Study:  Elderly Low in Vitamin D Increase their Risk of Premature Death

Natural sunlight is among the best sources of Vitamin D.

Some “D”pressing news to report on the heart health front, particularly if you’re a senior citizen.  According to a joint study conducted by researchers from Colorado and Massachusetts, the elderly are at greater risk of dying from heart disease when their vitamin D levels are low.

If you feel like you’ve been bombarded with vitamin D news lately, you’re not alone.  The media are great at beating a dead horse, aren’t they?  But this time the “beating” is warranted, as they’ve finally come to the realization that vitamin D really is the “D”fensive vitamin.

Just how defensive?  Well if the Colorado and Massachusetts researchers’ findings are accurate, and there’s no reason to think that they aren’t, if you’re not sufficiently armed with D, you’re three times more likely to die from heart disease.

This truly “D”sturbing finding (OK, OK, I’ll quit with the “D” stuff) was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society after researchers reviewed the health statistics of approximately 3,400 people in their elder years (65 years and older).  In the course of reviewing their blood samples, they found that those with the lowest vitamin D levels were three times more likely to have died than those with high vitamin D levels.  They were also two-and-a-half times more likely to have died from other diseases not including heart disease.

The researchers came from the University of Colorado and Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital.

As I’ve referenced in past articles, health officials have increased the recommended dosage for vitamin D, but only for the youngest among us (i.e. toddlers, young children), not the estimated 24 million elderly currently living in America.  Perhaps this latest report will serve as sufficient justification to up the recommended dosage (400 to 600 IUs is what’s recommended for men and women over 50).

In the meantime, it’s important to expose your skin to the sunlight.  Generally speaking, the elderly are loath to spend all the livelong day in the sun.  But I’m not talking all day; I’m talking about 20 to 25 minutes of direct sunlight exposure (no sunscreen).  That’s all that’s needed to get a sufficient dose of the sunshine vitamin (if possible, stay out in the sun in the 25 minute range rather than 20 minutes; the skin becomes less absorbent of the sun’s rays as we age).

You can get a good amount of vitamin D through the food you eat, but there aren’t many options to choose from.  Pasteurized milk and other dairy products are usually fortified with vitamin D, but that’s not enough for me to start advocating pasteurized milk consumption (see why here).

That pretty much leaves fish as the best option for vitamin D through food.  Salmon—perhaps the most nutritious protein source on planet Earth—has about 350 IUs of vitamin D in a 3.5 ounce portion.  Mackerel is another fish that’s loaded with D (about 345 IUs per 3.5 ounce serving).

Whether it’s through the sun’s rays or the fish that you graze, get this vital vitamin in your system—your life “d”pends on it.

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
dietary-supplements.info.nih.gov

Why Certain Fatty Foods Fall Flat in Satisfying Our Appetite

Certain kinds of food fail to satisfy the appetite.

Ever notice how foods loaded with fat never leave you satisfied, while low fat foods leave you feeling fuller longer?

Fat has more calories than carbohydrates and proteins (nine calories per gram as opposed to four calories per gram), so it’s natural to assume that high fat foods will leave us feeling more satiated than foods that are lower in fat.  Typically this is true, but not for the potato chip snacker or for the Pillsbury plunderer.  Dollars to doughnuts, these snack attackers will tell you it’s not true, as one doughnut, one chip, is never enough (a single Krispy Kreme doughnut has 12 grams of fat).

Several factors play into this dietary conundrum, one of which is whether or not what you’re consuming has any fiber in it.  Fiber plays a huge role in what I like to call “the fullness factor,” as high fiber foods are digested slower, and high fiber foods take up more room in the stomach.

But there’s another factor to consider that researchers have only recently keyed into, and its name is palmitic acid.

Palmitic acid is a saturated fatty acid found primarily in dairy foods like milk, cheese, butter, and milk.  Many of these ingredients are used in the production of bakery items like doughnuts, so it’s no wonder doughnuts never leave us feeing satisfied.

To study palmitic acid’s effects on appetite and brain chemistry, researchers fed a group of rats various kinds of fat.  Some of them were fed palmitic acid, while others were fed oleic acid, which is an unsaturated fatty acid found primarily in vegetable oils like olive oil.  They were fed these oils intravenously.

After three weeks, the researchers found that the rats fed the palmitic acid consistently ate more than the rats fed the oleic acid.

