Nursing and Survival
The secret is out---what mothers and babies have known for centuries and the
medical, pharmaceutical industrial complex is just now finding out. The Infant
Welfare Center of Chicago has tracked the health and development of 20,061
infants. They discovered those who were breast-fed for the first nine months
have a death rate of only 0.15%, those who were partially breast-fed had a death
rate of 0.7% and those who were artificially fed had a death rate of 8.4%.
That’s FIFTY-SIX times greater than the rate among the breast-fed babies. In
Holland 80% of the infants are born at home, they also have the best infant
survival rate in the world. Meanwhile, the United States has less than 20% of
infants born at home and the survival rate is twenty-first in the world. Does
that give us a clue, or what?
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Exclusive Breastfeeding Cuts Child's Asthma Risk
April 27, 1999
SAN DIEGO (Reuters Health) -- Exclusive breastfeeding through 4 months of age
protects against asthma for at least the first 6 years of life according to Dr.
Wendy Oddy, of the TVW Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth,
Western Australia.
Oddy presented the finding Sunday at the American Lung Association/American
Thoracic Society International Conference here.
Approximately half of the nearly 3,000 infants in the study were fed only breast
milk until 4 months of age, making this an appropriate threshold for examining
the effects of exclusive breastfeeding on asthma symptoms.
In comparing the two groups, Oddy and her team found that diagnosed asthma,
wheezing, sleep disturbance due to respiratory symptoms, and signs of allergy
were all significantly more common in children fed other milk before age 4
months than in those exclusively breast-fed through the 4th
month.
The study results may mean that "the introduction of other milk is a risk
factor" for asthma at age 6 years, but in an interview with Reuters Health, Oddy
said that the more plausible way of looking at it is that breastfeeding is
protective. Other studies have also demonstrated a protective effect of
breastfeeding, but Oddy's is the first to look specifically at exclusive
breastfeeding.
Oddy pointed out that human breast milk contains a unique combination of fatty
acids, immunoglobulins and other biologically-active compounds essential to the
proper development of the infant's immune system.
Oddy also suggested that the decline in breastfeeding may be one of many factors
contributing to the current "epidemic" of asthma in developed countries.
Oddy's team is currently in the process of determining if this association
persists in an 8-year follow-up of the group of children studied. She notes that
in a smaller, Finnish study, the link between breastfeeding and asthma was
observed for as long as 17 years.
Although there are a variety of barriers to breastfeeding today, including a
lack of support for new mothers from families and the healthcare system, Oddy
believes that "a lot more mothers can breastfeed than think they can."
One of the main factors determining if a woman will breastfeed is her partner's
attitude. "If the father commits, the mother commits" to breastfeeding,
according to Oddy. For this reason, she believes that increased antenatal
education for both parents is important to improving rates of breastfeeding in
developed countries.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or
redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is
expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall
not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken
in reliance thereon.
Breast Milk has 5 of the 8 carbs. found in Ambrotose.
STUDY SHEDS NEW LIGHT ON HUMAN CELL ACTIVITY
The London Free Press
29 January 1999
By Mary-Jane Egan
Free Press Health Reporter
A joint discovery of a London scientist and a colleague at Duke University -
featured today as the cover story in the international scientific journal
Science - is shedding new light on how activity within human cells can
contribute to diseases such as cancer, high blood pressure and congestive
heart failure.
The findings of Steven Ferguson of Robarts Research Institute and Louis Luttrell
at Duke in North Carolina hold out hope of new drug strategies targeting
illnesses caused by malfunctions in cell-signalling pathways that can lead to
life-threatening diseases.
Ferguson, a molecular pharmacologist, returned to his native London last year to
pursue his specialty in "G protein-coupled receptor signaling" and a class of
proteins called B arrestins.
These proteins regulate everything from sight, smell and taste to heart rate and
brain function. "They're probably one of the most important proteins invented by
nature and they're the target of more than 60 per cent of all medications," said
Ferguson.
While working with Luttrell at Duke before being lured to Robarts last year, the
pair discovered that B arrestins not only "turn off" cell signaling systems, but
can cause them to switch functions.
Ferguson, assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology at University
of Western Ontario, was particularly interested in how the cellular system
becomes impaired or "desensitized" and used a common example to explain the
problem.
"You enter a bakery and you're hit with that pleasant smell of freshly baked
bread, but after a few minutes, you don't notice it. You've become
desensitized."
Unless the counter-balance is present in cells to "resensitize," the pleasant
experience would not be repeated by re-entering the bakery, Ferguson said.
With congestive heart failure, Ferguson said the same principle applies. "The G
protein is causing the heart to contract but when B arrestin comes in, it shuts
off the receptor and can cause it to witch functions and signal growth," often
resulting in high blood pressure or heart failure.
Study results in experimental mouse models indicated this switching of signals
"might even play a role in the ability of G protein-coupled receptors to t
promote cancer," Ferguson said.
Desensitization also limits the effectiveness of drugs targeting such receptors,
such as drugs to treat asthma. And G proteins are popular drug targets, he adds,
because they're on the surface of the cell "so the medication doesn't have to
get into the cell".
