disease prevention Archives - Amazing Health Advances

The Sunshine Vitamin That ‘D’elivers on Cardio Health

AHA Publisher — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 08:00:16 +0000

University of South Australia via Newswise – Free from the sun, vitamin D delivers a natural source for one of the hormones essential to our bodies, especially the bones. But when you’re down on this essential nutrient, it’s not only your bones that could suffer, but also your cardio health, according to new research from the University of South Australia. In the first study of its kind, researchers from the UniSA’s Australian Centre for Precision Health at SAHMRIhave identified genetic evidence for a role of vitamin D deficiency in causing cardiovascular disease. The study, which is published in European Heart Journal today, shows that people with vitamin D deficiency are more likely to suffer from heart disease and higher blood pressure, than those with normal levels of vitamin D*. For participants with the lowest concentrations the risk of heart disease was more than double that seen for those with sufficient concentrations. Globally, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide, taking an estimated 17.9 million lives per year. In Australia, CVD accounts for one in four deaths and costs the Australian economy five billion dollars each year, more than any other disease. Low concentrations of vitamin D are common in many parts of the world, with data from the UK Biobankshowing that 55 per cent of participants have low levels of vitamin D (<50 nmol/L) and 13 per cent have severe deficiency (<25 nmol/L). Low levels of vitamin D are recorded by an estimated 23 per cent of people in Australia, 24 per cent of people in the US, and 37 per cent of people in Canada. Chief investigator, UniSA’s Prof Elina Hyppönen** says appreciating the role of vitamin D deficiency for heart health could help reduce the global burden of cardiovascular disease. “Severe deficiency is relatively rare, but in settings where this does occur it is very important to be proactive and avoid negative effects on the heart. For example, deficiency can be a problem for people living in residential care who may have limited exposure to sun,” Prof Hyppönen says. “We can also get vitamin D from food, including oily fish, eggs and fortified foods and drinks. This said, food is unfortunately a relatively poor source of vitamin D, and even an otherwise healthy diet does not typically contain enough. “If we don’t get any vitamin D through the sun, this is one of the rare nutrients for which we sometimes need to take a daily supplement to keep up with the requirements. “Understanding the connection between low levels of vitamin D and CVD is especially important, given the global prevalence of this deadly condition. “Our results are exciting as they suggest that if we can raise levels of vitamin D within norms, we should also affect rates of CVD. In our study population, by increasing vitamin D-deficient individuals to levels of at least 50 nmol/L, we estimate that 4.4 per cent of all CVD cases could have been prevented.” This large-scale Mendelian study used a new genetic approach that allowed the team to assess how increasing levels can affect CVD risk based on how high the participants actual vitamin D levels were. The study used information from up to 267,980 individuals which allowed the team to provide robust statistical evidence for the link between vitamin D deficiency and CVD. “It is not ethical to recruit people with vitamin D deficiency to a randomised controlled trial and to leave them without treatment for long periods. Prof Hyppönen says. “It is exactly this type of difficult setting which demonstrates the power of our genetic approach, given we can show how improving concentrations affects the risk in those most in need, without exposing participants to any harm. “Those with the lowest concentrations are likely to have the strongest effects, yet a population-wide approach to eradicate vitamin D deficiency could reduce the global burden of CVDs.” To read the original article click here.

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Pre-Infection Low Vitamin D Associated with Severe Covid

AHA Publisher — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 07:00:12 +0000

Naama Barak via Israel21c – Over a year and a half into the Covid crisis, most of us have already heard about the link between vitamin D deficiency and the coronavirus. But while previous research mostly measured vitamin D levels once patients were already sick, a new Israeli study shows that even pre-infection vitamin D deficiency is associated with increased Covid-19 severity and mortality. The study, conducted by researchers from Bar-Ilan University and its affiliate Galilee Medical Center, searched for vitamin D levels in the records of people with positive PCR tests for Covid who were admitted to the hospital between April 2020 and February 2021. It was recently published on MedRxiv and is now being submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. Of 1,176 patients admitted, 253 had vitamin D levels recorded 14 to 730 days prior to the positive test. Compared with mildly or moderately ill patients, those with severe or critical Covid were more likely to have severe pre-infection vitamin D deficiency, with levels less than 20 ng/mL. “This study can highlight the risks of vitamin D deficiency in terms of Covid-19,” said Dr. Amiel Dror, who led the study. “Vitamin D is often associated with bone health. We’ve shown that it may also play an important role in other disease processes, such as infection.” “It is still unclear why certain individuals suffer severe consequences of Covid-19 infection while others don’t,” added co-author Prof. Michael Edelstein. “Our finding adds a new dimension to solving this lingering puzzle.” This does not necessarily mean that giving vitamin D to Covid patients will decrease the risk of severe disease, the researchers note. However, it does underscore the need to understand how to mitigate the effect of vitamin D deficiency. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Israel21c click here.

