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No AdminsVitamins linked with higher death risk in older women
Public Group active 12 years, 1 month agoThey are being increasingly investigated for use in medical applications such as drug delivery and release. nWhilst many of their effects have been well documented, some of their mechanisms of action are not fully understood. Concern has arisen that widespread long-term nanoparticle use may “trickle down” into the environment, sparking unforeseen effects on plant or animal, or even human, health.
Drs Christian Gluud and Goran Bjelakovic, who review research for the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews to evaluate best evidence, said: “We think the paradigm ‘The more the better’ is wrong.”
They say dietary supplementation has shifted from preventing deficiency to trying to promote wellness and prevent diseases, and caution: “We believe that for all micronutrients, risks are associated with insufficient and too-large intake.”
Helen Bond of the British Dietetic Association said some people, like the elderly, might need to take certain supplements. For example, vitamin D is recommended for people over the age of 65.
Analysts in the US and Iran and political figures inside Iran have complained the government has spent needed cash on goods less pressing than medicine.
“The sanctions have accentuated the already existing bad situation that was due to corruption and mismanagement,” says Sahimi. Iran’s currency, the Rial, is also believed to have lost 80% of its value against the dollar since the beginning of 2012, making imports prohibitively expensive.
Cerium oxide is used in some diesel fuels to improve combustion and reduce particulate emissions.
A prior report in Environmental Science and Technology studied the effect of these same nanoparticles on soybean when the plants were grown hydroponically – without soil – but the team behind the new paper suggest that a fuller picture is to analyse soybean grown in more natural conditions.
The US treasury department, which administers the US sanctions, says exports of medicine, medical devices and food “have been maintained at a steady level” in recent years.
As many as six million Iranian patients could be harmed by the drug shortage, Fatemeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of Iran’s Charity Foundation for Special Diseases and daughter of former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, wrote in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
“If there is in fact a shortage of some medicines in Iran, it is due to choices made by the Iranian government, not the US government,” spokesman John Sullivan said in a written statement.
Continue reading the main story “Start Quote This product is equivalent to industrial-strength bleach”
End Quote Food Standards Agency spokesman The supplement, which claims to have beneficial effects against a wide range of illnesses, ranging from HIV and hepatitis to H1N1 flu, has already been the subject of warnings from the Food and Drug Agency (FDA) in the US.
n”Effects seem to depend upon their physical and chemical characteristics – this is what scientists are aiming at better understanding, so that in future they can predict toxicity or safety based on these characteristics.” The cerium nanoparticles seemed to completely inhibit the bacteria’s ability to fix nitrogen.
Commenting on the wider toxicity of nanoparticles, Prof Vicki Stone from the Heriot-Watt University, Scotland, said: “Nanomaterials are not ‘equally hazardous’ or conversely ‘equally safe’.
nBut the drug shortage has turned many Iranian Americans into ersatz pharmacists.
Majid, a Persian language teacher in the Washington DC area, bought bags of vitamins and dietary supplements from discount retailer Costco this autumn. Like many immigrant groups in the US and the UK, Iranian Americans have long been accustomed to bringing care packages to loved ones back in the homeland.
To diagnose his patients, Amen uses blood tests, cognitive tests, an exploration of family history as well as a brain scan, known as a SPECT or a Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography scan. It shows how blood flows as a measure of activity in the brain.
In a highly publicised case, a 15-year-old boy from a nomadic tribe in Iran’s south-western province of Khuzestan died in July of haemophilia because his family did not have access to medicine.
The drug shortage puts as many as six million Iranians at risk, an Iranian charity has warned About half a million people of Iranian descent live in the US, according to the US Census.
Amateur pharmacists Amid the shortage, Iranians in need of the chemotherapy, cardiac, diabetes, haemophilia and other drugs have turned to the large Iranian diaspora for informal help.
Iran’s health minister was soon sacked after denouncing the drug shortage “There is not a proper channel through which they can pay, unless they send somebody to Pfizer with a suitcase full of cash,” says Muhammad Sahimi, an Iranian political analyst and engineering professor at the University of Southern California.
Mark Affleck, a retired executive in the California avocado industry, consulted Amen a year ago because, at 56, he says he felt “foggy and hazy”. So what is the point of the scan?
Continue reading the main story “Start Quote There’s something about seeing your brain scan change that is very powerful”
End Quote Mark Affleck A patient of Dr Daniel Amen But this is just common sense. A scan of his brain revealed a moonscape surface with the gaps and holes that Amen associates with poor health.
“That medicine – they cannot find it in Iran,” she says. Her 60-year-old brother Ibrahim, who lives in Tehran, takes Qualaquin, an anti-malaria drug, to keep his pacemaker functioning since his heart surgery. nBut with the Iranian economy in shambles, the drug is no longer available in the country, says Sarah, his sister, who asked not to be identified by her real name to shield her family from the Iranian authorities.
