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Any treatment for White Hair?
Statistics: Posted by Musician — Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:08 am
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LONDON
A cure for grey hair which means millions will be able to throw away messy dyes may not be too far off, researchers have said.
Scientists found people who are going grey develop “massive oxidative stress” via an accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes hair to bleach itself from the inside out.
According to the FASEB Journal, the team, which includes experts from Bradford University’s School of Life Sciences, discovered the accumulation of hydrogen peroxide can be remedied with a treatment. They described it as “a topical, UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS (a modified pseudocatalase)”, the report said. The treatment can also be used for people with the skin condition vitiligo, which causes a loss of pigmentation. In 1993 Michael Jackson claimed to have developed vitiligo. Study author Professor Karin Schallreuter, a specialist in vitiligo, said: “To date, it is beyond any doubt that the sudden loss of the inherited skin and localised hair colour can affect those individuals in many fundamental ways.
“The improvement of quality of life after total and even partial successful repigmentation has been documented.”
The research team made their discovery after studying an international group of 2,411 patients. FASEB Journal editor-in-chief Gerald Weissman said: “For generations, numerous remedies have been concocted to hide grey hair but now, for the first time, an actual treatment that gets to the root of the problem has been developed.
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news- ... discovered
Statistics: Posted by semirza — Wed May 08, 2013 12:11 pm
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I have tried to contact you through private message system.
Statistics: Posted by Shimatoree — Mon Jan 14, 2013 4:42 am
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The risk for chronic kidney disease is high for people with diabetes. Fifty percent of those with diabetes don't know it and aren't getting the treatment they need. Did you know that approximately 40 percent of people with diabetes will develop chronic kidney disease? It creeps in silently and symptoms develop late, when the kidneys have failed. But it's possible to cut your risk by taking the following steps:
Monitor your blood sugar regularly — work with your diabetes care team to keep your blood sugars within your blood glucose goal range.
Get regular screening for kidney disease — kidney damage can be slowed down if detected early.
Increase physical activity — daily physical activity and exercise helps to control blood pressure and helps to lower your blood sugar.
Quit smoking — smoking reduces blood flow to the kidneys therefore kidneys cannot function at their best. Smokers are more likely to develop kidney disease. Smoking not only tends to raise blood sugar, it also makes it harder for your body to use insulin. I can go on about the negative effects of smoking but will save that for another blog!
Use non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen and naproxen with caution. Regular use can trigger kidney damage. Seek the advice of your healthcare provider as regular use of these medications should be monitored.
Kidneys help your body to get rid of toxins and excess water from the blood. Kidneys also regulate blood sugar, monitor blood levels of sodium and potassium, and regulate the acidity of your blood. Another important role of the kidneys is to make red blood cells. So, don't ignore your kidneys. Take care of your kidneys and they will take care of you for many years to come! Looking forward to hearing from you.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/chroni ... se/MY01243
I am suffering from kidney problem with diabetes, purpose of intitiating this threat is to share this knowledge with friends and also to get valuable input from people who have expertise in this field. I request Shimatoree specially to give his input regarding my recurring infection in kidney as I am also suffering from diabetes. Thanks.
Statistics: Posted by Pakistani47 — Wed Dec 26, 2012 9:25 am
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Hidden inside every stalk of broccoli and every floret of cauliflower is a substance so powerful at preventing and treating cancer that not even the drug industry is capable of matching its efficacy, both in terms of safety and potency. And researchers are still continuing to uncover the amazing medicinal power of sulforaphane, a therapeutic compound found in cruciferous vegetables that most recently was discovered to prevent and treat leukemia.
Researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas recently tested the effects of an isolated and highly concentrated form of sulforaphane on both mouse and human cell lines affected by acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a type of cancer that afflicts white blood cells, and most commonly in children. Led by Dr. Koramit Suppipat, the study involved applying sulforaphane to leukemic cell lines and primary lymphoblasts obtained from pediatric patients for the purpose of assessing its effects.
Upon observation, it was learned that sulforaphane effectively eradicates cancer cells by entering them and reacting with certain internal proteins to induce apoptosis, or cell death. At the same time, researchers observed that sulforaphane did not harm healthy cells when applied to cell lines obtained from healthy, cancer-free patients, a phenomenon unique to natural, therapeutic compounds that have not been artificially manipulated for the purpose of trying to patent a specific medicinal compound.
