Why Should You Breastfeed Your Baby?

(Photo courtesy of Flushing Hospital Medical Center)

Flushing Hospital Medical Center’s New Beginnings unit provides the women and their families with the ultimate birthing experience. Each month, we cover a new topic exploring an important aspect of health and well-being for expectant mothers. This month, we’ll cover the health benefits of exclusive breastfeeding for both mothers and their babies. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, exclusive breastfeeding involves only feeding breast milk to your baby and no other foods or liquids. It is the best source of nutrition for your infant’s first six months of life. 

Some of the benefits to babies and mothers include: 

• Providing all necessary nutrients for the baby’s healthy physical development, including vitamin D, iron, and zinc
• Preventing infections and serious health conditions, both during infancy and later in life
• Reducing a mother’s risk of conditions such as cancer, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure

Breastfeeding may become less frequent as your baby starts eating solid foods around six to 12 months of age. For guidance on how you should breastfeed your baby, talk to a lactation consultant or your baby’s doctor or nurse.Flushing Hospital’s New Beginnings unit offers spacious, modern delivery suites and advanced postpartum care, providing you with a safe environment to give birth and comprehensive follow-up medical support for you and your baby. To learn more about the unit, including accommodations and services provided, please call us at Source: https://www.newsindiatimes.com/

Read More........→August 23, 2023

What’s in vapes? Toxins, heavy metals, maybe radioactive polonium

Shutterstock Alexander Larcombe, Telethon Kids Institute.

If you asked me what’s in e-cigarettes, disposable vapes or e-liquids, my short answer would be “we don’t fully know”. The huge and increasing range of products and flavours on the market, changes to ingredients when they are heated or interact with each other, and inadequate labelling make this a complicated question to answer. Analytical chemistry, including my own team’s research, gives some answers. But understanding the health impacts adds another level of complexity. E-cigarettes’ risk to health varies depending on many factors including which device or flavours are used, and how people use them. So vapers just don’t know what they’re inhaling and cannot be certain of the health impacts. What do we know? Despite these complexities, there are some consistencies between what different laboratories find. Ingredients include nicotine, flavouring chemicals, and the liquids that carry them – primarily propylene glycol and glycerine. Concerningly, we also find volatile organic compounds, particulate matter and carcinogens (agents that can cause cancer), many of which we know are harmful. Our previous research also found 2-chlorophenol in about half of e-liquids users buy to top-up re-fillable e-cigarettes. This is one example of a chemical with no valid reason to be there. Globally, it’s classified as “harmful if inhaled”. Its presence is likely due to contamination during manufacturing. How about polonium? One potential ingredient that has been in the news in recent weeks is radioactive polonium-210, the same substance used to assassinate former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The Queensland government is now testing vapes for it. Polonium-210 can be found in traditional cigarettes and other tobacco products. That’s because tobacco plants absorb it and other radioactive materials from the soil, air and high-phosphate fertiliser. Whether polonium-210 is found in aerosols produced by e-cigarettes remains to be seen. Although it is feasible if the glycerine in e-liquids comes from plants and similar fertilisers are used to grow them. It’s not just the ingredients Aside from their ingredients, the materials e-cigarette devices are made from can end up in our bodies. Toxic metals and related substances such as arsenic, lead, chromium and nickel can be detected in both e-liquids and vapers’ urine, saliva and blood. These substances can pose serious health risks (such as being carcinogenic). They can leach from several parts of an e-cigarette, including the heating coil, wires and soldered joints.

Chemicals from the device itself can end up in our blood, urine and saliva. Shutterstock

That’s not all The process of heating e-liquids to create an inhalable aerosol also changes their chemical make-up to produce degradation products.

These include: 

• formaldehyde (a substance used to embalm dead bodies)
• acetaldehyde (a key substance that contributes to a hangover after drinking alcohol)
• acrolein (used as a chemical weapon in the first world war and now used as a herbicide).

These chemicals are often detected in e-cigarette samples. However due to different devices and how the samples are collected, the levels measured vary widely between studies. Often, the levels are very low, leading to proponents of vaping arguing e-cigarettes are far safer than tobacco smoking. But this argument does not acknowledge that many e-cigarette users (particularly adolescents) were or are not cigarette smokers, meaning a better comparison is between e-cigarette use and breathing “fresh” air. An e-cigarette user is undoubtedly exposed to more toxins and harmful substances than a non-smoker. People who buy tobacco cigarettes are also confronted with a plethora of warnings about the hazards of smoking, while vapers generally are not. How about labelling? This leads to another reason why it’s impossible to tell what is in vapes – the lack of information, including warnings, on the label. Even if labels are present, they don’t always reflect what’s in the product. Nicotine concentration of e-liquids is often quite different to what is on the label, and “nicotine-free” e-liquids often contain nicotine. Products are also labelled with generic flavour names such as “berry” or “tobacco”. But there is no way for a user to know what chemicals have been added to make those “berry” or “tobacco” flavours or the changes in these chemicals that may occur with heating and/or interacting with other ingredients and the device components. “Berry” flavour alone could be made from more than 35 different chemicals. Flavouring chemicals may be “food grade” or classified as safe-to-eat. However mixing them into e-liquids, heating and inhaling them is a very different type of exposure, compared to eating them. One example is benzaldehyde (an almond flavouring). When this is inhaled, it impairs the immune function of lung cells. This could potentially reduce a vaper’s ability to deal with other inhaled toxins, or respiratory infections. Benzaldehyde is one of only eight banned e-liquid ingredients in Australia. The list is so short because we don’t have enough information on the health effects if inhaled of other flavouring chemicals, and their interactions with other e-liquid ingredients. 

