Dental Plagues Help Decode Ancient Dietary Habits and Preferences

Tiny particles of plague removed from the teeth help decode ancient dietary patterns, reveals study. G. Richard Scott, associate professor of anthropology at the College of Liberal Arts, University of Nevada, Reno, obtained samples of dental plaque from 58 skeletons buried in the Cathedral of Santa Maria in northern Spain dating from the 11th to 19th centuries to conduct research on the diet of this ancient population. After his initial findings met with mixed results, he decided to send five samples to Simon R. Poulson at the Nevada University's Stable Isotope Lab, in the expectation they might contain enough carbon and nitrogen to allow them to estimate stable isotope ratios, said a university statement. "It's chemistry and is pretty complex," Scott explained. "But basically, since only protein has nitrogen, the more nitrogen that is present, the more animal products were consumed as part of the diet. Carbon provides information on the types of plants consumed." Scott said that once at the lab, the material was crushed, and then an instrument called a mass spectrometer was used to obtain stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios. "It was a long shot," he said. "No one really thought there would be enough carbon and nitrogen in these tiny, five to 10 mg samples to be measurable, but Dr. Poulson's work revealed there was," added Scott. Source-IANS

Ayurveda misused get rich the quack way

Ayurveda is the science of health and longevity. But this science and yoga therapy are being misused by quacks with the help of mass media. Naturopathy is another area which requires no specific qualification to practise. Hippocrates, ‘Father of Medicine,’ advocated naturopathic medicines. Natural diet and exercise are part of treatment. Benedict Lust is supposed to be the father of naturopathy. He had been schooled in hydrotherapy. He also practised herbal therapy. In our country, the practitioners of naturopathy require no particular education and training. Some of them are wind bags and they are unscrupulous and boastful. Nature cure is a term coined by John Scheel in 1895. There was a decline of this type of cure in the US which happened to be revived in 1970s. The healing power of nature became part of holistic treatment and the body’s vital ability to heal itself too is being experimented. More relevance is given to diet and life style. Gandhiji experimented with this method and wrote extensively on the results of his trials. He had firm faith in the healing power of nature. A five-and-a-half- year degree course is offered in doctor of naturopathy and yogic sciences. Diploma in naturopathy is also offered. Despite this, people cleverly come up proclaiming their skill in naturopathy without acquiring any basic qualifications. Buddha sanyasis forbid suppression of natural urges. They advocate moderation of food, sleep, sex and medicine. Exercise, yoga, meditation and massage are essential to maintain health. ‘Panchakarma’ enables elimination of toxic elements from the body. Internal medicine, paediatrics, surgery, eye and ENT, psychiatry, toxicology, aphrodisiacs etc. are the branches practised by our ancestors. Hinduism and Buddhism have contributed a lot to the medical field in ancient India. Other methods included foot massage, head massage, face mask and steam. Physicians discover diseases after long interviews and physical examination. They suggest change in lifestyle while using their medicines. Diet and lifestyle are given utmost importance in ayurveda. In Adharva Veda, there are 114 hymns and formulations for treatment. Dhannuanthari is believed to be the ‘deva of ayurveda’ who came out while churning the Palazhi by the Asuras and Devas. His second birth was in Dwapara Yuga. Yoga is the union of ‘Jeevatma’ and ‘Paramatma’. (Agnipurana Ch.372) It is also a physical exercise and helpful to coordinate the material body and the soul. Yoga is a cure for many diseases and also helpful to maintain good health. A rudimentary knowledge of yogic exercises is low-brow and such a person is not qualified to train. Let us evaluate the modus operandi of quacks. Pot belly is the mark of a tacky, physical condition. An idea flashes in a quack’s mind to acquire easy money. He produces in bulk a concoction to be massaged on the protruded part with wide publicity in the media. Attractively packed, it reaches the market. A special oil and the sap of some medicinal plants are the ingredients. The product is pushed with pomp and tumult. The hunk on the bottle has packs on the abdomen. Within a few weeks, he amasses wealth before too much complaints reach him and then he stops production. Another quack, as fresh as daisy, produces an ointment with enchanting smell which can make lilies and roses on the otherwise rough cheeks. One week is more than enough to ginger up vitality and acquire the beauty of the cinema star on the packet. Narcissism is an innate trait that moulds a puppet. The producer of this ointment too becomes a multimillionaire though he appears as a jinx to a bad face. Some well-advertised medicines are sold like hot cakes as they will increase memory. Lean ladies develop muscles all over by consuming another medicine! Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, arthritis, kidney problems, epilepsy, schizophrenia etc. have easy cure if you purchase the medicines and use them according to the instructions in the ads! A so-called physician has agents all over India to bring patients to him. We are made to believe that he can cure diabetes with some kind of herbs though we should not stop the medicines we use now. He has paid-employees to trump up his products and the popularity he gets is through ads. Another wizard can diagnose your problem simply by touching some parts of your body. He claims that the accuracy of his findings can be verified by lab tests. Charlatans thrive with the help of people who propagate the extraordinary skill of the miracle man. All these people have one aimbig bucks! The government should stop the emergence of incompetent people with ulterior motive. Unscrupulous people should not be allowed to sell medicines. Yoga training should also be monitored along with massage centres. Misleading ads require stringent punishments.(The writer is a retired principal and social critic. The views in the article are the writer’s own. e-mail: u.atiyodi@live.com). Source:Indian Express.

