Three things make you healthy and younger looking

 According to a UK study:

The risky behaviors were: smoking tobacco; downing more than three alcoholic drinks per day for men and more than two daily for women; getting less than two hours of physical activity per week; and eating fruits and vegetables fewer than three times daily.

These habits combined substantially increased the risk of death and made people who engaged in them seem 12 years older than people in the healthiest group, said lead researcher Elisabeth Kvaavik of the University of Oslo.

The study appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.

The healthiest group included never-smokers and those who had quit; teetotalers, women who had fewer than two drinks daily and men who had fewer than three; those who got at least two hours of physical activity weekly; and those who ate fruits and vegetables at least three times daily.

"You don't need to be extreme" to be in the healthy category, Kvaavik said. "These behaviors add up, so together it's quite good. It should be possible for most people to manage to do it."

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Fasting or crash dieting: Dangerous to your health?

CNN:

Research suggests rapid weight loss can slow your metabolism, leading to future weight gain, and deprive your body of essential nutrients. What's more, crash diets can weaken your immune system and increase your risk of dehydration, heart palpitations, and cardiac stress.

"A crash diet once won't hurt your heart," Dr. Rosenfeld says. "But crash dieting repeatedly increases the risk of heart attacks."

Bacon adds that long-term calorie-cutting can eventually lead to heart muscle loss. "Yo-yo dieting can also damage your blood vessels. All that shrinking and growing causes micro tears that create a setup for atherosclerosis and other types of heart disease," she says.

The article continues:

Experts have known for decades that extended crash diets can be dangerous -- especially when the diets become a fad.

In the late 1970s, an osteopath named Robert Linn published "The Last Chance Diet," a best seller that advocated a miraculous "liquid protein diet." Following the lead of their favorite celebrities, millions of people bought quarts of Dr. Linn's liquid formula and embraced the diet (or one of many copycat versions), averaging just 300 to 400 calories a day.

The diet seemed to work wonders -- some people reported losing as many as 10 pounds a week on the formula. But then the news of sudden deaths began to trickle in.

An investigation led by the Food and Drug Administration turned up nearly 60 deaths among liquid dieters. Although some of the deaths occurred in people with underlying diseases such as atherosclerosis (and therefore could have been coincidental), government researchers who examined otherwise healthy dieters who died of ventricular arrhythmias found that the pattern of deaths suggested "the effects of protein-calorie malnutrition on the heart," including atrophy of the heart muscle.

Conceivably there is a right way and a wrong way to substantially reduce caloric intake.  In other words, certain approaches are likely more risky than others.   But which ones?

Muscle loss appears to be the problem.

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Health benefit of calcium for men

Men who consumed the most calcium were twenty-five percent less likely to die-- according to a recent study.  The high calcium consumers among the 10,000 men in a Swedish study consumed 2,000 mg/day -- almost twice the recommended RDA.  

The finding was not a surprise to researchers, as previous research had linked high calcium intake to lower mortality in both men and women.

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Elderberry highest in antioxidants?

I blogged about a study that showed that Elderberry could be as useful as Tamiflu in fighting H1N1 virus and other flu viruses. I just stumbled upon a table showing that the elderberry has almost the highest ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) value of any berry.

ORAC scores are for 100/grams (3.5 ounces).

• Aronia (15.8K ORAC)
• Elderberry (14.6K ORAC)
  
• Cranberries (9.5K ORAC)
• Black Currant (8K ORAC)
  
• Blueberries (6K ORAC)
• Blackberries (6K ORAC)
• Plums (6K ORAC)
• Glass of Cabernet Sauvignon (5K ORAC)
  
• Glass of red table wine or Chianti (3.8K ORAC)
• Red grape Juice (1.2K ORAC)

Also topping any overall list of antioxidant foods is cocoa.  Raw cocoa has an ORAC of 26,000 per 100/g; processed dark chocolate about half that (processing heat will reduce a food's antioxidant properties).

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Elderberry has antiviral properties against H1N1 flu virus

UPDATED
Reuters:

NAPLES, Fla., Sept. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- A recent research study has given new scientific evidence to the long-held empirical belief that elderberries possess antiviral activities. The research involved a specific, reproducible elderberry extract developed by HerbalScience Group LLC, and succeeded in identifying key chemical components of the extract that inhibited in vitro infection and were shown to bind directly to Human Influenza A (H1N1) virus particles. The binding blocked the ability of the viruses to enter host cells, and thereby effectively preventing H1N1 infection in vitro.

