Health A-Z

Health Benefits of Banana

Enjoyed in various forms, bananas are eaten raw, accompanied with desserts, added to smoothies and much more. They offer some great health benefits, so add a banana to your daily diet today! Bananas are one of the most famous common fruits amongst people of every age. Enjoyed in its various forms, bananas are eaten raw, accompanied with desserts, added in smoothies and consumed in many more ways too. Let us look at the benefits of eating this fruit.

1. Blood Pressure Regulation

Banana is a fruit that contains high amount of potassium and low levels of salt. This combination helps to regulate the blood pressure. It reduces the risk of heart related diseases.

2. Bone Strength

The potassium content in bananas is good for the health of your bones. Eating bananas on a regular basis can prevent your bones from deteriorating. Consuming bananas can also neutralize the amount of sodium in your body, which ultimately saves calcium to get washed out from your body.

3. Source of energy

Bananas are loaded with a lot of vitamins and minerals like Vitamin C and Vitamin B-6. Considering this fact, it is evident that eating the fruit can provide you with great energy. Pack yourself a couple of bananas to eat in the afternoon after your lunch has been digested and your stomach asks for some food.

4. Bowel Health
If you are suffering from constipation, banana is the fruit you need to pick. The fruit contains dietary fiber that aids the maintenance of the bowel system of your body.

5. Stress Reduction

When you are in stress, the metabolic rate of your body shoots up and potassium levels consequently decrease. Eating a banana can thereby flush your body with potassium, which will automatically ease you and regularize your heartbeat.

6. Brain Food

The potassium in bananas also does wonders by making you more mentally alert. Research shows that this yellow fruit aids concentration and hence is a marvelous fuel for the brain.

7. Iron rich fruit

People suffering from iron deficiency can resort to eating bananas. This fruit, which is rich in iron, can supply your body with the amount of iron it needs. This can also benefit you when you are suffering from an injury and require the blood to clot faster with the help of haemoglobin.

It is unimaginable how one tiny yellow colored fruit can give your body numerous health benefits. Include bananas in your breakfast, lunch, snack or dinner and enjoy the phenomenal benefits it imparts your body with.

Source: Yahoo news

Older men who ignore knee pain risk worse problems

Shrugging off chronic knee pain as an inevitable part of aging puts men in their 70s at risk for accelerated muscle loss, falls and generally reduced quality of life, a new study suggests.

“This study confirms the findings of many studies indicating that chronic knee pain will seriously impact quality of life in older people,” lead author Marlene Franzen said.

Franzen is an associate professor of physiotherapy at the University of Sydney in Australia.

Nearly half of men over 70 have chronic knee pain, according to her team’s report in the journal in Age and Ageing.

“Chronic knee pain is not a ‘benign’ disease,” she told Reuters Health. “It does lead to a greatly increased risk of falls and developing mobility disability, and therefore increased risk of early mortality.”

Mobility disability means being unable to walk up or down stairs to the first floor without help and being unable to walk about half a mile without help, according to Franzen.

She and her coauthors tracked 1,587 men over age 70 for two years. About 640 of the men said they suffered from chronic knee pain at the start of the study. Two years later, another 150 reported experiencing bouts of chronic knee pain as well.

The researchers found that men with knee pain were nearly two and a half times more likely to have mobility disability than those without pain.

“Mobility disability among older people with chronic knee pain is serious as it has been associated with early mortality,” Franzen said.

The men with knee pain were also more likely to experience falls, which can be serious for people over 70, and to have reduced strength and mass in the muscles, tendons and ligaments that extend the knee, according to diagnostic scans.

The link between decreased leg muscle strength and chronic knee pain had only previously been established for women, Franzen said.

While some loss of muscle mass – about 1 percent a year – is typical with aging, Franzen’s team also measured changes in the strength of leg muscles that control the knee.

Past research has found the strength of those muscles drops by about 3.4 percent a year, and that was the rate Franzen’s group saw among men without knee pain. But for men who developed knee pain during the two-year study, muscle strength dropped by 4.5 percent a year.

“I think the evidence from this study and previous research would suggest that knee pain in older adults is associated with increased mobility problems, and this may be at least partly related to muscle strength declines,” David Scott said.

Scott studies the gradual loss of muscle mass that usually begins after age 30 at the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, but was not involved in the new study.

