Is lack of vitamin D linked to swine flu?

This is an improbable speculation. Vitamin D is added to butter and margarine these days so everybody should be getting enough. Though I suppose that the anti-fat brigade may have reduced usage of butter and margarine among some people. As for the reason why health is unusually poor in Scotland, why are we not mentioning Scotland's rate of alcohol consumption and the inactivity that accompanies high rates of unemployment?

Scotland has a disproportionately high number of swine flu cases. There could be a simple reason. It was all very predictable, I suppose, that when the first UK death from someone suffering from swine flu came, it did not come from St Ives or St Andrews. Jacqueline Fleming lived on a rundown council estate in Glasgow; she came from the other Scotland, the bleak one we garland with jokes and statistics but ultimately prefer to ignore.

The H1N1 outbreak is an uncomfortable reminder that the health gap both between the rich and the poor in Scotland, and between Scotland and practically everywhere else in Europe, is not only inescapable - it is, sadly, one of the things that define this country. How symbolic that Ms Fleming, 38 - the first person with swine flu outside the Americas to die - lived of all places in poor little Carnwadric, a deprived council ward in the West of Scotland. She is, in death, a Scottish landmark, an unintended indictment of this country's disproportionately woeful health record.

Ms Fleming apparently suffered from strokes and seizures. She was described as “a good, quiet woman”; a full-time mother, who lived an existence constrained by lack of opportunity and income. She was expecting her third child. When she caught the illness, which had occurred at a local primary school, she was made doubly vulnerable through her chronic condition and by virtue of the pregnancy. She fell gravely ill, gave birth to her baby at 29 weeks and died two weeks later without regaining consciousness. Her child, Jack, who did not have the virus, died 24 hours later: a private double tragedy that echoed round the world.

The following day, I was invited on The Jeremy Vine Show. We want to ask, said the researcher, why Scotland? Why is swine flu cutting swaths across Scotland, and killing people? The unvoiced question hovered: what's wrong with you people that makes you the sickest in half the world? You can understand where they were coming from. Scotland has 530 confirmed cases of swine flu, 441 possible cases and 300 clinically diagnosed possibles - a total of more than 1,200. By comparison, bigger countries are relatively unscathed. England, with ten times the people, only has 1,062 cases, Austria 7, Portugal 3, France 80, Germany 170, Spain 488 and Ireland 12.

Beneath the soundbites, there are several answers. One can say with absolute certainty that there has been better monitoring here. NHS Scotland and its many limbs, Health Protection Scotland and Health Scotland and NHS Quality Improvement Scotland and the Healthcare Environment Inspectorate and the Information Services Division - I could go on - are just part of one of the most impressive health service data engines in the world. In this regard Scotland purrs along like a Rolls-Royce: few other nations have information that combines high-quality data, consistency, national coverage and the ability to link data to allow patient-based analysis and follow-up. No case of swine flu has a chance of getting away from that lot.

And yes, of course, there's much to monitor. Scotland possesses a health record that would make a Third World dictator wince: hospital admissions from alcohol up 7 per cent on the previous year and up 17 per cent on five years ago; chronic levels of disability from strokes, coronary heart disease and cancer; lung cancer; drug use; a diet built on fat and sugar; and soaring levels of obesity. Surely these endemic weaknesses are what makes us vulnerable to swine flu?

Yes - but it's not the whole answer either. Since devolution, and the pumping in of billions of pounds, NHS Scotland is a fairly magnificent operation. Rates of ill health are declining, although the gap between the most deprived areas and the most affluent is widening, and England's health, similarly blessed with extra funding in the good times, is improving faster than Scotland's.

Which brings us face to face with the disconcerting thing they call the health deficit: the unexplained gap between Scotland's health outcomes and that of the rest of Britain; a gap that still persists even when the epidemiologists factor in all the lifestyle issues; the gap, in other words, that makes the Scots sick no matter how much money is spent on them.

It was fashionable for a while to talk about the biology of poverty, explaining it away by poor housing and a history of deprivation; cooked up with low self-respect and expectation.

But could the puzzle have a simpler answer? Recently The Times has revealed astonishing research showing the links between low vitamin-D levels and poor general health. Multiple sclerosis, cancer and diabetes are just some of the diseases linked to an immune system compromised by lack of the vitamin. And the Scots, living in a cloudy climate, are known to be twice as likely to be vitamin D deficient as the English. Increasing numbers of scientists suspect vitamin D could be the Scots' Achilles' heel.

Influenza, we know, strikes in the winter when vitamin D levels are naturally lowered - hence a possible reason why swine flu is at present widespread in Australia, where it's winter. Could the disproportionate prevalence of H1N1 in Scotland be related to endemic low levels of vitamin D among the population - especially those least likely to buy themselves supplements? It is a huge, intriguing question.

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British Navy captain bans brussels sprouts

Good man!

A BRITISH navy captain has banned brussels sprouts from his ship, labelling them the "devil's vegetable". Commanding officer Wayne Keble delivered the order to his 390-strong crew on HMS Bulwark because he hates the vegetable, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported. But he denied speculation he imposed the ban because sprouts make the sailors suffer from flatulence in the cramped conditions on board.

Keble disclosed his order after he was asked to confirm reports he had banned fried foods from his ship on health grounds. He said: "The only thing I have banned on board is brussels sprouts. They are the devil's vegetable and the only thing I do not like, and the only thing I hate. "Brussels sprouts are absolutely banned on board HMS Bulwark. I do not eat them so I do not know what the after-effects are.'' The distinctive smell of sprouts is caused by sulphur compounds released when cooked.

A spokesman for the Royal Navy and the Ministry of Defence said sprouts had only been banned from the captain's table. But a source on board the ship said Keble was "very serious'' about the ban and refused to allow any sprouts on board. "This ban is no joke ... The MoD can say what they like but Captain Keble runs the ship and he has categorically said that sprouts are banned,'' the source said.

HMS Bulwark is at present deployed in the Mediterranean and Far East.

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Eat-your-greens fight a lost cause

George Bush Senior became a hero to little boys everywhere when he banned broccoli from all his dinners and said: "I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli"

CHILDREN really do hate their vegies and parents are apparently hopeless at doing anything about it. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's snapshot of Australian children released today shows the level of disdain children have for their greens. The report, A Picture of Australian Children 2009, citing a 2007 nutrition survey, says: "Only a very small proportion of children met the recommendations for daily serves of vegetables (excluding potatoes) - 3 per cent of 4- to 8-year-olds and 2 per cent of 9- to 13-year-olds. "Even with the inclusion of potatoes, the proportions remained low (22 per cent and 14per cent respectively).

National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines recommend one serve of fruit and two serves of vegetables a day for children aged four to seven, one serve of fruit and three serves of vegetables for those eight to 11, and three serves of fruit and four serves of vegetables for ages 12 to 18. A serve is about half a cup.

The report's author, Deanna Eldridge from the AIHW's Children Youth and Families unit, said vegetable consumption was a key concern related to children's health and wellbeing. "This is a crucial figure to highlight, because this is occurring at a time when young bodies are growing and developing," she said.

Accredited practising dietician Kate Di Prima said that however hard parents might find it to get children to eat vegetables, they must persist. "Parents find it very difficult to encourage children to eat green vegetables and fruit," Ms Di Prima said. "They are happy to eat dairy foods and soft pastas and rice, but when it comes to chewing something with more than a bland taste, parents battle."

The prime concern about low levels of vegetable consumption was the lack of fibre in children's diets and the health consequences that flowed on, such as constipation, she said. Ms Di Prima said she advised parents to start small and build up. "Put a bit of carrot and a bit of broccoli on the plate," she said. "Or grate some zucchini and put it in with the pasta. This will put some balance in their diet. It's better than nothing." Don't cave in if a child is not co-operating, she said. Let them go to bed without eating anything rather than take the easy option and fill them up with some milk or yoghurt.

Parramatta mother Alexis Henderson said she improvised to make sure her five-year-old son, Brooklyn, ate enough vegetables. "You can mash them up, hide them, you can cook a cake with pumpkin in it, or make corn muffins," Ms Henderson said. She said Brooklyn did pretty well at home, but getting him to eat vegetables at school lunch was tricky. "It's hard when most other kids are bringing chips and Nutella sandwiches and all sorts of unhealthy things."

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Discovery could ease cancer pain

A breakthrough could lead to drugs to alleviate the pain experienced by cancer patients. The biology of cancer pain is different to other types of pain, often rendering analgesic drugs ineffective. Work by a German team, published in Nature Medicine, shows that blocking a specific type of hormone-like molecule produced by tumours could help. The team showed that the molecules make nerve endings grow in nearby tissue, causing an acute sensation of pain.

Pain is one of the most debilitating symptoms associated with the many forms of the disease. It can become excruciating as cancer advances, but tackling it has proved difficult for doctors.

The molecules highlighted by the latest study, by a team at Heidelberg University, were known to play a role in the development of blood cells in the bone marrow. But this is the first time they have also been shown to have a role in causing pain. The researchers hope their work could lead to new drugs to block this action.

Dr Mark Matfield is scientific adviser to the Association for International Cancer Research, which partly funded the work. He said: "Identifying one of the ways in which cancer causes pain - in fact, perhaps the main mechanism - is a crucial step towards drugs that could bring relief to cancer sufferers across the world."

Dr Joanna Owens, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said: "It's important that we continue to improve pain relief for people with cancer, and this study reveals an intriguing new avenue to explore. "What's particularly encouraging is that this research could one day lead to drugs that can block pain locally at the tumour site - which could ultimately lead to more effective pain relief with fewer side effects."

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Australia: Health nazis losing obesity war

THE Aussie pie, pizzas and sausage rolls are back in school canteens as the war against child obesity falters and threatens to collapse. Lollies, ice creams, chips and even banned sports drinks have also re-emerged on school menus because thousands of families are snubbing healthier foods.

Nutritionists and dietitians are desperately trying to rescue the $750,000 school health campaign launched five years ago by former Premier Bob Carr. They are offering "low fat" Aussie beef pies, pizzas made with wholemeal pita bread and vegetables and chicken burgers to children who turn their noses up at salads and wraps.