The researchers chalk up this fat find to palmitic acid’s ability to chemically alter the brain.  When palmitic acid is consumed in high enough quantities, it triggers the release of a certain protein that effectively renders leptin and insulin useless.  Leptin and insulin are hormones that help regulate appetite.  Among other functions, they tell the brain when the body feels “full.”

The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation and conducted by scientists from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

As a natural health advocate— and you, a natural health follower— scarfing on doughnuts and snicker doodles to test the scientists’ findings is not the best of idea.  However, I mention this study because each and every one of us “cheats” now and then, so it’s helpful to understand why certain “cheat” foods leave us feeling full, while others leave us feeling flat or unsatisfied.

Besides the kinds of food we’re eating, we also need to take into consideration how fast we’re eating.  As I wrote in a past Mangano Minute, there’s about a 20 minute delay between our brain and stomach in recognizing whether or not we feel full.  That’s why people who are trying to lose weight are advised to eat slower.  Eating slower not only enables the brain to recognize that fullness factor, but it also helps us enjoy our foods a bit more.  And enjoyment is the second most important thing in our daily dinings, the most important one being nutrition, of course.

Sources:
foodnavigator.com
krispykreme.com

Despite Age, Weight Training Slows Muscle Loss

Regardless of age, weightlifting reduces muscle loss

The noted poet Robert Frost once said, “In three words, I can sum up everything I know about life:  It goes on.”

How true.  No matter our condition, no matter how difficult or easy our circumstances are, life continues on.

Perhaps the best illustration of this truism is observing one’s exercise regimen once they reach their thirties and forties.

For example, I’ve been an avid exerciser since I was young, but as I’ve grown older, I’ve noticed how I’m not as quick as I used to be, I’m not the same strapping  young lad that I was in my mid-twenties.

But what’s changed?  I’m still pretty much the same weight. I definitely eat better than I used to eat.  So why are my exercise pursuits floundering instead of flourishing?

Obviously the passage of time and age is the answer to this question, but just what is it about age that forces us to recognize our lifting limits?

Well, researchers believe they may have found the answer to that question, and the answer is written in their blood.

By this I mean that as we age, like our decrease in muscle mass, blood flow efficiency decreases as well.

Researchers affirmed this sad fact of life after testing was done on a group of active twentysomethings and sixtysomethings.  Their blood was tested prior to their having breakfast and then tested again afterward.  Each of them were then given a shot of insulin to see whether or not insulin was used differently in the participants’ bloodstream, suspecting it would be used differently depending on their age.

Just as the good doctors’ suspected, insulin was used differently, and as you may have already guessed, insulin was used more efficiently in the young folks’ bodies.

Insulin is something of a renaissance hormone – it has many roles and many talents.  One of them is in regulating how much glucose the blood feeds to the muscles.  As the researchers found, the twentysomethings had a greater blood flow and insulin response in the muscles observed, while there wasn’t much of a change observed in the older group.

The study is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and was performed by researchers from the University of Nottingham in England.

So, as we age, do we just have to grin and bear our depleting physiques?  Must we be resigned to the notion that we’re no longer our twentysomething selves?

Yes and no.

Yes, we do have to accept that life goes on and our strength does decrease, but we can slow the aging process though our exercise efforts.

As researchers found in a follow-up study, the older men that weightlifted regularly used insulin more efficiently and saw more muscle growth than those that didn’t lift.  In fact, the insulin response and increased blood flow was on par with the twentysomethings!

The researchers define “regular” as weightlifting three times a week.  That’s exactly my idea of “regular” as well, for I weight train three times a week (though I’ll occasionally miss a session or two due to work constraints).

So there you have it.  Life may go on, but you can make sure it goes slowly through moderate amounts of weight training every week.

Sources:
livescience.com
wisegeek.com

Pesticide Use Poses Problems For Farmers

Farmers that work with pesticides significantly raise their risk for acquiring Parkinson’s disease.

Every year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles a list of the world’s most dangerous jobs based on how many people died while at the job site.  In 2008, for example, of the 5,000+ reported on-the-job deaths, fishermen ranked number one.

Other “deadly” jobs in 2008 were in the logging industry, the aircraft industry, and the transportation industry among taxi drivers, and refuse workers.

Another profession where hundreds of lives were lost—317, to be specific—was in farming.  Most of these deaths were due to freak accidents where heavy machinery was involved, making it the fifth deadliest jobs in America.

One thing the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t compile a list of is jobs that increase the risk of obtaining a disease.  If they did, farming would be chief among them.

