when the governments of some producing countries banned or limited food experts causing anxiety in many trade-dependent countries.
Cotton root rot a long-established disease in much of the state has been a problem for young trees according to Stein.
#Is football stress hazardous to fans health? The excitement of football and even the activities and feelings of anticipation leading up to games can be unhealthy in ways many do not realize according to Jody Gilchrist a nurse practitioner at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Heart and Vascular
Clinic at The Kirklin Clinic at Acton Road. Critical matchups tight games and crushing defeats provide heightened sensory inputs that trigger sympathetic responses and the release of adrenaline
which can reduce blood flow to the heart and other muscles and increase heart rate and blood pressure.
Chronic high levels of stress hormones lead to higher heart rates and higher blood pressures that over time tend to cause the heart to thicken
just as any other muscle would in response to heavy workloads The body doesn't distinguish between'bad'stress from life
or work and'good'stress caused by game-day excitement Gilchrist said. It impacts your health either way.
In addition to the effects of stress on the body some add insult to injury by eating
and drinking more than they should while cheering on their favorite teams. Moderation is the key
but people tend to eat more under stress. Some people are stress eaters and others tend to eat more
Alcohol can further complicate matters particularly for heart patients. Since alcohol is metabolized by the liver it can alter the way heart medications
and other drugs work in the body Gilchrist said. Drug interactions aside physicians generally recommend limiting alcohol intake to two drinks per day for both dietary and behavioral reasons.
Binge drinking is bad because alcohol contains empty calories Gilchrist said. Since alcohol decreases your inhibitions you are more likely to overeat
or eat things that you might normally avoid. You can try substituting light beers for regular beers
or squeeze a stress ball to reduce anxiety and smooth out your emotions. â#¢Take a brief walk at halftime
â#¢Because sodium causes fluid retention--something especially bad for heart patients--a good rule of thumb is to avoid foods that have more than 1 mg of sodium per calorie.
Even the smallest choices can have a positive impact on your health so make a point to incorporate many small changes rather than setting unrealistic goals such as staying away from fun foods altogether Gilchrist said.
In the end your health will win --even if your team does not. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Alabama at Birmingham.
and importance to the health of the landscape he noted citing wetlands teaming with birds amphibians and beneficial insects.
American elm is gone mostly from Dutch elm disease and ash trees are being threatened by the emerald ash borer. Restoring tall prairie grasses Seven years ago Johnson became one of the founders of the Ecosun Prairie Farms to demonstrate the viability of a working grass farm as a means of restoring tall grass prairie and pothole wetlands.
The take-home message is that health and environmental agendas are aligned not in the current dietary recommendations Heller said.
However reduced consumption would have both health and environmental benefits. In their Journal of Industrial Ecology paper Heller and Keoleian also looked at wasted food
and the public in danger of foregoing the potential public health benefits of e-cigarettes. The authors writing today in the journal Addiction analyse THE WHO-commissioned Background Paper on E-cigarettes which looks to have been influential in the recently published WHO report calling for greater regulation of e-cigarettes.
Professor Ann Mcneill lead author from the National Addiction Centre at King's college London says: We were surprised by the negativity of the commissioned review
and found it misleading and not an accurate reflection of available evidence. E-cigarettes are new
and we certainly don't yet have all the answers as to their long-term health impact but what we do know is that they are much safer than cigarettes
and put off smokers from using e-cigarettes putting us in danger of foregoing the public health benefits these products could have.
Dr Jacques le Houezec co-author and consultant In public Health and Tobacco dependence in France and Honorary Lecturer at the University of Nottingham says:
E-cigarette use has been led a consumer revolution the speed at which these products have developed and evolved shows just how much smokers are ready to adopt harm-reduction products.
The use of e-cigarettes could save millions of lives during this century and have the most important public health impact in the history of tobacco use.
The paper follows an editorial published this week in The british Journal of General Practice by public health experts from UCL who also argue that public health messages about e-cigarettes should be based on facts and not prejudice.
