As if taking care of your own body while pregnant isn’t hard enough! Not only do pregnant women have to be at optimal health while carrying, but they also need to take measures to protect their baby from uncontrollable pollutants such as second-hand smoke. This is especially significant when the second-hand smoke is coming from the father or another person within the household.

Although it may be a little easier today than in the not-so-distant-past to protect a baby from second-hand smoke due to smoking bans, smoke still fills the air in unsafe amounts. Second-hand smoke can be so harmful that it causes stillbirth – a baby dying in the uterus. The University of Nottingham researchers examined 19 previous studies from around the world and found that the risk of stillbirth or having a baby with birth defects is significantly increased by second-hand smoke exposure. Women who are exposed to second-hand smoke increase their risk stillbirth by 23% and also increase their risk of having a baby with birth defects by 13% – numbers no mother wants to hear.

What the studies say about second-hand smoke and birth defects

The studies only followed women who did not smoke themselves, but were heavily exposed to passive smoking. Although it may be hard to measure, the studies concluded that being around the amount of smoke created by a total of 10 cigarettes was enough to increase the chances of stillbirth or birth defects.

The researchers did add another variable into these risks, however. Although it is known that second-hand smoke can cause birth defects and stillbirth, it is not yet known how much damaged sperm effects the outcome, says lead researcher Dr. Jo Leonardi-Bee.

“What we still don’t know is whether it is the effect of sidestream smoke that the woman inhales that increases these particular risks or whether it is the direct effect of mainstream smoke that the father inhales during smoking that affects sperm development, or possibly both.”

Avoid passive smoking for the health of your child

The 50′s and 60′s are over. We all know now that smoking has no health benefits and is actually harmful to the body. Although smoking may not be the absolute biggest problem compromising people’s health, the issue is still alive and must be diminished. It is important that everyone be aware of the harmful effects behind smoking and second-hand smoke. As stated, it is especially important for women to avoid passive smoking as it may harm their child in the form of birth defects or even stillbirth. I don’t believe in bans, but I think as people continue to stop smoking and teach their kids that smoking is not cool and can cause harm, we’ll see a drop in smoking and a drop in so many health problems.

Sources:

BBC

Drinking green tea can slash your risk of illness, as it contains powerful antiviral components that a new study has associated with a lower risk of flu infection. Researchers examined more than 2,000 elementary school students who were given questionnaires about their green tea consumption and illness during influenza season. What they found was those who consumed green tea daily were sick less often.

The research concluded that drinking between 1-5 cups per day slashed flu rates, though the benefits stopped after 5 cups.

The abstract of the study states:

However, there was no significant association with the consumption of [more than] 5 cups [per day]. Our findings thus suggest that the consumption of 1-5 cups [per day] of green tea may prevent influenza infection in children.

The study highlights the benefits of natural foods and beverages, while other studies have proven the ineffectiveness of side-effect-laden seasonal flu vaccines. Scientists examining the seasonal flu vaccine have been found it to be only be 1% effective when it comes to flu prevention.

The authors of the major study summarized the findings:

“The corresponding figures [of people showing influenza symptoms] for poor vaccine matching were 2% and 1% (RD 1, 95% CI 0% to 3%)” announced the study authors.  In other words, you would have to vaccinate 100 people to reduce the number of people affected by the influenza virus by just one.

The number one excuse given by fast food lovers when asked why they don’t switch their diet to avoid the astronomical risk of  developing cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and a host of other diseases is always the same: “I don’t have enough money to buy healthy foods.” A new chart created by the New York Times shows that eating wholesome real foods that are far healthier than fast food is actually much more cost effective. The chart analyzes the price difference between a McDonald’s meal for 4 and 2 different well-balanced meals for 4. The price difference? In both real food options, the consumer saves an average of 51 and 67 percent over the McDonald’s meal, saving around $18.63 by choosing the second real food meal.

Click image to enlarge.

Due in part to poor nutrition and fitness habits, 105 million people in the United States now have diabetes or pre-diabetes, which a new study has linked to an increased risk of dementia. Dementia leads to loss of cognitive abilities, and is becoming increasingly more common among an exponentially younger demographic. The research was conducted at Kyushu University in Fukuoka in Japan, and reported in the journal Neurology.

Medical News Today reports:

The authors explained that diabetes patients have a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, such as vascular dementia. Vascular dementia occurs when blood vessels which provide the brain with oxygen are damaged – the brain becomes deprived of oxygen.

Their study included 1,017 individuals aged at least 60 years. They underwent a glucose tolerance test after fasting overnight to determine whether they had diabetes. They were followed-up closely for 11 years (average) and then assessed for signs of dementia. 232 of them developed dementia during this period.