The anti-health push is greatest at secondary level where students leave school grounds to eat at local fast food outlets or order in takeaway pizza on their mobile phones.

Dietitians have told The Daily Telegraph some schools are offering pies to children three times a day - at breakfast, recess and lunch. In a bid to reverse the trend the Healthy Kids School Canteen Association is taking over some school food operations. Low fat pies, pizzas and sausage rolls, with ingredients that meet health guidelines and home-made lasagne are now the front line items aimed at winning customers back.

Friday is pie and pizza day at Holy Cross Primary School at Glenwood in Sydney's west - portion sizes limited to healthy amounts - and the kids are lining up to get their orders. Canteen Association dietitian Jennifer Madz said Holy Cross would become a template across the state. "The problem is parents see the canteen as a treat and expect treat food there. We are trying to change the behaviour," Ms Madz said. "High schools are a special problem where students with money in their pockets go off campus to lunch in local fast food outlets. We are working on a plan to combat that."

Canteens hit by the global recession claim profits have been eroded as students resist low-fat menus.

While most sugary drinks are banned from school canteens, the food industry has manipulated some products to get around the rules. To get a non-milk-based gelato accepted the manufacturer added calcium and reduced the portion size. Banned Powerade became "Powerade Light" and juice was carbonated and sold in a can so children would think it was a softdrink. Under the nutrition rules foods are divided into red (no more than twice a term), amber (to be selected carefully and in smaller servings) and green (fill the menu) categories.

But enforcement has been almost non-existent and the Catholic and independent school sectors are not bound by them.

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Trial shows rituximab can slow progress of rheumatoid arthritis

Treating rheumatoid arthritis with a drug currently used only when patients are severely disabled appears to slow the progression of the disease dramatically, a study suggests.

A trial involving rituximab, an advanced antibody drug, has shown a remarkable reduction in symptoms for patients in the early stages of the disease. It has led one expert to claim that it could lead to a “paradigm shift” in the use of arthritis therapies.

Almost 500,000 people in Britain are affected by rheumatoid arthritis, which occurs when the body’s immune system attacks the joints. About 40 per cent of sufferers are forced to stop work during the first five years of their illness. The condition costs the economy about £4 billion a year.

A total of 755 patients took part in the Image trial, led by Professor Paul-Peter Tak, from the University of Amsterdam. All participants had recently received an arthritis diagnosis and had generally suffered the disease for less than a year.

After a year of treatment, those receiving a combination of methotrexate, a “gold standard” early-stage treatment, and rituximab were found to be three times as likely to have fewer symptoms — and a reduction pronounced enough to meet the criteria for remission — than those on methotrexate alone. During the second six months, continuing joint damage was almost completely halted in patients treated with rituximab.

Currently most patients go through a set order of treatments as the disease progresses, moving from ordinary anti-inflammatory painkillers, such as ibuprofen, to anti-rheumatic drugs such as methotrexate, which slow progression and delay joint damage.

In severe cases newer drugs called biologics may be used, including treatments that block an immune system signalling molecule called tumour necrosis factor (TNF). Under current guidelines, patients qualify for rituximab, which is marketed as MabThera, only on failing to respond to an anti-TNF. Originally developed to treat leukaemia, the injected drug targets specialised white blood cells that play a key role in the immune response behind rheumatoid arthritis.

Of the patients receiving the methotrexate and rituximab combination, 30.5 per cent experienced significant reduction of symptoms, compared with 12.5 per cent taking only methotrexate. A course of rituximab treatment costs £3,492 — significantly less than the £12,000 cost of a typical anti-TNF drug. Coupled with the new trial data, this is likely to have a bearing on how rituximab is made available.

The findings were presented last week at the annual meeting of the European League Against Rheumatism (Eular) in Copenhagen. Professor John Isaacs, a leading rheumatologist from the Institute of Cellular Medicine at the University of Newcastle, said: “These positive data clearly show the efficacy of using rituximab earlier and could signal a paradigm shift in the use of this drug.”

A task force of Eular experts is developing new evidence-based guidelines for the management of rheumatoid arthritis. Ailsa Bosworth, of the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, said: “These results are a very encouraging sign for the future for patients in the early stages. If I could have prevented damage when I was first diagnosed, it would have changed my life.”

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Atavists attack food from GMOs

Practically everything we eat is genetically modified. Tomatoes were originally yellow, for instance. Treating GMOs as an undifferentiated group is mindless. If a particular GMO has a problem that should be studied but all those GMOs released have been already studied extensively. Studies done by opponents of GMOs -- such as those reported below -- are probably just examples of the experimenter expectation effect and should not be taken seriously. If the FDA was once dubious about GMOs, it has found since from research that many are safe and has approved them. It is a very cautious organization, overcautious in the estimation of many

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has issued a warning urging the public to avoid genetically modified foods and has also called for a moratorium on GMOs until long-term, independent studies can prove their safety. The group has also called for required labeling of foods that contain GMOs, a move that has been strongly opposed by the Food and Drug Administration and Big Biotech which cooperatively purport that consumers should not have the right to know whether or not the foods they buy come from traditionally bred or genetically engineered sources.

While urging for more independent studies, the AAEM paper cites its own studies alleging that genetically modified foods cause serious adverse health effects, emphasizing more than a mere "causal association" as is commonly assumed. These effects include rapid aging, severe alterations to the major bodily organs, infertility, immune problems, gastrointestinal dysfunction, and disruption to proper insulin regulation, among others.

Many doctors are warning their patients to avoid GMOs as well, recognizing the distinct correlation between GMOs and disease. Ohio allergist Dr. John Boyles believes genetically engineered foods are so dangerous that people should never eat them. Biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava, following the review of more than 600 scientific journals, has concluded that the drastic deterioration of Americans' health in recent years can be attributed to GMOs being introduced into their diets.

Experimental studies of genetically engineered foods and their effects in the body are disturbing, to say the least. Biologist David Schubert of the Salk Institute has stated that children are the most likely people to experience the adverse effects of GMOs, noting that apart from adequate safety studies, children become "the experimental animals". In truth, every citizen is a guinea pig when genetically altered organisms are introduced into the food supply without adequate safety studies let alone honest labeling.

In the animal studies that have been conducted, some noteworthy findings have been discovered about GMOs:

Female rats fed genetically modified soy saw most of their babies die within three weeks compared to the 10% death rate experienced by rats fed natural soy. The babies that survived in the genetically modified-fed control group were also born smaller and had problems getting pregnant later on.
Male rats fed genetically modified soy experienced a change in testicular color from pink to dark blue, as well as altered young sperm and significant changes in their DNA.

Indian buffalo that consumed genetically modified cottonseed experienced various birthing complications including infertility, abortions, premature delivery, and prolapsed uteruses. Many of the calves that survived birth died shortly thereafter.

In the United States, about 24 farmers reported that their pigs became sterile after consuming genetically modified corn.

Genetically modified corn and cotton, purposely engineered to create their own built-in pesticide called Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), have been indicted in several studies to provoke intense allergic and immune reactions and death. Since the levels of Bt produced in the plant represent thousands of times more a concentration of Bt than natural Bt spray, the effects are greatly amplified. Shepherds whose sheep grazed on Bt cotton after harvest witnessed thousands of their sheep die. Post mortem examinations revealed severe irritation and black patches in the intestines and liver, as well as enlarged bile ducts. All sheep fed the Bt cotton eventually died within 30 days while those that grazed on natural cotton remained healthy.

Bt corn was also responsible for the deaths of cows, horses, water buffaloes, and chicken in both Germany and the Philippines.
Genetically modified tomatoes fed to rats were shown to cause bleeding stomachs and eventually killed many of the rats.

These are just a few examples of the many catastrophic effects of using genetically modified organisms as food.

Probably the worst finding in the AAEM report is the fact that GMOs can live and reproduce in the intestinal flora of the body long after being eaten. The genes present in the genetically modified organisms transfer into the DNA of intestinal bacteria, the good bacteria that digests food and maintains bodily health. This reprogramming can cause the intestinal flora to begin reproducing Bt pesticides, for example, rather than producing the living bacteria it is supposed to. The permanent, deadly implications of these alterations are mind boggling since intestinal flora is crucial for life.

Despite consensus from most FDA scientists in the early '90s declaring that genetically modified foods are inherently dangerous and could lead to all sorts of serious health problems, politics won out as mandates were given from Washington to promote biotechnology and GMOs in spite of apparent and obvious dangers. This led to the promotion of Michael Taylor, former attorney for Monsanto, as head of GMO policy at the FDA, a move that led to the official denial by the agency of any knowledge or substantiated concern by any FDA scientists about the safety of GMOs.

Despite findings in some 44,000 pages of internal FDA memos and reports released in 1999 due to a lawsuit, findings that contained the warnings from then scientists about the "unintended negative side effects" of genetic engineering, official FDA GMO policy has been scrubbed clean of the truth and purports blatant lies in its defense of GMOs as safe. In fact, current policy emphatically states that no safety studies on GMOs are even required or necessary; it is instead up to Big Biotech to determine the safety of its own genetically modified organisms if it so chooses.

Many people may remember the deadly epidemic in the late 1980s from the genetically engineered version of L-tryptophan, a food supplement, that was introduced into the market. An estimated 10,000 people became permanently disabled and about 100 died. Yet despite the rapidly occurring, deadly effects from this particular GMO immediately following its release, including noticeable changes in the blood, it took over four years to identify the existence of this epidemic.

Many concerned doctors hypothesize that the disease-causing symptoms of GMOs being consumed today will take years to show up, further besetting the efforts of those who are trying to expose the dangers of GMOs. Current data is showing that since 1996 when genetically modified crops were first introduced, the incidences of people with three or more chronic diseases has jumped from 7 percent to 13 percent.

In addition to all the existing evidence, AAEM is urging its members, the scientific community, and those in medicine to continue gathering case studies and initiate epidemiological research to help determine, once and for all, the effects of GMOs on human beings in addition to their effects on animals.

It is wise to avoid foods that contain GMOs and ingredients that are genetically engineered. These include non-organic corn and soy derivatives, canola and cottonseed oils, and sugar from sugar beets. Ingredients such as corn starch, corn meal, and soy lecithin are great examples of common ingredients that are suspect. Unless labeled as non-GMO or explicitly organic, these common ingredients are most likely genetically modified and should be avoided at all costs.

