Issue 140

5111 Kali Era, Virodhi Year, Shravana month
2066 Vikramarka Era, Virodhi Year, Shravana month
1930 Salivahana Era, Virodhi Year, Shravana month
2009 AD, August

Contents

Home

Management
AJIN

TSJ

MS

Vegetarian Links

Disclaimer

Soliciataion

Contact

VPC

More Links

Vedah

Diet and Exercise

Vegetable Proteins
Sugar

Miscellaneous

Life Expectancy in the US
Circumcision for Promiscuous and Heterosexual Risky Behaviors Only
Your Heart
Bitter Neem (chEdu vEpa)
Birth Rate Down
Excess Male Hormone Boosts Risky Choices

Recipes

http://vegetarian.about.com/updated.htm?nl=1

Diet and Exercise

Vegetable Proteins
A cooperative research effort has revealed that vegetable proteins are effective at preventing heart disease. In fact they are also effective at reducing blood pressure too. The research took place at Chicago’s Northwestern University by a team of researchers some of who were from the UK. They discovered that it was an amino acid known as glutamic acid that was responsible for inducing the health benefits derived. It was concluded that by better health would result by including in your diet 5% more glutamic acid. This is now the recommendation of the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. Although there are many sources of glutamic acid, the main foods it is found in are pasta, tofu, beans and whole grain rice.

One important thing to remember is that the study was regarding naturally existing glutamic acid within foods and not the artificially mass produced mono sodium glutamate which is added to a huge amount of foods to make what would otherwise be a very bland taste, become very tasty. This glutamate has been shown to produce a lot of health problems.

Sugar
Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way! (Mary Poppins)

A spoonful of sugar? Americans are swallowing 22 teaspoons of sugar each day, and it's time to cut way back, the American Heart Association says. Most of that added sugar comes from soft drinks and candy -- a whopping 355 calories and the equivalent of guzzling two cans of soda and eating a chocolate bar. By comparison, most women should be getting no more than 6 teaspoons a day, or 100 calories, of added sugar -- the sweeteners and syrups that are added to foods during processing, preparation or at the table. For most men, the recommended limit is 9 teaspoons, or 150 calories, the heart group says.

Miscellaneous

Life Expectancy in the US
U.S. life expectancy is standing at nearly 78 years, the government reported in August. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2007 is nearly three months greater than for children born in 2006. The new U.S. data is a preliminary report based on about 90 percent of the death certificates collected in 2007. It comes from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Life expectancy is the period a child born in 2007 is expected to live, assuming mortality trends stay constant. U.S. life expectancy has grown nearly one and a half years in the past decade, and is now at an all-time-high. Last year, the CDC said U.S. life expectancy had inched above 78 years. But the CDC recently changed how it calculates life expectancy, which caused a small shrink in estimates to below 78. The United States continues to lag behind about 30 other countries in estimated life span. Japan has the longest life expectancy -- 83 years for children born in 2007, according to the World Health Organization.

Obesity is the elephant in the room of health care reform, a public health catastrophe that kills well over 100,000 Americans a year. It costs the country $147 billion a year in health care for overweight adults and promises to shorten U.S. life expectancy for the first time since the Civil War. Whatever Washington does this year to try to lower medical spending almost certainly will be swamped by the nation's rising weight. Obesity lurks behind the top chronic illnesses -- heart disease, diabetes, stroke and colon, breast and prostate cancers, among many others. Treatment of each individual case routinely costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. In two decades the obesity rate has more than doubled. Amazingly, obesity strikes hardest at the poor and minorities; black women are nearly 40 percent more likely to contract heart disease than white women. Every third child born in 2000 is likely to wind up diabetic. Two out of three American adults are overweight or obese. Southern and Appalachian states are Ground Zero for the obesity epidemic. The nation's fattest states are Mississippi, Alabama and West Virginia, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control. The thinnest states are Colorado, Massachusetts and Connecticut. But the problem is significant and growing in all 50 states. Obesity is causing "death and illness on a massive scale," according to a new study by University of Virginia and Urban Institute researchers. But the United States also is feeling a rapidly escalating economic burden directly related to the obesity epidemic.

Prevention is the only cure. Yet while health care legislation in Congress would increase spending on prevention of chronic disease, it does little to tackle the underlying obesity epidemic directly; in fact, most of the bills are silent on what many contend would be one of the most effective weapons: yes, a tax on junk food and soda. Junk food taxes are part of a growing consensus among public health experts to adapt the successful fight against tobacco to the more complex obesity epidemic. States around the country have created commissions to battle obesity. Legislatures have taken varied approaches. When people have no control over their eating habits and life styles, the big government needs to step in! Anti-obesity activists also encourage an emphasis on physical activity among children. Republicans on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, however, mocked proposed jungle gyms and bike trails in health reform legislation, yet studies show such efforts help. The obesity problem took hold in just one generation, a stunningly short period in the history of public health, as food is available in plenty for even poorest of the poor in the US with the freedom of choice to get sick!

