Even people who don't cotton to tofu usually find soy nuts palatable. The hard, toasted seeds taste sort of like a cross between peanuts and pretzels. It now turns out that as snacks go, these may have an extra benefit--at least for women experiencing menopausal symptoms. Eating a handful of soy nuts at various times throughout the day cut the number of hot flashes they experienced by at least 40 percent.
The study recruited 60 heathy postmenopausal Boston-area women to take part in a pair of eight-week dietary sequences. In one, they ate a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet rich in calcium and fish. In the other sequence, they ate this diet supplemented with a half-cup of soy nuts each day, with the "nuts" to be spread out in three or four portions several hours apart. Half started on the diet without soy nuts, the rest on the soy-supplemented one.
In addition to experiencing fewer hot-flash episodes while they were in the soy-nut phase of the trial, the recruits also reported fewer other physical and emotional symptoms of menopause. Francine K. Welty and her colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston report their team's findings in the April Journal of Women's Health.
The amount of soy and its consumption throughout the day were each intended to mimic, in part, the typical day-long intake of soy in many Asian cultures, where the prevalence of hot flashes is low. Indeed, Welty's group notes, an estimated 10 to 25 percent of Chinese and Indonesian women typically experience this menopausal symptom compared to some 60 to 90 percent of women in Western countries.
I happened onto this paper while I was taking advantage of a nice offer by the publisher of this journal. In honor of National Women’s Health Week, last week, it opened access to the contents of this issue and any other issue of the journal at no cost--but only through June 15. To do so, log in to http://www.liebertonline.com/jwh.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Stunted Stats
The World Health Organization has just crunched data collected from national surveys in 139 countries to gauge the costs of poor nutrition across the globe. One set of statistics is especially disturbing. It shows that throughout the developing world, malnutrition has stunted the growth of one-third of the 179 million children there under age 5.
However, stunting rates vary widely by geography. WHO found that in 39 countries, the rate of stunting in children 5 and under was 40 percent. Among these nations, 22 are in Africa, seven in Southeast Asia, four each are in the eastern Mediterranean and west Pacific, and a single country each are in Europe and in the Americas.
Source: World Health Statistics 2007, released May 18, by the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, p. 13.
However, stunting rates vary widely by geography. WHO found that in 39 countries, the rate of stunting in children 5 and under was 40 percent. Among these nations, 22 are in Africa, seven in Southeast Asia, four each are in the eastern Mediterranean and west Pacific, and a single country each are in Europe and in the Americas.
Source: World Health Statistics 2007, released May 18, by the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, p. 13.
Endangered Species Stats
Mention endangered species, and most people think of pandas, black-footed ferrets, or whooping cranes. However, as of March 19, the largest number of endangered species in the Unied States were plants. In all, 598 of them, mostly flowering species, were formally listed as endangered, compared to just 412 animals.
Among animals, families with the most species endangered with extinction: birds with 76 , fish with 74, mammals with 69, and clams with 62.
Source: 2007. Endangered Species Bulletin, 2006 Highlights edition(May):56.
Among animals, families with the most species endangered with extinction: birds with 76 , fish with 74, mammals with 69, and clams with 62.
Source: 2007. Endangered Species Bulletin, 2006 Highlights edition(May):56.
Friday, May 18, 2007
West Nile Hammers Birds
Spread by mosquitoes, the West Nile virus has sickened more than 23,000 people in the United States since its introduction around 1999, killing more than 930 of them. Indeed, most news accounts of the disease's rapid spread have focused on West Nile's infection risk to people. However, birds have also proved highly vulnerable, as a new study indicates.
Walter D. Koenig of the University of California Berkeley and his colleagues charted changes in the breeding populations of birds throughout California between two counting seasons—the mid-1990s and the 2004-05 season. The latter period was selected because it is the first year that West Nile virus had been detected throughout the state.
The federally organized North American Breeding Bird Survey collects population data each year at the height of a species' breeding season. Such data were used for the new study only when the same person was responsible for bird counts in both periods, owing to large individual variations in counting techniques and reliability.
The scientists also pored over data on West Nile virus testing of 13,000 dead birds in the year leading up to the later breeding-bird census. The researchers restricted their estimates of West Nile's likely influence to just the breeding populations of the 29 passerines—perching birds or songbirds—for which virus prevalence information existed. Birds in this collection included the raven and crow, American goldfinch, song and house sparrows, barn swallow, robin, Western bluebird, and northern mockingbird.
In the just published March EcoHealth, the researchers report finding that species that had the highest virus prevalence rates, based on dead-bird testing, also experienced the greatest population declines between the two survey periods. The correlations proved especially strong for four species: the American crow, yellow-billed magpie, Western scrub jay and Steller's jay. When the researchers examined breeding-population data for these species in the 10 years leading up to the latest census, they saw no similar trend. In other words, it emerged only in the 2004-05 season, when the virus became widespread throughout California.
