Umbilical cord blood, or simply cord blood, is the blood left in the umbilical cord and placenta after the baby is born and the cord is cut. Usually, along with the umbilical cord and placenta, this blood is discarded as medical waste as it was thought to have no use. How wrong we were: recent advances in medical science have shown how IMPORTANT umbilical cord blood is. For one, it is a very rich source of stem cells (for this purpose, the blood has to be collected within 10 minutes of the birth). And stem cells, if you’ve been living under a rock these past few years, are currently one of the greatest hopes of mankind in overcoming otherwise untreatable diseases, such as those affecting the blood and immune system, or certain genetic disorders that are just so tricky to cure.

But wait, what are stem cells?

Stem cells are unspecialized cells that produce all blood cells. Think of them as blank “seed” cells that are programmed to eventually differentiate into specialized cells, as needed by the body. Therefore, stem cells can become (depending on need) platelets (which clot the blood to stop bleeding), red blood cells (transport oxygen to the cells), and white blood cells (the “soldiers” of our immune system that fights off disease).

How awesome are stem cells from umbilical cord blood?

To date, about 70 medical disorders have been treated with stem cells taken from cord blood—that’s how awesome! To put it simply: it SAVES LIVES!

People undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy (such as those with cancer) end up having their stem cells destroyed. This is a very dangerous condition, so they receive a stem cell transplant, taken from a donor (traditionally collected from the donor’s bone marrow—very painful!—or normal blood), and injected usually through a large vein in the chest. The transplanted cells find their way into the patient’s bone marrow, in which it is hoped that the stem cells will replicate and produce new blood cells in order to rebuild the person’s blood and immune system.

Stem cell transplants can save lives of people with serious diseases, such as leukemia (cancer of the white blood cells) and other cancers, or those with serious blood disorders (aplastic anemia). Recently, it has been found that umbilical cord blood stem cells can also be used in the treatment of brain injury, cerebral palsy, type 1 diabetes, and heart disorders. For children requiring such a stem cell transplant, umbilical cord blood is used; for adults, bone marrow transplant is used. However, with increasing knowledge and efficiency regarding umbilical cord stem cells transplant, adults are increasingly receiving this transplant as well.

Why are cord blood stem cells so important?

Although stem cells can also be taken from the bone marrow and normal blood, cord blood stem cells offer a number of advantages. Such as the following:

1. It is safe and easy to collect umbilical cord stem cells. It poses no risk to both the mother and baby, as the umbilical cord blood anyway would have been discarded. On the other hand, collecting stem cells from bone marrow is very painful and is actually already a form of surgery: it uses general or spinal anesthesia, and it poses a small risk of serious complications. Plus, it is so darned painful. The same thing with getting stem cells from normal blood: the donor gets several injections to stimulate the release of stem cells into the blood, and this sometimes causes bone pain and serious complications. All these things are not a problem with umbilical cord blood stem cells.
2. More matches: For a bone-marrow transplant to succeed, there must be a nearly perfect match of certain tissue proteins (called human leukocyte antigens or HLAs) between the donor and the recipient. Family members, such as siblings, are most likely to be a tissue match. However, only about 30 percent of individuals requiring a stem-cell transplant have a relative that is an appropriate tissue match. When stem cells from cord blood are used, the donor cells appear more likely to “take” or engraft, even when there are partial tissue mismatches. This means that more individuals may be able to find an appropriate match using cord blood.
3. Faster availability: Many individuals who do not have an appropriately matched family member can find a matched donor through national bone-marrow and cord-blood registries. It often takes at least two months to locate an appropriate bone- marrow donor compared to about two weeks for a cord-blood unit. The banked cord-blood cells also are available almost immediately. This can be crucial for patients with severe disorders who might die before an appropriate bone marrow donor can be found and complete the donation process.
4. More ethnic diversity: Members of non-white ethnic and racial groups often find it more difficult to find a match through a bone-marrow registry because there are fewer registered potential donors from non-white groups. The increasing use of cord-blood cells may make timely treatment available for more of these individuals.
5. Reduced risk of graft vs. host disease (GVHD): GVHD is a potentially fatal complication, in which donor cells attack the recipient’s tissues. This complication appears to occur less frequently with cord blood than with bone marrow, possibly because cord-blood cells are immature and may lack the ability to attack the recipient. A 2000 study found that children who received a cord-blood transplant from a closely matched sibling were 59 percent less likely to develop GVHD than children who received a bone marrow transplant from a closely matched sibling.
6. Fewer infections: Cord blood is less likely to contain viruses that can pose a risk to transplant recipients.

Moreover, some studies suggest that cord blood may have a greater ability to generate new blood cells than bone marrow. This suggests that a smaller number of cord-blood cells are needed for a successful transplantation.

Are there disadvantages in umbilical cord blood stem cells?

