'Eating fruits, veggies, fish may reduce bone loss in women'

January 27, 2017

Washington, Jan 27: Ladies, take note! Regular intake of anti-inflammatory diets - high in vegetables, fruits, fish and whole grains - may boost your bone health and prevent fractures, a first-of-its-kind study has claimed.

fruit Researchers at Ohio State University in the US compared levels of inflammatory elements in the diet to bone mineral density and fractures and found new associations between food and bone health.

Women with the least-inflammatory diets lost less bone density during the six-year follow-up period than their peers with the most-inflammatory diets.

This was despite the fact that they started off with lower bone density overall.

Diets with low inflammatory potential appeared to correspond to lower risk of hip fracture among one subgroup of the study - post-menopausal white women younger than 63.

The findings suggest that women's bone health could benefit when they choose a diet higher in beneficial fats, plants and whole grains, said Tonya Orchard, assistant professor at The Ohio State University.

"This suggests that as women age, healthy diets are impacting their bones," Orchard said.

Because the study was observational, it is not possible to definitively link dietary patterns and bone health and fracture outcomes.

Rebecca Jackson from Ohio State said the new findings support a growing body of evidence that factors which increase inflammation can increase osteoporosis risk.

Dietary information as well as data on bone density and fracture were collected from a large group of the participants in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), the largest study of postmenopausal women's health undertaken in US history.

Participants in the WHI were aged 50 to 79 when they enrolled in the study of prevention and control of common diseases impacting older women. Enrolment ran from 1993 to 1998.

For the the first-of-its-kind analysis, the research team looked at dietary data from 160,191 women and assigned inflammation scores based on 32 food components that the women reported consuming in the three months prior to their enrolment.

They used bone-mineral-density data from a subset of 10,290 women. Fracture data was collected for the entire study group. They found a correlation only between high-inflammatory diets and fracture in younger white women in the study.

Higher scores were associated with an almost 50 per cent larger risk of hip fracture in Caucasian women younger than 63, compared with the risk for women in the group with the lowest inflammatory scores.

Women with the least-inflammatory diets had lower bone mineral density overall at the start of the study, but lost less bone than their high-inflammation peers, Orchard said.

The study appears in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

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Is coronavirus spreading through air?

Agencies

July 30,2020

New York, Jul 30: Can the coronavirus spread through the air? Yes, it's possible.

The World Health Organisation recently acknowledged the possibility that Covid-19 might be spread in the air under certain conditions.

Recent Covid-19 outbreaks in crowded indoor settings — restaurants, nightclubs and choir practices — suggest the virus can hang around in the air long enough to potentially infect others if social distancing measures are not strictly enforced.

Experts say the lack of ventilation in these situations is thought to have contributed to spread, and might have allowed the virus to linger in the air longer than normal.

In a report published in May, researchers found that talking produced respiratory droplets that could remain in the air in a closed environment for about eight to 14 minutes.

The WHO says those most at risk from airborne spread are doctors and nurses who perform specialized procedures such as inserting a breathing tube or putting patients on a ventilator.

Medical authorities recommend the use of protective masks and other equipment when doing such procedures.

Scientists maintain it's far less risky to be outside than indoors because virus droplets disperse in the fresh air, reducing the chances of Covid-19 transmission.

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Study explains benefits of exercise in preventing vision loss

Agencies

July 3,2020

Apart from the many benefits of doing exercise, new research has now found that exercise can slow down or prevent the development of macular degeneration and may benefit other common causes of vision loss, such as glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy.

The new study from the University of Virginia School of Medicine found that exercise reduced the harmful overgrowth of blood vessels in the eyes of lab mice by up to 45 per cent. This tangle of blood vessels is a key contributor to macular degeneration and several other eye diseases.

The study represents the first experimental evidence showing that exercise can reduce the severity of macular degeneration, a leading cause of vision loss, the scientists report. Ten million Americans are estimated to have the condition.

"There has long been a question about whether maintaining a healthy lifestyle can delay or prevent the development of macular degeneration. The way that question has historically been answered has been by taking surveys of people, asking them what they are eating and how much exercise they are performing," said researcher Bradley Gelfand, PhD, of UVA's Center for Advanced Vision Science.

"That is basically the most sophisticated study that has been done. The problem with that is that people are notoriously bad self-reporters ... and that can lead to conclusions that may or not be true. This [study] offers hard evidence from the lab for the very first time," Gelfand added.

Enticingly, the research found that the bar for receiving the benefits from exercise was relatively low - more exercise didn't mean more benefit.

"Mice are kind of like people in that they will do a spectrum of exercise. As long as they had a wheel and ran on it, there was a benefit. The benefit that they obtained is saturated at low levels of exercise," Gelfand said.

An initial test comparing mice that voluntarily exercised versus those that did not found that exercise reduced the blood vessel overgrowth by 45%. A second test, to confirm the findings, found a reduction of 32 per cent.

The scientists aren't certain exactly how exercise is preventing the blood vessel overgrowth. There could be a variety of factors at play, they say, including increased blood flow to the eyes.

Gelfand, of UVA's Department of Ophthalmology and Department of Biomedical Engineering, noted that the onset of vision loss is often associated with a decrease in exercise.

"It is fairly well known that as people's eyes and vision deteriorate, their tendency to engage in physical activity also goes down. It can be a challenging thing to study with older people. ... How much of that is one causing the other?" he said.
The researchers already have submitted grant proposals in hopes of obtaining funding to pursue their findings further.

"The next step is to look at how and why this happens, and to see if we can develop a pill or method that will give you the benefits of exercise without having to exercise," Gelfand said.

He explained, "We're talking about a fairly elderly population [of people with macular degeneration], many of whom may not be capable of conducting the type of exercise regimen that may be required to see some kind of benefit." (He urged people to consult their doctors before beginning any aggressive exercise program.)
Gelfand, a self-described couch potato, disclosed a secret motivation for the research: "One reason I wanted to do this study was sort of selfish. I was hoping to find some reason not to exercise," he joked. "It turned out exercise really is good for you."

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