Other species also appeared to show some West Nile losses, but not to the same extent as these resident—nonmigratory—species. One bird that appeared fairly resistant to the virus: the raven.
Koenig's team concludes that West Nile infections have "had significant negative impacts on avian populations at a large geographic scale."
Walter D. Koenig of the University of California Berkeley and his colleagues charted changes in the breeding populations of birds throughout California between two counting seasons—the mid-1990s and the 2004-05 season. The latter period was selected because it is the first year that West Nile virus had been detected throughout the state.
The federally organized North American Breeding Bird Survey collects population data each year at the height of a species' breeding season. Such data were used for the new study only when the same person was responsible for bird counts in both periods, owing to large individual variations in counting techniques and reliability.
The scientists also pored over data on West Nile virus testing of 13,000 dead birds in the year leading up to the later breeding-bird census. The researchers restricted their estimates of West Nile's likely influence to just the breeding populations of the 29 passerines—perching birds or songbirds—for which virus prevalence information existed. Birds in this collection included the raven and crow, American goldfinch, song and house sparrows, barn swallow, robin, Western bluebird, and northern mockingbird.
In the just published March EcoHealth, the researchers report finding that species that had the highest virus prevalence rates, based on dead-bird testing, also experienced the greatest population declines between the two survey periods. The correlations proved especially strong for four species: the American crow, yellow-billed magpie, Western scrub jay and Steller's jay. When the researchers examined breeding-population data for these species in the 10 years leading up to the latest census, they saw no similar trend. In other words, it emerged only in the 2004-05 season, when the virus became widespread throughout California.
Other species also appeared to show some West Nile losses, but not to the same extent as these resident—nonmigratory—species. One bird that appeared fairly resistant to the virus: the raven.
Koenig's team concludes that West Nile infections have "had significant negative impacts on avian populations at a large geographic scale."
Who's Fattest Stats
The World Health Organization has just published a list ranking 36 nations in order of the share of their populations that have a normal bodyweight. Any guess where the United States falls? Third from the bottom, at 35.13 percent. The rest of Americans had a body mass index--a ratio determined by accounting for an individual's height and weight--above what's considered healthy.
Only Kuwait and the United Kingdom were fatter than the United States. Wealthy Saudia Arabia didn't rank much higher. It has ony 7% more healthy-weight individuals than we do.
Topping the healthy-weight list was the Lao People's Democratic Republic at 77.14 percent, followed by Ghana (72.4%), the Phillippines (69.51%), Japan (68.9%), the Republic of Korea (68.7%), India (62.5%), and Kyrgyzstan (61.25%).
Somewhere in the middle, all with about 50 to 54% of their populations at a healthy weight, were Colombia, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, and Finland.
Of course, it's not a complete list. There are some 200 countries. However, it says something fairly disappointing for America that Morocco, Estonia, Malaysia, and Kyrgyzstan have almost twice the proportion of healthy-weight adults that we and several other wealthy and powerful nations do. Obviously, it suggests a lot about how we spend out wealth--avoiding exercise in our automobiles and chowing down on low-cost fast food.
Source: World Health Organization Global Database on Body Mass Index (http://www.who.int/bmi/index.jsp), which was updated as of May 18, 2007.
Only Kuwait and the United Kingdom were fatter than the United States. Wealthy Saudia Arabia didn't rank much higher. It has ony 7% more healthy-weight individuals than we do.
Topping the healthy-weight list was the Lao People's Democratic Republic at 77.14 percent, followed by Ghana (72.4%), the Phillippines (69.51%), Japan (68.9%), the Republic of Korea (68.7%), India (62.5%), and Kyrgyzstan (61.25%).
Somewhere in the middle, all with about 50 to 54% of their populations at a healthy weight, were Colombia, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, and Finland.
Of course, it's not a complete list. There are some 200 countries. However, it says something fairly disappointing for America that Morocco, Estonia, Malaysia, and Kyrgyzstan have almost twice the proportion of healthy-weight adults that we and several other wealthy and powerful nations do. Obviously, it suggests a lot about how we spend out wealth--avoiding exercise in our automobiles and chowing down on low-cost fast food.
Source: World Health Organization Global Database on Body Mass Index (http://www.who.int/bmi/index.jsp), which was updated as of May 18, 2007.
Hot Flash Newsflash
A recent report in the Journal of Women's Health suggests a way to limit the risk of developing hot flashes during menopause that is definitely not what the doctor ordered: Spend your 30s as a couch potato.
