Scientists discover why smokers are thinner

WASHINGTON: US scientists have figured out exactly how nicotine acts as an appetite suppressant in the brain, a finding that could one day help in the fight against obesity, researchers said Thursday.
Smokers tend to be thinner than people who don't smoke, and the study led by Yale University and published in the journal Science describes how nicotine activates certain neurons in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus.
Those neurons tell the body when it's had enough to eat, according to senior author Marina Picciotto, a professor of neurobiology and pharmacology at Yale.
"Many people say they won't quit smoking because they'll gain weight. Ultimately, we would like to help people maintain their body weight when they kick the habit and perhaps help non-smokers who are struggling with obesity."
Researchers made the discovery by studying mice, but are hopeful that similar receptors can be isolated in humans, too.

Global move needed to battle cancer in poor countries

CHICAGO: A broad international effort is needed to halt the rapid spread of cancer in poor and middle-income countries, leaders from world cancer organizations said at a meeting here on Monday.
The call for action came at the 47th annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) held in Chicago. More than 30,000 researchers and representatives of pharmaceutical companies participated in the forum.
The officials called on President Barack Obama and other world leaders to take concrete action at a September meeting at the United Nations scheduled to focus on non-communicable diseases.
The September UN meeting "presents a monumental opportunity to put cancer on the global agenda," said Allen Lichter, the ASCO's chief executive officer.
"We urge world leaders to help save and improve the lives of millions of people living with cancer or at risk for the disease," Lichter said at a press conference.
The only previous UN meeting of this type was held in 2001 and focused on the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Lichter said that ASCO sent a letter co-signed by nearly 300,000 health care professionals to the White House on Monday asking Obama to participate in the UN meeting.
Cancer kills 7.6 million people worldwide each year, more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined, according to World Health Organization (WHO) figures.
A UN report concluded that the cancer rate will continue and rise and reach more than 20 million annual cases in 2030. Most of these new cases are expected to occur in low and middle-income countries.
As people in developing countries increasingly flock to polluted cities, smoke, and eat rich foods like those available in wealthy countries, their cancer rate has risen and is now similar to those in rich countries.
At the current rate, the number of cancer cases in these countries will surpass the number of cancer cases in developed countries by about 2015.
However there is a dearth of oncologists in poor and developing countries -- Ethiopia for example, population 80 million, has just one oncologist -- and those who do work there have limited access to the latest cancer treatments and early-detection tools.
The oncologists at the Chicago meeting were also trying to mobilize public attention for their their "World Cancer Declaration," which outlined 11 objectives they hope to achieve by 2020.
The goals, aimed at reducing levels of cancer, include sharp reductions in smoking, drinking alcohol, rates of obesity, and improvements in access to health care and universal vaccination programs for hepatitis B and human papillomavirus (HPV) aimed at preventing liver and uterine cancer.
The declaration has 230,000 signatures. Organizers hope they can obtain one million signatures by the time of the UN conference in September.

German e-coli probe focuses on restaurant

HAMBURG: Investigators searching for the origin of a killer bacteria were attempting to track supplies made to a north German restaurant where 17 guests fell ill, the press reported here Sunday.
The owner of the 'Kartoffelkeller' restaurant in the Baltic seaport of Luebeck, Joachim Berger, told ZDF public television that health inspectors had carried out tests at the premises after three separate groups of people had fallen ill after eating there.
More than 2,000 people have been taken ill over the past month, mostly in northern Germany, and at least 19 have died after being contaminated by the virulent enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) with symptoms including stomach cramps, diarrhoea, fever and vomiting.
Health officials, cited by Berger, said a family, a group of Danish tourists, and some women tax-inspectors were among the 17 who ate at his restaurant on May 13 and who contracted EHEC.
Guests who became ill appeared to have eaten steak and salad.
Bild am Sonntag newspaper said a 48-year-old woman tax-inspector later died, while eight remain ill, two of them critically.
"I have nothing to hide, I'm sure everything is in order" with the restaurant, the 67-year-old Berger told the newspaper.
Inspectors had thoroughly examined his kitchens and taken stool samples from all his employees, Berger said. None of the staff, who ate the same food as the guests, had been ill, he added.
Christian Seyfert, a spokesman for the consumer protection ministry in the region, told AFP that speculation about the restaurant's link to the outbreak was unfounded.
Berger said his food supplies came from a wholesaler in Moelln who obtained them from the central food market in Hamburg, the northern port where numerous cases of EHEC have also been reported.
German Health Minister Daniel Bahr, who on Sunday was to visit Hamburg's Eppendorf University clinic where many of the region's EHEC patients are being treated, has warned that the source of infection could still be active.
"Food health officials are working around the clock to identify the source of the infection," Bahr told the Ruhr Nachrichten newspaper on Saturday.
"But from earlier outbreaks we know that we can't always identify the source.
"It can't be ruled out that the source of infection is still active," he added, pointing to the need for continued vigilance as authorities still counsel against eating raw tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers.
Speaking to Bild am Sonntag, Bahr also the situation in a number of north German hospitals, especially Hamburg and Bremen, was "difficult" because of the high number of admissions, adding that other hospitals would be called upon to help.
Hamburg's top health official, Senator Cornelia Pruefer-Storcks, told NDR radio-television that the number of EHEC cases appeared to be growing more slowly.
Hamburg had registered 19 confirmed or suspected EHEC cases between Friday and Saturday, with one new case of full-blown haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), a kidney-threatening condition, she said.
At least 552 people have contracted HUS, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Earlier figures of infection for Hamburg had been much higher.
Cases of E. coli poisoning have also been reported in more than 12 other countries, including Austria, Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. Each was related to German travel.
A large majority of the patients are female, suggesting the source is "probably something that women prefer more than men," Andrea Ellis, an epidemiologist at the WHO department of food safety, said in Geneva.

