General Health Tips:Yoga More Popular Than Ever

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HEALTH TIP:  Yoga More Popular Than Ever

Who knew terms like downward facing dog, flowering lotus, and
half camel would ever be phrases of popular culture without a
chorus of snickers being heard throughout a studio, classroom,
or lecture hall? Unless you’ve been hiding in a box since the
Millennium started, you know what yoga is. The spiritual-based
exercise trend has been popular since celebrities started
showing up on the red carpet looking extremely lean and giving
their props to their personal trainer, their handpicked menu,
and the low-resistance, high-meditation strategy that is yoga.

You know that old saying, “You don’t know who you are until
you know where you came from?” Well, Hollywood didn’t invent
yoga; India did thousands of years ago as part of the ancient
system of Ayurveda. Yoga, now more than ever, is popular among
kids, young adults, and men and women alike.

However within the popularity of this trend, when it comes to
spiritual enlightenment, some wonder if holding poses, using
your core, and/or sweating out impurities are still yielding
the best results that they can. More and more kids are being
taught yoga in the classroom to help free up their stress
levels and improve concentration inside and outside of the
classroom for a better balanced mind and body. Even vacationing
has an outlet for providing one of a kind workout options for
kids these days. Princess Cruises just announced its kid’s
yoga program onboard their ships. Launching this fall, children
as young as three can take part in the free classes aimed at
promoting movement and parents are encouraged to join in the
thirty-to-sixty minute classes.

From kids to the elderly, and everyone in between, yoga has
also seen a recent boost from menopausal women. Doctors in
India took a group of 120 menopausal women between the ages
of 40 and 55 and broke them into two groups: one group
practiced yoga five days a week for eight weeks and the
control group focused on controlling their diet and exercise
regimens. The yoga group also was educated on the properties
of yoga, as well as how to manage stress through posing,
stretching and breathing. The control group was lectured on
diet, stress management, exercise and the process of menopause.
The Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana of Bangalore,
India’s team of doctors including Dr. R. Chattha, noticed after
eight weeks a significant change in the yoga group. The women
in the yoga group overall had reductions in night sweats,
problems sleeping, and hot flashes-usual symptoms of menopause-
whereas the control group did not notice these changes.

If you’ve never tried yoga, the good news is that you still
can. Yoga centers are popping up everywhere from Hollywood
Boulevard to Hollywood, Florida, and flexibility is not an
issue. With many different types of yoga, beginners can start
small and work their way up to the peace of mind they want.
Coincidentally, this September is also the first annual Yoga
Month. Approved as a National Health Observance (NHO), Yoga
Month is a year round, community-based sponsorship program
used to promote health and wellness. During September, the
Yoga Month tour throughout the United States and Canada will
help to bring yoga awareness to others through support groups,
teacher networking devices, and forums to promote new ideas
and products that coincide with a yoga-centric lifestyle.

Whether you’re a cancer patient, survivor, health nut, or just
looking to gain a healthier perspective, join in the fun, get
stretching and remember that it’s alright to snicker when
someone asks you to do a half camel.

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Setton Farms pistachios recall is expanded

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced
an expansion of the nationwide recall of possibly bacterially
tainted pistachios. The FDA said Setton Farms Inc. of Terra
Bella, Calif., is expanding its voluntary recall of pista-
chios to include all roasted shelled pistachios and roasted
in-shell pistachios from its 2008 crop due to potential con-
tamination with salmonella. Company officials said they are
also recalling raw shelled pistachios that weren’t roasted
prior to retail sale. Recalled bulk pistachios, mostly in
25-pound bags but ranging to 2,000-pound containers, were
distributed across the United States and to Canada, South
Korea, Hong Kong, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, the United
Kingdom, France, Cyprus, Greece, Lebanon, Norway, Ukraine
and Ecuador. Recalled pistachios packaged in 3-ounce to 5-
pound bags were sold across the United States under various
brand names including Delallo, Kirkland-CostCo, Sam’s Choice,
Slater Bros., Trader Joe, Sunset Valley and Setton Farms.
Setton is the second largest U.S. pistachio processor,
distributing its California pistachios across the United
States and to more than 30 other countries.

