Dangers of
Having Multiple Sex Partners
Alcohol
Get off the Couch
St. John's Wort
Snoring in Kids
New Pap Guidelines
Soy and Flaxseed
Alcohol
While studies financed by alcohol industry attempt to show healthy
side of it, an estimated 1,400 college students are killed every year in
alcohol-related accidents, according to a study released on April 9th that
researchers call the most comprehensive look ever at the consequences of
student drinking. The researchers say the figures show that college
drinking needs to seen as a major health concern. The study by the federally
supported Task Force on College Drinking estimated that drinking by college
students contributes to 500,000 injuries and 70,000 cases of sexual assault
or date rape. Also, 400,000 students between 18 and 24 years
old reported having had unprotected sex as a result of drinking. The new
report was one of 24 studies commissioned by the task force of college
presidents, scientists and students convened by the National Institute
on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The institute is part of the National
Institutes of Health. In addition, the percentage of pregnant American
women who reported binge drinking hardly budged during the late 1990s,
frustrating health officials who warn of the risk of birth defects.
Get off the Couch
Despite repeated warnings about the link between a sedentary lifestyle
and heart disease and diabetes, the figures haven't budged from 1997 to
2001 and Americans refuse to get off the couch. A new government
report says seven in 10 adults don't regularly exercise and nearly four
in 10 aren't physically active at all. The study showed 38 percent
reported no such physical activity at all. The National Center for
Health Statistics released the report on April 7th to mark World Health
Day as officials prodded Americans to do something or anything to become
more active. While, the United Nations said on April 4th, that exercises
as simple as walking up the stairs or even dancing could reduce the millions
of deaths caused each year by diseases related to physical inactivity.
WHO said that earlier studies had shown that 2 million deaths per year
are attributed to physical inactivity and that the problem is shared by
rich and poor countries alike. Lack of exercise contributes overall
to an estimated 30 million deaths each year, 80 percent of then in developing
countries. Chronic illness caused by lack of exercise, poor diet and smoking
is now the leading cause of death in every part of the world. Some 13.5
million people have coronary heart disease in the United States, and 1.5
million Americans people suffer from a heart attack each year. The
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 61 percent
of Americans are overweight and 26 percent are obese, or grossly overweight.
But countries like Mexico and Egypt are catching up. In countries
like China and India cities are growing rapidly and lifestyles are changing
just as fast. Desk jobs and increasing car use mean people get less exercise.
The burden of heart disease in both nations is now greater than in all
the world's rich countries combined. Lack of physical exercise, high-fat
diets and smoking are leading to a deadly "epidemic of inactivity" in the
Asia-Pacific region as well. Six out of 10 deaths in the region are
the result of diseases like diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancers
associated with a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diet, said Shigeru
Omi, the World Health Organization's regional director.
Duke University Medical Center recently released results of a study showing that long-term, intensive exercise can significantly improve the body's ability to control blood sugar levels. Long-term exercise leads to loss of fat in the gut (stomach) region, which is especially beneficial since this fat is thought to be directly linked to increased risk of diabetes and heart disease. The exercise program was defined by Duke as equivalent to running 20 miles a week for the participants, so it was intense. It consisted of four exercise sessions a week, beginning with 15 minutes each day and increasing to 60-70 minutes daily by the end of a three-month period. For the remaining six months of the study, patients maintained the same level of exercise. The program consisted of a combination of stationary biking, treadmill walking and stair climbing. A long-term study, the Diabetes Prevention Program, which involved over 3,000 people who were at risk for Type 2 diabetes, found that walking 30 minutes, five days a week, accompanied by "moderate changes in eating," resulted in a 58 percent reduction in the rate of people developing Type 2.
A report in the April issue of Annals of Internal Medicine examined fifty-four studies involving 2,419 participants and concluded that exercise pushes down blood pressure, regardless of age, weight, or what blood pressure was when the person started to exercise.
A new study presented at Experimental Biology 2002 meeting in New Orleans on April 22 showed that walking at a moderate pace for 40 to 45 minutes a day five times a week for twelve weeks was enough to restore elasticity of the carotid artery of women by 48 percent, to levels similar to those in younger, premenopausal women. Increase in the stiffness of these arteries can contribute to high blood pressure and enlarging of the heart, both risk factors for heart disease. Impaired elasticity in the carotid artery also can be a factor in postural hypotension, when blood pressure drops precipitously as a person changes body position.
