REPORTING POINT 04-05
HEALTH NEWS
“Live healthy...live well”
by Larry Kline
SWAPA Voice Mailbox 4337/email: livehealthy-livewell@cox.net
(Past issues of “Health News” are available on my son’s website, which includes a word-search engine - just go to the site with your browser and insert the key word to find past articles: http://home.earthlink.net/~candace_ball/healtharticles/frameset.htm) – LK
TANNING BOOTH BULL…. – contrary to industry marketing propaganda, indoor tanning salons can be just as harmful as outdoor tanning. The UV radiation produced in the tanning beds in no safer than the sun’s. It is estimated that over one million Americans visit tanning salons every day.
Alternatives offered include tanning sprays where the salons spray people with a coloring agent (dihydroxacetone, or DHA) that interacts with the skin to darken it, and is used in many OTC self-tanning products. Unfortunately, it is easy to inhale, swallow the spray or get it in the eyes and no tests have been conducted to prove whether the product is safe when this happens. If receiving the spray, be sure to protect the eyes, nose, and mouth, although many customers seem to want these areas “tanned” and do not protect these areas from the spray.
Other options offered include tanning pills, which are not approved by the FDA and are illegal to purchase. Most of these products contain canthaxanthin (related to beta carotene), which is approved only in very small quantities as a food coloring additive. Massive amounts can turn the skin bright orange or brown and can also cause serious health problems, including liver injury, severe itching, and an eye disorder caused by yellow deposits on the retina that can interfere with night vision. University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter 3/04.
NUTRITIONAL QUIZ 17 – beans of all kinds are an excellent source of protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. But many people avoid them because they cause gas. To cut down on the gas-forming substance in beans you should:
a) add a teaspoon of baking soda to the soaking water
b) discard the soaking water and cover the beans with fresh water when you cook them
c) let the cooked beans sit in the fridge overnight and then reheat
Answer is below.
FAT FACTS – in 1994 researchers at Rockefeller University, working with mutant mice that grew to be three times the size of normal mice, discovered what made them different – the absence of a hormone they named “leptin.” When injected with leptin, the mice suddenly changed their eating habits and began losing weight. Unfortunately, what worked for mice did not work for most people.
The search for a simple cure for obesity has failed for decades, in part because researchers regard fat as merely the product of the calories consumed minus the calories burned equation. Now, it is being recognized that fat tissue acts like a discrete, active organ of its own and it continuously sends messages to the rest of the body by releasing chemicals into the bloodstream. The messages generally deal with hunger; you are either full or starving. Eating is not voluntary; the amount of fat and the type of body fat also contribute to hunger.
Researchers are now focusing on the fat cells themselves. Fat cells are constantly absorbing or releasing substances in response to the body’s energy needs. Few systems are more critical to survival. This energy storage-and-management system includes the brain, stomach, liver, pancreas, and thyroid in addition to the body’s fat cells. This system has evolved over millions of years, before fast foods and easily acquired calories. For most of evolution, getting enough to eat was a driving force for survival – not many cave dwellers were obese!
When calorie intake exceeds expenditures, fat cells swell to as much as six times their minimum size, and begin to multiply from 40 billion in an average adult up to 100 billion in an obese person. Fat also requires a copious supply of blood in tiny capillaries (compared with an equal weight of lean muscle, which is supplied by larger blood vessels), which puts a strain on the cardiovascular system. Obesity creates stress on the joints, leading to osteoarthritis. The accumulation of fat around the windpipe can interfere with breathing when muscles relax in sleep, possibly leading to sleep apnea.
The discovery of leptin helped create a change in the way researchers looked at fat: The biochemistry of fat holds clues both to its tenacity and to the diseases associated with obesity, including heart disease, diabetes, and even certain cancers. Leptin is one of a half dozen chemical messengers produced by fat cells, including thrombotic (pro-clotting) agents, vasoconstrictors (raises blood pressure) and both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory agents.
Inflammation is getting more attention now. In addition to the inflammatory agents it makes directly, fat tissue attracts immune system cells called macrophages, which promote inflammation on their own. When one has excess fat, even small amounts, the body starts mounting an immune response as if foreign organisms were invading the body. This is one of the purposes of fat as inflammation fights infection, which for most of human history was a more pressing threat than obesity.
But inflammation is also now viewed as a key mechanism in heart disease – more important than the anatomical narrowing of coronary arteries by cholesterol deposits, which had been the focus of cardiovascular treatment for a generation. Medicine is good at detecting and treating these blockages, but most heart attacks are not caused this way. The bigger problem is inflamed plaque that can crack open and cause a blood clot, leading to a heart attack or stroke. Through a complex sequence of biochemical events, compounds secreted by fat cells contribute to vascular inflammation. In addition, two other compounds produced in fat cells increase the risk: plasminogen activator inhibitor-1, which blocks the body’s own clot-busters, and angiotensinogen, which leads to high blood pressure. Also obese people have increased amounts of fatty acids in the blood, which inhibits nitric oxide, a compound that helps relax blood vessel walls and lower blood pressure.
