Health Nuts & Pregnancy Nuts

Oh nuts. Many people don't fully appreciate all the health benefits we get from them. Nuts are excellent for our heart health by: lowering our LDL (bad) cholesterol, reducing risk of blood clots, and reducing risk of coronary heart disease. They do this by providing a Power 12 List: 1) Omega-3 Fatty Acids, 2) L-arginine, 3) Fiber, 4) Vitamin E, 5) Plant Sterols, 6) Unsaturated Fats, 7) Vitamin K, 8) Vitamin B6, 9) Folate, 10) Vegetable Protein, 11) Calcium, & 12) Magnesium.

In addition to heart health, nuts contribute to health in other ways. They can reduce your risk of diabetes, Parkinson's disease and dementia, macular degeneration, and improve your mood (e.g. walnuts improve serotonin levels in your brain, similar to antidepressant medications).

The best nuts: walnuts, hazlenuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios, pecans, and even peanuts (although not really a nut, but rather a legume). Also, the way in which you eat them matters. Raw or dry-roasted are the best ways and offer equal nutritional value. Oil-roasted nuts have more fat and calories. Try to avoid nuts made with salt--or at minimum, make sure sea salt instead of regular salt is used. If you are a food pyramid follower, nuts belong in the "meat" group.

The nut craze doesn't come without precaution. Please don't go nuts (pun intended) eating these, as just a handful is approximately 200 calories. Everything in moderation. The reason they are so calorically dense is because of nuts' high fat content. These fats are the healthy ones though, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated.

Pregnancy nuts: there is debate about whether consumption of peanuts and other nuts during pregnancy increases the risk that a child will develop a nut allergy or asthma OR conversely, exposure protects a child from developing an allergy or asthma. Be sure to read scientific sources of literature and look at the date of publication. A lot of press came out after the July 15, 2008 article I referenced above and here, but more recent science says the opposite. Be sure to consult with your physician on this.

*photo courtesy of nuthealth.org

Stop Typing, Start Talking

Take a look around you the next time you're in a mall, on the street, at the zoo or park, or anywhere where you can see a mother with her child. Is she talking to him/her or is she busy on the phone texting/emailing? Technology has its downfalls and teaching communication to our children could be one of them.

Infants learn speech by hearing it, so parents should be sure to talk to their children as much as possible. Identify objects, point out colors, animals, and expose them to a second language. Even if they aren't able to talk back to you yet, those babies are like little sponges, soaking up the information (well, it seeps in anyway). The point here is to try to stop the texts and emails on our Blackberries and iPhones and to remember to talk to your infants. Plus, you're enriching their cognition, and who doesn't want a smart kid?

This is also important, as we know that our ability to acquire new languages is best at very young ages and declines rapidly around puberty. See Steven Pinker's book, The Language Instinct, for more information on that. Also, read about Noam Chomsky, one of the fathers of linguistics. So, teach your children as much vocabulary as you can early and expose them to other languages early. Second-language exposure in junior high is too late for a child to be able to speak with phonetic "nativity."

Finally, to increase communication with your child, try teaching them sign language at a very young age, before they are able to talk. My sister-in-law did this with her children before they could communicate with her verbally and sure enough, the screaming outbursts of frustration were reduced, and the kids communicated more easily with her when wanting "more" or when they were "tired." Not only does communication then increase, but it's suggested they have an increase in cognition, early literacy, and spatial reasoning.

So, start talking to your kids and create some little Einsteins and Beethovens...or Chomskys.

Monkeys, Music, & Health Reform

Apologies for the absenteeism. Summer has been filled with passing my PhD Comps (hooray), traveling (e.g. Costa Rica & Panama), and working at AHRQ. No excuses really, but I give them nonetheless...

Here are some of my favorite recent stories from the Summer of 2009:

Eat Less and Live Longer. A team at the University of Wisconsin found that caloric restriction in monkeys was associated with reduced diabetes, cancer, and heart and brain disease. How did they do it? Reduce caloric restriction by 30%, and add a vitamin and mineral supplement to ensure adequate nutrition.

Internet Therapy. A recent study published in the Lancet says internet-based psychotherapy for depression works. Specifically, the used cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) in real time via the web. Will insurers pay for this type of therapy? Although recent trends say a push in therapy trends for depression is heavy on pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy may be more effective or less costly for those receiving treatment.

Pleasure from Music? Not for Depressed. It appears that the lack of interest and pleasure in depressed individuals is actually visible in neural brain activity. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows that individuals with depression have less neural activity than non-depressed, even for simple activities like listening to music.

US Life Expectancy at All-Time High. The CDC's Center for Health Statistics revealed new mortality stats in their National Vital Stat Report. The United States life expectancy is now 78, all all-time national high (Japan, Australia, Italy, Canada all still live longer than us). Women are still living longer (life expec is 80.4 yrs) than mean (75.3 years), but the gap is narrowing. Deaths due to the 8/15 leading causes of death have dropped (e.g. flu, heart disease, stroke, diabetes), but raised for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and liver disease. Not to play devil's advocate to public health and prevention of disease (i.e. promotion of longer lives), but does prevention actually cost us more money in the long run?