Corruption and mismanagement But the sanctions levied against Iranian banks, which are effectively cut off from the global financial system, have made it nigh impossible for Iranian companies to finance imports of whole drugs or raw ingredients, analysts say.
There is growing evidence that these bacteria have a significant impact on health.
Gut bug fuel A team at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland showed that the high and low fibre diets altered the types of bacteria living in the guts of the mice. nBacteria which can munch on soluble fibre, the type found in fruit and vegetables, flourished on the high-fibre diet and they in turn produced more short-chain fatty acids – a type of fat, which is absorbed into the blood.
At $3,600 Amen’s consultation and scan is not cheap and not all experts see the point of it.
Dr Gary Small, Director of the UCLA Longevity Center, says: “I’ve spent my career developing brain scan technology and I think there is a lot of promise to it. But a healthier lifestyle was always going to make me feel better. Is it going to be something helpful?'” Is it going to change the therapy? Despite all the tests, I am still 50 After two months I felt more alert, and revisiting Amen I could see small changes in the appearance of my re-scanned brain. I always ask myself, ‘Is this really going to change the patient’s outcome? But before I order any diagnostic test…
People should be able to make prudent decisions, such as not eating or drinking too much. People need to drive safely, get enough sleep, choose friends sensibly and have organising skills to avoid stress. It means your brain is beginning to struggle.”
Amen thinks our lifespan is in part determined by brain function. “It’s not normal, not even at 70,” says Amen.
If anyone finds this product on sale please get in touch with your local authority trading standards department as soon as possible.”
Legal action In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reported cases of severe nausea and vomiting among people taking the supplement, even though they had mixed it according to the instructions provided. “This product is equivalent to industrial-strength bleach.
“The agency is working with local authorities across the UK to stop this product being sold.
Zinc itself is an important dietary supplement and zinc deficiency is a large public health concern in the developing world, but zinc oxide nanoparticles have been shown to be toxic to mammalian cells grown in the laboratory.
However, effects in humans remain to be examined fully, and the researchers used comparatively low levels of zinc oxide in their experiments.
However, a possible solution may lie in another organ, the gut, and the bacteria which live there. The airways are more sensitive to irritation and more likely to become inflamed in people with asthma. nIt leads to a narrowing of the airways that make it harder to breathe.
The cells of the human body are vastly outnumbered by the trillions of microbes that live in and on it.
Then he arranged for a doctor friend to examine his mother, who was visiting from Iran, and to prescribe a large stock of blood thinner Warfarin to treat her heart disease, as well as a diabetes drug. I’m talking about 50 pounds.” nIn November Majid’s mother returned to Iran with “baggage full of medicine”, he said.
“They had like 10 bags,” he said. One of them was just full of medicine.
Sanctions against Iran’s oil industry have left the country short on foreign currency reserves. This week a prominent Iranian parliamentarian said oil revenues had declined 45% in the last nine months.
The plants grown in the presence of zinc oxide nanoparticles actually grew slightly better than control plants grown in the absence of nanoparticles. However, zinc built up in the edible parts of the plants, which included the leaves and the beans.
“I have heard that luxury cars have been imported with subsidized dollars, but I don’t know what happened to the dollars that were supposed to be allocated for importing medicine,” she said on state television, weeks before she was sacked.
Bacteria living in the roots of the soybean help provide it with essential nutrients They grew soybeans in a greenhouse in the presence of increasing amounts of the nanoparticles, monitoring the plants’ growth. In addition, the accumulation of the nanoparticles in different parts of the plant was also scrutinised.
And excess may even harm, as the study in Archives of Internal Medicine finds.
All of the women, in their 50s and 60s, were generally well nourished yet many had decided to take supplements. Experts have suspected for some time that supplements may only be beneficial if a person is deficient in a nutrient.A growing number of Iranians in the US have taken it upon themselves to send medicine to their loved ones back home.
To keep her brother’s heart beating, this autumn an Iranian immigrant living in the US state of Georgia devised a smuggling operation worthy of a le Carre novel.
nSoybean is a crop of huge commercial importance.
The researchers focussed on the effects of zinc oxide and cerium oxide nanoparticles. Globally, it is the fifth-largest crop and is the largest producer of edible oil and plant protein, such as tofu. In the current study, a team led by Prof Patricia Holden from the University of California tested the effects of two commonly used nanoparticles for their effects on the growth of soybean. Zinc oxide is a common component of cosmetics and ultimately ends up as a contaminant of solid waste generated by sewage treatment. This waste is widely used as an organic fertiliser.
And it is difficult to control for all other factors, like general physical health, that might have influenced the findings.
But they say their findings suggest that supplements should only be used if there is a strong medically-based cause for doing so because of the potential to cause harm.
