New Hampshire Health News Digest

Dr. Larry McCleary - ASDs: Time is of the Essence! ASDs: Time is of the Essence! 6/30/2008 11:52 PM MST ( ) Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are neurodevelopmental disorders that have much better outcomes the earlier they are diagnosed.and the sooner children are enrolled in appropriate intervention programs. To help disseminate information to more effectively avoid a delayed diagnosis it important to make available some of the earliest signs and symptoms to watch for. The Child Neurology Service "red flags" screening parameters include the following as absolute indications for immediate evaluation for autism: 1) no babbling or pointing or other gesturing by 12 months of age 2) no single words by 16 months 3) no spontaneous 2-word phrases by 24 months 4) loss of language or social skills at any age Speech delays usually prompt parents to raise concerns with their child's pediatrician at 16 to 19 months. However, certain social deficits occur earlier and may be more sp...

Killer Carbs - Appetite Control Cells Deteriorate As We Age, Says Study | Scientific Blogging Killer Carbs - Appetite Control Cells Deteriorate As We Age, Says Study Dr Zane Andrews, a neuroendocrinologist with Monash University's Department of Physiology, says he has discovered key appetite control cells in the human brain degenerate over time, causing increased hunger and potentially weight-gain as we grow older. Dr Andrews found that appetite-suppressing cells are attacked by free radicals after eating and said the degeneration is more significant following meals rich in carbohydrates and sugars. "The more carbs and sugars you eat, the more your appetite-control cells are damaged, and potentially you consume more," Dr Andrews said. Dr Andrews said the attack on appetite suppressing cells creates a cellular imbalance between our need to eat and the message to the brain to stop eating. "People in the age group of 25 to 50 are most at risk. The neurons that tell peop...

Quick-burning Carbs May Cause Fatty Liver: Low-glycemic Diet Protected Mice Quick-burning Carbs May Cause Fatty Liver: Low-glycemic Diet Protected Mice ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2007) — Diets rich in rapidly-digested carbohydrates not only expand waistlines, but may also cause fatty liver, a condition that can lead to liver failure and death, finds a new study in mice. If confirmed in humans, the findings suggest that fatty liver disease -- on the upsurge among Americans as a byproduct of the obesity epidemic -- may be preventable and possibly treatable through dietary changes. The researchers, led by David Ludwig, MD, PhD, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital Boston, fed mice either a high- or a low-glycemic index diet. High-glycemic index foods, including white bread, white rice, most prepared breakfast cereals and concentrated sugar, raise blood sugar quickly. Low-glycemic index foods, like most vegetables, fruits, beans and unprocessed gr...

Fast-Acting Carbs May Hasten Vision Loss Over Time Fast-Acting Carbs May Hasten Vision Loss Over Time ScienceDaily (Dec. 1, 2007) — Consuming higher-than-average amounts of carbohydrates that cause blood sugar levels to spike and fall rapidly could be a risk factor for central vision loss with aging. See also: Health & Medicine * Diet and Weight Loss * Nutrition * Healthy Aging Mind & Brain * Dieting and Weight Control * Nutrition Research * Perception Reference * South Beach diet * Glycemic index * Whole grain * Diabetic diet The study was led by Chung-Jung Chiu with Allen Taylor, both at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) in Boston, Mass. Taylor is director of the Laboratory for Nutrition and Vision Research at the HNRCA. The researchers analyzed dietary intake and other data from more than 4,000 men and women aged 55 to 80 participating in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study, or AREDS. Diets high in carb...

Killer Carbs: Scientist Finds Key To Overeating As We Age Killer Carbs: Scientist Finds Key To Overeating As We Age ScienceDaily (Aug. 22, 2008) — A Monash University scientist has discovered key appetite control cells in the human brain degenerate over time, causing increased hunger and potentially weight-gain as we grow older. The research by Dr Zane Andrews, a neuroendocrinologist with Monash University's Department of Physiology, has been published in Nature. See also: Health & Medicine * Obesity * Diet and Weight Loss * Nutrition Mind & Brain * Dieting and Weight Control * Nutrition Research * Disorders and Syndromes Reference * Appetite * Sensory neuron * High fructose corn syrup * Blood sugar Dr Andrews found that appetite-suppressing cells are attacked by free radicals after eating and said the degeneration is more significant following meals rich in carbohydrates and sugars. "The more carbs and sugars you eat, the more y...