An article detailing the study, titled "Elderberry flavonoids bind to and prevent H1N1 infection in  vitro," has been published in the peer-review scientific journal Phytochemistry. . . .

The research results are notable not only because they identified and characterized two specific flavonoids (plant nutrients that are beneficial to health) that are the major contributors to the anti-influenza activity of the elderberry extract, but also verified how the flavonoids provide that benefit,  via direct binding to H1N1 virus particles and blocking the virus from infecting host cells.

This recent study provides scientific evidence in support of some of the traditional uses of elderberry:

Elderberries have been a folk remedy for centuries in North America, Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa, hence the medicinal benefits of elderberries are being investigated and rediscovered. Elderberry is used for its antioxidant activity, to lower cholesterol, to improve vision, to boost the immune system, to improve heart health and for coughs, colds, flu, bacterial and viral infections and tonsilitis. Bioflavonoids and other proteins in the juice destroy the ability of cold and flu viruses to infect a cell. People with the flu who took elderberry juice reported less severe symptoms and felt better much faster than those who did not. Elderberry juice was used to treat a flu epidemic in Panama in 1995.

UPDATE:  Move over Tamiflu! Here's an impressive quote from the abstract to the recent study.

The H1N1 inhibition activities of the elderberry flavonoids compare favorably to the known anti-influenza activities of Oseltamivir (Tamiflu; 0.32 microM) and Amantadine (27 microM).

The study was published in July 2009 in Phytochemistry "Elderberry flavonoids bind to and prevent H1N1 infection in vitro" by Roschek B Jr, Fink RC, McMichael MD, Li D, Alberte RS.

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Iodine in the traditional Japanese diet

In an effort to reap the perceived benefits of the traditional Japanese diet, some alternative medicine practitioners advocate high-dose iodine supplements. Alan Gaby reviews the evidence for this kind of treatment in the Townsend Letter:

While iodine therapy shows promise, I am concerned that two concepts being put forth could lead to overzealous prescribing of this potentially toxic mineral. First is the notion that the optimal dietary iodine intake for humans is around 13.8 mg per day, which is about 90 times the RDA and more than 13 times the "safe upper limit" of 1 mg per day established by the World Health Organization. Second is the claim that a newly developed iodine-load test can be used as a reliable tool to identify iodine deficiency.
Is the optimal human requirement 13.8 mg per day?
The argument, developed by one investigator, (5) that the optimal human iodine intake is around 90 times the RDA is based mainly on two points. The first point is that the average iodine intake of adults living in Japan is 13.8 mg per day, and the Japanese are among the healthiest people in the world, with low rates of cancer. The second point is in regard to the amount of oral iodine that it takes to saturate the thyroid tissues.
The idea that Japanese people consume 13.8 mg of iodine per day appears to have arisen from a misinterpretation of a 1967 paper. (6) In that paper, the average intake of seaweed in Japan was listed as 4.6 g (4,600 mg) per day, and seaweed was said to contain 0.3% iodine. The figure of 13.8 mg comes from multiplying 4,600 mg by 0.003. However, the 4.6 g of seaweed consumed per day was expressed as wet weight, whereas the 0.3%-iodine figure was based on dry weight. Since many vegetables contain at least 90% water, 13.8 mg per day is a significant overestimate of iodine intake. In studies that have specifically looked at iodine intake among Japanese people, the mean dietary intake (estimated from urinary iodine excretion) was in the range of 330 to 500 mcg per day, (7,8) which is at least 25-fold lower than 13.8 mg per day

Gaby has debunked a pervasive myth. Concerning the second point, Gaby examines the rationale for an innovative new testing procedure for iodine deficiency ('iodine loading") and finds it wanting.

Gaby concludes:

The possibility that high-dose iodine/iodide can relieve certain common conditions is intriguing. Considering the positive anecdotal reports, an empirical trial of iodine/iodide therapy, based on the clinical picture, seems reasonable. The case has not been made, however, that the average person should markedly increase his or her iodine intake in an attempt to saturate the tissues with iodine. Nor has the case been made that the iodine-load test can provide reliable guidance regarding the need for iodine therapy. Thyroid function should be monitored in patients receiving more than 1 mg of iodine per day

Reasonable suggestions, I think, based on the evidence.