Lastly, the mindful citizen should contact grocers, food manufacturers, and restaurants to inquire about genetically modified ingredients and oppose their usage. As increasing numbers of people begin to seek out this information across the food supply-chain and purposefully avoid products that contain GMOs, producers and retailers will phase them out in order to meet demand. This can be seen in the gradual elimination of toxins such as high fructose corn syrup from food as consumers learn about its effects and avoid products that contain it.

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$2.5B spent on testing "alternative" cures. Nothing of any note to show for it

Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do. Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo biloba for memory. Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis. Black cohosh for menopausal hot flashes. Saw palmetto for prostate problems. Shark cartilage for cancer. All proved no better than dummy pills in big studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The lone exception: ginger capsules may help chemotherapy nausea.

As for therapies, acupuncture has been shown to help certain conditions, and yoga, massage, meditation and other relaxation methods may relieve symptoms like pain, anxiety and fatigue.

However, the government also is funding studies of purported energy fields, distance healing and other approaches that have little if any biological plausibility or scientific evidence. Taxpayers are bankrolling studies of whether pressing various spots on your head can help with weight loss, whether brain waves emitted from a special "master" can help break cocaine addiction, and whether wearing magnets can help the painful wrist problem, carpal tunnel syndrome.

The acupressure weight-loss technique won a $2 million grant even though a small trial of it on 60 people found no statistically significant benefit — only an encouraging trend that could have occurred by chance. The researcher says the pilot study was just to see if the technique was feasible.

"You expect scientific thinking" at a federal science agency, said R. Barker Bausell, author of "Snake Oil Science" and a research methods expert at the University of Maryland, one of the agency's top-funded research sites. "It's become politically correct to investigate nonsense."

Many scientists say that unconventional treatments hold promise and deserve serious study, but that the federal center needs to be more skeptical and selective. "There's not all the money in the world and you have to choose" what most deserves tax support, said Barrie Cassileth, integrative medicine chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. "Many of the studies that have been funded I would not have funded because they seem irrational and foolish — studies on distant healing by prayer and energy healing, studies that are based on precepts and ideas that are contrary to what is known in terms of human physiology and disease," she said.

In an interview last year, shortly after becoming the federal center's new director, Dr. Josephine Briggs said it had a strong research record, and praised the many "big name" scientists who had sought its grants. She conceded there were no big wins from its first decade, other than a study that found acupuncture helped knee arthritis. That finding was called into question when a later, larger study found that sham treatment worked just as well.

"The initial studies were driven by some very strong enthusiasms, and now we're learning about how to layer evidence" and to do more basic science before testing a particular supplement in a large trial, said Briggs, who trained at Ivy League schools and has a respected scientific career. "There are a lot of negative studies in conventional medicine," and the government's outlay is small compared to drug company spending, she added.

However, critics say that unlike private companies that face bottom-line pressure to abandon a drug that flops, the federal center is reluctant to admit a supplement may lack merit — despite a strategic plan pledging not to equivocate in the face of negative findings.

Echinacea is an example. After a large study by a top virologist found it didn't help colds, its fans said the wrong one of the plant's nine species had been tested. Federal officials agreed that more research was needed, even though they had approved the type used in the study. "There's been a deliberate policy of never saying something doesn't work. It's as though you can only speak in one direction," and say a different version or dose might give different results, said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a retired physician who runs Quackwatch, a web site on medical scams.

Critics also say the federal center's research agenda is shaped by an advisory board loaded with alternative medicine practitioners. They account for at least nine of the board's 18 members, as required by its government charter. Many studies they approve for funding are done by alternative therapy providers; grants have gone to board members, too. "It's the fox guarding the chicken coop," said Dr. Joseph Jacobs, who headed the Office of Alternative Medicine, a smaller federal agency that preceded the center's creation. "This is not science, it's ideology on the part of the advocates."

Briggs defended their involvement. "If you're going to do a study on acupuncture, you're going to need acupuncture expertise," she said. These therapists "are very much believers in what they do," not unlike gastroenterologists doing a study of colonoscopy, and good study design can guard against bias, she said.

The center was handed a flawed mission, many scientists say. Congress created it after several powerful members claimed health benefits from their own use of alternative medicine and persuaded others that this enormously popular field needed more study. The new center was given $50 million in 1999 (its budget was $122 million last year) and ordered to research unconventional therapies and nostrums that Americans were using to see which ones had merit.

That is opposite how other National Institutes of Health agencies work, where scientific evidence or at least plausibility is required to justify studies, and treatments go into wide use after there is evidence they work — not before. "There's very little basic science behind these things. Most of it begins with a tradition, or personal testimony and people's beliefs, even as a fad. And then pressure comes: 'It's being popular, it's being used, it should be studied.' It turns things upside down," said Dr. Edward Campion, a senior editor who reviews alternative medicine research submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine.

That reasoning was used to justify the $2 million weight-loss study, approved in 2007. It will test Tapas acupressure, devised by Tapas Fleming, a California acupuncturist. Use of her trademarked method requires employing people she certifies, and the study needs eight. It involves pressing on specific points on the face and head — the inner corners of the eyes are two — while focusing on a problem. Dr. Charles Elder, a Kaiser Permanente physician who runs an herbal and ayurvedic medicine clinic in Portland, Ore., is testing whether it can prevent dieters from regaining lost weight.

Say a person comes home and is tempted by Twinkies on the table. The solution: Start acupressure "and say something like 'I have an uncontrollable Twinkie urge,'" Elder said. Then focus on an opposite thought, like "I'm in control of my eating." In Chinese medicine, the pressure is said to release natural energy in a place in the body "responsible for transforming animal desire into higher thoughts," Elder said.

In a federally funded pilot study, 30 dieters who were taught acupressure regained only half a pound six months later, compared with over three pounds for a comparison group of 30 others. However, the study widely missed a key scientific standard for showing that results were not a statistical fluke.

The pilot trial was just to see if the technique was feasible, Elder said. The results were good enough for the federal center to grant $2.1 million for a bigger study in 500 people that is under way now.

Alternative medicine research also is complicated by the subjective nature of many of the things being studied. Pain, memory, cravings, anxiety and fatigue are symptoms that people tolerate and experience in widely different ways. Take a question like, "Does yoga work for back pain?" said Margaret Chesney, a psychologist who is associate director of the federally funded Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland. "What kind of yoga? What kind of back pain?" And what does it mean to "work" — to help someone avoid surgery, hold a job or need less medication?

Some things — the body meridians that acupuncturists say they follow, or energy forces that healers say they manipulate — cannot be measured, and many scientists question their existence.

Studying herbals is tough because they are not standardized as prescription drugs are required to be. One brand might contain a plant's flowers, another its seeds and another, stems and leaves, in varying amounts.

There are 150 makers of black cohosh "and probably no two are exactly the same, and probably some people are putting sawdust in capsules and selling it," said Norman Farnsworth, a federally funded herbal medicine researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Even after a careful study, "you know one thing more precise and firm about what that agent did in that population with that outcome measurement, but you don't necessarily know the whole gamut of its effectiveness," as the echinacea study showed, Briggs said.

The center posts information on supplements and treatments on its Web site, and has a phone line for the public to ask questions — even when the answer is that not enough is known to rule in or rule out benefit or harm. "I hope we are building knowledge and at least an informed consumer," Briggs said.

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How awful! Food production is rational and efficient -- and -- gasp! -- the producers make a profit!

Much better to be "green", "local", "organic" etc. Fortunately we still get a choice about that, though

The new documentary Food Inc. takes aim at corporate giants behind the U.S. food supply. As director Robert Kenner and food advocate and author Michael Pollan tell Steve Inskeep, they made the film in order to raise Americans' awareness about where their food really comes from.

Pollan says he wanted to address "the pastoral illusion we're spinning in the way we market food... You would think it comes from farms and that ranches with big hats are producing the meat."

In fact, say Pollan and Kenner, America's food comes primarily from enormous assembly lines, where animals and workers are being abused.

There are benefits to the current system; as Pollan points out, Americans spend less than nine percent of their income on food — less than any other people in history. But, he adds, the benefits have come "at an exorbitant cost, because the system depends on cheap fossil fuel to work. The system depends antibiotics to work. The system depends on abuse animals to work. And if people want to pay those costs for cheap food, that's great, but let's tell them about the costs first."

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Stillbirth risk triples for Scottish women who choose home delivery with private midwife over NHS

Homebirth has a long tradition in Scotland and what this shows is that women who expect problems would rather go to a private midwife than the NHS! This is a great reflection on the NHS. If the NHS did not treat women like no-account cattle, their first choice in such cases would surely be a hospital

Women who give birth at home aided by an independent midwife are almost three times as likely to have a stillbirth than those who deliver their child in hospital. Home births have long been debated amid concerns about their safety, because specialist care is not on hand in case of serious complications. However, the number of mothers choosing this option have been rising since 1988 and now about 2.5 per cent have a home birth.

NHS babies were more likely to be premature and admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit than those delivered by an independent midwife

Scientists from the University of Dundee studied records of more than 8,6000 women who gave birth in Scotland between 2002 and 2005. This included 1,462 who used the Independent Midwives Association (IMA) and 7,214 who relied on the NHS. They found the risk of stillbirth or neonatal death within a month of birth was 1.7 per cent in the IMA group compared with 0.6 per cent in the NHS group.

However, independent midwives had more patients who knew there would be problematic births, and were expecting twins or had a history of complications in labour. When 'high risk' cases were excluded from both groups, there was little difference between them. [But is that the point? Surely high risk cases should be in hospitals?]

The authors also pointed out that home births had a number of advantages when comparing the two groups. IMA mothers were significantly more likely to start labour spontaneously and have an unassisted birth than NHS mothers. They also took fewer pain relieving drugs.

Their babies were significantly heavier than mothers who had babies in hospital. NHS babies were also more likely to be premature and admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit. Finally IMA mothers were much more likely to breastfeed successfully than NHS mothers.