They estimate that for every million smokers who switch from tobacco to e-cigarettes over 6000 premature deaths would be prevented each year in the UK.
but it is vital that public health experts separate opinion from evidence and present the latter as objectively as possible.
or death wasn't clear said Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller Ph d. study senior author and distinguished university professor emerita department of epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Researchers suggested that higher dietary potassium intake may be more beneficial before high blood pressure develops. They also said there was no evidence of any association between potassium intake and hemorrhagic stroke
People should check with their doctor about how much potassium they should eat she said. The study was included observational
In their article Michelle Boone of Miami University and her colleagues note that most pesticide toxicity tests used in risk assessments are conducted by pesticide manufacturers themselves
#Allergic reaction to antibiotic residues in foods? You may have to watch what your fruits and veggies eatpeople with food allergies always have to watch what they eat.
Now they may have to watch what their fruits and vegetables eat as it seems it's possible to have an allergic reaction to antibiotic residues in food.
An article published in the September issue of Annals of Allergy Asthma and Immunology the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) examines the case of a 10 year-old girl who had an anaphylactic (severely allergic reaction after eating blueberry pie.
Although she had a medical history of asthma and seasonal allergies and known anaphylaxis to penicillin and cow's milk she wasn't known to be allergic to any of the ingredients in the pie.
After weeks of testing on both the young girl and a sample of the pie the article authors decided that what had caused the reaction was contaminated a streptomycin blueberry.
Streptomycin in addition to being used a drug to fight disease is used also as a pesticide in fruit to combat the growth of bacteria fungi and algae.
As far as we know this is the first report that links an allergic reaction to fruits treated with antibiotic pesticides said allergist Anne Des Roches MDFRCP lead study author.
Certain European countries ban the use of antibiotics for growing foods but the United states and Canada still allow them for agricultural purposes.
The authors note that new regulations from the Food and Drug Administration may help to reduce antibiotic contaminants in food
which will help reduce antibiotic resistance and may also help reduce this type of event.
This is a very rare allergic reaction said allergist James Sublett MD ACAAI president-elect. Nevertheless it's something allergists need to be aware of
and that emergency room personnel may need to know about in order to help determine where anaphylactic reactions may arise.
Anyone who is at risk for a life-threatening allergic reaction should always carry epinephrine. They also need to know how to use their epinephrine in an emergency situation.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by American College of Allergy Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
#Taxes, subsidies could encourage healthier diet, lower healthcare costsin a Viewpoint published in the Journal of the American Medical Association a team of Boston researchers call for the implementation of taxes
and subsidies to improve dietary quality in the United states. The researchers from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science
and Policy at Tufts University Harvard university and Boston Children's Hospital write that policies taxing nearly all packaged foods
and subsidizing healthier foods could both help people make meaningful dietary changes and substantially reduce health care costs.
With climbing rates of obesity diabetes and other diet-related illnesses helping to drive health care expenses to an all-time high we are at a crossroads said first author Dariush Mozaffarian M d. Dr. P
. H dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. The strategies we rely on now--labels on food packages
senior author David S. Ludwig M d. Ph d. director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children's Hospital;
and chronic disease Ludwig said. It's clear that poor nutrition has a major role in some of the leading American health problems including diabetes and heart disease.
We must act now to reduce the financial barriers to more sensible dietary choices and help people live long productive lives.
Reducing the rate of diet-related diseases and their economic costs would be a huge economic and welfare boost to Americans
and health disparities amongst the poor and other disadvantaged Americans and potentially save billions of dollars in year in health care costs for diet-related diseases.
It's a powerful example of how organisms in ecosystems once given a chance can make themselves resistant to stresses and changes.
so they are a direct indicator of the Bay's health said lead-author Cassie Gurbisz of the Center's Horn Point Laboratory.
or pose any kind of threat to humans says Dr. Mary jane Epps a postdoctoral researcher at NC State
which is part of Dr. Rob Dunn's Your Wild Life lab. Dunn is an associate professor of biological sciences at NC State
or garages eating the dead stuff that accumulates there says Dr. Holly Menninger director of public science in the Your Wild Life lab at NC State
We were did sure that not contain contaminants or infectious organisms and we performed an analysis
An unhealthy diet is linked closely to cardiovascular disease diabetes and some cancers. Eating a healthy diet is an important part of the strategy to prevent adverse health outcomes.
