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Thursday, May 23, 2013
Extra Vitamin D May Ease Crohn's Symptoms, Study Finds
Improvements reported in muscle strength, fatigue and quality of life
By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter
SATURDAY, May 18 (HealthDay News) -- Vitamin D supplements may help those with Crohn's disease overcome the fatigue and decreased muscle strength associated with the inflammatory bowel disease, according to new research.
Extra vitamin D "was associated with significantly less physical, emotional and general fatigue, greater quality of life and the ability to perform activities of daily living," said Tara Raftery, a research dietitian and doctoral candidate at Trinity College Dublin. She is scheduled to present the findings Saturday at the Digestive Disease Week meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Raftery and her colleagues evaluated 27 patients who had Crohn's in remission. (Even in remission, fatigue and quality of life can be problematic.) The patients were assigned to take either 2,000 IUs (international units) of vitamin D a day or a dummy vitamin for three months.
Before and after the study, the researchers measured hand-grip strength, fatigue, quality of life and blood levels of vitamin D.
"Hand-grip strength is a proxy measure of muscle function," Raftery said. "Muscle function has been known to be reduced in Crohn's disease."
Besides boosting bone growth and remodeling, vitamin D is thought to improve neuromuscular and immune function, reduce inflammation and help with other bodily tasks. Children and adults aged 1 year to 70 are advised to get 600 IUs a day; older adults, 800, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Vitamin D is found in fatty fish such as salmon, in smaller amounts in cheese, egg yolks and beef liver, and in fortified foods such as milk.
Sometimes called the sunshine vitamin, vitamin D is also produced when the sun's rays strike the skin.
Crohn's can affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract, but most commonly affects the end of the small bowel and the beginning of the colon. Symptoms vary, but may include persistent diarrhea, rectal bleeding, abdominal cramps, and pain and constipation. About 700,000 Americans are affected, according to the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America.
Its cause is not well understood, but Crohn's is thought to involve heredity and environmental factors. Experts believe that in those with Crohn's, the immune system attacks harmless intestinal bacteria, triggering chronic inflammation and, eventually, the disease symptoms.
The daily vitamin D supplement benefitted participants in many ways, Raftery found. "When levels of vitamin D peaked at 30 ng/mL (75 nmol/L) or more [a level considered healthy], muscle function in both the dominant and non-dominant hands were significantly higher than in those who had levels less than 30 ng/mL," she said.
Quality of life improved more for the D-supplement group, too. Using a standard measure to evaluate quality of life, the researchers found those who achieved a healthy blood level of the vitamin scored 24 points higher than those not on supplements. A 20-point difference is considered meaningful from a "real-world" perspective, Raftery said.
Homegrown Strain of Dengue Fever Virus Pinpointed in Florida
Some 2009-2010 cases originated in Key West mosquitoes, not from travelers, CDC says
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay ReporterTHURSDAY, March 14 (HealthDay News) -- Some people who fell prey to a 2009-2010 outbreak of dengue fever in Florida carried a particular viral strain that they did not bring into the country from a recent trip abroad, according to a fresh genetic analysis conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
To date, most cases of dengue fever on American soil have typically involved travelers who "import" the painful mosquito-borne disease after having been bitten elsewhere. But though the disease cannot move from person to person, mosquitoes are able to pick up dengue from infected patients and, in turn, spread the disease among a local populace.
The CDC's viral fingerprinting of Key West, Fla., dengue patients therefore raises the specter that a disease more commonly found in parts of Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Asia might be gaining traction among North American mosquito populations.
"Florida has the mosquitoes that transmit dengue and the climate to sustain these mosquitoes all year around," cautioned study lead author Jorge Munoz-Jordan. "So, there is potential for the dengue virus to be transmitted locally, and cause dengue outbreaks like the ones we saw in Key West in 2009 and 2010," he said.
"Every year more countries add another one of the dengue virus subtypes to their lists of locally transmitted viruses, and this could be the case with Florida," said Munoz-Jordan, chief of CDC's molecular diagnostics activity in the dengue branch of the division of vector-borne disease.
He and his colleagues report their findings in the April issue of CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Dengue fever is the most widespread mosquito-borne viral disease in the world, now found in roughly 100 countries, the study authors noted.