The more you walk, lower the diabetes risk

You can reduce your risk of developing diabetes by walking.

Researchers tracked 592 middle-aged adults in Australia who participated in a study to map diabetes levels between 2000 and 2005.

Participants underwent a health examination at the start of the study and provided details about their eating and lifestyle habits. The volunteers were also given a pedometer and instructed how to use it.

It was found that a follow-up with the participants five years later showed that a higher daily step count was associated with a lower body-mass index (BMI), lower waist-to-hip ratio and better insulin sensitivity, even after adjusting for factors such as diet, smoking and alcohol intake. These associations were independent of calorie intake and appeared to be largely due to a change in weight.

It was calculated that a sedentary person who changed his or her behaviour and started walking 10,000 steps every day could achieve a threefold improvement in insulin sensitivity, compared with a similar person who walked 3,000 steps a day, five days a week.

The 10,000 steps per day is a popular guideline, but a more recent recommendation is 3,000 steps per day, five days a week.

The above findings confirm an independent beneficial role of higher daily step count on body-mass index, waist-to-hip ratio and insulin sensitivity and provide further support to promote higher physical activity levels among middle-aged adults, the researchers concluded.

Vegetable juice help reduce weight loss: study

Vegetable juice is a drink made primarily of blended vegetables mixed with fruits such as tomatoes or grapes to improve flavor. Drinking V8 100 percent vegetable juice could help reduce weight.

Vegetable juices are commonly made from varying combinations of carrots, beets, pumpkin, and tomatoes etc, a private news channel reported.

The latter two, although not technically vegetables, are commonly used to increase palatability. Other popular items in vegetable juices are parsley, dandelion greens, kale, celery, fennel, and cucumbers. Lemon, garlic and ginger may be added by some for medicinal purposes.

Other common juices include carrot juice, tomato juice, turnip juice, and V8 Juice.

Study showed that overweight individuals with metabolic syndrome who drank one to two servings of V8 100 percent vegetable juice as part of DASH diet lost more weight compared to non-juice drinkers.

Over the 12-week study period, the juice drinkers lost an average of four pounds compared to the non-juice drinkers who lost one pound.

In addition to weight loss, the vegetable juice drinkers had significant increases of vegetable intake, vitamin C and potassium over the course of the study compared to the non-juice drinkers.

In general, vegetable juices are recommended as supplements to whole vegetables, rather than as a replacement.

Recent study found that juices provide the same health benefits as whole vegetables in terms of reducing risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Another study has found that drinking vegetable juice reduces risks of Alzheimer’s disease by 76%.

Many popular vegetable juices, particularly ones with high tomato content, are high in sodium, and therefore consumption of them for health must be carefully considered. Some vegetables such as beets also contain large amounts of sugar, so care must be taken when adding these to juices.

Fresh vegetables juice helps supply your body with readily available nutrition. It not only tastes great, but it helps you eat, or in this case, drink more vegetables in a day than you normally would.

It’s a well known fact that your body needs optimal nutrition to be healthy. Nutrition is fuel for the body. Every action of your body requires nutrition. Your body requires nutrition in order for your organs, glands, bones and every other component of your body to be healthy.

By enjoying fresh vegetable juice, you help to ensure the consistency needed to obtain the long term benefits, study revealed.

Teen obesity could shrink Australian lifespans

Health experts warned that Australia’s life expectancy could be sent into reverse after a new study found alarming levels of obesity among teenagers.

Nearly a quarter of 13-to-18-year-olds are overweight or obese, according to the survey of 12,000 secondary school students, which said Australia was facing a “chronic disease time-bomb”.

“If ever there was a wake-up call for Australians, this is it,” said Professor Ian Olver from the Cancer Council of Australia, which commissioned the National Secondary Students’ Diet and Physical Activity survey.

