Antioxidants not a risk for melanoma

A recent study set up a scare that supplements such as vitamins C and E, beta carotene, selenium and zinc which are used for cancer prevention. It seemed to suggest that daily supplementation with these antioxidants increased the risk of melanoma in women four-fold. This was very worrying as nearly 50 percent of the UK and US populations regularly use supplements so a new study was set up at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland.

Researchers there examined the association between antioxidants and melanoma among 69,671 women and men who were participating in the Vitamins and Lifestyle (VITAL) study, designed to examine supplement use and cancer risk. Their exhaustive study of the records showed that they did not find any link between blood levels of beta carotene, vitamin E and selenium and any subsequent risk of melanoma.

So if you are a regular supplement user, the fear of melanoma has just been debunked.

Cocoa and high blood pressure

Now, I would have thought that a good cup of cocoa would certainly make you feel better but because of its high caffeine content I wouldn’t have thought of it as a treatment for high blood pressure.

But who am I to disagree with researchers from Harvard? It seems that although 3 in 10 of us in the UK suffer from the condition there is one place in the world where it is virtually unknown. The Kuna Indians live on a group of islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama and hypertension does not exist there. Once the islanders reach 60, they have a perfect average blood pressure of 110/70 which is something to be envied and they also have much lower death rates from heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, and cancer.

So what’s their secret? It is certainly not their salt intake as that is as high as in the UK, but because they drink 5 cups of cocoa every day. WE know that the flavonols in cocoa stimulate your body’s production of nitric oxide and that boosts blood flow to your heart, brain, and other organs. If you are taking a daily aspirin to thin your blood you might like to know that one study found cocoa thins your blood just as well. Certainly tastes better, and one Harvard Medical School professor claims cocoa can also treat blocked arteries, congestive heart failure, stroke, dementia, and even impotence.

No more to be said really, but I would stick to organic cocoa and I am not sure if the islanders make it with milk or not, but if you do then make sure that’s organic too so you get the maximum benefit

How competitive is your nose?

How competitive is your nose? Did you know, and do you care, that when the nose encounters two different scents simultaneously, the brain processes them separately through each nostril in an alternating fashion? This means your nostrils are competitive and act almost as rivals in tracking down different odours. We are indebted to those find fellows at Rice University in Houston for looking at this as part of a psychology study.

They took 12 volunteers and got them to sample smells from two bottles; one contained phenyl ethyl alcohol, which smells like a rose, and the other had n-butanol, which smells like a marker pen. The bottles were fitted with nosepieces so that volunteers could sample both scents simultaneously, one through each nostril. During 20 rounds of sampling, all 12 participants experienced switches between smelling predominantly the rose scent and smelling predominantly the marker scent. In the laboratory setting in which each nostril simultaneously received a different smell, the participants experienced an ‘olfactory illusion,’ so that instead of perceiving a constant mixture of the two smells, they perceive one of the smells, followed by the other, in an alternating fashion. It is as if the nostrils were competing with one another, and although both smells are equally present, the brain attends to predominantly one of them at a time.

This sort of rivalry is not new apparently as our eyes do the same thing. When they simultaneously view two different images, one for each eye, they are seen alternately one at a time. The same goes for your hearing as when alternating tones an octave apart are played out of phase to each ear, most people experience a single tone that goes back and forth.

This research is aimed long term at contributing to the assessment and cure of olfactory disorders in patients and, in particular, the elderly.

Reflexology gets approval

The Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC) has approved reflexology practitioners to register with them. The Council’s aim is to establish and maintain a voluntary register of complementary healthcare practitioners in the UK who meet its standards of competence and practice and make that available to the general public.

The voluntary register will open over the course of this year to a wide range of complementary and natural healthcare practitioners. Reflexology is the fourth discipline for which the register has opened this year, joining massage therapy, nutritional therapy and aromatherapy.

It’s always sensible to get a recommendation when using any practitioner, and to check their training and credentials with their regulating body. To contact CNHC for a register go to www.cnhc.org.uk

Tea fights diabetes

I grew up in a family where several members drank black tea, meaning without milk, but really it just applies to the type of tea. Black tea, long known for its antioxidants, immune boosting and antihypertensive properties, could also help treat diabetes.

Researchers studied the polysaccharide levels of green, oolong and black teas because polysaccharides are a type of carbohydrate that includes starch and cellulose which help retard absorption of glucose.

The researchers found that of the three teas, the polysaccharides in black tea had the most glucose-inhibiting properties and their polysaccharides also showed the highest scavenging effect on free radicals, which are involved in the onset of diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.

In another recent study, participants who drank black tea had significantly reduced plasma glucose concentrations after two hours, compared to those who drank water or caffeine drinks. Drinking black tea also increased insulin levels, compared with the other drinks.

That study linked black tea’s diabetic benefits to polyphenols (naturally occurring antioxidants) and these compounds are thought to work by stimulating your B-cells — pancreatic cells responsible for insulin production — to produce insulin in your body. A growing body of research also suggests that the polyphenols in tea can lower your cholesterol, triglyceride levels and blood pressure, and even help to protect your bones. That study linked black tea’s diabetic benefits to polyphenols (naturally occurring antioxidants), including Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), of which more below!

My Green Tea Comment:

Although black tea was found to contain more glucose inhibiting polysaccharides, green tea may still be the most beneficial tea of them all, including for diabetics. A previous study found that EGCG in green tea worked as well in moderately diabetic mice as the diabetes drug Avandia, for example.

