Boiled nuts help protect against illness
Fri, 26 Oct 2007 19:45:55 GMT
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - For lovers of boiled peanuts, there's some good news from the health front. A new study by a group of Huntsville researchers found that boiled peanuts bring out up to four times more chemicals that help protect against disease than raw, dry or oil-roasted nuts.
Lloyd Walker, chair of Alabama A&M University's Department of Food and Animal Sciences who co-authored the study, said these phytochemicals have antioxidant qualities that protect cells against the risk of degenerative diseases, including cancers, diabetes and heart disease.
"Boiling is a better method of preparing peanuts in order to preserve these phytochemicals," Walker said.
The study will appear in Wednesday's edition of the American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The other co-authors in the study are A&M researchers Yvonne Chukwumah and Martha Verghese, as well as University of Alabama in Huntsville researcher Bernhard Vogler.
Walker said peanuts and other plants use phytochemicals for things such as helping avoid disease and insect attacks.
"These things are not nutrients; at the same time they have health benefits to humans," he told The Birmingham News. "The trick is to keep those health benefits, not to process them out of the foods."
According to Walker, water and heat penetrate the nuts, releasing beneficial chemicals to a certain point. Overcooking the nuts destroys the useful elements.
Alabama is third in the nation in the amount of peanuts produced with a crop valued at more than $67 million last year.
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Information from: The Birmingham News
Product combines workstation treadmill
Fri, 26 Oct 2007 20:49:14 GMT
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - A number of employers apparently are willing to let their workers walk. Steelcase Inc. says many companies have expressed interest in its newest product, which combines an office workstation with a treadmill so workers can burn calories while earning a paycheck.
The nation's largest office furniture maker will begin taking orders for its Walkstation beginning Nov. 19.
"What we have done is taken science from the lab to a product that could potentially help millions and millions of people," Walkstation developer James Levine told The Grand Rapids Press for a story published Thursday. "I think it's the next iPod. Everybody is going to want one."
Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who has spent the past 15 years studying energy expended during daily activity, collaborated on the Walkstation with Steelcase.
He approached staff members of the Grand Rapids-based company with the idea while they were doing research at the renowned medical facility. Within a month, a prototype was built that combined a height-adjustable workstation produced by Details, a Steelcase subsidiary, with a treadmill from the company's fitness area.
The final product, which will sell for about $4,000 and be the first product of Details' new FitWork line, incorporates a specially designed treadmill by St. Louis-based True Fitness Technology Inc.
The quiet-running treadmill is designed to offer a user a low-impact slow stroll rather than a sweat-inducing run-walk. It operates at a maximum speed of 3.5 mph instead of a more typical 10 mph.
Walking regularly, even at a slow pace, can improve a person's health, said Steve Glass, a fitness expert who is a professor of movement science at Grand Valley State University.
"How hard you work to burn calories isn't as important as burning those calories from the standpoint of long-term health," Glass said.
Levine said his research has shown that a sedentary lifestyle is unnatural. The key to fighting obesity and many other health problems is to keep people from spending their days desk-bound.
"Over the last 150 years, we've become chair-imprisoned. We are behind a screen all day at work. We are in a car or bus getting to and from work. And in the evening, we are in a chair watching television or surfing the Internet," Levine said. "We've gone from being on our legs all day to being on our bottoms all day."
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On the Net:
Steelcase Inc.: http://www.steelcase.com
Mayo Clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.org
True Fitness Technology: http://www.truefitness.com
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Information from: The Grand Rapids Press, http://www.mlive.com/grpress
Staph screening said may wipe out germ
Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:51:47 GMT
By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer
CHICAGO - Testing all new hospital patients for a dangerous staph "superbug" could help wipe out a germ that likely kills more Americans than AIDS, consumer advocates say and early evidence suggests.
Yet few U.S. hospitals do it, and many fight efforts to require it. Jeanine Thomas, who nearly died from the drug-resistant staph bug, says the reason is simple: "Doctors don't want to be told what to do."
The Chicago suburbanite's personal crusade led Illinois this year to become the first state to order testing of all high-risk hospital patients and isolation of those who carry the staph germ called MRSA.
Powerful doctor groups fought against it. The testing and isolation of patients would be too costly, they said. Many other germs plague hospitals that also require attention. Experts said a more proven approach would focus on better hand washing by hospital staff — a simple measure tough to enforce.
Yet, Thomas prevailed. Similar measures passed this year in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And Thomas' national crusade to make hospitals test for MRSA and report their infection rates gained steam last week after a Virginia teenager's death from the germ and a government report estimated it causes dangerous infections that sicken more than 90,000 Americans each year and kill nearly 19,000.
Suddenly the little-known germ with the cumbersome name, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is getting lots of attention.