“This might indicate that methods to improve lower-limb muscle strength in older adults, such as supervised exercise training, may have potential benefits both in decreasing the disability associated with knee pain, and also in preventing development of pain itself,” he said.

In the new study, obesity, back pain and higher levels of physical activity were more common in the group of men with knee pain. Men in their 80s, however, were less likely to have knee pain, which the authors attributed to their probably being more sedentary.

Knee pain usually becomes troublesome many years earlier than age 70, when people often have more physically demanding lifestyles or occupations, often in their 50s, Franzen said. Knee pain with age is even more common among women, she said.

For the obese, losing weight can help alleviate some knee pain, she said.

Otherwise, patients should see their doctors for an effective and safe pain management strategy, and a physiotherapist for a recommended physical activity program, Franzen said.

Source: News dump

Tips for Healthy Eyes

Fortify your vision – Be sure you are getting enough antioxidants like vitamin A, C, and E. Lutein and omega-3 fatty acids are now in studies to determine the effects they have in slowing age-related macular degeneration. And studies show, the average diet includes only a fraction of the nutrients recommended for healthy vision.

Get exercise – It improves blood circulation, which improves oxygen levels to the eyes and the removal of toxins.

Eat healthy – High-fat diets can cause deposits that constrict blood flow in the arteries. The eyes are especially sensitive to this, given the small size of the blood vessels that feed them.

Stop smoking – Smoking limits the blood flow to the eyes and increases oxidative stress.
Protect your eyes – Always wear eye protection that filters out as much UV light as possible. Also, wearing a hat with a brim will greatly reduce the amount of UV radiation slipping around the side of your sunglasses.

See your eye care professional regularly — Changes in your vision can occur without you noticing, and the earlier these changes are detected the better your treatment options.

Source: Bausch

Teasing tied to less physical activity among kids

Children who are teased while playing sports tend to have a worse quality of life than their non-teased peers, a new study suggests. Some of them may also become less active over time.

“Teasing not only influences psychological functioning but may reduce physical activity and lead to poorer physical, social, and emotional functioning for children,” Chad D. Jensen told Reuters Health in an email. He led the study at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

The link between teasing and less physical activity is particularly concerning considering most children are already not exercising as much as they should.

Jensen and his colleagues surveyed 108 kids, aged nine to 12, in 2010 and again in 2011. They asked kids about their participation in 21 different types of physical activity before, during and after school and how often they had been teased while playing sports or exercising since kindergarten.

The researchers also asked the kids how well they functioned physically, emotionally, with friends and at school. Together those measures were used to determine children’s health-related quality of life.

Children who were teased reported a worse quality of life than those who were not.

In particular, overweight and obese kids who reported being teased on the first survey had a poorer quality of life both initially and again one year later, the researchers write in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology.

“Negative effects of teasing appear to be persistent, affecting important outcomes one year after teasing is reported,” Jensen said.

Normal-weight kids who reported being teased on the first survey were more likely to become less active over the next year. For overweight and obese children, teasing reported in year two was linked to less physical activity the same year.

“School policy makers are encouraged to think of this form of peer victimization as a direct threat to children’s health outcomes,” write Jensen and his co-authors.

“These findings provide support for comprehensive bullying prevention programs and suggest that efforts to reduce peer victimization in the context of physical activity participation may be helpful in promoting physical activity participation and children’s quality of life,” Jensen said.

David Palmiter, a psychologist at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania, said the findings are not surprising.

“Being teased or being bullied in any kind of an ongoing way itself is a symptom…and worsens symptoms,” he said. Kids who are teased “often have vulnerabilities,” such as low self-esteem, before the teasing starts.

“Any kid, no matter how healthy they are, can have isolated instances of bullying,” he told Reuters Health. But a pattern of consistent bullying probably points to inner pain in the child who is bullied, said Palmiter, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

He said one way to address or prevent repeated teasing is to increase the size of children’s friend circles, so they’re not always on the fringes. That way, “They can travel from class to class with a pack,” he said.

Parents can arrange sleepovers and other activities with children’s peers outside of school and boost their children’s confidence by identifying their areas of strength and making sure they are regularly exposed to these areas.

In addition, Palmiter stressed the importance of parents spending one-on-one time with their children, focused entirely on what the child is doing or saying.

