03-22-12

Raising daily protein intake can help fend off age-related muscle mass loss, while exercise keeps muscles and bones strong, a U.S. registered dietitian said.

Lona Sandon, assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said the older people get, the more important it becomes to pay attention both to the quantity and quality of the calories consumed.

“The good news about calories taken in is the more physically active you are, the more calories you can consume at any age,” Sandon said in a statement. “The bad news is because we are aging, we are losing muscle mass, and we need the right type of calories to help promote and keep that lean muscle mass.”

A healthy diet rich in quality protein helps minimize muscle loss and experts recommend the average adult consume .36 grams of protein per pound of body weight — although for older individuals that benchmark jumps to nearly .7 grams. For example, for someone who weighs 154 pounds, the .7 gram of protein translates into about 4 ounces of recommended daily protein.

A 4-ounce piece of grilled trout provides roughly 28 grams of protein, Sandon said.

It is important to consider the quality of the protein, like that packed with essential amino acids — lean meat, fish, low-fat dairy products, cheese and yogurt — Sandon said.

Copyright United Press International 2012

03-21-12

Filling your plate with colorful fruits and veggies doesn’t just make your plate look pretty – it also provides antioxidants and other health-enhancing vitamins and minerals. “We get different nutrients from different foods, so eating a variety of produce in different colors is one of the easiest ways to ensure we’re getting a full range of nutrients,” explains Vandana Sheth, RD, spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. In fact, one quick way to determine whether you’re eating a balanced meal is to check your plate for at least three different hues. Here, 10 bright ideas for loading up on foods that fight cancer, boost vision, and improve your health in other ways.

Red: Beets

A crimson tint indicates that a fruit or vegetable may promote a healthy heart, boost vision and immunity, and cut down on cancer risks. Beets are a prime example of the healing power of the color red. Their hue comes from betacyanins, a substance linked to fighting cancer in laboratory mice. The vegetable also contains nitrate, which may lower your blood pressure and can halt dementia in older adults by improving blood flow to the brain.

Red: Cherries

The antioxidant-packed ruby spheres are more than just an ice cream topping. Bing cherries may lower your risk for arthritis, heart disease and cancer by fighting inflammation, according to a USDA study. If you’d rather drink your nutrients, guzzle a tart cherry juice. What’s more, a 2010 study found that the beverage may help you sleep better with its high melatonin content. It may also reduce muscle damage in athletes, reports research from London.

Red: Tomato

A tomato’s rosy complexion comes from lycopene, a phytochemical that helps protect against prostate cancer. While most fruits and vegetables lose some of their antioxidant mojo once they’re cooked, cooking tomatoes actually enhances their lycopene content, according to Sheth. This means that even when tomatoes are out of season you can reap their health benefits through tomato sauce or tomato paste.

Orange: Sweet Potatoes

Orange fruits and veggies get their color from beta-carotene, a potent antioxidant that’s converted to vitamin A in our bodies. The substance may protect the skin from UV rays and help prevent vision loss. Sweet potatoes are no exception. In addition to delivering nearly four times your recommended vitamin A allowance, a serving supply you with blood-pressure-friendly potassium, immunity-boosting vitamin C and slimming fiber. Orange you glad you know?

Yellow: Pineapple

The tropical fruit delivers 131 percent of your daily vitamin C intake and also supplies you with bromelain, an enzyme that helps with indigestion, reduces inflammation and may prevent heart disease, Sheth says. Mounting research also indicates that bromelain has cancer-fighting properties.

Green: Broccoli

Emerald veggies like broccoli and bok choy support a healthy immune system. These cruciferous veggies contain a protein that helps intra-epithelial lymphocytes (IELs) – immune cells that line and protect the gut and skin – function properly, according to 2011 research published in Cell. Broccoli’s also a great way to get your green on because it contains relatively high levels of protein (3 grams per cup), vitamin C (135 percent of your daily value), and vitamin K (116 percent of your daily value).

Green: Spinach

When it comes to greens, the deeper and more intense the color, the more nutrition you’ll get, Sheth says. Choose kale, spinach or collard greens rather than iceberg lettuce. Popeye’s favorite will hit you with significant helpings of calcium, potassium and vitamins A and K. Not to mention, the nitrate in spinach can help muscles perform more efficiently, according to a 2011 study published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Blue: Blueberries

Natural foods with a blue or purple glow contain anthocyanins, a phytonutrient known to be a superfood, according to Sheth. “These foods decrease our risk for macular degeneration and prevent certain cancers and strokes,” she says. A higher intake of anthocyanins has also been linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a 2012 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Blueberries are a superstar in their own right, serving up more antioxidants than most fruits and vegetables, as well as healthy doses of vitamins K and C, fiber and manganese.

