Connemara: Health-Landscape

The Connemara International Marathon is one of the world’s most scenic events, set in the dramatic scenery of the west of Ireland. 2017 will mark its sixteenth year in running, growing in numbers each year from 73 runners to our sell out point, in excess of 3,000 runners.



The next Connemarathon will take place on Sunday 23rd April 2017 join Team Croi for an unforgettable marathon experience.

The event comprises of half, full and ultra (39.3 mile) marathons. Participants will enjoy some of Ireland’s most beautiful scenery as they meander through bogs, hills, lakes, and the twelve pins mountain range, rising up over the great expanse of Killary Lough, through the sleepy village of Leenane, around the Maam Turk Mountains and all the way up to Maam Cross.

 

Support the fight against heart disease and stroke by taking on the challenge of the 2017 Connemara half, full or ultra marathon. 

Germany Remembers!

Germany has marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a tribute to the 300,000 ill and disabled people killed under the Nazis' "euthanasia" programme, who are often seen as forgotten victims of that era.

In a solemn ceremony at the German Bundestag, parliament speaker Norbert Lammert said the programme was the first to use gas to murder those considered "unworthy of living" and served as a "trial run for the Holocaust".
"It became the model for the mass murder that would follow in the Nazi extermination camps," he said in a speech attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel and relatives of victims.
Adolf Hitler's euphemistically named euthanasia programme, in which doctors and scientists actively participated, sought to exterminate the sick, the physically and mentally disabled, those with learning disabilities and those considered social "misfits".

Between January 1940 and August 1941, doctors systematically gassed more than 70,000 people at six sites in German-controlled territory, until public outrage forced them to end the overt killing.
But tens of thousands more died across Europe until the war's end in 1945, through starvation, neglect or deliberate overdoses administered by caregivers.
Many also underwent bizarre medical experiments and forced sterilisations because of their supposed genetic inferiority.



During the ceremony, an actor with Down syndrome read out a letter from one of the victims, Ernst Putzki, who wrote to his mother in 1943 describing the inhumane conditions at the institution where he was being held in Weilmuenster, Western Germany.
"Death from starvation is hard on our heels and no one knows who will be next," he wrote.
"Before, the people here were killed more quickly and their bodies were taken for burning at dawn. But this was met with resistance from the locals.
"So now we are simply left to starve."
Mr Putzki died in January 1945, officially of pneumonia.

Ceremonies are held around the world each year on 27 January to remember the World War II victims of the Nazis.
The day coincides with the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland by Soviet troops in 1945.
Of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, one million were murdered at Auschwitz, mostly in its notorious gas chambers, along with tens of thousands of others including Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.

Nutrition Update

The second edition of Nutrition at a Glance is now available:


  Located -  612.3 NUT

Guidelines - British Food Standards (FSA)

Roasting and frying starchy foods could increase the risk of cancer, according to the British Food Standards Agency.
The FSA has issued a public warning over the risks of acrylamide - a chemical compound that forms in some foods when they are cooked at high temperatures (above 120C).

A new campaign tells people how they can cut their risk, including opting for a gold colour - rather than darker brown - when frying, roasting, baking, grilling or toasting.
Acrylamide is found in high levels in a range of foods including breakfast cereals (not porridge), chips, potato products (such as waffles or potato shapes), biscuits, crackers, crispbread and crisps.
It is also found in coffee, cooked pizza bases, black olives and cereal-based baby foods.

Root vegetables including potatoes, sweet potatoes, beetroot, turnip, swede and parsnips can all carry high levels of the compound once they have been roasted or fried until darker brown or crispy. As well as high temperatures, long cooking times can increase levels of acrylamide even further.
Foods such as skinny fries and crisps appear to have the highest levels.
Acrylamide forms due to a chemical reaction between certain sugars and an amino acid (asparagine) in the food.

A new campaign tells people to opt for a gold colour

when frying, roasting, baking, grilling or toasting

However, boiling, steaming and microwaving appear far less likely to cause the reaction.
Studies in mice have shown that high levels of acrylamide can cause neurological damage and cancer.
While studies in humans have proved inconclusive, experts believe the compound has the ability to cause cancer in humans.The US Environmental Protection Agency has said acrylamide is "likely to be carcinogenic to humans" and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization, says it is a "probable human carcinogen".
In its new campaign, the FSA said people could take simple steps to reduce their consumption of acrylamide.
As a "rule of thumb", people should aim for a golden yellow colour or lighter when frying, roasting, baking or toasting starchy foods.
For example, roast potatoes should not be "fluffed up" to maximise dark brown crispy bits and they should be roasted to the lightest colour that is acceptable. Toast should also be browned to a light brown colour.

