Vitamin E supplements do more harm

Good morning friends. Indiscriminate use of high-dose Vitamin E supplementation does more harm than good, a new study has warned.

"There were so many conflicting reports about Vitamin E and its effect on various diseases, particularly heart disease, that we wanted to set the record straight, says Prof. Dov Lichtenberg of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine.

Study co-author Dr. Ilya Pinchuk said: "Our new study shows that some people may be harmed by the treatment, whereas others may benefit from it. Now we’re trying to identify groups of people that are most likely to benefit from the effects of Vitamin E.”

The researchers evaluated the results of the prominent studies measuring the health benefits of Vitamin E but reached varying conclusions. There have been many previous publications on the subject.

Analysis of the results of all these past publications together revealed that subjects who did not take a Vitamin E supplement enjoyed more quality-adjusted-life-years (QALY), a standard parameter used in medicine to assess the effect of medical interventions.

Dr. Pinchuk said: "To explain the meaning of this parameter, consider a participant who was healthy during the first 10 out of 20 years of the study, but then suffered a stroke and became dependent on others throughout the following 10 years.

“The QALY during the first 10 years of healthy life is 10, but after the stroke the quality of life is only half of what this person had before. Therefore, the second decade is considered the equivalent of merely 5 years of healthy life and in sum a person’s QALY is 15,” Dr. Pinchuk added.

The researchers examined data from more than 300,000 subjects in the US, Europe and Israel.

"Our major finding was that the average quality-adjusted life years (QALY) of Vitamin E-supplemented individuals was 0.30 less than that of untreated people. This, of course, does not mean that everybody consuming Vitamin E shortens their life by almost 4 months. But on average, the quality-adjusted longevity is lower for vitamin-treated people. This says something significant," Dr. Pinchuk said.

The results were recently reported in ATVB, a leading journal of cardiology, and discussed in the journal BioFactors. The Times of India

61st Republican Day

Wishing All A
61st Republican Day
To My Countrymen

Happy Uttarayan from Gujarat

Happy Uttarayan to All

from Dhirendra from Gujarat.

May this 2010 1st feastival

bring Happiness to your life.

I wish you and your family a very

Happy Makar Sankranthi.

Calcium vital to tickle our taste buds

Good morning friends. A new study has shown that calcium plays a vital role in tickling our taste buds.

The team of Japanese researchers have shown that calcium channels on the tongue are the targets of compounds that can enhance taste. Kokumi taste foods contain various compounds that have no taste themselves, but can enhance the basic sweet, salty and umami taste sensation they co-exist with. Lead researcher Yuzuru Eto examined whether calcium channels- which sense and regulate the levels of calcium in the body- might be the mechanism involved.

They found that calcium channels are closely related to the receptors that sense sweet and umami (savory) tastes and that glutathione (a common kokumi taste element) is known to interact with calcium channels. During the study, researchers created several small molecules that resembled glutathione and analyzed how well these compounds activated calcium channels in cell samples.

They diluted the same test substances in flavored water (salt water, sugar water, etc.) and asked volunteers (all trained in discriminating tastes) to rate how strong the flavors were. The findings revealed that the molecules induced the largest activity in calcium receptors and also elicited the strongest flavor enhancement in the taste tests. The research tested several other known calcium channel activators, including calcium, and found all exhibited some degree of flavor enhancement, while a synthetic calcium channel blocker could suppress flavors. The Times of India

Greetings on New Years Day

Wishing you all

the warmth and cheer

of the Holiday Season

today and always.
Happy new Year!

Visual source: blogspot

3 easy ways to soothe stiff joints

Good morning friends. Don’t you hate it when you get out of bed with a pain in your head, neck, and back? So before you nod off, do a quick posture check. There are three positions that help the ease strain on these body parts...

Poses for relaxation

According to researchers, joint-friendly sleeping habits can help protect creaky body parts from developing a crick. Choose one of these postures: - If you sleep on your back, put a small pillow under your knees. - If you sleep on your side, avoid tucking your neck and chin into the fetal position. - If you sleep on your stomach, put a pillow under one side of your body, so your head and neck aren’t strained.

Did you know?

Rather than popping pills, eat healthy to reduce the risk of arthritis. Have a cup of green tea. It is great for bone cartilage. You can also make a daily routine of having a bowl of salad before each meal. It does a whole lot of good for your hands and knees. – The Times of India

Steroid jabs delay diabetic retinopathy

Good morning friends. A new study has revealed that injecting steroids into the eye can significantly reduce progression of diabetic retinopathy, a complication of diabetes that can cause vision loss and blindness.

Proliferative diabetic retinopathy occurs when new blood vessels form on the optic disc or another component of the retina. Controlling blood glucose levels can help prevent the development of retinopathy and laser treatments can reduce the risk of vision loss, but the identification of other treatments remains desirable.

The researchers showed that steroid injections interfered with the creation of new blood vessels, possibly by reducing the production of compounds that spur their growth.

During the study, lead researcher Dr Neil M. Bressler, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore analyzed 840 eyes of 693 participants who had macular edema, a leakage of fluid into part of the retina that occurs in many cases of retinopathy.

Eyes were randomly assigned to receive one of three treatments: photocoagulation (a laser treatment that destroys blood vessels) or a 1-milligram or 4-milligram injection of triamcinolone acetonide directly into the eye as often as every four months.

After two years, the research team found that retinopathy had progressed in 31 percent of 330 eyes treated with photocoagulation, 29 percent of 256 eyes treated with 1-milligram doses of triamcinolone acetonide and 21 percent of 254 eyes treated with 4-milligram doses.

These differences appeared to be sustained at three years. "Use of this intravitreal [injected into the eye] corticosteroid preparation to reduce the likelihood of progression of retinopathy is not warranted at this time because of the increased risk of glaucoma and cataract associated with intravitreal steroid use," the authors write.

"Any treatment to be used routinely to prevent proliferative diabetic retinopathy likely needs to be relatively safe because the condition already can be treated successfully and safely with panretinal photocoagulation.

“Nevertheless, further investigation with regard to the role of pharmacotherapy for reduction of the incidence of progression of retinopathy appears to be warranted," they added. – The Times of India

The study appears in journal Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.