Purple: Grapes

Grapes possess an antioxidant trump card, of sorts: resveratrol. Many studies indicate that the substance may chip away at a number of different types of cancers and prevent against heart disease. To boot, the nutritious orbs may also prevent age-related blindness, according to research from California Table Grape Commission. They’ll also give you substantial amounts of vitamins K and C.

White: Banana

You may not think pale foods fit this technicolour food scheme, but white fruits and veggies can be beneficial to your health. “More and more people say to stay away from white foods, but naturally occurring white foods give us good nutrients,” says Sheth. In fact fruits with white flesh – such as bananas, apples, pears and cauliflower – may keep strokes away, according to a Dutch study published in the journal Stroke. Bananas’ concentration of B6 and potassium – which can boost your mood and help your heart, respectively – make them a solid achromatic choice.

—

For more tips and tricks, visit Fitbie.com — @2012, Fitbie.com See more at http://fitbie.msn.com/

Distributed by MCT Information Services

03-14-12

US researchers said Tuesday a cancer drug has shown promise toward improving memory when given to older mice with Alzheimer’s disease.

The drug, epothilone or EpoD, had previously been shown by the same team of scientists at the University of Pennsylvania to prevent cognitive decline in young mice who were bred to show Alzheimer’s-like symptoms later in life.

But their latest study showed that benefits in learning and memory extended to older mice who showed signs of Alzheimer’s, offering one more step toward someday trying the treatment in humans with the incurable form of dementia.

The drug appears to work by stabilizing nutrient-transporting structures in nerve cells known as microtubules, which break down when clumps of a protein called tau build up in the brain, causing what are known as “tangles” in the nerve cells.

EpoD functions like a well-known chemotherapy drug, paclitaxel, but is different in that it crosses the blood-brain barrier, said lead author Kurt Brunden, whose study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.

“EpoD readily enters the brain, where it appears to persist for a much longer time than in the blood. This may explain why low doses were both effective and safe in the mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Mice were treated for only three months, however. Humans likely would have to treated for much longer because Alzheimer’s is a chronic, deteriorating condition, so more research is needed to see if lengthier treatment would be harmful.

A separate team of researchers last month reported that another widely available cancer drug, bexarotene, showed remarkable success in reversing Alzheimer’s disease in mice.

Mice treated with the drug became rapidly smarter and the plaque in their brains that was causing Alzheimer’s started to disappear within hours, said the research in the US journal Science.

But experts caution that mice models do not always translate to success in human trials, and significant hurdles remain before it will be known whether such approaches could work in humans.

ksh/sg

COPYRIGHT 2002 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.

03-14-12

When it comes to weight loss, we focus a lot on the body – foods that will boost your fat burn and workouts for your six-pack. And while those things can help you slim down, a crucial, first step on the road to lasting weight loss is often missed: Conditioning your mind for change, says Margaret Moore, CEO of Wellcoaches and co-author of “Organize Your Mind Organize Your Life.”

To drop weight (and keep it off), you need to improve your ability to control cravings, deal with distractions, manage stress, and creatively problem solve so an office happy hour stocked with hors d’oeuvres doesn’t toss you off the wagon. In short, embarking on a diet shakes up your life and, unless you’re fully armed, you’ll abandon ship.

In “Organize Your Mind Organize Your Life,” Moore and her co-author Paul Hammerness, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, outline a six-part strategy for getting your brain in order to deal with any obstacle life throws your way. We asked Moore to apply these strategies to weight loss so you can see how a clearer mind will help you meet your healthy goals.

Tame the Frenzy

You missed your workout and you’re feeling pretty low about it. (It’s the third time this week.) Those 7 p.m. spinning sessions wouldn’t be so difficult to make if you were more caught up at work – but you’re pretty stressed about that, too. You hope you’ll make it to the gym tomorrow but with your slow work place, who knows?

