Encouraging Health

Who would have thought that a little green fruit with fuzzy brown skin would help your heart big time?

But it’s true. Eating lots of kiwifruit is like putting a tag team of heart helpers on your cardio-health case. Here’s why.

It’s in Your Blood
Kiwifruit appear to put the kibosh on artery-clogging plaques in two ways: They help lower triglyceride levels, and they reduce platelet clumping. The platelet effect could be particularly good for your ticker: Although platelets aid in blood clotting, when these cells stick together too much, it could set the stage for a heart attack or stroke.

Head of the Class
There’s plenty of heart-helping nutrition in kiwifruit to explain these positive impacts. You may be surprised to learn a kiwi has more vitamin C than an orange, beats bananas for potassium, and is chock-full of vitamin E and magnesium.

Dive In
Kiwifruit are easy to eat. Just slice one in half and scoop out the insides with a spoon, like you would a melon. Want to get creative with kiwifruit?

Try this Banana-Kiwi Salad.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 tablespoon minced shallot
2 teaspoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pinch of cayenne pepper, or to taste
4 kiwis, peeled and diced
2 firm ripe bananas, cut diagonally into 1/2-inch-thick slices
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
2 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh mint
2 tablespoons chopped cashews, toasted (see Tip)

Directions
1. Whisk lime juice, oil, shallot, vinegar, honey, salt and cayenne in a medium bowl. Add kiwis, bananas, bell pepper and mint; toss to coat. Serve sprinkled with cashews.

For more heart-healthy ideas, search Encouraging Health

Lois Fletcher started taking the subway to work nine months ago to save money. It turned out to be an excellent way for her to lose weight — more than 30 pounds to be exact.

Five mornings a week, the 53-year-old mother of three boards a commuter train in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, and heads downtown. She then walks about a mile to her office at the American Cancer Society, where she works as a computer specialist.

“My doctor has been encouraging me to exercise for quite some time,” Fletcher said. “I’ve never been able to fit it into my schedule. Now it is part of my daily commute.”

Like millions of mass transit riders around the United States, Fletcher realizes that leaving her car behind and getting on a train is good for her physical and mental health.

Fletcher acknowledges she’s overweight. When she started walking to and from the train station, she weighed close to 300 pounds. She suffers from diabetes and was taking medication for hypertension.

She was surprised to see all that walking was paying off: “At first I started to see changes in the way my clothes fit, and then when I got on the scale I found I had indeed lost weight.”

“Here’s somebody in her work clothes, granted with tennis shoes on, getting good exercise,” observed Fletcher’s colleague, Colleen Doyle, director of nutrition and physical activity for the American Cancer Society. Doyle herself makes the same trek from the subway station to the office. Going to a gym isn’t the only way to get regular exercise, she said.

Doyle said she sees more and more people who are killing two birds with one stone and meeting daily physical activity recommendations by walking or biking to work.

For those of us living in Puget Sound, working in twenty minutes of walking should not be a problem. With all the hills there are here, it’s no wonder we’re such a fit area of the country!

Browse Encouraging Health for more health tips.

Salad bars can be diet salvation or junk-food minefields. Here’s how to get from one end to the other without detonating an explosion of bad fats, sodium, sugar, and refined carbs.

1. Go dark on greens: Build a vitamin- and fiber-packed foundation by starting with roughly 1 cup of spinach and romaine leaves (for more than half of your daily vitamin A and all of your vitamin K, plus some folate and vitamin C). Skip ‘em: Lighter greens tend to offer less nutrition. Iceberg lettuce, for instance, delivers only about 7% of the A you need, some K, and not much else.

2. Go bright on veggies: Next, add about 1 cup of the most colorful crudités — think broccoli, carrots, cherry tomatoes, green and red bell peppers, beets. Ounce for ounce, vibrant veggies give you more fiber, minerals, vitamins, and disease-fighting antioxidants than their paler companions, like celery and cucumbers. Skip ‘em: Anything coated in mayo or an indefinable dressing, including carrot-and-raisin mixes, coleslaw, and potato salad.