Carbohydrate restriction, prostate cancer growth, ...[Prostate. 2008] - PubMed Result Carbohydrate restriction, prostate cancer growth, and the insulin-like growth factor axis. Freedland SJ, Mavropoulos J, Wang A, Darshan M, Demark-Wahnefried W, Aronson WJ, Cohen P, Hwang D, Peterson B, Fields T, Pizzo SV, Isaacs WB. Department of Surgery, Durham VA Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27710, USA. steve.freedland@duke.edu BACKGROUND: Recent evidence suggests carbohydrate intake may influence prostate cancer biology. We tested whether a no-carbohydrate ketogenic diet (NCKD) would delay prostate cancer growth relative to Western and low-fat diets in a xenograft model. METHODS: Seventy-five male SCID mice were fed a NCKD (84% fat-0% carbohydrate-16% protein kcal), low-fat (12% fat-72% carbohydrate-16% protein kcal), or Western diet (40% fat-44% carbohydrate-16% protein kcal). Low-fat mice were fed ad libitum and the other arms fed via a modified-paired feeding protocol. After 24 days, a...

A causal role for uric acid in fructose-induced metabolic syndrome -- Nakagawa et al. 290 (3): F625 -- AJP - Renal Physiology A causal role for uric acid in fructose-induced metabolic syndrome Takahiko Nakagawa,1 Hanbo Hu,1 Sergey Zharikov,1 Katherine R. Tuttle,2 Robert A. Short,2,3 Olena Glushakova,1 Xiaosen Ouyang,1 Daniel I. Feig,4 Edward R. Block,1 Jaime Herrera-Acosta,5,{dagger} Jawaharlal M. Patel,1 and Richard J. Johnson1 1Division of Nephrology, Hypertension, and Transplantation, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida; 2Department of Research, The Heart Institute of Spokane, and 3Biostatistics, Washington State University, Spokane, Washington; 4Division of Nephrology-Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas; and 5Departamento de Nefrologia, Instituto Nacional de Cardiologia Ignacio Chavez, Tlalpan, Mexico Submitted 6 April 2005 ; accepted in final form 26 September 2005 The worldwide epidemic of metabolic syndrome correlates with an elevation in serum uric acid...

Dr. Doom - Profile - Nouriel Roubini - Predicting Crisis in the United States Economy - NYTimes.com LINK to profile of Roubini in NY Times The Decline of the American Empire Nouriel Roubini | Aug 13, 2008 Recent economic, financial and geopolitical events suggest that the decline of the American Empire has started. After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a brief period where the world switched from a bipolar balance of two superpowers to a unipolar world with one economic, financial, geostrategic superpower, or better, hyperpower, i.e the United States. But by now three factors suggest that the US has squandered its unipolar moment and that the decline of the American Empire – as the US was in effect a global empire – has started. Let us explain how and why... First, the US squandered its power by relying excessively on its hard military power in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and in its unilateralist foreign policy – including economic issues such as global warming - rathe...

‘Sugar Fix’ Author Blames Fructose Alone For Obesity, But Taubes Counters ‘Sugar Fix’ Author Blames Fructose Alone For Obesity, But Taubes Counters Jimmy Moore August 7, 2008 The following is a reprint from the blog "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb": Is it really just fructose that’s making us fat and unhealthy? In an effort to keep things understandable by the average person visiting my blog, I like to keep things as simple as they can possibly be. You and I both know not everything is so black and white, but the trick is to get people at least thinking about a subject and hopefully digging deeper on their own to learn even more about it. That’s the essence of learning–get armed with a little truth and then investigate it further and further until comprehension takes place. One such simplistic subject you often see me blog about is sugar. Yes, there’s that sweet-tasting white stuff known as sucrose, or table sugar, that millions of Americans put in their food and drinks each day...

Suspect in U.S. obesity epidemic - Op-Ed - Kentucky.com Suspect in U.S. obesity epidemic Shirley Caudill Contributing columnist More than 33 percent of adults in the United States are overweight or obese. The incidence of obesity in children and adults has doubled in the last 10 years, but parents are at a loss as to the cause of this problem in their children. New research has found evidence that soft drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup may contribute to the development of diabetes and obesity, especially in children. Scientists found that drinks with corn syrup have high levels of reactive compounds that have been shown to have the potential to trigger cell and tissue damage that could cause the disease, which is at epidemic levels. The findings were reported at the 234th national meeting of the American Chemical Society last August. According to Meira Field of the U.S Department of Agriculture, most processed foods contain corn syrup. The sweetener is found in many foods ...