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Eat to Beat Disease: How to Eat for Optimal Health

AHA Publisher — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 08:00:04 +0000

Dr. Josh Axe, DC, DMN, CNS – It’s no secret that what you eat has immense effect on your health, and it turns out you can actually eat to beat disease. No one know this better than Dr. William Li, MD, author of the book “Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Health Itself.” Li has been featured on numerous media outlets, and he’s also the author of over 100 scientific publications, including research published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet. He’s also served on faculty at Harvard Medical School and has spent decades practicing medicine. I was lucky enough to talk with Dr. Li on my podcast, where he shared insights on how to combat cancer and other diseases through diet by activating the body’s five health defense systems. Here are his insights on how to eat to beat disease. The Study of Food One of the biggest breakthroughs for Dr. Li during his career was the realization that while the practice of medicine is vital and life-changing, a lot of his formal training focused on treating diseases and little on prevention. “When I went to medical school, I was really taught about health for maybe a few courses, and then everything else was about disease and what we should do to stamp it out, treat it, cut it burn it, give chemotherapy or antibiotics. That’s really how I entered the world of medical practice,” he says. “It is really just waiting for the horse to come out of the barn, which is illness, and then throwing the kitchen sink, ideally, smartly at it. “… I started to realize after many years of practice that the science was advancing so rapidly for treating disease and yet it didn’t seem like it was being applied to actually preventing disease, and you know prevention is really the mirror image of treatment.” Li realized that you can’t really use drugs as a prevention method so in order to focus on disease prevention, he shifted his attention to food. That led him to start researching the effects of food on health in the same manner medical researchers studied drugs, utilizing the same tools and methods to understand just how powerful food can be — and how to eat to beat disease. “I grew up uh eating traditional Asian cuisines and Mediterranean cuisines, whole foods freshly cooked not too much, designed to be really tasty. So I always felt that food was something that sustained me and sustained my well-being,” says Li. “… As an adult on my own eating in the cafeteria or hospital food, traveling around and going to restaurants, I started to realize we’ve actually lost touch with what our own history and cultures actually have given us, which is something pretty elemental that speaks to the body.” The focus for many today is on dieting, which can cause its own issues. Most diets are strict and exclusionary, and that can make them difficult for people to follow and sustain. “I just felt like there’s got to be a better way to do this, and what I discovered is when it comes to food and health, in fact it’s not just about the food — it’s about how our body responds to what we put inside it,” Li says. “You have to understand first before you choose any diet and any food combination how your body responds to keeping your health intact.” What Li found working for more than 30 years with Dr. Judah Folkman, a pioneer in the medical field, is that health is critically dependent on circulation. When circulation is excessive, it can feed diseases like cancer, while lack of circulation can cut off oxygen and nutrients to tissues so they die off — which in turn can promote disease. “Lab research has shown when a cancer that doesn’t have a blood supply suddenly gets one, that tiny little tumor can grow 16,000 times in only a couple of weeks. That’s enough to kill somebody. That’s led to the development of more than 18 medicines that cancer doctors use to cut off the blood supply to cancers,” Li says. “Using the same tools to discover medicines that can interfere to cut off a blood supply to starve a cancer, I’ve actually been able to test food, and when you test food in those systems, you can test them head-to-head, side-by-side, you wind up seeing that green tea, soy, lavender, citrus fruits, broccoli — they can stand up right next to cancer drugs.” The 5 Health Defense Systems The body is designed to protect health, while environmental factors all around are trying to get in. “Think of our body as a fortress. If you remember a medieval castle, you got the moat, you got the tall, sloping walls, you’ve got the little slits in the walls where people could shoot arrows out, you’ve got the little tiger traps, little holes with spikes in middle it, you got the winding staircases — all these things. A fortress is designed to protect itself from invaders,” says Li. “That is exactly our body except that rather than stone structures or spears, it’s actually biology.” There are five main health defense systems, according to Li: Blood or circulation/angiogenesis — The body grows blood vessels that feed every cell in the body. Stem cells in bone marrow — Help us heal from the inside out and regenerate our organs as we age or when we’re injured. Microbiome — This is the healthy gut bacteria, and humans have almost 40 trillion gut bacteria. “You know how a pregnant mom says, ‘I’m eating for two?’ We’re eating for 40 trillion, and that’s leading to a whole new insight into what we eat and how it impacts our gut defense,” says Li. DNA — Our DNA is hardwired to protect us against the assaults from the environment. Immune system — “It is more powerful than we ever thought because we now know that even an elderly person in their 80s, their immune system is so powerful that it can not only help resist infection, but it can help resist cancer as well.” “These five health defense systems are at play all the time, and when we sit down to eat something we are either building up and fortifying and boosting these defense systems or we’re taking it down and destroying it, ” says Li. “Everybody who thinks about food and health according to the traditional ways that have been everywhere for the last few decades, it’s about what program should I get into and what things should I cut out and what do I need to eat every single day. Here’s the news flash, which is good news: There’s no one size fits all. It’s about our individual preference, what our bodies seek, what we enjoy — and by the way, the enjoyment’s really important because if you can pick something that’s healthy that you enjoy, then you are already ahead of the game.” How to Eat to Beat Disease In “Eat to Beat Disease,” Dr. Li touches on 200 foods that can help boost immunity and activate the health defense systems. Here are some of the top foods to eat to beat disease: 1. Soy “There’s a belief out there that soy is actually dangerous for your health because it can cause breast cancer, and we believe this because there’s a plant estrogen in soy that we know is there, and we know that some types of human breast cancers can be activated by human estrogen. However, if you look at soy plant estrogen vs. human estrogen, they don’t look anything alike, and it turns out the science shows us that plant estrogens actually counter the effects of human estrogens so they actually block human estrogens almost like a drug does,” says Li. “There’s a study of 500 women who already have breast cancer, and it was studied that those women with breast cancer who actually ate more soy had better survival — they had about a 30 percent reduced risk of dying from breast cancer — and those who ate more soy were able to decrease the risk of having the cancer come back.” A note is to be wary of highly processed foods, including in soy products. A lot of soy milk is overly processed and contains unnecessary and sometimes harmful additives. That’s why I’m a proponent of natto, a fermented soy. It’s also why I’m in favor of fresh foods instead of buying juiced foods. Eating blueberries or an apple vs. buying blueberry juice or apple juice — it’s better to eat the whole, fresh fruit that hasn’t been processed or had any unhealthy ingredients added. Flaxseeds have a similar compound as soy that can protect against disease, along with lavender, vitex, clary sage. They can actually balance estrogen. 2. Tomatoes “There’s a lot of people out there saying tomatoes are harmful because they’re related to the nightshade plant,” says Li. “In fact, tomatoes don’t have any of the poisons of nightshade, and in fact there is a really important natural chemical called lycopene which is present in tomato. “Lycopene in tomato has been studied. There’s a study of 35,000 men, and they looked at their intake of tomatoes, cooked tomatoes, and found that those men who ate two to three servings of cooked tomatoes actually had up to a 30 percent lowered risk of developing prostate cancer. “In those men who did develop prostate cancer, the more tomatoes they ate, the less aggressive their prostate cancer because lycopene is anti-andorgenic, which means it cuts off the blood supply feeding cancers. It starves cancer in this really remarkable way.” 3. Green Tea Drink two-plus cups of green tea a day. It floods the system with natural bioactive chemicals that come from the tea plant that can actually cut off the blood supply to tumors, actually even kill cancer stem cells. It also protects blood vessels. 4. Tree Nuts Pistachios, almonds, cashews, macadamias and walnuts are some of the best options. “A major study of over 700 people from the American Society of Clinical Oncology showed that people who ate a couple handfuls of walnuts a day, about 15, a week actually had up to a 50 percent reduction in death if they had stage 3 colon cancer, and if they had their cancer successfully treated, it also markedly decreased the risk fo their cancer coming back,” shares Li. “A couple handfuls of nuts as a snack is a really great way to reduce your risk of cancer. “It turns out nuts not only have healthy omega-3 fatty acids that can cut off the blood supply feeding cancer cells, but they also have insoluble fiber. They’re a great source of fiber. “This insoluble fiber feeds our microbiome and activates our immune system. It lowers inflammation, which lowers cancer risk.” What Does Dr. Li Eat to Beat Disease? First and foremost, Dr. Li stresses “there’s no single food you need to eat all the time. It’s eating diversity, mostly plant-based foods, minimal processing like ultra-processed foods and cutting down on your meat also reduces your risk of cancer as well.” Instead, he says to focus on dietary patterns, such as the Mediterranean dietand traditional Asian diets. In addition, he likes to focus on plant-based foods and tries to build his meals around a vegetable. So what does Dr. Li typically eat to beat disease each day? Breakfast “When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is reach for either green tea or coffee,” Li says. “Coffee contains caffeic acid, chlorogenic acid, all these natural bioactives that are amazingly healthy for you. They increase your telomeres, which slows down cellular aging. They’re anti-androgenic so they cut off the blood supply feeding cancers, and they make our blood vessels actually healthier. Many lower the risk of dementia. “… I’ll have tea or coffee every day. Every day...

