Co-Sleeping Dramatically Increases SIDS Risk

05/22/2013

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) kills 2,100 babies per year. It’s a reality that too many parents are forced to face--the death of an infant. But what if one step could drastically reduce the chances of this tragedy occurring?

Babies who co-sleep, or sleep in the same bed as their parents, are at an increased risk of SIDS, according to new research led by Robert Carpenter, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The risk is greatest among infants younger than 3 years old. It's five times higher than for infants who don’t co-sleep. This is also true of infants that were breast fed and whose parents didn’t drink or smoke.

"This is a really important study, because it does what no other study has done before," in that the researchers separated out each factor linked with increased SIDS risk, said Dr. Rachel Moon, a pediatrician at Children's National Medical Center in Washington D.C., and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics task force on SIDS to LiveScience. 

Researchers looked at nearly 1,500 SIDS cases and 4,700 babies. The increased risk was even worse for babies whose parents smoked or if the mother had more than two drinks in the previous 24 hours. In all, 88 percent of SIDS cases would not have occurred if parents did not co-sleep. 

"It's become really uncommon to encounter a baby who dies of SIDS who wasn't bed-sharing," Moon said to LiveScience.

According to the CDC, it's considered SIDS if the sudden death of an infant can't be explained after a thorough investigation including a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene, and review of the clinical history. SIDS is the leading cause of death among infants aged 1–12 months, and is the third leading cause overall of infant mortality in the United States. 

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Sunshine May Reduce Asthma Symptoms

05/20/2013

Researchers are finding more and more often that environmental factors play a role in the development and maintenance of asthma symptoms. According to Boston Community Asthma Initiative, scented candles and air deodorizers, chemical cleaners, smoking, dust, and mold all play vital roles in triggering asthma symptoms.

But even seemingly indirect factors may impact symptoms. Researchers from King’s College London found that the amount of time asthma sufferers spend in the sun may also impact their the symptoms.

Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to worsened symptoms. The sun seems to calm the overactive part of the immune system that causes asthma. The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found that interleukin-17, a chemical in the immune system, is aggravated when vitamin D levels are too low. 

"We know people with high levels of vitamin D are better able to control their asthma - that connection is quite striking," said researcher Prof Catherine Hawrylowicz to BBC News.

The culture of covering up completely in the sun may be causing increased asthma rates in the U.S. Researchers haven’t studied whether vitamin D by itself had the same impact on results. 

Malayka Rahman, from the charity Asthma UK, said to BBC News: "For the majority of people with asthma, current available medicines are an effective way of managing the condition but we know that they don't work for everyone, which is why research into new treatments is vital.”

Treating asthma with sunshine is also more natural than medications with a number of side effects. 

Photo: Howard Sayer/Veer

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Read More: Junk Food Causes Childhood Asthma and Other Allergic Reactions

CDC Finds Swimming Pools Contaminated with Fecal Matter

05/18/2013

A study of public pools found that they are regularly contaminated with feces by swimmers. The CDC collected samples of water from pool filters in public pools and tested the samples for various bacteria. 

The study found that 58 percent of pool filters tested positive for e.coli, a bacteria found in the human gut and feces. According to the CDC, e.coli is a known marker of fecal contamination. It should be noted that no sample tested positive for 0157:H7 e.coli, the toxin-producing strain of e.coli that’s known to make people sick. 

Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which causes infections of the skin and ear, was found in 59 percent of samples. Cryptosporidium and Giardia germs, which spreads through feces and causes diarrhea were found in less than 2 percent of samples. 

The study only looked at public pools, not water parks, private pools, or other types of recreational swimming areas, but the same problems can be expected in all situations. 

“Swimming is an excellent way to get the physical activity needed to stay healthy,” said Michele Hlavsa, chief of CDC’s Healthy Swimming Program. “However, pool users should be aware of how to prevent infections while swimming. Remember, chlorine and other disinfectants don’t kill germs instantly. That’s why it’s important for swimmers to protect themselves by not swallowing the water they swim in and to protect others by keeping feces and germs out of the pool by taking a pre-swim shower and not swimming when ill with diarrhea.”

The study will be presented at Recreational Water Illness and Injury Prevention Week, May 20-26, 2013. 

Here are a few tips that you can take to avoid fecal contamination at the pool: 

• Shower before entering the pool.
• Rinse off before you get back in the pool.
• Check the chlorine levels of the pool often. Proper levels are as follows: (1-3 mg/L parts per million [ppm] and pH (7.2-7.8) levels
• Don’t swallow water in the pool.
• Don’t change diapers poolside.