People are being told to follow the cooking instructions on packaging to ensure foods are not cooked for too long or at too-high temperatures.They should also stick to a varied, balanced diet to reduce their overall risk of cancer.
The FSA said people should not keep potatoes in the fridge, which can increase overall levels of acrylamide.
Instead, raw potatoes should be stored in a dark, cool place with temperatures above 6C.

Evidence also shows the longer potatoes are kept, the more acrylamide can form.
Steve Wearne, director of policy at the FSA, said manufacturers had already taken steps to cut the levels of acrylamide in foods, but it was time for consumers to be made more aware of the risks.
He added: "We are not saying people should worry about the occasional meal ... this is about managing risk over a lifetime.
"Anything you can do to reduce your exposure will reduce your lifetime risk.
"People might, for example, think 'I like my roast potatoes crispy', but they will just decide to have them less often."
Other examples of ways to cut acrylamide include having chunky chips on occasion rather than fries.
Cutting potatoes into larger wedges reduces their surface area, thereby cutting down the level of acrylamide that can form. Crinkle-cut chips are worse than normal chips as they have a larger surface area.

Gavin Shears, a senior policy adviser in contaminants at the FSA, said: "We are not expecting people to go out and radically change their diets if they're eating a healthy balanced diet.
"If you slightly overdo your roast potatoes on a Sunday, it's not that you have to throw them away. We're not asking people to cut out certain foods.
"This is about reducing your overall lifetime risk through simple steps."
There are no official limits on how much acrylamide a food can contain, although the EU has drawn up guidelines.

The Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JEFCA), the international expert scientific committee in the area, has said acrylamide intake from food is a "human health concern" and levels should be as low as possible.

Positive News for Prostate

Scientists from Belfast have made a major breakthrough in the treatment of prostate cancer.
It is hoped the new discovery, described as a world first, could help stop the spread of the disease and prevent patient relapses.

Ulster University academic Dr. Declan McKenna, who led the study, said: "This new discovery is hugely significant."

Discovery will help stop spread of prostate cancer

For most, a five-year survival rate is just under 90% but for men diagnosed with advanced stage four cancer, the five-year survival rate is only 22%.
However, researchers have found that combining an existing hormone therapy, known as androgen deprivation, with a new drug called OCT1002, can improve treatment effectiveness.
It works by targeting more resistant cancer cells and preventing malignancy and spread.
Dr. McKenna added: "Hormone therapy is an effective treatment but its success with more resistant cancer cells is limited.
"By combining hormone therapy with this new drug we have for the first time discovered a way to destroy these resistant cells that may otherwise lead to relapse or the spread of cancer cells."

The new research builds upon Ulster's University's discovery earlier this year, that low oxygen levels in prostate cancer tumours are responsible for triggering genetic changes.
Those changes accelerate the growth of new cancer cells and can cause patients to relapse within two years of starting the traditional hormone therapy treatment.
"Our next step is to consider a move to clinical trials so we can focus on testing this combined therapy and ultimately develop tailored treatments for individual prostate cancer patients globally," said Dr. McKenna.
The three-year Ulster University study was supported by Prostate Cancer UK, through a £213,000 grant from the Movember Foundation.
The latest results have been published by the journal, Clinical Cancer Research.

New Irish Cardiac Device

Irish researchers have developed a soft robotic device that fits around a heart and helps it to beat. The invention raises the future possibility of a new form of treatment for patients suffering from heart failure.

The device takes the form of a sleeve that wraps around the outside of the heart and squeezes and twists it in synch with the natural heart beat.
The big advantage of the new device is that unlike other forms of treatment, it doesn't come in contact with blood, reducing the risk of clotting, stroke and the need for the patient to take blood thinning drugs.