People in health care settings, like hospitals and nursing homes, are most at risk for MRSA infections. Doctors and nurses who treat staph-infected patients and then don't carefully wash up can spread the germ to other patients. Germ-contaminated medical devices used on people having dialysis or medical procedures also can spread staph. Older patients and blacks are most at risk, according to the recent report by government researchers.
MRSA, pronounced Muhr-suh, has been around for decades and in recent years has spread to schools, prisons and crowded public housing projects. Even healthy people can carry it on their skin. It may look like a pimple or spider bite that doesn't heal, but it can turn deadly if it enters the bloodstream or morphs into a flesh-eating wound.
Yet, many infection control experts oppose required testing for it in hospitals.
Many note that MRSA is just one of dozens of risky germs that often infect people in hospitals — particularly those with weakened immune systems or open wounds.
But Lisa McGiffert doesn't buy it. The director of the Consumers Union's campaign to stop hospital infections calls that "an argument of distraction."
"Certainly there are other superbugs and they should be tackling those, too," said McGiffert. "To eradicate hospital-acquired infections is going to take a comprehensive effort" that should include testing hospital patients, she said.
About 1.7 million Americans each year develop infections from various germs while hospitalized and almost 100,000 of them die, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
MRSA accounts for only about 10 percent of these infections. Other worrisome bugs include C-difficile , vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus , and drug-resistant Acinetobacter ; none of them accounts for more than 10 percent of hospital infections.
MRSA infections have hogged attention, partly because they're on the rise. And, acknowledges the CDC's Dr. John Jernigan, "MRSA likely accounts for a disproportionate amount of illness and death" because of its strength and resistance to mainline antibiotics.
CDC recommendations for fighting drug-resistant bugs list MRSA testing as an option. However, the agency says it's unclear whether that works better than other measures. Those include judicious use of antibiotics, hand washing, and wearing gloves, gowns and other protective gear.
"We don't think a silver bullet to that problem," Jernigan said.
The Joint Commission, an independent, nonprofit group that sets standards for the nation's hospitals, doesn't have specific rules on how to prevent MRSA.
The commission's Dr. Robert Wise said the organization wants to see evidence that MRSA testing and other measures work. He said the commission hopes to have an answer early next year and then will then decide whether to adopt new standards.
Perhaps the commission will review an experiment done in Pittsburgh. There, the Veterans Affairs hospital tested new patients for staph, using a nose swab. They isolated those who had the germ, and annual infection rates fell from about 60 to 18 cases, said Dr. Rajiv Jain.
The staph bug used to cause "occasional" deaths, but no patient has died since 2005 when testing of all patients began, said Jain, who is with the VA's MRSA prevention program.
In May, the VA began putting a $28 million testing system in place for all 155 hospitals. But it costs about $32,000 to treat one hospitalized MRSA patient, so "if you reduce infections by 50 percent, you more than recuperate the cost," Jain said.
Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and the Netherlands have reduced their MRSA rates and all test high-risk patients. In the Netherlands, that means testing foreign patients.
Opponents of mandatory testing point out that these small countries all had low rates of the germ to begin with. Hospitals in larger, more diverse nations like Britain, for example, have long had problems with MRSA.
And testing may not make sense for hospitals that treat few high-risk patients or where other bugs are more prevalent, opponents say.
"The best approach is not to have state legislators dictating how hospitals go about fighting infections, said Dr. Don Goldmann, of the Institute of Healthcare Improvement, a nonprofit advocacy group.
At the University of Chicago Medical Center, doctors have been focusing on C-difficile bacteria, which can cause severe intestinal illness.
With Illinois' new law requiring MRSA testing, "We're having to shift gears and haven't been able to devote what we'd hoped on these other pressing problems," said Dr. Stephen Weber, the hospital epidemiologist.
At Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, lab supplies alone for the testing will likely cost about $80,000, said Stacy Pur, Rush's chief nurse epidemiologist for infection control.
"It's very labor-intensive and we would really much rather focus our efforts on infection control" measures proven to work, including better hand washing by hospital staff, she said.
But Thomas, the MRSA patient-turned-advocate, argues: "You're never going to control this with hand hygiene, because you're never going to get 100 percent compliance."
Thomas had never heard of MRSA until she slipped on ice seven years ago and broke her left ankle. That landed her in a Chicago hospital, where she believes she got the infection.
Two days after being sent home, she developed throbbing pain in her left leg. She went to the emergency room, where doctors removed her splint and found the ankle hugely swollen, black and draining pus. She was admitted and given antibiotics, but within a week the infection spread inside her body; her lungs, kidneys and other vital organs shut down.
Hospitalized for three weeks and bedridden for six months, she recovered but her ankle joint was destroyed. She formed a support group and began lobbying for the new law.