3. Choose lean proteins: Aim for about 1/2 cup of these. Chickpeas and kidney beans are nifty sources of fat-free protein (6 grams each). Sliced hard-boiled eggs (8 grams) are another smart choice, just limit the yolk to limit the fat. Skip ‘em: Chicken, tuna, or crab salads — they’re usually made with high-fat mayo; three-bean salad, which typically is afloat in a sea of oil; and cottage cheese, which is high in aging (read artery-clogging) saturated fat.

4. Sprinkle on extra flavor and crunch: Like cheese? Add 1 tablespoon of Parmesan (22 calories) to punch up the flavor, or 1 tablespoon of walnuts or sunflower seeds for some healthy crunch. Both have good-for-your-heart fats that help your body absorb the nutrients in all those veggies. Skip ‘em: Cheddar cubes — you’ll quickly eat more than you need; croutons — they may look harmless but at 100 calories per 1/4 cup, they’re usually high-cal booby traps of refined carbs, sodium, and trans fats. Ditto for crunchy Asian noodles.

5. Dress for success: Now swirl on about 1 tablespoon of heart-healthy olive oil, a splash of vinegar, a grating of pepper, and toss, toss, toss. Ask any chef — it’s the secret to a perfect salad. Thorough tossing ensures that all the flavors and textures are evenly distributed and lets you use minimal dressing to maximum effect. Skip ‘em: Walk right past those vats of ready-made salad dressings. Even the low-fat or fat-free versions are usually loaded with salt, sugar, and additives. And just 2 tablespoons of regular blue cheese or ranch have about 160 fat-packed calories.

6. Prefer a fruit salad? Easy. Go for whatever’s fresh — melons, berries, pineapple, kiwi — and top with 1 to 2 tablespoons of chopped walnuts or sunflower seeds for a sprinkling of good fats and crunchy flavor. Then buy a small container of low- or no-fat yogurt or cottage cheese for creamy protein minus the saturated fat in dairy foods. Skip ‘em: Syrupy canned peaches, apricots, pears, etc. They have far more calories and fewer nutrients than fresh fruit.

For more health information, check out other posts on Encouraging Health

Whether you steep it, saute it, or soak it, oh-so-savory rosemary can elevate both your culinary skills and your health.

Why? Because not only is it one of the trendiest cooking spices, but the fragrant needle-leaved herb is also showing early promise as a cancer killer.

Antioxidant Action
Human studies are needed to confirm the effects, but in cell studies, rosemary extract has given both breast cancer and leukemia cells a real fight. That’s good news about an herb we already know is chock-full of antioxidants — those free-radical killers that help protect you from cell-level damage.

4 Ways to Get More Rosemary into Your Life
Stick a fresh sprig in your lemonade, or steep it in hot tea.
Add chopped rosemary to your tossed salads.
Use fresh or dried rosemary in marinades for meats or vegetables (olive oil, fresh or dried rosemary, and soy sauce make a nice, simple one).

Try this delicious rosemary-infused recipe :

These simple sautéed mushrooms work as a quick, weeknight side dish. To turn them into a main course, toss with cooked pasta and a generous handful of Parmesan cheese or fold into an omelet with Gruyère, fontina or Swiss cheese.

Makes 4 servings, about 3/4 cup each

ACTIVE TIME: 20 minutes

TOTAL TIME: 20 minutes

EASE OF PREPARATION: Easy

1 ounce bacon (about 11/2 slices), chopped
1 1/2 pounds mixed mushrooms, such as cremini, shiitake (stemmed) and portobello, cut into 1/4-inch slices
2 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary or 1/2 teaspoon dried
1/4 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup dry white wine

Cook bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until just beginning to brown, about 4 minutes. Add mushrooms, garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until almost dry, 8 to 10 minutes. Pour in wine and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated, 30 seconds to 1 minute.