Belinda Phipps, Chief Executive of the National Childbirth Trust said: 'Women at high-risk of complications are still entitled to choose a home birth and I think we have to ask why they are made to feel that their only option is to turn away from the health service.'

SOURCE

Dangerous junk science in the health care debate

Never do these anti-salt freaks mention the disastrous effects of iodine deficiency that their advocacy could cause. And iodine deficiency is already widespread, probably as a result of the incessant anti-salt campaigns. Iodized table salt is the major source of iodine for most people. And it's not only the iodine in salt that is important: so is the sodium. Google "hyponatremia" if you want to read of deaths from low sodium levels in the bloodstream. For more on the dangers of LOW salt intake, see here

Settled science rarely is. Except to those with a vested policy interest in the debate. True to form, a recent diatribe by Michael F. Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest acknowledges none of the widely available data that conflict with his passionate crusade against table salt. However, to a debate that has raged for decades, Jacobson does bring a modern twist:

As legislators struggle to craft a health-care program that covers every American…Congress should direct the Food and Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture to require industry to reduce sodium levels [in food] by half over the next five to 10 years.

Notice that government-provided universal health care is taken for granted. Unsurprisingly, so is the constitutional authority of Congress to dictate market terms to the private sector. If this is really a question of health, why not ask if exposing patients to the cost of their unhealthy lifestyle choices (instead of further obscuring them through legislation and health entitlement bureaucracy) might encourage people to alter such habits voluntarily?

Jacobson never asks because the debate is not about health, it is about control. And freedom is not a public option. He simply pronounces:

There are basically three ways to deal with the money issue [in providing universal health care]. One is to cover fewer people and slash services —defeating the very purpose of the legislation. A second is to bring in more revenues. The third is to trim costs. A smart mix of the second and third could help prevent the first. And doing so could be accomplished partly at the dinner table.

As long as Congress sets the menu.

A fourth way, apparently not considered by Jacobson, would be to reform the employer-based health care system and allow true market competition to provide individuals with affordable coverage that meets their needs. Then informed consumers making personal cost-benefit analyses can take an active role in their own treatment.

Of course, these days it seems that informed citizens taking an active role in anything is precisely what the government does not want.

SOURCE






Stress CAN make hair go grey (but it may in theory also protect against cancer)

But only in mice and only when stress is defined as exposure to ionizing radiation and drugs used in chemotherapy! If you want a laugh, compare my realistic heading above with the original newspaper heading

Stress really can make your hair go grey, scientists have found. As the pressure builds, the stem cells that replenish your hair colour become damaged, leaving the tell-tale silver crown, a study has shown. But the very visible sign of ageing appears to also have a beneficial effect - reducing the risk of cancer, a leading expert has claimed.

When scientists from Kanazawa University in Japan studied the effects of radiation and other chemicals on the fur of mice, they found that their coats greyed early. This is because stem cells in their hair follicles were forced to mature, slashing the production of melanin - the chemical that gives colour to the hair and skin, the team explains in the journal Cell.

But Dr David Fisher, chief of the department of dermatology at Harvard Medical School, said that blocking these stem cells, which have damaged DNA, from dividing is also beneficial. It could stop you developing a tumour, which is a ball of damaged cells that grow out of control. ‘Greying may actually be a safety mechanism,’ said Dr Fisher. ‘They’ve shown that this mechanism is actually removing damaged stem cells. ‘The good news is if you do find yourself greying, you’re probably better off not having those cells persist.’

He said the findings, reported in the journal Cell, have ‘far-reaching’ consequences because they suggest that early maturation and differentiation in other groups of stem cells could help prevent cancer as well. Stem cells are the life source of the body, continually making copies of themselves which may differentiate into other cell types. When those located in the hair follicles of mice stopped replicating, the animals soon ran out of that cells that create pigment in their fur.

Dr Fisher commented on the findings made by Dr Emi Nishimura at Kanazawa University in Japan, who he worked with at Harvard. Dr Nishimura had previously discovered the stem cells within hair follicles and showed that their depletion during aging causes hair to turn grey. For this study, her team exposed mice to radiation and drugs used in chemotherapy, then monitored changes in the colour of their fur as well as the status of their stem cells. By looking at the hair follicles under microscopes, they saw when the stem cells turned into other cell types and linked the change to greying hair. A similar mechanism may operate in people, she said.

The findings challenge existing theories about how the body tries to protect itself when it suffers genetic damage from radiation or other toxins, Dr Nishimura said.. People have speculated that cells die when their DNA is damaged by apoptosis, a scientific term for cell suicide, Dr Nishimura said. This would stop damaged cells from growing uncontrollably as tumours.

But these findings suggest the body has another way to protect itself, she said. "Probably the tissue is trying to get rid of risky stem cell populations which have a lot of DNA damage,’ she said.

People constantly face a range of toxic agents that can damage their DNA from household and industrial chemicals, ultraviolet radiation from the sun and X-rays, and their effect on the body accumulates, Dr Nishimura said.

Dr Fisher said that the new findings ‘imply that age-related greying could be a result of accumulated DNA damage.’ It will take further experiments to prove the theory and to demonstrate that what’s true of stem cells in hair follicles is true of other types of stem cells. Dr Nishimura said she is planning other experiments to investigate these possibilities.

SOURCE

Red wine ingredient is a 'wonderdrug'

Here we go again: The antioxidant religion. That moderate drinking simply relaxes you, thus reducing stress-related diseases, seems not to have been considered. That taking antioxidants in pill form actually REDUCES your lifespan suggests that they are not what gives wine its benefits

An ingredient of red wine really is a 'wonderdrug', claim scientists, after research suggested it kills cancer cells and protects the heart and brain from damage. Researchers claim moderate drinking of red wine appears to reduce "all causes of mortality" and protects people from age-related disorders such as dementia, diabetes and high blood pressure. They said that the key ingredient appears to be resveratrol which in small doses acts as an antioxidant protecting organs but in larger quantities kills dangerous cancer cells.

"The breadth of benefits is remarkable – cancer prevention, protection of the heart and brain from damage, reducing age-related diseases such as inflammation, reversing diabetes and obesity, and many more," said Professor Lindsay Brown of the University of Queensland.

The conclusions were drawn by Professor Brown and her team after a "mini review" of a number of recent studies about the health benefits of red wine published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

The biochemists said that red wine appears to contain a number of antioxidants - naturally-occurring protective compounds - which are good for your health but that resveratrol was the most powerful. They concluded that it "shows therapeutic potential" for cancer and heart disease and may aid in the prevention of age-related disorders that affect the brain and the body.

The ability to protect healthy cells but kill diseased ones was still puzzling scientists, the study claimed, but they said the most likely explanation was low concentrations "activate survival mechanisms of cells while high concentrations turn on the inbuilt death signals in these cells".

But the researchers warned that moderation was the key as too much drinking causes multiple organ damage.

Professor Stephen Taylor, also at the University of Queensland, said that resveratrol is the "compound du jour" and that its beauty was that it is a medicine most people enjoy taking. "I think that red wine has both some mystique and some historical symbolism in the west and of course, some various pleasures attached to its ingestion, all of which give it a psychological advantage edge, food-wise," he said. He said "not many of us can or will eat a couple of cups of blueberries a day for years on end" but we were happy to have a glass of wine.

Professor Brown said the research was starting to explain reports from the last 200 years that drinking red wine improves health. "It is a cliché that nature is a treasure trove of compounds," she said. "But studies with resveratrol show that this is correct. We need to understand better the vast array of compounds that exist in nature, and determine their potential benefits to health."

SOURCE

Update:

Apologies for not giving a link to premature death from antioxidant pills. Here's one





Steak-lovers have little chance of children

This is a REAL doozy. I don't know how my father had four children, two conceived rather late in life. Like many Australians of his generation, he ate steak every day. And he certainly wasn't big on fruit and vegetables (unless you call beer a vegetable!). Anyway, below it is just the old antioxidant religion again. It's a very small and limited study: Of men attending a Spanish fertility clinic. And how come 31 of them DIDN'T have "reproductive problems"?? Why were they there?

Men who gorge on steak, burgers and full-fat cream have such poor quality sperm they stand little chance of fathering a child, scientists say. Those who eat a lot of fruit and vegetables have higher quality sperm that swims faster, according to new research.

Scientists in Spain found good quality sperm is a direct result of a diet high in antioxidants found in fruit and vegetables and especially in peppers, citrus fruits and spinach. Antioxidants work by slowing or stopping the oxidation of other molecules in the body which has a direct effect on both the number of sperm and their ability move fast.

Sperm are fewer and slower in men who eat few antioxidants and instead feast on meat and full-fat dairy products. Lead researcher Jaime Mendiola, of the University of Murcia, Spain, said: "A healthy diet is not only a good way of avoiding illness, but improves the quality of semen. "Men who eat lots of meat and full-fat dairy products have much poorer quality sperm than those who eat lots of fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products. People who eat more fruits and vegetables are ingesting more antioxidants, and this is the important point."

The scientists spent four years studying men in two fertility clinics in Spain to see if anything in their diets or exposure to pollution at work was making it difficult for some to father children. "We saw that, among the couples with fertility problems coming to the clinics, men with good semen quality ate more vegetables and fruit, which means more vitamins, folic acid and fibre and fewer proteins and fats, than those with poor sperm quality," Professor Mendiola said.

In his next study he will examine if it matters if men receive their vitamins from food or from pills. The study carried out among 61 men, 30 of whom had reproductive problems and 31 who didn't. The research was published in the journal 'Fertility and Sterility'.

SOURCE

Mushrooms on superfood list

The report below is typical of a myriad of enthusiastic claims about the benefits of mushrooms. There is however no flavour of scientific objectivity about the report. It appears to be just a piece of PR puffery from yet another enthusiast. Note however that there have been suggestions that, regardless of what nutrients mushrooms may contain, they also contain a compound that INTERFERES with nutrient uptake in the stomach. I eat mushrooms myself but I do so because of the taste alone and always in small amounts combined with other foods. Normal edible mushrooms also been shown to have toxic effects to some degree. Uncooked edible mushrooms can certainly give you cancer. And we also know that "there are toxic levels of metals, including arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury as well as the presence of radioactive contamination" in common mushrooms. I could go on but I think I have said enough to show that the report below is unbalanced

Mushrooms have earned the ranking of a superfood by Australia's leading scientific agency. Studies suggest the edible fungus is capable of helping weight loss, preventing disease and possibly even could be a cure for vitamin D deficiency.

