Weight Loss Craze in Hong Kong: Swallowing Parasite Worms
February 11, 2010
The Hindu
Dieters in Hong Kong were Tuesday warned by government doctors against a craze for swallowing parasite worms as a means of losing weight.
The city’s Department of Health has been alarmed to see websites offering products containing potentially fatal parasites as a means of weight control.
The products are thought to use Ascaris worms: giant intestinal roundworms which grow up to 40 centimetres in length in a host’s intestine and lay up to 200,000 eggs a day.
A Department of Health spokesman warned that swallowing the parasites could cause abdominal pain and distention, vomiting, diarrhoea and malnutrition.
“Parasite infestation may also be fatal if serious complications such as intestinal, biliary tract or pancreatic duct obstruction arise,” the spokesman said. “The worms may even invade such organs as the lungs.
“The infestation can be treated with medication that kills the parasite. The worms may require surgical removal if there are obstructions.”
He urged people to consult doctors before dieting and said the only natural, healthy and effective means of weight loss was through dietary regulation and regular exercise.
Dieting is big business in Hong Kong where obesity levels have soared because of sedentary lifestyles, fast-food diets and long office hours in the city of 7 million.
Clinics and websites offer a bizarre variety of questionable short-cut weight loss methods including hot wraps, fat-dissolving injections and even using controlled fire to literally burn off fat.
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Study Links Soft Drinks to Pancreas Cancer
February 8, 2010
Reuters
By John O’Callaghan
People who drink two or more sweetened soft drinks a week have a much higher risk of pancreatic cancer, an unusual but deadly cancer, researchers reported on Monday.
People who drank mostly fruit juice instead of sodas did not have the same risk, the study of 60,000 people in Singapore found.
Sugar may be to blame but people who drink sweetened sodas regularly often have other poor health habits, said Mark Pereira of the University of Minnesota, who led the study.
“The high levels of sugar in soft drinks may be increasing the level of insulin in the body, which we think contributes to pancreatic cancer cell growth,” Pereira said in a statement.
Insulin, which helps the body metabolize sugar, is made in the pancreas.
Writing in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, Pereira and colleagues said they followed 60,524 men and women in the Singapore Chinese Health Study for 14 years.
Over that time, 140 of the volunteers developed pancreatic cancer. Those who drank two or more soft drinks a week had an 87 percent higher risk of being among those who got pancreatic cancer.
Pereira said he believed the findings would apply elsewhere.
“Singapore is a wealthy country with excellent healthcare. Favorite pastimes are eating and shopping, so the findings should apply to other western countries,” he said.
But Susan Mayne of the Yale Cancer Center at Yale University in Connecticut was cautious.
“Although this study found a risk, the finding was based on a relatively small number of cases and it remains unclear whether it is a causal association or not,” said Mayne, who serves on the board of the journal, which is published by the American Association for Cancer Research.
“Soft drink consumption in Singapore was associated with several other adverse health behaviors such as smoking and red meat intake, which we can’t accurately control for.”
Other studies have linked pancreatic cancer to red meat, especially burned or charred meat.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, with 230,000 cases globally. In the United States, 37,680 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in a year and 34,290 die of it.
The American Cancer Society says the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer patients is about 5 percent.
Some researchers believe high sugar intake may fuel some forms of cancer, although the evidence has been contradictory. Tumor cells use more glucose than other cells.
One 12-ounce (355 ml) can of non-diet soda contains about 130 calories, almost all of them from sugar.
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Quitting Smoking Carries Diabetes Risk
January 06, 2010
Reuters
By Charles Dick
Smoking is well known as a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, but scientists said on Monday that quitting the habit can raise the risk even more in the short term.
A study by U.S. researchers found that people who stop smoking have a 70 percent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the first six years without cigarettes as compared to people who never smoked.
The researchers said they suspected the increased diabetes risk comes from extra weight gain common in people who quit.