Browse Encouraging Healthfor more health tips.

Forget the green beer and the green shirt today. Going green inside your home is where it’s at.

Forget the green beer and the green shirt today. Going green inside your home is where it’s at.

That’s right. Sprucing up your home with some live greenery helps keep you healthy. How? Plants can prime you for good health and better blood pressure.

All-Natural Health Helper
It’s not clear why, but nursing-home residents who were surrounded by greenery got fewer infections than peers who were in less green environments. And plants seem to have a soothing effect that helps keep blood pressure under control. Plants may help protect your lungs, too. In particular, English ivy, rubber plants, and spider plants are known to remove chemical pollutants from indoor air. Allergic to pollen? You might consider a few silk plants instead.

6 Reasons to Drink Green Tea
The steady stream of good news about green tea is getting so hard to ignore, that even java junkies are beginning to sip mugs of the deceptively delicate brew. You’d think the daily dose of disease-fighting, inflammation-squelching antioxidants — long linked with heart protection — would be enough incentive. But wait . . . there’s more! Lots more.

1. Cut Your Cancer Risk
Several polyphenols — the potent antioxidants that green tea is famous for — seem to help keep cancer cells from gaining a foothold in the body by discouraging growth and then suppressing the creation of new blood vessels that tumors need to thrive. Study after study has found that regularly drinking green tea reduces the risk of breast, stomach, esophagus, colon, and prostate cancer.

2. Soothe Your Skin
Got a cut, scrape, or bite, and a little leftover green tea? Soak a cotton ball in it. The tea is a natural antiseptic that relieves itching and swelling. Try it on inflamed blemishes, sunburns, or puffy eyelids. But that’s not all. Green tea has been shown to help block sun-triggered skin cancer, whether you drink it or apply it directly to the skin — which is why you’re seeing green tea in more and more sunscreens and moisturizers.

3. Steady Your Blood Pressure
Having healthy blood pressure — meaning below 120/80 — is one thing. Keeping it that way is quite another. But people who sip just half a cup of green tea a day are almost 50% less likely to wind up with hypertension than nondrinkers. Credit goes to the polyphenols again (especially one known as ECGC); they help keep blood vessels from contracting and raising blood pressure.

4. Protect Your — or Your Mom’s — Memory
Green tea may also keep the brain from turning fuzzy. Getting-up-there adults who drink at least two cups a day are half as likely to develop cognitive problems as those who drink less. Why? It appears that the tea’s big dose of antioxidants fights the free-radical damage to brain nerves seen in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

5. Stay Young
The younger and healthier your arteries are, the younger and healthier you are. So fight plaque buildup in your blood vessels; the sticky stuff increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, adds years to your RealAge, and saps your energy. How much green tea does this vital job take? About 10 ounces a day, which also deters your body from absorbing artery-clogging fat and cholesterol.

6. Lose Weight
Oh yeah, one more thing. Turns out that green tea speeds up your body’s calorie-burning process. In the every-little-bit-counts department, that’s good news!

I’ve lost ten pounds in the past three weeks, drinking twenty ounces of Green Tea a day. It really does work. In conjunction, I’ve cut out all snacks, reduced meal portions and became more active. I feel better, can breathe easier and more alert.

For more great health tips, browse Encouraging Health

Did you know that most of the free-radical fighters in green tea never make it to your bloodstream? But there’s a solution.

To get a better grasp on the healthy catechins in your green tea, flavor your cuppa with a squeeze of citrus juice.

Green Tea Booster
Catechins — the antioxidants in green tea famous for lowering your risk of chronic disease — quickly lose their power in your intestine. In fact, as much as 80 percent of the catechins in green tea are never absorbed. The solution to boosting absorption, researchers recently found, is as simple as flavoring your tea with freshly squeezed and strained lemon, orange, lime, or grapefruit juice.

