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Health Alert

Many Ignorant of Waist Fat Risk

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Almost nine in 10 people are not aware of the risks of carrying extra fat around their waistline.

A survey of 12,000 Europeans found most had no idea that a thick waist was a sign of a build-up of a dangerous type of fat around the internal organs. This “visceral fat” is strongly linked with type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

It is thought that the danger of visceral fat is related to the release of proteins and hormones that can cause inflammation, which in turn can damage arteries and enter your liver, and affect how your body breaks down sugars and fats.

Source: BBC News January 4, 2010

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Health Alert

Sugar May Be Bad, But This Sweetener is Far More Deadly

Scientists have proved for the first time that fructose, a cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks, can damage human metabolism and is fueling the obesity crisis.
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Fructose, a sweetener usually derived from corn, can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease.

Over 10 weeks, 16 volunteers on a controlled diet including high levels of fructose produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. Another group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

Resources:
Grist December 15, 2009
J Clin Invest 2009
Times Online 2009

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News on Health & Science

Now, ‘Smart Scaffold’ to Help Heart Heal Itself

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New treatments are being developed that heal broken hearts or muscle loss by prompting the body to repair damaged tissues.

Canadian researchers, for the first time, have developed an organic substance (scaffold) that attracts and supports cells necessary for tissue repair and can be directly injected into problem areas.

This development is a major step toward treatments that allow people to more fully recover from injury and disease rather than having to live with chronic health problems. It may even help reduce the need for organ transplantation by allowing physicians to save organs that would have been previously damaged beyond repair.

These “smart scaffolds”, developed by Erik Suuronen from the University of Ottawa and Ottawa Heart Research Institute, contain a protein that allows progenitor cells to adhere to the damaged tissue and survive long enough to promote healing. These cells emit homing signals that summon other cells to join in the process and give off chemical signals that order cells to grow blood vessels necessary for healing to occur.

“Ultimately, we envision a scaffold material that can be taken off the shelf and injected into the hearts of patients suffering from blocked arteries,” he said. “The scaffold materials would direct the repair process, and restore blood flow and function to the heart

Sources: The Times Of India

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