Recent Longevity News for the seven days ending 4/27/11.  You should consult your doctor if you are taking any medications.

Note:  There weren't any significant health articles past last Thursday this week.  I think many of the writers may have been off for the Easter Weekend and/or they save the articles for when there are more readers viewing the news.  That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Electro-specs - The Daily, 4/24/11 - It's an article on electronic eye glasses made by Panasonic and will be available in November.  The cost is $1200.  They automatically or manually adjust between distance and far.  Charge lasts for two days.

Poison Produce - The Daily, 4/22/11 - See the chart on page 3.

Coffee doesn't increase high blood pressure risk - MSNBC, 4/21/11 - "followed them for up to 33 years ... But the chance of being diagnosed with the condition was no different between people who said they chugged more than five cups of coffee per day and those who drank very little"

Low Glycemic Level Linked to Higher Mortality in Elderly - Medscape, 4/21/11 - "There was a U-shaped association of mortality with A1c level. Compared with the mortality risk with A1c level of less than 6.0%, the risk was lower for A1c levels between 6.0% and 9.0% (eg, HR, 0.83 [95% CI, 0.76 - 0.90] for A1c levels 7.0% - 7.9%) and higher at A1c levels of 11.0% or more (HR, 1.31; 95% CI, 1.09 - 1.57). At A1c levels of 8.0% or higher, the risk was significantly higher for any endpoint (complication or death) ... We cannot say whether this unexpected finding is due to the very low blood sugar itself, the treatments used to control blood sugars, or to some other factors not directly related to the care of diabetes ... It may be that the sickest patients at high risk of dying simply had low blood sugars to start with, rather than anything directly associated with the care of diabetes increasing the risk of death"

Prenatal pesticide exposure tied to lower IQ in children, study finds - Science Daily, 4/21/11 - "every tenfold increase in measures of organophosphates detected during a mother's pregnancy corresponded to a 5.5 point drop in overall IQ scores in the 7-year-olds. Children in the study with the highest levels of prenatal pesticide exposure scored seven points lower on a standardized measure of intelligence compared with children who had the lowest levels of exposure"

ACE inhibitors may increase risk of recurrence in breast cancer survivors, study suggests - Science Daily, 4/19/11 - "It's long been thought that inflammation fuels cancer growth in humans ... stress was biologically reprogramming the immune cells trying to fight the cancer, transforming them from soldiers protecting the body against disease into aiders and abettors. The study found a 30-fold increase in cancer spread throughout the bodies of stressed mice compared to those that were not stressed ... followed for an average of eight years ... In analyses that controlled for these differences in health issues, Ganz found that women exposed to ACE inhibitors had a significantly increased risk for recurrence, while those on beta blockers alone had a lower risk of recurrence"

Antibiotics disrupt gut ecology, metabolism - Science Daily, 4/19/11 - "carry several pounds of microbes in our gastro-intestinal tracts. Recent research suggests that this microbial ecosystem plays a variety of critical roles in our health ... antibiotics profoundly disrupt intestinal homeostasis ... Intestinal microbes help us digest our food, provide us with vitamins that we cannot make on our own, and protect us from microbes that make us sick, amongst other things ... administered antibiotics to the mice, to kill off most of their gut microbiota, and analyzed the feces anew ... The levels of 87 percent of the molecules detected had been shifted up or down by factors ranging from 2-fold to 10,000-fold ... the unnecessary use of antibiotics has deleterious effects on human health that were previously unappreciated ... our gut microbes control these important molecules raises the possibility that manipulating these microbes could be used to modulate diseases that have hormonal or metabolic origins (such as inmmunodeficiency, depression, diabetes and others)" - See probiotics at Amazon.com.

C. difficile colonization accompanied by changes in gut microbiota: Study hints at probiotics as treatment - Science Daily, 4/19/11 - "Asymptomatic colonization by Clostridium difficile, absent the use of antibiotics, is common in infants and when it happens changes occur in the composition of the gut microbiota ... The adult human gut is an ecosystem containing several pounds of bacteria, including hundreds of species and more than 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) individuals. A healthy microbial ecosystem protects the host against Clostridium difficile, which frequently colonizes the gut after its ecological balance has been disrupted by broad spectrum antibiotics ... Our results suggest that Bifidobacterium species, which are used as probiotics, can participate in that barrier effect against C. difficile" - See probiotics at Amazon.com.