Now Thomas is working with advocates in several other states.
"We have a wave happening," she said.
And if Illinois hospitals don't comply, she may push to enact testing of all — not just high-risk — hospital patients.
That has been done since 2005 at three Chicago area hospitals in the Evanston Northwestern Healthcare system. There, the MRSA infection rate has dropped 60 percent, said the system's Dr. Lance Peterson.
And at the VA hospital in Pittsburgh, Jain reported an added bonus. The rates for other hospital-acquired infections also fell after MRSA testing began.
Why? The testing may have caused hospital workers to pay more attention to hand washing and other prevention efforts, he said.
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Medical Writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.
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CDC: http://www.cdc.gov
MRSA support group: http://www.mrsa-survivors.org
Parkinsons tie to impulsiveness studied
Fri, 26 Oct 2007 02:04:17 GMT
By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer
WASHINGTON - Your brain is supposed to fire a "hold your horses" signal when faced with a tough choice. But a brain implant that stops the tremors of Parkinson's disease may block that signal — a new explanation for why some Parkinson's patients become hugely impulsive.
Scientists have long known that anti-Parkinson medications occasionally spark compulsions like pathological gambling.
Research published Thursday found another treatment, a pacemaker-like brain implant, can trigger a completely different kind of impulsiveness. How different? The drugs leave a subset of patients unlikely to learn from bad experiences, like a losing poker hand.
The brain implant doesn't hinder learning. In contrast, those patients can make hasty decisions as the brain loses its automatic tendency to hesitate when faced with conflict, University of Arizona researchers reported online in the journal Science.
In fact, the first patient they studied displayed an alarming example when he saw something across the room he wanted and tried to dash over without his wheelchair. Neuroscientist Michael Frank had to catch the man before he fell.
"Deep brain stimulation," or DBS, involves placing electrodes into a small region called the subthalamic nucleus, an area important for controlling movement. But it also is where scientists believe the brain yells: "Stop, weigh your options!"
Frank's theory: When electrodes fire to disrupt excessive movement, they also may block that signal.
"It makes a lot of sense," said Dr. Valerie Voon, a psychiatrist with the National Institutes of Health's neurology center, after reviewing the research.
The study doesn't offer easy solutions. But it could affect how neurologists counsel Parkinson's patients after DBS surgery.
"Because they don't have those brakes in place, you need to teach someone to slow down" when faced with certain decisions, Voon said.
At least 1 million Americans have Parkinson's, suffering increasingly severe tremors and periodically stiff or frozen limbs as brain cells quit producing dopamine, a chemical crucial for movement. There is no cure. Standard treatments include medications to stimulate dopamine and, once those fail, DBS surgery to control tremors.
Doctors have long noticed varying degrees of impulsiveness in Parkinson's patients, from making uncensored remarks to rare cases of extreme behavior such as compulsive gambling, shopping, eating or sex. Changing medications or doses often solves extreme symptoms — if patients or their families report the worrisome behavior.
Frank wondered what role the brain implant plays.
His team used specialized computer games to probe decision-making in 15 Parkinson's patients taking dopamine drugs, 17 others who received DBS, and 14 healthy older adults.
First, participants were shown pairs of Japanese characters and told to pick the "correct" one. It was baffling — what makes one symbol better, especially if you don't know Japanese? But as the computer screen beamed back "Correct!" or "Incorrect!" their brains learned to prefer some characters over others.
Then Frank paired the symbols differently: "Correct" ones together to simulate "win-win" decisions; "incorrect" pairings to model choosing the lesser of two evils; and easy "right-wrong" pairs.
Healthy people and Parkinson's patients on dopamine drugs hesitated briefly when faced with win-win or lose-lose choices, allowing time to weigh options. But DBS patients didn't hesitate with lose-lose choices — and actually sped up win-win decisions.
Remarkably, switch off the brain implant and DBS patients quit rushing the close calls.
As in previous research, medicated patients were less likely to learn which "wrong" symbols to avoid, backing the theory that dopamine drugs can hinder learning from negative feedback.
But do the DBS patients' hasty choices really matter in a win-win situation, where there's no clearly wrong answer?
In the real world, definitely, said Arizona's Frank. Say your job offers a range of 401K options. Sure, any one is better than no investment, but just grabbing the first one might not be the most lucrative.
It hasn't been obvious that different treatments cause different impulsive behaviors, said Dr. Kathleen Shannon of Chicago's Rush University Hospital.
"They all seem to make bad decisions and have trouble making decisions," she said. Now, "I'll start to look at my patients differently."
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On the Net:
Information on Parkinson's disease:
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/parkinsons_disease/parkinsons_disease.htm