Brian W. Whitcomb and his colleagues at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, in Baltimore, suspected physical activity might limit menopausal symptoms, including the often embarassing and always-miserable hot flashes. So, they administered detailed questionnaires to 512 menopausal women, querying them on their activities between the ages of 35 and 40.
The disappointing findings: highly active women were 70 percent more likely to have experienced moderate to severe hot flashes, and 80 percent more likely to suffer hot flashes daily, than were women who had remained largely inactive.
With the epidemic of obesity ravaging populations worldwide, physicians increasingly implore their patients to eat only as much needed to sate hunger--and to exercise regularly. Because regular exercise also helps cut risks of many chronic diseases, from heart problems to diabetes, the researchers caution that "our study results should not serve as an admonishment against regular participation but rather contribute information to the understanding of hot flashes."
The data appear in the journal's January issue. Normally, papers in this journal are available only to subscribers. However, in support of National Women’s Health Week, last week, the publisher is offering free online access to all issues of this peer-reviewed publication through June 15. To see this paper or any other in the journal, go to: http://www.liebertonline.com/jwh.
Brian W. Whitcomb and his colleagues at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, in Baltimore, suspected physical activity might limit menopausal symptoms, including the often embarassing and always-miserable hot flashes. So, they administered detailed questionnaires to 512 menopausal women, querying them on their activities between the ages of 35 and 40.
The disappointing findings: highly active women were 70 percent more likely to have experienced moderate to severe hot flashes, and 80 percent more likely to suffer hot flashes daily, than were women who had remained largely inactive.
With the epidemic of obesity ravaging populations worldwide, physicians increasingly implore their patients to eat only as much needed to sate hunger--and to exercise regularly. Because regular exercise also helps cut risks of many chronic diseases, from heart problems to diabetes, the researchers caution that "our study results should not serve as an admonishment against regular participation but rather contribute information to the understanding of hot flashes."
The data appear in the journal's January issue. Normally, papers in this journal are available only to subscribers. However, in support of National Women’s Health Week, last week, the publisher is offering free online access to all issues of this peer-reviewed publication through June 15. To see this paper or any other in the journal, go to: http://www.liebertonline.com/jwh.
Whooping Cranes Redux
North America's tallest birds--whooping cranes (Grus americana)--are also among the rarest. The only remaining natural population of the endangered birds summers in Canada, then migrates some 2,400 miles to winter on the coast of Texas. The 237 whoopers that returned to their wintering grounds for the 2006-07 season were the largest number in a century, and 17 more than a year before, according to Tom Stehn and Wendy Brown of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Their report appears in that agency's just-published 2006 Highlights edition of the Endangered Species Bulletin.
In 1941, a mere 41 members of the species remained, largely due to habitat destruction, shooting, and other human activities. With the help of substantial federal protection in both Canada and the United States, the birds have been making a slow but steady rebound. The population grew to 100 by 1986 and reached 200 in 2004.
The species' 2006-07 winter tally reflects a record 49 chicks that reached fledging stage, last summer; all but four of these made it to Texas. In contrast, the year before, just 30 chicks arrived in the wintering grounds. Another record, the Bulletin notes: seven adult pairs made it to Texas with twin chicks in tow. Ordinarily, a female lays two eggs, only one of which survives through its first migration.
This past winter, five whooping cranes were also sighted at a New Mexico wildlife refuge, marking only the second time members of the species were seen wintering outside of Texas.
Nearly 5 feet tall, whoopers are majestic animals. Despite their growing numbers, the wild population's future remains anything but assured. The birds reproduce slowly and inhabit just a few nesting and wintering sites. As such, Stehn and Brown warn, "a single catastrophic event could eliminate the wild, self-sustaining . . . population." And we would all be the poorer for that.
In 1941, a mere 41 members of the species remained, largely due to habitat destruction, shooting, and other human activities. With the help of substantial federal protection in both Canada and the United States, the birds have been making a slow but steady rebound. The population grew to 100 by 1986 and reached 200 in 2004.
The species' 2006-07 winter tally reflects a record 49 chicks that reached fledging stage, last summer; all but four of these made it to Texas. In contrast, the year before, just 30 chicks arrived in the wintering grounds. Another record, the Bulletin notes: seven adult pairs made it to Texas with twin chicks in tow. Ordinarily, a female lays two eggs, only one of which survives through its first migration.
This past winter, five whooping cranes were also sighted at a New Mexico wildlife refuge, marking only the second time members of the species were seen wintering outside of Texas.
Nearly 5 feet tall, whoopers are majestic animals. Despite their growing numbers, the wild population's future remains anything but assured. The birds reproduce slowly and inhabit just a few nesting and wintering sites. As such, Stehn and Brown warn, "a single catastrophic event could eliminate the wild, self-sustaining . . . population." And we would all be the poorer for that.
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