Negative thoughts like these – anxiety about deadlines, sadness about your missed workout, anger at yourself for not being more “on top of it” – impair brain function and cloud your thinking. That leaves you less creative, resilient and strategic in your decision-making, says Moore, who is also co-director of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. In fact, a 2010 study from the University of Waterloo in Ontario found that people who felt anxious while doing math problems had trouble completing a task as simple as counting to 5. (And you expect to count calories carrying around all that stress?)

Unfortunately, the average dieting experience is full of toxic, negative self-talk. (“Why haven’t I lost more weight?” “I’m always going to be fat.” “I really shouldn’t have had that extra scoop of ice cream.”) It’s a vicious cycle that more often than not ends with a person ditching her diet so she doesn’t have to listen to the mean voice inside bad-mouthing her body. Simply quieting the negative self-talk clears your mind and gets your brain ready to learn and your body ready to lose. The quickest way to quiet your inner frenzy is to get moving, says Moore. When you feel negative emotions closing in, head out for a brisk walk, shoot a couple free throws, or turn on some music and dance. Keeping busy prevents you from ruminating on perceived failures. Try to manage the negative emotions and amplify the positive, says Moore.

Sustain Attention

Whether you’re eating, exercising, or cleaning out your kitchen cupboards, the ability to focus intently on the task at hand is an invaluable weight loss tool. “An organized brain is able to evaluate a situation and screen out what’s worthy of your attention,” says Moore. And that skill plays a large role in mindful eating, which countless studies have proven decreases the amount of food a person eats and increases their satiety post meal. “You want people to build a really positive, nourishing relationship with food, which means enjoying and savoring it instead of carelessly eating it while watching TV, browsing online, or commuting,” says Moore. “You can put a lot of food in your mouth in 20 minutes.”

Whatever you’re doing, completely immerse yourself in that task. If you’re watching TV, don’t get distracted by the bag of chips in the pantry. If you’re shopping for groceries, don’t let the cookie aisle cause you to stray from your list. Choose to be fully present and focused on seeing your goal to completion without allowing outside factors to interfere. When you start to feel your focus wavering, think about your strengths or recent successes.

Apply the Brakes

When you open your fridge with every intent to grab a handful of raspberries and come out with a piece of cake instead, you’ve missed a chance to put the brakes on an impulse – and your waistline pays the price. One study even found that the top 10 percent most impulsive people weighed 24 more pounds than the bottom 10 percent.

“Impulsivity leads you to make choices that come from emotional need rather than from a decision the ‘thinking brain’ reasoned out,” says Moore. When you find yourself making a snap decision for the worse – even if you’re already a couple bites in – get your thinking brain back in place by asking yourself questions about your other options. You could put the slice of cake back and grab the raspberries like you originally intended, or you could sliver off a very small piece of the cake and eat it with your fruit. Applying the brakes helps you slow down the decision process, weigh all of the options, and put a goal (fitting into that bikini, perhaps?) at the center of the discussion between your thinking brain and your emotional brain. “You need to have a head to heart conversation,” says Moore. “If you slow down and give the head a chance to make a decision, it will always make the better one.”

Mold Information

Yesterday you had a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin for breakfast. By 11 a.m. you felt sluggish and pretty hungry. Today you had a little more time in the morning, made yourself an egg white omelet with veggies and a little low-fat cheese. When 11 a.m. rolled around you were alert and felt like you could wait until lunch to eat again. Which breakfast will you choose tomorrow?

When you reflect on the discovery that you made – breakfast No. 1 bad, breakfast No. 2 good – you’re pulling information from your working memory, a mental workspace that holds the need-to-know-this-on-a-regular-basis info that helps you solve problems using observations and conclusions you’ve formed in the past. “Harnessing your working memory is really about having a menu of things that work for you at the front of your mind,” says Moore.

The key to mastering this strategy seems simple enough: Remember how you feel after you eat a meal or perform a workout and apply those findings later. But the reality is that we are often either too busy to do a gut check or don’t think to connect how our bodies feel with what we ate an hour or two earlier. We end up making the same mistakes, eating the wrong things and the scale doesn’t budge. To help begin collecting “data points” for your working memory to access, Moore suggests keeping a food and feeling journal. Carefully track what you eat like you would with a traditional food diary but also take note of how you feel a couple of hours afterward. Once you stock up your store of working memories you’ll be able to think creatively and make better, more healthful decisions on the fly. For example, if the salad bar is out of grilled chicken, you remember a satisfying lunch featuring a tuna sandwich and add tuna to your bowl instead of reaching for the crispy chicken, which you remember being greasy. Strategically committing these food-feeling outcomes makes it easy to guide future behavior.