According to a new study in the journal Archives of Neurology, farmers that work with pesticides dramatically increase their risk for Parkinson’s disease.  What’s more, among three specific pesticides, that risk is three times higher than among other pesticides!

The study was really more of a survey, as the researchers involved asked 519 people with Parkinson’s about their occupational history and how often they were around pesticides.  They also interviewed 511 other people who served as controls.  These people did not have Parkinson’s but lived in the same area as those with Parkinson’s.

Among those with Parkinson’s, about 10 percent of them had a job that had them around pesticides frequently, like farming.  This is in stark comparison to the healthy controls, where about 5 percent of them reported being around pesticides through work.

That pesticides increase the risk of Parkinson’s is nothing new, though, as studies going back to the 19^th century have found links between pesticide use and Parkinson’s.  What hasn’t been analyzed is what specific pesticides increase that risk.

To answer that question, researchers analyzed eight highly toxic pesticides.  According to their analysis, all eight of them put someone at double the risk for obtaining Parksinson’s compared to those who are never around them, but three pesticides put someone at triple the risk!

The trifecta of trouble are 2,4 dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, paraquat, and permethrin.  The researchers report that all three affect the levels at which the brain can transmit dopamine, the neurotransmitter that controls movement.

Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disorder.  It manifests itself through a number of symptoms, like rigidity, improper balance, slowness of movement, tremor-like motions (shaking uncontrollably) and muffled speech.  While the cause for this disease remains unknown, it results from the brain being unable to transmit neurotransmitters that control movement.

While Parkinson’s is diagnosed overwhelmingly among men and women over the age of 65, 15 percent of those with Parkinson’s are under the age 50 (Michael J. Fox is perhaps the most well-known example).  Approximately one million people in the United States have Parkinson’s, and an estimated 60,000 people are newly diagnosed with it every year.

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
msnbc.msn.com
telegraph.co.uk
parkinson.org

Researchers Test Theory that a Lack of Vitamin K Increases Risk of Disease

Vitamin K deficiency contributes to age-related diseases, analysis shows.

If you’re like me, someone who’s always looking for the latest in health news, then you know that vitamin D has dominated the health news cycle.  The reason?  People are deficient in this all-important vitamin, so the RDA (recommended daily allowance) for the sunshine vitamin has been increased.

The vitamin D publicity parade continues, but a new parade is coming up the street, and vitamin K is the drum major.

Like vitamin D, vitamin K is another vitamin the average American is lacking in.  A lack of vitamin K puts people at greater risk for a plethora of problems, most notably blood disorders like hemophilia or bone issues like osteoporosis.  But it also puts people at greater risk for age-related diseases, like cancer, heart disease, and dementia.

Drs. Joyce McCann and Bruce Ames from Oakland, California’s Children’s Hospital Research Institute discovered this after poring over hundreds of studies and completing a series of tests that assessed the accuracy of their “triage theory,” first developed in 2006.

This so-called “triage theory” is a little convoluted, so stay with me if you can.  In its basic form, the theory says that as man evolved over time, cellular mechanisms developed that produced age-related diseases as a response to vitamin deficiencies.  These age-related diseases include cancer, heart disease, and dementia, hence the term “triage.”

To test the veracity of their theory, Ames and McCann used field mice with inactive proteins, proteins that typically absorb and rely on vitamin K to perform blood clotting functions.  Among the 16 inactive proteins, a little less than half of them depended on vitamin K to blood clot properly.  In other words, without vitamin K, the proteins are unable to clot, likely resulting in a blood disorder like hemophilia.

The other proteins weren’t as involved in blood clotting, so vitamin K wasn’t as crucial for clotting function.  But the lack of vitamin K was detrimental to other functions, like arterial, skeletal, and immune system function.  In fact, they found an increase incidence of “spontaneous cancer” among the mice.

The study is set to be published in the October issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

While more research needs to be done before truly definitive conclusions can be made regarding vitamin K supplementation, the findings support McCann’s and Ames’ theory that vitamin K insufficiency expedites the occurrence of age-related diseases.

Nutrition analysis indicate the majority of Americans aren’t getting enough vitamin K, so Ames and McCann hope health officials will increase the recommended vitamin K intake for men and women (120 mcg/d for men; 90 mcg/d for women).  That fact, combined with their findings, will hopefully make that increase a reality.

