Sweet, sweet POTATOES
Astaple in almost every local marketplace, a starch to add to a bubbling pot of local farm produce — sweet potato is a much-loved food item in Jamaica.
However, do we really understand just how nutritionally strong and versatile this carbohydrate is? This highly nutritious food is packed with loads of fibre, vitamins C, A and B6, as well as potassium.
Dr Joanne Smith, a nutritionist and lecturer in the Caribbean Institute of Health Research at The University of the West Indies as well as a consultant with health food brand, Not Jus’ A Salad, believes sweet potatoes can be very useful for people looking to reduce the amount of food they consume.
Sweet potato is a complex carbohydrate, which, among other nutritious qualities, helps
result in redness and swelling at the injection site, stiffness and soreness in the muscle, tenderness and swelling of the local lymph nodes and, if the vaccine is potent enough, even fever (and that associated, generally crappy feeling).
This is the balance of vaccine design — maximising protection and benefits while minimising their uncomfortable, but necessary, side effects. That’s not to say that serious side effects don’t occur, they do, but they are exceedingly rare. Two of the most discussed serious side effects, anaphalaxis (a severe allergic reaction) and Guillainbarré syndrome (nerve damage due to inflammation), occur at a frequency of less than 1 in 500,000 doses.
VACCINATION AGAINST SARS-COV-2
The food crisis in many parts of the world, compounded by the novel coronavirus pandemic, has required many to tighten their budgets, especially amid job cuts and losses.
Many are forced to eat less. In countries like Venezuela, some eat only once per day. Other areas see some people eating every other day. What has it been like for you? How can you maximise on reduced portions of food as the food situation worsens?
LESS food, LESS Weight
Many people are struggling with being overweight. Having less to eat may coerce people to consume less, especially when it comes to more expensive junk foods.
The healthy appetite Jamaicans have may not be so healthy after all. If you have had to cut your budget, lowering meat intake and fat could work in your favour. Some fast-food establishments still attract long lines of customers amid the novel coronavirus crisis, but not as long as before. This could mean that more people may be eating
Not only should you consider buying in bulk, but try to seek out healthier foods, too. Note that there are many less expensive foods that are healthier than more expensive ones. Also, eating small amounts of healthy food is better than eating large amounts of unhealthy ones, which can be more expensive.
Take time out and study the nutritional value of foods. Cookbooks are good for showing you appetising ways to create meals from legumes and vegetables that may not be as appealing when eaten by themselves. The Internet is also a helpful source. Try, too, to use different sites to corroborate information when finding the value a particular food holds.
grow More in times of LESS
I went to the vegetable man, who hit me with an eye-popping $600 per pound for tomato, recently. I am seriously considering planting “cash crops” in the backyard, and you should too, as you can grow your own and save more as you reap more.
More nutrition from LESS food
One who is shrewd in food preparation will maximise the nutritional value in each food.
So, try to not soak fruits and vegetables in water for more than a minute, as they start losing some of their value.
Food to be used for the next meal can be safely covered and refrigerated. Foods to stay for longer periods should be dried and tightly shut in plastic bags to prevent air from entering. Where salads are concerned, prepare only enough for one meal.
Peeling fruits and vegetables takes away much of their nutritional value. Where you know fruits and vegetables are grown free of pesticide, you only need to wash them properly. Sadly, with pesticide use so widespread, peeling may be necessary. Some, nevertheless, use a brush with stiff bristles to have dirt and such removed.
We have a culture of stuffing ourselves with food, and unhealthy food at that. As we tighten our food belts given the worsening economic situation, lest we forget, eating less may be best.
Warrick Lattibeaudiere, PHD, a minister of religion for the past 23 years, lectures fulltime in the School of humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Jamaica, where he is also director of the Language, Teaching and Research Centre. e-mail him at wglatts@yahoo.com
UNITED STATES (AP) — Scientists are seeing promising early results from the first studies testing gene editing for painful, inherited blood disorders that plague millions worldwide.
Doctors hope the one-time treatment, which involves permanently altering DNA in blood cells with a tool called CRISPR, may treat and possibly cure sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia.
Partial results were presented yesterday at an American Society of Hematology conference and some were published by the New England Journal of Medicine.
Doctors described 10 patients who are at least several months removed from their treatment.
All no longer need regular blood transfusions and are free from pain crises that plagued their lives before.
Victoria Gray, the first patient in the sickle cell study, had long suffered severe pain bouts that often sent her to the hospital.
“I had aching pains, sharp pains, burning pains, you name it. That’s all I’ve known my entire life,” said Gray, 35, who lives in Forest, Mississippi. “I was hurting everywhere my blood flowed.”
Since her treatment a year ago, Gray has weaned herself from pain medications she depended on to manage her symptoms.
“It’s something I prayed for my whole life,” she said. “I pray everyone has the same results I did.”
Sickle cell affects millions, mostly black people. Beta thalassemia strikes about one in 100,000 people. The only cure now is a bone marrow transplant from a closely matched donor, without the disease, like a sibling, which most people don’t have.
Both diseases involve mutations in a gene for haemoglobin, the substance in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body.
In sickle cell, defective haemoglobin leads to deformed, crescent-shaped blood cells that don’t carry oxygen well. They can stick together and clog small vessels, causing pain, organ damage and strokes.
Those with beta thalassemia don’t have enough normal haemoglobin, and suffer anaemia, fatigue, shortness of breath and other symptoms. Severe cases require transfusions every two to five weeks.
The treatment studied attacks the problem at its genetic roots.
In the womb, foetuses make a special type of haemoglobin.
After birth, when babies breathe on their own, a gene is activated that instructs cells to switch and make an adult form of haemoglobin instead. The adult haemoglobin is what’s defective in people with one of these diseases. The CRISPR editing aims to cut out the switching gene.
“What we are doing is turning that switch back off and making the cells think they are back in utero, basically,” so they make foetal haemoglobin again, said one study leader, Dr Haydar Frangoul of the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville.
The treatment involves removing stem cells from the patient’s blood, then using CRISPR in a lab to knock out the switching gene. Patients are given strong medicines to kill off their other, flawed, blood-producing cells. Then they are given back their own lab-altered stem cells.
Saturday’s results were from the first 10 patients, seven with beta thalassemia and three with sickle cell. The two studies in Europe and the United States are ongoing and will enrol 45 patients each.
Tests so far suggest the gene editing is working as desired with no unintended effects, Frangoul said.
“The preliminary results are extremely encouraging,” he said.
The study was sponsored by the therapy’s makers — CRISPR Therapeutics, with headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, and Massachusetts-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Some study leaders consult for the companies.
Separately, Dr David Williams of Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital gave partial results from a study testing a novel type of gene therapy that also seeks to restore foetal haemoglobin production for those with sickle cell.
Six patients, including one as young as seven, were given the treatment, in which some of their blood stem cells were removed and altered in the lab to muffle the haemoglobin switching gene. None have had pain crises, five of the six no longer need transfusions and all have near-normal haemoglobin, he reported at the conference and in the medical journal.
Government grants paid for the work. Williams is named on a patent for the therapy, which Boston Children’s has licensed to Bluebird Bio Inc of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company provided the therapy for the study, which will enrol 10 people in all to establish safety. A larger study to test effectiveness is planned.
Williams, who was not involved in Frangoul’s study, said it “validates this approach” of targeting the haemoglobin switching gene to tackle sickle cell. Gene-editing treatment shows promise for sickle cell disease