St. John's Wort
A long-awaited government-backed new study, the first large study
to evaluate St. John's wort against both a placebo and an established antidepressant,
found that St. John's wort, a popular herbal supplement touted as
a remedy for depression, did no better than placebo pills. The extracts
of a short, yellow-flowering weed, formally known as Hypericum perforatum,
has been a consumer-health phenomenon with $180 million in sales in 2000.
Hypericum extracts are ranked among the top five best-selling dietary supplements
in the US. St. John's wort's medical uses date back to the ancient Greeks.
Several smaller studies, mostly from Europe, have shown the herb can produce
a benefit in cases of mild depression. There is also some evidence suggesting
the herb has at least weak effects in the brain similar to those of widely
prescribed prescription remedies. In another small study by the Rotterdam
Cancer Institute in the Netherlands released on April 9th, doctors showed
that St. John's wort interferes powerfully with a common cancer drug and
decreases blood levels of the drug by about 40 percent. This effect
lingered for more than three weeks after people stopped taking the supplement.
Snoring in Kids
Snoring may be a symptom of a more serious problem in children.
New guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics suggest that doctors
look for symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea during kids' routine check-ups.
This sleep disorder has been linked to learning and attention problems
and slowed growth. Symptoms include noisy breathing and brief breathing
lapses during sleep. The guidelines, published in the journal Pediatrics,
suggest that surgical removal of tonsils and adenoids be the first line
of treatment for obstructive sleep apnea in children.
New Pap Guidelines
Cervical
cancer is the third most common cancer worlwide and the leading
cause of cancer deaths among women in the developing world, according to
Reproductive Health Outlook. Currently, many of the estimated 2.5
million American women a year with abnormal
but inconclusive cervical-cancer Pap test results are given at least
two follow-up Pap tests within a year; or a colposcopy test, in which the
cervix is examined and sometimes biopsied; or a test for the human papillomavirus
(HPV), the chief cause of cervical cancer. The new guidelines that
were created at a conference last year sponsored by the American Society
for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology and convened by the National Cancer
Institute say that HPV testing is preferred if Pap tests are done with
liquid-based screening, which is becoming increasingly popular at labs
around the United States. Participants included representatives from
29 professional groups, including the American Cancer Society and the American
College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. With this technique,
cells scraped from the cervix are collected in liquid instead of being
smeared between two slides.
(Pap Smear: George Papanicolaou, a physician and researcher
born on May 13, 1883, in Greece, developed and gave his name to what is
known as the Pap test. Papanicolaou received his medical degree from
the University of Athens in 1904 and a doctorate of philosophy from the
University of Munich six years later. After immigrating to the United
States in 1913, he became an anatomy assistant at Cornell University.
In 1923, Papanicolaou studied vaginal smears of women who had cervical
cancer and found cancer cells present. He theorized that a microscopic
smear of vaginal fluid could detect the presence of cancer cells.
Twenty years later, in
1943, he published findings that his test could indicate cervical cancer
before symptoms appear. Papanicolaou died of a heart attack in 1962.)
Soy and Flaxseed
A study entitled, "The Effects of Dietary Soybean and Flaxseed Meal
on Metabolic Parameters in a Genetic Model of Obesity and Diabetes," suggests
that diets rich in soy protein and flaxseed have beneficial effects on
many aspects of obesity and diabetes. Soybean and flaxseed affected plasma
lipids and a number of enzymes. They also had varying effects on tissue
weights in lean and obese rats. Obese rats compared to lean rats had significantly
lower plasma creatinine but higher total bilirubin, blood urea nitrogen,
alanine aminotransferase and lactate dehydrogenase. Both soy and flaxseed
meal decreased total bilirubin, protein and uric acid in the lean rats,
but the effects in obese rats were mixed. ("Experimental Biology 2002"
conference held April 20-24, 2002 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center,
New Orleans, LA.)
Sreenivasarao Vepachedu, April 2002
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