The original article by Gaby sparked a debate (which I have yet to read). Make of it what you will, here are those posts:

• A Rebuttal of Dr. Gaby's Editorial on Iodine by Guy E. Abraham, MD and David Brownstein, MD
  
• Alan R. Gaby, MD's Response to: A Rebuttal of Dr. Gaby's Editorial on Iodine
  
• Iodine Debate Continues by Guy E. Abraham, MD and David Brownstein, MD
  
• Gaby Responds to Rebuttal #2 by Alan R. Gaby, MD

Update:
Here is a comprehensive study of idodine toxicity.

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How safe are kelp supplements?

Recently, I have noticed that kelp supplements are available just about everywhere. But how safe are they?

An article in the Journal of Dermatology related this horror story:

A 54-year-old woman was referred to the University of California, Davis, Occupational Medicine Clinic with a 2-year history of worsening alopecia and memory loss. She also reported having a rash, increasing fatigue, nausea, and vomiting, disabling her to the point where she could no longer work full-time. A thorough exposure history revealed that she took daily kelp supplements. A urine sample showed an arsenic level of 83.6 microg/g creatinine.

So the researchers conducted a study:

To evaluate the extent of arsenic contamination in commercially available kelp, we analyzed nine samples randomly obtained from local health food stores. Eight of the nine samples showed detectable levels of arsenic higher than the Food and Drug Administration tolerance level of 0.5 to 2 ppm for certain food products. None of the supplements contained information regarding the possibility of contamination with arsenic or other heavy metals.

The researchers warn that under-regulation of supplements may be putting the public in danger:

The 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) has changed the way dietary herbal therapies are marketed and regulated in the United States. Less regulation of dietary herbal therapies will make inadvertent toxicities a more frequent occurrence.

My own reaction: it depends how you define "regulation." Contaminated products and products sourced from contaminated environments should be banned entirely. As for uncontaminated products, it's far preferable that the government mandate warning labels than ban products entirely. Why? First, people will turn to unsafe sources if they think the product is helpful -- as happens with street drugs, defeating the purpose of a ban. Second, it's not the role of governments to make choices for people. Improved testing and labeling offers an important and in many respects, urgently required advance on current practice.

The authors further advise:

Clinicians should be aware of the potential for heavy metal toxicity due to chronic use of dietary herbal supplements. Inquiring about use of dietary supplements is an important element of the medical history.

And patients should make themselves familiar with the up-to-date scientific literature on any drug or supplement they consume. This has never been so easy to do.

If you are not familiar with the science, what would be the point of taking any supplement? You could just as easily be putting yourself at further risk!

Finally, I can see two other potential problem with kelp. First, concerns the extremely high iodine content of some species. This may put some people at risk of toxicity. Second, some places where seaweed is gathered may be contaminated by industrial waste or pollutants. And some seaweeds may contain toxic heavy metals such as iron or aluminum. I have read that lead contamination is an issue with various kinds of supplements sourced from China.

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Is high fructose corn syrup as heathy as sugar?

JOTMAN.COM:

"American Coke is too sweet" is a familiar complaint about the US coming from Thais I know who have relocated.

Most processed American foods are too sweet, in my opinion. But is something else going on here? Is there just more sugar added to American Coke?

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Red wine substance featured on 60 Minutes

A CBS News 60 Minutes report examined claims that a substance in red wine (Resveratrol) could improve health and lengthen lives.

I have been taking resveratrol for several years.

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Best diet for prevention of heart disease

NY Times reports that the winner, hands down, is the "Mediterranean diet":

“The Mediterranean diet is one people can stick to,” said Dr. Ozner, author of “The Miami Mediterranean Diet” and “The Great American Heart Hoax” (BenBella, 2008). “The food is delicious, and the ingredients can be found in any grocery store.

“You should make most of the food yourself,” Dr. Ozner added. “When the diet is stripped of lots of processed foods, you ratchet down inflammation. Among my patients, the compliance rate — those who adopt the diet and stick with it — is greater than 90 percent.”

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For diabetes prevention eat nuts and beans, not bread and potatoes

NY Times reports:

People with Type 2 diabetes on a high-fiber diet kept their blood sugar under better control when they ate foods like beans and nuts instead of the recommended whole-grain diet, researchers have found.

Beans and nuts are among foods that only modestly increase blood glucose levels; scientists describe these foods as having a low glycemic index. . . .

