease than whites.

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Milk Fascists in Australia too

Why can't the do-gooders let people take their own risks if they want to? I drank raw milk for a time in my childhood with no visible ill-effects. It did taste better. Most of us kids got TB from it but hardly noticed. We were all healthy country kids so it was just another childhood illness akin to flu which came and quickly went -- leaving us immunized against TB for the rest of our lives. The milk was a very pleasant vaccine.

Dairy inspection standards are now however much stricter than the negligible ones of my far-off childhood so any infection these days is a tiny risk -- and we all take risks

The thirst for raw milk straight from the cow's udder has created a clandestine market among consumers who say it is healthier and tastes better. However, food authorities are determined to stamp out what they say is a highly dangerous and illegal practice.

Peter Melov, of Bondi, was recently fined $53,000 for selling raw milk and raw-milk products through a now-defunct organisation, Global Sov. The products were sold online and at an organic food market in Bondi Junction. "Everyone was coming in asking us for raw milk, and a few shops in Bondi had it, so I thought 'I'll just sell it'," Mr Melov said.

Selling unpasteurised milk and cheese for human consumption is illegal, but it is available to buy under names like "bath milk" in certain health-food shops and markets. The Sun-Herald understands some raw-milk aficionados have exploited this apparent loophole, buying "bath milk" for drinking. Primary Industries Minister Steve Whan said companies selling raw-milk products were putting lives at risk. "There is sound scientific evidence pointing to the risks associated with consuming raw milk," he said.

Mr Melov, who was found guilty in Downing Centre Local Court of 43 breaches of the Food Act, said he had received no complaints from customers, and the NSW Food Authority had not warned him that he was doing anything wrong. He would not risk selling raw milk again, he said. "It was like we had been dealing drugs. "If we had just got a phone call, we would have complied completely with the Food Authority."

Medical microbiologist Dr Vitali Sintchenko, of Westmead Hospital, said there were sound reasons why selling raw milk was banned. "There are potential pathogens and toxins present in raw milk that can be life-threatening," he said.

Cheesemaker Will Studd has advocated changes to the legislation banning raw milk. "If we have such a healthy dairy industry, what is everybody so concerned about?" he asked. "Why aren't consumers allowed to enjoy milk in its natural state?" With the right regulation, there would not be any alarm about consuming raw milk and its products, he argued.

Fellow cheesemaker Franck Beaurain does not think it is necessary to relax existing regulations. "I really believe you can do a good job with pasteurised milk. I can't say it [raw milk] tastes better than pasteurised."

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Low energy lightbulbs 'could harm 40,000'

Low energy light bulbs could exacerbate the health conditions of up to 40,000 people across Britain, a minister has said. Anne Milton, the public health minister, made the admission after Labour MP Mark Tami asked if the Department of Health had made an assessment of their effects on people with sensitive eye conditions.

Mrs Milton referred to a report by the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR), which found up to 250,000 people across the EU with certain eye, photosensitive and neurological conditions could be at risk. She said: "Firm figures for the United Kingdom are not available, but the SCENIHR statistics would equate to around 30,000 to 40,000 people that might be affected in the UK."

A 2008 review by the Health Protection Agency warned of the ultra-violet rays emitted by compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), and the flickering nature of the light they gave off. The former can trigger rashes in a small number of people as well as lupus, an autoimmune disease whose symptoms include fatigue and joint pain. The latter can induce eye pain and could even increase the incidence of repetitive behaviour in autistic people.

Mrs Milton added: "The Department is continuing to work with the HPA, patient groups, clinicians and the lighting industry to keep the health issues under review." [Good of them!]

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Food campaigners face fury over sick spoof of Al Qaeda video in which Ronald McDonald is 'held hostage'

Campaigners for ethically-produced food provoked fury today by releasing an Al Qaeda-style spoof video in which they are seen holding Ronald McDonald hostage.

Five members of the Finnish group, who call themselves the Food Liberation Army, are seen in black balaclavas with the fictional McDonald's figurehead distinctive in the foreground, despite wearing a hood.

The spokesperson threatens to execute the character if the fast food chain refuses to answer questions about how it produces its products.

McDonalds told MailOnline today that the stunt was irresponsible and 'in very poor taste'. It also denied the campaign group's suggestion that it was attempting to hide details about its food quality and manufacturing processes.