The biggest disadvantage is that although rich in stem cells, the umbilical cord contains only a small volume of blood. This means that the unit has a smaller number of stem cells than may be collected from bone marrow. As a result, there may not be enough stem cells to treat some older children or adults. (Doctors are studying the effectiveness of combining more than one cord-blood unit or expanding the number of stem cells in a unit before transplantation to attempt to solve this problem.)

Stem cells from cord blood may take longer to “take” and start producing blood cells than bone-marrow stem cells. This may be due, at least in part, to the smaller volume of stem cells from cord blood. Individuals may be at increased risk of infection until the transplanted stem cells produce sufficient disease-fighting white blood cells.

Umbilical cord blood banking: parents have a choice

Parents can now choose to store their newborn baby’s cord blood at a private cord-blood bank in case their baby or a family member ever needs it. Or parents can donate the cord blood to a public cord-blood bank so that any genetically matched individual needing treatment has access to it. Prospective parents who are considering these options should have as much information as possible to make an informed decision. Some states require health care providers to discuss options for umbilical cord-blood banking with their patients.

For instance:

Belly fat is fat that most often contain toxins, so the first order of the day is getting rid of it by drinking the right water. Drink Bio-Electronic Vincent (BEV) water or water filtered through the reverse-osmosis filtration method. This water attracts the heavy toxins from fat and pulls it out the body. The less minerals and metals in the water, the more the water can remove the dense stuff from your belly!

Source: Lose belly fat and great ab muscles: top 7 ways to lose belly fat and having great ab muscles

They said umbilical cord transplants are a viable option for adults with leukemia who urgently need a bone marrow transplant to replace cells destroyed by chemotherapy or radiation treatments, but cannot find a donor.

“What we found is when you look at the outcome of leukemia-free survival, which is the likelihood of a patient being alive without disease, it’s the same whether you are transplanting using an adult graft which is from an adult donor or a cord blood unit,” said Dr. Mary Eapen of the Medical College of Wisconsin, whose study appears in the journal Lancet Oncology.

Cord blood worked even if it was not a great match, Eapen said in a telephone interview.

Only about half of all white adult patients can find a suitable donor, and the odds are much lower if the patient is African American or Asian, Eapen said.

“In general … if you don’t have an acceptable tissue match with a donor, your chances of having a complication are higher and it can result in death,” she said.

But that is less so with stem cells from umbilical cord blood. “The body is more tolerant to the cells in the placental blood, even though they are not a perfect match.”

Eapen and colleagues analyzed data from 216 transplant centers worldwide. They compared the results of 165 patients 16 or older with acute leukemia who had been received umbilical cord blood to 888 adults given unrelated stem cell transplants, and 472 who had been given unrelated donor bone marrow.

After two years, all the patient groups were equally likely to survive and be free of leukemia regardless of graft source.

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Melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, still makes up just 3 percent of all skin cancers, and results in about 8,000 deaths a year, according to the National Cancer Institute. But three factors have doctors alarmed: The rates of this cancer are rising; it has become the most common cancer for young people; and many of the cases result from the preventable, but addictive, behavior of indoor suntanning.

Since 1992, the indoor tanning industry has grown five-fold, with 28 million indoor tanners in the United States supporting a billion-dollar-a-year business, said Maria Tsoukas, an assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

During that same period, melanoma rates have increased by 2 percent in the general population, Stein said. Amongst young women, who make up 71 percent of tanning salon customers, incidents of melanoma have increased by 2.2 percent, Stein said. Over that time, skin cancer also became the most common form of cancer for Americans ages 25-29, a group that traditionally shows very low cancer rates, Stein said.

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Researchers examined self-reported oral hygiene habits and coronary disease in 11,869 adults aged 35 and older (with a mean age of 50) from the Scottish Health Survey—a study conducted once every three to five years—between the years 1995 and 2003. The team, led by Cesar de Oliveira, a research fellow in epidemiology and public health at University College London, followed up with subjects after an average of eight years to see if they had had a heart attack or coronary disease.

Even though the researchers found that those who reported brushing their teeth less than twice a day were more likely to be male, older, smokers and to have other health issues (such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity), the team controlled for those variables and others and still found that tooth brushing is associated with cardiovascular disease.

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Also: carnitine supplements help in heart attack recovery.

Prof. Sayed-Ahmed’s team discovered that long-term carnitine supplements may even prevent the development of liver cancer. In their study using lab rats as animal model, they observed that a depletion in L carnitine levels led to the development of pre-malignant lesions in the liver and also progressed the vital organ’s degeneration. Providing carnitine supplements were found to completely reverse the degradation and the pre-cancerous lesions in the river also disappeared.

More at carnitine supplements and liver cancer.

Also check out: vitamins alpha lipoic acid.

Video.

