Health & WellnessS


Health

Postmenopausal Hormone Use Linked to Risk for Kidney Stones

Estrogen therapy was associated with risk for nephrolithiasis in healthy postmenopausal women, according to the results of an analysis from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) published in the October 11 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Observational studies examining the role of estrogen in the risk of kidney stone formation have shown conflicting results," write Naim M. Maalouf, MD, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and colleagues from the WHI Hormone Therapy Trials. "However, randomized trial evidence on nephrolithiasis risk with estrogen therapy in postmenopausal women is lacking.... Because the process of kidney stone formation is influenced by a variety of lifestyle and other health-related factors, the true impact of estrogen therapy on the risk of kidney stone formation is difficult to infer from observational studies."

Using data from the WHI estrogen-alone and estrogen-plus-progestin trials performed at 40 US clinical centers, the investigators analyzed the incidence of kidney stones. Participants included 10,739 postmenopausal women with hysterectomy who were randomly assigned to receive 0.625 mg/day conjugated equine estrogens (CEE) or placebo, and 16,608 postmenopausal women without hysterectomy who were randomly assigned to receive placebo or estrogen plus progestin, given as CEE plus medroxyprogesterone acetate (2.5 mg/day).

Average duration of follow-up for determination of kidney stone risk was 7.1 years for the CEE trial and 5.6 years for the estrogen-plus-progestin trial.

Syringe

First patient treated in stem cell study

The first patient has been treated with human embryonic stem cells in the first study authorized by the Food and Drug Administration to test the controversial therapy.

A patient who was partially paralyzed by a spinal cord injury had millions of embryonic stem cells injected into the site of the damage, according to an announcement early Monday by the Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif., which is sponsoring the groundbreaking study.

The patient was treated at the Shepherd Center, a 132-bed hospital in Atlanta that specializes in spinal cord and brain injuries, Geron said. The hospital is one of seven sites participating in the study, which is primarily aimed at testing whether the therapy is safe. Doctors will, however, also conduct a series of specially designed tests to see whether the treatment helps the patients. No additional information about the first patient was released.

Cow

The Shocking Truth About Dairy

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John McDougal M.D. routinely reverses and cures serious diseases like diabetes and heart disease simply by helping his patients change their diets.

In his experience, the most important thing to remove from one's diet is dairy food.

I realize that a lot of people are not going to want to hear this, but the science is overwhelming.

The scary thing is that advertising dollars from the milk and cheese industry keeps this simple information from getting to the public.

A simple thing one can do to significantly improve health: take the time to watch this important video.


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How Being Deaf Can Enhance Sight

Hearing-specialized brain regions adapt to visual input

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© Amee J. McMillanA new study of deaf cats may help explain why some deaf people have great vision. In hearing cats (left), visual information is processed in one place (yellow) and sound information is processed somewhere else (orange), but in deaf cats, parts of the auditory regions become visual (small yellow areas).
Some deaf people have extraordinarily keen vision, and a new study of cats may explain why. The results, published online October 12 in Nature Neuroscience, show how parts of the brain normally dedicated to a sense that has been lost can pitch in to augment another type of input.

For years, researchers have known that deaf people often have superior peripheral vision and motion detection, but just how the brain creates these advantages was unclear. "Over the years, we've speculated about how these changes might be taking place," says neuroscientist Helen Neville of the University of Oregon in Eugene, but a clear cause has been elusive.

In the new study, researchers led by Stephen Lomber found that in deaf cats, brain regions important for hearing get co-opted to enhance vision. Instead of processing sound, these regions lend a hand to the visual system. For the first time, the study establishes a causal link between particular auditory regions and vision enhancements.

Pills

Call for ban on codeine

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© Unknown
The widely used painkiller codeine doesn't work in some people and can be fatal in others, so its use should be halted, say researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Codeine works by being metabolised to morphine in the body, but the extent of that metabolism depends on a person's genetic make-up, so the amount of morphine produced varies.

In an editorial published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal this week, Stuart MacLeod and Noni MacDonald say the problem is especially relevant for infants, citing examples of two children who died after being given codeine following a tonsillectomy, and two studies that show non-fatal toxicity to infants being breastfed by mothers taking codeine.