A new study has found that consuming fruit with a white interior, such as apples and pears, can protect your body against strokes — adding to the pile of research that suggests fruit consumption can help slash your risk of disease. Fruit with a white interior contain both fiber and flavonoids, two potent nutrients that researchers say is why these foods are so protective against stroke.

CBS News reports:

“Two nutrients in particular,” Phillips said. “The first is fiber. Fiber has been shown to lower your blood pressure, probably the most important factor for reducing stroke risk. Another is a flavonoid that prevents plaque building up in the arteries, which also prevents heart disease.

“Both apples and pears, in particular, are high in those nutrients. Cauliflower, cucumbers, bananas — all of those things are high in those nutrients that prevent stroke.”

“The most important risk factors (for stroke), Phillips pointed out, “are high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Outside of that, if you cut out the smoking, you’re cutting your risk dramatically. Diabetes is a risk factor, and a previous history of heart disease or a family history of stroke, they matter also.

If you visited the site yesterday, you may have experienced something out of the ordinary. When attempting to view any of the site’s content, a page would pop up warning you of “suspicious activity” or “malware” risks. What was that all about? Well, it seems we may be speaking the truth too loudly for some people with our recent launch of the highly successful Vaccine Information Week campaign.  In fact, the attackers aimed to redirect and delete integral pages on our site that were receiving thousands of shares and views due to Vaccine Information Week. Rest assured that there was no risk to readers, as the point of this attack was to delete and redirect important vaccine and GMO-related articles that were causing shockwaves around the web through social media and bookmarking.

In effect, they were attempting to discredit the movement as a whole. This, of course, only strengthens the message of the campaign. We have since upgraded to a bulletproof dedicated server, with a number of powerful safeguards in place to block any further attacks. In addition, Google has removed the warning after reviewing the facts.

Please do not allow the failed attacks to halt the amazing response to the campaign that we are seeing on a daily basis. Hundreds of websites have decided to participate in the movement, and THOUSANDS of individuals. Instead of retreating from these attacks, continue to share this information on an even greater scale, refusing to succumb to such dirty tactics.

Vaccine Information Week, and the overall message of this website and its readers will not be silenced by petty cyber attacks.

African American women are at a higher risk for breast cancer that isn’t dependent for growth on the hormones estrogen or progesterone than other women. The good news is that breastfeeding has been found to lower the risk back down to a normal level consistent with other females, according to a new study.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, followed a group of 47,000 African American women from 1996 through 2009. Researchers had participants fill out, every two years, a detailed questionnaire assessing a wide range of factors that affect a woman’s risk for breast cancer — including weight, age at which they began menstruating, pregnancies and age of first childbearing, birth control or hormone-replacement use, physical activity and alcohol consumption.

What they found was that African American women who had given birth to more children were more likely to develop estrogen or progesterone-negative cancer than their peers who had not given birth or who had given birth to only one child. But when a woman with two or more childbirths breastfed her babies, that risk declined considerably.

The authors — epidemiologists from Boston University,Georgetown University and Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Rochester, N.Y. — surmised that given the prevalence of infectious diseases in Africa, women of African origins may respond to pregnancy with a particularly strong immune response, which in turn can allow cancers to gain a foothold in the body. Lactation, they noted, appears to blunt that effect.

Calcium is an essential nutrient in your diet, but a recent study has found that those taking over 500mg of elemental calcium daily have a 30% increased risk of myocardial infarction.  When taking calcium in a pill form, your body’s ability to direct it to the right places is diminished (as well as being deficient in vitamin K), leading calcium to be deposited in places it should not be.

GreenMedInfo reports on the study:

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the effects of personal calcium supplement use on cardiovascular risk in the Women’s Health Initiative Calcium/Vitamin D Supplementation Study (WHI CaD Study), using the WHI dataset, and to update the recent meta-analysis of calcium supplements and cardiovascular risk.

DESIGN: Reanalysis of WHI CaD Study limited access dataset and incorporation in meta-analysis with eight other studies. Data source WHI CaD Study, a seven year, randomised, placebo controlled trial of calcium and vitamin D (1g calcium and 400 IU vitamin D daily) in 36,282 community dwelling postmenopausal women. Main outcome measures Incidence of four cardiovascular events and their combinations (myocardial infarction, coronary revascularisation, death from coronary heart disease, and stroke) assessed with patient-level data and trial-level data.