"There is about an 80 percent cure rate (for acute lymphoblastic leukemia), but some children don't respond to treatment. For those cases, we are in need of alternative treatments," explained Dr. Daniel Lacorazza, an assistant professor of pathology and immunology at Baylor, and one of the study's contributors. "Sulforaphane is a natural product. However, what we used in this study is a concentrated purified form."
Eat plenty of cruciferous vegetables to protect yourself against cancers of all types.
Up until this point, there have been few, if any, reliable studies demonstrating the power of sulforaphane in specifically treating blood cancers like leukemia. Previous studies have identified many of the general cancer-fighting properties of sulforaphane, including a 2011 study published in the journal Molecular Nutrition & Food Research that linked sulforaphane to eradicating prostate cancer But the new study out of Baylor identifies specific aspects of the nutrient's hematologic cancer-fighting profile that further reinforces its viability as a safe and natural medicine for cleansing the blood.
"Broccoli, which is loaded with sulforaphane, antioxidants, and carotenoids, has been shown to protect against cancers of the esophagus, stomach, colon, lung, larynx, prostate, mouth, pharynx, ovaries, breast, and cervix," writes Stephanie Beling in her book PowerFoods: Good Food, Good Health with Phytochemicals, Nature's Own Energy Booster about the health benefits of eating broccoli in whole form.
However, to obtain the maximum health benefits of broccoli, be sure to eat it raw or very gently steamed. According to a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry back in 2009, cooking broccoli can destroy up to 90 percent of its natural sulforaphane content, rendering it far less medicinally potent.
http://www.naturalnews.com/025893_brocc ... earch.html
Statistics: Posted by semirza — Wed Dec 19, 2012 12:17 pm
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Neal D. Barnard is an American physician, author, clinical researcher, and founding president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an international network of physicians, scientists, and laypeople who promote preventive medicine, conduct clinical research, and higher standards in research.
Michael Tobias: Dr. Barnard, in your soon-to-be-published new book, Power Foods for The Brain (due out February 19 –- Grand Central) you impart some very new insights and synthesis of biochemical data from research around the world pertaining to the impact of food on the mind. People, and government agencies, have long acknowledged the role of diet with respect to obesity, heart disease and diabetes. You take the correlations much deeper: into the secrets of the brain itself.Neal Barnard: The fact is, we can look into the brain in ways we were not able to before, and what we’ve learned is both hopeful and disconcerting at the same time. The disconcerting part is that threats to the brain are all around us, which is why Alzheimer’s disease hits half of us by age 85. We can see the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease in individuals who, on the surface, seem fine. The hopeful side comes from careful studies of large populations showing that a particular pattern of dietary habits appears to protect the brain to a very substantial degree.
Michael Tobias: One of the areas you discuss in your book that is particularly fascinating to me is what you refer to as the “Blue Zones.” Talk about this.
Neal Barnard: Yes, some years ago, Dan Buettner, working with National Geographic, began studying areas where people lived extraordinarily long lives: Okinawa, parts of Costa Rica, Sardinia, and Greece, as well as Loma Linda, California. Their name comes from the color researchers used to mark them on the map. So the question was, what do these long-lived people have in common? The first thing to leap off the page was that they all have largely plant-based diets. People in the Blue Zones also tend to avoid tobacco, are physically active, and put an emphasis on family and social engagement. I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, where sausage and eggs were more our thing, and unfortunately Fargo is not a Blue Zone.
Michael Tobias: But within these longevity zones?
Neal Barnard: These areas are remarkable for more than longevity. They are marked by robust mental health, too. So I began to visit the Blue Zones myself. The dietary staple in Okinawa, surprisingly enough, is the sweet potato, and animal-based foods are few and far between. In Hojancha, Costa Rica, I was struck by the casado, a generous plate of black beans, rice, a vegetable, and sweet plantains, with meat strictly optional. The casado is the everyday plate in that part of Costa Rica. Its name refers to a man who, being happily married, stays in his casa, presumably eating healthful food and living a long, contented life. In Loma Linda…
Michael Tobias: Near Los Angeles?
Neal Barnard: Yes. There, I met a remarkable surgeon, Dr. Ellsworth Wareham, who continued his operating room career until age 95. He and his wife shared their healthy plant-based lunch with me. At nearly 100 years of age, he is as sharp as a tack.