That said, until the 2009-2010 southern Florida outbreak, the United States had remained basically dengue-free for more than half a century.
Ultimately, 93 patients in the Key West area alone were diagnosed with the disease during the outbreak, which seemingly ended in 2010, with no new cases reported in 2011.
But the lack of later cases does not give experts much comfort. The reason: 75 percent of infected patients show no symptoms, and the large "house mosquito" population in the region remains a disease-transmitting disaster waiting to happen.
To try and get a handle on just how serious that risk might be, the CDC team looked at blood samples from 16 of Florida's 67 counties, collected from dengue patients by the Florida Department of Health.
Rigorous genetic testing revealed what researchers feared: the identification of a local Key West strain among dengue patients who had not recently traveled outside the United States.
The team was able to trace the new Key West strain back to its original imported source: a Central American viral strain initially brought into Florida by patients infected in that region. But they stressed that as the local mosquito population acquired the virus from this first round of patients, it developed into a distinct strain of its own. In turn, the new strain was passed on to local residents who had not recently visited Central America.
pcos and appetite control
Hi :) my name is Caitlyn I'm 21 and i really need some advice. I've been making lifestyle changes especially t words my diet. but my appetite is really out of control i talked to a (therapist) and she doesn't think its emotional eating I read that pcos can cause extreme appetite changes. I'm& nbsp;really nervous to talk to my doctor about it but I'm going to anyways. does anyone have any tips on how i can control it. I could change my whole life if i could just take my appetite out of the equation I'm committed to changing my life for the better but these urges are uncontrollable and i find it hard not to beat myself up 10 rice cakes 2 pickles a protein bar 2 cups of low fat ice cream, some cottage cheese and a bag of popcorn later. -_- as you can see i have a real problem I want to change my life so bad but I have no help ideas please?
Allison Williams at the Phil Spector programme premiere
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High-Frequency Noise Boosts Math Skills in Study
But the treatment isn't ready for prime time yet, expert says
By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, May 16 (HealthDay News) -- Could you someday zap your way to a smarter brain? Preliminary new research suggests that it's a possibility: Scientists report that they were able to improve the math-calculation skills of college students by buzzing their brains with doses of random high-frequency noise.
But don't go searching for a brain zapper at Walmart just yet. It's not clear why "transcranial random noise stimulation" might boost thinking skills, and the necessary equipment isn't sitting on the shelves at your local hardware store. The treatment is considered to be harmless but has only been studied for a few years, and the study findings aren't definitive.
For now, though, the results of the new study are promising, said author Roi Cohen Kadosh, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, in England. "We can enhance one of the most complicated high-level cognitive [mental] functions and improve brain response after just five days of training, with a long-lasting effect six months later."
Scientists have only been studying transcranial random noise stimulation for about five years, Cohen Kadosh said. Researchers use the technique to stimulate the brain's cortex by putting electrodes on the scalp and delivering random bits of electrical noise. "It is non-invasive, painless -- the level of current is generated by home batteries, and is very low -- and relatively cheap," he said.
Transcranial random noise stimulation is considered to be harmless, and several studies haven't mentioned any adverse effects in those who have been zapped. Researchers are interested in one possible positive effect, though: changes in how the brain processes things.
"The brain is working on electricity, and in some cases poor behavior and cognitive [thinking] abilities appear when there's less activation of regions that are otherwise active," Cohen Kadosh said. "We thought that if we can make it easier for neurons to fire, it will allow an improved performance."
In the study, appearing May 16 in the journal Current Biology, researchers recruited 51 Oxford students and gave them five days of training and testing as they performed arithmetic tasks. The tasks tested their ability to remember math facts (like 4 x 8 = 32) and make calculations (like 32 - 17 + 5 = 20), Cohen Kadosh said.
Some of the participants received transcranial random noise stimulation when they performed the math tasks. Those participants were two to five times better at learning things, he said. And, six months after the stimulation, they were 28 percent better at making calculations than the other participants.
Scientists aren't sure why the stimulation treatment may boost learning and thinking, but Cohen Kadosh said it may have something to do with activating neurons in the brain.
Why might brain-zapping be a good thing? "We all want to improve our learning and to make it faster if possible, and we also want to help those who have problems in learning" due to disease, developmental problems or aging, he said. Also, "around 20 percent of the population finds math challenging."
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