Shift Sets

Many people pride themselves at being good multitaskers. They claim to have no trouble completing a home workout while prepping dinner and helping their kids with homework, flitting back and forth between activities. When we focus on several things at once it’s not whether or not the tasks get done that’s the issue, it’s how well.

While it is possible to quickly move from one project to another, it’s not through multitasking – it’s through a deliberate process Moore and Hammerness have dubbed set-shifting. “Set-shifting is the notion that when your shift your focus, you shift all of it to the next thing,” says Moore. “You don’t pollute the next task with thoughts or worries from the previous.” Rather than being in a confusing and constant state of working on everything, you’re deliberately stopping one task and moving on to the next, then stopping that task and moving on to the next, guaranteeing that you’re always fully invested in what’s in front of you.

So when you hit pause on the workout DVD to help your child with a division problem, you’re not still thinking about the finer mechanics of a pushup as you try to explain how many times six goes into 40. You switch tasks and reorient your focus, promising yourself that when you do return to the previous activity it’ll be with renewed motivation and new insights about how to improve your performance.

Connect the Dots

Though these strategies can be broken into categories – and it’s best to focus on each individually when you’re just starting out, says Moore – they work best when applied together. With the frenzy of negative emotions tamed, your attention focused, your impulses controlled, your working memory ripe for the picking, and the ability to get more done more efficiently in a shorter timeframe mastered, your brain is ready to take on the challenge of weight loss. “The prize of an organized mind is discovering your unique formula for keeping weight off – you learn what works and what doesn’t,” says Moore.

—

For more tips and tricks, visit Fitbie.com — @2012, Fitbie.com See more at http://fitbie.msn.com/

03-15-12

Men who drink a sugar-sweetened beverage a day have a 20 percent higher risk of heart disease than men who avoid sugary drinks, U.S. researchers say.

The study found men who drank a 12-ounce, sugar-sweetened beverage a day had a 20 percent higher risk of heart disease. However, less frequent consumption — twice weekly and twice monthly — didn’t carry the same risk.

The findings held even after controlling for other risk factors, including smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol use and family history of heart disease, said Dr. Frank B. Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston who was the study’s lead author.

“This study adds to the growing evidence that sugary beverages are detrimental to cardiovascular health,” Hu said in a statement. “Certainly, it provides strong justification for reducing sugary beverage consumption among patients, and more importantly, in the general population.”

Hu and his colleagues arrive at their findings, published in Circulation, an American Heart Association journal, after studying 42,883 men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.

Beginning in January 1986 and every two years until December 2008, the men — mostly white, ages 40-75 and employed in the health profession — answered questionnaires about diet and other health habits. The study participants also provided a blood sample midway through the survey. Follow-up was 22 years later.

Copyright United Press International 2012

03-14-12

Adriane Fugh-Berman was stunned by the question: Two graduate students who had no symptoms of mental illness wondered if she thought they should take a powerful schizophrenia drug each had been prescribed to treat insomnia.

“It’s a total outrage,” said Fugh-Berman, a physician who is an associate professor of pharmacology at Georgetown University. “These kids needed some basic sleep [advice], like reducing their intake of caffeine and alcohol, not a highly sedating drug.”

Those Georgetown students exemplify a trend that alarms medical experts, policymakers and patient advocates: the skyrocketing increase in the off-label use of an expensive class of drugs called atypical antipsychotics. Until the past decade these 11 drugs, most approved in the 1990s, had been reserved for the approximately 3 percent of Americans with the most disabling mental illnesses, chiefly schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; more recently a few have been approved to treat severe depression.

But these days atypical antipsychotics – the most popular are Seroquel, Zyprexa and Abilify – are being prescribed by psychiatrists and primary-care doctors to treat a panoply of conditions for which they have not been approved, including anxiety, attention-deficit disorder, sleep difficulties, behavioral problems in toddlers and dementia. These new drugs account for more than 90 percent of the market and have eclipsed an older generation of antipsychotics. Two recent reports have found that youths in foster care, some less than a year old, are taking more psychotropic drugs than other children, including those with the severest forms of mental illness.

In 2010 antipsychotic drugs racked up more than $16 billion in sales, according to IMS Health, a firm that tracks drug trends for the health-care industry. For the past three years they have ranked near or at the top of the best-selling classes of drugs, outstripping antidepressants and sometimes cholesterol medicines. A study published last year found that off-label antipsychotic prescriptions doubled between 1995 and 2008, from 4.4 million to 9 million. And a recent report by pharmacy benefits manager Medco estimated that the prevalence of the drugs’ use among adults ballooned more than 169 percent between 2001 and 2010.

Critics say the popularity of atypical antipsychotics reflects a combination of hype that the expensive medicines, which can cost $500 per month, are safer than the earlier generation of drugs; hope that they will work for a variety of ailments when other treatments have not; and aggressive marketing by drug companies to doctors and patients.

“Antipsychotics are overused, overpriced and oversold,” said Allen Frances, former chair of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, who headed the task force that wrote the DSM-IV, psychiatry’s diagnostic bible. While judicious off-label use may be appropriate for those who have not responded to other treatments for, say, severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, Frances said the drugs, which are designed to calm patients and to moderate the hallucinations and delusions of psychosis, are being used “promiscuously, recklessly,” often to control behavior and with little regard for their serious side effects. These include major, rapid weight gain – 40 pounds is not uncommon – Type 2 diabetes, breast development in boys, irreversible facial tics and, among the elderly, an increased risk of death. The latest fad?

Doctors are allowed to prescribe drugs for unapproved uses, but companies are forbidden to promote them for such purposes. In the past few years major drugmakers have paid more than $2 billion to settle lawsuits brought by states and the federal government alleging illegal marketing; some cases are still being litigated, as are thousands of claims by patients. In 2009 Eli Lilly and Co. paid the federal government a record $1.4 billion to settle charges that it illegally marketed Zyprexa through, among other things, a “5 at 5 campaign” that urged nursing homes to administer 5 milligrams of the drug at 5 p.m. to induce sleep.

Wayne Blackmon, a psychiatrist and lawyer who teaches at George Washington University Law School, said he commonly sees patients taking more than one antipsychotic, which raises the risk of side effects. Blackmon regards them as the “drugs du jour,” too often prescribed for “problems of living. Somehow doctors have gotten it into their heads that this is an acceptable use.” Physicians, he said, have a financial incentive to prescribe drugs, widely regarded as a much quicker fix than a time-intensive evaluation and nondrug treatments such as behavior therapy, which might not be covered by insurance.

In a series in the New York Review of Books last year, Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, argued that the apparent “raging epidemic of mental illness” partly reflects diagnosis creep: the expansion of the elastic boundaries that define mental illnesses to include more people, which enlarges the market for psychiatric drugs.

“You can’t push a drug if people don’t think they have a disease,” said Fugh-Berman, who directs PharmedOut, a Georgetown program that educates doctors about drug marketing and promotion. “How do you normalize the use of antipsychotics? By using key opinion leaders to emphasize their use and through CMEs (continuing medical education) and ghost-written articles in medical journals,” which, she said “affect the whole information stream.”

James H. Scully Jr., medical director of the American Psychiatric Association, sees the situation differently. He agrees that misuse of the drugs is a problem and says that off-label prescribing should be based on some evidence of effectiveness. But Scully suggests that a key factor driving use of the drugs, in addition to “intense marketing and some effectiveness,” is the growing number of non-psychiatrists prescribing them. Many lack the expertise and experience necessary to properly diagnose and treat mental health problems, he said.

Among psychiatrists, use of antipsychotics is rooted in a desire to heal, according to Scully. “All of the meds we use have their limits. If you’re trying to help somebody, you think, ‘What else might I be able to do for them?’ ”

Since 2005, antipsychotics have carried a black-box warning, the strongest possible, cautioning against their use in elderly patients with dementia, because the drugs increase the risk of death. In 2008 the Food and Drug Administration reiterated its earlier warning, noting that “antipsychotics are not indicated for the treatment of dementia-related psychosis.” But experts say such use remains widespread.

In one Northern California nursing home in 2006 and 2007, 22 residents, many suffering from dementia, were given antipsychotics for the convenience of the staff or because the residents refused to go to the dining room. In some cases the drugs were forcibly injected, state officials said. Three residents died.

A 2011 report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services found that in a six-month period in 2007, 14 percent of nursing home residents were given antipsychotics. In one case a patient with an undetected urinary-tract infection was given the drugs to control agitation.