The point is this: It’s not genes that carry us into a healthy old age—or not genes alone. Lifestyle factors are very, very influential in determining who survives and who does not—as well as in determining who can think clearly decade after decade and who succumbs to the tragedy of dementia.
Michael Tobias: The ecology of Alzheimer’s, and of dementia in general, suggests a strong correlation between a vast disease arena afflicting people (and possibly other species, like canines) throughout the world, and the environment. The intersection, as you describe it, might well be our diet. Given the alarming prevalence of Alzheimer’s and dementia, in your opinion what do you think is going on, in terms of the fundamental diets that may be contributing to the breakdown of mental faculties, and – in so many instances – widespread mortality?
Neal Barnard: Within the brain of an Alzheimer’s patient, strands of beta-amyloid protein ooze out of the brain cells. It is a bit like sausage coming out of a sausage-maker, and these protein strands collect between the brain cells in microscopic clumps called amyloid plaques. This process appears to be fueled, at least in part, by fatty, cholesterol-laden foods. The more these foods are on your plate and the higher your cholesterol level rises, the more plaques accumulate. And also hiding in those plaques are tiny traces of metals—iron, copper, and aluminum—and these appear to be potentially neurotoxic.
Michael Tobias: What about natural foods that combat these alleged toxins?
Neal Barnard: Yes. Apart from these threats, we also have our defenders. The vitamin E in nuts and seeds, the anthocyanins that give grapes and berries their color, and the omega-3 traces in green vegetables all play protective roles. They can add up to a big drop in the risk of cognitive problems.
Michael Tobias: One of the sub-headings in your book is entitled “Bad for the Heart, Bad for the Brain.” What are some of the explicit links researchers like yourself are starting to uncover?
Neal Barnard: The first was the cholesterol link that I hinted at just now. A high cholesterol level is bad for the heart, of course, and it is clearly linked to Alzheimer’s risk, too. Taking a step further, it turns out that the most notorious gene linked to Alzheimer’s risk—called the APOE epsilon4 allele—actually has the job of transporting cholesterol particles in the blood and the brain. Here’s what I believe is going on: For many years, people have lamented that this gene condemns people to Alzheimer’s disease. However—and this is one enormous however—if we skip the foods that cause our bodies to make extra cholesterol, it may be that we can leave that gene with nothing to do—that is, with not much cholesterol to transport. So you may still have the gene, but your food choices protect your heart and brain at the same time.
Michael Tobias: And saturated fats?
Neal Barnard: Precisely. There is more to the heart-brain link. As you know, scientists observed long ago that saturated fat—the kind that makes bacon grease solid at room temperature, as opposed to olive oil, for example—is strongly linked to heart disease. Well, researchers at the Chicago Health and Aging Project began observing thousands of healthy individuals, starting in 1993, to try to sort out who stays healthy and who does not.
Michael Tobias: The results?
Neal Barnard: Ten years later, it became clear that those who got the most saturated fat in their foods had a much higher risk—not just of heart problems—but of brain problems, too. Their Alzheimer’s risk was more than three-fold higher, compared with those who generally avoided “bad fats.” And then, looking at trans-fat, that oft’ maligned grease in donuts and snack foods, they found the same thing. A snack-food junky mainlining plenty of trans-fats could end up with five times the risk of Alzheimer’s, compared with a person who skipped these foods.
Michael Tobias: And the ascribed-to suite of cholesterol-lowering drugs, in your opinion?
Neal Barnard: That is the logic. If high cholesterol is bad, cholesterol-lowering drugs must be good, right? Well….not necessarily. Statin drugs can sometimes be a double-edged sword. They definitely lower cholesterol and do seem to reduce the risk of dementia. But they can actually cause quite serious memory problems in rare cases. And that really makes the case for dietary changes as our first line of defense.
Exercise plays a huge role, too. It protects the heart and brain, and even reverses age-related brain shrinkage.
Michael Tobias: You’ve looked at healthy diets from countless studies and one of the most stunning comparisons was that of broccoli versus cheese. The inherently different properties and pathways through our bodies of these two food types would suggest a veritable poster child for your message. Could you clarify?
Neal Barnard: Dairy products and green leafy vegetables are both calcium-rich. So, yes, broccoli and cheese both bring you calcium. But that is where the similarity ends. A cup of broccoli has essentially no saturated fat, while a one-ounce slice of cheddar cheese has 6 grams of it. The tiny fat traces in broccoli are heavily balanced in favor of “good” omega-3 fats, unlike cheese, which mainly delivers “bad” fats. Broccoli has no cholesterol—ditto for all vegetables while, ounce-for-ounce, cheese has about the same cholesterol as a steak. And green vegetables also deliver vitamin E, folate, and iron.
