High-Fat Diet May Prove to Help Epilepsy

According to studies carried out in recent years, it appears that following a high fat diet, similar to Atkins Diet, may help in the treatment of epilepsy. Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that leads to seizures. A person is diagnosed with epilepsy if they have at least two seizures unrelated to another medical condition. Researchers have found significant evidence that show children who follow a high fat diet have reduced epileptic episodes in which medications have not previously worked to control.
The mechanism is still not clearly defined, however, it appears to work by causing the body to burn fat instead of sugar for energy, also known as ketosis. Carbohydrates are for the most part restricted, which is normally your body’s primary energy source. By eliminating carbohydrates, your body is then forced to use fat for energy, causeig ketones to be produced.
The trial consisted of 145 children between the ages of 2 and 16 who had never followed a high fat diet of this nature. Each of the children involved in the study had at least seven seizures per week and failed to respond with anticonvulsant drugs. The children were broken into two groups. The first group was placed on the diet right away, while the control group did not start the diet until 3 months after the first group. The first group’s results showed 38 percent of the participants reduced their seizures by half, while only 6 percent reduced their seizures in the control group.
The diet needs to be medically supervised, however it does allow for a more manageable treatment. Some side effects do come with the treatment, some of which include kidney stones, high cholesterol, constipation, slowed growth, bone fractures, and dehydration. Aside from the side effects, it seems to be an important breakthrough in the treatment of epileptic children who have failed to respond to medication.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/health/research/06epil.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=science&adxnnlx=1210393377-0VBxlA02WSCBjcAZsqy4YQ
http://www.epilepsy.com/epilepsy/treatment_ketogenic_diet
http://www.epilepsy.com/101/ep101_epilepsy
Post By: Meaghan Elliott

Gender Mortality

Mortality refers to the number of deaths in a population. There are different factors that can bring about death in a population. These factors may include injuries (unintentional, suicide, or homicide), diseases and accidents. The measurements of mortality rates are counted and reported in ratios as the crude death rate (CDR). To calculate the CDR, the number of deaths in a designated population during a given year is divided by the population size. For example, in 2003, the CDR for the USA was 840 per 100,000 population, though this rate varies considerably among age groups, racial and ethnic groups, between males and females. To determine the death rate for a particular group, a Specific Rate (SR) is calculated by confining the number of deaths and the population size to that given segment of the population. i.e. if we are to determine the death rate using genders, we use the gender SR as a segment of the population.
The CDR in the USA is said to have declined general by almost 50 percent since the 1900 and continues to drop each year. It is believed that mortality rates improved for both men and women in the second half of the 20th century. The largest reduction has been for females, both black and white, while the least reduction has been for black males. This difference during most of the 20th century can be attributed primarily to the fact that men smoked more than women. But in the recent decades, the prevalence of smoking among women has increased while the prevalence of among men has declined.
It has been discovered that females have a longer life expectancy than males. At birth, female infants can expect to live about 80 years compared to the male infants whom have been estimated at 74 years. Within racial groups, white females are expected to live 5 years more than the white males counterparts, and black females more than 7 years longer than black male infants. The mortality rates for all three leading causes of death in the USA—heart disease, cancer, and stroke—are higher for men than women and progress against those causes of death has been much slower than against other causes in the last 50 years. This is evident that men at all ages are less likely to seek medical care and less likely to comply with medical instructions than are women.
Females have biological advantage over males from the beginning of life, as demonstrated by lower mortality rates at both the prenatal and neonatal stages of life. However the sizable gap in expected years of life between men and women is traceable to an interrelationship among several factor biological and sociocultural influences.
In conclusion, the mortality rate in the USA has general decreased in both male and female but more in female mostly because of the initiatives they have taken care of themselves in the last decades. The deaths in the USA in the present are mostly associated with chronicle diseases such as diabetes, cancer, stroke, and heart diseases more than injuries.