“The primary reason is that there’s not enough staff,” said Toby S. Edelman, senior policy attorney for the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a Washington-based nonprofit group, who recently testified about the problem before the Senate Special Committee on Aging. “If you can’t tie people up, you give ‘em a drug” she said, referring to restrictions on the use of physical restraints in nursing homes. Drugs at 18 months

Nursing home residents aren’t the only ones gobbling antipsychotics.

Mark E. Helm, a Little Rock pediatrician who was a medical director of Arkansas’s Medicaid evidence-based prescription drug program from 2004 to 2010, said he had seen 18-month-olds being given potent antipsychotic drugs for bipolar disorder, an illness he said rarely develops before adolescence. Antipsychotics, which he characterized as the fastest-growing and most expensive class of drugs covered by the state’s Medicaid program, were typically prescribed to children to control disruptive behavior, which often stemmed from their impoverished, chaotic or dysfunctional families, Helm said. “Sedation is the key reason these meds get used,” he observed.

More than any other factor, experts agree, the explosive growth in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder has fueled antipsychotic use among children. Between 1994 and 2003, reported diagnoses increased 40-fold, from about 20,000 to approximately 800,000, according to Columbia University researchers.

That diagnosis, popularized by several prominent child psychiatrists in Boston who claimed that extreme irritability, inattention and mood swings were actually pediatric bipolar disorder that can occur before age 2, has undergone a reevaluation in recent years. The reasons include the highly publicized death of a 4-year-old girl in Massachusetts, who along with her two young siblings had been taking a cocktail of powerful drugs for several years to treat bipolar disorder; the revelation of more than $1 million in unreported drug company payments to the leading proponent of the diagnosis; and growing doubts about its validity.

Helm said that antipsychotics, which he believes have become more socially acceptable, serve another purpose: as a gateway to mental health services. “To get a child qualified for SSI disability, it is helpful to have a child on a medicine,” he said, referring to the federal program that assists families of children who are disabled by illness. Ask your doctor

Psychiatrist David J. Muzina, a national practice leader at pharmacy benefits manager Medco, said he believes direct-to-consumer advertising has helped fuel rising use of the drugs. As former director of the mood disorders center at the Cleveland Clinic, he encountered patients who asked for antipsychotics by name, citing a TV commercial or print ad.

Some states are attempting to rein in their use and cut escalating costs. Texas has announced it will not allow a child younger than 3 to receive antipsychotics without authorization from the state. Arkansas now requires parents to give informed consent before a child receives an anti-psychotic drug. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it is summoning state officials to a meeting this summer to address the use of antipsychotics in foster care. And Sens. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced legislation that would require doctors who prescribe antipsychotics off-label to nursing home patients to complete forms certifying that they are appropriate.

Medco is asking doctors to document that they have performed diabetes tests in patients taking the drugs. “Our intention here is to get doctors to reexamine prescriptions,” Muzina said.

“In the short term, I don’t see a change in this trend unless external forces intervene.”

health-science@washpost.com

This article was produced in collaboration with Kaiser Health News. KHN is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health-policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

For more news, or to subscribe to the newspaper, please visit http://www.washingtonpost.com

Copyright washingtonpost.com

03-06-12

TOKYO — The adoption of only one of five healthy lifestyle habits, such as not smoking and drinking moderately, can lower the cancer risk in males by 14 percent, according to the results of a long-term survey by the National Cancer Center in Japan.

The center surveyed about 80,000 men and women aged between 45 and 74 over a 10-year period from nine prefectures including Iwate, Osaka and Okinawa.

The center set numerical criteria for five cancer risk factors — smoking, drinking, salt intake, exercise and body mass index. Cancer risks increased if the subjects exceeded those criteria.

According to results of the survey conducted between 1995 and 2006, the more healthy habits subjects had, the lower their cancer risk.

On average, the adoption of one healthy habit would reduce cancer risks by 14 percent for males and by 9 percent for females, the center said.

——

(c)2012 The Yomiuri Shimbun (Tokyo)

Visit The Yomiuri Shimbun (Tokyo) at www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy

Distributed by MCT Information Services

Copyright The Yomiuri Shimbun 2012

03-07-12

March 07–Does your cupboard hold a package of unfinished crackers? An old bag of whole grain flour? Some leftover nuts from holiday baking? Or perhaps a bottle of vegetable oil you’ve been slow to finish?