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Read More: Incurable Gonorrhea Strain Worse Than We Thought 

Your Handbag as Dirty as a Toilet Seat, Study Finds

05/17/2013

As I look at the bottom of my handbag I find an empty candy wrapper, a wine opener, a few bobby pins, and sand from the beach. It isn’t pretty, in fact, it’s where lip gloss, broken sunglasses, and business cards go to die. It’s not a place of cleanliness because it’s mine and no one has to know it’s dirty but me.

But then there’s the bacteria, a big problem, according to a study from Initial Washroom Hygiene Solutions and reported by CBSLocal.

What’s inside your handbag is covered with germs, more than you’d find on a toilet seat. Hand cream, mascara, lip stick, and hand sanitizer bottles are among the most bacteria-laden. 

Doctor Sorana Segal-Maurer with New York Hospital-Queens said cell phones are also covered in bacteria.

“We don’t want to put it down. It goes into the bathroom with some people — not a good idea,” Segal-Maurer said to CBSLocal. “You really need to wipe it down.”

And that apple--clean it off.

“Number one, you’re probably not going to wash your hands before you go reaching for it, and number two, it’s floating around next to all the other stuff in your bag and then you want to put it in your mouth — it’s not a good idea,” Segal-Maurer said.

The outside of your bag is also covered in bacteria, especially if you’re one of those people that plops their bag down on the bathroom floor. Instead, hang your bag on a bathroom hook or don’t take it into the bathroom in the first place. The study found that leather bags held on to the most bacteria, likely because it’s so difficult to wash them.

This study isn’t any reason to panic, rather, it’s just one more reason to wash your hands with soap and water and clean your bag out once in a while. But for sure, your handbag is another place that germs like to hide. 

Photo: Fuse

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Read More: Can You Get the Flu From Your Cell Phone?

8 Foods that Detox Your Arteries

05/16/2013

Overtime your arteries can begin to accumulate plaque and if you’re not careful, you may not even notice until the damage is done.

Heart disease can creep up on your body and so can the risk for heart attack or stroke too. Detoxing your arteries should be part of your daily ritual and can be acocmplished through a healthy diet. 

By making certain artery cleansing foods a part of your diet, you can keep your arteries running clean long into old age. Here are some heart healthy foods you should add to your grocery list:

1. Kiwi

Kiwis are loaded with flavonoids that cleanse your blood vessels and decrease inflammation. They're also loaded with fiber, which reduces cholestrol and reduces your risk of heart disease. 

2. Shrimp

While shrimp do have cholesterol, they also contain taurine, an amino acid which protects the arteries from fat crossing the intestinal wall. 

3. Avocado

Avocados have been shown to reduce total blood cholesterol by an average of 17 points. A compound called beta-sitosterol does the work. Cholesterol plays a big role in your arteries because high cholesterol levels build up plaque along the artery walls. Blood vessels can become blocked and even rupture, causing heart attack, stroke, and cardiovascular disease. 

4. Olive Oil

One of the polyphenols in olive oil, hydroxytyrosol, helps protect the cells that line your blood vessels from being damaged by overly reactive oxygen molecules. Therefore, it keeps the blood flowing through your arteries flowing strong. 

5. Asparagus 

Asparagus is one of the best, natural artery-clearing foods around, says Shane Ellison, an organic chemist and author of Over-The-Counter Natural Cures to Shape. "Asparagus works within the 100,000 miles of veins and arteries to release pressure, thereby allowing the body to accommodate for inflammation that has accumulated over the years." 

6. Sardines

Sardines have become all the rage as of late and that's a good thing considering that sardines are loaded with omega-3 fatty acids and niacin, both which are good for your heart. Add them to salads, dressings, or eat them with crackers.

7. Rolled Oats

Rolled oats contain beta-glucan, which lowers cholesterol and keeps plaque levels low in the arteries. Make homemade rolled oats with coconut milk, honey, nuts, and dried fruits. 

8. Watermelon

L-citrulline, an amino acid found in watermelon has been found to lower cholesterol because the body produces nitric oxide, which widens the blood vessels.

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Foreign Born Americans Less Likely to Have Allergies

05/15/2013

A study from St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York found that U.S. kids living outside of the U.S. have fewer allergies.

The questionnaire used for the study was distributed to 91,642 children, ages 0-17 enrolled in the 2007-2008 National Survey of Children’s Health. 

Head researcher Jonathan I. Silverberg, M.D., Ph.D, MPH and colleagues looked at the prevalence of allergic disease. Children who were born outside of the U.S. had less atopic disorders like asthma, eczema, hay fever, and food allergies. Additionally, children born outside the U.S., whose parents were also born outside the U.S., had significantly lower odds of having atopic disorders than children whose parents were born in the U.S., according to Science Daily.

