Encouraging Health

Try fewer burgers and more veggies after menopause: Cutting dietary fat may offer a long-sought protection against deadly ovarian cancer — if you stick with the diet long enough.

Researchers unveiled the first hard evidence that switching to a low-fat diet late in life can lower the odds of ovarian cancer, a malignancy with a particularly dismal survival rate.

The study tracked almost 40,000 women ages 50 to 79, some of whom were assigned to cut the total fat in their diets to 20 percent of calories — from an average of 35 percent — while others continued their usual diets.

For the first four years, the menu changes didn’t make a difference. But those who kept the fat low for eight years cut their chances of ovarian cancer by 40 percent, researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

So far, the diet has had seemingly little impact on rates of breast cancer, colorectal cancer and even, surprisingly, heart disease. There are a number of theories: Maybe the women started healthier eating too late; most were overweight, a major risk factor, and the diet wasn’t designed to shed pounds. Nor did most women actually cut enough fat.

Despite all those hurdles, a low-fat diet did appear protective against ovarian cancer — and the women who started with the worst diets and cut fat the most, got the most benefit.

ovarian cancer, low fat diet

ovarian cancer, low fat diet

For some of us, exercise is like that new TV series — miss an episode and we write it off completely. Why bother, right?

But some exercise can still do plenty for you, even if you’re not religious about it. Just 30 minutes of walking 3 days per week, for example, can help reduce three important heart disease risk factors.

Three’s Good Company
In a study, healthy sedentary men and women who walked at a brisk pace for 30 minutes just 3 days a week were able to lower their blood pressure (systolic number), improve their ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol, and lose weight. That’s three major heart disease risk factors for the price of a few 30-minute walks!

Break It Up
If finding a full half hour to walk during your day isn’t possible, grab three 10-minute sessions at different times of the day. Exercise is like TiVo — you can work it around your schedule and it’s still just as good!

How about listening to a podcast while you walk?

walk, podcast

walk, podcast

Here’s another reason not to love darkness: It could mean less protection against colon cancer.

Sunlight helps your body make vitamin D, and many people fall short on D during the darker days of winter. But like Batman and Robin fighting villains, calcium and vitamin D may be key players in helping your body fend off precancerous colon polyps.

Supplement Codependency
Just as you need both sufficient calcium and vitamin D to build strong bones, you may need the vitamin/calcium combo to protect your colon as well. In a study, calcium supplementation thwarted colon-polyp recurrence only when people had enough vitamin D in their blood. Similarly, vitamin D lowered the risk of returning polyps only when people popped calcium. Determining how calcium and vitamin D work synergistically to keep the colon free of polyps requires further research.

Your Colon Checkup
Getting screened for colon cancer (something everyone over 50 should do) is the only way to know if you have colon polyps or colon cancer, and early detection gives you the best chance of successful treatment. Still reluctant to get your colon screened?

Read More about colon cancer from here:http://www.webmd.com/colorectal-cancer/tc/colon-cancer-treatment-patient-information-nci-pdq-general-information-about-colon-cancer

colon cancer

colon cancer

EVOO, which stands for extra virgin olive oil, is an abbreviation I first encountered watching Rachel Ray’s cable TV show “30 Minute Meals.”

The celebrity chef has even launched her own brand of olive oil (which she’s dubbed EVOO, naturally). But even though Ray uses extra virgin olive oil in abundance, I was never sure what made extra virgin different from regular olive oil. A little research revealed that there are, in fact, culinary as well as health reasons behind choosing this type of olive oil.

Extra virgin olive oil, known for its strong taste and flavor, is produced from the first pressing of the olives and has no more than 0.8 percent acidity. Regular olive oil is a blend of virgin and refined olive oil and can have up to 1 percent acidity. The flavor and taste of regular olive oil is not as strong as that of extra virgin olive oil.

All olive oil contains monounsaturated fats that help lower total and low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels in our blood. In fact, the FDA has stated that there is limited evidence to support consumption of two tablespoons a day of monounsaturated fat to help reduce the risk of heart disease.

So when you add fat to your meals, replace saturated fats, found mainly in animal products, with sources of monounsaturated fat, like nut, canola, and olive oils.

