Why Beer Is The Latest Hope In Fight Against Cancer
It might be your preference to crack open a bottle of red wine at the end of a hard day but you may be better off pouring a pint.
Researchers at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg have discovered that beer contains a powerful molecule that helps protect against breast and prostate cancers.
Found in hops, the substance called xanthohumol blocks the excessive action of testosterone and oestrogen. It also helps to prevent the release of a protein called PSA which encourages the spread of prostate cancer.
Scientists have long known that substances in hops help to block oestrogen. This is the first time, however, that they have been found to also inhibit testosterone.
‘Research is still early but in trials we hope to further demonstrate that xanthohumol actively prevents prostate cancer development,’ says Clarissa Gerhauser of the Heidelberg centre. If successful, xanthohumol may one day be developed as a cancer-fighting drug.
So which brews are likely to be richest in xanthohumol?
‘Hops give beer its bitter flavour, so traditional bitters and ales will contain far more of this substance than light lagers,’ explains Ben McFarland, author of the World’s Best Beers.
Beers highest in hops, he says, are India pale ales such as those made by the Meantime Brewery in Greenwich, South-East London. First brewed in the 1800s, these ales were made with high levels of hops to act as a natural preservative for export.
Ales such as Sharp’s and local bitters will also be hop-rich, containing around three to four times more than a typical light lager. Drinks such as Guinness owe their dark colour to malt and contain moderate levels of hops.
Alcohol Concern warns you should only drink beer within recommended limits – two to three units a day for women, three to four units for men. By Anastasia Stephens, The Daily Mail
Rising Obesity Will Cost U.S. Health Care $344 Billion A Year
If Americans continue to pack on pounds, obesity will cost the USA about $344 billion in medical-related expenses by 2018, eating up about 21% of health-care spending, says the first analysis to estimate the future medical costs of excess weight.
These calculations are based on the projection that in 10 years 43% of Americans adults may be obese, which is roughly 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight, if obesity continues to rise at the current rate. Extra weight increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease and many types of cancer.
This report comes as the country struggles to find ways to curb medical costs and Congress debates health care legislation.
“Obesity is going to be a leading driver in rising health-care costs,” says Kenneth Thorpe, chairman of the department of health policy and management at Emory University in Atlanta. Thorpe did this special analysis on obesity for America’s Health Rankings, the 20th annual assessment of the nation’s health on a state-by-state basis.
“There is a tsunami of chronic preventable disease about to be unleashed into our medical-care system which is increasingly unaffordable,” says Reed Tuckson of United Health Foundation, sponsor of the report with the American Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention.
Using weight data, Census statistics and medical expenditure information, Thorpe found:
•An obese person will have an average of $8,315 in medical bills a year in 2018 compared with $5,855 for an adult at a healthy weight. That’s a difference of $2,460.
•If the percentage of obese adults doesn’t change but stays at the current rate of 34%, then excess weight will cost the nation about $198 billion by 2018.
•If the obesity rate continues to rise until 2018, then Colorado may be the only state with less than 30% of residents who are obese.
•More than 50% of the population in several states could be obese by 2018: Oklahoma, Mississippi, Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio and South Dakota.
The report adds to the growing body of evidence of obesity’s impact on medical costs. A study released in July showed that obese Americans cost the country about $147 billion in weight-related medical bills in 2008, double what it was a decade ago. It now accounts for about 9.1% of medical spending.
Overall, the United States spends about $1.8 trillion a year in medical costs associated with chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, and all three are linked to smoking and obesity, the nation’s two largest risk factors, according to the America’s Health Rankings report.
Smoking is still the No. 1 preventable cause of death in the country, accounting for about 440,000 deaths annually, the report says.
About one in five Americans smoke. More than 3 million people quit smoking this past year. The percentage of people who smoke varies by state, from 9.3% in Utah to more than 25% in Kentucky, Indiana and West Virginia, the study says.
“This report is an urgent call to take much more aggressive action to deal with key disease risk factors such as obesity and smoking,” Tuckson says.
Health economist Eric Finkelstein, co-author of The Fattening of America, says medical costs won’t go down unless Americans make a serious effort “to slim down by improving their diet and exercise patterns.” By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY
Eating Dairy Products Helps Fight Obesity
Five helpings of dairy products every day, instead of the three now recommended, can help keep heart disease and diabetes at bay. New research has shown that a higher intake of dairy products on a reduced calorie diet can help fight obesity, besides cutting down risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
As part of her doctoral research, Wendy Chan She Ping Delfos from Curtin’s School of Public Health (CSPH) compared three serves of dairy with five serves of dairy within a reduced calorie diet prescribed for obese participants over a 12-week weight loss trial.
Participants who consumed five daily dairy serves were found to have higher mean levels of weight loss; higher mean levels of fat mass loss; greater drop of systolic blood pressure; and greater total percentage abdominal fat loss, according to a CSPH release.