Evaluating population trends in diet quality is important because it can offer guidance for public health policy.
The authors used the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 (AHEI-2010) to investigate trends in diet quality in the U s. adult population from 1999 to 2010 using a sample of 29124 adults from the National
Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES. A higher AHEI-2010 score indicated a more healthful diet.
However overall dietary quality remains poor indicating room for improvement and presenting challenges for both public health researchers and policy makers.
Growing Socioeconomic Disparity in Dietary Qualityin a related commentary Takehiro Sugiyama M d. Ph d. of the National Center for Global Health and Medicine Tokyo and Martin F. Shapiro
#Fruit consumption cuts cardiovascular disease risk by up to 40 percentdaily fruit consumption cuts the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) by up to 40%according to research presented at ESC Congress by Dr Huaidong
Dr Du said: CVD including ischaemic heart disease (IHD) and stroke is the leading cause of death worldwide.
Improving diet and lifestyle is critical for CVD risk reduction in the general population but the large majority of this evidence has come from western countries and hardly any from China.
The current study included 451 681 participants with no history of CVD and not on antihypertensive treatment at baseline from the China Kadoorie Biobank (1) conducted in 10 different areas of China 5
Dr Du said: Our data clearly shows that eating fresh fruit can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease including ischaemic heart disease and stroke (particularly haemorrhagic stroke.
And not only that the more fruit you eat the more your CVD risk goes down.
Dr Du said: Our data shows that eating fresh fruit was associated with lower baseline BP.
and CV mortality in more than 61000 patients from the China Kadoorie Biobank who had CVD or hypertension at baseline.
Patients with CVD and hypertension should also be encouraged to consume more fresh fruit. Many western populations have experienced a rapid decrease in CVD mortality during the past several decades especially stroke mortality
Our results show the benefit of eating fruit in the healthy general population and in patients with CVD and hypertension.
The above story is provided based on materials by European Society of Cardiology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
Managing the demand better for example by focusing on health education would bring double benefits--maintaining healthy populations and greatly reducing critical pressures on the environment.
All participants were already taking part in an annual representative population survey about smoking and health in the Australian state of Victoria
The above story is provided based on materials by BMJ-British Medical Journal. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
and her colleagues with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that youth who have touched never even a regular tobacco cigarette
Shanta Dube associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Georgia State's School of Public health is a lead author of the recently released study Intentions to smoke cigarettes among never-smoking U s. middle and high school electronic cigarette
Lead researcher Dr Cristina Banks-Leite from the Department of Life sciences at Imperial College London said:
Over a period of nine years a team of more than 100 researchers led by Dr. Renata Pardini Dr. Marianna Dixo and Prof.
control type 2 diabetesin a comprehensive review of recent randomized clinical trials and observational studies of diabetes and nutrition Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard School of Public health investigators have identified specific foods
and dietary patterns that are beneficial in preventing and controlling diabetes. The findings were published June 7 2014 in Lancet.
We undertook this review because we believe that most of the current dietary guidelines for patients with diabetes do not reflect recent evidence.
Nutrition can be used as a medicine to prevent and control diabetes in a very effective way says Osama Hamdy M d. Ph d. Medical Director of Joslin's Obesity Clinical Program and Assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical school.
With the global epidemic of type 2 diabetes it's critical to invest in effective diabetes prevention
and management says Frank B. Hu M d. Ph d. M p h. senior author of the study and Professor Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology Harvard School of Public health and Director Boston Obesity
Nutrition Research center Epidemiology and Genetics Core. An unhealthy diet has long been considered a major contributor to the development of diabetes
but only in the past two decades has this role been confirmed by prospective observational studies and clinical trials.
One major finding was that certain foods and dietary patterns can help prevent type 2 diabetes even without weight loss.
People who eat a Mediterranean diet with foods such as olive oil whole grains and leafy vegetables and fruits have a lower risk of developing diabetes even
when they don't lose weight Dr. Hamdy says. Foods such as oat cereal yogurt and dairy products green leafy vegetables grapes apples blueberries and walnuts were associated with reduced diabetes risk.
