Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) Supplements For Breast-Feeding Mothers Is Good For Premature Infants

Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) Supplements For Breast-Feeding Mothers Is Good For Premature Infants.
Very too early infants have higher levels of DHA - an omega-3 fatty acid that's basic to the improvement and development of the brain - when their breast-feeding mothers believe DHA supplements, Canadian researchers have found. Researchers say a deficiency in DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) is common in very preterm infants, possibly because the ordinary diets of many in the or breast-feeding women lack the essential fatty acid, which is found in cold water fatty fish and fish lubricator supplements.

The study included breast-feeding mothers of 12 infants born at 29 weeks gestation or earlier. The mothers were given high-priced doses of DHA supplements until 36 weeks after conception. The mothers and babies in this intervention series were compared at date 49 to a control group of mothers of very preterm infants who didn't take DHA supplements.

The levels of DHA in the knocker milk of mothers who took DHA supplements were nearly 12 times higher than in the draw off of mothers in the control group. Infants in the intervention group received about seven times more DHA than those in the hold back group. Plasma DHA concentrations in mothers and babies in the intervention league were two to three times higher than those in the control group.

So "Our study has shown that supplementing mothers is a usable and effective way of providing DHA to low birthweight premature infants," review author Dr Isabelle Marc, an assistant professor in the pediatrics department at Laval University in Quebec, said in a item release. The DHA content in the breast drain of mothers who don't consume fish during the breast-feeding period is probably insufficient, according to Marc.

Eating The Correct Ratio Of Omega-3 DHA And EPA Can Help Alleviate Depression

Eating The Correct Ratio Of Omega-3 DHA And EPA Can Help Alleviate Depression.
Omega-3 fatty acids may ease alleviate indentation but only when a unusual type of fatty acid called DHA is used in the right ratio with another fatty acid known as EPA, a redesigned study suggests. The researchers analyzed the results of some 15 above-named controlled clinical trials on the use of omega-3s - commonly found in oily fish or in fish unguent supplements - to treat depressed people. They found that when used by itself, DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) only did not seem to offer any benefit.

However, DHA combined with a rather high portion of EPA (eicosapentenoic acid) did improve depressive symptoms. "Preparations with some EPA had some consistent antidepressant effects, while preparations of unmixed DHA had no antidepressant effects," said lead study architect Dr John Davis, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "I don't of we can prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, but there is now evidence from a number of double-blind studies that suggest mixed DHA/EPA has antidepressant properties, whether by itself or given along with unwritten antidepressants".

The study, funded by the US National Institutes of Health, was designed as a meta-analysis, in which researchers merge the results of multiple prior studies. The findings were slated for donation Thursday at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology meeting in Miami.

Davis noted the next stage should be to test the anti-depressant effect of the omega-3 fatty acid combination in a large population to affirm a dose range. Prior research on the effectiveness of omega-3 fattys acids against depression has been mixed, with one new randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, for example, concluding that taking 800 milligrams of DHA everyday did not help ward off depression in pregnant women.

In The USA Scientists Have Found The New Causes Of Glaucoma

In The USA Scientists Have Found The New Causes Of Glaucoma.
Glucosamine supplements that millions of Americans select to balm treat up on and knee osteoarthritis may have an unexpected side effect: They may increase risk for developing glaucoma, a scanty new study of older adults suggests in May 2013. Glaucoma occurs when there is an proliferation of intraocular pressure (IOP) or pressure inside the eye. Left untreated, glaucoma is one of the unsurpassed causes of blindness.

In the new study of 17 people, whose average age was 76 years, 11 participants had their optic pressure measured before, during and after taking glucosamine supplements. The other six had their liking pressure measured while and after they took the supplements. Overall, pressure inside the sidelong glance was higher when participants were taking glucosamine, but did return to normal after they stopped taking these supplements, the study showed.

So "This swatting shows a reversible effect of these changes, which is reassuring," wrote researchers led by Dr Ryan Murphy at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine in Biddeford, Maine. "However, the likelihood that constant damage can result from prolonged use of glucosamine supplementation is not eliminated. Monitoring IOP in patients choosing to extend with glucosamine may be indicated".

Exactly how glucosamine supplements could affect power inside the eye is not fully understood, but several theories exist. For example, glucosamine is a harbinger for molecules called glycosaminoglycans, which may elevate eye pressure. The findings are published online May 23 as a delving letter in JAMA Ophthalmology.

The Danger Of Herbal Supplements In The Mixture With Warfarin (Coumadin)

The Danger Of Herbal Supplements In The Mixture With Warfarin (Coumadin).
People taking the drug blood thinner warfarin (Coumadin) may up their jeopardize for strength complications if they also take herbal or non-herbal supplements, new research reveals. In fact, eight out of the 10 most sought-after supplements in the United States could spark safety concerns with element to warfarin, while also impacting the drug's effectiveness. "I specifically looked at warfarin use, but the legal issue is that even though herbal supplements fall under the category of food, and they're not regulated like instruction drugs, they still have the effects of a drug in the body," cautioned study author Jennifer L Strohecker, a clinical druggist at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

So "Warfarin is a very high-risk medication, which can be associated with autocratic consequences when it's not managed properly. However, warfarin is derived from a plant, wonderful clover. In fact, many of our prescription drugs came from plants. So, it's very significant for patients to recognize that just because an herb is marketed not like a prescription drug that doesn't disobliging it doesn't have similar effects in the body".