He also echoed Jensen’s sentiment about the importance of comprehensive bullying prevention programs.

“Every school should have an anti-bullying program,” Palmiter said

Source: GMA News

For pre-diabetics, just 2,000 steps a day reduces the risk

People who are already on the way to developing diabetes could significantly reduce their risk of having a heart attack or stroke by walking for just an extra 20 minutes a day for a year, scientists said on Friday.

A large international study of people with a condition called impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) – a precursor to diabetes – found that taking an extra 2,000 steps a day over one year cut the risk of serious heart illness by 8 percent.

IGT affects around 344 million people worldwide, or almost 8 percent of adults, and this number is projected to rise to 472 million by 2030 as populations grow and age and unhealthy diets contribute to increasing rates of diabetes.

“People with IGT have a greatly increased risk of cardiovascular disease,” said Thomas Yates of Britain’s University of Leicester, who led the research.

“While several studies have suggested that physical activity is beneficially linked to health in those with IGT, this is the first study to specifically quantify the extent to which change in walking behavior can modify the risk of heart disease, stroke, and cardiovascular-related deaths.”

Yates’ team took data from a trial covering more than 9,300 adults in 40 countries who had IGT and heart disease or at least one cardiovascular risk factor.

All the participants were given a lifestyle change programme aimed at helping them lose weight and cut fat intake while increasing physical activity to 150 minutes a week. Using a pedometer, researchers recorded usual walking activity over a week both at the start of the study and again 12 months later.

After adjusting for a wide range of confounding factors including body mass index, smoking, diet and use of medication, the researchers used statistical modeling to test the relationship between the number of steps taken a day and the risk of subsequent heart disease.

They found that for every 2,000 additional steps a day the start of the study there was a 10 percent reduction in risk of heart disease.

On top of this, the risk of heart disease and so-called cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes was further reduced by 8 percent for every extra 2,000 steps a day between the start of the study and 12 months later.

“These findings provide the strongest evidence yet for the importance of physical activity in high risk populations and will inform diabetes and cardiovascular disease prevention programmes worldwide,” said Yates.

“Changing physical activity levels through simply increasing the number of steps taken can substantially reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease,” he added, noting that the benefits of extra walking showed up regardless of a person’s bodyweight or the level of activity they started at.

Source: reuters

Small Changes to Combo Meals can Help Cut Calorie Consumption

What would happen if a fast-food restaurant reduces the calories in a children’s meal by 104 calories, mainly by decreasing the portion size of French fries? Would children compensate by choosing a more calorie dense entrée or beverage? Researchers at Cornell University, Dr. Brian Wansink and Dr. Andrew Hanks, analyzed transaction data from 30 representative McDonald’s restaurants to answer that question.

Prior to 2012, the Happy Meal® was served with one of three entrée options (chicken nuggets, cheeseburger, hamburger), a side item (apples or small size French fry), and a beverage (fountain beverage, white milk, chocolate milk, apple juice). By April 2012, all restaurants in this chain served a smaller size “kid fry” and a packet of apples with each CMB. Wansink and Hanks found that this change in default side offerings resulted 98 of the 104-calorie decrease in the CMB.

With such a large decrease in calories, would children compensate by choosing a more calorie dense entrée or beverage? Wansink and Hanks found that 99% of children ordered the same entrée, and orders of chicken nuggets (the lowest calorie entrée) remained flat at nearly 62% of all orders. Yet, nearly 11% fewer children took caloric soda as a beverage and 22% more chose white or chocolate milk–a more satiating beverage. This increase was partially due to small changes in advertising for milk. Interestingly, the chocolate milk served in 2012 was of the fat-free variety compared to the 1% milk variety served previously. It also contained 40 fewer calories. Overall, the substitutions in beverage purchases resulted in 6 fewer calories served with the average CMB.

Small changes in the automatic—or default—foods offered or promoted in children’s meals can reduce calorie intake and improve the overall nutrition from selected foods as long as there is still an indulgence. Importantly, balancing a meal with smaller portions of favored foods might avoid reactance and overeating. Just as managers have done this in restaurants, parents can do this at home.