Michael Tobias: Folate – the water-soluble B vitamin?
Neal Barnard: Yes. And by the way, I have a tip for any broccoli haters out there: Add a little spritz of lemon juice. Somehow the sourness of the lemon juice combines with the bitterness of broccoli to make an almost sweet taste that even a broccoli-avoiding president would have loved.
What counts here is that, when we are looking for nutritious foods, we need to look at the whole package. Not just, “will it give me calcium,” or “is this a source of iron.” Rather, we need to look at the range of nutrients packed into a food to see if it helps us or harms us overall. And basically, your brain is happiest at the produce counter.
Michael Tobias: While many specialists have looked at meat and dairy products, and their impacts on human health, you have also brought forward some compelling new data –albeit, as yet apparently inconclusive – with respect to fish and saturated fat. Could you elaborate and describe some of the studies you’ve examined, both the positive and negative correlations in terms of what may be happening, in your opinion, in terms of human consumption of fish?
Neal Barnard: As you know, there has been a lot of enthusiasm for fish in some circles, and fish do contain omega-3s. However, studies show that people who eat fish tend to have more weight problems and a higher risk of diabetes, compared to people who skip animal products altogether.
Michael Tobias: And studies regarding the impact of human consumption of fish on the human brain? Because this is pretty big news.
Neal Barnard: When it comes to the brain, fish get a mixed verdict. Some studies show benefits, but others do not. There certainly are omega-3s in fish. But if you were to send a vial of fish fat to a lab, you would find that 70-85 percent of the fat in fish is not omega-3s. Just like chicken fat and beef fat, fish fats are mixtures, including substantial amounts of saturated fat. And studies of fish-oil supplements for heart or brain health are really running aground—showing no benefit at all.
Michael Tobias: A lot of fish eat other fish.
Neal Barnard: Exactly. It is important to remember that fish are carnivores, which sets them apart from many other animals people eat. That means they are part of a long food chain, and they accumulate whatever toxins their prey have swallowed. They live in the oceans and waterways that have effectively become the human sewer, so they are an abundant source of toxins we want to avoid.
Michael Tobias: You speak at length about toxic metals in our body, like copper, iron and aluminum. What are we consuming and surrounding ourselves with that we might want to think twice about, in terms of such metals and complex metallic alloys?
Neal Barnard: We need traces of iron to make the hemoglobin our blood cells use to carry oxygen. And we need traces of copper to make several key enzymes. But iron rusts. Copper corrodes, too, which is why a penny does not stay shiny forever. This is oxidation. And it doesn’t just happen in a frying pan you accidentally left on your backyard picnic table for a few days. It also happens to the iron and copper within your body. As these metals oxidize, they produce free radicals, which are like little sparks damaging your brain cells and every other part of you.
Michael Tobias: OK, we’re living in a world of sparks and free radicals, toxins and a mishmash of threats. What do we do?
Neal Barnard: All three of these metals—iron, copper, and aluminum—are found in the plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Where do they come from? Many municipal water treatment plants add aluminum to drinking water to precipitate out solids (so bottled water or reverse-osmosis filtered water is a better choice for drinking). Aluminum or cast-iron cookware and copper pipes will leach metals into whatever they come into contact with. Meats are loaded with iron—which, of course, we had thought was an advantage until we realized that most of us get too much iron.
Michael Tobias: But what about the supposedly good iron derived from vegetables?
Neal Barnard: The iron in green vegetables and beans is easier for the body to keep out when the body already has enough. Multiple vitamins often have added iron and copper, so it pays to read labels and select brands without these metals. Aluminum also turns up in some antacids, in baking powder, and as an additive in a number of foods; aluminum-free brands are right next to them on the store shelf.
Michael Tobias: Ultimately, are you and your scientific peers beginning to sense a kind of diet that could truly liberate us from the debilitating, tragic and life-altering demographic avalanche of Alzheimer’s and/or dementia, and how does that fit in to your own life story?
Neal Barnard: When my father succumbed to dementia, I realized that he was walking down the same dismal pathway that had consumed his parents, as well. And there is nothing more tragic than seeing your loved ones drift further and further away with each passing day. The financial cost is back-breaking, but the personal cost is far worse.
