Malnutrition Looms In Nigeria - Buhari

Malnutrition due to scarcity of food, may soon be the lot of Nigerians if news reaching Nigeria natural Health Online is anything to go by.

The Presidency has raised the alarm that Nigeria, currently Africa's largest producer of cereals and grains, risks famine from early next year following a huge demand in the global market targeting the nation's surplus production.

The Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, said this while featuring on radio program in Kano yesterday.

The presidential aide told Pyramid Radio that the huge demand for Nigeria's grains in the global market was creating "an excellent environment for the mindless export of Nigerian grains across our borders and unless this curtailed, Nigerian markets will be bereft of food by January next year."

He noted that the Ministry of Agriculture had advised Buhari on the need to draw the attention of all Nigerians to this issue "which, if not addressed promptly, could lead to a shortage of grains in our country by January."

Shehu stated: "Over the past year, Providence has blessed Nigeria with a bountiful harvest of grains, more than enough to feed the country and to export to other countries. At present, there is a high demand for grains from Nigeria, from African countries as distant as Libya and Algeria, and from places as far away as Brazil.

"However, the Ministry of Agriculture has raised concerns about a massive rate of exportation, which could lead to a shortage of grains in Nigeria by January."

Shehu, who said Nigeria currently enjoys what he called a free market situation, stressed that "President Muhammadu Buhari is not in any way opposed to or intent on tampering with that."

He said exporters, on the other hand, also have a moral obligation to make their produce available to Nigerians who live within the country’s borders "to ensure that our citizens have access to food."

According to him, the Ministry of agriculture estimates that no fewer than 500 trucks laden with grain leave Nigerian markets every week headed for countries outside the borders.

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Exercise Can Help Control Diabetes

As Nigeria joins the rest of the international community to mark the World Diabetes Day, the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, has said that healthy lifestyle which involves balanced diet and regular exercise can control diabetes.
The Minister made this revelation yesterday in his message to Nigerians on World Diabetes Day. The United Nations sets aside November 14 of every year as Word Diabetes Day.
Diabetes, often referred to by doctors as diabetes mellitus, describes a group of metabolic diseases in which the person has high blood glucose (blood sugar), either because insulin production is inadequate, or because the body’s cells do not respond properly to insulin, or both.
The International Diabetes Federation, IDF, estimates that about 415 million people have diabetes in the world and more than 14 million people in the African region; by 2040 this figure will more than double. In Nigeria alone, the IDF data shows that there were more than 1.56 million cases of diabetes in Nigeria in 2015.
Adewole said that Federal Government was committed to increasing awareness on Diabetes and how to control it. He said:“Federal Government is committed to stepping up advocacy to create awareness that diabetes is preventable if people change their life style.
When you watch what you eat, when you exercise regularly, you can definitely stay away from diabetes, but in case you discovered that you have it, you can manage it.”
The Minister urged the general public to enrol with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) as such would reduce the cost any medication. Adewole also encouraged members of the public to go for diabetics screening to know their status.
He further stressed that diabetes is preventable and can only be prevented through healthy lifestyle. According to the United States, U.S. Centre for Disease Control, CDC, the prevalent of diabetes among blacks is particularly high.
For instance, blacks are 1.7 times as likely to develop diabetes as whites. Besides, the prevalence of diabetes among blacks has quadrupled during the past 30 years.
Among blacks age 20 and older, about 2.3 million have diabetes – 10.8 per cent of that age group. Furthermore, blacks with diabetes are more likely than non-Hispanic whites to develop diabetes and to experience greater disability from diabetesrelated complications such as amputations, adult blindness, kidney failure, and increased risk of heart disease and stroke.
Similarly, death rates for blacks with diabetes are 27 per cent higher than for whites.

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Daily Soda Consumption Increases Type 2 Diabetes Risk

Scientists have raised the alarm over the negative impact of sugary soda on health, saying drinking a can of sugary soda can dramatically heighten a person’s risk of developing prediabetes.
The new findings is published in the ‘Journal of Nutrition’. Prediabetes is a ‘warning sign’ condition that precedes full-blown type 2 diabetes, a long term metabolic disorder that is characterised by high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and relative lack of insulin.
Senior Researcher, Nicola McKeown, who is a scientist with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Centre on Agieng at Tufts University in Boston, said: “A person who drinks a daily can of sugar-sweetened beverage has a 46 per cent increased risk of developing pre-diabetes. However, a can of diet soda every day does not boost pre-diabetes risk, the researchers found. The results show how regular sugar intake can batter a person’s body on a cellular level,” McKeown said.
The ‘NewsmaxHealth’ reported that cells require the hormone insulin to break down sugar into energy. But too much sugar in the diet can overexpose the cells to insulin. McKeown said:
“This constant spike in blood glucose over time leads to the cells not becoming able to properly respond, and that’s the beginning of insulin resistance.”
Once insulin resistance starts, blood sugar levels rise to levels that are damaging to every major system in the body. Pre-diabetes is an important landmark on the way to type 2 diabetes, McKeown said. It means a person has elevated blood sugar — a sign of increasing insulin resistance — but has not entered fullblown type 2 diabetes.
However, she asserted that prediabetes is reversible if a person cuts back on sugar. Sugar-sweetened beverages are the leading source of added sugar in the American diet as well as diets of most countries around the world including Nigeria.
These results show cutting back on sugary drinks is “a modifiable dietary factor that could have an impact on that progression from pre-diabetes to diabetes,” McKeown said.
For this study, McKeown and her colleagues analysed 14 years of data on nearly 1,700 middleaged adults. The information was obtained from the Framingham Heart Study, a federally funded program that has monitored multiple generations for lifestyle and clinical characteristics that contribute to heart disease.
Participants did not have diabetes or prediabetes when they entered the study. They self-reported their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and diet sodas.
The research team found those who drank the highest amounts of sugarsweetened beverages — six 12-ounce servings a week, on average — had a 46 per cent higher risk of prediabetes, if researchers didn’t weigh other factors.
However, the American Beverage Association counters that sugar in beverages isn’t the sole risk factor for prediabetes.