Strohecker and her colleagues are slated to present their findings Thursday at the Heart Rhythm Society annual encounter in Denver. The authors note that almost 20 percent of Americans currently clutch some type of herbal or non-herbal supplement. To gauge how these products might interact with warfarin, the researchers ranked the 20 most well-received herbals and 20 most popular non-herbal supplements based on 2008 sales data, and then looked at how their use specious both clotting tendency and bleeding.

More than half of the herbal and non-herbal supplements were found to have either an ancillary or direct impact on warfarin. Nearly two-thirds of all the supplements were found to inflate the risk for bleeding among patients taking the blood thinner, while more than one-third hampered the effectiveness of the medication. An rise in bleeding risk was specifically linked to the use of cranberry, garlic, ginkgo and dictum palmetto supplements, the team said.

Calcium And Vitamin D Reduce The Risk Of Skin Tumors

Calcium And Vitamin D Reduce The Risk Of Skin Tumors.
Certain women at hazard for developing melanoma, the most frigid form of skin cancer, may picture the likelihood in half by taking vitamin D with calcium supplements, a new study suggests. "It looks go for there is some promising evidence for vitamin D and calcium for prevention of melanoma in a high-risk group," said exceed researcher Dr Jean Tang, an assistant professor of dermatology at Stanford University School of Medicine.

The women most at endanger of developing the life-threatening cancer are those who have had a erstwhile non-melanoma form of skin cancer, such as basal cell or squamous cell cancer, the researchers said. Vitamin D and calcium are illustrious for their roles in bone growth, but they also affect other cells in the body. Some studies have shown that vitamin D and calcium are associated with put down risk of colon, breast, prostate and other cancers, the researchers said.

Tang speculated that cancer cells lurking in the coating of women who have had a above-mentioned skin cancer may be waiting to develop into melanoma. "But if they take calcium and vitamin D that reduces the peril of developing an actual tumor". As little as 400 or oecumenic units (IU) of vitamin D daily may be protective.

The US Institute of Medicine now recommends 600 IU of vitamin D daily. Calcium has also been shown to set tumor advance in patients with colon cancer. "So maybe calcium has a role, too. I can't declare whether it was the calcium or the vitamin D that was important". But the combination seemed to convey a benefit.

Whether these results would be seen in men or litter women isn't known. But an earlier study led by Tang found a service from vitamin D in reducing the risk of melanoma among older men. "More studies demand to be done, because we want to make sure these results are true in other communities".

The boom was published in the June 27 2011 online edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. For the study, Tang's line-up collected data on 36282 postmenopausal women, 50 to 79 years old, who took portion in the Women's Health Initiative study.

Nutritional Supplements Affect The Body In Different Ways

Nutritional Supplements Affect The Body In Different Ways.
With three unripe studies determination that a daily multivitamin won't help boost the regular American's health, the experts behind the research are urging people to abandon use of the supplements. The studies found that popping a ordinary multivitamin didn't ward off heart problems or memory loss, and wasn't tied to a longer human span. The studies, published in the Dec 17, 2013 conclusion of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, found that multivitamin and mineral supplements did not work any better in these respects than placebo pills. Dietary supplements are a multibillion-dollar commerce in the United States, and multivitamins tale for nearly half of all vitamin sales, according to the US Office of Dietary Supplements.

But a growing body of evidence suggests that multivitamins come forward little or nothing in the way of health benefits, and some studies suggest that high doses of inevitable vitamins might cause harm. As a result, the authors behind the new research said, it's tempo for most people to stop taking them. "We believe that it's clear that vitamins are not working," said Dr Eliseo Guallar, a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

In a strongly worded think-piece on the three studies, Guallar and his co-authors urged consumers to hinder spending money on multivitamins. Even a representatives of the vitamin industry asked kinsmen to temper their hopes about dietary supplements. "We all need to manage our expectations about why we're taking multivitamins," Duffy MacKay, evil president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a work group that represents supplement manufacturers, said in a prepared statement.

So "Research shows that the two vital reasons people take multivitamins are for overall health and wellness and to fill in nutrient gaps. Science still demonstrates that multivitamins exert oneself for those purposes, and that alone provides reason for common man to take a multivitamin". However it's not clear that taking supplements to fill gaps in a less-than-perfect chamber really translates into any kind of health boost.

Many Supplements Contain Toxins That Are Not Claimed In The Description

Many Supplements Contain Toxins That Are Not Claimed In The Description.
A Congressional exploration of dietary herbal supplements has found intimation amounts of lead, mercury and other encumbered metals in nearly all products tested, plus myriad illegal fettle claims made by supplement manufacturers, The New York Times reported Wednesday, 27 May. The levels of critical metal contaminants did not exceed established limits, but investigators also discovered troubling and perhaps unacceptable levels of pesticide residue in 16 of 40 supplements, the newspaper said. One ginkgo biloba fallout had labeling claiming it could to Alzheimer's disease (no effective treatment yet exists), while a product containing ginseng asserted that it can enjoin both diabetes and cancer, the report said.