We need a take-no-prisoners assault on this disease. And I believe we can do it, if we take advantage of what science has shown us and set aside some of the habits we grew up with. The previous generation dealt with smoking. The current generation is in an identical battle with unhealthy foods. But just as the war on tobacco was much slower than it should have been, we are taking our sweet time in getting the courage to do something about the garbage on our plates, and we are putting our children at risk, too. But we know what we have to do, and it’s time to get started.
Michael: Thank you, Neal.
Statistics: Posted by Mirza Ghalib — Mon Dec 17, 2012 12:21 pm
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It's serious but lets keep the humour intact!
Statistics: Posted by resurrected — Mon Nov 26, 2012 11:24 am
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'Pakistan Times' Health Desk
Medical researchers in France on Sunday said they had used over-the-counter allergy drugs to ease Type 2 diabetes in obese mice, in a study that strengthens theories that inflammation plays a role in this disorder.
Harvard Medical School biochemists Guo-Ping Shi and Jian Liu explored a hunch about mast cells - components of the immune system that help to heal damaged tissue, mainly by increasing blood flow to the wound.
In some cases, mast cells accumulate to excessive levels, become unstable and then leak detritus into the surrounding tissue. This results in inflammation and has already been linked with asthma and other allergies.
Shi noted that mast-cell overload also occurred in fatty tissue among people who are obese and diabetic, which prompted him to ask whether diabetes could also be controlled if mast cells were regulated.
In a study published in the journal Nature Medicine, his team tried out two common over-the-counter allergy drugs, ketotifen fumarate and cromolyn, on lab mice that were obese and diabetic.
The rodents were divided into four groups - a control group that was given no special treatment; a group that was shifted to a healthy diet; a third group that kept with its usual diet but was given one of the two drugs; and a fourth, that was given one of the drugs and was also switched to a healthy diet.
Symptoms in the second group improved moderately, the third saw dramatic improvements in both body weight and diabetes, while the fourth recovered by nearly 100 percent in all areas.
The researchers took their investigation a stage further by genetically engineering mice so that their ability to produce mast cells was impaired. The mice remained slim and non-diabetic, even though they had chomped on a fatty, sugary diet for three months.
"The best thing about these drugs is that we know it's safe for people," Harvard Medical School quoted Shi as saying in a press release. "The remaining question now is: Will this also work for people?"
The team's next step is to try out the drugs on obese and diabetic monkeys.
Three other studies, likewise published in Nature Medicine, explore the role of different immune cells, the so-called T cells, in causing insulin resistance among obese mice.
The work marks a further advance down the avenue of exploration into the immune system as a cause or amplifier of Type 2 or "adult-onset" diabetes, for which metabolism is traditionally fingered as the culprit.
http://www.pakistantimes.net/pt/detail.php?newsId=2821
Statistics: Posted by semirza — Sun Oct 28, 2012 9:36 am
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Left: EM image of Naegleria fowleri in its cyst stage. Center: EM image of Naegleria fowleri in its ameboid trophozoite stage. Right: EM image of Naegleria fowleri in its flagellated stage. Credit: DPDx and GS Visvesvara
Naegleria fowleri (commonly referred to as the "brain-eating ameba or brain-eating amoeba"), is a free-living microscopic ameba*, (single-celled living organism). It can cause a very rare, but severe, infection of the brain called primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM). The ameba is commonly found in warm freshwater (e.g. lakes, rivers, and hot springs) and soil. Naegleria fowleri usually infects people when contaminated water enters the body through the nose. Once the ameba enters the nose, it travels to the brain where it causes PAM, which is usually fatal. Infection typically occurs when people go swimming or diving in warm freshwater places, like lakes and rivers. In very rare instances, Naegleria infections may also occur when contaminated water from other sources (such as inadequately chlorinated swimming pool water or heated and contaminated tapwater) enters the nose
http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/naegleria/
Statistics: Posted by semirza — Thu Oct 11, 2012 12:58 pm
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A child drinks water in Karachi, Pakistan in 2011. Authorities in Pakistan’s largest city have launched an urgent investigation after a rare water-borne “brain-eating” amoeba killed 10 people in four months, officials said Tuesday.© AFP/File Rizwan Tabassum
KARACHI : Authorities in Pakistan’s largest city have launched an urgent investigation after a rare water-borne “brain-eating” amoeba killed 10 people in four months, officials said Tuesday.