Like regular olive oil, extra virgin olive oil contains monounsaturated fats. Because extra virgin olive oil is less processed, however, it contains more of the antioxidant polyphenols, said to help reduce the risks of cancer and heart disease.

Despite the health benefits, I suspect Rachel Ray uses extra virgin olive oil in most of her dishes because of its distinctive flavor. The popularity of her term EVOO has made it a new addition to our culinary vocabulary.

Cant get enough Racheal Ray? Go here: http://www.watchingrachaelray.com/oktoberfest/

EVOO,Rachael Ray

EVOO, Rachael Ray

by Andrew Weil, M.D.
Believe it or not, adding fats to salads can make them healthier, according to research conducted at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.

In a study published in the March 2005 Journal of Nutrition, 11 study participants ate a mixed salad or a tomato salsa, with and without avocado or avocado oils.

From three to five times more carotenoid nutrients such as lycopene and beta-carotene were absorbed by the participants who ate the salad with avocados, which are about 17 percent fat. Previous studies have shown just as much benefit comes from including full-fat dressing on salads.

Naturally, the key here is balance.

Fatty salad dressing may help you absorb fat-soluble antioxidants and carotenoids, but keep your daily caloric load in mind before upending a bottle over your greens.

I recommend sparing use of fatty salad dressing, but more liberal ingestion of avocados, which come with lots of vitamins, minerals, and monounsaturated fats. Since the fat is part of the fruit, overdosing on the fat in this form is less likely.

For more cooking ideas, check out http://cooking.451press.com/

salad dressing, cooking

salad dressing, cooking

Sorry about no post this morning. Kept having Microsoft updates. Onto this afternoons post!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/conditions/10/09/alcoholism.pill.ap/index.html

A migraine pill seems to help alcoholics taper off their drinking without detox treatment, researchers report, offering a potential option for a hard-to-treat problem.

The drug, Topamax, works in a different way from three other medications already approved for treating alcoholism.

Experts said the drug is likely to appeal to heavy drinkers who would rather seek help from their own doctors, rather than enter a rehab clinic to dry out. The drug costs at least $350 a month, plus the price of doctor’s visits.

But side effects are a problem, and it’s unclear whether the findings will make a dent in an addiction that affects millions of Americans.

Addiction specialists not involved in the study said the findings are promising, although side effects such as trouble concentrating, tingling and itching caused about one in five people to drop out of the study. Drowsiness and dizziness are also problems.

“The size of the treatment effect is larger than in most of the other medications we’ve seen,” said Dr. Mark Willenbring of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. “And all the drinking variables changed in the right direction.”

The study, published in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association, was funded by the maker of the drug, Johnson & Johnson Inc.’s Ortho-McNeil Neurologics. The researchers also reported financial ties to the company. Ortho-McNeil reviewed the manuscript, but did not change the results or interpretation, the researchers reported.

The study followed 371 heavy drinkers for 14 weeks. About half were randomly assigned to take Topamax, also called topiramate, in gradually increasing doses. The others took dummy pills.

All volunteers were encouraged — but not required — to stop drinking.

At the start of the study, they drank, on average, 11 standard drinks daily. That’s about two six-packs of beer each day, or two bottles of wine, or a pint of hard liquor.

By the end of the study, 27 of the 183 people, or 15 percent, who took Topamax had quit drinking entirely for seven weeks or more. That compared with six out of 188, or 3 percent, in the placebo group.

Others cut back. The Topamax group cut back to six drinks a day, on average, assuming everyone who dropped out of the study relapsed into heavy drinking. That compared to seven drinks a day for the placebo group.

“You can come in drinking a bottle of scotch a day and get treatment without detox,” said Dr. Bankole Johnson of the University of Virginia, who led the study, which was conducted at 17 U.S. sites from 2004 to 2006.

To read the rest of the study, click above.

Topamax

Topamax

http://health.discovery.com/centers/althealth/naturopathy/naturopathy.html

Just what is naturopathic medicine?
Although naturopathic medicine has been practiced since the late 1800s, its philosophical roots extend back several millennia to the healing traditions of China, Greece and India.