But they said no one should use their findings as an excuse to continue smoking — a habit which can also cause lung disease, heart disease, strokes and many types of cancer.
“The message is: Don’t even start to smoke,” said Hsin-Chieh Yeh of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the United States, who led the study.
“If you smoke, give it up. That’s the right thing to do. But people have to also watch their weight,” she added.
Type 2 diabetes — often called adult-onset diabetes — is a common disease that interferes with the body’s ability to properly use sugar and insulin, a substance produced by the pancreas which normally lowers blood sugar after eating.
Overweight people and those with a family history of the disease have an increased risk of developing it, as do smokers.
Diabetes is reaching epidemic levels, with an estimated 180 million people suffering from it around the world.
Diabetes cases are forecast to triple in the United States in the next 25 years to 44 million with the costs of caring for them rising to $336 billion a year.
Yeh’s study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal, looked at almost 11,000 middle-aged adults who did not yet have diabetes from 1987 to 1989. The patients were followed for up to 17 years and data about diabetes status, glucose levels, weight and more were collected at regular intervals.
The researchers found that people who quit smoking had a 70 percent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the first six years after stopping compared to people who never smoked. The risks were highest in the first three years, and returned to normal after 10 years.
Among those who did not stop smoking the risk was lower, but the chance of developing diabetes was still 30 percent higher compared with those who never smoked.
Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the world, killing more than 5 million people a year. A report by the World Lung Foundation last August said smoking could kill a billion people this century if trends hold.
Sugary Drinks During Pregnancy Increase Risk of Diabetes in Child
December 11, 2009
Natural News
By Sherry Baker
According to the American Diabetes Association, approximately 4% of all pregnant women (about 135,000 expectant moms) in the U.S. develop gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) each year. These are women who have never had diabetes before but suddenly have high blood sugar (glucose) levels during the later part of pregnancies. And if not well controlled, the condition can hurt their babies — causing newborns to be so extremely large and heavy their shoulders can be damaged during birth. The babies born to women with GDM often have very low blood glucose levels at birth and may likely have breathing problems, too. What’s more, babies born with excess insulin due to their mother’s GDM often become obese in childhood and they frequently grow into adults who are at risk for type 2 diabetes.
So what causes gestational diabetes? That has remained unclear — but now scientists have discovered what appears to be one cause. A new study, published in the December issue of the journal Diabetes Care, has found for the first time that drinking more than 5 servings of sugar-sweetened cola drinks weekly prior to becoming pregnant significantly raises the risk of developing diabetes during pregnancy.
“Compared with women who consumed less than 1 serving per month, those who consumed more than 5 servings per week of sugar-sweetened cola had a 22% greater GDM risk,” Dr. Liwei Chen, MD, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Sciences Center in the New Orleans School of Public Health and lead author of the study, said in a statement to the press.
Although scientists have not yet unraveled the precise underlying mechanism resulting in gestational diabetes, they have some strong clues. Previous studies strongly suggested that the main defect in the development of GDM is diminished secretion of insulin combined with pregnancy-induced insulin resistance.
So how do sugar-laden soft drinks fit into this? The research team behind the new study has suggested several explanations for their findings. For one thing, the high sugar intake associated with the drinks may lead to impaired pancreatic cell function. Drinking a large amount of sugar-sweetened beverages contributes to a high glycemic load (GL). The large amounts of rapidly absorbable sugars cause levels of glucose in the body to spike — and this can result in insulin resistance and impaired function of pancreatic beta cells, which make insulin.
In their paper, the scientists noted that the only significant association they found between sweet drinks and gestational diabetes involved sugar-sweetened colas. They did not find that other sweet beverages, including fruit drinks, raised the risk of GDM. Dr. Chen suggests that the explanation may simply be that sugar-sweetened colas are tremendously popular in the U.S. and, unfortunately, widely consumed in excess by women of child-bearing years.