The water company and health officials monitoring water in Karachi, home to 18 million people, have been ordered to trace the source of the Naegleria fowleri outbreak.
Saghir Ahmed, health minister of southern Sindh province of which Karachi is capital, said the drinking supply, swimming places and facilities used for the ritual ablutions Muslims must perform before prayers were all under investigation.
“There is no reason to panic and citizens should stay calm and take precautions,” Ahmed said.
“It is a water-borne infection and we are thoroughly inquiring about its arrival and spread here.”
Shakeel Malick, a health ministry official, said the amoeba had caused 10 deaths so far this year. He said there have been cases in the past, but so few that detailed numbers were not recorded.
The amoeba causes primary amoebic meningitis, a disease with a fatality rate of over 99 percent, said Faisal Mehmood, an expert in infectious diseases.
Naegleria fowleri is found in warm fresh water and usually infects people when contaminated water enters the body through the nose. The amoeba passes through the nasal membranes and destroys brain tissues.
The ablutions Muslims must perform before praying involve rinsing inside the nose and Ahmed said people should use boiled water for the purpose while the outbreak was going on.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said nine cases had been confirmed and one more was suspected. It is working with Pakistani officials to investigate the cases and work out steps to prevent further infections.
“We are visiting houses of the victims and profiling their history,” Musa Khan, WHO’s head of disease early warning system in Pakistan, told AFP.
Misbahuddin Farid, who heads the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, said chlorine concentration was being increased in reservoirs and supply stations as a precaution.
A health ministry statement referring to recent lab tests said 22 per cent of 913 samples drawn from water supply sources in the last three months were found to be non-chlorinated.
http://pakistan.onepakistan.com/news/br ... cials.html
Statistics: Posted by semirza — Thu Oct 11, 2012 12:25 pm
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Beyond 45 i must say sorry.
Statistics: Posted by teriwal — Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:45 pm
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Magazine issue 2879
Newscientist
From dementia and diabetes to high blood pressure – no pill protects us against ill health like exercise does
IT'S 9 am in the office - time for my daily medication. As usual, I slink off to the fire escape for my fix. Twenty minutes later, I'm back at my desk, brimming with vitality and raring to go.
I've taken this medicine regularly now for about eight years, after developing elevated blood pressure in my mid-40s. I'd heard it could help reduce blood pressure and improve circulation. Sure enough, the high blood pressure vanished long ago.
Amazingly, this drug is freely available to everyone on the planet. It's completely up to you when you take it, and how much. And as research is now revealing, the more of it you take, the healthier you will be.
What is this wonder drug? It is plain old physical activity of all sorts - from running marathons to simply walking around your sofa while watching television. We've all heard that exercise is good for us, but what is becoming increasingly clear is the sheer extent of its benefits and why it works.
A plethora of recent studies shows that exercise protects us from heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, obesity, cancer, Alzheimer's disease and depression. It even boosts memory. And it has the potential to prevent more premature deaths than any other single treatment, with none of the side effects of actual medication. "It's a wonder drug," says Erik Richter, a diabetes researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. "There's probably not a single organ in the body that's unaffected by it."
Throughout evolution, humans have been active. Our ancestors chased prey as hunter-gatherers and fled from predators. More recently, they laboured on farms and in factories. But the decline of agricultural and industrial labour, plus the invention of the car, a multitude of labour-saving devices and - most perniciously - TV, computers and video games, mean we've all ground to a sudden and catastrophic standstill.
"We were built to be active, but the way our environment has changed and the way we live our lives has led us to become inactive," says Christopher Hughes, senior lecturer in sport and exercise medicine at Queen Mary, University of London.
Now we're paying the price. In 2009 Steven Blair, an exercise researcher at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, published a study of more than 50,000 men and women showing that a lack of cardiorespiratory fitness was the most important risk factor for early death. It accounted for about 16 per cent of all deaths in men and women over the period of study, more than the combined contributions of obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol, and double the contribution of smoking (see graph).
In other words, physical inactivity is killing us. "Everyone knows too much booze or tobacco is bad for you, but if physical inactivity was packaged and sold as a product, it would need to carry a health warning label," says Hughes.