Another study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded that green tea-extract also had a positive impact on glucose abnormalities. In that study, daily supplementary intake of green tea-extract lowered the hemoglobin A1c level in individuals with borderline diabetes.

So for my money black tea is not as healthy as green tea as they undergo far more processing. Oxidation is the main deciding factor whether you have green, oolong, or black tea, and black tea undergoes the most amount of oxidation through application of high heat. Good green tea is not oxidized at all and, like the Irish fields, the greener it is the higher the quality.

Fluoride is a common contaminant in many black teas and this toxic substance can have profoundly negative effects on your body. Green tea is the least processed kind of tea, and therefore typically contains the least amount of fluoride and the most EGCG of all tea varieties, which is a very good thing for your health.

I am currently trying a new type of green tea, Matcha, which contains the entire ground tea leaf, and can contain over 100 times the EGCG provided from regular brewed green tea. I will let you know how I get on with it.

Hand transplants now a reality

Losing a hand, whether from accident or warfare, has profound psychological as well as physical implications. Now a viable form of hand transplantation is an option for selected amputees after the results of a small clinical trial with long-term follow-up. Normally amputees are offered either a prosthesis or tissue reconstruction, depending on their condition, neither of which is entirely satisfactory.

The trial followed five patients at the Louisville Center over a ten year period who had lost hands due to fireworks accidents, work-related accidents, and loss due to firearms. What is extraordinary to me is that the transplantation procedures occurred from two years to more than 30 years after amputation and since 1964, more than 40 hand transplantations have been performed worldwide, including 12 patients who received transplants of both hands.

Reasonable function does return to the hands and it has been made possible to have such prolonged survival of a transplanted hand because of the drugs that are used in kidney transplant recipients which were then developed for limb transplants. The only downside seems to be that all such transplant patients require lifetime immunosuppression regimes, but the benefits of having a ‘real’ working hand far outweigh that consideration for all the patients who have been treated.

Tobacco cure for ‘cruise ship virus’?

Anyone who regularly travels by plane or ship will probably have fallen victim to norovirus and its unpleasant symptoms of diarrhoea and vomiting. It is sometimes referred to as the “cruise ship virus”, as it has occurred with frightening regularity there, but this microbe can spread like wildfire through any place where people gather such as offices, schools and military bases.

Because of the large numbers of cases, a search has been on for a vaccine and this new certainly is unique in its origin as it was “manufactured” in a tobacco plant using an engineered plant virus. Science has always turned to nature when seeking cures – not always with the best results – but it has been effective in many cases. A study of the top 150 proprietary drugs used in the USA in 1993 found that 57% of all prescriptions contained at least one major active compound derived from plants and we would not have aspirin without white willow bark, or digoxin without digitalis, and many more examples.

Researchers are particularly turning to plants in the battle against fast spreading infectious diseases like norovirus, swine flu, and bird flu. They are doing so because plant biotechnology makes available more efficient and inexpensive ways to bring vaccines quickly to the public and this is especially critical in times when viruses mutate into unpredictable new strains as they are doing more and more today.

It is less expensive than developing conventional vaccines because purification from plant extracts is simpler as there are no infectious agents to clean up. There are no viruses in plants which can infect humans, so you don’t have to worry about viral removal.

Noroviruses are always mutating, making it difficult to produce an effective vaccine in the time scale required. The costs involved in this are huge so it is a great development to be able to use plant biotechnology to create a cheaper, quicker vaccine that is uniquely suited to combat mutating viruses like norovirus and the flu. Plant-based vaccines can be produced and put into clinical tests within eight to 10 weeks and for commercial use that means a fast turnaround of two to four months.

And where does tobacco come in? Well the scientists involved re-engineered plant viruses to produce high levels of specially designed “virus-like” nanoparticles in tobacco plants. These particles are the same size as the norovirus, but they consist only of the outer surface protein — that is the portion of the virus recognized by the human immune system. The particles contain none of the infectious material of the original virus, but they stimulate a robust immune response to fight off an actual infection.

So a good use for tobacco plants, and good news for tobacco farmers who must have seen a serious downturn in profits in the last few years. After successful experiments, a nasal delivery system for the virus-like particles is being developed and will start clinical trials in late 2009.

Get your water from the source

I know, here I am banging on again about drinking enough water, but this time not from a bottle.  Water is, of course, crucial for good health, but the very best source comes from the water that is stored in plants.

To really hydrate your body get out the juicer and drink fresh, living juices of water-rich plants like apples, celery, carrots, cucumbers, and citrus fruit.

Ginseng reduces inflammation

Researchers from the University of Hong Kong have treated human immune cells with different extracts of ginseng and found that it inhibits and reduces inflammation.

Panax ginseng is a medicinal herb much used in traditional Chinese medicine and further studies are now needed to see if it can help manage inflammatory-based diseases in human beings, including Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular conditions and various cancers.

Antioxidants OK in the sun

Antioxidants help our skin stay healthy and younger looking and skin is adversely affected by being exposed unprotected to the sun. You want to avoid wrinkles, and you want a healthy glow so what do you do? Many people take antioxidant supplements but there have been previous alerts that they could increase the risk of melanoma, particularly in women.

This is now shown not to be true, based on an analysis of data from a population study of almost 70,000 participants. So no need to give up a healthful supplement, but don’t give up using sun protection please!

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