Taking Tea with C
The vitamin C in citrus may help with absorption by increasing the acidity in your small intestine. Other unidentified substances in the juice probably lend a hand, too. Researchers found a 50-50 mix had the greatest catechin-preserving effect, and lemon did it best, closely followed by orange, lime, and, in last place, grapefruit.

Here’s a great recipe to try: Green Tea-Fruit Smoothie

Makes 2 servings, 1 cup each

ACTIVE TIME: 10 minutes

TOTAL TIME: 10 minutes

EASE OF PREPARATION: Easy

2 cups frozen unsweetened mixed fruit (peaches, melon and grapes)
3/4 cup hot brewed green tea
3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Combine fruit, tea, honey and lemon juice in a blender; blend until smooth and frothy. Serve immediately.

More Green Tea News
It may help you lose weight. In a small study, Japanese researchers recently noted that adding catechin-rich green tea to the daily diet mildly boosted weight loss efforts in a group of men. Catechins — a type of antioxidant — also are purported to provide heart-health benefits. Other sources of catechins include grapes, wine, chocolate, berries, and apples.

The best way to lose weight is to control your calorie intake and increase the number of calories you burn each week through extra physical activity. A nutritionally balanced diet that doesn’t exclude food groups or discourage healthy eating patterns is your best bet. Boosting your metabolism with muscle-building exercises will make weight loss easier as well. If your weight loss efforts have stalled, consider revising your workout schedule to increase the aerobic portion of your workout. Or, focus on other goals in addition to weight, such as body fat measurements or body size measurements; sometimes improvements in these areas are not apparent on the bathroom scale.

It may help keep your knees young and strong.

It can help your skin look great.

It can help you stay sharp. In a study, older people who drank at least 2 cups of antioxidant-rich green tea per day were about 50 percent less likely to develop cognitive impairment compared to the people who drank 3 or fewer cups per week. Exercising regularly and keeping your brain busy with puzzles, books, and problem solving are other good ways to stay sharp.

Correct water temperature and steeping time are important when making a flavorful cup of tea. Black and herbal teas should be prepared with boiling water and steeped for 4 to 6 minutes. However, these conditions are too harsh for delicate green tea and may affect the flavor and potency. When preparing green tea, heat water to approximately 160-180 degrees Fahrenheit. If you don’t have a thermometer, just bring the water to a boil and then remove it from the heat source for about a minute. Pour the water over your green tea bag or leaves and steep for 2 to 3 minutes, the optimal infusion time for this kind of tea.

So, sit back and enjoy yourself with some Green Tea! For more great health articles, browse Encouraging Health

So you spent your youth smoking, eating doughnuts, or keeping the couch warm. Don’t despair.

There are four simple steps middle-aged people can take to lower the risk of death in the ensuing four years by 40 percent — even if they haven’t been a health superstar to date.

Live the Good Life
Make these modest changes to start undoing all the unhealthy things you did before:
Eat more than five servings of fruit and vegetables daily.

Walk at least 2.5 hours a week.

Shave your BMI to under 30; 24.9 is ideal.

Quit smoking.

All Four Is Best
Try to take all four changes to heart — it’s your best shot at lowering your risk of heart disease. But tackling even one or two items will still have an impact on your longevity.

To help you stave cravings, A High-Calorie Snack That’s OK for Your Waist

If you love nuts as much as a backyard squirrel does, but you’re caught up by your calorie-counting conscience, relax. And read on . . .

Peanuts may be one high-calorie treat that doesn’t do serious damage to your weight or your waistline.

Say Hi to Mr. Peanut
In a recent small study where people were given a daily snack of peanuts, researchers were surprised to find that no one’s weight changed significantly after many weeks, despite the extra calories. Why? Seems peanuts fill you up (thanks to the fiber, protein, and healthy monounsaturated fats) but the fat and calories in the nuts aren’t completely absorbed by your gut. Now, if only Girl Scout cookies worked the same way.