As we have become inactive, so once-rare diseases have mushroomed. A report from the organisation Diabetes UK reveals that in 1935, when the world's population was just over 2 billion, an estimated 15 million people globally had type 2 diabetes. By 2010 the world's population had more than trebled and the number with diabetes had shot up to 220 million, with 300 million predicted for 2025. Likewise, results published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that over a third of US men and women are obese, as are about 17 per cent of US children.
Weekly dose
The good news is that we can do something about it. I started running up and down the fire escape for a few minutes each day in the hope of not having to take cholesterol-lowering statins or drugs for high blood pressure. Now I'm eager to know what my daily routine is doing to my body and, more importantly, how it might be protecting me from disease.
The most robust evidence so far comes from the Exercise is Medicine initiative pioneered by the American College of Sports Medicine in Indianapolis, Indiana. Researchers there have collated studies over the past decade or so of people who follow the US government's advice on physical activity. This prescribes 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, such as brisk walking, ballroom dancing or gardening, or 75 minutes of more vigorous activity such as cycling, running or swimming.
Flush your system
What the Exercise is Medicine findings show is that this weekly dose of moderate exercise reduces the risk of premature death through heart disease by 40 per cent, approximately the same as taking statins.
Chi Pang Wen of the National Health Research Institute in Zhunan, Taiwan, offers some insights into precisely how physical activity prevents cardiovascular diseases. "Exercise can stimulate circulation, flush out fatty deposits in the walls of blood vessels and dilate small vessels that could otherwise be the cause of a heart attack or stroke," he says. In April he presented results from a study of over 430,000 Taiwanese men and women, showing that exercise reduced the risk of heart attacks by 30 to 50 per cent.
Exercise also keeps blood vessels clear by helping to destroy the most dangerous fats. Research published in February reveals that it alters the structure of fatty triglyceride particles in the bloodstream, making it easier for enzymes to destroy them before they can gum up the works. Many risks to circulatory health come from such fatty particles, in the form of chylomicrons produced in the gut, or very low density lipoproteins (VLDLs) pumped out by the liver. The bigger the VLDL particles are, the easier they are for enzymes to break down, and the findings show exercise causes the particles to enlarge by about a quarter.
"A single 2-hour bout of exercise reduced triglyceride concentrations in the circulation by 25 per cent compared with no exercise," says Jason Gill, who led the study at the University of Glasgow, UK. His team found a decrease in both types of fat, but it was twice as large for the more insidious VLDL particles.
One of the most startling findings of the Exercise is Medicine initiative is that a modest weekly dose of exercise lowers the chances of developing type 2 diabetes by 58 per cent, twice the preventive power of the most widely prescribed anti-diabetes medication, metformin.
Type 2 diabetes affects adults when they stop responding efficiently to the hormone insulin, which orders muscle and fat cells to absorb surplus glucose from the bloodstream. When insulin loses its punch, glucose continues circulating and creates the potentially fatal sugar imbalances that are the hallmark of diabetes.
How does exercise reverse this? The story dates back to 1982, when Richter found that insulin activity is enhanced by physical activity - at least, in rats. Experiments showed that after the rats ran around for a couple of hours, their cells became up to 50 per cent more responsive to insulin compared with the cells of non-exercising rats. "We confirmed it later in humans," Richter says.
As cells reawaken to insulin, it seems that surplus glucose gets sponged from the circulation. Richter found that the effects lasted for a couple of hours after exercise in rats, and up to two days in humans.
Recently he and colleagues have unravelled more details about how exercise brings this about. They have discovered that both insulin and muscle contractions during exercise activate a molecule in muscle and fat cells called AS160, which helps them absorb glucose. Once activated, AS160 orders the cell to send molecules to the cell's surface to collect glucose and bring it inside. Without these transporter molecules, glucose cannot get through the fatty cell membrane.
That's not the only way exercise also helps cells burn off excess sugar. Muscle cells absorb glucose and fatty acids from the bloodstream to replenish adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the molecular fuel found in most living cells. As ATP is used up, it produces waste products that are sensed by another molecule, AMPK. AMPK then orders cells to recharge by absorbing and burning yet more fat and sugar. In the mid-1990s, Grahame Hardie at the University of Dundee, UK, found exercise accelerates this process because muscle contraction activates AMPK.
Hardie says exercise has the potential to reverse obesity and diabetes and prevent cancer. The findings of the Exercise is Medicine initiative show that taking the US government's recommended weekly dose of exercise halves the risk of breast cancer in women and lowers the risk of bowel cancer by around 60 per cent. This is about the same reduction seen with low daily doses of aspirin.
