Health Archives - Page 13 of 18

Dr Art Hister – Fish Oil and Pregnancy

Some studies have shown that if pregnant women eat more fish, their babies may end up with slightly higher IQs at the age of 7 than the babies of moms who don’t eat as much fish during pregnancy.

And in our rush (I was going to say “in our arrogance” but that was simply too arrogant on my part) to believe that we understand stuff long before we actually know what we’re talking about, a lot of experts have recommended that pregnant women and prospective moms increase their intake of fish in order to get higher levels of fish oil products in their blood streams.

Well, there are certainly lots of good reasons to eat more (safe) fish, especially by moms, but making your baby smarter as a result is not one of them.

Not, that is, if you believe – and I do – a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association which enrolled 2000 pregnant women, half of whom got fish oil supplements and half of whom got a placebo of vegetable oil.

When the babies were evaluated at12 months they found no cognitive score differences in the babies when they were evaluated at 18 months, Why? 3 potential reasons.

Fish oils supplements don’t actually improve cognitive scores
The women in this study were already getting enough fish oil in their regular diet so taking supplements would not have shown any benefit
Maybe vegetable oil supplements – the placebo – increases cognitive scores as much as fish oil so the researchers were not able to detect a measurable difference.

Whatever. Bottom line: fish is good for you and supplements are, well, no one knows really. So eat lots of (safe) fish.

Dr Art Hister – Food to Lower LDL

First, the very, very good news: a study has shown that a combination of foods – not just single good-guy foods such as fish or veggies but the whole shebang put together – can significantly lower the risk of bad health consequences in individuals who eat that combo, and in only a short period of time, which may be even better news.

Thus, in this small study of 44 overweight people from Lund University in Sweden, the individuals who ate the way they were told to eat lowered their LDL levels (that’s the “bad” cholesterol) by a staggering 33 % through diet alone (in most diets the maximum LDL-lowering effect is usually about 15-20 %), their total cholesterol levels fell by 14 %, and they also experienced significantly improved levels of other important metabolic factors such as clotting proteins.

So what’s the bad news, you wonder.

Just this: the foods they were given to eat which were very rich in the usual good-guy elements (anti-oxidants, fish oils, probiotics, fibre etc.) and which included good stuff like blueberries and veggies also included heavy doses of barley, soy protein, oily fish (which in Sweden must surely have been herring and the like) and vinegar.

I think if it were me, I’d settle for less of a drop in LDL if it also meant less of an intake of tofu, barley, and herring.

Dr Art Hister – Drugs for Mild Alzheimer’s Disease

A frustrating but likely accurate analysis of a drug widely-used to treat early (or mild) Alzheimer’s disease concludes that the drug is not effective in these cases.

This new study was published in the highly-respected journal, Archives of Neurology, and in this analysis of several previously published studies about the drug memantine, the authors of this report found that memantine does not slow either memory decline of cognitive function decline in mild cases of Alzheimer’s disease.

It’s a frustrating analysis, as I wrote earlier, because frankly, there are so few drugs that can be used to try to stem the progress of AD, so taking away one that is prescribed by many doctors is well, frustrating, but it’s important to note, especially for those people who believe that anything, even if it’s only slightly effective, is better than nothing when it comes to such a depressing condition as AD, that this is simply not true: using nothing is often a better choice given that all drugs, including memantine, have potential significant side effects and complications associated with their use.

And that’s a very good principle – nothing may be the best choice – to remember for all conditions involving the use of potentially problematic medications, which is why it’s always a great tactic to make very good friends with your pharmacist so that you can ask him or her about those potential risks when you’re put on a new drug.

Dr Art Hister – Sun Exposure

If you’re worried about skin cancer, here’s another thing to worry about.

An interesting review of about 41 patients (published in the Archives of Dermatology) trying to ward off a recurrence of basal cell carcinoma, one of the two most common forms of skin cancer, found that (and I’m actually quite surprised to learn that even the men were doing this), in this study at least, a large majority (80%) of those people who had a basal cell skin cancer were actually listening to their doctors and were using sunscreen every day, avoiding sun exposure during peak hours, and wearing appropriate clothing to cover up exposed areas of skin.

That’s the terrific news.

The consequent bad news, however, is that in their understandable zeal to avoid the sun, over half of them ended up with vitamin D deficiency (you get most of your vitamin D, of course, from sun exposure).

Bottom line: if you are fervent about avoiding the sun for whatever reason, then it’s a good idea to take vitamin D supplements.

