HEALTHY eating could soon involve scoffing a plateful of specially nurtured silkworms. Biologists claim that the little wrigglers offer the best way to get high levels of a potential life-saver called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) into our diets.
CLA, an essential fatty acid, has been found in clinical trials to protect against cancer, help to fight viruses and bacteria, and even help us lose weight. It is found in beef, poultry, dairy products and corn oil, but only in small amounts.
CLA supplements are expensive, and attempts to produce high-CLA poultry and pigs by feeding it to them have proved difficult. Now biologists writing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry claim to have found an easy answer in silkworms. The team, at Ohio State University and Gyeongsang University in South Korea, have found that silkworms fed on mulberry leaves coated with CLA accumulate large amounts of it in their bodies.
Silkworms may have other benefits: serrapeptase, produced in their guts, may have anti-inflammatory powers, claims a study in the Journal of International Medical Research.
Now all we have to do is to eat them. Silkworm salad, anyone? If the idea makes you queasy, at least it beats the alternative: the discovery was inspired by studies which found that CLA is easily absorbed by houseflies.
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Shirt circuit: the fashion for healthy hearts
HEART on your sleeve? Now you can get the whole shirt, thanks to European scientists who have created a top that monitors your cardiac activity.
The garment, revealed to the World Congress of Cardiology, is knitted with high-tech electronic fibres and incorporates several biometric sensors. It has been created by cardiologists based in Milan (where they like a smart shirt) as part of a wider European Community project called Wealthy — the Wearable Health Care System.
When tested on 15 cardiac patients performing different levels of physical activity at home, it gave just as accurate results as an electrocardiogram machine based in a hospital. The shirt looks like any other, and wearers say it is perfectly comfortable, though it’s probably handwash only, given all the stainless-steel wires woven into the viscose yarn.
The garment is linked to a small electronic device that records the wearer’s electrical heart activity and transmits the electrocardiograph result to hospital doctors’ PCs.
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The new smart shirt, which should enable cardiac patients to be monitored safely at home, is only the beginning. The fabric has the potential to record and transmit other information, such as respiratory activity, body temperature and physical activity.
Shock horror
BEING prepared for a shock may only make things worse, say psychologists, who report that people who anticipate a disturbing event such as loss or violence are more likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder than those who have it come upon them suddenly.
The Wisconsin-Madison University brain-imaging study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says anticipation fires up two memory-forming regions before the event even occurs. You have been warned (sorry).
Smoking therapy
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BAD mothers have given a crucial lead to doctors in preventing pre-eclampsia, the pregnancy complication that sends blood pressures soaring dangerously. Researchers at Queen’s University, Ontario, noticed that pregnant women who smoke have a third lower rates of pre-eclampsia.
Now they have found, from studies of placental tissue, that the carbon monoxide in smoke makes the difference. Eureka: carbon-monoxide gas therapy for at-risk mothers.
Quick march
THREE or four short, quick walks a day may offer a much better way to keep your blood pressure healthy than going to the gym, claims a study by Indiana University.
The study followed 20 men and women with prehypertension (heading towards high blood pressure but not there yet) and found that taking three or four brisk ten-minute walks dropped their blood pressure for 11 hours. Spending 40 minutes in the gym doing continuous exercise dropped their blood pressure by the same amount, but only for seven hours.
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Up to two thirds of people aged 45 to 64 could have prehypertension, said a study last year by the US Government’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Janet Wallace, the study’s lead researcher and a kinesiology professor, says in the Journal of Hypertension: “We’d no idea that short bouts might be better. They’re easier to fit in with your life, too.”
Cocky docs
WATCH out if your doctor has great confidence in his or her abilities. The higher they rank themselves — particularly in specialised areas — the worse they are likely to perform, reports a survey of more than 2,000 physicians by Toronto University in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
High medical self-esteem, it appears, may be lethal.