CSIRO Associate Professor Manny Noakes, a best-selling author who wrote The Total Wellbeing Diet, has released a report into mushrooms at the Australian Dietitians Association annual conference. Dr Noakes reviewed 11,000 international papers on the health benefits of mushrooms, finding a diverse range of nutrients. "I was always a mushroom-lover but the research has shown me even more about the rich range of essential nutrients they offer," Dr Noakes said.

The research showed mushrooms were the only non-animal food to provide a natural source of Vitamin D, delivering one of the strongest anti-oxidant effects of all foods.

WHY some experts saying eating mushrooms is good for your health:

THEY are a natural source of Vitamin D and provide essential B group vitamins riboflavin, niacin and biotin.

MUSHROOMS are low in salt and are packed with essential minerals such as selenium, phosphorus and potassium.

THEY help strengthen the body's immune system and attack killer cells that can lead to tumours and cancer. They also may hold clues to help combat Alzheimer's.

It also showed mushrooms contain a healthy dose of B-group vitamins riboflavin, niacin and biotin, and a range of essential minerals such as selenium, phosphorus and potassium while being low in salt.

The CSIR0 believes mushrooms may boost the body's immune system, increasing its ability to fight bugs and attack killer cells, beating off viral infections such as influenza and tumours that cause bowel and breast cancer.

"While many believe B12 is only found in animal foods such as milk, research has now confirmed that it is available in mushrooms in modest amounts and, more importantly, in a form that is easily absorbed by the body," Dr Noakes said. "It was believed to be coming from compost, but that has been disproven. "It is a major surprise. "The common mushroom is also unique because it contains glutamate, known to enhance flavour and associated with umami, which is the `fifth flavour' and creates what we call `deliciousness'. "It makes you feel satisfied and full. "This means it has the potential to maintain appetite control without having to eat a lot."

While many Australians are generally cautious about sun exposure, there is a growing body of evidence that low levels of vitamin D contribute to a range of diseases including osteoporosis, diabetes and some cancers. The unique nature of mushrooms is that the action of sunlight is able to trigger the production of vitamin D.

Growers are planning to deliver vitamin D-rich mushrooms for sale during the next 12 months, providing consumers with a natural solution to the vitamin D problem. The CSIRO is continuing a range of research projects into the benefits of mushrooms, including their ability to ward off Alzheimer's disease.

The above story by Suellen Hinde appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on June 7, 2009





Magnetic fields test “reflexes” of autism

This seems very crude but maybe it's a useful first step

Scientists are trying a new approach to unravel the workings of the autistic brain: the neurological equivalent of banging a patient's knee with a hammer to test reflexes. Instead of a hammer, though, researchers are pressing a flat paddle against patients' heads and creating a magnetic field that triggers brain cell activity.

As the quest to understand autism has grown more urgent, researchers have used brain scanners to peer into autistic minds, searched for faulty genes, and scrutinized the play of 1-year-olds.

The work has provided theories - but few concrete answers - about what goes awry to cause social isolation, repetitive behaviors, and communication problems that afflict an estimated one in 150 children with autism spectrum disorders. The hunt has focused on everything from "mirror neurons," brain cells some researchers think enable people to understand other's actions and intentions, to an overgrowth of local connections in the brain.

Now a small but growing number of researchers see hope in a tool called transcranial magnetic stimulation, which lets scientists spark activity in specific areas of the brain and watch what happens to patients' behavior. The technology may illuminate some of the biology behind the disease, and some specialists speculate it may one day offer a treatment.

"There's a lot of mystery about autism - it's not as if there's a well-understood story of what's going on at all, and there's a huge variety of autism, too," said John Gabrieli, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Transcranial magnetic stimulation "is fantastic for identifying brain regions that are essential for specific mental functions. . . . I think if we can start to use it more systematically with autism, one could hope we'd understand a lot more about what's going on."

Gabrieli said he hopes to team up with researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who are already getting preliminary results with the technology, finding that autistic brains appear to be more malleable than those of other people.

Researchers at the Boston hospital's Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation used rapid, repetitive stimulation to simulate what happens in the brain when people learn a new task. Then they gave a single pulse of stimulation and measured minute muscle twitches that told them how long people's brains maintained connections formed by the initial stimulation.

In people with no evidence of autism, changes lasted about 30 minutes, on average. But in people on the autism spectrum, the initial stimulation caused brain changes that lasted much longer - on average an hour and a half. "As they're going through their world, their brains are changing their circuits much more and much longer," said Lindsay Oberman, a postdoctoral researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess. "They're making connections, just not breaking them at the same rate as normal people." That suggests to Oberman that important cognitive processes may be getting stuck on labyrinthine side roads.

Researchers in the laboratory are also investigating whether stimulating a specific area of the brain improves language skills.

John Elder Robison, 51, said he decided to participate in the experiments because it wasn't until he reached adulthood that he was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a disease on the autism spectrum. "I have a strong desire to do this to benefit people like me," Robison said. "I knew how much I had struggled as a young person - not knowing, being called 'retard' or 'freak.' This might help young people."

Use of transcranial magnetic stimulation to investigate autism is in its early days, but the technology is well-established. In the noninvasive procedure, a current travels through two loops in a figure-eight-shaped paddle, creating a changing magnetic field. The paddle is pressed against the patient's head, and the changing field induces an electrical current in brain tissue.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as a depression treatment last fall. The main side effect is a risk of seizure, but the risk is low, researchers say, because years of research have provided insight into how to use the technology safely.

While such stimulation may turn out to be a useful tool in autism research, Michael Merzenich, emeritus professor at the University of California at San Francisco, cautioned that a limitation of the technology may be that so much has gone wrong in the autistic brain. "Virtually any way you would probe it in detail, you'd quickly reveal abnormalities," Merzenich said. "My question is, if I start poking around . . . it's a pretty complex, multivariable mess that I'm poking. How likely is it that's going to lead to great insight?"

Dr. Manuel Casanova, a neuroscientist at the University of Louisville, began using the technique on patients a few years ago. Casanova was interested in groups of brain cells called minicolumns, which are abnormally small in autistic people and seem to lack what he calls an inhibitory "shower curtain" that prevents activity from spilling into the rest of the brain. His idea was to boost the shower curtain using the stimulation.

Casanova reported last year in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders that when he used repetitive stimulation on 13 high-functioning people with autism spectrum disorder, the treatment seemed to improve synchronization between brain regions. The patients were also able to sit still longer, follow directions better, and reduce repetitive behaviors.

Initially, he paid for the research out of his own pocket, but last week he received gratifying validation - a grant from the National Institutes of Health to support his work over the next four years.

Dr. Marco Iacoboni, a psychiatry professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, recently submitted a grant proposing a study using the technique. He would like to use it to inhibit activity in a part of the brain that may be suppressing the activity of "mirror neurons" - brain cells that appear to be active both when a person moves and when the person watches someone move.

Robison, the Asperger patient, said he believes some of the experiments at Beth Israel Deaconess have helped him, and Oberman and colleagues have been encouraged by their attempts to use the tool as a treatment. But researchers embracing the tool also urge caution. "These are just the very first steps - it's the first man on the moon just collecting rocks and looking at the composition of the rocks," Iacoboni said. "There is a very strong rationale for doing this; that's why it's promising. But people shouldn't hope we've found anything yet."

SOURCE

Junk diet is `like a narcotic'

All that was apparently shown here is that rats got to like human foods and acted disturbed when given only rat pellets again. If someone fed me rat pellets instead of my normal diet, I would get pretty disturbed too. It undoubtedly shows that rat pellets are unappetizing but what else it proves I fail to see

PEOPLE who eat too much junk food can become addicted to it in the same way a drug-user becomes dependent on narcotics, ne research shows. Researchers at the Sansom Institute in South Australia have found that excessive consumption of foods high in fat and sugar triggers the release of dopamine in the central reward pathwav in the brain.

"This creates a feeling of pleasure not dissimilar to that caused by drugs of abuse," lead researcher Zhi Yi Ong said. "Repeated activation of the dopaminergic reward pathway is associated with the development of addiction."

Ms Ong and her team used rodents to explore junk food dependence feeding them biscuits, Nutella, peanut butter, Froot Loops and Cheetos for two months.

"Their desire for junk food ended up over-riding their physiological hunger signals," she said. The rodents also displayed anxiety when the researchers replaced their junk food with standard food. "The ability of chronic junk food intake to produce junk food dependence may explain why many individuals struggle to control their desire for these foods," she said.

The above story by Suellen Hinde appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on June 7, 2009





Bubs'IQ plummet from lack of iodine

IODINE deficiency among pregnant women has reached such alarming levels. they will produce a generation of dumber children. a leading expert warns. Endocrinologist Professor Creswell Eastman has just completed a study of 400 pregnant women at Sydney's Westmead Hospital and found 60-70 per cent of them were iodine-deficient - up from 50 per cent a few years ago.

Iodine is a trace element essential for brain growth in a developing foetus and to maintain normal thyroid function, growth and metabolism.

Professor Creswell, vice-chair of the International Council for Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders, said women involved in the study were only getting half the iodine they required. "Children born to mothers who are moderately iodine-deficient have lower IQs ... It is dumbing down our population," Prof Eastman said. "We could solve the whole problem if we could convince the Government that all salt for human consumption should be iodised," Prof Eastman said.

The above story by Sharon Labi appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on June 7, 2009

Table salt IS already all iodized as far as I know. Salt used in food manufacture probably is not however. So it is the health nuts warning people off adding salt to their food who are causing this problem

Oily fish can halt the progress of late-stage eye disease

But it can also give you eye disease in the first place! I shouldn't laugh but this really is an amusing set of findings. If I took the findings seriously, I would never eat fish again!

People with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) should eat oily fish at least twice a week to keep their eye disease at bay, say scientists. Omega-3 fatty acids found in abundance in fish like mackerel and salmon appear to slow or even halt the progress of both early and late stage disease.

