Health
Sports and Energy Drinks Responsible for Irreversible Damage to Teeth
by Staff Writers
Chicago IL (SPX) May 03, 2012
 Dr. Bone recommends that her patients minimize their intake of sports and energy drinks. She also advises them to chew sugar-free gum or rinse the mouth with water following consumption of the drinks. “Both tactics increase saliva flow, which naturally helps to return the acidity levels in the mouth to normal,” she says. |
A recent study published in the May/June 2012 issue of General Dentistry, the peer-reviewed clinical journal of the Academy of General Dentistry, found that an alarming increase in the consumption of sports and energy drinks, especially among adolescents, is causing irreversible damage to teeth-specifically, the high acidity levels in the drinks erode tooth enamel, the glossy outer layer of the tooth.
“Young adults consume these drinks assuming that they will improve their sports performance and energy levels and that they are ‘better’ for them than soda,” says Poonam Jain, BDS, MS, MPH, lead author of the study.
“Most of these patients are shocked to learn that these drinks are essentially bathing their teeth with acid.”
Researchers examined the acidity levels in 13 sports drinks and nine energy drinks. They found that the acidity levels can vary between brands of beverages and flavors of the same brand. To test the effect of the acidity levels, the researchers immersed samples of human tooth enamel in each beverage for 15 minutes, followed by immersion in artificial saliva for two hours.
This cycle was repeated four times a day for five days, and the samples were stored in fresh artificial saliva at all other times.
“This type of testing simulates the same exposure that a large proportion of American teens and young adults are subjecting their teeth to on a regular basis when they drink one of these beverages every few hours,” says Dr. Jain.
The researchers found that damage to enamel was evident after only five days of exposure to sports or energy drinks, although energy drinks showed a significantly greater potential to damage teeth than sports drinks. In fact, the authors found that energy drinks caused twice as much damage to teeth as sports drinks.
With a reported 30 to 50 percent of U.S. teens consuming energy drinks, and as many as 62 percent consuming at least one sports drink per day, it is important to educate parents and young adults about the downside of these drinks. Damage caused to tooth enamel is irreversible, and without the protection of enamel, teeth become overly sensitive, prone to cavities, and more likely to decay.
“Teens regularly come into my office with these types of symptoms, but they don’t know why,” says AGD spokesperson Jennifer Bone, DDS, MAGD. “We review their diet and snacking habits and then we discuss their consumption of these beverages. They don’t realize that something as seemingly harmless as a sports or energy drink can do a lot of damage to their teeth.”
Dr. Bone recommends that her patients minimize their intake of sports and energy drinks. She also advises them to chew sugar-free gum or rinse the mouth with water following consumption of the drinks. “Both tactics increase saliva flow, which naturally helps to return the acidity levels in the mouth to normal,” she says.
Also, patients should wait at least an hour to brush their teeth after consuming sports and energy drinks. Otherwise, says Dr. Bone, they will be spreading acid onto the tooth surfaces, increasing the erosive action.
Related Links
Academy of General Dentistry
Hospital and Medical News at InternDaily.com
Albuquerque, NM, 32nd largest US city, ends water fluoridation
By Ethan A. Huff
(NaturalNews) A major health victory has been achieved in New Mexico where officials in the state’s largest city, Albuquerque, have made the historic decision to stop artificially fluoridating the municipal water supply. This means that more than half a million local residents will no longer be forcibly medicated with a toxic byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer manufacturing industry, and the city itself will save hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars a year in the process. KOB News 4 in…
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Holistic Health
Eco-friendly fabric softeners and dryer sheets cause allergic reactions and pose serious health hazards
By JB Bardot,Â
(NaturalNews) Fabric softeners are meant to soften synthetic fabrics and reduce static cling. Most standard fabric softeners and dryer sheets contain noxious scents and chemicals such as quarternary ammonium compounds, which release toxic chemicals like formaldehyde into the environment. Formaldehyde causes a variety of serious allergic reactions including rashes, respiratory conditions and neurological disorders. Even eco-friendly fabric softeners are loaded with chemicals and fragrances that may…
GMO alert: top 10 genetically modified foods to avoid eating
By Aurora Geib,
(NaturalNews) There is a conspiracy of selling out happening in America. Politics and personal interest it would seem determine government policies over and above health and safety issues. When President Obama appointed Michael Taylor in 2009 as senior adviser for the FDA, a fierce protest ensued from consumer groups and environmentalists. Why? Taylor used to be vice president for Monsanto, a multinational interested in marketing genetically modified (GM) food. It was during his term that GMO’s were…
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Pet Health
Finding the Right Dog Groomer
This article is courtesy of DogTime.com.