Funded by the beverage industry, Americans Against Food Taxes wants to halt what health-care researchers believe is one of the best weapons in the fight against obesity: a soda tax. Sugary soft drinks of scant nutritional value are responsible for a whopping 43 percent of the increase in Americans' daily calorie intake since the late 1970s. Evidence suggests that the body digests liquid calories in a way that accelerates weight gain. Soda serving sizes have ballooned from 8-ounce bottles to 20-ounce containers and 30-ounce refills; an average American now downs a gallon of soda a week.

Circumcision for Promiscuous and Heterosexual Risky Behaviors Only
Circumcision, which may help prevent AIDS among heterosexual promiscuous and high risk men in Africa who visit prostitutes, doesn't help protect gay men from the virus, according to the largest U.S. study to look at the question. The research, presented at a conference in August, is expected to influence the government's first guidance on circumcision. Circumcision "is not considered beneficial" in stopping the spread of HIV through gay sex. Previous research has suggested circumcision doesn't make a difference when anal sex is involved. It may help in vaginal sex with prostitutes. However, the CDC is still considering recommending it for other groups, including baby boys and high-risk heterosexual men. Circumcision is a sensitive issue laden with cultural and religious meaning, and babies are involved. Jews and Muslims circumcise babies as a mandatory religious/cultural practice. Other religions consider it as removing healthy, functioning, sexual and protective tissue from a person who cannot consent, and mutilating a child.

Your Heart
Despite previous understanding, it has now been proved that the human heart does regenerate cells automatically. The medical research community has believed that the heart did not regenerate any cells and thus if the cells got damaged it meant the heart would be permanently under performing. The new research results from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute reveal that heart cells regenerate themselves at a rate of 1% every year.

Bitter Neem (chEdu vEpa)
It is found in India and is an extract from Azadirachta indica otherwise known as the Neem (vEpa) tree.

Neem has been used within Ayurvedic medicine for centuries with several ancient medical texts recommending its use for a variety of ailments. For very good reasons Neem is known as the “the village pharmacy" because the roots, bark, leaves, seeds, fruits and oil are all utilised as effective herbal medicines. Neem trees live for over 200m years and produce 50 kilos of fruit each year. The chemicals that exist in Neem and that are useful in medicine are twenty sulphur compounds, terpenoids and azadirachins. There are a huge number of health benefits from Neem. It is a very effective anti-fungal and antiseptic treatment that is used on eczema, ulcers, ringworm and boils. In fact Neem has been recommended as a general antiseptic by the Science and Technology for International Development Board's National Research Council's Ad Hoc Panel. Several viruses are prevented from doing their dirty work on account of Neem. It is not a cure but it does prevent virus infection. Chicken pox and small pox are two that are effectively prevented from getting a foothold. In India, Neem is sold by permission of the government for diabetics as a medicine. http://www.healthypages.co.uk/newsitem.php?news=6070

Birth Rate Down
There aren't just fewer jobs in a recession. There are fewer babies, too. U.S. births fell in 2008, the first full year of the recession, marking the first annual decline in births since the start of the decade and ending an American baby boomlet. U.S. births have fallen since the recession began, says a U.S. report released this month. There were 4,247,000 births in 2008. That's down about 68,000 from 2007, which was a record year for births. But the decline also halts a string of increases since 2002. Births were up in January, February and April 2008. But they fell in every other month except September. Births declined in all but 10 states. Besides the recession depression, a drop in immigration also may be a factor, experts said. The report comes from the National Center for Health Statistics.

The downturn in the economy best explains the drop in maternity, some experts believe. The Great Depression and subsequent recessions all were accompanied by a decline in births.

Excess Male Hormone Boosts Risky Choices
Female MBA students with higher levels of the "male" hormone testosterone were far more likely than those with lower levels to choose finance careers such as investment banking that can be lucrative but also risky, a team at Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago found. Other studies have found that male financial traders will make much more aggressive trades on days when their testosterone is high.
Men and women both produce testosterone in their bodies, although men usually have much higher levels. High testosterone causes facial hair other male features and is linked with many traits, including aggression and a relish for risks.

Injections of the male hormone testosterone increased blood-pumping ability and heart muscle strength in men with heart failure, Italian researchers report. Use of testosterone for heart failure, the progressive loss of the ability to pump blood throughout the body, has been controversial in some cases. About one of every four men with chronic heart failure has evidence of testosterone deficiency, as production of the hormone declines with age. Few studies of testosterone therapy in heart failure have been done in the United States, but several have been reported in Europe.

	Recipes http://vegetarian.about.com/updated.htm?nl=1

Health and Nutrition

Issue 140