Ferguson said scientists worldwide are now hotly pursuing the field. "We're
looking at a very basic mechanism of a cell that exists in every single cell in
the body, but its role and function differs depending on the receptor being
activated. From a scientific perspective it's always been
thought of as a rather simple mechanism, but we're finding it's actually immense
because of this ability to switch functions."
He said it's these windows into how cells function that lead to clearer
understanding of disease and disease prevention.
Mark Poznansky, president and scientific director of Robarts, said he's pleased
the work is gaining international recognition.
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Comments:
London is a world-class medical center. When their TV station reported on this
last evening, it was explained even more clearly that cell-to-cell communication
is the exciting aspect of these discoveries. Isn't that interesting, especially
since the glyconutrient complex facilitates cell-to-cell communication? Before
long the whole world is going to discover the importance of supporting this
basic function of the human body. Are you ready?
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The following appeared in The London Free Press, Thursday, January 28, 1999, By
Brenda C. Coleman, Associated Press.
CHlCAGO-Following a landmark study of more than 17,000 twins, researchers
reported yesterday that most cases of Parkinson's disease are not due to a
genetic defect, but are caused by factors that are likely environmental.
"For the first time, today we can say that for people with Parkinson's disease
diagnosed after age 50, it's most commonly caused by environmental factors,"
said Dr. Caroline Tanner of the Parkinson's Institute in Sunnyvale, California,
who led the study published in yesterday's Journal
of the American Medical Association.
The environmental factors are unknown, but may include chemical exposures, diet
and smoking - the last of which, paradoxically, seems to lessen the risk of
developing Parkinson's, she said.
At least one million Americans have Parkinson's, Tanner said, making it second
only to Alzheimer's disease in frequency as a degenerative disease of the brain
and nerves.
Parkinson's causes slow deterioration of the nerves' ability to control the
muscles. It usually starts with small tremors, then progresses to a shuffling
gait and increasing weakness.
There is no cure, and drug therapy tends to lose effectiveness over time.
A genetic cause is most common in the approximately 10 per cent of people with
the disease who are diagnosed before age 50, Tanner said.
In 1997, researchers identified a long-sought gene defect that can cause a form
of Parkinson's, but the proportion of cases arising from the defect was unknown
before this study.
In the new study, researchers tracked down more than 17,000 men enrolled in a
Second World War-era twin registry. The researchers found 161 twin pairs in
which at least one brother had Parkinson's disease and data on the pairs was
complete.
Among the 161 sets, there were 16 in which Parkinson's had struck before age 50.
Of the four sets of identical twins-who have exactly the same genetic
material-both brothers had Parkinson's.
Among the 12 fraternal pairs, who share only half their genetic material, there
were only two in which both brothers had Parkinson's.
Researchers calculated that if one twin developed the disease by age 50, the
other was six times more likely to get it if he were an identical twin than if
he were a fraternal twin.
Tanner said environmental factors most likely to play a role in typical
Parkinson's include exposure to chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides,
diet and tobacco smoking.
The apparent protective effect of smoking was found in the twins and in previous
research, Tanner said.
She and Dr. J. William Langston, president of the Parkinson's Institute and
senior author, said the protection is probably real, perhaps caused by smoking's
stimulation of the liver to produce enzymes that neutralize some toxin that
would otherwise provoke Parkinson's.
"But there are about 2,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke, so we still have a big
job ahead of us in finding what chemicals might actually be protective,"
Langston said. "And we don't recommend smoking to prevent Parkinson's disease."
An expert not involved in the study said it presents a compelling reason to
search for better treatments, since the drugs now available may lessen symptoms,
but don't really attack the disease or prevent disability.
And surgery is promising, but still largely experimental, noted Dr. Jeffrey
Cummings of the University of California, Los Angeles.
In an editorial accompanying the study, he recommended that the new findings
should refocus research on environmental triggers for typical Parkinson's
disease and genetic influences in early onset disease.
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Comments:
The glyconutrient complex and phytonutrients promote full cell-to-cell
communication and protection from environmental toxins. Thought you'd find that
interesting in the light of this article.
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Breastmilk Reduces Infection Rate in NICU
Breastmilk provided to very low birth weight, preterm infants in the Neonatal
intensive care unit (NICU) may decrease the chances of these infants acquiring
infections in the NICU by 53 to 57 percent. Researchers from Georgetown
University Miedical Center and Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health
studied the medical records of 212 very low birth weight, preterm
infants who were hospitalized between January 1992 and September 1993. They
compared the incidence of infections in infants who received human milk with
those who received formula exclusively. The researchers discovered that 29.3
percent of the preterm infants who were fed human milk acquired infections vs.
47.2 percent of the formula-fed infants. in addition, sepsis and/or meningitis
occurred in 19.5 percent of the infants fed human milk and 32.6 percent of
the formula-fed infants. All infections occurred after the very low birth weight
infants started receiving feedings. (Women's Health Weekly, September 14, 1998)