Recent Longevity News for the seven days ending 4/16/03:

Concord Grape Juice Stamps Out Hypertension - HealthScout News, 4/15/03 - "Half the men drank an average of 12 ounces of grape juice a day and the other half drank the same amount of a placebo ... At the end of the 12 weeks, the 19 men who drank the grape juice had a drop from an average baseline systolic blood pressure of 142.7 mm Hg, to 137.0, and a drop in diastolic blood pressure from 87.9, to 82.1 mm Hg. The men who drank the placebo showed no change" - Yeah but I calculate 12 ounces of grape juice at 206 calories.  It didn't mention their weight at the end of the study. - Ben

The Dairy Calcium in Yogurt Helps People Lose Belly - WebMD, 4/15/03 - "put 34 obese people on a low-cal diet. Sixteen of them got pills with 400 to 500 mg of calcium per day. The other 18 people ate enough yogurt to give them 1100 mg of calcium per day ... After 12 weeks, everybody lost a lot of fat ... Sixty percent of the yogurt eaters' weight loss was belly fat, while only 26% of the comparison group's loss was belly fat"

Estrogen Patch More Heart-Friendly Than Pills - WebMD, 4/15/03 - "the C-reactive protein increased to an average of almost twice their baseline levels when the women took oral estrogen replacement, but not when they were on the estrogen patch"

Walking Won't Prevent Heart Disease - WebMD, 4/15/03 - "only more strenuous exercise and physical activity, such as jogging, swimming, and climbing stairs, on a regular basis can significantly reduce the risk of early death due to heart disease"

Hong Kong Officials Launch Investigation After SARS Kills Younger, Fitter Patients - Intelihealth, 4/15/03 - "one expert voiced fears that the virus believed to be causing severe acute respiratory illness has mutated ... six of eight people whose deaths were reported over the weekend ranged in age from 35 to 52 and had no prior health problems"

Calcium Helps Girls Keep the Weight Off - HealthScout News, 4/14/03 - "Whether calcium comes from dairy products or supplements, girls who consume the highest levels weigh less than girls who consume lower levels ... as little as a daily increase of one cup of milk or a small piece of cheese, about 300 milligrams of calcium, resulted in one-half inch less of abdominal fat and as much as two pounds less of body weight. "I have reason to believe that the same effect occurs in boys,""

Two lipid-lowering meds are better than one, study finds - HealthScout News, 4/11/03 - "Researchers combined low-dose simvastatin, which targets low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (bad cholesterol), with the drug fenofibrate, which increases high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (good cholesterol) ... volunteers had a 52 percent reduction in triglycerides, a 23 percent increase in HDL and a 28 percent decrease n LDL" - Ask your doctor if replacing the fenofibrate with inositol hexanicotinate (no-flush niacin) might do the same thing. - Ben

Are Organic Foods Better for You? - HealthScout News, 4/11/03 - "The truth is there is no scientific evidence to prove that organic foods are safer or more nutritious than conventionally grown foods" - I emailed her at terrieh@umich.edu but received no response.  Several years ago, I got in an argument via email with another person of the U. of Michigan staff over a similar statement regarding vitamin E.  To make a broad statement like that, it's saying you went through every page of millions of pages of professional publications that's ever been published.   She didn't even go though the recent news.  See:

• Fruit Consumption Boosts Parkinson's Risk - HealthScout News, 4/2/03 - "Consuming lots of fruits and fruit juices appears to increase the risk of Parkinson's disease ... The culprit may be pesticides, plant-borne toxins or herbicides, not the fruit itself"
• Disease-Fighting Benefits of Organic Foods - WebMD, 3/6/03 - "Recent evidence suggests that these micronutrients play important roles in preventing cancer and heart disease ... organic berries and corn had significantly more flavonoids than those grown by conventional methods. And a third method -- called sustainable farming -- yielded even higher flavonoid levels"
• New reasons for eating organic? - MSNBC, 12/18/02 - "The study by researchers at the University of Washington concluded that children fed a diet of organic foods were exposed to far fewer — six to nine times less — toxic pesticides than children fed a conventional diet ... What we do know is that chronic exposures to low levels of pesticides could very well be significant ... Children exposed to high levels of organophosphate pesticides are at risk for bone and brain cancer, neuroblastoma and childhood leukemia"

Antioxidant Soothes Diabetic Neuropathy - WebMD, 4/11/03 - "Alpha lipoic acid seems to actually change the metabolism of the nerve or blood supply to the nerve ... It is a very strong antioxidant and it is assumed that oxidation plays a role in the development of diabetes ... This means the substance -- produced in very small amounts by the body and also found in foods such as potatoes and red meat -- protects against damage by cell-ravaging "free radicals." This oxidation process is implicated in various diseases, including heart disease, cancer, and neurologic conditions including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's ... alpha lipoic acid improves the function of cell "transporters" that carry and distribute glucose. "This helps insulin do its role,"" - See iHerb or Vitacost alpha lipoic acid products.

Birth Control Pill Linked to Heart Disease Protein - WebMD, 4/11/03 - "young women who took birth control pills had twice as much C-reactive protein in their blood as a similar group of women who did not use birth control pills ... It is possible that oral contraceptive use promotes inflammation" - See my inflammation page for ways to reduce it.