The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, has stopped using codeine. The authors are calling for others to follow suit.

Book

US: Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children

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© Drew Angerer/The New York TimesSophia Coudenhove read a picture book on Wednesday to her 14-month-old daughter, Anna, perhaps too young for a chapter one.
Picture books are so unpopular these days at the Children's Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., that employees there are used to placing new copies on the shelves, watching them languish and then returning them to the publisher.

"So many of them just die a sad little death, and we never see them again," said Terri Schmitz, the owner.

The shop has plenty of company. The picture book, a mainstay of children's literature with its lavish illustrations, cheerful colors and large print wrapped in a glossy jacket, has been fading. It is not going away - perennials like the Sendaks and Seusses still sell well - but publishers have scaled back the number of titles they have released in the last several years, and booksellers across the country say sales have been suffering.

Info

Why We Need Mandatory GMO Food Labels

  • Only 26% of the U.S. public understands that most junk foods and animal products contain GMO ingredients.
  • The FDA is moving fast to approve a brave new world of GMO foods, including genetically engineered animals like Frankenfish, the eel-like-ocean-pout-chinook-Atlantic-salmon mix.
  • Genetically modified foods are less nutritious, more likely to trigger an allergy, and contain higher levels of growth hormones and pesticides. Yet GM foods aren't required to be rigorously tested for food safety before they end up in grocery stores and restaurants.

Stop

Flashback Industry Study Shows Brain Tumour Link to Heavy Mobile Phone Usage

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© Unknown
A long-awaited international study of the health risks of mobile phones has linked extended mobile phone use to an increased risk of developing brain tumours.

The 10-year Interphone study, the world's biggest study of the health effects of mobile phones, found while there was no increased risk of cancer overall, those in the top 10 per cent of phone use are up to 40 per cent more likely to develop glioma, a common type of brain cancer.

Just 30 minutes of mobile talk time daily was enough to put participants into the top 10 per cent category in the study, carried out in 13 countries, including Australia, and involving more than 5000 brain cancer patients worldwide.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, which conducted the study and has repeatedly delayed its publication, summarised the findings by saying there were "suggestions of an increased risk of glioma, and much less so meningioma, in the highest decile (10 per cent) of cumulative call time, in subjects who reported phone use on the same side of the head as their tumour".

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Garlic Oil Shows Protective Effect Against Heart Disease in Diabetes

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© Getty ImagesGarlic Oil
Garlic has "significant" potential for preventing cardiomyopathy, a form of heart disease that is a leading cause of death in people with diabetes, scientists have concluded in a new study. Their report, which also explains why people with diabetes are at high risk for diabetic cardiomyopathy, appears in ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Wei-Wen Kuo and colleagues note that people with diabetes have at least twice the risk of death from heart disease as others, with heart disease accounting for 80 percent of all diabetes-related deaths. They are especially vulnerable to a form of heart disease termed diabetic cardiomyopathy, which inflames and weakens the heart's muscle tissue. Kuo's group had hints from past studies that garlic might protect against heart disease in general and also help control the abnormally high blood sugar levels that occur in diabetes. But they realized that few studies had been done specifically on garlic's effects on diabetic cardiomyopathy.

The scientists fed either garlic oil or corn oil to laboratory rats with diabetes. Animals given garlic oil experienced beneficial changes associated with protection against heart damage. The changes appeared to be associated with the potent antioxidant properties of garlic oil, the scientists say, adding that they identified more than 20 substances in garlic oil that may contribute to the effect.

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Taking Showers "Can Make You Sick"

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© Getty ImagesShower water can contain harmful bacteria
Showering may be bad for your health, say US scientists, who have shown that dirty shower heads can deliver a face full of harmful bacteria.

Tests revealed nearly a third of devices harbor significant levels of a bug that causes lung disease. Levels of Mycobacterium avium were 100 times higher than those found in typical household water supplies.

M. avium forms a biofilm that clings to the inside of the shower head, reports the National Academy of Science.

In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, the study authors say their findings might explain why there have been more cases of these lung infections in recent years, linked with people tending to take more showers and fewer baths.

Water spurting from shower heads can distribute bacteria-filled droplets that suspend themselves in the air and can easily be inhaled into the deepest parts of the lungs, say the scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder.