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MEDICAL NOTES Breast milk could fight coronavirus
Guide to the foods for a better snooze
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NOT sleeping well? It could be down to your gut! Nutritional therapist CAMILLAGRAY discusses the ways that dietary changes can positively impact sleep quality.
n How does your gut affect your sleep?
Good quality sleep is linked to a larger amount of bacterial diversity in our guts. Generally, those with a high diversity of microbes in the gut are considered the healthiest. So, if you have low diversity, it may mean you are at risk of experiencing poor sleep.
Factors in modern-day living such as stress, travel, medications, and western diets can all reduce the diversity of gut bacteria but it’s also believed that our gut bacteria, just like their host (us!), have their own circadian rhythm.
The circadian rhythm is our body clock and regulates different organs depending on the time of day. So if you are eating very late at night, your gut bacteria might be winding down and not ready to digest a whole meal!
n How can improving your diet help
you sleep? To get a wider diversity of gut bacteria, which is associated with better sleep, it’s generally considered wise to eat as many plant-based foods as possible. Fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, pulses, herbs, and spices – they all count.
These all contain polyphenols and prebiotics, which are food for your good gut bacteria, while at the same time fending off the bad ones.
Think of your gut like theAmazon rainforest with tons of different variations of flora and fauna living there. The wider the diversity of natural foods you consume, the more different variations of good gut bacteria you are feeding.
n What specific food can help you
sleep? Serotonin is important to the production of melatonin, the main hormone involved in sleep, so it’s a good idea to eat foods that can help manufacture it.
Serotonin is made from a constituent of protein called tryptophan, found in foods like fish, turkey, chicken, cottage cheese, beans, avocados and bananas.
Foods rich in magnesium for dinner can help too. This mineral is known to be mother nature’s relaxant. Think green plant foods like spinach, kale and broccoli which are all high in magnesium. Alternatively, a nice relaxing Epsom salt bath can do the trick! BREAST milk could help protect us against Covid-19 and other respiratory tract infections.
The antiviral properties of lactoferrin – a protein naturally found in human milk – makes it a great natural supplement, a new study has found.
Lactoferrin is also found in cow’s milk, as well as the eye, nose, respiratory tract, intestine, and elsewhere, and a team of researchers led by the University of Huddersfield found it was promisingly effective in reducing the risk of respiratory tract infections.
Dr Hamid Merchant, from the University’s Department of Pharmacy, said: “This is a very promising molecule which can be adopted as an adjunct therapy for Covid-19 and could be part of a daily routine for people to take, along with vitamin C, D and Zinc supplements to keep our immune system healthy.
“Particularly now winter is upon us we need this extra protection. ”
n Leapfrog IMMUNE is a chewable immune support supplement of Lactoferrin, Zinc and Vitamin C. It is currently available in Selfridges, Next, TheDrug.Store, Revital and Amrita Nutrition.
SLEEPSLEEPCURECURE
MEDICATIONS previously used to treat other conditions could now help relieve a disorder that causes sufferers to wake repeatedly.
Scientists have successfully repurposed two existing drugs to reduce the severity of sleep apnoea by at least 30%.
Affecting around 1.5 million adults in the UK, sleep apnoea is a condition where the upper airway from the back of the nose to the throat closes repetitively during sleep, restricting oxygen intake and causing people to wake up to 100 times in an hour.
Those with untreated sleep apnoea are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, dementia and depression, and up to four times more likely to crash a car.
Despite almost 30 years of research, there are still no approved drug therapies to treat the condition. But now the work of sleep health expert Professor Danny Eckert and his team has brought scientists one step closer.
Previous research showed two classes of medication –reboxetine and butylbromide –were able to keep muscles active during sleep in people without sleep apnoea, and assist their ability to breathe.
Professor Eckert said: “We were thrilled because the current treatment options for people with sleep apnoea are limited and can be a painful journey for many.
“Almost everyone we studied had some improvement. ”
By repurposing the medications, researchers used a multitude of recording instruments to measure whether reboxetine and butylbromide could successfully target the main causes of sleep apnoea.
