Revista Espanola De Nutricion Comunitaria最新文献

In our society, beer is recognized to be a component of the Mediterranean diet and moderate intake of this beverage provides numerous beneficial nutrients. However, in the last few decades, beer has been considered not only from a purely nutritional point of view but also in the context of health promotion. Multiple components contribute to the preventive potential of beer against bone and circulatory diseases and cancer. The present article discusses the possible benefits of moderate beer intake from a new perspective: that of regulating sleep due to the sedative action of hops, one of the components of beer.

Introduction

The highest specificity in the measurement of the magnitude of relative risk of osteoporosis and bone fracture among women is obtained when autochthonous ranges of bone mineral density (BMD), obtained from a normal population, are taken as reference values. These ranges are not sufficiently well established in Latin America.

Objectives

To characterize changes in bone mass according to absorptiometry measurements and the relative risk of osteoporosis in a selected female population (healthy, working women aged more than 49 years old) using BMD risk margins in an autochthonous population as reference values.

Materials and methods

We performed a cross-sectional survey in the western region of Cuba in 307 healthy women, aged 50 to 59 years old, from 1998 to 2007. BMD was measured with a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry densitometer (DEXA Lunar) in the lumbar spine (anterior-posterior), femoral neck, Ward triangle, trochanter and whole body. Bone density (g/cm²) was obtained and was also expressed as a quotient according to height for each skeletal site (g/m). The percent decrease in bone mass and the frequency of women at relative risk of fracture were calculated. Distributions in percentiles were determined and means and standard deviation were calculated according to ethnic origin. Differences in BMD according to length of amenorrhea, ethnic origin, quotients according to height, and results taking the World Health Organization criteria as reference (safety margins ≤1 standard deviation and risk ≤ 2.5 standard deviation) were evaluated in a young Cuban population and in other reference populations by means of analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Student’s t test for independent samples. Data were processed by SPSS, version 11.5 for Windows.

Results

In the average woman with less than 5 years of amenorrhea, the femur / height quotient, showed a decrease of 7.7 % when compared with peak bone mass in the young population. The frequency of women at risk of fracture increased for fractures of the lumbar spine and femoral neck when the Cuban population was used as reference. According to the risk margin (g/cm²), in the population aged between 50 and 59 years, not differentiated by ethnic origin, the relative risk of fracture of the femoral neck was 4.4 %, that for fracture of the lumbar vertebra was 8.1 % and that for whole-body fracture was 7.7 %. When the Cuban reference was applied for whole body fracture, the presence of risks was similar to the DEXA Lunar criteria.

Conclusions

The prevalence of risk of osteoporosis and decline in bone mass were determined in the study group. Our results provide further evidence of the highest specificity in skeletal sites when measurements are adjusted by height, using the criteria of risk margins in the autochthonous population as a reference.

Objective

To analyze the applicability of the universal breast feeding recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO) in distinct regional contexts in relation to maternal and infant nutritional status.

Material and methods

We compared the 2001 WHO proposal on exclusive breast feeding with data on maternal milk production in Indonesia, India and Mexico, considering the nutritional allowances and children's growth curves of the WHO.

Results

Daily maternal milk production from the three countries was 563 ml. The level recommended by the WHO is 1,248 ml, leaving an obvious daily deficit of 648 ml.

Conclusions

The universal application of the WHO recommendation puts children in underdeveloped countries at risk of malnutrition and predisposes them to chronic diseases in adulthood. To implement a global proposal or recommendation for exclusive breast feeding, the socioeconomic level of distinct regions, countries and social groups must be identified and the strategy of starting weaning at the age of 3 months should be evaluated internationally.