Vitamin K is found primarily in green vegetables, like broccoli, spinach, kale, asparagus and Brussels sprouts.  Vitamin K is a fat soluble vitamin.  Traditionally, fat soluble vitamins are toxic in large quantities.  It’s possible that vitamin K can be toxic in high doses as a result of this fact, but at present, there’s no such thing as vitamin K overkill.

Translation:  the more vitamin K coursing through your veins, the better off you are in avoiding age-related diseases.

Sources:
thedoctorwillseeyounow.com
nutraingredients.com
sciencedaily.com
eurekalert.org

Study:  Chocoholics Reduce Cravings with 15-Minute Walk

A 15-minute walk has been shown to reduce chocolate cravings, according to study.

“Sometimes the best way to avoid unnecessary confrontation is to walk away.”  This pearl of wisdom is often given to kids frustrated by bullying class mates.

But the same principle applies to foods that frustrate a person’s diet.

When it comes to food, all of us have weaknesses:  foods that we fall for in those moments of weakness. We all have strategies to overcome these cravings.  Typically, the average person plops on their sofa, flicks through the boob-tube, hoping an engrossing episode of Law & Order or a captivating edge-of-your-seat thriller will distract their crave-crazed brain.

But this is precisely the wrong way to go about it.  Instead of sitting, you’re much better off walking.

Writing in the journal Appetite last year, British researchers from the University of Exeter report that people who regularly consume and crave chocolate temper those cravings by walking for as little as 15 minutes.

Here’s how the study worked.  It involved 25 chocoholics, which is my way of saying that the people involved ate chocolate on a regular basis.  For this test, though, they were asked not to consume chocolate for three days—no doubt a challenge for any chocoholic.

By day three, before they indulged, they were asked to do one of two things:  take a brisk 15-minute walk, or sit on their sofa.  Every participant both walked and sat, but it was up to them in what order they did them.

According to lead researcher Dr. Adrian Taylor, 12 percent of the people walking reduced their cravings during and after their walks.  That wasn’t the case for people when they were sitting.  In fact, the chocolate cravings became more intense with each minute they sat.

Now, the results here may seem obvious.  After all, by walking away from temptation, it renders the ability to cave in to temptation obsolete.  But in this study, participants were literally tempted with chocolate both walking and sitting, for instance by a person opening a luscious candy bar right in front of their faces, teasing them with its sweet, decadent scent.

This is the first study to link a reduction in chocolate cravings with exercise.  Past studies have shown how exercise can reduce other addictive behaviors, like cigarette smoking.

“Short bouts of physical activity can help to regulate how energized and pleasant we feel, and with a sedentary lifestyle, we may turn to mood regulating behaviors like eating chocolate,” said Taylor.  “This research furthers our research of the complex physical, psychological and emotional relationship we have with food.”

Source:
telegraph.co.uk

Did Chemotherapy Contribute to Swayze’s Death?

Would Patrick Swayze still be alive without chemotherapy? Leave your comments below.

Patrick Swayze, the man who stole the heart of millions of girls in the 80s and 90s, died this past week.  He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer some 20 months ago, and he fought the disease valiantly until it ultimately took his life.  He was just 57 years old.

In the weeks leading up to his death Sept. 14, radiation and chemotherapy treatment really ramped up in intensity as his conditioned worsened.  For more than a year and a half, though, Swayze never let it get in the way of his work.  Day after day, month after month, he showed no signs of slowing down, granting interview after interview, completing 13 episodes of the A&E drama series The Beast, and bringing greater attention to his disease through telethon appearances and fundraising efforts.

After his death, I asked readers and fans of mine on Facebook to leave some feedback on whether or not they believed chemotherapy hastened his death.  As I suspected, the opinions varied considerably, some suggesting it prolonged his life, others not sure, others convinced that it killed him.

I’m sure many of you have read Suzanne Somers take on Patrick Swayze’s death.  She thinks he would still be alive today if he didn’t use chemotherapy.  To put it mildly, she’s no fan of chemotherapy.

I, too, am no fan of chemotherapy.  As a reader of mine so aptly put it, chemotherapy “reduces the quality of a person’s life,” because not only does it attack cancerous cells, it attacks healthy cells as well.  And while chemotherapy has saved millions of lives—a notion that many holistic practitioners disagree with, in case you’re curious—it’s taken millions of lives as well.  Past studies have shown that chemotherapy treatments likely contributed to as many as 30 percent of cancer-related deaths  and is often misused, which is to say that it’s used when cancer has metastasized so much that its no longer effective.