The researchers base their findings on almost 3,000 people taking part in a trial of vitamins and supplements. The findings are published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

An estimated 500,000 people in the UK suffer from AMD, which destroys central vision. Experts have already suggested omega-3 may cut the risk of getting AMD by a third, and now this latest work suggests these fats also benefit patients who already have the disease.

Progression to both dry and wet forms of advanced AMD disease was 25% less likely among those eating a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids. People with advanced AMD who also consumed a low-GI diet, eating of foods that release their sugar more slowly, and who took supplemental antioxidant vitamins and minerals like vitamin C and zinc appeared to reduce their risk of disease progression by even more - by up to 50%. Substituting five slices of wholegrain bread for white bread every day out of a total intake of 250g of carbohydrate might cut out almost 8% of advanced age related macular degeneration over five years, say the authors.

Surprisingly, however, the supplements were counterproductive for those with early AMD, negating the benefits of omega-3 fats, and even appeared to increase the risk of disease progression. Those who took all the antioxidant vitamins plus zinc, and who a high daily intake of beta carotene - found in yellow and green vegetables - were 50% more likely to progress to advanced disease.

The researchers at Tufts University, Boston, believe omega-3 fatty acids offer protection against AMD by altering fat levels in the blood after a meal that can be damaging to the body. But they say it is not clear whether patients should also consider taking supplements as well as omega-3 because of their mixed findings.

They suggest that eating two to three servings of fatty fish, such as salmon, tuna, mackerel, shellfish, and herring every week, would achieve the recommended daily intake (650mg) of omega-3, substantially cutting the risk of both early and late stage AMD.

The UK's Food Standards Agency says people should eat at least two portions of fish a week including one of oily fish. But they caution that too much oily fish is bad because it can contain low levels of pollutants that can build up in the body. Most people can safely eat up to four portions a week, but girls and women who might have a baby and those who are pregnant or breastfeeding should limit their intake to two portions a week.

A spokeswoman from RNIB said good nutrition was very important for both general and eye health. "These findings appear to be consistent with previous research that has shown that eating omega-3 poly-unsaturated fats as part of a balanced diet may help prevent the development of age-related macular degeneration, the main cause of severe sight loss in the UK. "RNIB hopes that this will further highlight why looking after your eyes should be a key motivation in maintaining a healthy lifestyle," she said.

SOURCE




The breastfeeding trend goes over the top

Australian mothers beg for black market breast milk, risking serious disease transmission

MOTHERS desperate to feed their babies breast milk are advertising for donated human milk in an unofficial milk black market that bypasses health authorities. The trend is part of an international return to wet-nursing, according to advocates who say the "breast is best" message is getting through. A Gold Coast milk bank has fielded more than 160 requests from New South Wales women wanting to find or donate milk. The natural baby food is proven to contain antibodies against illnesses and infection and has been linked with everything from higher intelligence to fewer allergies.

But mothers without their own supply are left to go it alone in NSW, risking passing on diseases including HIV and hepatitis through unscreened milk. Mothers Milk Bank founder Marea Ryan said mothers were forced underground because banks - including her own in Queensland and another in Western Australia - can only cater for a local supply. "The interstate mums have to have a donor as a private arrangement - another mother who is happy to give them milk," she said. "I think it is increasing as people become a lot more aware of the benefits of breastfeeding."

She added that mothers should see blood tests from donors before feeding their baby donated milk. One Sydney woman who arranged frozen breast milk over the internet said she copped abuse, despite insisting on a medical clearance. "I got lots of mothers telling me it was disgusting, asking how could I give another woman's milk to my baby," she said. "It was full on." The Sydney mother blamed her feeding troubles on a past breast reduction and mastitis, coupled with her daughter's whooping cough. "It was horrible. I'm a big believer in breast feeding," she said. "Knowing she was sick when she was born, you just want to give them the best."

Breastfeeding Australia national spokeswoman Carey Wood said World Health Organisation guidelines recommended "cross-feeding" ahead of formula. "We know the best thing for babies is their mothers' own milk," she said. Ms Wood said breast milk was produced by mothers specifically for the age of their baby. "Milk for an 18-month-old or two-year-old, that's not exactly what a newborn needs," she said.

The association does not condone private arrangements and asked a Senate Inquiry for a national network of breast milk banks in 2007. In the US, breast milk has sold online for as much as $1.90 for 20ml.

SOURCE

9 June, 2009

Can crash diets be good for you?

New research appears to show that crash diets can be a safe and effective way of keeping the pounds off. But for how long?



We all know the nutritional rules, don’t we? Crash dieting is just a code for losing muscle and water. As soon as we stop, we’ll simply regain the weight — and, likely, plus some. Yo-yo dieting will merely mess up your metabolism.

In spite of this, we’ve kept doing the crazy diets. The bottom line was that we were thin. So what if we fasted for 48 hours, drinking only water, diet cola and black coffee, then munched a 400-calorie meal, then fasted again for 48 hours more? We lost 1st in four days — even if it was dangerously extreme.

My own life has borne witness to the Scarsdale diet: I had a green salad and no cake for dinner on my 16th birthday. I lived through “Smashgate”, a regime of Smash mashed potato, for days, until I realised that it was about 10 times as calorific as I’d thought. At university, it was all about calorie counting — anything from 700 to 1,200 calories a day. In my first job, I worked through a haze of starvation on the simple but deadly “stone in four days” plan. I picked Thursdays for the first night of a fast, so I could offset dinner hunger pangs by late-night shopping at Topshop.

Sooner or later, most of us say goodbye to this miserable way of life. When sensible women want to lose weight, we rethink emotional eating patterns, up the exercise and get sustainably healthy, losing 1lb per week tops, right?

Maybe not. We could all be about to head back to the weird world of crash dieting. For new research from Tufts University in Massachusetts says that crash diets can actually work better than slow weight loss. Susan Roberts, professor of nutrition and psychiatry at Tufts, says the latest research from her lab shows that “sensible, healthy crash diets actually do as well for long-term success as slow diets and, for some people, can actually work better”.

She distinguishes between good and bad crash diets, however. The one she advocates goes further than the usual 1,500 calories a day typically advised for women to lose 1lb per week, but is not extreme, never dipping below 1,200 calories for women (or 1,800 for men). “We studied two groups, in which we cut either 10% or 30% of calories, and tried to keep them at it for a year,” she explains. “In the end, they were in a similar place — the 30-percenters definitely did not do worse, despite having a more stringent programme.”

What is more, she adds, people who get tempted easily may be better candidates for fast, strict diets than gentle weight loss: “A small calorie cut can work for the sensible crowd, but seems to almost backfire for people who get tempted by food. Disinhibited eaters [a psychological term referring to people who give up on diets easily when presented with food opportunities] actually did really badly on the 10% diet.”

Certainly, if you’re addicted to overeating, it can be easier dramatically to cut out all your favourites, rather than learn moderation, which is perhaps why meal-replacement diets have been found to be one of the most successful ways to lose weight (see Simon Glazin, above). “Despite the hype about slow diets being better, there has actually been very little research into whether losing weight fast or slowly works better in the long run,” argues Roberts. “The trouble with slow diets is people tend to feel they are getting nowhere and give up. Fast keeps you excited and feeling like you’re making progress.” Other experts take a very different view and insist any kind of diet is bunkum. “Diets depend on failure,” says the psychotherapist Susie Orbach, who has explored women’s attitudes to eating in such books as Bodies. “They need to fail, otherwise there would be no repeat customers.”

Others, such as Dr Peter Rowan, an eating-disorder consultant from the Cygnet hospital in London, warn that dieting and eating disorders go hand in hand. “The large majority of patients with anorexia and bulimia have the illnesses triggered by weight loss. Even a sensible weight-loss diet can trigger an eating disorder in someone who is vulnerable, but there is evidence to suggest that the more severe the weight loss, the more likely the diet is to trigger an eating disorder.”

Roberts dismisses extreme crash diets that promise huge losses, as well as fasting, as “snake oil”, but says that to lose as much as 20lb in eight weeks on 1,200 calories a day, plus 30 minutes’ daily exercise, is safe, provided the diet is balanced, with plenty of low-GI, high-protein foods to keep you full. And the weight loss will last, she says, if you “change what you eat permanently” to generally healthy habits.

Dr Shahrad Taheri, director of the weight-management clinic at the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, agrees that 1,200 nutritious, low-GI calories per day is the lowest a woman should go, but warns: “Most people’s weight problems occur over a number of years and reflect a lifestyle of selecting calorie-dense foods combined with reduced physical activity — this needs time to change.”

SOURCE






The bug that can blast away cancer: Drug made from virus extends patients' lives

Sounds plausible and the initial results sound hopeful

A common virus which causes stomach upsets is giving hope to cancer patients - by boosting their immune system and blasting away tumours. Almost 80 patients with advanced forms of liver cancer, head and neck tumours and breast cancer are taking part in trials using a drug made from the reovirus. A number, who have struggled to benefit from chemotherapy, have seen astonishing results, with tumours shrinking and in one case disappearing altogether.

Experts say it is too soon to say if Reolysin is the 'magic bullet' that will kill off cancer, but they believe it may offer a way of extending the life of patients given a short time to live. Reolysin appears to kill off cancer cells by rupturing their walls, creating a chain reaction of 'explosions' which rip through tumours. As the tumours shrink they become less harmful and more easily treatable by chemotherapy. At the same time, Reolysin seems to 'wake up' the immune system so it can recognise cancer cells as invaders, prompting the body to mount an attack on harmful cells.

One liver cancer patient, Andrew McManus, 65, said last night: 'To put it bluntly, I could well be dead by now without this treatment.'

Reovirus infection occurs often in humans, but most cases are mild - causing a stomach upset. Its role in human disease is uncertain. Canadian firm Oncolytics Biotech Inc, which created Reolysin, is working on trials with researchers from St James's Hospital in Leeds, the Royal Marsden Hospital in London and the Royal Surrey County Hospital. The drug is administered intravenously via a drip, with a patient receiving eight fiveday courses of treatment spread over six months. The only side-effects appear to be a flu-like ache and a raised temperature.