Health Reform. Will it occur this year? Questions? Check the facts and falsities behind the bills and debates here.

5 Months Until Health Reform?

I took a quick look today at Kaiser Health News (KHN), the new nonprofit news organization devoted to health care policy and politics.  They just rolled out today, June 1st, 2009.  I added a quick link in my bookmarks also.  KHN will be a great, high-quality resource for stories on things like health reform, health care costs, insurance, aging, health IT, and quality and delivery of care issues.  I urge you to take a look.

Regarding the title of this post, "5 Months Until Health Reform?," an interview was done with White House health care czar, Nancy-Ann DeParle and she estimates that Obama will have a health reform bill on his desk by Thanksgiving.   DaPerle is asked about her thoughts on financing, and the answere appear unclear, although she does state her opinion that health reform will not be funded primarily with taxes and that a scaled back version of health reform (e.g. scaling uninsured number to half) is not an option right now.  Full reform is the focus.  Also see the KHN article, "Big, Small or Nothing At All? Three Scenarios For Health Reform."  

What are your thoughts on health reform?  What about Kaiser's new health news, KHN?

You can view the press releases for KHN here:  11-19-2008 and today's roll-out 6-1-2009.

Employers: Rewarding the Healthy

It is well-understood:  being healthy is cheap.  Healthier employees are cheaper employees--less costs fo chronic diseases (e.g. diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular health) and less productivity lost.

Employers really do not have any incentives to provide prevention plans for employees, as the majority of employees don't spend their lifetime at one company and leave for new jobs before employers could reap the financial benefits of investing in preventive behaviors of employees.  Tax benefits for employers could help.  Policymakers are trying to get a larger number of employers to grasp this notion.  A recent survey by Hewitt Associates says that 1/3 of employrs are planning to put more of an emphasis on wellness plans.  Some large corporations already do, such as General Mills, Dell, and Safeway.  More will like

ly follow suit, especially with the proposed policy changes.  

Sen Baucus (D-MT) and Sen Harkin (D-IA) are propsing tax incentives for employers that offer wellness programs to employees.  This is consistent with Obama's goals for health reform ("invest in prevention and wellness").  A victory for public health--a shift in focus from treating more expensive and downstream diseases, rather than a focus in less-expensive upstream acts of preventing diseases from beginning.  But who loses?

A recent Health Affairs article, "Financial Penalties for the Unhealthy? Ethical Guidelines for Holding Employees Responsible for Their Health," looks at the other side of this issue.  According to federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations, employers can give rewards/penalties for up to 20% of the total cost of covering an employee.  However, unions and those concerned with personal freedoms are arguing about the blurry ethical line of holding employees responsible and protecting their individual liberties.  Considerations about paternalism, personal choice, privacy protection, access to health promotion, and the complexities of developing obesity are brought up on the opposing side.

Where do you stand?

Alzheimer's Project on HBO

HBO aired a  4-part documentary on May 10th, 2009 on Alzheimer's Disease.  The Alzheimer's Project was made in association with the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health and the  Alzheimer's Association.  The documentary also features Maria Shriver, First Lady of California, as her father is living with Alzheimer's Disease (she also is exec-producer).  

There is no cure for Alzheimer's Disease (AD), although the documentary sheds light on recent research findings and breakthroughs about this devastating disease.  Alzheimer's disease is an irreversible and progressive brain disorder that slowly deteriorates memory, judgement, the ability to carry out daily activities, and produces personality changes.  The risk for developing AD doubles every 5 years after the age of 65 and nearly 50% of people have the disease by the age of 85.  After cancer, it is the most feared disease.

During the time I was obtaining my Master's degree, I was working with the great team at the University of Kansas on both the research and clinical side of Alzheimer's Disease and related dementias.  Information about them and research projects can be found here:

The University of Kansas Alzheimer & Memory Program (KU-AMP)

How Many Eggs Do You Have? Scientists Say Females Able to Make Eggs Later in Life.

 I opened up my issue of "Science" magazine from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and saw the article titled, "Study Suggests a Renewable Source of Eggs and Stirs More Controversy."  Wow.  

Apparently some stem cell biologists, Ji Wu and colleagues, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China found that adult ovaries have cells that can give rise to new eggs (oocytes) and then turn into offspring.   This really gives a slap in the fact to the idea of females being born with all the eggs they will ever have.   A now heated controversary is emerging in reproductive biology.  The researchers results come from a series of studies on mice, where they removed their ovaries and sorted through cells to find "germline cells" that eventually turned into eggs and offspring.

Much more research is to be done before we can say anything conclusively, but it looks like we might be able to disprove the idea that females cannot make more eggs.  John Tilly, professor of obstetrics and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School, was not involved with the study, but has also published some controversial ideas about women's ability to produce new eggs.  Scientists and researchers everywhere, whom are already in a crazed controversy, have more science in favor of the fact that women are not born with a finite number of eggs.

So, is the biological clock really a psychological clock?