Lee Swanson Research Update
Dear Friends and Valued Customers, I know several people who have had strokes, but honestly I didn’t realize what an overwhelming number of people are affected by this debilitating and often lethal medical emergency. The American Stroke Association reports: “About 780,000 Americans each year suffer a new or recurrent stroke. That means, on average, a stroke occurs every 40 seconds. Stroke kills more than 150,000 people a year. That’s about one of every 16 deaths. It’s the number three cause of death behind diseases of the heart and cancer.” The National Institutes of Health (NIH) says that a stroke happens when blood flow to your brain stops. “Within minutes, brain cells begin to die.” Symptoms of stroke are: sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg (especially on one side of the body); sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding speech; sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes; sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination; sudden severe headache with no known cause. Now researchers have found that increasing your calcium intake may help reduce the risk of stroke. Read on to find out what researchers in Japan are saying. In another study, scientists at Johns Hopkins University have found that the number of infant deaths may be cut by administering vitamin A to babies shortly after birth. See the second report below. As always, I wish you the very best of health. ***********************************
Greater calcium intake may lead to fewer strokes
An increased intake of calcium, particularly from dairy, may reduce the risk of stroke by 30%, according to a new study from Japan.
The study followed 41,526 Japanese men and women aged between 40 and 59, and the results are published in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke.
Diet is known to have an impact on a person’s risk of having a stroke, and in particular a connection has been made between intake of sodium and hypertension. Conversely, more magnesium, potassium and calcium has been inversely linked to hypertension in some observational studies.
Despite these links, the researchers stated that no prospective studies have examined the link between calcium intake and the incidence of stroke in Japanese men and women with a low average calcium intake.
Researchers from the University of Tsukuba, Osaka University and Japan’s National Cancer Center, and National Cardiovascular Center, used food frequency questionnaires to assess dietary intakes of the 41,526 men and women in the study.
Over the course of the study, which lasted from 1990 to 2003, the researchers documented 1,321 strokes, and 322 cases of coronary heart disease.
Lead author Mitsumasa Umesawa reports that total calcium intake from all sources was associated with a 30% reduction in the risk of having a stroke. The researchers concluded: “Dietary calcium intake, especially calcium from dairy products, was found to be associated with a reduced incidence of stroke among middle-aged Japanese.”
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Vitamin A supplementation appears to lower infant mortality
One oral dose of vitamin A administered shortly after birth can lower the risk of infant death by 15%, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Researchers conducted a community-based, double-masked, cluster-randomized, placebo-controlled trial. In the study, 15,937 newborns from rural areas in Bangladesh received either a 50,000 IU dose of vitamin A or a placebo approximately seven hours after delivery. After six months, the vitamin A group had an average mortality rate of 38.5 deaths per 1,000 births, compared with 45.1 deaths per 1,000 births in the placebo group.
“Because childhood mortality is greatest during the first few months of life, a single dose of vitamin A administered by mouth to a newborn child can save the lives of an additional 300,000 children in Asia every year,” says Alfred Sommer, MD, MHS, dean emeritus of the Bloomberg School. “That is on top of the one million lives a year that would be saved by dosing all vitamin A-deficient children twice a year from six months through five years of age.”