Drinking coffee and even decaffeinated coffee were associated also with lower type 2 diabetes risk. Participants who followed a Mediterranean eating plan--without restricting calories--showed a greater improvement in glycemic control
and insulin sensitivity than participants who ate other popular diets. In addition overweight patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes who followed the Mediterranean diet had need less for antihyperglycemic medications compared with participants on a low-fat diet.
Overall a variety of eating plans including the Mediterranean low-carbohydrate/low glycemic index and high-protein diets improved glycemic control and cardiovascular disease risk factors in patients with diabetes compared with control diets.
This offers patients a range of options for diabetes management. Foods associated with a higher risk of diabetes include red and processed meat sugar-sweetened beverages alcohol in excess quantities and refined grains such as white flour.
Recent studies of fat intake and diabetes incidence support the notion that eating the right kind of fats is beneficial to health.
This goes against years of advocacy of a low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet. When people started eating less fat they compensated by eating more refined carbohydrates
which stimulate insulin secretion and increase fat deposition. A major problem with the American diet is refined too much grains and added sugar
which are associated with the rise in obesity and type 2 diabetes Dr. Hamdy says. Current evidence shows that some fats such as those from red and processed meats are associated with higher cardiovascular risk
while other fats such as those from vegetable oils and nuts are associated with lower risk. The Joslin nutritional guidelines for diabetes recommend a diet with relatively high amounts of healthy fats and protein but moderately low amounts of carbohydrates.
We know now that the quality of fat and carbohydrates is more important than the quantity of fat
and carbohydrates Dr. Hamdy says. Since 2005 participants in the Joslin Why WAIT (Weight Achievement and Intensive Treatment) program who have followed these guidelines
and exercised regularly have lost weight and maintained it for five years and significantly reduced their diabetes medications by more than 50 percent.
The program's nutritional guidelines have been adopted by many institutes and organizations across the globe. The Why WAIT program works very well in practice Dr. Hamdy says.
People enjoy what they eat while improving the quality of their diet. Now that we have clear evidence we are striving to educate the American public about what foods to eat to prevent diabetes
and improve overall health he says. Since almost all knowledge of dietary prevention and management of diabetes comes from research in developed countries more studies are needed in less developed regions to help patients with diabetes worldwide improve their health.
We need to develop nutritional guidelines that take into account dietary patterns accessibility to foods and types of agriculture in different regions of the world Dr. Hu says.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Joslin Diabetes Center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference e
#Synthesis produces new fungus-derived antibiotica fortuitous collaboration at Rice university has led to the total synthesis of a recently discovered natural antibiotic.
The laboratory recreation of a fungus-derived antibiotic viridicatumtoxin B may someday help bolster the fight against bacteria that evolve resistance to treatments in hospitals and clinics around the world.
As part of the process Rice organic chemist K c. Nicolaou and structural biologist Yousif Shamoo and their colleagues created
and tested a number of variants of viridicatumtoxin B that could lead to the simplified synthesis of a new generation of more effective antibiotics.
The work reported this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) focused on a tetracycline discovered in 2008 by scientists who isolated small amounts from penicillium fungi.
The yield wasn't nearly enough for extensive testing but it provided a basis for the discoverers to analyze its structure through magnetic resonance imaging Nicolaou said.
We're inspired by molecules that are biologically active and have the potential to become medicines one day he said.
The new discovery belongs to a class of antibiotics known as tetracyclines for their distinctive molecular structure.
They proved potent in initial tests on Gram-positive bacteria so named for a staining technique to mark bacteria that are more susceptible to antibiotics than their Gram-negative counterparts.
The first tetracyclines discovered in the late 1940s ushered in a new class of powerful antibacterial agents to treat high-mortality diseases among them anthrax and plague as well as such bacterial infections as chlamydia syphilis and Lyme disease.
To find new weapons especially against superbugs that resist nearly all antibiotics synthetic chemists pursue the complex process of mimicking the structures of effective natural molecules as they build drug candidates atom by atom.
Tetracyclines are widespread antibiotics today but bacteria are building resistance to a lot of them Nicolaou said.