Eating Same Food Daily Is Bad For Your Health

A dietitian has warned against eating the same range of foods every day as it may take a toll on your health. A survey has revealed that most people stick to toast and cereals for breakfast every day with sandwiches for lunch. And they rely on a handful of favorites such as pasta, chips or pizza in the evenings. Sixty-eight per cent of people questioned in the survey for PAGB, the trade association for over-the- counter medicines and food supplements, said they routinely buy the same things from the supermarket every week. "Eating the same type of food every day is not only boring but could lead to deficiencies in certain nutrients," the Daily Express quoted Dietitian Helen Bond as saying. "It can also compromise the immune and digestive systems and, ultimately, long-term health," he warned. Source-ANI

Biodegradable Stent Appears Safe: Study

First fully biodegradable coronary artery stent appears safe for long-term treatment of coronary artery disease, says study published in Circulation. Stents are mesh tubes inserted into coronary arteries to help prop them open and allow for blood flow to the heart muscle. The biodegradable Igaki-Tamai stent is used in nine European Union countries and Turkey — but not in the United States — to treat peripheral artery disease (PAD), the disorder which results from fatty deposits that narrow leg arteries. However, no countries have approved the Igaki-Tamai stent for treating clogged heart arteries. "We have needed this long-term clinical data to clarify the coronary safety of the stent," said Kunihiko Kosuga, M.D., Ph.D., co-author of the study and director of cardiology at Shiga Medical Center for Adults in Moriyama City, Japan. "Our findings will pave the way for the entry of coronary stents made of biodegradable polymers into the real world of interventional cardiology." Metal stents, sometimes coated with drugs, remain in the body and can reclog. This biodegradable stent is made of poly-l-lactic acid, a cornstarch-based material, which dissolves into the artery wall. This leaves no foreign material in an artery permanently and reduces the occurrence of an in-stent blood clot. In the study, researchers tracked 50 Japanese patients (44 men, average age 61 years old) who received 84 Igaki-Tamai stents between September 1998 and April 2000. The stents weren't coated with drugs. After an average 10 years, researchers found: The survival rate was 98 percent free from cardiac death and 87 percent free from death from all causes. Fifty percent of patients experienced no major cardiac complication. Acceptable major event complication rates were similar to those for bare metal stents. Although researchers expected stent degradation to take six months, the study indicated the stent was totally absorbed in three years. "Fully biodegradable stents may hold an important position as the next generation of coronary devices," Kosuga said. Source-Eurekalert

Study: Men who do load-bearing exercise in early 20s may be shielded from osteoporosis