Where to next? 

• For us to better assess the health risks of vapes, we need to learn more about:
• what happens when flavour chemicals are heated and inhaled
• the interactions between different e-liquid ingredients
• what other contaminants may be present in e-liquids
• new, potentially harmful, substances in e-cigarettes.

Finally, we need to know more about how people use e-cigarettes so we can better understand and quantify the health risks in the real world. Alexander Larcombe, Associate Professor and Head of Respiratory Environmental Health, Telethon Kids Institute This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read More........→August 14, 2023

Facts about Apple Seed Cyanide

How would you react when you get to know that your favorite fruit is also a house to several diseases?

Apples are supposed to be one of the healthiest and delicious fruits that we are munching on since ages. Many health benefits are attached to eating one apple everyday. But do you know the other part of the story? Are you aware of what is Apple Seed Cyanide? Have you ever come across those black seeds hidden deep inside the apples? These black seeds have an unhealthy story to tell. Where apples are recommended healthy and a must addition to your daily diet, the apple seeds are dangerous to health causing various disorders and death. 

The apple seeds consist of a small proportion of chemical composite known as Amygdalin. It is not harmful as far as it is unscathed or swollen accidently. Nevertheless, it takes a heinous turn on being chewed or crushed. It releases a harmful gas popularly known as Apple Seed cyanide that may lead to death if taken in high amounts.

The high amounts consumed will certainly get you in a big trouble. You may be victimized to several disorders and get a paralysis attack, memory loss or even heart failure. A person is said to have taken a high dose of Apple Seed Cyanide if he has munched roughly 200 black seeds of apples. The small proportion on the other hand will not have such big consequences, but can cause mild body clutters. Vomiting, headache, stomach cramps, body ache and other body related turmoil.

 

Black seed oil on the other hand smells good and is favorable to your skin and hair. It can fight cancer and other diseases. You can get benefited to the numerous advantages attached to the apple seed oil but beware chewing the apple seeds.

Prevention is better than cure – Tips to be safe :

Apples are undoubtedly good for health but if not eaten rightly they can land you in misfortune. Keep your eyes and ears open so that you do not get trapped inside the uninvited accidents.

It is always commendable to slice the apple into four pieces, remove black seeds from between and then bite on to avoid any mishaps.

Alternately, if you are out and want to have an apple, go ahead but don’t forget to spit the seeds out.

Few fruits like apricots, peaches and cherries have the kinds of seeds that can produce cyanide when exposed to chewing. If possible do carry other fruits along that do not have such harmful seeds.

The seeds if come in contact with your teeth will prove to be detrimental. Avoid giving whole apple to kids, as they might not follow what it takes to be unharmed.

Be safe be alert from the harmful Apple Seeds Cyanide. Prevention lies in your hands. Source: https://www.tathastuindia.in/

Read More........→September 15, 2022

Use Neem Ki dali without neem leaves to get rid of stomach bloating, gas problem instantly.

Date Of Publication: 15/09/2022, Country: India, Place Ahmedabad-Gujarat, Researcher: Ashish Bordia, Education: B.sc, MBA, Experiment: Self experience.

If you are suffering from serious Stomach Bloating, Gastric problem and Allopathic medications are not working then can use 3-4 fresh washed thick Neem ki dali (Hindi Word, where Neem leaves connects) without Neem leaves and crush the same inside your mouth and suck its liquid for some of minutes, will provide you magical result in the case of Stomach Bloating, Gastric Problem. this research is done & applied on myself & got an amazing results. you must need to take 3-4 neem ki dali dose three time in a day (Morning, Afternoon and Evening) for some of days to get rid of Stomach Bloating, Gastric problem completely. as if you face immediate problem then use the same for instant relief. Image : Pixabay License, Free for commercial use,

Read More........→September 15, 2022

UK becomes first nation to approve Omicron vaccine

AUG 16, 2022 Britain has become the first country to authorise a Covid-19 vaccine that targets the Omicron variant. The UK medicine regulator (MHRA) approved the 'bivalent' vaccine made by Moderna as a booster for adults, Reuters reported. The agency's decision was based on clinical trial data that showed the booster triggered "a strong immune response" against both Omicron (BA.1) and the original 2020 virus, it said. The UK medicine regulator also cited an exploratory analysis in which the shot was also found to generate a good immune response against the currently dominant Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5, Copyright © Jammu Links News, Source: Jammu Links News

Read More........→August 16, 2022