“Giving patients with a history of heart attacks a margarine enriched with omega-3 oils in addition to standard drugs appears to make no difference to their chances of having a repeat attack.  A 40-month study of more than 4,800 patients showed taking low doses of omega-3 fatty acids in margarine did not significantly reduce rates of serious heart attacks and other cardiovascular events, Dutch researchers said.  The finding raised questions about the benefits of omega-3, which has been shown in previous studies to make for healthier hearts.  The margarines used in the study were developed for the researchers by food and consumer goods giant Unilever.  Doctors, however, are unlikely to rush to change clinical practice.  Many already prescribe omega-3 fish oil capsules, including GlaxoSmithKline’s Lovaza, to reduce triglycerides, a type of blood fat linked to clogged arteries.  ’It will be viewed as a largely negative study and people who are enthusiasts for omega fatty acids will continue to be enthusiasts and people who are skeptics will continue to be skeptics’, said Scott Wright of the Mayo Clinic in the United States, who was not involved in the research.  Daan Kromhout of Wageningen University, who led the study, told the European Society of Cardiology the lack of efficacy might reflect the good background drug treatment patients were receiving, with 85 percent on cholesterol-lowering statins, as well as blood pressure and blood-thinning tablets.  ’We found the cardiovascular mortality rate in the study population was only half that expected, probably because of their excellent treatment’, he said.  ’This may also be why the rate of major cardiovascular events during follow-up was no lower in the fatty acid groups than in the placebo group’.  All the men and women in the Dutch study were aged between 60 and 80 and had suffered a heart attack roughly four years previously.  They were randomly assigned use of one of four margarines on bread instead of their regular spread — one containing no extra omega-3 fatty acids; one with 400 milligrams a day of extra eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA); one with 2 grams of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA); and one with a combination of EPA-DHA and ALA.  Fish like salmon, herring and sardine are a common source of EPA-DHA, while ALA is found in vegetables including soybeans, flax seeds and walnuts.  Despite the overall negative results, researchers did find there was a reduction in repeat heart attacks and other cardiovascular events in women who took ALA margarine, although this was not statistically significant.  Diabetes patients also showed a possible benefit”

“Scientists have found that vitamin D influences more than 200 genes, including ones related to cancer and autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis — a discovery that shows how serious vitamin D deficiency can be.   Worldwide, an estimated one billion people are deficient in vitamin D, and a team of scientists from Britain and Canada said health authorities should consider recommending supplements for those at most risk.  ‘Our study shows quite dramatically the wide-ranging influence that vitamin D exerts over our health’, said Andreas Heger of the Functional Genomics Unit at Britain’s Oxford University, who led the study.  Vitamin D effects our DNA through something called the vitamin D receptor (VDR), which binds to specific locations of the human genome. Heger’s team mapped out these points and identified more than 200 genes that it directly influences.  Vitamin D deficiency is a well-known risk factor for rickets, and some evidence suggests it may increase susceptibility to autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes, as well as certain cancers and even dementia.  With this is mind, the group looked at disease-associated regions of the gene map to see if they had higher levels of VDR binding.  They found VDR binding was “significantly enriched” in regions linked to several common autoimmune diseases, such as MS, type 1 diabetes and Crohn’s disease, as well as in regions associated with cancers such as leukemia and colorectal cancer”

Scientists have found that vitamin D influences more than 200 genes, including ones related to cancer and autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis — a discovery that shows how serious vitamin D deficiency can be.

Worldwide, an estimated one billion people are deficient in vitamin D, and a team of scientists from Britain and Canada said health authorities should consider recommending supplements for those at most risk.

A couple of weeks ago I received an intriguing email inviting me to join an information evening on the N-Vital Brain Rejuvenation Program  – a brand-new audio CD suite – at Dymocks Booksellers, in Adelaide.  Well, this was an invitation I could not turn down by virtue of the title alone – ‘Brain Rejuvenation’ is definitely something all grown-ups need to factor into their post 30s and this slightly graying nomad is no different to her peers…   Journalist or not!   Sailing up Dymocks’ escalator on the appointed night, and with cheese and sparkling wine in hand, I seated myself at the front to find out how this program could help myself and our many thousands of globalmediapost.com readers hone our  thinking and memory skills.  NeuroSonica(TM)’s director of marketing, Dr Max Hicks, opened his presentation by explaining that neuroacoustics is a science that studies the effects of sound on the brain and its electrical brainwave patterns.  He outlined the ways in which different major brainwaves correspond to different activities, moods, states and conditions, and went on to detail how NeuroSonica(TM) uses a variety of special sound techniques to retrain and optimise brainwave patterns, leading to improved cognition, performance, emotional stability and overall brain function. He then explained that although these audio suites are not medical products, they are exceptionally effective owing to their unique combination of scientific audio technologies, which incorporates state of the art brainwave synchronization or ‘entrainment’, pitch stimulation techniques derived from the research of Dr Alfted Tomatis, the 3-dimensional Holophonic(TM) sound technology of Hugo Zucharelli and others…   Well, I was amazed, first of all to learn that the findings of Dr Alfred Tomatis, the late French ear, nose, and throat specialist who was accredited with ‘making astonishing medical and psychological discoveries that led to audio-psycho-phonology, or the Tomatis method’ in the 20^th Century’, have now been adapted and  ’hybridised’ with other 21st Century sound technologies by NeuroSonica(TM)’s CEO, Ken Grimmer.

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