Lead researcher Professor Alan Melcher said: 'We have had a few dramatic responses to Reolysin but we still have to be very cautious about getting up too much hope. We cannot say people have been cured. However, it is exciting and has got real potential.'

One man, Henry Nelson, 74, of Halifax, with cancer of the head and neck saw a lump the size of a tennis ball in his neck almost disappear after chemotherapy plus Reolysin.

Professor Melcher said: 'It is a completely different approach to treating cancer. It is not just another drug. It is a virus and it seems to be very well tolerated in combination with chemotherapy. 'There is no magic bullet with cancer, but these combinations seem to be working.'

Experts say larger trials are needed before Reolysin can be widely available to patients. That could take up to five years. In UK trials, 15 head and neck cancer patients have been treated so far. Of 12 for whom results were available, five have had a partial shrinkage of their tumours and in four the disease stabilised for between two to six months. Oncolytics also announced positive results from its other UK trials, for patients who have tumours which have failed to respond to standard therapy. Of 17, 15 experienced stable disease or better.

Liz Woolf, of Cancer Research UK, said 'If it proves successful in larger trials, the reovirus could one day become an effective new treatment to be used alongside chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery to benefit people with some types of cancer.

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Probiotic supplements have 'no proven benefit for healthy people'

Good to see some reasonable skepticism

Probiotic drinks are of no benefit to healthy people and may harm those with low immune systems, a leading microbiologist has warned. Michael Wilson, Professor of Microbiology at University College London, said there were some cases when topping up on "good bacteria" could help recovery from illness, but understanding of the supplements is "shaky" and needs a more robust scientific investigation.

"There are certain instances when probiotics are useful but the problem is there's no regulation," Prof Wilson said. "They are regarded as food supplements not medicinal products – anyone can get a suspension of bacteria and market it as a probiotic," said Prof Wilson, speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival. "With medicinal treatments, the pharmaceutical industry makes sure the things they produce are safe."

He said that there was some "instinctive sense" that adding to the gut flora will help with adverse events. In recent years, probiotics have been promoted as a healthy food supplements, in the form of yoghurts, drinks and capsules, and the market is worth an estimated £200 million in Britain.

Clinical trials have shown that eating live bacteria can help sufferers of certain illnesses, such as antibiotic-associated diarrhoea, and there is evidence they can help women who have recently given birth to lose weight. However, according to Prof Wilson, for people with compromised immune systems, increasing the bacterial load could lead to health problems.

"No bacterium is totally innocuous. If you are healthy there is probably no harm in taking probiotics, but there is also no benefit. But to increase the bacterial burden if you are immuno-compromised is asking for trouble," he said.

A spokesman for Yakult, one of the leading probiotic brands, disputed Prof Wilson's warning. "We have 75 years of studies, carried out by independent scientific research bodies in the UK, Europe and Japan, including human trials, which have all demonstrated the health benefits of supporting the gut flora with Yakult."

A spokesman for Danone, the company which produces Actimel and Activia probiotic yoghurts, added: "The efficacy of these products has been shown in many studies and the results have been published in highly reputed scientific journals. "Most recently an independent study, published in the British Medical Journal, showed a significant reduction in the incidence of C difficile-associated diarrhoea in hospitalised patients who drank Actimel twice a day."

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There's more to breastfeeding than meets the eye

ANIMAL milk production was biochemist Peter Hartmann's specialty as a young scientist, but when Britain joined the common market in the early 1970s and European dairy products displaced Australian ones, his funding collapsed and he began applying his knowledge to humans. At the University of Western Australia, he focused instead on that "incredible organ", the lactating breast. "At that time, breastfeeding was at the lowest point ever in Australia, it wasn't seen as the 'in' thing to do research on," Hartmann says.

Last month, it was announced that Hartmann, with computer expert and UWA pro vice-chancellor (research and research training), Robyn Owens, had been awarded the $160,000 British Rank Prize for nutrition. Hartmann's desire to work out a simple, effective way of measuring breast volume, and then milk volume within the breast, was facilitated by Owens's expertise in adapting computer technology called "Moire topography". This method involves projecting stripes on to a breast and measuring the distortions caused by the shape of the breast, which allows calculation of volume.

"One of the stories here is that cross-disciplinary collaboration is very powerful. In WA, these collaborations are easier because you can be at an institution within 10 or 15 minutes," Hartmann says. This teamwork made possible a world of discoveries about breastfeeding. These ranged from basic research such as establishing that humans lactate differently from dairy cows and laboratory animals, [Another example of the often-poor generalizability from animal models] to present work growing breast tissue from stem cells produced in milk.

And while it was already relatively simple to work out how much milk a baby was receiving at each feed - by weighing the infant before and after - that gave no clue about how much each breast was producing, and the capacity of each breast. "One of the things our research clearly showed was that the baby was choosing how much milk to take at each feed, so we could say a baby's appetite varied, they were not always 'clearing their plates'," Hartmann says.

It transpired that the more the baby drained from a breast, the more the breast produced. And that breasts operated independently of each other. One might be very full for one feed and the other much less so, but the position could be reversed from feed to feed. It was also possible to work out how empty a breast was by the amount of fat in the milk. If the milk produced was fatty, the breast was giving up its last reserves.

There is much more to do and know, Hartmann says. "We don't have any (medical) specialty in looking at this important function, so if you have a problem and go to your GP and he can't help, there's nowhere else to go."

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Chocolate Milk's 'Natural' Muscle Recovery Benefits Match or May Even Surpass a Specially Designed Carbohydrate Sports Drink

This is a very small study but interesting

Soccer players and exercise enthusiasts now have another reason to reach for lowfat chocolate milk after a hard workout, suggests a new study from James Madison University presented at the American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting. Post-exercise consumption of lowfat chocolate milk was found to provide equal or possibly superior muscle recovery compared to a high-carbohydrate recovery beverage with the same amount of calories.

In this study, 13 male college soccer players participated in "normal" training for one week, then were given lowfat chocolate milk or a high-carbohydrate recovery beverage daily after intense training for four days. After a two week break, the athletes went through a second round of "normal" training, followed by four-day intensified training to compare their recovery experiences following each beverage (with the same amount of calories). Prior to the intense training, at day two and at the completion of this double-blind study, the researchers conducted specific tests to evaluate "markers" of muscle recovery.

All of the athletes increased their daily training times during the intensified training, regardless of post-exercise beverage yet after two and four days of intensified training, chocolate milk drinkers had significantly lower levels of creatine kinase - an indicator of muscle damage - compared to when they drank the carbohydrate beverage. There were no differences between the two beverages in effects on, soccer-specific performance tests, subjective ratings of muscle soreness, mental and physical fatigue and other measures of muscle strength. The results indicate that lowfat chocolate milk is effective in the recovery and repair of muscles after intense training for these competitive soccer players.

This new study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting milk may be just as effective as some commercial sports drinks in helping athletes recover and rehydrate. Chocolate milk has the advantage of additional nutrients not found in most traditional sports drinks. Studies suggest that when consumed after exercise, milk's mix of high-quality protein and carbohydrates can help refuel exhausted muscles. The protein in milk helps build lean muscle and recent research suggests it may reduce exercise-induced muscle damage. Milk also provides fluids for rehydration and minerals like calcium, potassium and magnesium that recreational exercisers and elite athletes alike need to replace after strenuous activity.

Nearly 18 million Americans play soccer, according to American Sports Data, and millions more engage in recreational sports. Many experts agree that the two-hour window after exercise is an important, yet often neglected, part of a fitness routine. After strenuous exercise, this post-workout recovery period is critical for active people at all fitness levels - to help make the most of a workout and stay in top shape for the next exercise bout. Sweating not only results in fluid losses, but also important minerals including calcium, potassium and magnesium. The best recovery routine should replace fluids and nutrients lost in sweat, and help muscles recover.

Increasingly, fitness experts consider chocolate milk an effective (and affordable and enjoyable) option as a post-exercise recovery drink. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that Americans drink three glasses of lowfat or fat free milk every day. Drinking lowfat chocolate milk after a workout is a good place to start.

Reference: Gilson SF, Saunders MJ, Moran CW, Corriere DF, Moore RW, Womack CJ, Todd MK. Effects of chocolate milk consumption on markers of muscle recovery during intensified soccer training. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2009;41:S577.

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Your child’s Body Mass Index is nobody’s business but yours

My daughter is desperately excited by her upcoming fifth birthday – not least because apparently she will ‘look like six’. She’s not daft; she knows that the labels on the clothes that I buy her now read ‘Age 6-7’, and that she is taller and heavier than some of her friends.

My daughter is not fat – although according to recent research from Newcastle University, eviscerated by Tim Black on spiked, as a parent I would be the last person to admit that she was. But she isn’t a skinnymalinks either. I’m quite pleased about this because I think she looks healthy and beautiful, and my instincts tell me that denying children pudding and sending them to bed hungry is neither necessary nor desirable in this day and age.

The trouble is, when you are constantly incited by government campaigns, health professionals and media reports to calculate and then worry about your child’s Body Mass Index, you find yourself doubting your instincts – and looking at your child in a very peculiar way. Will she pass the test? you wonder, when the school weigh-in programme comes around. If I put a chocolate biscuit in her lunchbox, will people think it’s my fault that she failed?

And so it was when, towards the end of last school term, I received a letter from the local NHS Community Services regarding the ‘height, weight, vision and hearing’ screening programme for reception-class children. Parents were advised to complete a form, which asked for basic health information about the child and gave the opportunity to consent – or not – to their child ‘receiving the Health Assessment Service offered’, and return it to the school forthwith. The covering letter was explicit in its advice that parents really should consent to this: we were told the Health Assessment was necessary ‘to identify any unmet health needs that may impact on your child’s education’; and that if we did not consent, or failed to return the form, ‘your GP will be notified’.

Now, I am not the most organised of parents when it comes to returning forms; but in this case, I actively dithered. I have no problem with vision and hearing screening offered through the school, not least because I can see how problems with eyesight and hearing really can ‘impact on your child’s education’. But screening for height and weight is a different matter. This is a political initiative, introduced a few years ago as part of the government’s war on obesity.