Fat cells also secrete estrogen, which is linked to certain types of cancer, chiefly breast cancer in postmenopausal women. In addition, there is very promising research into the link between obesity and type 2 diabetes (adult onset). Fat has been found to be a major risk factor for diabetes, which damages the blood vessels and can lead to cardiovascular disease and blindness. Diabetes is a buildup of glucose in the blood. Researchers have found two compounds in fat cells – tumor necrosis factor alpha and resistin – seem to interfere with the operation of insulin. Insulin is the hormone that promotes the uptake of glucose from the bloodstream into cells, and insulin resistance is a precursor for full-blown diabetes. Resistin also promotes the conversion of fatty acids into glucose by the liver, a process that is useful if the body is starving, but a potential hazard if one is at risk for diabetes. Resistin’s effects are countered by adiponectin, the one truly beneficial compound made by fat. Adiponectin reduces inflammation, increases insulin sensitivity (lowering blood sugar) and even seems to improve the balance of HDL (good) versus LDL (bad) cholesterol. Unfortunately, the fatter one is the more resistin and less adiponectin is produced.
Researchers have also determined that fat cells behave differently in different parts of the body and that an individual’s fat distribution has implications for their health. Fat carried in the hips and thighs – the “pear” body shape – is considered comparatively benign, because it is less metabolically active than the kind that accumulates around the organs in the abdomen. Visceral fat has the highest association with diabetes, high blood pressure and high triglycerides and it produces more inflammatory and clot-promoting compounds than the subcutaneous fat distributed around the body. Fortunately, visceral fat is also the first to disappear when one exercises. It is not a candidate for liposuction – only subcutaneous fat can be removed that way. Doctors have found that even removing over twenty pounds of subcutaneous fat does not improve the overall health status in a group of obese women, when analyzing their blood chemistry. If the same amount of fat were lost by diet and exercise, the size of the fat cells would shrink and fewer of the harmful chemical messengers would be produced in the body.
Other researchers have found that the food sources of calories consumed also determines a role in the type and distribution of body fat. It has been found that those who consume more white bread, rice, pasta, and other refined carbohydrates tend to add fat disproportionately around the middle, even without a large change in body weight. Other foods produce little change in waist measurements, including good foods like whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables.
Research is continuing on leptin. When first discovered, it was hoped that leptin levels could be controlled in obese people, which would help them lose weight. That has not occurred yet. One reason is the theoretical concept that the brain and endocrine system fail to respond to the increase in leptin that results from gaining weight. One researcher believes that a compound called SOCS-3, which seems to inhibit the activity of leptin, is produced by high-fat diets and results in a “leptin resistance.”
Many other compounds may affect the body’s storage and use of fat and energy. So far, fat has resisted every chemical attempt to control it. For now, the most practical solution continues to be to eat less and exercise more. Newsweek 8/23/04.
HOSPITAL ERRORS DEADLY – a new study of 37 million patient records finds that medical errors in U.S. hospitals account for an estimated 195,000 deaths a year.
The report issued by HeathGrades, a private company that rates hospitals for insurers and health plans, was based on review of Medicare patients hospitalized between 2000 and 2002. If hospital errors were included on the national list of the leading causes of death, they would be sixth, ahead of diabetes, pneumonia, and Alzheimer’s disease.
The Senate has recently voted to establish a confidential, voluntary medical error reporting system that hospitals and healthcare providers could use without fear of lawsuits. There is similar pending legislation in the House. RN 9/04.
UNDERSTANDING PEANUT ALLERGIES – there are more than one million Americans with severe peanut allergies, the number one food allergy in the United States. Cases of severe peanut allergies have increased greatly in the last few years. According to researchers at UCLA, peanut allergies are more common in the United States, although more peanuts are consumed in China. The scientists theorize that the way peanuts are processed in America may bring out the allergen potential.
If the theory is accurate, there are possible preventive measures to avoid peanut reactions. One experimental treatment involved giving test subjects an anti-allergy medication (anti-IgE) that resulted in an increased tolerance to peanuts from half a peanut to an average of nine.
The research into medications to prevent peanut allergies is ongoing. In the meantime, the researchers suggest caution for peanut allergy-sufferers when eating in restaurants that serve Chinese, Thai, and other Far Eastern cuisines as the cooks may use the same wok to make more than one dish, allowing peanut oil to leach into other foods
Speaking of allergies, your addiction to antacids may cause food allergies. In one study, 25 percent of test subjects developed signs of food allergies after taking antacids like Tums, proton-pump inhibitors like Prilosec, or h-2 inhibitors like Zantac for 3 months. Along with blocking stomach acids, antacids also block the action of the digestive enzyme pepsin. Since the food cannot be degraded, the immune system assumes the food is dangerous and attacks it. Use the products only if you have a diagnosed condition. Men’s Health 5/04.
NUTRITIONAL QUIZ ANSWER: b) carbohydrates in the beans called oligosaccharides produce gas. Throwing away the soaking water gets rid of at least some of them. You can also add Beano (or a generic version) to the beans before eating – some people find this helps. University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter 6/03.