The high-cereal high fiber diet emphasized “brown foods” such as whole-grain bread and breakfast cereal, brown rice and potatoes with the skin on. The low-glycemic diet included beans, peas, lentils, pasta, quickly boiled rice and certain breads, like pumpernickel and rye, as well as oatmeal and oat bran cereals.

It's important to consider that some of the low-glycemic foods are only generally considered low-glycemic under certain conditions. For example, instant oatmeal is often considered to be higher glycemic than the whole oats long-time cooking variety.

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Two supplements you don't have to worry about not taking

Science News reports:

In perhaps the largest cancer chemoprevention trial ever conducted, researchers have found that supplementation with vitamin E or selenium, alone or in combination, was not associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer or other cancers. This study, along with another cancer prevention study, will be published in the January 7 issue of JAMA, and both reports are being released early online because of public health implications.

I have not gone out of my way to take either E or Selenium in supplement form for years now.

Wherever possible, it's usually best to get vitamins and minerals from natural food sources. Nuts are a great natural source of both vitamin E and selenium -- and lots of other stuff too. These "other" nutrients may well enhance any benefits we derive from vitamin E and selenium.

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In study, walnuts and almonds protected hearts

Bloomberg reports on a study of the effect of the so-called "Mediterranean-diet" Vs a low-fat diet on heart disease. The study found:

One of the Mediterranean-diet groups was given 1 liter (33.8 ounces) a week of virgin olive oil. The other received 30 grams (1.06 ounces) a day of mixed nuts, half of which were walnuts and the rest almonds and hazelnuts.

The prevalence of metabolic syndrome decreased 6.7 percent in the group given the olive oil compared with 13.7 percent among those in the nut group, the study found.

Weight didn’t change among the participants after one year. Those on the Mediterranean diet plus nuts experienced more of a drop in waist size, triglycerides and blood pressure compared with those on the low-fat diet, Ros said.

The article notes that other studies have made similar findings:

Nuts contain nutrients that may affect insulin resistance, blood pressure and blood fats such as cholesterol. Studies have shown that eating nuts may protect against heart disease, the researchers said. A July report in the New England Journal of Medicine found that overweight people lost more pounds on a Mediterranean diet than did those on a diet low in fat.

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Benefits of iodine in your diet

Kristof at the NY Times writes:

Almost one-third of the world’s people don’t get enough iodine from food and water. The result in extreme cases is large goiters that swell their necks, or other obvious impairments such as dwarfism or cretinism. But far more common is mental slowness.

When a pregnant woman doesn’t have enough iodine in her body, her child may suffer irreversible brain damage and could have an I.Q. that is 10 to 15 points lower than it would otherwise be. An educated guess is that iodine deficiency results in a needless loss of more than 1 billion I.Q. points around the world.

One unfortunate consequence of the "heath" trends in the West to choose sea salt over table salt is that the iodine has not been added to sea salt. Deficiencies may result where local soils are deficient in iodine. One scientist observes:

Worldwide, the soil in large geographic areas is deficient in iodine. Twenty-nine percent of the world's population living in approximately 130 countries is estimated to live in areas of deficiency (see Table). This occurs primarily in mountainous regions such as the Himalayas, the European Alps, and the Andes, where iodine has been washed away by glaciation and flooding. Iodine deficiency also occurs in lowland regions far from the oceans, such as central Africa and eastern Europe. Those who consume only locally produced foods in these areas are at risk for IDD.

Wikipedia notes, "The introduction of iodized salt since the early 1900s has eliminated this condition in many affluent countries; however, in Australia, New Zealand, and several European countries, iodine deficiency is a significant public health problem."

As for natural sources of iodine, artist-blogger Kylie Budge writes, "I didn't know about iodine in seaweed until I lived in Japan where people eat many different kinds of seaweed every day. I've grown to love eating seaweed through nori, kombu, hijiki and wakame in Japanese food." If a lack of iodine is correlated with a low IQ, perhaps the success of Japanese at mathematics and other disciplines can be explained by a diet rich in iodine. (Of course, another explination offered is that East Asians get more DHA than other people from the oily fish they eat. Fish oil being a brain nutrient).

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Nap Vs cup of coffee

“People think they’re smarter on caffeine, but this study is a strong argument for taking a nap instead of having a cup of coffee," the researcher said to the NY Times. Here's what they found:

Those who had caffeine had worse motor skills than those who napped or had a placebo. In the perceptual task, the nappers did significantly better than either the caffeine or placebo group. On the verbal test, nappers were best by a wide margin, and the caffeine consumers did no better than those given a placebo. Despite their mediocre performance, caffeine takers consistently reported less sleepiness than the others.