Steve Mister, president of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a following group that represents the dietary supplement industry, said it was not surprising that herbal supplements contained drop amounts of heavy metals, because they are routinely found in soil and plants. "I dont believe this should be of concern to consumers," he told the Times. The report findings were to be presented to the Senate on Wednesday, two weeks before chat begins on a major food safety bill that will likely village more controls on food manufacturers, the Times said.

The newspaper said it was given the report in advance of the Senate hearing. How durable the bill will be on supplement makers has been the subject of much lobbying, but the Times celebrated that some Congressional staff members doubt manufacturers will find it too burdensome.

The Problem Of The Use Of Unproven Dietary Supplements

The Problem Of The Use Of Unproven Dietary Supplements.
US salubrity authorities Wednesday intensified lean on on makers of dietary supplements, caveat individuals or companies marketing "tainted" products that they could face criminal prosecution, among other consequences. The step on it comes after several reports of injury and even death from the use of illegal supplements that are deceptively labeled or restrict undeclared ingredients. These include those laced with the same active ingredients as drugs already approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, analogs (close copies) of those drugs or narrative false steroids that don't qualify as dietary ingredients.

And "Some contain prescription drugs or analogs never tested in humans and the results can be tragic," said Dr Joshua Sharfstein, starring operative commissioner at the FDA, at a Wednesday news conference. "We have received reports of serious adverse events and injuries associated with consumer use of these tainted products, including stroke, liver and kidney damage, pulmonary ruin and death".

Since 2007 FDA has issued alerts on 300 tainted products. "FDA is vocation heed to an important public health problem. Serious injuries have resulted from products masquerading as dietary supplements. They're most often poorly labeled so consumers don't comprehend what they're buying".

Most of the illegal products are marketed in three categories: to call attention to weight loss, to enhance sexual prowess and as body-building products, the agency noted. The weight-loss products identified with problems comprehend Slimming Beauty, Solo Slim and Slim-30, which bear sibutramine (or analogs), the active ingredient in the FDA-approved drug Merida, recently timid from pharmacy shelves due to a heightened risk of heart attack and stroke.

The body-building products number Tren Xtreme, ArimaDex and Clomed, which contain anabolic steroids or aromatase inhibitors, a descent of cancer-fighting drugs that interfere with estrogen production. Consumers should also be aware of "products that present warnings about testing positive in performance drug tests".

German Scientists Have Found That Many Food Supplements For Weight Loss Are No Better Than Placebo

German Scientists Have Found That Many Food Supplements For Weight Loss Are No Better Than Placebo.
A big bunch of weight-loss supplements don't appear to knead any better than placebos (or fake supplements) at helping rank and file shed pounds, a new study has found. German researchers tested placebos against weight-loss supplements that are all the rage in Europe. The supplements were touted as having these ingredients: L-Carnitine, polyglucosamine, cabbage powder, guarana egg powder, bean extract, Konjac extract, fiber, sodium alginate and unavoidable plant extracts.

So "We found that not a single product was any more effective than placebo pills in producing burden loss over the two months of the study, regardless of how it claims to work," said researcher Thomas Ellrott, belfry of the Institute for Nutrition and Psychology at the University of Gottingen Medical School in Germany, in a word release from the International Congress on Obesity in Stockholm, Sweden. The researchers tested the products and placebos on 189 overweight or overweight people, of whom 74 percent finished the eight-week study.

The Amount Of Caffeine Is Not Specified In Dietary Supplements For The Military

The Amount Of Caffeine Is Not Specified In Dietary Supplements For The Military.
A restored meditate on finds that popular insert pills and powders found for sale at many military bases, including those that claim to boost energy and oversee weight, often fail to properly describe their caffeine levels. Some of these products - also sold at health-food stores across the county - didn't accommodate any information about caffeine on their labels regard for being packed with it, and others had more or much less caffeine than their labels indicated. "Fewer than half of the supplements had correct and useful information about caffeine on the label," said study lead author Dr Pieter Cohen, aide-de-camp professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "If you're looking for these products to remedy boost your performance, some aren't going to work and you're contemporary to be disappointed. And some have much more caffeine than on the label".

Researchers launched the study, funded by the US Department of Defense, to tot to existing knowledge about how much caffeine is being consumed by members of the military. Athletes and members of the fighting face a risk of health problems when they consume too much caffeine and exercise in the heat. Cohen emphasized that the supplements were purchased in civilian stores: "Why is it that 25 percent of the products labels with caffeine had off the mark news at a mainstream supplement retailer"?

He also explained the specific military concern. "We already be aware that troops are drinking a lot of coffee and using a lot of energy drinks and shots. Forty-five percent of influential troops were using energy drinks on a daily basis while they were in Afghanistan and Iraq. We're talking about bountiful amounts of caffeine consumed, and our question is: What's going on on top of that?"