If so, you may be harboring dangerous, rancid foods.

Protecting against rancidity — which occurs when oils oxidize — has long been a challenge for home cooks, but a recent perfect stew of factors has made the issue more serious. Strangely enough, this situation comes courtesy of the rising popularity of “healthy” polyunsaturated fats, whole grain flours and warehouse stores — not bad developments on their own, but taken together they’ve resulted in American pantries full of food that goes rancid much faster than we’re used to.

Add to that Americans’ growing acclimation to the taste of rancid foods, and the problem gets bigger.

So what’s wrong with eating rancid oils?

“There are at least two,” says lipid specialist and University of Massachusetts professor Eric Decker. “One is that they lose their vitamins, but they also can develop potentially toxic compounds” that have been linked to advanced aging, neurological disorders, heart disease and cancer.

“They’re carcinogenic, pro-inflammatory and very toxic,” says integrative medicine specialist Andrew Weil. “They are also widespread in the food chain.”

The growing problem comes as a byproduct of Americans and food manufacturers swapping trans fats for polyunsaturates in their products over the past 10 years. This has resulted in a whopping 58 percent drop in trans fatty acid consumption in the U.S. in the past decade, according to a recent government report. But for all of their artery-blocking evil, trans fats had at least one big benefit: They were very stable, meaning they took forever to go rancid. The same is true of highly refined white flours.

But when these flours and fats were replaced with whole grain flours and polyunsaturates, such as corn and soybean oil, that shelf stability collapsed.

“Manufacturers noticed this and had to change their delivery schedules and formulations,” says Kantha Shelke a food scientist and spokeswoman for the Institute of Food Technologists. “And some consumers became irrationally angry that their food was not lasting as long as it had before.”

Indeed, while Americans followed orders to ditch saturated and trans fats for polyunsaturated (vegetable) and monounsaturated (olive, canola and peanut) fats, they didn’t realize these healthier fats don’t last nearly as long.

“People buy these huge containers of oil (at warehouse clubs) and just don’t realize that there’s no way they can use it before it goes rancid,” Decker says. “They don’t recognize it as a problem.”

While monounsaturates (like olive or peanut oil) also can go rancid after about a year, they are still 10 times more stable than polyunsaturates, according to Decker.

“People need to minimize their use (of polyunsaturated oils),” Weil says. “And if you do use them, keep them in the refrigerator in the dark, and buy only small amounts that you use up quickly.”

And while some consumers can sniff out (and toss out) rancid foods, many don’t know the telltale stale, grassy, paintlike odor. Others may not be able to detect them through layers of other flavorings. And still others might feel compelled to consume them out of thriftiness or hopes that a strong sauce will mask the taste.

Because air, light and heat speed up oxidation, it’s normally a bad idea to, for example, buy vegetable oil in a clear bottle and place it on the counter in a warm kitchen for several months.

Exotic oils (macadamia, walnut, sesame, fish, flaxseed, etc.), nuts and whole grain flours are also major candidates for fast rancidity, and should all be stored in the refrigerator or freezer. Whole intact grains and nuts in their shells, however, last much longer.

“When grains are ground, their interiors are exposed to the air,” says food scientist and author Harold McGee. “The whole grains contain the germ and the bran, both of which are rich in oils, that are especially prone to oxidizing and going rancid. So you end up with off flavors very quickly in whole grain flours compared to refined flours.”

Frequent shopping for small quantities of fresh and freshly processed foods has served much of the world well in avoiding rancid food. Americans, however, favor a different grocery-shopping pattern that involves less-frequent trips for larger quantities of shelf-stable foods.

Trans fats, preservatives and refined flours combined to train a couple of generations of Americans that “chips, cakes, cookies and crackers could last for months,” Shelke notes, “and we became accustomed to that.”

Those habits may change in time, but until they do, Weil suggests that consumers train their “noses to recognize the smell of rancidity even in parts of a dish.”

Though some hope that our sense of smell and taste can help us avoid rancid foods, recent studies raise doubts. Shelke notes that new immigrants to America often think peanut butter — now often made with polyunsaturates — smells rancid while American natives think it just smells like peanut butter.

McGee notes that the problem extends to rancid olive oils, which, in a 2011 University of California study, were actually preferred by 44 percent of American tasters.