C. difficile increases risk of death six-fold in patients with inflammatory bowel disease - Science Daily, 4/19/11 - "C. difficile bacteria are present naturally in the gut in around two thirds of children and 3 per cent of adults, but they do not cause problems in healthy people. Broad spectrum antibiotics can cause problems by killing harmless bacteria that usually reside in the gut, allowing C. difficile to flourish and produce toxins that cause diarrhea and fever. The infection is rarely fatal in people who are not already severely ill or elderly; a review published in 2010 estimated the overall mortality rate for patients with C. difficile to be 6 per cent ... IBD patients who contract C. difficile in hospital are six times more likely to die in hospital than patients who are admitted for IBD alone. In the patients followed in the study, the mortality rate for IBD patients with C. difficile at 30 days was 25 per cent, compared with 3 per cent for patients with IBD alone ... IBD patients with C. difficile also stay in hospital for longer, with a median length of stay of 26 days compared with five days, and are almost twice as likely to need gastrointestinal surgery ... At St. George's Hospital, we have seen a 70 per cent reduction in hospital-acquired infections after implementing a range of control measures, such as careful handwashing and reduced use of broad spectrum antibiotics"

Hypothyroidism Shows Strong Association With Type 2 Diabetes, Screening Recommended - Doctor's Guide, 4/18/11 - "The cross-sectional study comparing 1,848 adult patients with type 2 diabetes with 3,313 individuals without diabetes, showed the prevalence of hypothyroidism on the study group to be 5.7% compared with 1.8% in the control group"

Abstracts from this week's Doctor's Guide Nutrition/Dietetics plus abstracts from my RSS feeds (Click here for the journals, the PubMed ones at the top):

Dietary Intakes of Antioxidant Vitamins and Mortality From Cardiovascular Disease: The Japan Collaborative Cohort Study (JACC) Study - Stroke. 2011 Apr 21 - "investigated the relation of dietary vitamins A, E, and C intake with mortality from cardiovascular disease for Japanese men and women ... The multivariable hazard ratios (95% CI) associated with the highest versus lowest quintiles of vitamin C intake were 0.70 (0.54 to 0.92) for total stroke, 0.63 (0.41 to 0.97) for coronary heart disease, and 0.79 (0.66 to 0.94) for total cardiovascular disease for women, but the inverse associations observed were weak and did not reach statistical significance for men. No significant association was observed between vitamins A or E intake and risk of mortality for either men or women"

Cannabis Use, Ischemic Stroke, and Multifocal Intracranial Vasoconstriction: A Prospective Study in 48 Consecutive Young Patients - Stroke. 2011 Apr 21 - "Multifocal angiopathy associated with cannabis consumption could be an important cause of ischemic stroke in young people"

Dietary Intakes of Arachidonic Acid and {alpha}-Linolenic Acid Are Associated with Reduced Risk of Hip Fracture in Older Adults - J Nutr. 2011 Apr 20 - "arachidonic acid (AA) ... Participants in the highest quartile of ALA intake had a 54% lower risk of hip fracture than those in the lowest quartile (Q4 vs. Q1: HR = 0.46; 95% CI = 0.26-0.83). Men in the highest quartile of AA intake had an 80% lower risk of hip fracture than those in the lowest quartile (Q4 vs. Q1: HR = 0.20; 95% CI = 0.04-0.96). No significant associations were observed among intakes of EPA, DHA, EPA+DHA, or fish. These findings suggest dietary ALA may reduce hip fracture risk in women and men and dietary AA may reduce hip fracture risk in men" - See alpha lipoic acid products at Amazon.com. Note that arachidonic acid is in the omega-6 category.

