Eating Fish

Possible contamination has made some reluctant to eat fish. The Health News Blog's Eating Fish Still Beneficial Despite Chemicals, weighs in on the matter. There are many benefits to eating fish so do the well established benefits overcome possible drawbacks? Yes, according to the Harvard School of Public Health and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Quoting from the linked blog:


The evidence across different studies showed that fish consumption lowers the risk of death from heart disease by 36%.

The reduced rated of heart disease comes, researchers say, from eating about three ounces of farmed salmon or six ounces of mackerel each week.

The benefits come from the omega-3 fatty acids that salmon and mackerel contain. The risks from eating fish are because of pollutants in the oceans and specifically the following chemicals: mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins.

Regulating Medicinal Delivery Systems

A Spoonful Of Sugar Makes The Medicine Go To Work reveals a clever means of regulating timely delivery connected with treatment for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Human growth factors are delivered and bacteria are the deliverers of them. The goal is to repair colon cells; reducing inflammation caused by IBD. The regulating switch is a sugar known as xylan, found in tree bark.

The linked article quotes a Professor Carding as stating: "It's vitally important to be able to control when and how much of the drug is administered and we believe our discovery will provide that control." The regulated bacteria were modified so as to be able to synthesize HGFs. An encouraging aspect of this is the possibility of applying this approach to treat other diseases.