News by Subject Medicine & Health

A lack of the mineral selenium in the diet puts people at risk of paracetamol overdose, even when the painkiller is taken at levels claimed to be safe on the packaging, according to collaborative research emerging from the University of Bath and Southwest University in China.

20 percent of the middle-aged UK South Asian population may have a very severe vitamin D deficiency, a new study in the British Journal of Nutrition reports. Such deficiency can lead to health problems such as osteomalacia (softening of the bones) and other chronic diseases.

Rice is the most widely consumed staple food source for a large part of the world's population. It has now been confirmed that rice can contribute to prolonged low-level arsenic exposure leading to thousands of avoidable premature deaths per year.

besity management should focus on outcomes that patients consider to be important, not weight loss alone, and include a holistic approach that addresses the root causes of obesity, according to a new clinical practice guideline published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.191707.

In the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, eating well in a sustainable way is more important now than ever, Flinders University experts say. 'Eating local' and growing your own fruit and vegetables can save money, provide families and local producers with vital income - and also improve health and immunity.

University of Utah researchers find that stable isotopes in hair reveal a divergence in diet according to socioeconomic status (SES), with lower-SES areas displaying higher proportions of protein coming from cornfed animals. It's a way, the authors write, to assess a community's diet and their health risks.

While adults prefer levels of sweetness similar to typical soft drinks, children and adolescents are less sensitive to the taste and prefer concentrations that are 50% sweeter, according to research by professor of food science and human nutrition M. Yanina Pepino and Julie A. Mennella of the Monell Chemical Senses Center.

COVID-19 has led to a global economic slowdown that is affecting all four pillars of food security - availability, access, utilization, and stability. The greatest threats are to food accessibility, due to income losses and disruptions in supply chains - particularly for more nutritious foods and the world's poor.

Cancer mutations are not necessarily bad actors, in and of themselves. In fact, in certain micro-environments like the gut, these mutations can actually help the body to fight cancer, not spread it. However, if the gut microbiome produces high levels of metabolites, like those found in certain bacteria and antioxidant rich foods like black tea and hot cocoa, then it acts as a particularly hospitable environment to mutated genes and will accelerate the growth of bowel cancers.