TheWellnessLiving Health Tips

Besides computers of impressive power and small but cool electronic gadgets, technology has provided us with great tools to improve our quality of life and enhance our chances for a longer and better life. Once restricted to hospitals and other care centres because of their complexity and elevated cost, electronic devices for monitoring and diagnosing various medical parameters are now available in small, portable and affordable home versions.

The benefits of having our own monitoring devices such as blood pressure monitors or ECG machines at home are obvious for those suffering from high blood pressure or heart problems: one can easily monitor and keep detailed records at different moments of the day, including just before bed! How often would one do it otherwise?

Healthscape is an all-in-one solution to acquire our own, top quality personal medical equipment including devices like body fat monitors, ECG machines, blood pressure monitors, stethoscopes, digital thermometers, nebulisers and many more. In addition to quality and excellent prices,  Healthscape offers a great variety of free information and health resources making it a good resource to put in our browser’s bookmarks bar.

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Humans love the taste of sugar so much that the word “sweet” refers not only to this basic taste quality but also something that is highly desirable or pleasurable. This attraction goes so far that sugar (and sugar-rich foods) overconsumption is probably the main factor driving the current obesity epidemic.

But why are we so fond of sugar, when other animals appear to be so ’self-restrained’ when it comes to diet and nutrition? The answer seems to lie on our evolutionary history. Refined sugars (e.g., sucrose, fructose) were absent in the diet of most people until very recently in human history. Biologists speculate that the human attraction for intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants (molecules that taste sweet). In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars. Being able to detect carbohydrate-rich nutrients constituted an advantage that was selected favourably as it allowed to choose foods more effective in providing energy. However, natural foods are usually sugar-poor, so our ancestors were not not adapted to the high concentrations of sweet tastants present in our present-day products that contain refined sugar or corn syrup.

Overconsumption of sugar-dense foods or beverages is initially motivated by the pleasure of sweet taste and is often compared to drug addiction. French investigators attempted to explore this relationship by using rats that were offered either sweetened water or highly addictive doses of cocaine. The results were stunning: the vast majority of the rats (94%) preferred the sweet treat over the drug, demonstrating that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals.

A plausible explanation for the addictive power of sugar is that the supranormal stimulation of the sweet receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction.

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Thanks to her teacher’s efforts, my daughter is very interested in learning what foods or beverages are healthy for her and which ones are not. She usually asks whether this snack or that drink are good or bad. Even though I’m usually pretty sure I’m telling the right answer, it’s only common sense, but a little of actual knowledge would be fine to support my advice.

The National Institute of Public Health of Mexico has recently put together “Beverage Consumption  Recommendations” aimed to serve as a guideline for consumers, health professionals, and government officials. One of the main reasons that encouraged this work is the alarming increase in overweight, obesity and diabetes in Mexico. It is thought that beverages contribute a fifth of all calories consumed by Mexicans, and many studies found that caloric beverages increase the risk of obesity. After considering all these evidences, it is clear that educating people and professionals on the benefits and risks associated to the most common drinks is of prime importance to improve the public health conditions.

The committee classified beverages into six levels regarding their health benefits and risks. Some aspects taken into account were caloric content, nutritional value, and health risks associated with the consumption of each type of beverage. The beverages were ranked from the healthier (level 1) to least healthy (level 6):

Level 1: water

Level 2: skim or low fat (1%) milk and sugar free soy beverages

Level 3: coffee and tea without sugar

Level 4: non-caloric beverages with artificial sweeteners

Level 5: beverages with high caloric content and limited health benefits (fruit juices, whole milk, and fruit smoothies with sugar or honey; alcoholic and sports drinks)

Level 6: beverages high in sugar and with low nutritional value (soft drinks and other beverages with significant amounts of added sugar like juices, flavored waters, coffee and tea).

As a conclusion, the panel advices that water should constitute the first choice, followed by no or low-calorie drinks, and skim milk. People should prefer these beverages over others with high caloric value or sweetened beverages, including those containing artificial sweeteners.

Some parts of this ranking agree more or less with our perception, water is obviously a ‘healthy’ option, but it may surprise many people to find out that some beverages, heavily advertised as healthy stuff go quite low in the list, such as fruit juices and fruit smoothies. Time to reconsider what we take in our lunch-bags!

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Smoking is the most importan cause of preventable death in the developed world. In spite of this, tocacco dependence is still viewed by many just as a bad habit. Because of the strong bonds created by the dependence, most smokers wanting to quit find it difficult and many fail if not following a strict treatment.

In a recent article in the specialized journal “Annals of Internal Medicine”, Dr Steinberg and collaborators from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey discussed the importance of regarding tobacco dependence as a medical condition that requires a specific medical treatment, rather than a bad habit or a lifestyle choice. They compare smoking to diabetes. Diabetes, they say, is similar to tobacco dependence in “their potential to exacerbate other diseases, their behavioral components of treatment, and their effectiveness of medications”. In spite of this, treatments for diabetes are amply covered by health insurance plans, whereas coverage for tobacco cessation products and treatments are usually very limited.

In the article, the authors review some of the available treatments that usually have satisfactory results. Among the safest options is behavioral counseling, but there are also pharmacotherapies that are safe and effective. “Nicotine replacement therapy effectively delivers nicotine in safer doses without exposure to the toxins and chemicals in cigarette smoke”. As everybody is different, optimal duration of tobacco dependence treatment cannot be established, and some smokers may require more extended courses or treatment than others.

They conclude that limited coverage constitutes a severe downside for this important problem. For those smokers for whom normal methods don’t work, health care providers should encourage using long-term cessation treatments and insurance carriers should cover them. To achieve this, “tobacco dependence should share the status of other chronic illnesses, with effective treatments given as long as is necessary to achieve successful clinical outcomes”.

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A link between obesity and diabetes has been take for granted for a long time, but the exact relationship has been elusive. New evidence suggest that excess fat may be contributing to the accumulation of pollutants that eventually influence the appearance of tye 2 diabetes.

Certain pollutants present in the environment tend to accumulate in the fatty tissues of animals. An example if these substances in PCB, which occurs in many types of electrical equipment. Another example is the pesticide DDT, which in spite of being banned still persists in the environment. Some pollutants are directly conmumed by people, and in other cases they are ingested by animals, entering the food chain and end up in people as well.

Researchers at the Kyungpook National University in South Korea found out that people that had elevated levels of six different kinds of pollutants in their fatty tissues had more chances to develop diabetes than people with low levels of these pollutants (for more info see New Scientist, 30 September 2006, p 18). This study was backed by further evidence suggesting a link between PCB and some pesticides and development of insulin resistance in non-diabetics. The hypothesis is that fat people will tend to accumulate more pollutants as their fat acts as a storage agent. Although the theory is appealing, other investigators warn that the relationship is much more complex and other factors may be at play.

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