Friday, November 5, 2010

Messign up kids lives through inadequate nutrition

The stupidity of so called experts never ceases to amaze me. Most of the time I try to ignore such things as I believe (a) they are trying their best, they are just ignorant and (b) I don't like to criticize people as this doesn't produce a positive atmosphere..... but sometimes the overwhelming stupidity of researchers makes me angry.

I have access through a local university full access to most journals. However part of this access is that they are not to be used commercially. My business Zestos is both education and commercial. So in some ways I could justify using this full journal access as Zestos has basically an education company. However I like to ere on the side of caution and take the more ethical path of not using this journal access for Zestos. But every now and then I access the full article because I am extremely interested in the study. This was one such case.

The study took kids who had major burns, high enough that they needed to be tube fed. Between 1985 and 1995 they children were fed "normal" milk. Between 1996 and 2004 they were feed "formula". This formula was similar in concept to a baby formula. It had low fat, high carbohydrates, very good balance of highly available proteins and a bunch of vitamins and minerals.

It appeared from the abstract (which is publicly accessible) that the milk was just that, milk that you would purchase in a supermarket. I was amazed, surely the hospital wouldn't have feed straight milk, without the addition of vitamins (and minerals) that are essential to healing and life. Hence I was so intrigued I read the whole paper. Conclusion: the milk was straight milk. 

So what they did was feed kids who couldn't eat cause they were so badly burnt a food that lacked vitamins and minerals. In a time were the body needed the nutrients the most, they were not fed them ?! I cannot believe the malpractice.....

Unsurprisingly there was significant differences in healing time. The milk children staying in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) for 47 days were as the formula group stayed 31 days. Sepsis, which is a serious condition of inflammation occurred in 20% of the milk kids, but only 11% of the formula kids.There was no difference in the death rate, but the autopsies showed fatty live in 66% of the milk deaths, were as only 17% of the formula children.

What I find even more amazing is the conclusion was that is was the low fat formula diet that was better, not that the additional nutrients eg vitamins and minerals that made the difference. Sometimes the shear stupidity of medical researches/professionals amaze me.

Rant over !  
 

1 comment:

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