19 August, 2013

Drinking coffee and tea keeps liver healthy

Drinking four cups of tea or coffee daily can help those with fatty liver disease keep their organ healthy, scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have found.

An international team of researchers led by Duke- National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School (Duke-NUS) and the Duke University School of Medicine suggest that increased caffeine intake may reduce fatty liver in people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Worldwide, 70 per cent of people diagnosed with diabetes and obesity have NAFLD, the major cause of fatty liver not due to excessive alcohol consumption.

There are no effective treatments for NAFLD except diet and exercise.

Using cell culture and mouse models, the study authors - led by Paul Yen, associate professor and research fellow, and Rohit Sinha, of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School's Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders Programme in Singapore - observed that caffeine stimulates the metabolisation of lipids stored in liver cells and decreased the fatty liver of mice that were fed a high-fat diet.

These findings suggest that consuming the equivalent caffeine intake of four cups of coffee or tea a day may be beneficial in preventing and protecting against the progression of NAFLD in humans, researchers said.

"This is the first detailed study of the mechanism for caffeine action on lipids in liver and the results are very interesting," Yen said.

"Coffee and tea are so commonly consumed and the notion that they may be therapeutic, especially since they have a reputation for being "bad" for health, is especially enlightening," Yen added.

The team said this research could lead to the development of caffeine-like drugs that do not have the usual side effects related to caffeine, but retain its therapeutic effects on the liver.

The findings will be published in the journal Hepatology.

Source: www.indianexpress.com

19.08.2013

Soft drinks tied to increased aggression in kids: Study

Heavy soft drink consumption is associated with aggression, attention problems and withdrawal behaviour in young children, a new study has found.

The study by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, University of Vermont, and Harvard School of Public Health assessed approximately 3,000 5-year-old children.

The kids were enrolled in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a prospective birth cohort that follows mother-child pairs from 20 large US cities.

Mothers reported their child's soft drink consumption and completed the Child Behaviour Checklist based on their child's behaviour during the previous two months.

The researchers found that 43 per cent of the children consumed at least 1 serving of soft drinks per day, and 4 per cent consumed 4 or more.

Aggression, withdrawal, and attention problems were associated with soda consumption. Even after adjusting for sociodemographic factors, maternal depression, intimate partner violence, and paternal incarceration, any soft drink consumption was linked to increased aggressive behaviour.

Children who drank 4 or more soft drinks per day were more than twice as likely to destroy things belonging to others, get into fights, and physically attack people.

They also had increased attention problems and withdrawal behaviour compared with those who did not consume soft drinks.

"We found that the child's aggressive behaviour score increased with every increase in soft drinks servings per day," said Shakira Suglia, Mailman School assistant professor of Epidemiology.

Although this study cannot identify the exact nature of the association between soft drink consumption and problem behaviours, limiting or eliminating a child's soft drink consumption may reduce behavioural problems, researchers said.

The study was published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

Source: www.indianexpress.com

19.08.2013

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling

Margaret B. Runbeck