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Obesity Responsible for 100,000 Cancer Cases Annually
November 06, 2009
Web MD
By Todd Zwillich
As many as 100,000 cases of cancer could be prevented in the U.S. each year if Americans get rid of their excess body fat.
That’s according to estimates released by the American Institute for Cancer Research. The estimates suggest that heart disease, diabetes, and joint problems aren’t the only illnesses in which rampant obesity is causing havoc.
The group says overweight and obesity could be the cause of more than 6% of all the estimated 1.6 million cancer cases diagnosed in the U.S. each year.
A 2007 report from the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Foundation reviewed hundreds of studies and found what researchers called “convincing evidence” that obesity was tied to several cancers. Those included cancer of the esophagus, pancreas, and kidneys. It also included colorectal cancer and endometrial cancer (a form of uterine cancer).
Researchers also said it was “probable” that excess abdominal fat was a cause of breast cancer in postmenopausal women.
Experts took estimates of obesity’s influence on cancer and applied them to a breakdown of the approximately 1.6 million U.S. cancer cases per year.
The researchers estimate that excess body fat is the cause of 33,000 breast cancer cases each year, nearly one-sixth the total cases in postmenopausal women. Obesity could be to blame for nearly 21,000 cases of endometrial cancer and more than 13,000 cases of colorectal cancer per year.
Researchers stressed that the figures are only estimates, and that individual cancer cases can have many, inter-connected causes.
Americans Fail at Diabetes Awareness
November 2, 2009
Atlanta Journal Constitution
By HealthDay News
Though someone is diagnosed with diabetes every 20 seconds, many Americans lack basic knowledge about the potentially life-threatening disease, according to a new survey from the American Diabetes Association.
Diabetes is responsible for more deaths each year in the United States than breast cancer and AIDS combined, but just 42 percent of those surveyed knew that diabetes could be so deadly.
“There’s a real lack of awareness of the seriousness of the disease,” said Sue McLaughlin, president of Health Care and Education for the diabetes association. To combat that, the organization has launched a new campaign called Stop Diabetes to encourage people with diabetes to share their stories. The effort aims to increase awareness of the disease, fight the social stigma sometimes associated with it and get more people involved in the fight against diabetes.
Those who have the disease often say the lack of awareness can feel like a lack of support.
“Living with diabetes every day is a struggle, and people don’t always understand what you go through every day,” said Malika Bey of Pittsburgh. Bey was diagnosed with gestational diabetes during two pregnancies, and then with type 2 diabetes after her last pregnancy.
“It would help if family members were more supportive,” she said. “You know, I can’t eat everything I want to eat, and at a party, nobody thinks about something simple, like getting diet drinks.”
McLaughlin said a common myth is that sugar and overeating cause diabetes. But, that’s not true for either type of diabetes. Diet isn’t a factor at all in type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease in which the body mistakenly attacks the islet cells in the pancreas, destroying the body’s ability to produce insulin. And, though type 2 diabetes is more common in people who are overweight, genetics and other unknown factors — not just diet — can be contributors. Even some thin people have type 2 diabetes.
Still, only one-third of the people surveyed knew that too much sugar did not cause diabetes. And more than half of the respondents wrongly believed that anyone who was overweight or obese would eventually develop type 2 diabetes.
But the opposite belief — that you won’t get diabetes even though you’re overweight — can be a problem, too, experts say.
Frank Timmons, from Rockland, Mass., tipped the scales at 347 pounds. When he went to the doctor in November 2008, his blood sugar level was 350 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). A normal random blood sugar reading should be less than 140 mg/dL.
“I was kind of a train wreck,” Timmons admitted in a statement released by the American Diabetes Association. But, he used his diagnosis to kick-start a new life. Just a year later, Timmons has lost 140 pounds and his blood sugar levels are back in the normal range. He said the biggest factor in his success is exercise: He walks at a brisk pace for 45 minutes each day.
“You have to make up your mind to be well,” Timmons said. “It is hard to do. Once you dedicate yourself to it, you will be amazed at your success.”