Children who lived in the U.S. for 10 years had significantly higher instances of these allergies when compared to children who had lived in the U.S. for only 0-2 years. 

"In conclusion, foreign-born Americans have significantly lower risk of allergic disease than US-born Americans. However, foreign-born Americans develop increased risk for allergic disease with prolonged residence in the United States," the study concludes.

"It's a stark reality considering that of the 40,000 U.S. families surveyed in another recent study, 8 percent had food allergies of some sort," said Dr. Ruchi Gupta of Children's Memorial Hospital who is also an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University's School of Medicine to PBS. 

A number of issues may be leading to increased allergic vulnerability in U.S. kids including overly sterile environments, which don’t allow a child’s immune system to properly develop. Additives and pesticides in the Western diet may be changing gut flora so that kids can no longer handle certain foods, creating sensitivity, both mild and severe. Milk proteins, genetically modified ingredients, and the prevalence of c-sections may also be to blame for increased childhood allergies.

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Waist-to-Height Ratio More Important Than BMI

05/14/2013

Measuring the ratio of your waist to your height is a more accurate indicator of longevity than body mass index (BMI)--this according to researchers from Oxford Brookes University.

People with the highest waist-to-height ratio, of .8 and above, lived an average 17 fewer years than those with acceptable waist-to-height ratios, according to The Telegraph. 

Researchers found that in order to live optimally and reduce your risk of stroke, heart disease, and diabetes, you needed to keep your waist circumference at 1/2 of your height. This means at a height of 5'5'', your waist needs to stay below 33 inches in order for life expectancy not to be reduced. Children can be screened at ages as young as 5 years old.

In the study, researchers examined data from patients who had their waist-to-height ratios taken in the 1980’s. Twenty years later, death rates were more closely linked to waist-to-height ratios than BMI. They were even able to calculate longevity reductions based on waist-to-height ratios. 

Researcher Dr. Margaret Ashwell said to The Telegraph: "If you are measuring waist-to-height ratio you are getting a much earlier prediction that something is going wrong, and then you can do something about it.

"The beauty is that you can do it in centimetres or inches, it doesn't matter. We have got increasing evidence that this works very well with children as well, because whilst they grow up their waist is growing but also their height."

This is likely an indicator of the deadly nature of visceral fat. Visceral fat, located in the abdominal cavity, is the most dangerous kind of fat because it puts pressure on the body’s internal organs. It’s linked to an increased risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. In women, it’s associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. 

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7 Reasons Why More Kids are Allergic

05/04/2013

Research shows that more kids than ever before have allergies and I don’t mean a sniffly nose or a rash, I mean seriously debilitating allergies that are in many cases, deadly.

Of the 40,000 families surveyed, 8 percent have food allergies of some sort, according to Dr. Ruchi Gupta, of Children's Memorial Hospital and an associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University's School of Medicine on PBS. 

Of those with allergies, 37 percent have severe or life threatening allergies and 30 percent have sensitivities to more than one food group. Researchers looked at the type of food allergy, the type of reaction, and how the allergy was diagnosed. 

The most common food allergy was to peanuts, followed by milk and shellfish. Many were highly allergic, meaning that they would react to even touching a food. Why are more kids than ever before allergic to peanuts, soy, shellfish, milk, and so many more food products? Why do so many children have asthma? Researchers still have a lot of work to do, but these are some of the reasons that doctors point to in their quest to figure out why childhood allergies have become so severe and so prevalent.

1. The Hygiene Hypothesis 

We are too clean. In fact, the sterile environments we put our kids in mean their immune systems don’t come in contact with allergens so their bodies aren’t able to fight them. Modern life may be too clean; we don’t live on farms and we’re never in touch with dirt. And we love antibacterial everything. 

"We’ve developed a cleanlier lifestyle, and our bodies no longer need to fight germs as much as they did in the past," said Marc McMorris, a pediatric allergist at the University of Michigan Health System. "As a result, the immune system has shifted away from fighting infection to developing more allergic tendencies."

2. The Western Diet

There may also be a connection to the Western Diet. Additives and pesticides may be changing our gut flora so that our bodies can no longer handle certain foods, creating sensitivity, both mild and severe. Junk food may also contribute to childhood asthma.

3. GMOs in Our Diet

According to The Unhealthy Truth, by Robyn O’Brien, allergies are an overreaction to a protein in the body so that the immune system reads foods as foreign and dangerous. Today, 93 percent of all soy, 86 percent of corn, and 93 percent of canola seeds are now genetically modified. But it's not just that so many foods are modified (165 million acres and counting), it's that there's currently no labeling system in place so that consumers know what they're buying. Soy, corn, and canola are in so many of the processed foods we eat everyday, they're difficult to avoid and may be causing our immune systems to work overtime, reading these foods as foreign and dangerous.