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5000 Daily HIV Screening For Calabar Carnival

The United Nations Population Fund, UNPF, has put plans in place to screen 5,000 persons daily for HIV/AIDS, during the Calabar Carnival. The Programme Officer of UNPF in Nigeria, Mr. Araoyinbo Idowu, disclosed this to newsmen at the  weekend. Idowu said that UNPF will conduct the tests in collaboration with an NGO, Excellence Community Education Welfare Scheme, ECEWS. He said the fund will organise an awareness campaign tagged Wise Up Cross River, on a daily basis throughout the one month carnival. 
According to Idowu, “there are going to be some demonstrations by youths and various stakeholders during the HIV/AIDS awareness campaign. In the course of the campaign, there will be various activities including one-on-one counselling, music, graphic designs, tattoo inscription and games. Also, many young volunteers and other stakeholders will be on stage to entertain people each day at the condom zone.” 
The Programme Officer said that the campaign was aimed at sensitizing youths on the dangers of HIV/AIDS and the need for safe sex. He said the programme will also bring together commercial sex workers, student organisations and those already living with the virus, to exchange knowledge on the disease. According to him, the organisation would mobilise youths from the 18 local government areas in the state to participate in the programme. 
Idowu also said that condoms would be distributed free during the month-long campaign. He added that UNPF decided to bring the campaign to the carnival because of its popularity and mass participation.

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Electric implant could end agony of Arthritis

A tiny electronic implant could end the agony of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) for hundreds of thousands of sufferers. According to findings of a new study which was published in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’, the pacemaker-like micro-regulator device, which is fitted under the skin near the collarbone, sends electrical pulses to a key nerve that helps block the pain of inflamed joints. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system – which normally protects its health by attacking foreign substances like bacteria and viruses – mistakenly attacks the joints.
That inflammation from RA causes redness, warmth, swelling, and pain within the joint and affects joints on both sides of the body, such as both hands, both wrists, or both knees. The mailonline reported that the development of this device, lends hope to millions globally who suffer from RA.
The debilitating disease is caused by the body’s own immune system attacking joint tissue, causing inflammation, stiffness, and fatigue. If left untreated, joints can lose shape and alignment and nearby cartilage and bone can be damaged, leading to permanent disability. Currently, patients typically take a cocktail of powerful drugs to dampen the immune system.
People who use them are more likely to become ill from infections such as pneumonia. But experts have found that using electrical pulses to stimulate the vagus nerve can have a similar effect without the side effects. The vagus sends signals from the brain to key organs such as the spleen, triggering a decrease in the production of proteins called cytokines that help control the immune system and can cause inflammation. Scientists said that resulted in reduced swelling in joints and a decrease in joint pain and damage in people with rheumatoid arthritis.
Scientists behind the device, now being tested in the Netherlands, hope it would be available in the United Kingdom (UK) by 2020. One patient who took part in a pilot study said it was so successful it felt as if she did not have the disease any more. She said: “I have my life back, like before I got arthritis.”

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Immunotherapy Can Help HIV Patients

Immunotherapy has been considered potentially promising for many different kinds of cancers, and now there is fresh hope that the same method could be used to treat or functionally cure HIV.
These are the findings of a study published in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’. Immunotherapy, also called biologic therapy, is a type of cancer treatment designed to boost the body’s natural defences to fight cancer. It uses substances either made by the body or in a laboratory to improve or restore immune system function.
They said during the clinical, The United States, U.S., researchers said they examined a total of 24 chronically HIVinfected participants in clinical trials conducted at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Reacting to the development, Senior Author, Pablo Tebas, who is director of the AIDS Clinical Trials Unit at Penn, said they found injections of one broadly neutralising HIV antibody (bNAb), known as VRC01, were safe.
He said it generated high levels of the antibody and modestly delayed the time of HIV viral rebound, but suppression did not surpass eight weeks in the majority of participants. Tebas said the study only looked at one antibody and they believe combinations of more potent bNAbs may help successfully control the AIDS virus.
“As a result, this method marks a first step toward the ultimate goal of durable suppression of HIV in the absence of antiretroviral therapy. For the near future, it is unlikely that we will be able to fully eradicate HIV once a person has been infected. But a functional cure is a reasonable intermediate goal,” he said.
Tebas said a functional HIV cure means that while the virus would still exist in a person’s body in extremely small amounts, virus replication would be durably suppressed, disease progression drastically slowed, and symptoms of infection stopped all without the need for daily medications.
He stressed that the goal of immunotherapy is to eliminate the need to take a pill every single day while simultaneously chipping away at the latent reservoir of virusinfected cells.
He, however, stressed that scientists are still years away from that goal. “If a person is able to be functionally cured of HIV, long-term follow-up will be essential to ensure that the virus doesn’t return to high levels.’’ Tebas said it was noted that many participants were also found to have

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