Lost in Digestion
More good news about peanuts: We may burn off the fats in them better than we burn off the fats in potato chips or cookies. Our bodies break down the monounsaturated fats in peanuts and convert them into energy more easily than saturated fats.

So go ahead — unleash your inner squirrel. Just limit your daily dips in the peanut dish to 1-ounce servings (about 30 peanuts). They’re not made of air, after all.

Browse Encouraging Health for more tips.

Chocolate is found to have more and more health benefits the longer the medical community studies it. So far, Chocolate (dark chocolate, specifally) is shown to help victims of dementia and high blood pressure, not to mention it’s flavanols, which are antioxidants found in cocoa beans, that help to boost the immune system of those with autoimmune diseases, such as HIV and those on immunosuppressants.

In today’s day and age, medical researchers are still seeing cases of dementia, one of the unfortunate symptoms of advanced HIV disease, and are looking for ways to improve brain functioning. Flavanols can increase blood flow to the brain, researchers have said. This raises the prospect of using flavanols in the treatment of dementia, marked by decreased blood flow in the brain, and in maintaining overall cardiovascular health. The next step, researchers said, is to move from healthy subjects to people who have “compromised” blood flow to the brain.
Norman Hollenberg of Harvard Medical School said he found similar health benefits in the Cuna Indian tribe in Panama. They drink cocoa exclusively and do not have high blood pressure. In addition to having low blood pressure, Hollenberg said, there are no reports of dementia among the native Cuna.

Some people get all the luck.

However, when tribe members move to cities, their blood pressure rises.
Another study of six men and seven women aged 55-64. All had just been diagnosed with mild high blood pressure. Every day for two weeks, they ate a 100-gram candy bar and were asked to balance its 480 calories by not eating other foods similar in nutrients and calories. Half the patients got dark chocolate and half got white chocolate.

Those who ate dark chocolate had a significant drop in blood pressure (by an average of 5 points for systolic and an average of 2 points for diastolic blood pressure). Those who ate white chocolate did not.

What is it about dark chocolate? The answer is plant phenols — cocoa phenols, to be exact. These compounds are known to lower blood pressure. A major difference in both the Cuna Indian Tribe and the second study is the consumption of dark chocolates, which is high in flavanols. In the case of the Cuna Indians, all they drank is their own chocolate; in cities they adopt the local diet.

Eating more dark chocolate can help lower blood pressure — if you’ve reached a certain age and have mild high blood pressure, keep in mind: Dark chocolate — not white chocolate — lowers high blood pressure

The cocoa typically sold in American markets is low in flavanols, which usually are removed because they impart a bitter taste. He also said the findings do not mean people should indulge in chocolate. Chocolates made in Europe are generally richer in cocoa phenols; so if you’re going to try this at home, remember: Darker is better.

Another bit of good news, is in cocoa a lot of fat is removed from the chocolate. But you still have to balance the extra calories by eating less of other things. You have to remember two things.

First, flavonoid content varies markedly in chocolate products, so you might not be getting the healthy stuff with that candy bar.

And second, along with the flavonoids, chocolate products also deliver lots and lots of calories. 100 grams of dark chocolate, for instance, yields approximately 500 calories, and eating this much chocolate daily without adjusting for the increase in calories will produce a weight gain of about 1 pound per week.

So any benefit you might gain by eating chocolate could be completely negated by making yourself obese.

Furthermore - and importantly for those who adhere religiously to one or another mutually-exclusive dietary philosophies - these extra calories are packaged both as fat and as carbohydrates. This means that adding chocolate to your diet will violate both low fat and low carb dietary rules.

Search Encouraging Heath for more healthy tips.

Doctors often hesitate to tell patients they likely suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, fearing the news will overwhelm them.

But a study by Washington University in St. Louis suggests physicians need not worry.

Not only did the diagnosis not increase anxiety or depression among patients and their caregivers, but most were relieved to have symptoms explained and a way to find help.

