"health risks" news and stories

With news agencies now saying that a major source of salt in daily diets is bread, carb-laden loaves could once again come under fire from nutrition-fanatics. Even though the headlines blame bread, more than 75 percent of all the salt in people’s diets come from processed foods, only a small portion of which are breads. Salt is necessary in bread making, not only for flavor, but because it interacts with the yeast, retarding its growth and producing a better-textured, tastier loaf. One teaspoon of salt weighs just over 2 grams, and organizations like the British government recommend a maximum of 6 grams of salt a day. If a loaf of homemade or non-preprocessed bread has one to three tablespoons of salt in it, there is nothing to worry about unless you are eating multiple loaves of bread on a daily basis.

Some salt is necessary in the diet, serving functions like regulating fluid levels in the body. Do yourself a favor and cut back on the deli meats, don’t just cut back on bread.

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In 1989, a group of Canadian researchers discovered that grapefruit juice increased the potency of a blood pressure drug they were testing. The pairing came about after they tried to use the juice to mask the taste of the alcohol; the trial was held to uncover potential side effects when the alcohol was combined with the drug. The scientists were startled, but had difficulty proving why the grapefruit juice had such an effect. According to the New York Times, studies done on grapefruit juice have concluded that it sometimes interferes with an enzyme, CYP 3A4, which can reduce the potency of many drugs or help them pass out of the body faster. This means that the body might receive more of an impact from a given drug if it is taken with grapefruit juice.

Grapefruit juice does not always produce this effect, however. It interacts with CYP 3A4 in the intestines, so it does not effect injected drugs, only those taken orally. It also is very unpredictable. Different people have different amounts of CYP 3A4 in their intestines and different glasses of grapefruit juice will react differently. It is most likely to produce potentially harmful effects with cholesterol-lowering drugs and SSRIs, like Prozac, which is used to treat depression. The best thing to do is to avoid grapefruit juice if your doctor recommends it.

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Forbes list of the 10 best diets to follow did not include the carb-phobic Atkins diet for a good reason: while people who follow the diet do lose weight, a new case study shows that it could lead to life-threatening health complications.

The study followed the case of a woman who developed a condition known as ketoacidosis while following the diet. Though it is somewhat rare, the disease is caused by a buildup of ketones in the blood-stream. Ketones are produced by the liver when insulin levels fall and more are produced the lower the insulin levels get. An excessive buildup of ketones in the blood can cause patients to fall into a coma, preceded by loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting.

According to WebMD, ketosis, which would precede the onset of the extreme condition of ketoacidosis, can be prevented by eating approximately 100 grams of carbohydrates a day, or about 1 cup of oatmeal. Carb-Counter.org is a good source of information regarding the amount of carbohydrates in various foods.

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