Grape Seed Extract May Be A Useful Supplement To Blunt Hypertension In Postmenopausal Women - Intelihealth, 4/10/03 - "a diet moderately high in grape seed extract can blunt salt (sodium chloride)-sensitive hypertension to about the same extent as treatment with either plant estrogens or 17ß-estradiol. This suggests that mechanisms other than the estrogen receptor activation actually provides the beneficial effects of estrogen therapy and that grape seed extract may be a useful supplement to blunt hypertension and other cardiovascular symptoms in postmenopausal women" - See iHerb (5% discount code "qc") or Vitacost grape seed extract products.

Chromium Effective for Common Type of Depression - New Hope Natural Media, 4/10/03 - "15 people suffering from atypical depression, who had been off of antidepressant medication for at least seven days, were randomly assigned to receive chromium picolinate or a placebo for eight weeks. The dose was 400 mcg per day for the first two weeks, then 600 mcg per day for the remainder of the study ... Seventy percent (7 of 10) of those receiving chromium responded to the treatment, whereas none of the five individuals in the placebo group had a positive response. Although the number of participants in the study was small, the difference in outcome between the chromium and placebo groups was highly statistically significant. Moreover, in 60% of those receiving chromium, the depression went into remission" - See iHerb or Vitacost chromium products.

Iron Improves Muscle Strength and Endurance - New Hope Natural Media, 4/10/03 - "after six weeks of iron supplementation, the women had 10 to 15% less muscle fatigue after the fourth minute of leg exercises, and leg muscle strength after completion of the exercises was increased by 26.5%" - See iHerb or Vitacost iron supplements.

Athletes Believe The "Whey" To Greater Muscle Strength Is Through Training And Protein Supplements - Intelihealth, 4/10/03 - "supplementation with a100% whey isolate formulation and creatine produced greater muscle fiber growth increases that transferred into significant increases in functional strength" - See iHerb (5% discount code "qc") or Vitacost whey products.

Cholesterol Drugs: Breast Cancer Treatment? - WebMD, 4/10/03 - "One reason cancer cells grow so fast is that they lack biochemical brakes that slow cell growth ... Mevacor -- and, likely, other statins -- lets these growth-brakes build up inside cancer cells -- making them a potentially useful breast cancer treatment down the road" - Note: Red yeast rice is a non-prescription statin but you should still check with your physician.  See VitaminShoppe or Vitacost red yeast rice products.

A Derivative Of The Green Tea Leaf May Help With Metabolic Syndrome X, A Potentially Deadly Disorder - Intelihealth, 4/10/03 - "A new weapon might eventually be added to the arsenal: consumption of Tegreen, a tea polyphenols product containing in excess of 65 percent tea catechins, derived from the green tea leaf ... oral administration of Tegreen is capable of improving glucose and lipid metabolisms in an obese rat model induced by a high-calorie diet ... Tegreen intervention can significantly decrease visceral fat depot and increase the insulin's sensitivity, presumably touching one of the pathological root causes of this potentially deadly syndrome" - See iHerb (5% discount code "qc") or Vitacost green tea extracts.

With Syndrome X, a Higher Risk for Stroke - ABC News, 4/10/03 - "People with three or more vascular risk factors have what is known as metabolic syndrome, also known as Syndrome X ... most of these risk factors, if not all of them, are modifiable. We can decrease weight and increase our physical activity, which will increase our good cholesterol and address the weight risk factor. We can decrease our blood pressure through medication, through diet and through exercise again. The same with diabetes and triglycerides — there are some agents that are supposed to reduce LDL, the bad cholesterol, and they may work in reducing triglycerides"

Retinal Abnormalities Age-Related Macular Degeneration Associated With Hypertension, Pulse Pressure - Doctor's Guide, 4/10/03 - "Retinal abnormalities in older people without diabetes are related to hypertension. Higher blood and pulse pressure are also associated with an increased incidence of macular abnormalities, including wet and dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD)"

B-Vitamins Prove Effective In Relieving Chronic Pain - Intelihealth, 4/10/03 - "B-vitamins, such as thiamin (B1), pyridoxine (B6), and cyanocobalamin (B12), have been proven to be clinically effective in treating various painful conditions such as lumbago, sciatica, trigeminal neuralgia, facial paralysis and optic neuritis as acting as an analgesia (pain reliever)"

New Stress-Buster Drugs Block Hormone Binding - Clinical Psychiatry News, 4/03 - "A new class of anxiety-relieving drugs—agents that interrupt core hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress signals—will emerge in the next 2-3 years ... In his HPA axis model of depression, the affected individual has a blunted ability to counterregulate in response to stress-induced cortisol increases, and thus is unable to turn off the fight-or-flight HPA mechanism. The result is constant anxiety and overreaction to external stimuli, followed by a sense of learned helplessness and loss of motivation. Many symptoms of deeply entrenched depression—anxiety, loss of appetite, reduced libido, elevated heart rate, hypertension, and dyslipidemia—point to HPA dysregulation ... People with melancholic depression do tend to produce abnormally high levels of CRH. These individuals also have elevated levels of cortisol" - See my cortisol page for ways to reduce it.

Deciphering the Power of Antioxidants - Health Supplement Retailer, 4/03 - "Different antioxidants protect against different types of free radicals in different parts of cells and in different places in the body"

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