Would you like it if you could never take a bath, clean your hair or trim your nails? Of course not! Now imagine how your dog feels? Good grooming is healthy and happy part of his life, too.
Some grooming steps like brushing can be handled at home. Performing this regularly will not only keep your dog looking good, but will also give you a chance to inspect your dog for swelling, fleas, and possible infections.
Depending on your abilities, you may also want to take your dog to a professional groomer. Short-coated dogs may only require a bath and brush, and an occasional trim of the nails. Long- and thick-coated dogs, however, may be more prone to tangles and mats. For these breeds, you may want to consider using a professional groomer. The question is, how do you choose the groomer that is right for you and your dog?
Why a Professional Groomer?
In our busy lives, we may not always have the time or know-how to keep our dogs looking good. Some dogs (like Cocker Spaniels) require special cuts to keep that classic look. Any dog may need to be groomed to remove multiple mats or are too fidgety for you to handle. Then there are those times your wandering dog meets up with a skunk or somehow acquires a mystery odor that home remedies just don’t help. A grooming pro can help in any and all these situations. They are trained to groom your dog with a gentle hand during difficult situations and know just what to do when you need your French poodle to look like a French poodle again. However, grooming pros can’t perform magic; it’s up to you to stay on top of your dog’s grooming needs.
Destructive Behavior in Dogs
It is normal for dogs to chew on things, dig, and be protective over their territory.
It is normal for dogs to chew on things, dig, and be protective over their territory. Dogs are diagnosed with destructive tendencies when they destroy things we don’t want them to, such as furniture, shoes, doors, or carpets. Not all destructive behavior is the same, however. When a dog chews on the wrong things or digs in the wrong place but does not have any other symptoms, this is considered a primary destructive behavior. Dogs that have other symptoms like anxiety, fear, or aggression in combination with their destructive behavior are diagnosed with secondary destructive behavior. Both types of destructive behavior can lead to problems with other organs, such as teeth, skin, the stomach, or intestines, if left untreated.
Symptoms and Types
- Primary destructive behavior
- Chewing on small things left out in the house
- Chewing on furniture legs or edges
- Chewing on or eating house plants
- Digging holes in the yard
- Owner may or may not be around when symptoms first start
- Secondary destructive behavior
- Things are destroyed to get the attention of the owner
- Owner is around to see things being destroyed
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Positivity Mind and Body
A Blueprint for Character Development, Spiritual Transformation, and Lifestyle Change
Uploaded by bu on Apr 13, 2010
Barbara Fredrickson, Boston University 2009-2010 Templeton Fellow, is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Author of the book Positivity, she delivers a lecture titled A Blueprint for Character Development, Spiritual Transformation, and Lifestyle Change, one of the final three lectures in the public component of the Danielsen Institutes Religious and Psychological Well-being Project. The lecture summarizes the building block pieces presented over the course of the lectures series to better understand character development and spiritual transformation, while also revealing how people can change their lives for the better.
Hosted by the Danielsen Institute Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology on March 20, 2010
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Articles of Interest
Flu study that sparked censorship row is published at last
by Staff Writers
Paris, France (AFP) May 2, 2012
 Two-year-old dies of bird flu in Indonesia Jakarta (AFP) May 2, 2012 – A two-year-old boy has died of bird flu in Indonesia, the health ministry said, bringing the country’s death toll from the virulent disease this year to seven.The toddler, from the city of Pekanbaru on Sumatra island, developed fever on April 17 and was hospitalised three days later, according to a health ministry statement released late Tuesday.”His condition worsened and he died on April 27,” it said. It added that it was suspected that he contracted the virus through contact with poultry products as his parents sold quails’ eggs for a living. Indonesia is the nation hardest-hit by bird flu, with 156 deaths reported since 2003, according to the latest figures given by the World Health Organization, which exclude the country’s latest death. The virus typically spreads from birds to humans through direct contact, but experts fear it could mutate into a form that is easily transmissible between humans.