RESULTS: In the WHI CaD Study there was an interaction between personal use of calcium supplements and allocated calcium and vitamin D for cardiovascular events. In the 16,718 women (46%) who were not taking personal calcium supplements at randomisation the hazard ratios for cardiovascular events with calcium and vitamin D ranged from 1.13 to 1.22 (P = 0.05 for clinical myocardial infarction or stroke, P = 0.04 for clinical myocardial infarction or revascularisation), whereas in the women taking personal calcium supplements cardiovascular risk did not alter with allocation to calcium and vitamin D. In meta-analyses of three placebo controlled trials, calcium and vitamin D increased the risk of myocardial infarction (relative risk 1.21 (95% confidence interval 1.01 to 1.44), P = 0.04), stroke (1.20 (1.00 to 1.43), P = 0.05), and the composite of myocardial infarction or stroke (1.16 (1.02 to 1.32), P = 0.02). In meta-analyses of placebo controlled trials of calcium or calcium and vitamin D, complete trial-level data were available for 28,072 participants from eight trials of calcium supplements and the WHI CaD participants not taking personal calcium supplements. In total 1384 individuals had an incident myocardial infarction or stroke. Calcium or calcium and vitamin D increased the risk of myocardial infarction (relative risk 1.24 (1.07 to 1.45), P = 0.004) and the composite of myocardial infarction or stroke (1.15 (1.03 to 1.27), P = 0.009).

CONCLUSIONS: Calcium supplements with or without vitamin D modestly increase the risk of cardiovascular events, especially myocardial infarction, a finding obscured in the WHI CaD Study by the widespread use of personal calcium supplements. A reassessment of the role of calcium supplements in osteoporosis management is warranted.

The bountiful known benefits of exercise continue to grow as more research is done on the subject. The latest findings: just 15 minutes of exercise pay day can not only boost your life expectancy by 3 years, and cut your risk of death by 14%. In contrast, a couch potato lifestyle with 6 hours of TV per day cuts your lifespan by 5 years.

The BBC News reports:

This could be a couple of 10-minute bouts of activity every day or 30-minute exercise sessions, five times a week, for example.

Experts say this advice still stands, but that a minimum of 15 minutes a day is a good place to start for those who currently do little or no exercise.

The Lancet study, based on a review of more than 400,000 people in Taiwan, showed 15 minutes per day or 90 minutes per week of moderate exercise, such as brisk walking, can add three years to your life.

And people who start to do more exercise tend to get a taste for it and up their daily quota, the researchers from the National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan, and China Medical University Hospital found.

More exercise led to further life gains. Every additional 15 minutes of daily exercise further reduced all-cause death rates by 4%.

And research from Australia on health risks linked to TV viewing suggest too much time sat in front of the box can shorten life expectancy, presumably because viewers who watch a lot of telly do little or no exercise.

England’s Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies said: “Physical activity offers huge benefits and these studies back what we already know – that doing a little bit of physical activity each day brings health benefits and a sedentary lifestyle carries additional risks.”

Depressed women may have a higher risk of stroke, according to new research published online Aug. 11 in the journal Stroke.

“We know that stroke can increase risk of depression, but depression itself may increase risk of future stroke,” said study author An Pan, a research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

HealthDay reports:

Women with a history of depression were 29 percent more likely to have a stroke during six years of follow-up, and this finding held even when researchers controlled for other factors known to increase stroke risk. What’s more, women who took antidepressants had a 39 percent increased risk of stroke.

The study was published online Aug. 11 in the journal Stroke.

The jury is out in terms of the role that antidepressants have in upping stroke risk, Pan said. “We don’t know whether medications increase risk of stroke or if medicine is a marker for severity of depression.”

Depressed women were more likely to be single, smoke and be less physically active than their non-depressed counterparts, the study showed. They were also slightly younger, had a higher body mass index and more coexisting conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.

Pan and colleagues followed 80,574 women aged 54 to 79 who took part in the Nurses’ Health Study from 2000 to 2006 and had no prior history of stroke. Depression was assessed via a standardized tool measuring symptoms, antidepressant prescriptions, and/or a diagnosis of depression from a doctor. Overall, 22 percent of women were depressed or had a history of depression when the study began, and there were 1,033 strokes during six years of follow-up. Specifically, 538 women had ischemic stroke, the most common form of stroke, which is caused by a blockage such as a blood clot, and 124 women had hemorrhagic or bleeding stroke, which occurs when a blood vessel in the brain bursts.

“If you have depression, see a doctor and get diagnosed,” he said. “Treating your depression is very important to lower your future risk of cardiovascular disease, and if you have depression, you probably have some other lifestyle factors that you need to change.”

Dr. Alan Manevitz, a psychiatrist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, agreed. “Depression is associated with poor health behaviors including poor diet, lack of medication compliance and lack of exercise, all of which can increase stroke risk.”