The introduction, in 2006, of a national ‘weigh-in’ scheme via schools, through which parents could be advised about how far down the scale of morbid obesity their children were sitting and through which the government could collect statistics to beef up their claims of a rampant fatness epidemic, was all about meeting the political objective of tackling a presumed public health problem (1). It had, and has, nothing to do with education – unless you take into account a fat kid’s ability to shine at PE.

This was given tacit recognition in the early days of the weigh-in scheme, when parents were given the ability to opt their child out of this aspect of the Health Assessment. But it was quickly discovered that the ‘target group’ – that is, children with less-than-perfect BMI scores – were being removed from the programme by their parents, defeating its stated objective of helping parents to recognise their child’s chubbiness and take appropriate lifestyle measures to address this; and the rules changed to make all parents comply with the screening.

The upshot, certainly in our neck of the woods, was that the political height and weight screening became lumped together with the medically more important hearing and vision screening, and parents are forced to ‘consent’ to all of this or face the scrutiny of their GP. The only basis on which you can ‘opt out’ is by refusing to allow your child’s height and weight measurements to be included in the government’s data collection statistics. Which is what, after far too much soul-searching, I eventually did. Not having the ability to register a protest about my child being weighed or having her individually graded on a scale of fatness (both of which I cared about) I took the only available opportunity of registering any kind of objection, by refusing to let anonymous, meaningless figures about my child be included in national statistics (about which I really don’t give a monkey’s).

Then a funny thing happened. Three weeks into the new school term, I received a message from my GP’s surgery asking me to get in touch, followed by a phone call from a very nice woman involved in the Health Assessment service. The woman explained to me that they had received my consent form after the screening had already taken place in school, and asked whether I would like them to arrange some separate screening for my daughter. I accepted the offer, although I also explained that if I thought there was a problem I would be happy to talk to my GP. After a brief pause, she admitted that, while my daughter had not been screened for vision and hearing because my consent had not been given, they had gone ahead with the height and weight screening, with the result that I would receive a letter telling me how tall my daughter was and how much she weighed, and that these statistics would have already been passed on for collection in the government’s data.

The woman was very apologetic, and took pains to reassure me that all this data was ‘anonymised’. I explained that I did not actually mind the data being collected, but that it seemed rather strange that my lack of consent could be taken seriously when it came to the medically-important part of the screening service that I did want to access, but ignored when it came to the very bit of the service that I was worried about. I raised my concerns that the height and weight screening was a political measure that had nothing to do with my child’s education, and pointed out that – unlike eyesight and hearing – I was perfectly capable of measuring height and weight myself. The woman agreed with me that the height and weight screening was indeed political, and said that was causing those working in this field a lot of problems with parents becoming upset and confused by the whole thing – the last thing that health professionals want to happen.

So, I asked, am I likely to receive a letter categorising my child as underweight, normal, overweight, obese? The woman explained that no, this year they were not categorising children like this, because last year several parents became understandably very upset on hearing that their child had been awarded a fat grade. Consequently, this year parents would be receiving (as I did) a letter that simply informed us how tall and heavy our child was, along with a general paragraph on the importance of having a healthy weight. But, as she pointed out, this would lead to complaints, too, as parents were utterly confused about ‘what it meant’. In other words, simply being told that your child weighs x kilos begs the question of whether you are then supposed to go and work out their Body Mass Index and its presumed relationship to healthy weights and diets – or whether you just chuck the letter in the bin.

I haven’t chucked the letter in the bin – but only because I want to keep it as proof that I do not require surveillance by my GP. The telephone call from my local surgery, staffed by busy, conscientious people who are brilliant when you are ill, turned out to have been placed because I had not returned the screening form in time, and they just wanted to check ‘whether everything is okay’. As it goes, I am not worried that they might be worried – the GP practice knows my family, and I am confident that they realise that the reason we are not visiting the doctor all the time is because, actually, the kids are pretty healthy. But they, too, are forced to play along with an agenda that forces parents to ‘consent’ to surveillance practices that both parents and health professionals know are based on political objectives rather than health imperatives.

What a waste of everybody’s time, skill and energy this all is. And how bad it is for children, that so many people are scrutinising their bodies for signs of a glitch in the BMI calculation, rather than seeing them as little people with so many more exciting challenges ahead than worrying about what they had for breakfast.

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How the humble hydrangea shrub could hold the key to curing MS, diabetes and arthritis

This sounds like very good news indeed

Its bright and beautiful flowers bring a splash of colour to gardens all over Britain. But it seems the hydrangea is more than just a pretty bloom. A drug made from its roots could be used to treat a raft of common diseases, researchers say. The colourful shrub - a staple of Chinese medicine - has the power to 'revolutionise' the treatment of multiple sclerosis, psoriasis and some forms of diabetes and arthritis, scientists claimed yesterday. These diseases occur when the immune system attacks the body.

Existing treatments are expensive, have to be injected, and do not address the biological cause of the problem. Powerful drugs which suppress the immune system can be used as a last resort but leave patients at risk of infections and other serious side-effects. Now it appears that a medicine derived from the hydrangea's root could offer an alternative.

Experiments found that it blocked the formation of a type of white blood cell involved in autoimmune disease. Crucially, the drug does not seem to affect other kinds of cell vital to the body's defences - meaning it does not otherwise inhibit the immune system. Mice with a multiple sclerosis-like disease were far less severely affected when given low doses of the hydrangea-based drug, which is called halofuginone, the journal Science reported. Halofuginone is already used to treat a rare autoimmune disease which affects the skin and internal organs.

Much more research would be needed for it to be given the green light to treat other conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes. However, scientists say it is a promising avenue of research. Dr Anjana Rao, of the Children's Hospital in Boston in the U.S., said: 'Halofuginone may herald a revolution in the treatment of certain types of auto-immune and inflammatory diseases.' Her fellow researcher Dr Mark Sundrud added: 'This is really the first description of a small molecule that interferes with auto-immune pathology but is not a general immune suppressant.'

Hydrangea root has traditionally been used to relieve inflammation and 'cleanse' the joints. It is one of the 50 staple herbs of Chinese medicine and is also a traditional medicine of north American Cherokee Indians. An extract of hydrangea leaf is also said to have anti-malarial properties.

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Paralysed stroke victim 'cured' with botox

An Australian stroke victim who has been paralysed for more than two decades can walk again after being injected with botox. Russel McPhee, from Gippsland, Victoria was a fit, healthy meat worker who played football, cricket and basketball when, at the age of 26, he collapsed suddenly at work. When he woke in hospital he was told he had suffered a devastating stroke and that he would never walk again. "I felt my life had ended," he told The Times. "I lost my job, my wife left me, I ended up with nothing."

Today, Mr McPhee, 49, can walk almost unaided for up to 20 metres and can cover 100 metres with a walking frame. "I thought I would die in my wheelchair,” he said. “My life has started all over again. "I have seen people cry when they realise I’m standing beside my chair. Tough men, blokes I went to school with and played sport with, weep when they see me.”

His dramatic improvement came after treatment with botox, or botulinum toxin injections at the St John of God rehabilitation centre in Nepean, Victoria. Just one month after his first injection, he was able to stand up and walk a few yards, with a helper on either side. Now he can walk the length of a room with only a guiding hand on his arm.

Botox is an accepted treatment for the type of paralysis commonly associated with strokes - it was used to treat muscle spasm years before it was adopted by the cosmetics crowd. But patients usually show the best effects if they are treated soon after a stroke. Such a dramatic improvement after so long is almost unheard of.

Mr McPhee’s doctor, rehabilition specialist Dr Nathan Johns said botox on its own would not have worked without Mr McPhee's own extraordinary strength of will. "When he came to us the spasticity in his muscles had not been treated for 20 years so it was very strong,” said Dr Johns. "Usually giving a patient botulinum toxin relieves the stiffness by relaxing the muscle, but it also weakens the muscle which means the patient would not regain much mobility. "But Russell had unusually good muscle power despite the fact that he’d been in a wheelchair for so long.”

Crucially, Mr McPhee had repeatedly, over the years, attempted to get out of his wheelchair and stand on his own. He was not successful, managing at most a few seconds on his feet before he collapsed. “Often I would lie on the floor for hours, just hoping that someone might drop by so they could pick me up again," he said. Those repeated, heart-breaking attempts to stand built up a core muscle strength on which his doctors and physiotherapists were able to work.

Dr Johns said; "We injected the botulinum toxin directly into his muscles 18 months ago. After 10 days the muscles started to relax and in 12 weeks, as the botulinum toxin took effect and he started intensive physiotherapy, we saw a marked improvement."

Russell's journey to mobility came when he was re-united with a childhood sweetheart, Kerry Crossley, who determined to help him walk again. Ms Crossley was referred to Dr Johns who was, said Mr McPhee: "The first person to give me hope. "Dr Johns took one look at me and said; ‘Botox will fix you up'. Twenty years ago I had been told I might not even live but here he was saying he could help me walk. It was a very emotional moment. Suddenly I had a chance. "The first time I was able to walk was amazing. My son was only a few months old when I had the stroke and I have always wanted to show him that I could walk like other dads."

Dr Johns said: "He is the best example we have of such significant gains after treatment with botulinum toxin. Other patients have shown improvement, but they were already ambulant.”

Professor John Olver, one of Australia's top stroke experts, said Mr McPhee's recovery after so long in a wheelchair was "highly unusual but quite feasible." Professor Olver, the Medical Director of Epworth Rehabilitation in Victoria said: "We use botulinum toxin routinely for patients with spacticity which has been caused by stroke, brain damage or heart disease. “But we use it very early on, usually within weeks of a stroke, to prevent the spasticity from becoming a problem. "After stroke muscles tend to become very stiff or spastic which can prevent movement. "Sometimes the spasticity is so severe we inject those muscles with botulinum toxin, which relaxes the muscles enough to allow a physiotherapist to strengthen and stretch them. "It is unfortunate that this patient had to wait for 20 years and extremely unusual that his treatment was so successful after being immobile for so long. But he's very fortunate that his muscles are strong enough to allow him to be able to walk."

Mr McPhee is now planning to get rid of his walking frame altogether. "I want to go dancing with Kerry and play basketball with my son," he said.

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