The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, included 2,081 men and women from across the United States. Their average age was 46, and 285 of them had been diagnosed with diabetes.
The survey also found that:
Just 12 percent knew that people with diabetes don’t have to follow a more restrictive diet than the healthy diet that’s recommended for the general population.
Almost one in 10 respondents thought there was a cure for diabetes, and 19 percent weren’t sure. (Although there are ways to manage diabetes, there is no cure.)
Less than 60 percent could correctly distinguish between type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
Almost 20 percent erroneously believed that the death rate from diabetes was declining.
Overall, Americans scored a 51 percent on the survey — a failing grade.
“This is a serious disease, and something that causes a lot of deaths,” McLaughlin said. “We hope the Stop Diabetes campaign will raise awareness about how important it is to be educated about diabetes and to get screened if you’re at high risk.”
Those in the high-risk category include people who are older than 45, are of a race other than white or have a family history of the disease. Being physically inactive or overweight are also risk factors for type 2 diabetes.
Symptoms of diabetes include increased thirst, increased urination, blurred vision, tingling in the hands and feet, fatigue, dry skin and, possibly, increased hunger, McLaughlin said.
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Drugs That Change Taste Damage Metabolism
October 26, 2009
NaturalNews
By S. L. Baker
It’s not unusual to hear about herbicides having suspected toxic effects or prescription drugs producing side effects. But a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded study just published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry has found another negative and surprising way common herbicides and fibrate drugs (which are used to lower elevated blood lipids) impact the human body: they block a nutrient-sensing taste receptor on the tongue called T1R3.
So what’s the big deal about this? It turns out there’s emerging evidence these taste receptors are also found in hormone-producing cells in the intestine and pancreas. When working properly, these internal taste receptors in the gut trigger the release of hormones involved in the regulation of normal homeostasis (the ability of the body to maintain internal physiological stability) of glucose as well as energy metabolism. Simply put, screwing up the ability of T1R3 to sense certain nutrients could possibly wreak havoc on the human body in a variety of ways — from playing a role in unhealthy blood sugar levels to causing people to gain weight .
“Compounds that either activate or block T1R3 receptors could have significant metabolic effects, potentially influencing diseases such as obesity, type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome,” said Monell geneticist and study leader Bedrich Mosinger, MD, PhD, in a statement to the media.
For their study, Dr. Mosinger and his research team tested the ability of two classes of chemical compounds to block the T1R3 taste receptor. These compounds were selected because they have strong structural similarities to lactisole, a sweet taste inhibitor that is known to block T1R3. Specifically, the researchers investigated fibrates (a class of drugs often used to lower blood cholesterol, especially triglycerides), and phenoxy herbicides.
Fibrate drugs are sold in the U.S. under several names including gemibrozil (brand name Lopid) and fenobribrate (brand name Tricor). Phenoxy herbicides are chemicals widely used in agricultural fields, on golf courses, rights-of-way and lawns to control broad-leaf weeds. The best known, called 2,4-D, is one of the most extensively used herbicides in the world. According to the Oregon State University Extension Service web site, popular brands of phenoxy herbicides include MCPA, Crossbow, Banvel, Garlon, Weed-B-Gone, and Brush Killer. They are also incorporated into a host of “weed and feed” and brush control products for use on grass.
In laboratory experiments, the researchers found that both classes of compounds were very potent in blocking activation of the human sweet taste receptors. Additional tests showed that this ability of both fibrates and phenoxy herbicides to block T1R3 is specific to humans.
“The metabolic consequences of short and long-term exposures of humans to phenoxy herbicides are unknown. This is because most safety tests were done using animals, which have T1R3 receptors that are insensitive to these compounds,” Dr. Mosinger said in the press statement. “Given the number of compounds used in agriculture, medicine and the food industry that may affect human T1R3 and related receptors, more work is needed to identify the health-related effects of exposure to these compounds.”
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