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Michigan accepting marijuana applications

DETROIT — The state of Michigan has started accepting appli-
cation for medical marijuana from residents with debilitating
illnesses, officials said Monday. Michigan is the 13th state
to legalize the use of medical marijuana, the Detroit News
reported. The Michigan Department of Community Health said
it can take up to 15 days to review an application, which
must include a form from a Michigan-licensed doctor certi-
fying that a patient suffers from a qualifying medical condi-
tion. It can take another five days to issue a picture ID
card. Qualifying conditions include cancer, glaucoma,
HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C and Crohn’s disease, the newspaper
said. An automated system erroneously put a stock symbol for
Community Health Systems, which is in no way associated with
medical marijuana, in an earlier version of this article.
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Pancreatic cancer biomarkers list created

BALTIMORE — A Johns Hopkins University scientist has created
a compendium of 50,000 possible pancreatic cancer biomarkers
and says he’s asked his colleagues to study it. Associate
Professor Dr. Akhilesh Pandey, founder and director of the
Institute of Bioinformatics in Bangalore, India, said with
limited resources available for the testing needed to be con-
sidered a bona fide biomarker of clinical value, it’s impor-
tant to take stock of the big picture and come up with strat-
egies. Pandey and his team amassed 2,516 potential biomarkers
of pancreatic cancer. More than 200 genes are shortlisted
because they were reported as overexpressed in four or more
published studies. That, the scientists said, means the pro-
teins they make are in higher abundance in people with pan-
creatic cancer than in people without the disease. That quali-
fies them for the further studies needed to validate them as
sensitive and specific biomarkers. Pandey says he was motiv-
ated by the fact that even leading cancer investigators had
no real idea about how many candidate biomarkers for panc-
reatic cancer had been identified. “Curation and databases
are not very sexy concepts,” said Pandey. “But we can’t keep
doing the exciting new discovery stuff and never take the
time to catalog our results and share them.” The research
appears in the journal PLoS Medicine.

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New insecticides may stall malaria forever

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — A U.S.-led study suggests insecticides
that would kill just older mosquitoes would be a better way
of controlling malaria. Pennsylvania State University
Professor Andrew Read said such an approach would be a more
sustainable way of controlling the disease and might lead
to evolution-proof insecticides that never become obsolete.
Each year malaria kills about a million people, but many of
the chemicals used to kill the insects become ineffective,
the scientists said, since repeated exposure to an insecti-
cide breeds a new generation of mosquitoes that are resis-
tant to that particular chemical. “Insecticides sprayed on
house walls or bed nets are some of the most successful ways
of controlling malaria,” said Read. “But they work by killing
the insects or denying them the human blood they turn into
eggs. This imposes an enormous selection in favor of
insecticide-resistant mosquitoes.” Read, Penn State Professor
Matthew Thomas and doctoral student Penelope Lynch of The
Open University in the United Kingdom say chemical or bio-
logical insecticides that kill only older mosquitoes are a
more effective way to fight the deadly disease. “It is one
of the great ironies of malaria,” said Read. “Most mosquitoes
do not live long enough to transmit the disease. To stop mal-
aria, we only need to kill the old mosquitoes.” The research
appears in the journal PLoS Biology.

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Fluorescent brain cells may guide surgeons

HEIDELBERG, Germany — German scientists say they’ve devel-
oped a technique designed to improve neurosurgery involving
gliomas — malignant brain tumors. Brain tumors are often
resistant to chemotherapy, growing fine extensions that
infiltrate normal brain tissue and often forming satellites
in surrounding tissue, researchers said. That makes it near-
ly impossible to remove the tumor tissue completely by sur-
gery because of the difficulty of discriminating between
tumor tissue and healthy brain tissue. But the technique
developed by Dr. Eva Frei of the German Cancer Research
Center and medical scientists at Heidelberg University is
designed to improve such surgical procedures. The scien-
tists, noting tumors take up large amounts of the blood
protein albumin, attached a fluorescent substance to albumin,
which then enters the bloodstream and eventually accumulates
in the brain tumor. Laser light is then used to cause the
substance to glow, making the fine extensions of the tumor
visible. “Other contrast agents often fade, for tumor resec-
tion can take five to six hours,” said Frei, but she said
the fluorescence marker attached to albumin is visible during
the entire operation. The scientists calculated the prob-
ability of the fluorescent tissue being tumor cells is 97
percent. The study is reported in the journal Neurosurgery.