A spokeswoman said: 'McDonald’s is always available to engage in constructive conversations with our customers, stakeholders and the media. 'This stunt is in very poor taste and not a responsible approach to meaningful dialogue. 'Meanwhile, we are focused on our customers and are fully transparent about our high quality food and industry-leading standards and practices.'

The video sees the FLA demand that McDonalds release information about its manufacturing process, and the additives used in its product. The campaign group also asks why McDonalds will not release figures detailing how much unrecycled waste it produces each year.

Speaking in Finnish, with an English translation running across the bottom of the screen, the spokesperson says: 'We are a Food Liberation Army, and we hope that this extreme action will take us towards a better and safer food future.

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Bone drug 'could give you another five years of life'

Highly speculative. With only 35 men and 106 women on biophosphonates and no attempt at sampling, this could very easily be a rogue result. See the comments in the last paragraph below. Journal article here

A drug taken by hundreds of thousands of women for osteoporosis could extend life by up to five years, scientists claim. Bisphosphonates – the most commonly prescribed treatments for the bone-thinning disease – have been shown to reduce death rates by as much as 80 per cent among those over 75.

Researchers believe they could extend an elderly person’s life by around five years. They suspect that the powerful drugs, which prevent the loss of bone, may also reduce the levels of toxic substances in the body which can cause cancer, high blood pressure and other illnesses.

Around 553,000 patients in Britain are currently taking bisphosphonates, which are sold under brand names such as Actonel, Reclast and Boniva. The majority are prescribed to post-menopausal women suffering from osteoporosis, but they are also used to treat those with arthritis and certain types of cancer.

Scientists in Australia looked at 2,000 volunteers over the age of 70, including 121 who had been taking bisphosphonates for an average of three years. They found that after five years the death rate among those who had been taking the drugs was 80 per cent lower than average.

The scientists believe that by reducing bone loss, the drugs may be preventing the release of toxic substances such as lead into the blood. Lead gradually accumulates in the body from petrol and paint on walls and is stored in the bones for decades. But when the bones break down and it is released into the bloodstream it can be harmful and has been linked to high blood pressure, kidney disease and memory loss.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, also suggests that the bones store another toxic chemical, cadmium – naturally found in soils – which has been linked to lung cancer.

Associate Professor Jacqueline Center, from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, said: ‘While the results seemed surprisingly good, they are borne out by the data – within the limitations of any study – and appear to apply to men as well as women.’

But others were sceptical of the findings as the study only involved a small number of participants. A spokesman for Arthritis Research UK, which represents a number of patients prescribed the drug for bone-thinning, said: ‘It was quite a small study, and much bigger randomised controlled trials have not shown that bisphosphonates extend lifespan.’

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"Healthy" lifestyle 'would prevent 79,000 cancers a year' (?)

The WCRF publicity machine hard at work again in the report below. Their "estimates" are based on an uncritical acceptance of epidemiological claims -- all of which become moot under close examination. The WCRF is just a donation-fed private club that needs to keep making scary announcements to get donations -- a lot like the SPLC

Almost 80,000 cancers could be prevented in Britain every year if everybody followed a healthy lifestyle, the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) has estimated.

Breast and bowel cases could be almost cut in half, with respective reductions of 42 and 43 per cent, the charity has calculated.

The changes would involve people taking regular exercise - such as walking for half an hour a day - maintaining a healthy weight and eating a healthy diet.

Studies have consistently found relatively few people recognise that taking such measures can cut the risk of a range of cancers.

Professor Martin Wiseman, medical and scientific adviser for the WCRF, said: "It is distressing that even in 2011 people are dying unnecessarily from cancers that could be prevented through maintaining a healthy weight, diet, physical activity and other lifestyle factors. "We still a have chance to avert a big increase in cancer cases in the UK, so we urge the public and the Government to make cancer prevention a public health priority."

The estimate that 79,000 cancers could be prevented nationwide, wase released to mark World Cancer Day.

Every year almost 300,000 cancers are diagnosed in Britain, according to the Office for National Statistics. Cancers kill more than 150,000 people a year, making it the second biggest killer after heart disease.

