Q – Tips: Get up and move
Sitting too long turns off the enzyme lipoprotein lipase. In sedentary people this enzyme doesn’t break down fat into energy so the fat gets “stored.”
Q – Tips: Food and migraines
Foods known to induce migraine headaches include cheeses (especially aged cheeses), chocolate, chicken liver, beer, wine, nuts, mushrooms, smoked/pickled meat and fish, bouillon cubes, yoghurt, eggs, soy sauce, MSG and foods with nitrites (hot dogs, bacon, deli-meats).
Seriously? Worm therapy? Yuck or Yay?
Dear Dr. K: A while ago you wrote about a British physician who ingested worms to treat his asthma. I recently read a report about “worm therapy” for arthritis. Is this for real? Believe it or not, the answer to your question is yes. Despite the growing sophistication of immunologic research, there are still lessons to be learned from mother nature. Two-billion humans are infected with some form of worm. The main reason for this is poverty and a lack…
Nanoparticle technology fights peanut allergy
The much-anticipated arrival of a vaccine for severe peanut allergy is still unfulfilled. There seem to be too many unresolved issues with the vaccines currently being tested — whether they be injectable or oral vaccines. Safety concerns and avoidance of unwanted reactions are instrumental in this delay. Enter nanoparticle technology. Perhaps because the amount of peanut protein used in nanoparticle vaccines is so small, there have been no severe reactions to the vaccine. Also, early studies show that the nano-vaccine…
Hard water known to cause infant eczema
Although it’s been suspected that hard water contributes to the development of eczema in infants, the premise had never been scientifically researched until investigators at St. George’s University in Canada have now proven it is so. Hard water (water with high calcium content) and water with higher chlorine content were both found to increase the likelihood of eczema in infants by 46%. The investigators also found the installation of a water softener removed this increased risk.
Tiniest cells causing big misery in young and old
An infection that previously was mostly seen in children, over the past 15 years has been showing up more frequently in older adults. With its extended incubation period (2-4 weeks), it is difficult to diagnose, and capable of emerging as bronchitis or pneumonia. And it is caused by the smallest free-living organisms — Mycoplasma pneumoniae — that were originally thought to be viruses, but have been shown to be bacteria. Unlike most bacteria they lack a cell wall and are…
New shingles vaccine? Not quite yet
The lead article in the New England Journal of Medicine last month was on a new shingles vaccine. The study involved 15,000 people over age 70 in 18 different countries. Unlike the currently used shingles vaccine which uses a live virus, the new vaccine uses a single protein from the virus, along with an immune stimulator. The new vaccine, which is called HZ/su (Herpes Zoster subunit) prevented shingles in 92% of the patients, and prevented the dreaded complication of shingles…
Q – Tips: probiotics and cancer therapy
A recent article in Science discussed research on the benefit of probiotics in response to cancer therapies. It seems that ingestion of probiotics helps immune cells called T-lymphocytes destroy the cancer cells that have already been partially damaged by chemotherapy treatments.
Q – Tips: Asthma and fracking
John Hopkins Epidemiologists have found that asthmatics who live in areas of the country where fracking is done have an increased incidence of hospital/ER-requiring flare-ups — that is four times greater than their counterparts not exposed to the environmental leak of natural gas.
Q – Tips: Thumb sucking & nail biting
The Journal of Pediatrics recently had an article discussing the allergy protective effect of thumb sucking and nail biting. Children who persisted in one or the other of these behaviors beyond age 2 reduced their risk for allergy/asthma by 30%.