Source: Food psychology

Winter special: 5 fruits you must have to boost immunity

Winter is a time when those whacky cold winds can give you cold and flu and other seasonal health disorders. So one needs to have not just a healthy diet, but also consume fruits as they are packed with the necessary vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that help fight infections and boost immunity to fight against diseases.

All those scrumptious cakes and candies might attract you, but that best-tasting foods just add to one’s calorie intake and don’t help otherwise.

So, here is a list of five super-foods one must indulge in this winter:

Oranges: They are packed with Vitamin C and just one orange can supply 116.2% of the daily value of Vitamin C which helps prevent colds and recurrent ear infections.

Kiwi: Kiwi is a rich source potassium and antioxidants and help boost immunity and keep blood pressure in check.

Tangerines: This sweet and sour fruit is advisable especially for heart patients as it helps fight against bad cholesterol and clean trans-fat.

Pomegranate: This is one fruit which is highly recommended for those who are anaemic as it helps stimulate blood production. Also, it is helps prevent ageing of skin.

Cranberries: It is a rich source of antioxidants, Vitamin C and necessary fibre which helps boost immunity during winters.

Source: inagist

Fetal stem cell grafts successfully help brittle-bone babies

In an international collaboration, researchers from Sweden, Singapore and Taiwan successfully treated two babies with a congenital bone disease that causes stunted growth and repeated fracturing by injecting them in utero with bone-forming stem cells.

Results of their longitudinal study have been published in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine.

Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) not only stunts the growth of those who suffer from this disease, but the repeated fractures it causes are painful.

However, this condition can be recognized prenatally with an ultrasound, so researchers from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published a paper in 2005 detailing how mesenchymal stem cells – connective tissue cells that form and improve bone tissue – were given to a female fetus in Sweden.

These stem cells were taken from the livers of donors, and the researchers note that though the donors and recipients were not genetically matched, there was no rejection.

In this recent study, the team explains how the girl experienced several fractures and had scoliosis by age 8. At this point, the researchers gave her a fresh stem cell graft from the same donor as before.

For the following 2 years, the child did not experience any new fractures and her growth rate improved. Today, the researchers say, she participates in dance lessons and gym class at school.

‘International effort needed’ for this rare disease
The team from Karolinska Institutet, along with colleagues in Singapore, detail how they gave another baby girl from Taiwan – who was shown prenatally to have OI – stem cell transplantation in utero.

The girl experienced a normal, fracture-free rate of growth until she was 1-year-old, at which point the team gave her a fresh stem cell treatment.

Her normal growth resumed, the team says, and now, at the age of 4, she is able to walk normally and has not experienced any new fractures.

“We believe that the stem cells have helped to relieve the disease since none of the children broke bones for a period following the grafts, and both increased their growth rate,” says study leader Dr. Cecilia Götherström, from Karolinska Institutet.

She adds:

“Today, the children are doing much better than if the transplantations had not been given. OI is a very rare disease and lacks effective treatment, and a combined international effort is needed to examine whether stem cell grafts can alleviate the disease.”
The team says they identified a male patient from Canada who was born with OI, which was caused by the exact same mutation that the girl from Sweden had.

Born with severe widespread bone damage, this boy was not given stem cell therapy like the girls were, and he experienced numerous fractures and kyphosis of the thoracic vertebrae – a condition that causes an extreme curvature of the spine, impairing breathing.

The untreated boy died within his first 5 months from pneumonia, the investigators say.

Although the researchers say their findings suggest the stem cell therapy treatment “appears safe and is of likely clinical benefit,” they add that “the limited experience to date means that it is not possible to be conclusive and that further studies are required.”

When asked what kind of research she and her team are planning for the future, Dr. Götherström told Medical News Today:

“We are presently transplanting stem cells to one patient once a year for 4 years to investigate the effects of repeated infusions.

Also, we wish to include more patients with severe OI to be transplanted in the future, which will require joint international efforts and financial resources.”

The study was funded by a grant from the Swedish Society for Medical Research.

Maternal Health Program In India Failing To Deliver, Study Shows

A prominent program that claims to reduce infant and maternal deaths in rural India by encouraging mothers to deliver in private hospitals has been unsuccessful, despite the investment of more than $25 million since 2005, a new Duke University study finds.

The Chiranjeevi Yojana program in Gujarat, a state in northwestern India, received the Wall Street Journal Asian Innovation Award in 2006 and has been hailed by some as a model for wide adoption throughout India.

