UAE second largest consumer of bottled water

The UAE is the world's second largest consumer of drinking bottled water in 2006, according to a National Geographic report.

The report put Italy on the lead with 203 litres per person, followed by the UAE at 197 litres, and Mexico (191 litres) while the USA ranked tenth with 104 litres. to the report, the world demand for bottled water surged from 28 billion gallons in 2000 to 47 million in 2006. The report lamented a lack of public awareness to the importance of recycling bins. "U.S, drinkers toss 60 million plastic water bottles a day," it said. Source

Marrying close relatives not necessarily risky- Doctors

Marrying close relatives within the limits of religious sanctions may not necessarily pose health risks for offspring, according to 130 doctors who attended here a workshop on 'pre-marital health check'. The workshop jointly organized by Ministry of Health and Dubai Department of Health and Medical Services targeted doctors from maternity and paediatric hospitals and preventive medicine in an effort to familiarize them with the 'pre-marital health check' programme being implemented by Ministry of Health as part of its strategy to bring about healthy families. Assistant Undersecretary for Public Health and Primary Health-care Dr. Maryam Matar said that the Ministry is moving ahead with a clear vision and plan in this regard. "We give emphasize to the need for enhancing professional capability of doctors in diagnosis as it can create good results in pre-marital health checks for prospective brides and grooms and avoid the chances contagious diseases.", she said. The pre-marital health checks can identify the chances of occurring genetically transmitted diseases like Talassimia which is found in the region and mainly attributed to marriages between close relatives. The workshop stressed that marriage between close relatives is not necessarily a reason for genetically transmitted diseases the chances of which can be determined prior to marriage through diagnostic techniques.The doctors also underlined the importance of prospective brides consuming folic acid as a way to minimize the chances of several diseases affecting nervous system. It is better to avoid the chances of giving birth to malformed babies through preventive measures, the workshop concluded. Source

Shisha is 100 times worse than cigarettes

Smoking tobacco using the traditional hookah waterpipe has been part of the fabric of life in the Middle East for centuries. It's documented evolution stretches back to 16th century India where one historian recorded that the waterpipe was invented by a physician during the reign of Emperor Akbar as a less harmful method of tobacco use. The physician, Hakim Abul Fath, suggested that "tobacco smoke should be first passed through a small receptacle of water so that it would be rendered harmless."

So began a myth that shisha smoking is far less dangerous to health than cigarette and pipe smoking. This week, the World Health Organisation has quashed that myth, suggesting that smoking a hookah is more dangerous than smoking cigarettes. It also said that more research is needed into the link between the use of the waterpipe and several fatal illnesses. An advisory note from the WHO says that smoking a hookah may expose the smoker to more smoke over a longer period of time than occurs when smoking cigarettes. Because smoking a hookah may take up to 80 minutes, the report suggests that the smoker is subjecting himself to as much smoke as somebody dragging on 100 cigarettes. And the water does not strip out all toxic substances. Some of the nicotine is absorbed, but this leads to people smoking for longer in order to experience the effects of the drug, and therefore inhaling more smoke containing carbon monoxide, heavy metals and other toxic compounds, which leads to heart and respiratory problems. Source

Study: Tomatoes no defense against prostate cancer

Heinz might no longer be able to claim its ketchup can prevent prostate cancer.
The FDA-approved and popularly held notion that antioxidants in tomatoes can prevent prostate cancer appears to be false, according to a large study done by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and National Cancer Institute.
"It was an hypothesis based on observational studies and the fact that cancer can be caused by oxidative damage to DNA," said Ulrike Peters, a Fred Hutchinson scientist and lead author on the report published in the current journal of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.
Natural dietary compounds known as carotenoids, especially the antioxidant lycopene, have been proposed as cancer-fighters because of their ability to protect against the kind of chemical and genetic "oxidative" damage in cells that can lead to cancer.
Tomatoes are especially high in lycopenes and some earlier studies, including one done in 2002 by Harvard, found epidemiological evidence that men who ingested large amounts of tomato products had lower risks of prostate cancer.
This, along with other studies suggesting the protective benefit, prompted the Food and Drug Administration in 2005 to allow the world's largest maker of tomato-based products, H.J. Heinz Co., to advertise that: "The risk of prostate cancer may be reduced by eating just 1/2 to 1 cup of tomatoes -- such as a single serving of Classico{+®} pasta sauce -- per week."
The FDA now allows makers of tomato-based products to claim their foodstuffs may reduce the risk of gastric, ovarian and pancreatic cancers as well. Continue to the full story from source.

