Go healthy for good – November 2016

Wearing a hat at school swimming meets appears to be becoming less popular in Australia. Researchers found that student spectators at inter-school swimming carnivals wore a hat a median of 46 per cent in 2009 but only 18 per cent in 2015. Students from private schools (41 per cent) were twice as likely as those from public schools (18 per cent) to wear a hat. The most common cancer in Australia is skin cancer and sunlight is a known carcinogen, so there is a clear necessity for wearing a hat in the summer sun.

Boys are the cause of more trouble than girls when it comes to pregnancy complications, according to researchers at the Robinson Research Institute, Adelaide. Data from some 574,000 Australian births from 1981 to 2011 reveals that women pregnant with boys were more likely to deliver early, have diabetes and develop pre-eclampsia (a high blood pressure condition) during their pregnancies. On the other hand, women carrying girls had a 22 per cent higher risk of getting pre-eclampsia earlier in pregnancy, also requiring pre-term delivery.

Swapping animal protein for plant protein reduces the risk of death. One large study showed when 3 per cent of total daily calorie consumption was switched to plant protein, the relative risk of death dropped 34 per cent if it replaced processed red meat, 19 per cent if it swapped out eggs and 12 per cent for unprocessed red meat. Plant protein is commonly sourced from whole grains, nuts and legumes. So it isn’t just what you take out that counts, it’s also what you add in.

It isn’t just athletes who benefit from beetroot. A daily serving of beetroot juice can boost the quality of life for people with heart failure. A group of seniors with heart failure, high blood pressure (BP) and very low exercise abilities were given a glass of beetroot juice every day. After one week, BP went down and exercise endurance went up by
an astonishing 24 per cent! 

Men with high levels of the herbicide 2, 3, 7, 8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) are less likely to have a son. Blood taken from staff who had worked at a New Zealand phenoxy herbicide factory showed that men with the highest blood concentrations of TCDD at the time of their children’s births had only half as many boys as expected. For women, no effect was observed. Note, this broadleaf weed killer has not been sold in New Zealand since 1988 due to safety concerns.