In recent years, increased awareness about the relationship between nutrition, lifestyle and disease has helped popularize this science.

So too have the failings of mainstream medicine. Although naturopathy doesn’t have all the answers, so great is its promise that many traditional M.D.s are studying natural therapies.

Practitioners see themselves as teachers and partners, empowering and motivating patients to take responsibility for their health and well being.

“The primary goals of naturopathic medicine are to establish and maintain optimal health and to promote wellness,” say Michael Murray and Joseph Pizzorno, authors of the Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, and two of the nation’s most notable N.D.s (doctor of naturopathic medicine).

naturopathy

naturopathy

The size and shape of a woman’s hips may affect her daughter’s breast cancer risk, an international group of researchers report.

The study of 6,370 Finnish women found that breast cancer rates were nearly three times higher among those born to mothers with relatively wide hips, and nearly seven times higher among women born to mothers with wide hips who’d already given birth to one or more children.

A woman was more likely to develop breast cancer if her mother’s intercristal diameter (the widest distance between the wing-like structures at the top of the hip bone) was more than 30 centimeters (11.8 inches). The risk of breast cancer was also higher if these wing-like structures were rounded, the team said.

Breast cancer risk was 2.5 times higher for daughters of women in whom the widest distance was more than three centimeters greater than the distance at the front, said the American, British and Finnish researchers.

The American members were from Oregon Health & Science University.

The researchers noted that wide, round hips indicate high sex hormone concentrations in mothers, which may, in turn, boost breast cancer risk in their daughters. They suggested that increased breast cancer risk is established in the first trimester of pregnancy, when an embryo’s developing breast tissue is exposed to a mother’s circulating sex hormones.

Read more of this study by clicking above.

For more information on Breast Cancer, see http://www.discussingbreastcancer.com/

Breast Cancer

Breast Cancer

You know those seemingly endless hours your parents made you spend practicing the piano or learning to play the violin?

Time to say thank you, because all that practice did more than tune up your recital skills. It may have made the language areas of your brain more efficient, too. If you never took music lessons, here’s why you should start.

Music and Lyrics
Researchers recently asked a group of musicians and nonmusicians to listen to — and reproduce — tone sequences.

Your Brain on Music
Not surprisingly, the musicians performed better on the task. But this was a surprise: As the musicians reproduced the tones, scans of their brains showed major activity in areas linked to language, leading researchers to conclude that building music skills may bolster language areas of the brain as well. In other words, studying music is like doing push-ups for your brain!

Already a musician. Check out www.musiciansnotebook.com for ideas: 5 Ways To Make Your Digital Songwriting Life Easier

music, brain development

music, brain development

If you crave the occasional Mexican treat — and who doesn’t? — opt for a tortilla with this hue: blue.

Besides having a softer texture and sweeter taste than tortillas made from white corn, blue corn tortillas may have less impact on your blood sugar — and possibly your waist! Here’s the “why” and the “how.”

Hold the Starch
Researchers put both blue and white tortillas to the test and found that the blue flats had a lower starch content and lower glycemic load than the white variety. Which means that Team Blue is more likely to keep your blood sugar levels stable and help keep your appetite under control

Color Me Antioxidants
Another reason to go blue — or black, or red, or purple? The rich-in-color tortillas abound with anthocyanins, natural antioxidants that help steamroller DNA-damaging compounds hanging around in your body. Plus, darker-pigmented varieties dole out more protein. The downside? They tend to have more fat, too — so don’t eat ‘em until you’re blue in the face.

Try It:
Here’s another great blue corn treat to try: Parched Blue Corn, a roasted, lightly salted whole-kernel snack that’s a traditional Native American food. It was originally roasted in clay pots over open fires. You just have to tear open the bag.

Going Once, Going Twice:

Over on http://www.coachingcooking.com, there is a great recent for Sunday Breakfast: Mimosas and Breakfast Fajitas.Try making them with blue tortillas!

blue tortillas, antioxidants, www.coachingcooking.com, breakfadt fajitas

blue tortillas, antioxidants, www.coachingcooking.com, breakfadt fajitas