4. New Milk Proteins 

As I said above, milk is the number two food allergy because new proteins have been added to our milk supply, making more children than ever before unable to digest it. 

5. Chemical Cleaners 

One of the requests that doctors dealing with childhood asthma will make is that parents stop using toxic chemical cleaners and replace them with natural cleaners like vinegar and baking soda. This is because childhood asthma can be set off with strong cleaners. Bleach, ammonia, and antibacterial cleaners may do damage to a child’s respiratory system. 

 6. Food Avoidance

Nervous parents may avoid these foods, making the problem even worse. A research team from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, found that maternal intake of peanuts in mice can bring about protection against peanut allergies in offspring. Further, breast feeding can help matters. According to Food Navigator:

"[M]aternal transmission of these peanut-specific antibodies through breast milk may be, at least in part, responsible for this protection."

7. C-Sections

Babies born through c-sections may have different immune systems. According to the National Institutes of Health, "Researchers evaluated more than 1,200 newborns when they were 1 month, 6 months, 1 year and 2 years old. By age 2, babies born by cesarean section were five times more likely to have allergies than those born naturally when exposed to high levels of common household allergens such as pet dander and dust mites."

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Read More: Eating Peanuts During Pregnancy Could Reduce the Deadly Allergy in Your Baby

Half of Ground Turkey Samples Test Positive for Fecal Bacteria

05/03/2013

The first ever lab analysis of ground turkey has brought some scary realities to light, according to research from Consumer Reports.

Researchers studied 257 samples from retailers nationwide and found that more than half tested positive for fecal bacteria.

Specifically, 69 percent of ground turkey samples had enterococcus and 60 percent had e coli, bacteria associated with fecal matter. Additionally, some of the samples tested positive for salmonella and staphylococcus aureus, the two leading causes of food borne illness. 

Ninety percent of the samples had one or more of the five bacteria Consumer Reports tested for in the study. But the scariest part of the study wasn’t the bacteria itself, but that many of the bacteria were antibiotic resistant, meaning they could not be treated with three or more common antibiotics. Three of the samples had antibiotic resistant staphylococcus, which is known to be deadly. 

Use of Antibiotics Tied to Resistance

The only positive news, if you want to call it that, was that products labeled “organic,” “no antibiotics,” and “raised without antibiotics” had much fewer antibiotic resistant bacteria, though there was still bacteria in their products. 

Livestock free of antibiotics are much less likely to carry resistant bacteria. In conventional livestock, the use of antibiotics is under fire because scientists are finding that it causes the perfect breeding ground for drug resistant bacteria. This is particularly true of the subtherapeutic use of antibiotics, meaning using them for any use other than sickness, including fattening livestock up rapidly or to quell any sickness caused by cruel treatment or unhealthy living standards that could cause them to get sick in the future.

The problem is getting worse. Last year an antibiotic resistant salmonella strain caused the recall of nearly 55,000 pounds of frozen raw turkey burgers. 

If you’re going to eat meat, make sure you buy organic. Organic livestock is free of antibiotics, growth-promoting hormones, the feed must be certified organic, and animals must have free range to roam. 

Photo: Ingram Publishing 

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Belief in God May Help Treat Depression, Study Says

04/30/2013

Those who believe in God respond better to psychiatric treatment--this according to research from McLean Hospitals in Belmont Massachusetts.

Patients reported higher levels of well being and less of a likelihood to harm themselves when they believed even moderately in God.

Researchers followed 159 patients at Behavioral Health Partial Hospital Program at McLean Hospital over the course of a year. Patient's averaged age was 33-years-old and 60 percent were diagnosed with depression, while 12 percent were diagnosed bipolar disorder and other disorders like anxiety. 

Those that had a moderately high or high belief in God responded better to treatment. Each patient was asked to rate their treatment expectation as well as their belief in God on a 5 point scale. Levels of well being and self harm were assessed at the beginning and end of the study, according to The Daily Mail. 

The study also found that participants did not necessarily need to believe in organized religion as a whole. Of the study participants, 30 percent claimed no specific religion but still saw benefits in their treatment if their belief in God was moderately high or high.

According to the study, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, “Our work suggests that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without, regardless of their religious affiliation.”

"Given the prevalence of religious belief in the United States -- over 90 [percent] of the population - these findings are important in that they highlight the clinical implications of spiritual life," study researcher David H. Rosmarin said to Opposing Views. "I hope that this work will lead to larger studies and increased funding in order to help as many people as possible."

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