Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Fan reduces risk of SIDS.

According to Ed Martin, M.D., chief of pediatrics for Kaiser Permanente in Vallejo, California, putting your baby to sleep with a fan in her room may significantly reduce her risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Experts believe that a baby can die in her sleep if she breathes exhaled carbon dioxide instead of oxygen and this study shows that simply increasing air circulation is protective.

"A ceiling fan, a desk fan, forced-air heating, or even an open window can help," says Ed Martin, M.D.

Thus, put your baby to sleep on her back, avoid soft bedding, never smoke in her room and don't share a bed are some ways to prevent SIDS as well.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Should you worry about lung cancer?

According to the American Cancer Society, 13 percent of those diagnosed with lung cancer are non-smokers. Indeed, anyone can get the disease without ever lighting up. But increasing the amount of magnesium in your diet may decrease your risk for the disease. As a matter of fact, Epidemiologists at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas found that study participants with the most magnesium in their diet had a 53 percent reduced risk of lung cancer. This mineral helps DNA repair itself. As a result, the researchers recommend getting your RNA for magnesium - 320 mg for women and 420 mg for men - by stocking up on magnesium - rich foods such as green leafy vegetables like Swiss chard (29.2 mg per cup), halibut (170 mg per 159 g or 5.5 oz), almonds (49 mg per ounce), and black beans (120 mg per cup).

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Magic Mushroom

Developed in Japan in the mid 1980s, AHCC or popularly known as Active Hexose Correlated Compound is produced from the fermented extract of a hybrid of several medicinal mushrooms. In the last 20-plus years, AHCC has gained and shown promist as a treatment and preventive for everything from candida infections and post-traumatic stress disorder to hair loss and nausea caused by cancer treatment.

But health expert's studies show that AHCC may increase survival rate - and decrease recurrence - in cancer patients. In fact, in a nine-year study of 269 post-surgical liver cancer patients published in the Journal of Hepatology, the group taking AHCC (3 grams per day) showed a 13 percent higher rate of survival than those in the control group. Plus only 35 percent of the patients in the AHCC group had a recurrence of cancer compared to 66 percent in the control group.