Vaporizing.Info - Medical Uses of Cannabis Diabetes: Insulin is excreted from the beta islet cells of the pancreas. Insulin, a natural body chemical, floods the body after a sugar-rich meal and causes various cell types to dramatically increase their uptake of glucose, a common sugar. The effect of insulin is to reduce the levels of glucose in the bloodstream. Diabetes can result from the body's inability to produce sufficient quantities of insulin or from an inability to respond properly to the insulin that is produced. In either case, many of the clinical effects of diabetes stem from the deleterious effects of high blood sugar. There is some anecdotal evidence that Cannabis lowers blood sugar. AIDS and cancer patients, among other Cannabis users, often report an increase in appetite after consuming Cannabis, and a few reports indicate that smoking Cannabis can lower blood sugar in diabetics. A study (Tracy Blevins phd) was undertaken to determine whether this effect can be detec...

Alcoholism may be controlled with nutrient therapy | Better Nutrition (1989-90) | Find Articles at BNET Research into the genetics of alcoholism has taken off the last 15 years and has produced a great body of information blaming the disease on everything from tainted genes to permissive parents. Yet the consistent rate of failure in treating alcoholics has motivated some health experts to look at nutritional approaches. Some researchers suggest that alcoholism may, in some cases, actually result from hypoglycemia and nutritional deficiencies. For years, physicians believed that hypoglycemia resulted when alcohol was consumed in preference to food. However, according to Carl Pfeiffer, M.D., Ph.D., author of Mental and Elemental Nutrients, evidence suggests that many nutritional disorders, hypoglycemia in particular, actually precede alcoholism. An experiment performed on rats confirmed this view. One group of rats was fed a refined carbohydrate diet known to cause hypoglycemia. Anothe...

Alcohol Vulnerability Linked To Action Of Insulin "This finding opens promising new avenues for the treatment of alcoholism," said Ulrike Heberlein, PhD, UCSF professor of anatomy and senior author on the paper. "Insulin is already known to act in the nervous system to regulate food intake, so it makes sense that it would influence the response to other substances the body senses as rewards, such as alcohol or drugs of abuse." Insulin functions in the brains of animals from worms to mammals, and the pathway by which it influences behavior has been conserved throughout millions of years of evolution, Heberlein said, and research has recently revealed that insulin reduces the presence of the molecule that transports dopamine in the brain. "In animals and humans, dopamine in the brain affects the response to both food and drugs. We are starting to see that in addition to its importance in sugar metabolism, insulin regulates release of neurotransmitters and may be ...

My Way News - Martian soil may contain detrimental substance NASA's Phoenix spacecraft has detected the presence of a chemically reactive salt in the Martian soil, a finding that if confirmed could make it less friendly to potential life than once believed. Scientists previously reported that the soil near Mars' north pole was similar to backyard gardens on Earth where plants such as asparagus, green beans and turnips could grow. But preliminary results from a second lab test found perchlorate, a highly oxidizing salt, that would create a harsh environment. The first test "suggested Earth-like soil. Further analysis has revealed un-Earthlike aspects of the soil chemistry," chief scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson said in a statement Monday. On Earth, perchlorate is a natural and manmade contaminant sometimes found in soil and groundwater. It is the main ingredient in solid rocket fuel and can be found in fireworks, pyrotechnics and other expl...

Stand Up For Your Health -- Physiologists And Microbiologists Find Link Between Sitting And Poor Health Physiologists analyzing obesity, heart disease, and diabetes found that the act of sitting shuts down the circulation of a fat-absorbing enzyme called lipase. They found that standing up engages muscles and promotes the distribution of lipase, which prompts the body to process fat and cholesterol, independent of the amount of time spent exercising. They also found that standing up uses blood glucose and may discourage the development of diabetes. You're probably sitting down right now. Well, by the time you're done reading this, you may see sitting in a whole new way! "Chair time is an insidious hazard because people haven't been told it's a hazard," Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, told Ivanhoe. That's right -- the time you sit in your chair could be keeping your body's fat burning i...