Suzanne Somers is convinced chemotherapy killed Patrick Swayze.  She has every right to that opinion, and I can understand why she thinks that way.  But as much as I want to believe chemotherapy may have contributed to his death, I’m not 100 percent convinced that it did.

For starters, Swayze smoked all his life.  In fact, he didn’t even stop when he learned he had pancreatic cancer.  He was also known to be somewhat of an alcohol abuser.  That makes for a toxic brew of trouble for anyone, never mind someone with cancer.

Secondly, he was diagnosed with one of the deadliest forms of cancer.  Pancreatic cancer claims an estimated 35,000 lives in the U.S. alone every year.  It is the fourth leading cause of cancer, and while it accounts for two percent of all cancer diagnoses, six percent of all cancer deaths are pancreatic.  That’s a huge disparity!

Finally, Swayze had grade four pancreatic cancer.  Grade four basically means the cancer was already widespread, as opposed to grade one, where the cancer is more centrally located.  So considering the fact that 75 percent of people diagnosed with lower stages of pancreatic cancer die within the first year, and that 98 percent die within five years, it’s amazing he survived as long as he did.

Again, while I wish I could say I knew definitively that chemotherapy killed Swayze, there were too many other contributing factors to know definitively.  In the end, only the deity knows.

All we know is that Swayze was a true legendary talent.  He will forever be remembered for his ability to meld masculinity with sensitivity (as in movies like Ghost and Dirty Dancing), for never taking himself too seriously (as in his skit with Chris Farley as a Chippendale’s dancer on Saturday Night Live) and for remaining a faithful and devoted husband to his wife of 34 years.   May Patrick Swayze rest in peace.

Sources:
cbsnews.com
khou.com

Study: Onion Compounds May Cut Colon Cancer Risk in Half

Consuming onions can reduce your risk of colon cancer in half, study confirms.

“Impossible.”

That’s what I said to myself the other day, shocked and chagrined that I’d never written about the onion.

How is this possible?  After all, the onion’s the third largest vegetable crop produced in the United States, not one, but two states call the onion their official state vegetable (Georgia and Texas), and the average American eats about 19 pounds of onions every year (that’s nothing compared to Libya, where the average Libyan eats 66 pounds of onions a year, according to the National Onion Association).

To rectify this oversight, this Mangano Minute will be a devotion to the onion, the vegetable that no salad, no stir fry, no salsa is complete without.

Whether it’s sweet like the Vidalia onion, hot like the Red, or mild like the White, there’s no escaping the onion’s curative qualities.  Packed with quercetin, chromium and vitamin C, this layered Libyan love is admired both for its unique taste and its nutritional know-how.

All of the nutritional benefits are too numerous to list for a Mangano Minute posting, so I’ll restrict my list to one particularly impressive benefit:  Onions can cut your risk of colon cancer in half!!

This is according to a new study published in the British Journal of Nutrition, where researchers from the University of Aberdeen in Ireland looked to see if flavonol consumption, like those found in onions, influenced the rate of colon cancer in a sample of approximately 700 people (264 volunteers were already diagnosed with colorectal cancer, the remaining were healthy and served as controls).

Initially, the researchers saw no correlation between flavonol consumption and the incidence rate of colorectal cancer.  But when they isolated what the participants consumed to food sources other than tea (tea is the main source of flavonol consumption in the United Kingdom), the correlation became clearer.

Writing in the British Journal of Nutrition, the researchers concluded that quercetin, the most abundant flavonol found in onions, “may be linked with reduced risk of developing colon cancer.”

Interestingly, the researchers found no link between reduced rectal cancer risk, only a link between quercetin and colon cancer.  And as mentioned, that risk may be reduced by as much as 50 percent with its increased consumption.

It may not do wonders for your breath, but onions perform wonders for your overall health and longevity.  The onion consumption rate in the U.S. has increased 50 percent over the last 20 years.  With studies like this, it won’t be long before Americans rival Libyans in their lovin’ for the onion!

Sources:
foodreference.com
whfoods.com
nutraingredients.com

Results of Canada Study Raises New Question for Food Diners Everywhere

Chances are a woman will consume fewer calories when dining with a man.

Unlike most of my articles, which overwhelmingly focus on the quality of foods and supplements and how they affect our bodies, this one focuses on how others might affect our body and our commitment to overall health.

So here’s a question for you to ponder while you sit with your dinner guests this evening:  Could they be influencing your food choices?  Or how much of what you’re eating?

If you’re a researcher from McMaster University, the answer is clear:  Yes.