“We assume that rancid flavors are normal,” McGee says, “because, in some cases, that’s what we’ve gotten used to.”

The smell test

A rancid food is “the smell of oil paint,” says integrative medicine specialist Andrew Weil. “Linseed oil, which is the same as flax oil, is the basis of oil paint. It’s highly unsaturated and so it oxidizes fast when exposed to the air.”

How long is this good?

Although the FDA oversees advice on the safe storage of food at home, it has not updated its recommendations since the gradual switch from saturated fats to unsaturated fats in food production.

Experts advise paying close attention to “use by” and “sell by” dates on packages, which may have changed in recent years because of new formulations.

The Institute of Food Technologists’ Kantha Shelke says she’s found that similar boxes of soda crackers using refined and whole grain flours had shelf lives of 141 and 80 days respectively when left unopened.

In general, buy products that contain oils or fats in small quantities.

Store most cooking oils in a cool, dark cabinet — not next to the stove.

Refrigerate polyunsaturated oils especially fish, nut and flax seed oils.

Store nuts and whole grain flours in the freezer.

05-09-12

Diabetes drug could treat leading cause of blindness: study WASHINGTON, May 7 (Xinhua) — U.S. researchers have discovered that a drug already prescribed to millions of people with diabetes could also have another important use: treating one of the world’s leading causes of blindness.

In laboratory rat and cell-culture experiments, the scientists found that metformin, which is commonly used to control blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetes, also substantially reduced the effects of uveitis, an inflammation of the tissues just below the outer surface of the eyeball.

Uveitis causes 10 to 15 percent of all cases of blindness in the United States, and is responsible for an even higher proportion of blindness globally. The only treatment now available for the disorder is steroid therapy, which has serious side effects and cannot be used long-term.

“Uveitis has various causes — the most common are infectious diseases and autoimmune disorders — but they all produce inflammation within the eye,” said Prof. Kota Ramana with the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB), also senior author of a paper on the study published online Monday in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science. ” Metformin inhibits the process that causes that inflammation,” he added.

The scientists discovered metformin’s efficacy when they tested it in rats given an endotoxin that mimicked the inflammatory effects of bacterial infection. The results showed clearly that metformin was a very effective anti-uveitis agent.

“We found that the drug is therapeutic as well as preventive — if we gave our rats the drug beforehand, they didn’t develop uveitis, and if we gave it after uveitis had developed, it was therapeutic,” said UTMB professor Satish Srivastava, also an author of the paper. “Metformin’s strong anti-inflammatory properties make this possible,” he noted.

According to the researchers, metformin works by activating an enzyme called AMPK, which in turn damps down the activity of the protein NF-kappa B. The inhibition of NF-kappa B suppresses the production of inflammatory signaling molecules — cytokines and chemokines — needed to initiate and sustain uveitis.

Since metformin is already used so widely as a therapy for diabetes, the scientists believe that it has a good chance of being rapidly adopted as an anti-uveitis drug.

(c) 2012 Xinhua News Agency – CEIS. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

Copyright Xinhua News Agency – CEIS 2012

Colorectal cancer patients are commonly treated with a combination of three chemotherapy drugs, yet approximately half of those treated fail to respond and those who do respond are frequently plagued with side effects such as severe nerve pain. “Once bowel cancer has spread it is very difficult to treat, partly because the side effects of chemotherapy can limit how long patients can have treatment,” commented chief investigator William Steward, who is the ECMC director at the University of Leicester. “The prospect that curcumin might increase the sensitivity of cancer cells to chemotherapy is exciting because it could mean giving lower doses, so patients have fewer side effects and can keep having treatment for longer.”

The trial will recruit 40 patients with colon cancer that has metastasized to the liver. Three-fourths of the participants will be administered curcumin supplements for one week prior to being treated with standard chemotherapy drugs, while the remainder will receive chemotherapy alone.

“The Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres Network supports research into some of the most novel and exciting new anticancer therapies, often providing the first insights into their effect on cancer patients,” remarked Dr Joanna Reynolds, who is Cancer Research UK’s director of centers. “By doing a clinical trial like this we will find out more about the potential benefits of taking large amounts of curcumin, as well as any possible side effects this could have for cancer patients.”

“This research is at a very early stage, but investigating the potential of plant chemicals to treat cancer is an intriguing area that we hope could provide clues to developing new drugs in the future,” Dr Steward added.