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The American Heart Association (AHA) 2018 Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health meeting (March 20-23) revealed some information worth sharing with you all.

>Retinal photos can predict 20 yrs in future odds of dementia

>It is better to leave your kids with neighbors versus your friends who will let them sit around.

>Dietary monounsaturated fats from plants (avocados, olive oil,vegetable oils) may lower death risk (16%) from heart problems. If you just switch from animal to plant sourced monounsaturated fats your likelihood of dying drops 24%! If you rid your diet of saturated fats, trans fats and refined carbohydrates your risk of death from any cause is lowered 10-15%.

 

Your life style now can predict if you have type 2 -adult onset Diabetes (T2D) 20 years from now. A just published study from Stockholm followed (from 1985-1996) over 290 thousand individuals thru 2012 measuring body mass index (BMI), fasting glucose (fGlu) and triglycerides (TG). Age and sex were considered as measurements & compared to controls.

If these parameters were substantially elevated – overweight, obesity, elevated fGlu and TG – over the years T2D developed. It did not matter if the individual was male or female. It would appear that over a long period our pancreases fatigue (decrease/cease insulin production). The chronic demand for making insulin sets us up for T2D decades later.

Anything in excess, even water, can be bad with capital ‘B’.  When it comes to ‘juice’, too much of a good thing can be bad for kids. Important is if it really comes from natural non-GMO fruit, it is a flavoring with a red dye #? Also is sugar added? Please again read labelsthey are placed to protect your health. I think of them as a “Buyer Beware’ label.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), juice can be a good source of vitamin C and a healthful part of a child’s diet, but too much fruit juice packs in sugar and calories. Think tooth decay and weight gain. As with taking to much Vitamins (especially C) pills or juice,  diarrhea can result.

The AAP offers these recommendations:

• Infants younger than 1 year should not drink fruit juice.
• Toddlers 1 to 3 years old should have no more than 4 ounces of juice per day. They should not get juice from bottles or cups that allow them to drink juice throughout the day and should not be given juice at bedtime.
• Children 4 to 6 years old should have no more than 4 to 6 ounces of juice per day.
• Children 7 to 18 years old should have no more than 8 ounces of juice per day.

 

Nutritional value of whole fruit beats out fruit juices ALWAYS!

Fruit juice was recommended to get vitamins and water into children initially however but never for children under age 6 mos.-1 year please consult your physician.

 

 

 

Epilepsy is a chronic disorder of recurrent unprovoked seizures, and is one type of seizure disorder. Convulsion is pretty much same as seizure. Some folks with low sugar or with head trauma can jerk and twitch a few times, this is not epilepsy but a convulsion or a seizure.  According to the Institute of Medicine, one in 26 people in the US will suffer from epilepsy at some point in their life. More than 3,000 Americans die each year from Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy. Recent estimates by CDC¹, reveal 1.2% of the US population suffers from Epilepsy, (@ 3.4 million), including 470,000 children. Reality is that @ 35% are not controlled by medication, while another third is only partially controlled with medication².

So many health initiatives and innovations in treatment are coming from overseas. Yet another catch by the FDA just occurred – the approval of a smartwatch for seizure patients. Approved in EU in April 2017, the Embrace seizure monitoring smart watch tracks sleep, stress, and physical activity, along with seizure activity -impressive!  It can learn and notify wearer if a convulsion is coming.  It can also send alerts to whomever you assign. A crowdfunding initiative brought this to market. Got to LOVE what technology is doing for health care!

¹ https://www.cdc.gov/epilepsy/data/index.html 
² https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/articles/9092951/ 

Don’t complain if your tea is piping hot! Research shows tea too hot (above 65 °C, 149 °F) is dangerous to your health. The World Health Organization considers such drinks, to be potentially carcinogenic. Study details included: if they drank tea, what kind, how often, and how hot.

This study out of China revealed that drinkers of hot tea had a higher incidence of esophageal cancer as high has 1.5 times higher than those who do not drink hot tea. The hotter the tea the higher the likelihood of developing drinkers esophageal cancer.