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Junk food companies told British Government wants to avoid 'intrusive' laws

The Health Secretary has told junk food manufacturers he wants to avoid "intrusive, restrictive and costly regulation". Andrew Lansley said to senior executives from companies including Mars and PepsiCo that ministers were not interested in "nannying" people about their food choices.

His comments come despite criticism of the Government’s decision to roll back spending on the Change4Life health campaign, in favour of getting commercial companies and charities to fill the gap. Cadbury, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, Kraft, Mars, Nestle and PepsiCo have all been involved, alongside Britvic and supermarket giant Tesco.

At a public health debate held by The Grocer trade magazine on Wednesday, Mr Lansley said there had been an imbalance in health policy for years, with "big state dominating over big society". Now there needed to be a "wide range" of interventions to achieve improved health - regulation was just one option.

Mr Lansley said he would not be "scared" to use industry to achieve public health and commercial aims, because companies could reach consumers in a way ministers could not. He added: “Hopefully there will be no need for intrusive, restrictive and costly regulation.”

The Health Secretary also admitted he himself falls outside the healthy weight range. "I know that I'm overweight," he said. "I know that I should have a BMI of 25 and I'm a BMI of 28."

Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said: "Mr Lansley's reassurance to junk food manufacturers beggars belief. "As Health Secretary, his duty is to reassure the public that the food we are asked to choose from is as healthy as it can be.”

Jacqui Schneider, of the Children’s Food Campaign, added: “There’s absolutely no evidence that industry – which has a vested interest – is able to bring about a change in people’s behaviour.”

SOURCE

How coffee can boost the brainpower of women... but scrambles men's thinking

The heading above reflects the heading of the academic journal article concerned but is a poor reflection of the journal abstract, which follows:

"We tested whether increased caffeine consumption exacerbates stress and disrupts team performance, and we explored whether “tend and befriend” characterizes women's coping. We gave decaffeinated coffees, half of which contained added caffeine, to coffee drinkers in same-sex, same-aged dyads. We measured individual cognitive appraisals, emotional feelings, bodily symptoms, coping, and performance evaluations, together with dyad memory, psychomotor performance, and negotiation skills under higher or lower stressful conditions. Evidence consistent with the first hypothesis was weak, but we found that women performed better than did men on collaborative tasks under stress, provided caffeine had been consumed. The usefulness of multi component, cognitive-relational approaches to studying the effects of caffeine on stress is discussed, together with special implications of the effects for men"

It would appear that the authors have over-interpreted their results. What they found was that women were better at collaborative tasks, which is not big news, given the female specialization in socio-emotional relationships. What is interesting is that women needed caffeine to bring out their greater abilities in that respect. One would have thought that they would be superior with or without caffeine. I suspect poor experimental design -- unrepresentative sampling etc. There is no obvious reason why caffeine should affect men and women differently

Next time you have a high-pressure meeting at work, keep an eye on what goes into your colleagues’ cups. Drinking coffee improves women’s brainpower in stressful situations – but sends men into meltdown, according to a study. While sipping a cappuccino or downing an espresso boosts women’s performance when working with others, the same drinks impair men’s memories and slow their decision-making.

And given that Britons get through some 70million cups of coffee a day, the implications are significant, say the researchers.

Psychologist Dr Lindsay St Claire said: ‘Many meetings, including those at which military and other decisions are made, are likely to be male-dominated.

‘Because caffeine is the most widely consumed drug in the world, the global implications are potentially staggering.’

The researchers, from Bristol University, wanted to examine what coffee does to the body when it is already under stress, such as during a tense meeting.

They recruited 64 men and women and put them in same-sex pairs. Each pair was given a range of tasks to complete, including carrying out negotiations, completing puzzles and tackling memory challenges, and told they would have to give a public presentation relating to their tasks afterwards. Half of the pairs were given decaffeinated coffee, while the others were handed a cup containing a large shot of caffeine.

The researchers found that men’s performance in memory tests was ‘greatly impaired’ if they drank the caffeinated coffee. They also took an average of 20 seconds longer to complete the puzzles than those on the decaffeinated coffee.

But women completed the puzzles 100 seconds faster if they had been given caffeine, the Journal of Applied Social Psychology reports.