Without intervention, 1 in 5 men develop fractures related to osteoporosis in old age Young men who play volleyball, basketball or other load-bearing sports for four hours a week or more increase bone mass and might gain protection from developing osteoporosis later in life, according to a new study in the May issue of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. The study, the largest scale investigation of its kind, discovered that young men who actively resisted the urge to adopt a "couch-potato" lifestyle in their late twenties seemed to gain the biggest bone benefit. "Men who increased their load-bearing activity from age 19 to 24 not only developed more bone, but also had larger bones compared to men who were sedentary during the same period," said senior study author Mattias Lorentzon, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden. Bigger bones with more mass are thought to offer a shield against osteoporosis, a disease that affects men and women alike, in which bones become porous and weak over time and start to fracture by age 50 or later. "Osteoporosis actually seems to get its start by age 25 when bones start to lose tissue. So this study sends an important message to young men," Lorentzon said. "The more you move, the more bone you build." Sports that involve jumping or fast starts and stops and increase the load put on the body's bones seemed most associated with the enhanced protection for men. Lorentzon and his colleagues found that basketball and volleyball seemed the best kinds of activities for building bone mass, followed by soccer and tennis. Such load-bearing sports seem to push the body to form new bone tissue. Activities that do not put an increased load on the bones, like swimming and bicycling did not seem associated with the building of bigger bones or more bone mass, even though they offer other health benefits. Osteoporosis affects more than 200 million people worldwide yet many are unaware that they are at risk. The disease has been called the silent epidemic because bone loss occurs without symptoms and the disease often is first diagnosed after a fracture. Osteoporosis is more common in women, but men also develop it—usually after age 65. Previous studies suggest that load-bearing physical activity might shield men and women from bone loss, which occurs as part of the aging process. But Lorentzon and his colleagues wondered if the link would hold true in a very large study that followed men over a five-year period. To find out, the researchers evaluated 833 men who were 18- to 20-years old at the start of the study. The researchers measured the participants' bone mass and collected information about their exercise habits. Five years later the recruits came back to the lab to report activity levels and get bone scans again. The researchers discovered that men who both started off with a high level of load-bearing exercise at the study's start and those who stepped up the pace had a better chance at building bone than men who remained sedentary or those who slacked off during the five year period. They found that for every hour of increased physical activity during the five-year study, the men in this study gained bone mass. The study found that recruits who participated in load-bearing sports for four hours a week or more showed an increase in hip bone density of 1.3 percent. At the same time, men who remained sedentary during the five year study lost about 2.1 percent of bone mass in the hip, a worrisome finding because thinning hip bones are more likely to break later in life. Hip fractures in men often lead to serious disability and complications, including life-threatening post-surgery infections and cardiovascular events. This study was conducted in white men recruited mostly from the city of Gothenburg, Sweden. However, Lorentzon noted the findings likely apply to Caucasian men in the United States and in other countries, and additional research must be done to show that such load-bearing exercise can protect men in other ethnic groups and women. "Such research is crucial to understanding how osteoporosis develops and more importantly how to prevent it," said Keith Hruska, M.D., president of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR), the world's leading scientific organization for bone health. "Bone fractures from osteoporosis devastate men and women all over the globe and ongoing research is the only way to find ways to protect men from this disease." Source:Eurekalert

Loneliness may Speed Up Aging Process

A new study has found that loneliness can speed up the effects of aging and increase the risk of heart diseases. The study was conducted by researchers at Cornell’s University who divided 182 men into two groups, with the first group between 18 to 30 years of age and the second group between 65 to 80 years of age. The researchers then took blood pressures of the participants at the start, during and after the test. The participants were assessed for their social bonds and the researchers found that those who viewed themselves as lonely had higher blood pressure levels and increased risk of cardiovascular diseases compared to their contemporaries. “The most striking thing we found was that the cardiovascular response of the lonely young adults to the social stressor task looked more like that of the non-lonely older adults. I think it’s helpful to distinguish the emotional pangs that are associated with acute loneliness from the more chronic feelings of distress that accompany perceived deficits in the quality of our social relationships”, lead researcher Anthony Ong said.