The program was launched in 2006 to help address the shortage of obstetricians at public hospitals accessible to low-income women in rural areas. It aimed to provide free childbirth care at participating private-sector hospitals to women who are below the poverty line. The hospitals are paid 1600 Indian rupees per delivery, approximately $30 to $40. The hospitals may offer additional services to patients and charge separate fees for them. By 2012, approximately 800 private-sector hospitals were participating and the program had helped pay for more than 800,000 deliveries.

Manoj Mohanan, Duke assistant professor of public policy, global health and economics, led the research team. The team surveyed 5,597 households in Gujarat to collect data on births that had occurred between 2005 and 2010. They found no statistically significant change in the probability of delivery in health care institutions, the probability of obstetric complications or the probability that physicians or nurses were present during childbirth.

“We were surprised to find, as well, that even among those who delivered at health care facilities there were no significant reductions in households’ out-of-pocket expenditures for deliveries.”

The findings were published online this week by the peer-reviewed international public health journal, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, in an article titled, “Impact of Chiranjeevi Yojana on institutional deliveries and birth outcomes in Gujarat, India: a difference-in-differences analysis.”

While the study did not determine why patients’ delivery costs did not decline or why the program is ineffective, several explanations are possible, Mohanan said. Media reports in India suggest that despite the promise of free care, hospitals we

re billing women for extra, chargeable services. Providers also complained that the reimbursement amounts were not adequate to cover costs of providing the service.

In addition, mothers may perceive the quality of care at participating private hospitals to be poor, so even when the care is provided for free, demand does not rise. Transportation costs from rural villages also could be a factor, he said.

Mohanan said previous research, which had suggested the program was very successful, had methodological limitations. It did not address the role of self-selection of institutional delivery by pregnant women and did not account for unrelated increases in institutional deliveries that probably occurred as a result of rapid economic growth in the region.

Source: Duke sanford

Fewer teens trying dangerous synthetic marijuana, study shows

Teenagers are smoking less tobacco and drinking less alcohol, but they’re using more marijuana, according to a new report by the National Institute of Drug Abuse.

More than 60 percent of high school seniors do not view marijuana use as harmful and 23 percent report smoking pot in the past month, said the report released Wednesday.

NIDA director Dr. Nora Volkow blames the acceptance and use figures on adults and the media message following marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington State.

“These changes in perception come because of legalization of marijuana as medicine,” Dr. Volkow said. “Teens use it because they think marijuana is less harmful, since it cannot be as harmful if it has a medical purpose.”

Teen cigarette smoking continues to decline, falling to 10 percent today from 25 percent in 1993, according to the report. Alcohol use peaked in 1997, when 52 percent of high school seniors used alcohol monthly, that is now down to 39 percent.

But experts fear marijuana will continue on the upswing as more states adopt laws allowing medical marijuana, supply grows and prices decline. That is bad news for younger teens who light up.

“When you smoke pot, it interferes with the way you learn and memorize” says Volkow. “If you regularly consume pot, it affects your scholastic achievement.”

In those states where medical marijuana is legal, 34 percent of teens get their pot not from a drug dealer, but someone who buys their marijuana with a prescription. This contradicts the claim by many medical marijuana proponents that state regulations would keep pot out of the hands of kids. In fact, among states reporting the highest teen marijuana use – 19 of the top 20 already legalized medical marijuana.

“We know that for most of those, marijuana is not from prescription given to them but prescription to someone else, whether that is adult relative or friends is not clear,” says Volkow.

But even in states where reefer remains illegal, the DEA says 88 percent of cities report pot is widely available. The agency itself is eradicating 77 percent less pot than just three years ago, suggesting it too is not enforcing pot laws with the same vigor as in decades past.

With less eradication and less enforcement, domestic production is up, forcing the Mexican cartels to ship more of their lesser quality, lower priced pot in bulk to replace revenues lost to domestic competition. Seizures in the Tucson Border Patrol Sector are up 40 percent over last year. Recently, agents seized 10 tons of pot at a checkpoint in Nogales, while on Monday an ultra-light aircraft dumped a large marijuana load just south of Tucson.

Said one agent who asked to remain anonymous, “We are seeing a ton of pot right now.”

Source: recreational flying