“As obese kids move into adulthood, the heightened risk of chronic diseases like cancer means previous gains in life expectancy may be reversed.

“We may see today’s teenagers die at a younger age than their parents? generation.”

The study found an “excessive prevalence of overweight and obesity among students”, with 23.7 percent of the teenagers above their healthy weight.

Just 15 percent met national guidelines for an hour’s physical activity every day, with girls more lax than boys and exercise levels diminishing with age.

Almost one in three students said they drank four or more cups of sugary or sports drinks per week, and 43 percent ate fast food or takeaways at least once a week. Only 14 percent ate the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables.

Nearly half (47 percent) of students had three to four televisions in their home, with a further 17 percent reporting five or more TVs and 47 percent saying they had a set in their bedroom. Only one percent had no TV at all.
A majority (71 percent) engaged in “small-screen recreation” — watching television and DVDs, playing video games and using computers — for more than two hours on an average school day, exceeding national health guidelines.
“This piece of research confirms what we’ve feared for some time — that the high school students of today will grow up to be the heart attack victims of tomorrow,” said Lyn Roberts, head of the National Heart Foundation, which co-commissioned the research.
Australia is one of the world’s fattest nations, with the most recent National Health Survey classifying 25 percent of people aged 18 or older as obese, and 37 percent as overweight.
The total cost of obesity, including health and productivity costs, was estimated to be around Aus$58 billion ($58 billion) a year in 2008, the most recent available figures.

Fresh meat prevents chronic diseases

The use of fresh and healthy meat can keep people away from fatal diseases like food poisoning and gastrointestinal (GI) complications.

“Such complications may lead to malfunctioning of liver, kidneys and brain,” Physician Dr Syed Hasnain Ali Johar told APP here on Sunday.

He said that major reasons for GI diseases were caused by the use of unhealthy meat and improperly cooked food as bacteria flourish rapidly in unhygienic meat.

He said that liver diseases could cause hepatitis and liver disorder, which were fatal at an advanced stage, adding kidney malfunction could lead to renal failure, if not treated in time.

Dr Hasnain Ali Johar said that meat of sick animals called ‘Laap’ hardly carry any proteins and vitamins rather use of such meat is a source of diseases for human beings.

Laap could also cause ‘botulism’ a diseases in which intestines are paralysed and diarrhoea went on non-stop in children that could lead to death, while in adults it might cause paralysis of a part of body, brain or other complications.

He advised the people to avoid excessive use of beef and mutton called “red meat” to lead a healthy and active life.

He was of the view that eating food regularly from hotels, stalls and open places often caused GI diseases, terming meat at these places “unhygienic.”

“Keeping meat in refrigerators for more than 10 days is not a good practice because such freezing exterminate the proteins,” he added.

He also advised that people should avoid meat, if they were not sure about its hygienic condition. If healthy meat was unavailable, people should use pulses, eggs and milk to get proteins.

Pulses are second source of getting the required proteins after meat, while one glass of milk or one egg could provide sufficient protein to human beings.

The family physician suggested that people should use seasonal vegetables, which are cheap and full of vitamins, minerals and even proteins.

Sleep best time to strengthen memories

Reactivating newly learned memories during sleep rather than when awake does a better job of strengthening the memory trace.
Memory consolidation is a dynamic process. To study how brain works during sleep, researchers from America involved training participants in a memory task to learn an object’s location in a grid.
At the same time an odour was released the idea being to associate the memory with the smell. One group then went to sleep, while the second group stayed awake.
After about 20 minutes, while the sleeping group’s brain wave patterns were in slow wave sleep (SWS), both groups were subjected to the same odour again to reactivate the memory.
After another 20 minutes, the sleeping group was woken, and both groups were given a similar task, but the objects were in different locations and without the odour. Half an hour later they were asked to recall the position of the cards from the original task.
It was found that both groups were correct about 60 per cent of the time without any odour assistance. But once the odour was added to the test, the non-sleeping group was only correct about 42 per cent of the time, compared to the sleeping group’s 84 per cent.
The above findings prove that reactivation during waking destabilised memories.
In contrast, reactivation during SWS immediately stabilised memories, thereby directly increasing their resistance to interference.

World Sleep Day today

On Monday, World Sleep Day, sleep specialists said the lack of quality sleep has become a public health issue because of the rising number of people who are not getting adequate sleep.

Dr. Michael Sarte, president of the Philippine Society of Sleep Medicine, said Filipinos may not be realizing the effect of quality sleep on people’s overall physical and mental health.

“Most people do not know that a lot of illnesses can be traced to the fact that they do not get enough sleep,” he said.

“The more they can be informed, the better they can be armed,” he said.

He said quality sleep for adults should have four to five cycles of both deep sleep and light sleep, five to seven hours a night.