The invention raises the future possibility of a new form

of treatment for patients suffering from heart failure

It is attached to the heart using a gel, sutures and a suction device. It is then connected to an external pump, and this powers the soft actuators.
The device was developed by NUI Galway and Harvard post-doctoral researcher, Dr Ellen Roche, along with Professor Conor Walsh, an Irish engineer based at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Boston based university.
The current treatments for heart failure are medical management, transplant or use of ventricular assist devices or VADs.
These pump blood from the ventricles of the heart to the aorta, but because they come in direct contact with the blood they can cause dangerous side effects, including stroke and clots.
"The novelty of this device is that it doesn't contact the blood," said Dr Roche.
"Additionally we can actuate different parts of it independently so we can tailor the movement of the device to the patient's needs."
"We can transfer both a compression motion and a twisting motion to the heart which mimics the way the heart beats itself."

Trinity College Dublin graduate, Professor Walsh established Harvard's bio-design laboratory where he and colleagues are developing a range of other soft robotics which have the potential to help people with disabilities.
According to the Irish Heart Foundation, 90,000 people in Ireland are suffering from heart failure with 10,000 new cases reported every year.
The condition also affects 41 million people worldwide.

The new device has been trialled in the lab and in animals, with excellent proof of concept results.
However, it is likely to be between three and five years before it has been refined, tested and approved for use in humans.
Dr Roche said she expects refinements will include trying to make it wireless.
It's hoped that the device could become a bridge to transplants or could be worn by a patient suffering from heart failure for the rest of their life.
"This research is really significant at the moment because more and more people are surviving heart attacks and ending up with heart failure," said Dr Roche.
"Soft robotic devices are ideally suited to interact with soft tissue and give assistance that can help augmentation of function and potentially even healing and recovery."
The research, a collaboration between Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Wyss Institute and Boston Children's Hospital, is published in the journal - Science Translational Medicine.

Progress with Parkinson's!

A naturally-occurring compound has been found to block the molecular process thought to lie behind Parkinson's Disease and could form the basis of a possible treatment, scientists have said.

The preliminary findings suggest the compound, called squalamine, also suppresses the toxic products associated with the process, researchers at Cambridge University have found.
Academics stressed further research is needed, and that findings are based on cell cultures developed in the lab and testing in nematode worms.



But the compound has been used in clinical trials for cancer and eye conditions in America, and a trial in Parkinson's Disease patients is now being planned by one of the researchers involved in the study.
The study was led by academics from the Centre for Misfolding Diseases based at Cambridge University and Georgetown University and the National Institutes of Health in the United States.

It is not yet clear whether squalamine can reach the specific regions of the brain where the main molecular processes determining Parkinson's Disease take place, or what form any resulting drug might take.
Squalamine is a steroid which was discovered in the 1990s in dogfish sharks, although the form now used by scientists is a safer, synthetic analogue.
To date, it has been extensively investigated as a potential anti-infective and anti-cancer therapy.
In the new study, researchers found squalamine inhibits the early formation of toxic aggregates of the protein alpha-synuclein - a process thought to start a chain reaction of molecular events eventually leading to Parkinson's Disease - and can suppress the toxicity of these poisonous particles.
Co-author Michele Vendruscolo, of Cambridge University, said: "This is an encouraging step forward in our efforts to discover potential drugs against Parkinson's Disease."
Researchers said it would be interesting to investigate the efficacy of squalamine as a means to alleviate certain symptoms, including severe constipation and symptoms concerning the peripheral nervous system.
The findings are published in Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences (PNAS).

Toxicity of Diesel Fumes!

A campaign led by medical professionals is calling for all diesel cars to be banned from London.
Doctors Against Diesel claim 9,400 Londoners a year die prematurely from breathing in toxic fumes from diesel engines.

Paris, Madrid, Mexico City and Athens have committed to a ban on diesel vehicles by 2025.
Opponents to the campaign have called the proposals "impractical" and warned a blanket ban could "backfire".

Paris, Madrid, Mexico City and Athens have

committed to a ban on diesel vehicles by 2025

Doctors Against Diesel - comprising doctors, nurses and health professionals - are calling for Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, to commit to phasing out diesel vehicles from London.

Mr Khan has already said he wants to get rid of diesel buses by 2018.
A spokesman for the mayor said he has no legal powers to ban cars in London, and is calling on the government "to face its responsibility and implement a national diesel scrappage scheme now".
"The mayor has more than doubled air quality funding and is doing everything in his power to tackle London's toxic air and rid the city of the most polluting vehicles, but he cannot do this alone" the spokesman added.