Butter may be good for you after all, claims a new study.

The research by Lund University in Sweden shows that butter leads to considerably less elevation of blood fats after a meal compared with olive oil and a new type of canola and flaxseed oil.

The main explanation for the relatively low increase of blood fat levels with butter is that about 20 per cent of the fat in butter consists of short and medium-length fatty acids. These are used directly as energy and therefore never affect the blood fat level to any great extent.

“A further explanation, which we are speculating about, is that intestinal cells prefer to store butter fat rather than long-chain fatty acids from vegetable oils. However, butter leads to a slightly higher content of free fatty acids in the blood, which is a burden on the body,” explains Julia Svensson, a doctoral candidate in Biotechnology and Nutrition at Lund University.

The greater difference in men is due to, among other things, hormones, the size of fat stores, and fundamental differences in metabolism between men and women, which was previously known. This situation complicates the testing of women, since they need to be tested during the same period in the menstruation cycle each time in order to yield reliable results.

“The findings provide a more nuanced picture of various dietary fats. Olive oil has been studied very thoroughly, and its benefits are often extolled. The fact that butter raises blood cholesterol in the long term is well known, whereas its short-term effects are not as well investigated. Olive oil is good, to be sure, but our findings indicate that different food fats can have different advantages,” says Svensson.

“Finally, all fats have high energy content, and if you don’t burn what you ingest, your weight will go up, as will your risk of developing diseases in the long run,” she adds.

The study involved 19 women and 28 men.

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Beer can help strengthen the bones and prevent fractures in old age, a new study has confirmed.

Beer is a significant source of silicon, which is a key ingredient of the diet that helps to improve bone mineral density.

The best beers for silicon are the pale malted ales and lagers. Dark bitters and stouts contain lower levels because they are made with roasted barley, which has lower silicon content. Wheat contains less silicon than barley, so wheat beers are poorer sources of silicon.

Previous studies have suggested that a regular pint or two may help to prevent the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis.

In the new study, researchers at the University of California studied 100 commercial beers and found their silicon content ranged from 6.4 milligrams per litre to 56.5 mg/l. Paler beers have more silicon than darker ones because less heat is used in the malting process.

“Beer containing high levels of malted barley and hops are richest in silicon. It is the husk of the barley that is rich in this element. While most remains during brewing, significant quantities are none the less extracted into wort and survive into beer,” the Independent quoted Charles Bamforth, who led the study, as saying.

The study has been published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.

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Launching of the first smallest hand-held echocardiography machine in the world will be the main highlight of the 15th international conference on echocardiography and clinical cardiology (February 11 to 14) being held in Goa for the very first time.

The conference is expected to bring to the State some of the top international names in the field of echocardiography. The top among these are US-based Dr Navin C Nanda (University of Alabama), who is internationally known as the father of echocardiography.

Addressing a press conference on Thursday, Dr Digambar Naik, Organising Secretary of the event, said, “The echocardiography machine, manufactured by Philips and costing about Rs 6 to 8 lakh, to be launched here is the size of a cell-phone. The present one is double the size.”

Dr Naik said for those new to echocardiography it can be best summed as ultrasound of the heart. Today echocardiography supplements the ECG (electrocardiogram) results thus giving the exact analysis of a patient’s heart, he mentioned.

The doctor, who runs the Vrundavan Hospital, said echocardiography machine is a must have tool for every physician to tell his/her patients the status of the heart before and after angiography, angioplasty or heart surgery.

Dr Naik maintained echocardiography was so advanced in today’s world that it guides a surgeon during and after surgery to perfection. Every doctor who treats heart patients must have the basic knowledge of echocardiography, he asserted.

He observed, “In this conference we aim at training and teaching every physician in the country to use echocardiography machine and advice their patients on the next course of action.”

Dr Francisco Colaco, Chairman of Organising Committee, said, “The hand-held echo machine is financially very viable and is one of the cheapest modes to detect heart problems. An ECG costs between Rs 1,000 to 3,000 depending on the heart condition. Both echocardiography and electrocardiogram supplement each other to know the exact status of a person’s heart.”