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Hot Peppers Ease Hay Fever Symptoms

I used to pride myself on being the only person in my immediate
family to not have any allergies, until I turned ten and discovered
that a case of the sniffles, itchy eyes, and non-stop sneezing
sessions that start around early spring meant that I had something
referred to as “hay fever.” I was quickly swiped off my allergy
pedestal and joined the rest of my family, miserable anywhere from
a few weeks to months out of the year when the allergens took to
the air and into our noses. A remedy for this annoyance may come
in a new form of nasal spray that has emerged with a secret
ingredient aimed at repelling those allergens and the sweet smell
of relief for all who suffer from hay fever: hot peppers.

You would think that stuffing peppers up your nose would not be
a good idea, that you would most likely burn your nostrils and
your sense of smell would be tainted; you would be correct, as
this nose spray acts a bit differently than simply wearing spicy
vegetables in your nose. The all-natural nose spray is called
Sinol-M and is made with capsaicin, a natural irritant found
within the membranes and white pith of chili peppers.

Allergic rhinitis, commonly called hay fever, is a variety of
symptoms involving the nose and eyes caused by breathing in
allergens such as dust, pollen, or dander. Hay fever is
categorized as the type of allergic reaction a person gets when
they are specifically allergic to plant pollen. Hay fever is
common in early spring when pollen starts to pick up in the air,
but it depends on the area you live and which pollen you are
allergic to, and for some unlucky people there is the possibility
of suffering all year round. Around 50 million Americans suffer
annually from nasal allergies.

Researchers at the Institute for Asthma and Allergy in Wheaton,
Maryland, as well as scientists at Strategic BioSciences,
conducted a double-blind trial testing the success rate of the
second-generation capsaicin nose spray against the first-
generation product. Working with 24 patients suffering from hay
fever symptoms, researchers split them into two groups and
instructed them to spray once in each nostril as needed for the
first week with either the new formula Sinol-M or the older
Sinol, with a usage maximum of 12 sprays per nostril per day.
After a dry period of one week between trials, the groups were
then instructed to use the other generation of spray that they
had not used the first week.

Sinol-M’s formula is derived from Sinol but contains a solution
called “mucoadhesive” that helps the spray stay inside the nose
longer, leading to less sprays per nostril. Sinol-M also curbs
the burning or sting from the peppers associated with other
capsaicin-based sprays.

The groups recorded their findings after the period was over
with Sinol and Sinol-M acting much the same both significantly
relieving nasal symptoms (sneezing, itchy, runny, or stuffy
nose) but with one main difference. Sinol-M seemed to reduce
the symptoms and therefore the volunteers’ need for use of the
product over Sinol, especially at night throughout the week of
the trial. The “pepper burn” was also shown to be lessened with
Sinol-M.

Dr. Christos Efessiou, CEO of Strategic BioSciences, said in
an interview that the findings are a good measure for natural
health, “This study proved for the first time that a homeopathic
nasal spray containing capsaicin is an effective treatment for
allergic rhinitis.”

The results were presented at the 47th annual meeting of the
Western Society of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology in Maui,
Hawaii, in January of 2009. Lead researcher of the Institute
of Asthma and Allergy, Dr. Martha White, echoed Dr. Efessiou’s
statement when she wrote of the benefits of this new study,
“Unlike the prescription nasal steroid sprays, this is an
all-natural product that has now been demonstrated to provide
clinical benefit and is available without a prescription.”

Now hay fever sufferers everywhere—my family included—can
hopefully breathe a sigh of relief that this new nasal spray
is available over the counter and relatively inexpensive (a
bottle of regular Sinol—since Sinol-M is not yet available—
found on the Internet is less than 20 dollars).

Sinol-M should become available in stores throughout the
United States this month.

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