To study this question, Meredith Young, a doctor of medicine from the university’s Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior, observed men and women as they sat and dined at university cafeterias (three different university cafeterias), all of them oblivious to Young’s observing their gastronomic tendencies or their dining companions.

What she found was that what people ate – and how much of what they ate – was largely dictated by gender and the gender of their dining companion.  In short, women who ate with men tended to eat less, while women who ate with other women tended to eat more.

Young wasn’t surprised by these findings and chalks up the results to what media images today portray as the thing that’s attractive to the opposite sex:  thinness.

Young believes that women who are influenced by media images consider eating smaller meals an attractor, thus are more prone to eat smaller portions when in a male’s presence.  Whether it’s done unconsciously or consciously is for future studies to determine.

The study is published in the journal Appetite.

Again, this study falls outside the traditional bailiwick for natural news items.  But I think it’s a question worth considering, especially for women:  Do you find that you eat less when in a male’s presence rather than a female’s?  If so, why?  Is there any validity to this researcher’s findings?

Speaking as a man, I think a woman shouldn’t allow who she dines with affect how much of what she eats.  Each and every one of us has our own personal satiety meter; in other words, we eat until we feel “full.”

That, and that alone, should determine how much of something we eat.  By ignoring that fullness meter – whether it’s eating despite being full or not eating enough – is showing disrespect to our bodies and the sustenance it requires.

Now, there’s a big difference between how much of what we eat and the foods we choose to eat.  And according to this study, women who ate with men opted for lower calorie foods than did women who ate with other women.

I’m not sure what I think of this.  On the one hand, it’s good, because women dining with men are opting for healthier food choices.  But on the other hand, it’s not so good, because the women are seemingly influenced by peer pressure, not their own desire to eat healthy.

And that’s really what it’s all about:  your own desire to eat healthy, no one else’s.

Do you find that who you eat with influences your eating habits?  How you answer will help you better understand your overall commitment to living a healthy, all-natural lifestyle and why you’re doing it.  That commitment has to come from deep inside of you, no one else.

It’s not about doing it because it’s attractive, or because it’s “in,” it’s about doing it because it’s the surest thing to living a long and healthy life.

Source:
sciencedaily.com

Study:  Vitamin E, Omega 3s Found to Reduce Symptoms of Autism

Vitamin E supplementation shows improvement in children with autism.

The famous former prime minister Winston Churchill will be forever remembered as a stalwart conservative, but no one could call him conservative in his commentary.

Never one to pull punches, Churchill called it like he saw it, with utterances like “I may be drunk, miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly,” “There is no such thing as a good tax,” and “A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

He applied this quote to anything that was mysterious or difficult to explain.  And while Churchill wasn’t known for applying this quote to diseases or health matters, I have no doubt he would have applied it to man’s understanding of autism.

Though science has come a long way in determining just what autism is, it still remains that riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma.

What is known about autism is that it’s a developmental disorder that overwhelmingly affects young children, boys primarily.  It’s typically diagnosed between a child’s first and third birthday, and is characterized by an inability to communicate, aggressive behavior and/or repetitive motions.

There’s no known cure for autism, so treatment options really run the gamut, much of it depending on the severity of the child’s condition.  Prescription drugs and therapy are often required, but there’s been an ever increasing investigation into analyzing the diet of a person’s autism.

In a past column written on autism, I talked about the common food allergies the scientific community often sees in people with autism.  Today, the scientific community is looking into what autistic boys and girls may be lacking in.

For instance, writing in the journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, Russell L. Blaylock discusses his findings about how children with autism might react to dietary interventions.  Past research has indicated that children with autism are often neglecting in vitamin E.  Using this knowledge as a backdrop, Blaylock recruited 187 children to see how their supplementing with vitamin E and omega-3s might affect their symptoms.

According to Blaylock and the parents’ assessment of their autistic children at the conclusion of the study, all of the children showed improvements in virtually every aspect that autism tends to affect after supplementation:  speech, eye contact, motor skills and sensory perception.  At the start of the study, all of the children were deficient in these areas of communication.

As with all studies, more needs to be researched before making any broad-based conclusions as to how vitamin E and omega-3s can counter the effects of autism.  But this is certainly a welcome finding in a world that’s dominated by advancements in drug therapy treatments.  There’s no question that some prescription drugs have done wonders for millions of people, but advancements in natural medicine is a breath of fresh air.

Sources:
rightwingnews.com
nhiondemand.com
alternative-therapies.com