”Many people commonly believe that when trying to lose weight dairy products are key foods that they have to cut out of their diet as they are high in fat,” Chan Delfos said.
”Participants who had five serves of dairy and engaged in resistance exercise had similar health benefits to participants consuming five serves of dairy only,” she said. Khaleej Times.
Smoking Bans Cut Down On Heart Attacks For Everyone, Study Finds
Bans on smoking in public and in workplaces can sharply reduce the number of heart attacks among both smokers and nonsmokers, according to a report issued Thursday by the Institute of Medicine. The report provides strong support for the anti-smoking laws in effect in 21 states and the District of Columbia and is likely to bolster efforts to pass such laws elsewhere.
“It’s clear that smoking bans work,” said Dr. Lynn R. Goldman of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who led the panel that produced the report. “Bans reduce the risk of heart attacks in nonsmokers as well as smokers.”
“There’s no question that secondhand smoke has an adverse health impact in workplaces and public environments,” said Dr. Clyde Yancy, president of the American Heart Association. “We must continue to enact comprehensive smoke-free laws across the country to save lives and reduce the number of new smokers.”
Nearly 440,000 Americans die each year from smoking-related illnesses — more than one-third from heart disease — according to the heart association. About 38,000 of those deaths are related to secondhand smoke, which has many characteristics of other types of air pollution linked to heart disease. The association between illness and secondhand smoke was reinforced by a 2006 report by the U.S. surgeon general on the consequences of exposure to environmental smoke.
Among the report’s conclusions: While heavier exposure to secondhand smoke is worse, there’s no safe level. It also cited “compelling” if circumstantial evidence that even less than an hour’s exposure might be enough to push someone already at risk of a heart attack over the edge.
That’s because within minutes, the smoke’s pollution-like small particles and other substances can constrict blood vessels and increase blood’s propensity to clot — key heart attack factors. Yet many people don’t know they have heart disease until their first heart attack, making it important for everyone to avoid secondhand smoke, said Dr. Neal Benowitz of the University of California, San Francisco, who co-wrote Thursday’s report.
“Even if you think you’re perfectly healthy, secondhand smoke could be a potential threat to you,” he said.
Still, bans on smoking have remained controversial, in part because of fears that they might keep customers away from bars and restaurants. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention commissioned the Institute of Medicine to study the evidence. Some of the members of the panel initially were skeptical about the benefits of such bans, according to statistician Stephen E. Fienberg of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, but they quickly changed their minds when they began reviewing the evidence.
The panel examined 11 studies of heart attacks in areas where bans were implemented and found a decrease in heart attacks in every study, ranging from a low of 6 percent to a high of 47 percent, depending on how the study was conducted.
“Such consistent data confirms for the committee that smoking bans do, in fact, decrease the rate of heart attacks,” they wrote. One study, for example, found that hospitalizations for heart attacks in Pueblo dropped 41 percent in the three years after the city banned smoking in the workplace.
In most of the studies, it was difficult to isolate the benefits for nonsmokers from those for smokers, but two of the studies showed a very clear benefit for nonsmokers.
The committee also surveyed the evidence from laboratory studies in animals and concluded that these results supported bans. By Thomas H. Maugh II, Denver Post.
Can Fish For Dinner Lead To Diabetes?
Making sure fish ends up on your dinner plate a couple of times a week may be a good way to cut your risk for developing heart disease, but it may not do the same for diabetes, new study findings hint.
In the study, researchers found no evidence of reduced risk for diabetes among adults who ate more fish, or the essential omega-3 fatty acids obtained primarily from seafood.
Rather, their findings suggest that eating 2 or more servings of fish a week may slightly increase diabetes risk.
Diet is a key factor in preventing the onset of diabetes in adults, but how omega-3 fatty acid intake impacts diabetes risk is still unresolved, Dr. Frank B. Hu, at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues explain in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
They examined ties between fish and omega-3 fatty acid intake and the development of diabetes among 152,700 women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study and 42,504 men enrolled in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.
Overall, 9,380 cases of adult-onset diabetes developed among these healthcare workers during up to 18 years of follow up.
After adjusting for lifestyle and other dietary factors, plus body weight, family history of diabetes, and menopausal status and hormone use when applicable, Hu’s team noted increased diabetes risk “in all cohorts” consuming higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids.
Diabetes was 1.17 times more likely among people who ate fish 2 to 4 times a week, and 1.22 times more likely among those who ate fish 5 or more times a week, relative to those who ate lesser amounts of fish.
Dr. Hu and colleagues emphasize that numerous studies have demonstrated beneficial effects of fish and omega-3 fatty acids on multiple risk factors associated with diabetes, and on heart disease — the major sequelae of diabetes.
They say further study is needed to figure out the “clinical relevance” of the current findings and determine the mechanisms behind their observation that high fish intake may raise diabetes risk. Yahoo Daily News.