Reducing salt intake 'cuts heart disease risk'

Cutting back on the amount of salt eaten could reduce a person's chances of developing cardiovascular disease by a quarter, according to a new report published in Telegraph UK.
Scientists have also discovered that reducing the amount of salt consumed could lower the risk of death from cardiovascular diseases by up to a fifth.
The research provides some of the strongest objective evidence to date that lowering the amount of salt eaten reduces the long-term risk of future cardiovascular disease, according to the report's authors.
Researchers who carried out the study, published on the British Medical Journal's website, followed up participants from two trials completed in the 1990s staged to analyse the effect that reducing salt in the diet had on blood pressure.
All of the people studied by the US team from Boston had high-normal blood pressure - pre-hypertension - and were therefore at greater risk of developing conditions like a stroke or heart disease.
Scientists examined 744 people in the first study in 1990 and 2,382 in the second, which ended in 1995.
In both trials participants reduced their sodium intake by 25 per cent-35 per cent alongside a control group who did not cut back on their intake.
Detailed information about cardiovascular and other health problems was collected from the people taking part in the trials.
Researchers found that participants who had cut back on salt during the study tended to stick to a lower salt diet compared to the control group.
In total, the scientists collected information from 77 per cent (2,415) of the participants, 200 of whom had reported some sort of cardiovascular problem.
The results showed these pre-hypertensive individuals were 25 per cent less likely to develop cardiovascular problems over the course of 10 to 15 years following the trial.
There was also a 20 per cent lower mortality rate. At present, the average salt consumption in the UK is around 9g per day, far higher than the recommended maximum of 6g.
This is a very important study because for the first time it shows that reducing salt intake does reduce the number of people suffering and dying from strokes and heart attacks, the biggest causes of death and disability in the UK.
Previous studies have predicted that reducing salt intake by 6g a day will reduce the number of heart attack and strokes by approximately 70,000 events (35,000 deaths) a year in the UK alone, and this new research confirms these results.

Rich Ice Cream good for pregnancy

Did you know that eating rich ice cream and drinking whole-fat milk, and using heavy cream for coffee, may help reward women shooting for pregnancy.

Women wanting to become pregnant should consider changing low-fat dairy foods to high-fat foods, for instance by swapping skimmed milk for whole milk and eating rich ice cream.
Also these women should maintain normal calorie intake and limit their consumption of saturated fats. Once they have become pregnant, they are advised to switch back to low-fat dairy foods.
On the other hand, if pregnancy is not the goal, low-fat dairy foods, such as skimmed milk and low-fat yogurt, may the better bill of fare.
In a turn-about from the standard health prescription, researchers found that women who ate two or more portions of low-fat dairy foods a day increased their risk of ovulation-related infertility by 85%, compared with women who ate less than one portion a week according the Feb. 28 issue of Human Reproduction
If women ate at least one portion of high-fat dairy food a day, their risk of infertility was 27% lower compared with women who had one high-fat dairy serving a week, or even less.
The study also found that the more ice cream the women ate, the lower their risk, so that a woman eating ice cream two or more times a week had a 38% lower risk compared with a woman who ate ice cream less often than once a week.

Tip: Baskin Robbins and Haagen Dazs are at every corner of all the Shopping Malls in Dubai.

Antioxidant vitamins not life savers any longer!

In the same way as Unhappy Meals articles unveil the controversies of healthy eating, recent articles are sparkling doubts regarding the use of Vitamins.

Antioxidant vitamins are not life savers!!!

