June Contents:
Amrit
Cow milk
Cholesterol
Cola
Diabetes
Vegan Diet
Yoga
Human Genome
Amrit:
"It makes chemotherapy more bearable for patients without interfering in
the cancer treatment," said Dr. Hari Sharma. He is a professor
emeritus and former director of cancer prevention and natural products
research at Ohio State University. He and researchers at the All
India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi recently completed a study
on Amrit and presented their findings at the St. Joseph Hospital's Center
for Healthy Aging in Chicago recently. Amrit has been used in India
as an antidote for healthy aging for generations. Amrit is
an antioxidant that contains 44 herbs and minerals, including large amounts
of vitamins C and E, as well as beta-carotene. According to Dr. Sharma,
Amrit increases a chemical in the liver that is responsible for cleansing
from the body toxins that cause the side effects. Maharishi Aayurveda
Products International, in Colorado Springs, Co, sells it.
Cow Milk:
According to a study published Dr. Suvi M. Virtanen with the University
of Tampere, Finland, in the June issue of Diabetes, consuming large quantities
of cow's milk during childhood may increase the risk of developing type-1
diabetes in children who are already genetically susceptible to the disorder.
Cholesterol:
Cholesterol, and a protein named TACO, may carry a health risk that has
nothing to do with diet. Swiss researchers have found that cholesterol
on certain cell surfaces lays down a welcome mat for tuberculosis (TB)
and other infections. Once inside, the friendly TACO protein invites the
bacteria to stay.
Cola:
According to a Harvard study published in this month's Archives of Pediatrics
& Adolescent Medicine, teen-age girls who drink soda - particularly
cola - are far more likely to break a bone. Grace Wyshak, an associate
professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School,
suggested that a chemical in colas - phosphoric acid - might actually weaken
bones.
Diabetes:
According to Dr. Laurie J. Goodyear, an assistant professor of medicine
at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, exercise appears to
increase the activity of a substance called AMP kinase, which causes muscle
to take up and use more glucose, or blood sugar. Speaking to Reuters Health,
Dr. Goodyear predicted a "worldwide explosion" in type 2 diabetes, largely
due to poor food choices and inactivity. Regular exercise, she said, would
help stave off this explosion by preventing insulin dysfunction in the
first place. Already, though, the disease—previously referred to as "adult-onset
diabetes"—is on the rise among children. This problem, according to Goodyear,
is particularly evident in urban areas, where children often have little
opportunity for activity and tend to have poor diets.
Vegan Diet:
British researchers at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in Oxford said
that men who eat a vegan diet had lower levels of a protein associated
with prostate cancer. Their findings suggested that a diet without meat
or dairy products could reduce the risk of contracting the deadly disease.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in British men. Each year,
the disease kills about 9,500 men and about 21,000 new cases are diagnosed.
The study was published in the British Journal of Cancer. Previous research
had found prostate cancer rates were lower in countries with low consumption
of meat and dairy products.
Yoga:
According to a study presented by B.H. Sung and colleagues from Kaleida
Health-Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo, New York at the annual meeting
of the American Society of Hypertension, yoga in the form of controlled
breathing lowered blood pressure in people who were subject to mental stress.
Prayer:
“We are troubled by the uncritical embrace of this trend by the general
public, individual physicians, and American medical schools,” said the
group of nine researchers and chaplains, led by Richard Sloan of the Columbia
University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. The trend, they
said in an article in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine,
is based on “limited, narrowly focused, and methodologically flawed studies
of the place of religion in medical practice.” But, they said, “Religion
does not need science to justify its existence or appeal.”
Human Genome:
We are all made of the same genes! Each one of us is essentially 99.9 percent
genetically identical in our genome of 3 billion genetic subunits.
However, we are different- height, weight, shape, color of hair,
eye and skin and so on. It is the 0.1 percent, or approximately 3
million bases, that accounts for our differences. Our genome is like our
horoscope that tells our future. Can we avoid the predictions? May be,
but not yet. First, watch out for the insurance company that might deny
you insurance for having a predisposition for something! Later, gene therapy
and gene-based drugs will be available for most diseases (say, 50 years
from now). A new era of eugenics began with the sequencing
of Human Genome. Hope this powerful technology will not be misused or abused!
Sreenivasarao Vepachedu, June 28, 2000
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