The door to the small concrete building that served as their bodega creaks as Renato dela Cruz opens it carefully. He says he’s sure he can find them here. Once inside, his eyes suddenly have this bizarre, focused gaze, looking around the shelves and cabinets that lined the walls. He opens cabinets one by one, carefully. Nothing. He motions me to follow him to a back room divided by a pile of sacks of rice. Right behind a movable wooden shelf he finds his “treasure”: an “innocent” bunch of day-old mice, still quivering as Renato scoops them into his cellophane bag. He grins to me and says, “Yum!” I pretend to vomit; he laughs.

Renato is a rice and vegetables farmer; just one of a few dozens eking out a living from a patch of rice field in this little town in Sta. Rita, Pampanga. Although he’s already in his late 40s, his four children are mere toddlers. He says he used to be very healthy, but that changed when he was in his mid-20s. That was when the asthma came. He didn’t know then that it was asthma. He was shovelling hay one day when suddenly he couldn’t breathe. In this backward town where people believe in magic and the local version of voodoo, called “kulam,” the village’s medicine man told him somebody secretly hates him in the village, probably a rival to a lover, and that that person has put a spell on him. He would then try an endless succession of herbal medicines, all fruitless. He almost died during an asthma attack. That was when he finally went to a doctor and got proper medial diagnosis. But having no money to buy the prescribed drugs and regimen, he went back to native cures. Until somebody told him to eat live baby mice for his asthma. Renato swears it works.

Back at his house, Renato carefully places the still-squirming baby mice on the table. He says “Malinis naman iyan” (“They’re clean, anyway”). He takes out a saucer, pours some vinegar in it, throws in a dash of pepper and salt. He sets down and, with a face I couldn’t really read, he solemnly picks up one live baby rodent, dips it in the vinegar, and places it in his mouth. He then slowly chews it like it’s the tastiest thing in the world. “Manamis-namis,” (“Sweetish”) he says after a while, answering a question I didn’t actually ask. I’m reminded of those rodent-eating aliens in V.

In still another part of town, I’m introduced to Michael Jose. Micheal’s 19, and has asthma, too. And like Renato, Michael’s family thrives on farming. When I tell him about Renato’s baby mice-eating “cure” for his illness, Micheal puckers up his face. “Hindi epektib yun!” (“That’s not effective!”), he says. I have been told in advance what Michael’s up to, of course, and he is saving the “show” for me. Michael brings out a cardboard box. When he removes the lid, I see four house lizards inside, and they seemed too stunned to move. Michael has everything ready: on the table, there’s a saucer with what looks like soy sauce and vinegar in it. He picks up one lizard, and for a moment my heart breaks for the little creature. I can see the lizard’s still very much alive. Micheal carefully (the lizard has a tendency to jump) dips the creature in the soy sauce, and quickly puts it in his mouth, as if afraid he might change his mind. He begins chewing it. “How’s it?” I ask. “Medyo mapait,” (“It’s slightly bitter”) he says.

Michael has been eating lizards on a “regular” basis. According to him, that means “at least twice a week.” If you ask him if it actually works, like Renato, Micheal swears by its efficacy. “Dati halos araw araw kinakapos ako ng hininga. Ngayon halos hindi na, parang normal na lang,” (“I used to get asthma attacks almost everyday. Now I rarely get it, it’s like I’m living a normal life already.”)

The town’s resident health center clinician is aware of the townsfolk’s strange remedies, but she says not much could be done. The government does not provide enough medical support, especially in far-flung barrios. As long as there’s something the epople could hope for, they’re free to cling to such hopes.

Before I leave I pay a last visit to Renato’s house. He’s tending to his fighting cocks in the backyard. He’s blowing cigarette smoke on a cock’s face to “make it brave and invincible” when he suddenly gets into a coughing fit. He’s wheezing when the worse part of it is over. “Wala yun,” (“That’s nothing”), he says. It was worse when he was still not eating live day-old baby mice; the attacks were more frequent, almost deadly. I say nothing. I have nothing to offer, and I don’t want to remove that bit of hope. I shake his hand and thank him for accommodating me. I say “Goodluck,” but he didn’t hear me; he has already turned back to his fighting cock, and from the looks of it, trying to stifle a cough.

Brown fat is different from white fat. Brown fat –abundant in babies but found only in small pockets in adults — is the kind of fat that burns energy instead of storing it. Meanwhile white fat–the indication of obesity — is the type of fat that stores energy. Researchers are finding a way to mimic the mechanism of brown fat using an enzyme called cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2). The study, performed on mice, found that the enzyme could stimulate the white fat in mice to “act” like energy-burning brown fat, and thereby inducing weight loss by about 20 percent.

One caveat, though: the study has yet to be performed on humans. So the actually results with humans might be uncertain.

Meanwhile, as far as the burning of fat is concerned, there are always L carnitine supplements for that safe complement to any weight loss program.

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Can you really find a place in your daily diet for superpower foods such as almonds, flaxseeds, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, spinach, rosemary, and good ol’ wild salmon? Well, you should, if you want to remain on top of this game called life.

Get the list here.