Dr Art Hister – Coffee and Brain Cancer

The hardest thing I have to do in my regular health talks to the public is convince that legion of coffee-haters out there (you know who you are) that coffee is actually a health drink.

So while most anti-coffee folks consider coffee to be nothing more than a vehicle to deliver caffeine, coffee is in fact a health drink loaded with minerals, anti-oxidants, and god-knows-what-else that goes into a good cup of coffee (and I for one don’t consider that brown fluid that you get from most coffee outlets to be real coffee; real coffee for me is a good hand-ground espresso, or even a double).

Studies have shown that coffee drinkers have lower risks of lots and lots of adverse health consequences such as two that stand out for me: Type 2 diabetes and dementia.

And you can now add brain cancer to that pro-side of the coffee ledger.

According to a recent huge multi-country study of over 400,000 individuals which was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, people who drink as little as one-half cup of coffee a day had up to a 34 % lower risk of being diagnosed with a type of brain cancer known as a glioma (and yes, I have to grudgingly admit that those who drank tea regularly also seemed to get the same benefit in this study).

I’d tell you more but to be honest, I have got to go and enjoy another brain-saving double cappuccino!

Dr Art Hister – Gluten Free Diets

Here’s an important warning for anyone who has been diagnosed with celiac disease, and perhaps even for those who have never officially been diagnosed as celiac but who still think they may be: stick to your gluten-free diet.

According to a small study (17 people) presented at a recent meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology, celiac disease may be becoming refractory in some people. Meaning that, for a few people, even if they are on a gluten-free diet, their symptoms do not abate and they require medical therapy (drugs to alleviate the symptoms and to reduce the inflammation).
So why this advice to stick to a gluten-free diet, you may well ask , seeing as it doesn’t work for these refractory cases.

Because the researchers believe that it’s much more likely that the disease becomes refractory in people who don’t stick to a gluten-free diet in the first place.

In other words, if you’re a celiac, the more you cheat on your diet (which is pretty easy to do by people who have few or minimal symptoms), the more likely it is that the disease will become refractory.

So, if you don’t want to battle with a condition that ends up controlling you rather than you controlling it, stick to a gluten-free diet from the moment you think you may be a celiac.
Besides, there are so many great gluten-free recipes and foods available these days.

Dr Art Hister – Why Women Live Longer

Here’s a poser for which there are no easy answers, although there’s a Nobel Prize in it for the person who comes up with a way to counteract it: why do women outlive men?

This is true in every single country in the world (I believe that the Maldives, wherever those are – or that is – was the last place in the world, according to WHO, where men still outlived women. But that reversed sometime last year, much to the chagrin, no doubt of Maldivean men).

Here in Canada, by the way, the difference in life expectancy between men and women is just under 5 years, a gap that has narrowed a bit over the last decade, and each time the new statistics come out, some headlines (particularly from more liberal publications and media groups) imply that this narrowing is actually not a good thing for women, in that it means we are doing a better job at keeping men alive than we are doing at keeping women alive.

Speaking as man, though, I say, “Hey, it’s about time we started doing that.”

Anyways, all this was brought up because a survey from New York City found that while women in the Big Apple can expect to live to 82 (the overall American life expectancy for women is 81), men in Gotham live only to 76 on average.

But here’s the thing: the researchers believe that most of that gap is due to preventable causes. In other words, men in NYC die much earlier from all sorts of things they can actually do something about, something that I think is also true for men in every culture and every country.

These preventable factors include: heart disease (90% of heart attacks are linked to poor lifestyle habits), AIDS, murder (this is New York, after all), obesity (a staggering 71% of men in NYC are overweight or obese compared to only 57% of women) , poor nutrition, being sedentary (more than NYC women, clearly), and (this is a big one for Americans, where health care costs so much, although every male should think about this one because men are reluctant in general to follow health advice or to see a doctor regularly) not attending a health care professional on a regular basis.

Dr Art Hister – Fish Oil and Pregnancy

Dr Art Hister – Food to Lower LDL

Dr Art Hister – Drugs for Mild Alzheimer’s Disease

Dr Art Hister – Sun Exposure

Dr Art Hister – Coffee and Brain Cancer

Dr Art Hister – Gluten Free Diets

Dr Art Hister – Why Women Live Longer

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Dr Art Hister – Fish Oil and Pregnancy

Dr Art Hister – Food to Lower LDL

Dr Art Hister – Drugs for Mild Alzheimer’s Disease

Dr Art Hister – Sun Exposure

Dr Art Hister – Coffee and Brain Cancer

Dr Art Hister – Gluten Free Diets

Dr Art Hister – Why Women Live Longer

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