• Arachidonic acid - Wikipedia - "Arachidonic acid in the human body usually comes from dietary animal sources—meat, eggs, dairy—or is synthesized from linoleic acid"

Serum Carotenoids and Fat-Soluble Vitamins in Women With Type 1 Diabetes and Preeclampsia: A longitudinal study - Diabetes Care. 2011 Apr 15 - "preeclampsia (PE) ... In pregnant women with type 1 diabetes, low serum α- and β-carotene were associated with subsequent development of PE, and vitamin D deficiency may also be implicated" - See Jarrow Formulas, CarotenALL at Amazon.com.

Neat Tech Stuff / "How To's":

Health Focus (Halitosis):

Related Topics:

• dental health

Specific Recommendations:

• SmartMouth Alcohol-Free Mouthwash, Fresh Mint, 16-Ounce Box (Pack of 2)
• SmartMouth Toothpaste, 6-Ounce Tubes (Pack of 3)
• Tongue cleaners at drugstore.com

Alternative News:

• Fox segment on halitosis, recommends SmartMouth brand, just in time for Valentine's (video) - 2/13/10 - See SmartMouth Alcohol-Free Mouthwash, Fresh Mint, 16-Ounce Box (Pack of 2) and SmartMouth Toothpaste, 6-Ounce Tubes (Pack of 3) at Amazon.com.
• Magnolia Bark Extract vs. Bad Breath - WebMD, 11/16/07 - "those who got the mints laced with magnolia bark extract had a 61% drop in their bad-breath bacteria within 30 minutes of using the mints"
• Help for Halitosis? - Dr. Weil, 5/21/07
• Bad Breath Banishers Battle It Out - WebMD, 4/20/06
• Yogurt: An Antidote to Bad Breath? - WebMD, 3/10/05 - "the participants ate about 3 ounces of yogurt twice daily for six weeks ... odiferous compounds, namely hydrogen sulfide, decreased in 80% of participants ... levels of plaque and the gum disease gingivitis were also significantly lower among yogurt eaters"
• Too Young for Bad Breath? - Dr. Weil, 6/2/03
• Tea Fights Bad Breath, Mouth Bacteria - WebMD, 5/20/03

Other News:

• Unhealthy patterns of innate oral bacteria may cause bad breath - Science Daily, 5/16/10 - "Poor oral hygiene resulting in bacterial overgrowth is a known cause of bad breath and while treatment with antibacterials generally provides short-term relief, the malodor-causing bacteria quickly return. Bacteria attributed to bad breath are considered members, not imposters, of the oral microbial ecosystem suggesting that an overall shift in the structure of bacterial populations may be necessary to completely cure bad breath ... The results of this investigation clearly demonstrate that oral malodor is a symptom based on the characteristic occupation of indigenous oral bacterial populations, rather than solely on bacterial overgrowth due to poor oral hygiene"
• Dr. Yosef Krespi Highlights Ways To Fight Bad Breath To The Roots - cbs2chicago.com, 12/31/08 - "Most bad breath comes from bacteria that put out foul smelling byproducts. They can live in plaque on your teeth, on your tongue, or in the little pockets that cause gum disease. But sometimes, they're a little further back in your throat ... Tonsil stones can't be brushed or cleaned, so it's difficult for people suffering from bad breath to get rid of tonsil stones on their own"
• Stomach Ulcer Bug Causes Bad Breath - Science Daily, 11/24/08
• Mouthwashes Really Do Fight Bad Breath - Science Daily, 10/7/08
• New mouth rinses promise to take your bad breath away - USATODAY.com, 5/13/08
• Flavored Gum Kills Bad-Breath Germs - WebMD, 4/6/04
• Have Bad Breath? Sweep Your Tongue - TheSanDiegoChannel.com, 2/14/03 - See Tongue cleaners at drugstore.com.
• Parasitosis Possible Source of Paediatric Halitosis - Doctor's Guide, 11/18/02
• Ooh, That Smell: What to Do if It's Coming From You - WebMD, 8/9/01
• The Sweet Smell of Success: How to Banish Bad Breath - WebMD, 10/18/00

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