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New antibiotic weapon in war on hospital superbug C.diff

A new antibiotic could transform treatment of hospital patients with life-threatening C. diff infections. A study shows Fidaxomicin – the first advance in the field for decades – cuts the rate of repeat infections by 45 per cent compared with an existing antibiotic. It also shortens the duration of diarrhoea symptoms affecting hundreds of NHS patients each year.

Experts claim the drug helps preserve the natural ‘good’ bugs in the intestine that are normally wiped out by diarrhoea and the action of conventional antibiotics.

C. diff is among the more virulent of hospital-acquired infections, with more than eight out of ten victims of C. diff aged 65 and over. Almost one in three people contracting the debilitating stomach bug suffers recurrent illness because current treatment fails to eradicate it.

A study of 629 patients published in the New England Journal of Medicine marks the final stage of investigation of the drug prior to licensing for clinical use.

Study co-leader Dr Mark Miller, head of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, Canada, said: ‘There wasn’t much interest in C. difficile for many years, because it wasn’t considered a serious disease.

'However, over the past decade the bacterium has mutated into something much more serious that has caused epidemics worldwide.’
Hospitals have installed alcohol hand gel dispensers to reduce the risk from superbugs

Fidaxomicin, developed by Optimer Pharmaceuticals of San Diego, is the first in a new class of antibiotics. It is only minimally absorbed from the gut into the bloodstream, which means its killing power is specifically targeted at C. diff in the intestine.

Patients taking part in the phase 3 trial were randomly allocated oral treatment with Fidaxomicin or the antibiotic Vancomycin for ten days. Just 15 per cent of those treated with the new drug suffered recurrences compared with 25 per cent of those given Vancomycin, a 45 per cent reduction.

The length of illness was shorter for those on Fidaxomicin and the low rate of side effects was similar in both groups.

Dr Miller said: ‘Anybody who knows C. difficile recognises that recurrences are the major problem with this disease. 'Anything that can reduce the recurrence rate, especially as dramatically as Fidaxomicin, is a very important milestone in the treatment of C. difficile.’

Latest figures show there were 783 C. diff infections in hospitals in England in December 2010. There were almost 13,000 hospital infections recorded between October 2009 and 2010.

SOURCE

Fat is good for you -- and organic food isn't

Eating is good for you – and eating a lot is even better. There, I've said it; but before the obesity police take me away for re-education in the cells beneath the Department of Health, I offer – as evidence in my defence against high treason in the war against fat – some findings published in the latest edition of Nutrition Journal, the results of a survey of 350,000 randomly selected Americans.

The analysis, in this highly respected academic publication, concludes that overweight people live longer lives, and that those who are obese in old age tend to live longer than those who are thin. They are also, say the researchers from the University of California, more likely to survive certain dangerous medical conditions such as heart disease, renal failure and type 2 diabetes.

The lead researcher, Dr Linda Bacon, concludes: “It is overwhelmingly apparent that fat has been highly exaggerated as a risk for disease or decreased longevity. For decades the US public health establishment and the $58.6bn a year private weight-loss industry have focused on health improvement through weight loss. The result is unprecedented levels of body dissatisfaction and failure in achieving desired health outcomes.”

Hallelujah and pass the cream! Actually Dr Bacon’s observations elide two very different phenomena, which should be treated separately. As she points out, there is the publicly funded campaign (as bloated here as it is in the US) which spends countless millions telling us that fat in food is a terrible thing because it will kill us off prematurely – an assertion for which there is very little evidence, but which has the status of holy writ.

Then there is the obsession with being thin, a phenomenon which is overwhelmingly the province of well-to-do women; this has nothing to do with health, and does not make any claims to be beneficial, in the medical sense. It is about image rather than content – and no less significant for that.

This distinction was brilliantly encapsulated by HG Wells in his short story “The Truth About Pyecraft”. Mr Pyecraft is a morbidly obese man who constantly complains to a fellow member of a London club, Mr Formalyn, about the misery caused by his excessive weight. Eventually Formalyn gives Pyecraft a secret weight-loss formula. It works: after taking it, Pyecraft floats up to the ceiling, where he remains helplessly until he is handed several volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica, which give him the necessary ballast to return to earth. Wells was making the distinction between weight – or mass, if you prefer – and fatness.