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Scientists who created a mutant virus to explore a key aspect of influenza published their research Wednesday after a four-month storm that brewed fears of bioterrorism and accusations of censorship.
The controversy began in December when teams in the United States and the Netherlands separately said they had engineered a hybrid virus in high-security labs.
Their goal was to understand how a highly lethal strain of flu which spreads among birds but is hard to transmit to mammals could mutate into a variant that is contagious among humans.
A 23-member expert panel that advises the US government called for manuscript changes before the work could be published in a journal, the traditional arena for displaying and discussing scientific work.
It feared that full disclosure could help a rogue state or bioterror group make a virus against which no-one would be immune.
But some scientists lashed the recommendation, saying it was an attempt to censor or stifle scientific discourse.
Two journals put the papers on hold while they consulted the researchers and the panel, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).
On Wednesday, the British journal Nature finally published one of the studies, conducted by a team led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin.
“The essential scientific elements (in the original manuscript) were unchanged,” the journal said, adding it was publishing the paper after receiving “several independent pieces of biosecurity advice”.
Kawaoka’s team delved into the H5N1 strain of avian flu, which caused a health scare in Hong Kong in 1997 and still surfaces sporadically today.
H5N1 spreads easily among poultry and wild birds but is hard to transmit to humans. When it does, it is brutal, killing more than one infected person in two.
The team took a key gene, known as haemagluttinin or HA, from the H5N1 virus and added a mutation that made it more compatible with human respiratory cells.
They then took a strain of H1N1 flu — the virus that caused a pandemic among humans in 2009 but proved to be no more lethal than ordinary seasonal flu — and replaced its HA gene with the engineered one.
The next step was to test the “H5/H1 hybrid” on six ferrets, a mammal deemed an excellent model for testing flu because its respiratory system is so similar to that of humans.
The infected ferrets passed on the virus to others in respiratory droplets, thus proving that the new virus could be spread through coughs and sneezes.
But none of the animals died, something that remains to be explained, said the researchers.
The findings shed light on the genetic borrowings that help a virus gain in contagiousness, they said. This risk is all too present in nature, especially in pigs, which can mix avian, human and porcine viruses.
The work will help alert health watchdogs to emerging viral threats and provide vaccine engineers with potential targets, they argued.
Nature showed journalists a report from “a bio-defence agency outside the US”, which it declined to name, that said the benefits of publication outweighed the risks.
“This information could be used by an aggressor and shows one of the building blocks for the development of a potential BW [biowarfare] weapon,” the report said.
“[Such skill] is a demanding capability, probably beyond the capacity of the majority of those groupings of concern,” it said.
“On the other hand, not publishing this information would slow, or even block, the development of a vaccine against a virus that still has the potential to mutate naturally to a pandemic form, which could cause huge numbers of fatalities worldwide.”
Touching on the tension between freedom of expression and scientific responsibility, Nature said it was “desirable” to have a forum such as NSABB but in this case the panel had over-reacted.
“There are justified concerns among the research community about the NSABB’s processes, and these processes should be reviewed.”
The other paper, intended for the US journal Science, is written by Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which publishes the journal, said Fouchier’s study was undergoing peer review — the traditional scrutiny in scientific publications.
“We had originally hoped, as a public service, to be able to publish Dr. Fouchier’s paper simultaneously with the similar research by Dr. Kawaoka. But appropriate review and editing of the manuscript is the primary goal,” said AAAS spokeswoman Ginger Pinholster.
Related Links
Epidemics on Earth – Bird Flu, HIV/AIDS, Ebola
Bird dog finds missing bird
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A nearly 2-year-old German short haired pointer named Bella who likes to flush Hungarian partridges during lunchtime walks with her owner and an escaped 6-year-old cockatiel named Zoey ended up nose-to-beak with positive results for all involved.
Zoey flew away from her home with Debbie and Karri Zuidema on April 2 as they headed for work, setting off a frantic search and lost pet notice in the Independent Record.
The newspaper reports that later that day Dave Madden and Bella were out for a walk when Bella pointed, but the bird didn’t flush.
Madden took a closer look and carefully picked up Zoey, then got his girlfriend to get a cage and food.
Later he spotted the lost pet notice and two days later Zoey and her owners were reunited.
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