This Week In Wellness

This Week In Wellness a vegan couple who fed their children on a strict and insufficient diet have had their three children removed from them after they were found to be malnourished and suffering from Rickets. The couple have avoided jail time but have been sentenced to 300 hours of community service with the judge labelling their parenting as “reckless” and stated that “the abandonment of parental responsibility cannot be excused”.

Their 20 month old daughter had been fed a strict vegan diet of just oats, bread and a few mouthfuls of vegetables and weighed in at just 4.89kg. She was malnourished, her growth was stunted, her bones brittle and her motor skills were poorly developed.

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/parents-sentenced-over-neglect-of-child-on-veganonly-diet/news-story/68bedf9fd1b86a2e04864c27349233d2

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This Week In Wellness a study in the British Medical Journal has found that good cardiovascular health at age 50 is associated with a lower risk of dementia later in life.

The American Heart Association’s “Life Simple 7” cardiovascular health score, initially designed for cardiovascular disease, has been put forward as a potential tool for preventing dementia. It aims to monitor 7 risk factors for heart health. smoking, diet, physical activity, BMI, fasting glucose levels, cholesterol and blood pressure. Dementia is a progressive disease that can start to develop 25 years before any symptoms develop so this study was designed to measure the cardiovascular health score at 50 and see if there is any correlation with dementia over the next 25 years.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190807190812.htm

https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l4414

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This Week In Wellness high levels of Oestrogen in the womb may be linked to the likelihood of a child developing Autism.

In a recent study by a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge and the State Serum Institute in Denmark. Published in Molecular Psychology researchers collected amniotic fluid and compared the levels of sex steroid hormone oestrogen. In the 98 foetuses who later developed autism, all 4 oestrogens were significantly elevated making them more predictive of the likelihood of autism than previously suspected androgens, like testosterone. Prenatal Oestrogens can have an effect on brain growth and also masculinisation of the brain.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190729094538.htm

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-019-0454-9

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This Week In Wellness drinking hot tea may increase your risk of esophageal cancer.

A study published in the International Journal of Cancer has shown that drinking tea hotter than 60 degrees Celsius was associated with a whopping 90% higher risk.

Previous studies have shown a link between hot tea drinking and risk of esophageal cancer but this is the first one to show what temperature makes the difference. The study followed 50,045 individuals aged 40 to 75 years for a median of 10 years. Of the 317 new cases of esophageal cancer identified, 285 of the were in the group that consumed 700 ml of tea per day or more at a higher temperature (60°C or higher).

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320102028.htm

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ijc.32220

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This Week In Wellness the team of science writers behind Retraction Watch has put together a database of unreliable scientific research in Australia and 247 research papers published by Australian scientists (including some of Australia’s most reputable Universities) to be compromised.

“The public should be concerned. Almost 250 [papers], that’s a number that many people would find unconscionably high,” said Professor Simon Gandevia, deputy director of Neuroscience Research Australia.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/bad-science-australian-studies-found-to-be-unreliable-compromised-20190719-p528ql.html

https://retractionwatch.com/category/by-country/australia-retractions/

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This Week In Wellness a new study reveals children who are habitually barefoot between the ages of 6-10 show significantly better motor skills including better balance and jumping skills.

Shout out to Dr Jacey Pryjma from the Australian Children’s Chiropractic centre for bringing this research to my attention.

Published in Frontiers in Pediatrics, this is the first study to assess the relevance of growing up shod vs. barefoot on jumping, balancing and sprinting and shows that children and adolescents who spend most of their time barefoot develop motor skills differently from those who habitually wear shoes.

https://neurosciencenews.com/motor-skill-footwear-9552/

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fped.2018.00115/full

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This Week In Wellness topical collagen powder may be just as effective as sutures for healing skin biopsy wounds according to a study published in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology by a team of physician researchers at the George Washington University.

In a comparison that included rate of healing, the quality of the wound healing, symptoms and also the early cosmetic outcomes the topical application of collagen powder onto the wounds the collagen powder proved to be just as effective in this small sample size.

Collagen powder has been a popular supplement used in recent times for gut healing when taken orally due to it’s important structural role in the skin, gut lining and other organs however it also plays an important role as a signal molecule in wound healing. This helps to stop bleeding, stimulate the immune system and stimulate new blood vessel formation and importantly does so without causing irritation or increasing the risk of infection.

“During normal wound healing, collagen acts as a scaffold for cellular entry and growth in the wound bed and encourages the deposition of new collagen,” said Adam Friedman, MD, interim chair of the Department of Dermatology at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences and an author on the study. “While collagen has been used as a wound healing adjuvant, a good comparison to the standard of wound care has been lacking.”

“Given the cost and time to place and remove sutures and the potential reimbursement for collagen, using topical collagen powder for punch biopsy wounds may be easier on the patient, not requiring an additional visit for suture removal and yielding an equivalent or possibly better wound healing outcome,” Friedman said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190708140044.htm

https://jddonline.com/articles/dermatology/S1545961619P0667X/1/

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This Week In Wellness high fructose corn syrup combined with trans fats has been shown to induce nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (advanced inflammatory fatty liver disease) in rodents. 

The incidence of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is rising rapidly and much of the blame has been laid on fat. However the impact of high fructose corn syrup and also the type of fats being consumed may have been overlooked in this picture according to a new study published in the European Journal of Nutrition. 

http://healthimpactnews.com/2017/study-vegetable-oil-contribute-to-fatty-liver-disease-saturated-fats-do-not/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28676973

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Spending time in nature may be enough to help you feel healthier and happier. In what seems like one of the most common sense studies ever a study published in Nature, analysed over 20,000 people in England and their self reported health and wellbeing. It showed that any time in nature leads to benefits, and that the benefits to health and wellbeing seemed to peak at 200-300 minutes and showed no additional benefit thereafter.

Whilst the health benefits of nature have been long known this appears to be the first time that it has been quantified in the research, telling us exactly how much may be beneficial and the good news is that it isn’t a huge amount of time.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2206249-two-hours-a-week-spent-outdoors-in-nature-linked-with-better-health

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44097-3

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This Week In Wellness a mother’s womb may not be as sterile as we were lead to believe. Researchers from the University of Western Australia have found that the majority of babies are exposed to bacteria in the womb and have even postulated that these bacteria may play an important role in development.

Lead author Lisa Stinson says that “Over the last decade, numerous studies have detected bacterial DNA in amniotic fluid and first-pass meconium [baby’s first poop], challenging the long-held assumption that the womb is sterile,” In this study Published in Frontiers in Microbiology her team carefully collected amniotic fluid samples from 50 healthy women undergoing planned caesarean deliveries, and found that nearly all (36/43 viable samples) contained bacterial DNA, despite none of the women or babies having any signs of infection. What’s more, all 50 newborns had bacteria in their first poop. The researchers concluded that this ‘fetal microbiome’ would likely have a significant impact on the developing immune system, gut, and brain.

https://blog.frontiersin.org/2019/06/05/microbiology-fetal-microbiome-womb-bacteria/?utm_source=ad&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=ba_sci_fmicb

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.01124/full

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