This new tetracycline is not plentiful in nature so the only way we can make it available to study by biologists for its potential in medicine is to synthesize it in the laboratory.
Three years of effort led the chemists working at Rice's Bioscience Research Collaborative to find a structure that not only matches that of natural viridicatumtoxin B
but also allows the possibility of synthetic variants that could match or surpass its antibiotic potency.
Nicolaou who is known best for synthesizing the widely used anticancer drug taxol and the chemotherapy agent calicheamicin said the complicated new molecule offered a challenge he couldn't resist.
The structure (the discoverers) assigned to this molecule was suspicious to us. We didn't actually believe that it was correct he said.
Given this we initiated a research program to synthesize this compound for three purposes he said.
One was to develop new synthetic chemistry which is always the case in these kinds of endeavors.
Two was to synthesize the molecule itself and confirm its structure. Three was to use the technology we've developed to make analogs of it in the hope that we could find something simpler and yet better in terms of its biological and pharmacological properties.
Nicolaou's team met all of those goals and did indeed revise the structure of the molecule.
The lab turned synthetic samples over to biologist Shamoo and his group for testing against a number of bacterial strains and comparison with natural viridicatumtoxin B. This was very exciting for us said Nicolaou who moved his lab from the Scripps Research Institute
and the University of California at San diego last year to form these kinds of collaborations.
In order to investigate the biological properties of our synthesized compounds we turned to the Shamoo laboratory for its expertise in the area of antibiotics and drug-resistant bacteria.
The results also suggested the possibility of making variants by modifying certain domains of the molecule to improve its overall pharmacological properties.
Our expertise in antibiotic resistance and his synthesis of viridicatumtoxin B and analogs were a perfect opportunity for us to work together on an important problem.
Nicolaou acknowledged it could be years--even decades--before an antibiotic derived from viridicatumtoxin B is available to patients.
and the tools developed through the process should prove valuable in the synthesis of other fungal tetracyclines.
and run to develop it into a drug he said. We have to worry about solubility biodegradation availability
and so many different things before we can get on the path of clinical development because that part of the process is very expensive.
In this month's print edition of the journal Angewandte Chemie Nicolaou laid out strategies for drug development to make
It's said that for a drug to be discovered a chemist has to make 10000 compounds on average he said.
It also means that it takes 12 to 15 years to develop a drug from the beginning to the end and costs between $1. 5 billion to $2 billion.
The interface between chemistry and biology is the key to success in discovering drugs. Co-authors of the JACS paper are graduate students Christopher Hale Lizanne Nilewski and Kathryn Beabout and postdoctoral fellows Christian Nilewski Heraklidia Ioannidou and Abdelatif El Marrouni all of Rice
and new or improved roads are vital for farmers said Dr Gopalasamy Reuben Clements from James Cook.
The good news is that there are still expanses of the world where agriculture can be improved greatly without large environmental costs said Dr Nathan Mueller of Harvard university USA.
#Where you live may be putting you at risk for foodborne illness, researcher findsimproving education about risky food handling behaviors would reduce the amount of foodborne illness
and help improve food security around the world according to Kansas State university research. For their study the university's Kadri Koppel assistant professor of human nutrition and Edgar Chambers IV university distinguished professor and director of the Sensory Analysis Center worked with around 100 consumers from India
These bacteria lead to many cases of foodborne illness and we need a better understanding of food handling practices to find the risky behaviors that may lead to contamination.
The research found mixed results on this with most of the consumers in Argentina and Colombia storing meat on higher shelves putting them at a higher risk for contamination.
Dr Dan Bebber of Biosciences at the University of Exeter said: If crop pests continue to spread at current rates many of the world's biggest crop producing nations will be inundated by the middle of the Century posing a grave threat to global food security.
and pathogens and historical observations of a further 424 species. Significant use was made of historical CABI records which document crop pests and diseases around the world from 1822 to the present day.
Dr Timothy Holmes Head of Technical Solutions at CABI's Plantwise knowledge bank said: By unlocking the potential to understand the distribution of crop pests
and diseases we're moving one step closer to protecting our ability to feed a growing global population.
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