This included balancing the electrical activity of muscles around the airway, preventing the throat from collapsing while people were sleeping, and improving the regulation of carbon dioxide and breathing during sleep.
Results from the study showed these medications did in fact increase the muscle activity around participants’ airways, with the drugs reducing the severity of participants’ sleep apnoea by up to one third.
Until now, the main therapy for sleep apnoea has involved wearing a mask to bed, or Continuous PositiveAirway Pressure Therapy, which benefits millions. However, many people find it uncomfortable and half the people that try it find it hard to tolerate.
Other therapies, such as mouthguards fitted by dentists, can be unpredictable and expensive.
Professor Eckert, Director of Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health, said: “Next, we will look at the effects of these and similar medications over the longer term. We will assess whether we can harness the benefits of one drug without needing to use them both. ”
“Equally, we will test whether these treatments can be combined with other existing medications to see if we can improve their efficacy even more. ”
Covid link to fears of diabetes epidemic
DIABETES will be the next epidemic to sweep the UK, and Covid may be triggering more cases, says a leading health expert.
Dr Quinton Fivelman, chief scientific officer at London Medical Laboratory, says diabetes is escalating rapidly, usually linked to factors such as weight, lifestyle, age and family history.
But he said: “New research has revealed Covid could be triggering the disease in previously healthy people, and potentially significantly worsening cases for some preexisting diabetics. ”
Dr Fivelman added: “The first signs that you may have diabetes are that you urinate more often, are frequently thirsty, are often tired, have unexpected weight loss or suddenly suffer from blurry eyesight.
“Keeping your blood sugar levels normal requires the proper balance of glucagon and insulin secretion at the appropriate times.A lack of insulin secretion can result in Type 1 diabetes. This may be triggered by Covid-19 attacking pancreatic cells.
“The SARS-CoV-2 virus can spread beyond patient’s respiratory tract and lungs. Two recent U.S. studies have shown Covid-19 in pancreatic cells from patients who died from Covid-19.
“Additional experiments revealed that Covid-19 selectively infected human islet cells in experiments.
“This suggests that Covid-19 infection of the pancreatic cells can lead to diabetes similar to Type 1 diabetes in previously healthy patients. ”
POINTLESS EXERCISE? Study says weight loss advice may need a major rethink
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PEOPLE who take part in regular exercise actually burn fewer calories than those not doing any strenuous activity, new research claims.
The results of the study has led to calls for a major rethink about exercise and diet.
National guidelines across the globe generally recommend burning 500-600 calories more than you consume (known as a calories deficit) through exercise and diet in order to lose weight, said Professor Lewis Halsey.
But he said his team’s research showed that the body compensates for calories lost in exercise by using up fewer calories on basic functions like sleeping.
And the number of calories burned on those functions varies between people with different levels of body fat, they found.
“Not only should these guidelines be revised, but there is also a need for greater personalisation of exercise plans depending upon body mass, ” added Prof Halsey, from the University of Roehampton, who led the research.
The calories the body burns to keep ticking over decreases by 28% during periods when daily exercise levels are consistently high, according to their research.
This means the more we exercise over the long-term, the less calories our bodies burn for the most rudimentary activities, therefore reducing the overall calories we burn per day.
The study also found that adults with the highest body mass index (BMI) burned even fewer calories in the background after an increase in activity.
The results show that only 54% of the calories burned by exercise or activity among people with the highest BMI actually translated into calories burned at the end of the day, due to their bodies reducing the energy spent on the most basic of functions.
In contrast, 70% of calories burned during activity by those with the lowest body mass translated into more calories burned at the end of the day.
Overall, calories lost were no different when comparing age and sex, meaning the energy lost during activity applies equally to men and women, young and old, once their BMI is accounted for.
The research suggests that people who have a higher BMI, and thus greater fat levels, may burn less calories per day in response to long-term hikes in activity.
With many current weight loss programmes using additive models to calculate how many calories should be burned to reduce fat loss, and the rise of digital exercise trackers such as Fitbit and Apple Watch highlighting people’s calories burned during a day, this study contradicts the belief that the calories burned from exercise easily translate into extra calories burned overall for the day.