Speaking of napping, did you know that "the Chinese are napping maniacs?"

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Eggs and diabetes

Startling results from a recent study:

Specialists at Harvard Medical School in Boston found eating an egg every day may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes by about 60 per cent.

Women were most susceptible, with females consuming seven eggs or more a week increasing their risk by 77 per cent.

Eating just one egg a week carried no increased risk, Dr Michael Dr Gaziano wrote in the journal Diabetes Care.

It's hard to believe an egg-a-day could really be that risky.

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Health benefits of vanilla

Wikipedia discusses the health benefits of the world's second most expensive spice:

In old medicinal literature, vanilla is described as an aphrodisiac and a remedy for fevers. These purported uses have never been scientifically proven, but it has been shown that vanilla does increase levels of catecholamines (including epinephrine, more commonly known as adrenaline), and as such can also be considered mildly addictive. In an in-vitro test vanilla was able to block quorum sensing in bacteria. This is medically interesting because in many bacteria quorum sensing signals function as a switch for virulence. The microbes only become virulent when the signals indicate that they have the numbers to resist the host immune system response.*

The adrenaline kick is certainly for real. Be sure you are eating real vanilla, not synthetic product. Otherwise you deprive those farmers in Africa, Mexico, and Indonesia of their livelihood. But worst of all, you cheat yourself of the genuine vanilla experience.
__
* Source: Inhibition of bacterial quorum sensing by vanilla extract.

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Hazardous energy drinks

I came across an article which discusses caffeine intoxication -- these days most typically associated with energy drinks -- some of which contain up to fifteen times more caffeine than a cola drink. The article states:

Caffeine intoxication is clinically considered a syndrome. It is currently defined by a number of symptoms and clinical features that surface in response to recent excessive consumption of caffeine. Common features of caffeine intoxication include excitement, anxiety, rapid heartbeat, restlessness, tremors, insomnia, rambling flow of thought and speech or periods of inexhaustibility. In rare cases, caffeine intoxication can lead to death.

The caffeine content of energy drinks can vary from can to can, from 50 milligrams to more than 500 milligrams per serving, whereas a normal 12-ounce cola drink has approximately 35 mg of caffeine per serving and a 6-ounce cup of brewed coffee has 80 to 150 milligrams of the stimulant drug per serving.

The highlighted line is misleading. It should read: Taken in sufficient quantities, caffeine will kill you. Caffeine is deadly in relatively small quantities. A fatal dose of caffeine is only 3,000-20,000 mg. Fewer than 50 strong cups of coffee or 6 energy drinks -- consumed in a short period of time -- could easily be fatal. In 2000, one Irish athlete died after drinking just four cans of Red Bull.

This website reviews energy drinks. The writer observes that some energy drinks do not bother to list the caffeine content. One such drink is Roaring Lion:

Roaring Lion does not have a very complicated ingredient list. . . . The nutrition label clearly points out generous amounts of niacin, vitamins B6 and 12, and pantothenic acid. Curiously, caffeine content is not indicated. The caffeine rush is above average, which is why we were surprised it was not called out.

The energy drink reviewer notes that whereas caffeine is an essential ingredient in any energy drink, "Some of the energy drinks just keep upping the caffeine content but that can make you feel like crap, stomach issues, and has you crash hard with a caffeine addiction head ache the next day." Even when it comes to energy drinks, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Why not just drink coffee? You decide whether -- and how much -- sugar to add, you can be sure what's in it, and coffee appears to have some real health benefits.

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How to like healthy foods

NY Times reports: "studies suggest that involving children in meal preparation is an important first step in getting them to try new foods."

I wonder if the same thing holds true for grown-ups?

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Mediterranean diet extinct

NY Times reports:

“It is almost a perfect diet, but when we looked at what people were eating we noticed that much of the highly praised diet didn’t exist any more,” said the report’s author, Josef Schmidhuber, a senior economist at the food organization. “It has become just a notion.”

The article suggests the Mediterranean diet may have gone extinct within the past few years -- the very period when international scientists have increasingly extolled the health benefits of the diet which consists largely of fish, olive oil, goat's cheese, tomatoes and other fresh vegetables.

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