Adventure Ausrama Blog

CHEMISTRY What are the French good for? Supplying top class engineers to Britain because they still use the rote system in education maybe? The French do have some good ideas though. They have come up with a way to strengthen bones. For years foam has been injected into walls of houses to improve insulation. The concept has been adapted to health. Calcium phosphate cement has been used for some time to repair bones. It is a bone substitute during surgery. The compound has now been made into a foam. It can be injected into bone to repair defects. Tests have shown it regenerates bone growth in osteoporosis treatment. French chemists at the University of Nantes have used hydrogen to push air bubbles into the calcium phosphate compound. These cavities enable new bone growth to strengthen weakened bones.  Medical breakthroughs are ongoing.  It is a pity health provision in all countries of the world is failing while new treatment techniques continue. ◆ Chemi...

Over recent years there has been a host of controversial claims about fish oil, calcium and glucosamine. The questions are do these supplements do any good and do they all have to be taken? Some doctors say take them and other GPs say claims about them are nonsense. Some tests have been done. It has still not been proven that taking calcium prevents deterioration of bones in old age. And there is no proof that glucosamine gets into joints thus reducing pain. Tests on fish oil offer some hope of benefit. During research into omega 3 (which is in fish oil) on young children a potential benefit came to light. It seems that premature birth is delayed when fish oil is taken. Omega 3 prolongs pregnancy. Subjects who took the supplement also had larger babies. Their birth date was later than predicted. Of course, this brings up another question: Are heavier babies healthier? As the cause of premature birth is unknown perhaps this benefit overrides the perceived consequences of la...

Australians are so obsessed about staying out of the sun to prevent skin cancer that the number of people getting osteoporosis is increasing. This is a sad consequence of a positive behavior change. Osteoporosis would not be a problem if more people took calcium tablets with vitamin D each day. Unfortunately, many would rather spend their money on other things. The disease affects young people as well as the elderly. The Nepean Consensus Statement meeting has been praised for making the disease more widely known. However, money spent on such activities is wasted, considering you can treat yourself without actually being diagnosed with the disease. Developing "fancy" management practises is unnecessary. Giving calcium and vitamin D to the elderly who already suffer with osteoporosis is a waste of time, because once you have the disease it cannot be cured. A person need not adopt a calcium rich diet: calcium and vitamin D in tablet form are easily absorbed by the body. Eve...