Safeguards and Hazards
The Human Immune System Microbes by the millions have us under constant siege, intent on invading our comfortably warm and moist bodies. If they gain entry, they are in for a shock. They are confronted by an incredibly complex immune system—millions of millions of highly specialized cells regulated by scores of proteins. Time magazine says: “The immune system is compared favorably with the most complex organ of them all, the brain.” It then quotes immunologist William Paul: “The immune system has a phenomenal ability for dealing with information, for learning and memory, for creating and storing and using information.” Dr. Stephen Sherwin adds his praise: “It’s an incredible system. It recognizes molecules that have never been in the body before. It can differentiate between what belongs there and what doesn’t.” And if it doesn’t, it is war, total war.
Snacking on Carbohydrates Carbohydrate meals may cause drowsiness and fatigue afterward, in spite of a high level of glucose in a person’s blood. Studies have indicated that concentration and test scores are lower after a carbohydrate meal. Many who overeat prefer carbohydrates to other snack foods not only because they crave sweets but also because they like bread and pasta. Smokers who quit smoking crave carbohydrates, and a reason they gain weight when they quit is that they eat more sweet, carbohydrate-rich foods.
Risk in Being Overweight For middle-aged and younger women to be overweight to any degree increases the danger of heart disease. This according to an eight-year-study of 116,000 nurses from 30 to 55 years of age. Seventy percent of the heart disease in obese women and 40 percent in women overall is due to excess weight. The news report of this in The New York Times continued: “Previous studies of men have indicated that being moderately overweight increased the risk of heart disease. But this is the first time that the risks of being even mildly overweight have been documented in middle-aged women, said Dr. Charles H. Hennekens, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an author of the study. The results show that ‘obesity is right up there with cigarette smoking and heavy alcohol consumption as a major cause of excess morbidity and mortality in the United States,’ he said.”
Infant Deaths Linked to Smoking After a three-year study, two doctors in Sweden found a strong link between smoking and sudden infant death syndrome, known as SIDS—a term for deaths of unknown causes in babies from one to six months of age. Drs. Bengt Haglund and Sven Cnattingius compiled data on 280,000 live births in Sweden. Of this group, 190 died of SIDS, and the doctors blamed smoking by the mothers for 50 of the deaths. Mothers who smoked moderately during pregnancy—one to nine cigarettes a day—were twice as likely as a nonsmoker to lose their baby to SIDS. Heavy smokers—ten or more cigarettes a day—tripled the risk. Dr. Haglund said: “From a preventive point of view, smoking is the single biggest cause of SIDS.” He did say, however, that other socioeconomic factors could be involved: age of the mother, social class, and whether the father lived with the mother and child. The report in The New York Times concluded: “The study showed that the incidence of SIDS is lower in Scandinavian countries than it is in other industrialized countries like the United States.”