References:
Population Reference Bureau: “The Gender Gap in U.S. Mortality” http://www.prb.org/template.cfm?section=PRB&template=/contentManagement/content
2006.

Dogs Have the "Upper Paw" on Cats

A recent study has found that dogs receive more overall care from their owners than cats do. Researchers published their findings in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. They concluded that not only do dogs receive more affection from their owners, but that they are also more likely to receive medical attention when needed - regardless of its price. This study was conducted over three months with 2,000 dog and cat owners.

The findings were interpreted in many ways. It was proposed that cats have earned a bad reputation (hissing and clawing at the owners, not willing to comply with commands etc.), and that the cat owners subconsciously are aware of it and are less willing to take them to the vet for annual exams. Additionally, it was proposed that cats are often thought as being more "disposable" than dogs. In one example from the study, a cat was scheduled to be put down because the cat and the dog it lived with were not getting along.

From this study, dog owners were contributing to the health of their dog to a much greater extent. Dog owners were found to be much more likely to spend large sums of money when the dog became ill. Where a cat may be put down due to an illness such as cancer, a dog was found to be more likely to receive treatment through their owners. Overall, 52 percent of dog owners were found to spend whatever it took to keep their dog healthy, as opposed to 42 percent of cat owners.

It would be interesting to see this study done on a larger scale. Because only 2,000 people were sampled, it is possible that the relative amounts of care for dogs and cats are equal. Expanding the study to a state-wide or country-wide level would be able to determine this. From there, it is up to the person reading the study as to whether or not numbers and percentages really indicate how much a certain animal is liked over another.

-Posted by Nate Pitcher

Dammed If You Do

As the United States was colonized and the Manifest Destiny was realized more and more Americans began to settle out west. Many of these areas faced major difficulties in agriculture and turned to dams to provide drinking water and irrigation. This strategy was widely used through the 1980’s where large dams, were being constructed at a rate of about 500 per year. Now most rivers in the entire Northern Hemisphere have been dammed for hydroelectric power, water supply, irrigation and even for tourism. In fact, the Yellowstone River is the only one in the country with more than 600 miles of undammed water.

This may seem like a success from the power, water supply and irrigation standpoint but this large scale damming has had drastically negative effects in recent years, as highlighted by struggles in the Pacific Northwest. The New York Times has recently reported that all commercial fishing of the Chinook salmon in Northern California, Oregon and Washington state has been banned for the 2008 season, which started on May first. Due to extremely low numbers of young salmon making the journey upstream to mate there has been serious concern that the fishing industry may kill off the population. One potential reason for these low numbers of salmon has been attributed to the increased use and amount of dams.

As most people know, salmon are famous for being anadromous, meaning that they survive in both fresh and salt water. The fish are born in rivers and as they grow swim downstream to the ocean. Each year when mature, they return to their home rivers swimming upstream to lay their eggs. With the dams however this has become quite difficult. Immediately one would recognize that a dam put in downstream of a breeding area would make it virtually impossible for a salmon to make it upstream to mate. There are several other difficulties that the dams provide as well.

For one, dams not only stop the flow of water down a river but also halt the flow of silt and sediment. Though this seems to be no great loss for the river it in fact is exactly the type of environment the salmon like to lay their eggs in. Also the institution of irrigation systems disturbs many salmon habitats as many pooling areas are, in effect, vacuumed out to bring fresh water to agricultural hubs. Young salmon swimming downstream had been constantly sucked up these tubes and simply dumped in agricultural aqueducts. With no nutrients or resources these young salmon would be left simply to die NY Times.

It is time to recognize the damage caused by these dams in regions such as the Pacific Northwest and find a solution as quickly as possible. Many dams have been removed over the past few years in an attempt to free up both water and sediment, and there has been a movement to screen the tubes leading to irrigation ditches as well. However if this has led to such a large crash in the numbers of the Chinook salmon there is no reason that we should not find better ways to manage our ecosystem before this population becomes totally depleted.

Daniel O'Leary