“Based on existing evidence, we see little justification for the general and widespread use of dietary supplements,” Dr Jaakko Mursu of the University of Eastern Finland and his research colleagues said.
However, scientists think the vitamin inositol, taken with folic acid, may be more effective at preventing defects.
Despite taking folic acid, also known as vitamin B9, some woman still go on to have children with neural tube defects. Every year about 100 children in the UK are born with spina bifida and other neural tube defects.
Prospective mothers are advised to take folic acid as a way of preventing the condition.
Sepideh went from one pharmacy to another across Tehran in search of a refill, but none had any in stock. The Iranian factory that produces Gliclazide had been unable to import raw ingredients from Europe, she was told.
When Sepideh was in Tehran visiting family over the summer her mother’s supply of Gliclazide, a diabetes pill, became perilously low. But as Sepideh, a graduate student in the US state of Virginia, has found, residence in a land of relative plenty is no guarantee one can help those in need back home.
The scientists said these fatty acids acted as signals to the immune system and resulted in the lungs being more resistant to irritation.
The opposite happened in low-fibre diets and the mice became more vulnerable to asthma. nTheir report argued that a dietary shift away from fibre in favour of processed foods may be involved in rising levels of asthma.
That step came a month after she angered the government by complaining publicly that foreign currency reserves were being spent on luxury items rather than on medicine. Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sacked Health Minister Marziyeh Vahid Dastjerdi, the only woman minister in the history of the Islamic Republic.
“It’s in meat, fruit and vegetables. Many more pregnancies are terminated when the condition is diagnosed by ultrasound scan.
Scientists think inositol could prevent these extra cases.
Tests on mice suggest it stimulates tissue growth in the embryo to prevent neural tube defects. n”Inositol is a naturally occurring molecule a bit like glucose”, he said.
Dr Nick Greene is one of the researchers working on the project at the Institute of Child Health, University College London.
“They said the baby had spina bifida. UCL’s Dr Nick Greene and Anne Marie Hodkinson on their involvement in the trial
She said: “We went for the 22-week scan, and it was quite a long scan, and at the end of it they told me that there was a problem.
“In all the books I had read, I read about spina bifida and then read about folic acid and turned the page, thinking, ‘that’s fine, done that’, so it was quite a shock.”
When Anne Marie decided to have another baby she enrolled in the clinical trial and is now seven months pregnant.
“The brain scans are an unnecessary prop but add a level of seemingly scientific (but untested) corroboration of his claims.”
Having peered into my brain, my age has not changed. As my father always said, “Use your brain.”
But of course this is not about actually reversing your age. It is about the human body functioning at its best and making good decisions to look, feel and think younger – and in that respect, I get it. And it is debatable whether an expensive scan is necessary to make anyone adopt a sensible lifestyle.
“There’s a lot of promising theory but the data is just not in,” says Sherlin. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote Your brain actually starts deteriorating years before you have any symptoms”
End Quote Dr Daniel Amen But whether these techniques can help someone’s mind stay young, or have an impact on age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s, is a matter of debate. It needs to be really thoroughly examined. But from a theoretical perspective and anecdotal evidence, the possibilities are right there.”Continue reading the main story “Start Quote If a patient is eating a balanced diet then do they really need supplements?”
End Quote Dr James Kennedy GP Researchers analysed the results of tests on 3,800 patients, assessing changes in levels of pain after patients took glucosamine, chondroitin or both together.
So, as part of their study in the British Medical Journal, researchers in Mexico and the United States gave 228 pregnant women at high risk of pre-eclampsia daily food bars containing L-arginine and antioxidant vitamins. It affects up to 10% of all first-time pregnancies and is dangerous for both mother and child.
Pre-eclampsia is thought to be linked to a deficiency in L-arginine, an amino acid that helps maintain a healthy blood flow.
Another 222 pregnant women received bars containing only vitamins, and another group of 222 got bars containing no L-arginine or vitamins, the placebo group.
Nanoparticles – illustrated in this computer generated image – are just millionths of a millimetre in size Nanoparticles – also known as nanomaterials – are manufactured for use in an array of applications such as cosmetics, material coatings and as a fuel additive. A nanometre is a length measurement that exists at the microscopic end of the size spectrum – you can fit one million nanometres into one millimetre. The nanoparticles harmed bacteria that the plant relies on for growth.
A nanoparticle is defined as a particle that has at least one diameter that is less than 100 nanometres (nm).
It said: “In recent decades, there has been a well-documented increase in the incidence of allergic asthma in developed countries and coincident with this increase have been changes in diet, including reduced consumption of fibre.”
Human treatment? One of the researchers Dr Benjamin Marsland said some of the differences caused by high-fibre diets have already been observed in people by comparing diets in Europe and Burkina Faso.
It is still apparently on sale here through a number of sites, one offering a 100ml bottle for
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