Thus, while the average dieter says that she wants to lose weight, what she really means is that she wants to be a different shape; it has nothing to do with being a “healthy weight” (whatever that is); and indeed such a dieter would almost certainly give up the last five years of her life expectancy in exchange for what she would regard as a perfect figure – although admittedly that view might be amended when the Faustian payment became due.

Nevertheless, because thinness is, under the modern Western dispensation, seen to be beautiful, and because beauty has always been regarded (with no basis in fact) as a visual manifestation of underlying virtue, dieting has become a form of self-sanctification, of moral purification.

It has sometimes been argued that in an increasingly irreligious age, the body has become the most fashionable temple, to which devotion is paid in a peculiarly self-obsessed manner, to the benefit of no one but the owner.

In fact, religion and diet have always been closely linked. Fasting – still practised in one form or another by strictly observant adherents to each of the great Abrahamic faiths – is the most obvious example; but religious dietary laws go well beyond that, as Jews and Muslims can attest. Although some claim that the dietary rules of what had once been desert tribes can be explained by what would have been common sense and hygiene in the days before refrigeration, the truth is that such rules were never intended to be for the benefit of the physical health of adherents. They were always about being virtuous, in this case by obeying God’s word unquestioningly, and to be part of a group who by eating in a certain (highly constrained) way, were closer to that God.

There really is not such a vast difference, psychologically, between those ancient faith identities and the modern cults of food faddism. The latter, too, identify certain food items as inherently and absolutely “bad”, quite distinct from any nutritional or scientific evidence. Vegans are an extreme example of this tendency, in that they are able to judge all those who do not observe their own strictures as being participants in a form of collective wickedness. Yet other, less ascetic, brands of nutritional nonsense are also little more than food cults – for example, the so-called “organic” movement, which has as its high priest the future head of our established church, the Prince of Wales.

While every meta-analysis conducted over decades has failed to demonstrate that “organic” food has any superior nutritional properties to that grown with the aid of chemical fertilisers, the adherents to this cult remain unalterably convinced that they and their children will live longer and healthier lives than those who do not adhere to the same quasi-religious dietary law. They believe that so-called “non-organic food” – in reality there is no such thing – gives people cancer; yet since 1950, as pesticides and industrial farming have taken an increasing role in food production, stomach cancer rates have actually declined by 60 per cent in Western countries.

Back in 1974, Dr Lois McBean and Dr Elwood Speckmann produced what remains the most incisive demolition of the pseudo-nutritional cults, in a paper on what they termed “food faddism”.

Their list of its typical adherents bears repeating today: “Miracle seekers or those who adhere to an uncritical belief in bizarre or unrealistic promises; ritual or authority seekers; those pursuing ‘super’ health; paranoiacs; ‘truth’ seekers; fashion followers ? and the ‘afraid’ who are anxious about the uncertainties and threats of living.”

That last category is the most telling; it makes the point that those who are frightened by food are frightened by life itself. Eat up – and enjoy yourself.

SOURCE






Popeye had it right: spinach really does make you stronger

A good journal summary: "A decline in mitochondrial function occurs in many conditions. A report in this issue of Cell Metabolism shows that dietary inorganic nitrates enhance muscle mitochondrial efficiency. It is an attractive hypothesis that dietary changes enhance energy efficiency, but its potential application depends on long-term studies investigating net benefits versus adverse effects"

Popeye's taste for a can of spinach before a fight has a genuine scientific basis, researchers have found: the leafy green vegetable really can boost your muscle power.

It was thought the iron content of spinach accounted for its status as a superfood. But researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have found that the inorganic nitrate it contains is the secret of its strength-giving property.

They gave a small dose of nitrate, equivalent to that found in a plate of spinach, to exercising volunteers and found it reduced their need for oxygen. Their improved muscle performance was due to increased efficiency of the mitochondria that power cells, the researchers wrote in Cell Metabolism. They suggest their finding could offer one explanation for the health benefit of eating fruit and vegetables, the mechanism of which still remains unclear.

Great efforts have been made to isolate the key ingredients of a healthy diet, with limited success. Nitrates could be one of those key ingredients. They interact with bacteria in the mouth to produce nitric oxide, a physiologically important molecule with a key role in lowering blood pressure.

SOURCE