Beehive Extract Arrests Growth of Prostate Cancer Cells

An extract from honeybee hives stops prostate cancer growth in mice, shows research. Caffeic acid phenethyl ester, or CAPE, is a compound isolated from honeybee hive propolis, the resin used by bees to patch up holes in hives. Propolis has been used for centuries as a natural remedy for conditions ranging from sore throats and allergies to burns and cancer. But the compound has not gained acceptance in the clinic due to scientific questions about its effect on cells. In a paper published in Cancer Prevention Research, researchers combined traditional cancer research methods with cutting-edge proteomics to find that CAPE arrests early-stage prostate cancer by shutting down the tumor cells' system for detecting sources of nutrition. "If you feed CAPE to mice daily, their tumors will stop growing. After several weeks, if you stop the treatment, the tumors will begin to grow again at their original pace," said Richard B. Jones, PhD, assistant professor in the Ben May Department for Cancer Research and Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology and senior author of the study. "So it doesn't kill the cancer, but it basically will indefinitely stop prostate cancer proliferation." Natural remedies isolated from plant and animal products are often marketed as cure-alls for a variety of maladies, usually based on vague antioxidant and anti-inflammatory claims. While substances such as ginseng or green tea have been occasionally tested in laboratories for their medicinal properties, scientific evidence is commonly lacking on the full biological effects of these over-the-counter compounds. "It's only recently that people have examined the mechanism by which some of these herbal remedies work," Jones said. "Our knowledge about what these things are actually doing is a bit of a disconnected hodge-podge of tests and labs and conditions. In the end, you're left with a broad, disconnected story about what exactly these things are doing and whether or not they would be useful for treating disease." To study the purported anti-cancer properties of CAPE, first author Chih-Pin Chuu (now at the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan) tested the compound on a series of cancer cell lines. Even at the low concentrations expected after oral administration, CAPE successfully slowed the proliferation of cultured cells isolated from human prostate tumors. CAPE was also effective at slowing the growth of human prostate tumors grafted into mice. Six weeks of treatment with the compound decreased tumor volume growth rate by half, but when CAPE treatment was stopped, tumor growth resumed its prior rate. The results suggested that CAPE stopped cell division rather than killing cancerous cells. To determine the cellular changes that mediated this effect, the researchers then used an innovative proteomics technique invented by Jones and colleagues called the "micro-western array." Western blots are a common laboratory tool used to measure the changes in protein levels and activity under different conditions. But whereas only one or a few proteins at a time can be monitored with Western blots, micro-western arrays allow researchers to survey hundreds of proteins at once from many samples. Chuu, Jones and their colleagues ran micro-western arrays to assess the impact of CAPE treatment on the proteins of cellular pathways involved in cell growth – experiments that would have been prohibitively expensive without the new technique. "What this allowed us to do is screen about a hundred different proteins across a broad spectrum of signaling pathways that are associated with all sorts of different outcomes. You can pick up all the pathways that are affected and get a global landscape view, and that's never been possible before," Jones said. "It would have taken hundreds of Westerns, hundreds of technicians, and a very large amount of money for antibodies." The micro-western array results allowed researchers to quickly build a new model of CAPE's cellular effects, significantly expanding on previous work that studied the compound's mechanisms. Treatment with CAPE at the concentrations that arrested cancer cell growth suppressed the activity of proteins in the p70S6 kinase and Akt pathways, which are important sensors of sufficient nutrition that can trigger cell proliferation. "It appears that CAPE basically stops the ability of prostate cancer cells to sense that there's nutrition available," Jones said. "They stop all of the molecular signatures that would suggest that nutrition exists, and the cells no longer have that proliferative response to nutrition." The ability of CAPE to freeze cancer cell proliferation could make it a promising co-treatment alongside chemotherapies intended to kill tumor cells. Jones cautioned that clinical trials would be necessary before CAPE could be proven effective and safe for this purpose in humans. But the CAPE experiments offer a precedent to unlock the biological mechanisms of other natural remedies as well, perhaps allowing these compounds to cross over to the clinic. "A typical problem in bringing some of these herbal remedies into the clinic is that nobody knows how they act, nobody knows the mechanism, and therefore researchers are typically very hesitant to add them to any pharmaceutical treatment strategy," Jones said. "Now we'll actually be able to systematically demonstrate the parts of cell physiology that are affected by these compounds." Source-Eurekalert