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Boosting Antiviral Immune Function with Green Tea

AHA Publisher — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 07:00:28 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – Unlike most antiviral drugs, green tea appears to work by boosting the immune system to combat diseases such as genital warts (caused by HPV) and the flu (caused by the influenza virus). According to one study, “The belief in green tea as a ‘wonder weapon’ against diseases dates back thousands of years.” I’ve talked about it in relation to chronic disease, but what about infectious disease? I explore this in my video Benefits of Green Tea for Boosting Antiviral Immune Function. Interest in the antimicrobial activity of tea dates back to a military medical journal in 1906, which suggested that servicemen fill their canteens with tea to kill off the bugs that caused typhoid fever. “However, this effect of tea was not studied further until the late 1980s” when tea compounds were pitted against viruses and bacteria in test tubes and petri dishes, but what we care about is whether it works in people. I had dismissed this entire field of inquiry as clinically irrelevant until I learned about tea’s effect on genital warts. External genital warts, caused by human wart viruses, “are one of the most common and fastest-spreading venereal diseases worldwide.” Patients with external genital warts “present with one or several cauliflower-like growths on the genitals and/or anal regions…associated with…considerable impairment of patients’ emotional and sexual well-being.” But rub on some green tea ointment, and you can achieve complete clearance of all warts in more than 50 percent of cases. If it works so well for wart viruses, what about flu viruses? As you can see at 1:41 in my video, it works great in a petri dish, but what about in people? Well, tea-drinking school children seem to be protected, but you don’t know about the broader population until it’s put to the test. If you give healthcare workers green tea compounds, they come down with the flu about three times less often than those given placebo, as you can see at 2:02 in my video. In fact, just gargling with green tea may help. While a similar effect was not found in high school students, gargling with green tea may drop the risk of influenza infection seven or eight-fold compared to gargling with water in elderly residents of a nursing home, where flu can get really serious. Unlike antiviral drugs, green tea appears to work by boosting the immune system, enhancing the proliferation and activity of gamma delta T cells, a type of immune cell that acts as “a first line defense against infection.” According to the researchers, “Subjects who drank six cups of tea per day had up to a 15-fold increase in [infection-fighting] interferon gamma production in as little as one week”—but why There is in fact a molecular pattern shared by cancer cells, pathogens, and “edible plant products such as tea, apples, mushrooms, and wine.” So, eating healthy foods may help maintain our immune cells on ready alert, effectively priming our gamma delta T cells so they “then can provide natural resistance to microbial infections and perhaps tumors.” I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised; tea, after all, is a “vegetable infusion.” You’re basically drinking a hot water extraction of a dark green leafy vegetable. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Greger click here.

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Israel Pilots First-Ever Disinfectant Tunnel for Public Spaces

AHA Publisher — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 07:00:17 +0000

Naama Barak via Israel21c – Sanitation tunnel that mists incomers with disinfectant solution being piloted at Tel Aviv’s Bloomfield Stadium. In a post-lockdown world, the idea of entering crowded shopping malls or sports stadiums is thrilling yet somewhat petrifying. But since public spaces can’t be avoided forever, it’s good to know they can be made safer. One Israeli company doing just that is RD PACK. Usually in the business of constructing automatic machines that move, pack and store products, it created a sanitation tunnel that sprays incomers with a disinfectant solution to provide protection against bacteria and viruses, including corona-type viruses. One such sanitation tunnel is now being piloted at the entrance to Bloomfield Stadium in Tel Aviv. It will remain until the end of soccer season, even though games are currently being held without an audience. The tunnel can also be placed at the entrance to other public spaces such as hospitals, airports, schools or office buildings. Its automatic system senses when someone is walking through the tunnel and turns on misting nozzles that spray the space with the disinfectant solution. The saturated environment of the tunnel means that every facet of the people or objects passing through are sanitized, even if they’re not directly exposed to the misting nozzles. The disinfectant solution being used in the tunnel is one that was developed by chemists Eran Avraham and Izaak Cohen at Bar-Ilan University, in which tap water can be turned into a powerful yet environmentally friendly disinfectant on demand. According to its developers, the water-based solution is safe for skin and does not contaminate groundwater. Its bacteria-killing properties were proved in tests carried out in Israeli hospitals and has also proved effective in neutralizing corona-type viruses. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Israel21c click here.

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