IN BRIEF

Healthy pregnancy campaign

Newspaper Health Times initiated a campaign on April 19 in Beijing to educate pregnant women on how to get enough nutrition. About 150 people from all walks of life, mostly mothers, medical experts and journalists - including Meng Xianli, editor-in-chief with Health Times, and executives with Doctor D-Cal, a calcium supplements company, attended the opening ceremony. According to Li Guanghui, a nutritionist and metabolism specialist with Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, pregnant Chinese women used to suffer from lack of nutrition, but nowadays, the situation has reversed to another extreme, with more women absorbing excessive nutrients and then having difficulty in natural delivery.

NZ supplements come to China

Vitaco Health, one of New Zealand's largest producers of health and wellness products, recently announced in Beijing that it would launch its flagship brand Healtheries in China in June. Vitaco CEO Geoff Norgate said New Zealanders look to food as the basis of good health, just as the Chinese do. He said the company employs nearly 400 people and distributes products to more than 30 countries every year, with a product portfolio of dietary supplements, healthy foods and beverages, sports nutrition, organic and marine products. Vitaco will partner with Chinese company DKSH to distribute the products through supermarkets and groceries.

No cure found for tinnitus

Using a magnet to generate an electrical current in the area of the brain that controls hearing does not seem to get rid of ringing in the ears, a new study suggests. Researchers found people reported just as much bothersome ringing after a month of so-called repetitive transcranial magnetic simulation as after a series of fake, magnet-free treatments. Although it seems natural that ringing in the ears - known as tinnitus -would be a hearing-related problem, so far medications and magnetic stimulation targeting the brain's auditory areas have not made the sound go away, according to Jay Piccirillo. "People want a pill to make it go away, but there isn't anything like that," Piccirillo, an otolaryngologist from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, says. "There's no cure for tinnitus."

Cinnamon darefoolish, doctors say

Pediatricians today cautioned young people against participating in a popular dare known as the cinnamon challenge, which involves trying to swallow a tablespoon of ground cinnamon in a minute without drinking water. Health risks tied to the game - such as breathing problems, lung inflammation and asthma attacks - are relatively rare, they say, but are "unnecessary and avoidable". "What we were discovering was that it wasn't just that this was a dare prompted by peer pressure, but in fact there were acute health issues associated with it and there might be some real concerns for more chronic health issues," says Steven Lipshultz, a co-author of the study from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Attempts at the cinnamon challenge have increased dramatically in recent years, researchers say, in part as a result of popular Internet videos.