People who take antioxidant vitamins such as A, C and E -- long touted as protecting against cancer, heart disease and other health problems - don't live any longer, new research shows.
Worse yet, there is actually evidence that they die younger than people who don't take vitamins.
The latest findings contradict the findings of observational studies claiming that antioxidants improve health according the Centre for Clinical Intervention Research at Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.
The research, published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, should be of interest to the millions of consumers who regularly take vitamin supplements.

These findings apply only to supplements containing high doses of antioxidants such as vitamins A, C, E and beta carotene.
The findings do not apply to multivitamins. There are also clear benefits to supplements such as vitamin D and folic acid for pregnant women.

Latest advancements in treatment of cancer

The four-day international oncology conference that concludes today (Thursday, February 22, 2007), in Al Ain, has addressed a wide spectrum of oncology-related topics including latest advancements in treatment. His Excellency, Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, who formally opened the conference highlighted issues related to cancer prevention, early diagnosis and optimal cure including the need to take into consideration issues relevant to quality of life when treatment decisions are being made. The conference is being hosted by Tawam Hospital in affiliation with Johns Hopkins and the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, UAE University.
During the conference, the evidence base for treatment options in patients with advanced malignancy was presented by distinguished international faculty; Prof. R. Arceci, Prof. M. Choti, Prof. E. Van Cutsem and Prof. D. Ettinger. The importance of various combinations of drugs used in the treatment of cancer was discussed, as also was the rule of neo (novel) therapies recently developed to be used alone or in combination to treat advanced cancers. Prof. Arceci dealt with cancer of the blood (Leukaemia), Prof. Choti addressed the use of neoadjuvant therapy for liver tumor prior to surgery, Prof. Cutsem referred to colon cancer and Prof. Ettigner highlighted the role of chemotherapy and radiation therapy for head and neck cancer. Continue to the full story from Source.

Unhappy Meals (Part 2)

The continuention of Unhappy Meals:
Last winter came the news that a low-fat diet, long believed to protect against breast cancer, may do no such thing — this from the monumental, federally financed Women’s Health Initiative in US, which has also found no link between a low-fat diet and rates of coronary disease.
The year before we learned that dietary fiber might not, as we had been confidently told, help prevent colon cancer.
Just last fall two prestigious studies on omega-3 fats published at the same time presented us with strikingly different conclusions. While the Institute of Medicine stated that “it is uncertain how much these omega-3s contribute to improving health” (and they might do the opposite if you get them from mercury-contaminated fish), a Harvard study declared that simply by eating a couple of servings of fish each week (or by downing enough fish oil), you could cut your risk of dying from a heart attack by more than a third — a stunningly hopeful piece of news. It’s no wonder that omega-3 fatty acids are poised to become the oat bran of 2007, as food scientists micro-encapsulate fish oil and algae oil and blast them into such formerly all-terrestrial foods as bread and tortillas, milk and yogurt and cheese, all of which will soon, you can be sure, sprout fishy new health claims.
It's quite confusing.....isn't it???

Loneliness link with Alzheimer's

People who are lonely are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, a large US study has suggested.
The findings come from a study of more than 800 elderly patients, who were followed over a four-year period.
Social isolation has already been shown to be linked to dementia but this is the first time researchers have looked at how alone people actually felt.
Writing in Archives of General Psychiatry, the researchers said the reason for the link was not yet clear.
Study leader Professor Robert Wilson and colleagues assessed participants loneliness by asking people to rate from one to five whether they agreed with certain statements related to loneliness on an annual basis.
Questions posed to those being studied included "I experience a general sense of emptiness" and "I often feel abandoned".
People in the study were also assessed for signs of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
And autopsies were carried out on 90 patients who died during the study to look for certain physical signs associated with Alzheimer's disease such as deposits of protein outside and around nerve cells.
The team found that the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease increased by 51% for each point of the loneliness score.
Those with the highest loneliness score of 3.2 had about 2.1 times the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease compared to those with a low score of 1.4.
When the researchers factored in social isolation, such as if people had a small social network, the results did not change significantly.
However there was no association between loneliness and the brain pathology associated with Alzheimer's disease.