‘It’s not good news. No one is pleased to find out they have dementia,’ said Brian Carpenter, co-investigator and associate professor of psychology at Washington University. ‘But some people find comfort in getting resolution to their anxiety and concerns, and knowing that people can help them.’

The study, which appears in the March issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, gauged depression and anxiety two days before and two days after an evaluation and diagnosis.

Medical practice guidelines say doctors should tell their patients about a dementia diagnosis regardless of the stage of the disease.

But a review of published studies dating from the 1970s until very recently showed half of doctors were not telling their patients what they suspected, the researchers said.

Scott Roberts, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study, said medical ethicists debate patients’ right to information and the fear that such knowledge may upset them.

‘This study is interesting, because it shows a lot of the paternalistic fears are not supported by the data,’ he said.

Neurologist John Morris, who heads the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Washington University where the study subjects were evaluated, said doctors have varying comfort levels, in part because of uncertainty the diagnosis is accurate.

He said he wanted to evaluate patients’ reactions because early detection has advantages, such as enabling patients to plan for their future care.

In the St. Louis study, 90 patients and their caregivers were interviewed at the center two days before the evaluation, and by telephone two days later. Their levels of anxiety and depression were gauged based on answers to standardized questionnaires.

For more articles on mental health issues, browse Encouraging Health and 451 Press.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have discovered that a change in the location of a protein in the brain could serve as a biomarker for depression, making it possible with a simple, rapid, laboratory test to identify patients with depression and to determine whether a chosen antidepressant therapy will provide a successful response.

A new discovery could change future diagnosis and therapy of depression.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have discovered that a change in the location of a protein in the brain could serve as a biomarker for depression, allowing a simple, rapid, laboratory test to identify patients with depression and to determine whether a particular antidepressant therapy will provide a successful response.

The research is published in the March 12 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

“This test could serve to predict the efficacy of antidepressant therapy quickly, within four to five days, sparing patients the agony of waiting a month or more to find out if they are on the correct therapeutic regimen,” said Mark Rasenick, UIC distinguished university professor of physiology and biophysics and psychiatry.

Despite decades of research, the biological basis of depression is unknown, and the molecular and cellular targets of antidepressant treatment remain elusive, although it is likely that these drugs have one or more primary targets.

Rasenick said the discovery could help millions who suffer from undiagnosed depression or receive unsuccessful treatment.

“We discovered that in depressed individuals a signaling protein is located in specific areas of the cell membrane called lipid rafts,” he said. This protein, called Gs alpha, activates adenylyl cyclase, a link in signal transduction, and is responsible for the action of neurotransmitters such as serotonin.

“These ‘rafts’ are thick, viscous, almost gluey areas, that either facilitate or impede communication between membrane molecules,” Rasenick said. “When Gs alpha is caught in these lipid raft domains, its ability to couple with and activate adenylyl cyclase is markedly reduced. Antidepressants help to move the Gs alpha out of these rafts and facilitate the action of certain neurotransmitters.”

Previous research in both rats and cultured brain cells by Rasenick and his colleagues, as well as others, has shown that Gs alpha changed its location in response to antidepressants, moving out of the lipid rafts to areas of the membrane that allow more efficient communication among membrane components responsible for neurotransmitter action. Further, antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs have been shown to concentrate in these lipid rafts.

“This new study shows that in depressed humans, Gs alpha protein is confined in lipid rafts, where it’s less likely to mediate the action of neurotransmitters, and that antidepressants have the opposite effect,” Rasenick said.

“In simple language — we may be able to tell you if you are depressed and more importantly, whether you are responding to the chosen antidepressant therapy.”

The new study may also explain why antidepressants take so long to work and why chemically dissimilar compounds have similar effects.

Browse Encouraging Health and the 451 Press for more information on Mental Health issues.

mental health, depression, protein, biomarker, treatment

mental health, depression, protein, biomarker, treatment