Colaco, the first echocardiographer in the State, said the advantage is doctors can carry this machine in the hand with ease during their clinical rounds. “The field of echocardiography is progressing by leaps and bounds and this conference will be a boon to Goan doctors to learn whatever possible from top experts in the world,” he stated.

On February 11, a Continuing Medical Education programme will be held where interesting case studies are scheduled to be presented. The CME is the pre-conference event and on February 12 the actual conference will take off and end on February 14.

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Putting a smile on chubby faces everywhere, a new study by Australian researchers finds that being overweight may be a boon for the elderly: among the 9,240 adults ages 70 to 75 in the study, those who were overweight were the least likely to die over 10 years, compared with people who were of normal weight or obese.

The study, published Thursday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, looked at data from two long-term population-based studies and found that adults who were overweight had an average 13% lower risk of death from any cause over 10 years, compared with those who were of normal weight. Those who were underweight were 76% more likely to die, while the obese had the same mortality risk as those of normal weight. Researchers also found that being sedentary increased the risk of death in men by 28%; in women, the risk was doubled.

The new report adds to the ongoing scientific debate over how to define ideal weight in adults and whether the widely used measure of weight categories — body mass index (BMI), a measure of body fat based on a ratio of weight and height — is equally useful for all age groups. The World Health Organization defines normal weight as a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 kg/m2; overweight is defined as a BMI of 25 to 29.9 kg/m2. A BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese, and under 18.5 underweight.

In 2007 a study by U.S. researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute found that overweight adults had a slightly lower risk of death than their normal-weight peers, largely because they were less likely to die from a variety of diseases, including Alzheimer’s, infections and lung disease. Another study in 2005, published in Obesity, analyzed data on more than 11,000 Canadian adults for over 12 years and found that people who were overweight were 17% less likely to die than those of normal weight. Underweight adults, by contrast, had a 73% higher risk of death.

The current study looked only at major causes of mortality, which the researchers grouped together as cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory disease or other. In all weight categories, the leading causes of death were cardiovascular disease and cancer. The lowest risk of death from either cause occurred in overweight adults.

Why exactly excess weight would protect older adults is unclear, but the study’s lead author, Leon Flicker, a professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Western Australia, offers a theory. “We can only hypothesize, but it may be that as we age, the presence of nutritional and metabolic reserves [that is, fat] are advantageous. If you develop an illness, a little more reserve gives you a greater chance to recover from that illness,” he says.

The study has a few limitations, however. First, it used height and weight measurements that were reported by participants — which can be imperfect. (People tend to overestimate height and underestimate weight, which skews their BMI.) It also collected height and weight information only once, at the start of the study; researchers could not have known, for instance, whether people might have unintentionally lost weight before the study or during the follow-up as a result of underlying disease. Furthermore, the study’s participants had a lower overall mortality rate than the general population, suggesting they were healthier to start with. Many overweight and obese people die at younger ages, and participants in Flicker’s study necessarily had to survive until 70 in order to be included.

Preventive health experts also point out that there is a difference between survival and quality of life. Being overweight is a major risk factor for many health problems, including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stroke, coronary disease, cancer and loss of physical function. “These are strong enough reasons to strive for a healthy weight and avoidance of obesity,” says Dr. JoAnn Manson, a Harvard Medical School professor and chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Moreover, given all of the adverse effects of obesity on health, it isn’t biologically plausible that overweight would lower mortality risks.”

Where researchers may agree is that BMI is an unreliable marker for body fat, or health, in the elderly. As people age, they lose muscle mass and bone density, which leads to weight loss and a declining BMI, despite an increase in body fat. Manson suggests measuring waist circumference instead, which is a more accurate gauge of abdominal obesity and tends to predict a higher risk of death in all age groups.

For the authors’ part, they acknowledge that being overweight is not a condition to which we should aspire. “The evidence is overwhelming that in younger age groups being overweight increases your mortality risk and lots of other nonfatal conditions,” says Flicker. But he adds that if you are among the population’s successful agers, you are probably doing something right: “Having reached the age of 70 years, and you are overweight — not obese — there is no reason why you should lose weight, unless you have a condition that is associated with being overweight, such as diabetes mellitus or severe osteoarthritis.”

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