How exercise does this is not yet clear - not least because so many factors are involved in cancer's appearance and progression, including sex hormone imbalances, the ability of the immune system to clear cancer cells, and damage to genes and DNA generally. However, some clues are beginning to emerge. "Exercise reduces body weight, which is a known risk factor for postmenopausal breast cancer," says Lauren McCullough of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
She also thinks that reducing fat deposits in the body results in less exposure to circulating hormones, growth factors and inflammatory substances. "All have all been shown to raise breast cancer risk," she says.
Another clue comes from work by Anne McTiernan of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who studies bowel cancer. Biopsies from 200 healthy volunteers showed that, compared with exercisers, non-exercisers had more telltale signs of abnormalities in colonic crypts - recesses in the lining of the colon that absorb water and nutrients. Crypts in idle participants had an increased number of dividing cells, and these also climbed higher up the crypt walls, where they had the potential to form pre-cancerous polyps.
Another potential protection against cancer might come back to the ability of exercise to stimulate AMPK. Recent research by Beth Levine of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas showed that exercise stimulates cells craving extra energy to burn unwanted rubbish, including faulty or mutated DNA that could trigger cancer if it hangs around. More recently, in unpublished work, Levine has discovered the same processes in brain cells, suggesting that exercise might play a role in staving off dementias and neurodegeneration.
As well as potentially staving off dementia, pounding the stairs might even help boost my brainpower and memory. Back in 1999, Henriette van Praag of the US National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland, found that mice using a running wheel developed new neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain vital for memory. "We had a doubling or tripling of neurons after they'd been running daily for about a month," she says. Subsequently, van Praag and other groups found the most likely reason: a doubling in the level of a substance in the hippocampus called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which may support growth of new neurons.
More than a decade on, a team led by Art Kramer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrated through a brain-imaging study of 120 older adults that exercise increased hippocampus volume by around 2 per cent. It also improved their memory, as measured by standard tests. "The volume increase we saw can make up for approximately two years of normal age-related decrease," says Kramer. "We found that even modest increases in fitness can lead to moderate, 15 to 20 per cent improvements in memory."
The benefits aren't just restricted to adults. Kramer and his colleagues have also found that pre-adolescent children who exercise develop larger hippocampuses.
So if exercise is so beneficial, why won't people take it? At least 56 per cent of US adults don't meet the government's exercise guidelines. "The most common excuse people give in polls is that they don't have time," says Blair. Perhaps that is not surprising when US citizens spend, on average, almost 8 hours a day watching TV, according to a 2008 study.
For those, like me, who don't want the fuss of joining a gym, there is plenty people can do at home or the workplace in their own time and at their own pace. Blair cites a study in which researchers asked half of a group of couch potatoes to walk round their sofa during each TV commercial break. "They burned 65 calories more per hour, and that is 260 calories in 4 hours," he says. Over a week, their exertions met the US government recommendations for exercise.
And overweight people can benefit massively from exercise even if they don't lose weight, Blair points out. One of his studies has shown that for fit fat people, the risk of dying prematurely is half that for unfit lean people.
Once a marathon runner, Blair now walks for an hour a day, and at the age of 73, he has set himself the goal of walking 5 million steps each year, tracking his progress with a pedometer. He is concerned that not enough doctors recognise that lack of fitness is effectively a disease. He wants them to use fitness as a gauge of health, perhaps making their patients do a treadmill test as a matter of routine, rather than considering it as an afterthought.
Figures published in The Lancet last month back up his assertion that no action, other than abstaining from smoking, is as good for health as being physically active. The study also reveals that physical inactivity effectively kills 5 million people a year worldwide, as many as smoking (see map).
As for me, the stair-run does seem to be working, although I don't have health data from eight years ago to confirm my progress. Scans and tests last month showed my blood pressure and bone density are normal, and I have 6 per cent less body fat than is average for my age. Also, only 20 per cent of my fat is the dangerous sort around organs in the abdomen, compared with 30 per cent in most of my peers. My heart fitness, measured on a treadmill, is above average and I have no chronic diseases that I know of. Now, imagine you were offered a pill that did all that. Wouldn't you take it?
Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... ?full=true
Statistics: Posted by Holly Flame — Wed Aug 29, 2012 5:22 pm
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