Light sleep is when a person drifts in and out of sleep and can be easily awakened. In this stage, the eyes move slowly and muscle activity slows down.

Deep sleep is when a person falls deep in slumber. There is no eye movement or muscle activity, and the brain produces delta waves almost exclusively.

On the other hand, children require at least nine to ten hours of quality sleep, he said.

Smoking increases among Pakistani women

The number of college and university going women smokers in the country has jumped to 16 percent from six percent in the recent years, said Prof. Javaid A. Khan, a senior chest physician and researcher in his presentation during 12th Biennial Convention of Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (PIMA).

He said women smokers too, are bearing the same health consequences of tobacco usage as the male smokers,

“Pakistanis in general consume Rs. 450 billion worth of tobacco annually including 120 billion rupees on smoking cigarettes daily, added the Consultant Chest Physician, currently associated with Aga Khan University Hospital.

In his key-note address on Tobacco Control – Key to Disease Prevention, he said millions of rupees are also spent on pan chewing, besides niswar and hookah by the masses each year.

According to a PIMA press release issued here on Monday the two day 12th Biennial Convention of the Association, concluded on Sunday evening at Hyderabad, was attended by renowned consultants, including Pediatricians, Cardiologists, Nutritionists, Oncologists, Gynecologists, Hematologists and other medical professionals.

A large number of postgraduate students and pharmacists from all parts of Sindh also attended the moot.

Dr. Javaid A. Khan in his keynote address said tobacco usage in the form of Shisha or Hooka, gaining steady popularity among youth in urban areas of the country, was 100 times more harmful than cigarettes.

“Smoking Shisha for an hour is equal to smoking 100 cigarettes in the same time,” he said.

The chest physician, a strong proponent of anti-smoking campaign said “shisha” also contains nicotine and tar that result in lung cancer and heart attacks.

“Unfortunately many people consider Shisha as a non-hazardous leisurely activity,” he said.

The chest physician referred to a WHO study that showed parents who had only 15 percent acceptability for smoking reflected over 70 percent acceptability for the Shisha smoking.

“It is an alarming trend and there was an immediate need to create awareness regarding diseases caused due to smoking, in one or the other form,” he said.

Dr. Khan deplored that in countries like Pakistan; a single cigarette was cheaper than a loaf of bread and consequently was getting popular among youth due to its availability and affordability.

He said that tobacco was responsible for 100,000 deaths annually in Pakistan.

“Appropriate and efficient measures to prohibit smoking and tobacco chewing will not only prevent deaths but also curtail heavy expenditure incurred on diseases caused due to consumption of tobacco and its bi-products,” he said.

The Chest physician said although cigarettes and tobacco were very cheaply available in Pakistan, medicine especially Tarceva, needed for treatment of lung cancer, cost patients more that US$ 4000 per month, and is unaffordable for majority of countrymen.

World health day observed

World Health Day was observed on April 7 across the globe including Pakistan. This year theme of the World Health Day is “Antimicrobial resistance: no action today, no cure tomorrow”.

Each year, the World Health Organization selects a key global health issue and organizes international, regional and local events on the Day and throughout the year to highlight the selected area.

World Health Day 2011 focus on antimicrobial resistance and its global spread. Antimicrobial resistance threatens the continued effectiveness of many medicines used today to treat the sick, while at the same time it risks jeopardizing important advances being made against major infectious killers.

Antimicrobial resistance is not a new problem but one that is becoming more dangerous; urgent and consolidated efforts are needed to avoid regressing to the pre-antibiotic era. On this day, WHO introduced a six-point policy package to combat the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

Drug resistance is becoming more severe as many infections are no longer easily cured, leading to prolonged and expensive treatment and greater risk of death, warns the World Health Organization (WHO).

World Health Day is celebrated every year to mark the establishment of WHO on April 7th 1948. Under the theme “Combat Drug Resistance”, WHO has called for urgent and concerted actions by the governments, health professionals, industry, civil society, and patients to slow down the spread of drug resistance and limit its impact today to preserve medical advances for future generations.

The message this year is loud and clear while the world is on the brink of losing these miracle cures, said WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan.

Japan to start screening food for radioactivity

TOKYO: Japan instructed local authorities to start screening food for radioactivity after accidents at an earthquake-hit nuclear power plant sparked fears of wider contamination.

It is the first time Japan has set radiation limits on domestically produced food, a health ministry official said.

The limits are in line with an anti-disaster programme prepared in advance by the government's atomic power safety commission, said the official.

Limits vary depending on the type of foodstuff but have been set in consultation with internationally accepted levels and average intake in the Japanese diet.

Radioactivity leaked into the air after explosions at the Fukushima No.1 plant, where last week's quake and tsunami knocked out the reactor cooling systems.

Several Asian nations have said they will screen food imported from Japan for radiation while the European Union has called for similar checks.

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