Recent Longevity News for the seven days ending 8/28/02:

Cracking the Fat Riddle - Time Magazine, 9/2/02 - "the food pyramid is due for an overhaul in 2003—although no one is yet willing to give any details. If Harvard's Willett has his way, the pyramid will make a greater distinction between the types of fats and carbs we should and shouldn't eat. Willett, unlike the USDA, does not lump most carbohydrates at the pyramid's base or all fats at the pyramid's eat-sparingly pinnacle. In fact, Willett places good fats—those from vegetables and fish—at the base and good carbohydrates—from whole-grain versions of bread and pasta—side by side at the base. Carbohydrates with a high glycemic load join saturated fats at the top"

Fish and Nuts Are Brain Foods - ABC News, 8/28/02 - "When we don't have enough omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in our system, it can lead to a heart attack or a stroke. You're not getting enough oxygen to your brain, and you are overloading your heart ... The omega-6 takes care of one set of problems, and the omega-3 takes care of another set of problems. We need them both. But the ratio has to be correct," McDermott says. "The American diet is very high in omega-6 rather than omega-3 fats. It's thought that it should be the inverse for optimal health ... we should take in one part omega-3 fats to four parts omega-6 fats. Yet the ratio for most American eaters is 9-1" - See TwinLab TwinEPA at iHerb (5% discount code "qc") and Vitacost.

Prenatal Vitamin Use May Protect Child from Cancer - ABC News, 8/28/02 - "Daily vitamin and mineral use in the month before pregnancy and in each trimester was associated with a 30% to 40% reduction in the risk of neuroblastoma"

C-Reactive Protein, IL-6 Levels Tied to Heart Disease in Postmenopausal Women - Doctor's Guide, 8/28/02 - "Baseline levels of the inflammatory biomarkers C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) are independently associated with a two-fold increase in risk of healthy postmenopausal women developing coronary heart disease (CHD)"

Low Dietary Or Serum Potassium Risk Factor For Stroke - Doctor's Guide, 8/27/02 - "Diuretic users had an increased risk for stroke which was associated with lower serum potassium (relative risk 2.5;P<0.0001). People who did not use diuretics had an increased risk for stroke if they had low dietary potassium intake (relative risk 1.5;P<0.005)"

Vitamins Help Heart Patient Arteries - ABC News, 8/27/02 - "A six-month regimen of folic acid, vitamin B12 and vitamin B6 can help prevent reoccurrence of blocked arteries in patients who have undergone coronary angioplasty ... The treatment apparently works by lowering levels of homocysteine, an amino acid long implicated in heart attacks ... the patients who took the vitamin Combination showed a 48 percent reduction in the development of restenosis, or renarrowing of the vessel, compared to patients who received the placebo"

Exercise May Lower Blood Vessel Inflammation - ABC News, 8/27/02 - "chronic CRP elevations have been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, and inflammation is believed to play a key role in the hardening and narrowing of arteries that can lead to heart attack and stroke ... The results of this study showed that physical activity is inversely associated with C-reactive protein concentrations, suggesting that physical activity may mitigate inflammation"

Low Vitamin E Linked to Early Artery Disease - ABC News, 8/27/02 - "the more vitamin E women consumed in their diets, the less likely they were to have the beginning traces of thickening in the neck's carotid arteries, a marker of artery disease throughout the body" - I feel that the reason studies on vitamin E supplements have had poor results is because they used only the d-alpha form of vitamin E.  Taking only the d-alpha has been shown to lower the gamma form of vitamin E.  That may cause more harm than good.    See:

• Effect of oral supplementation with D-alpha-tocopherol on the vitamin E content of human low density lipoproteins and resistance to oxidation - Medline, 8/91 - "gamma-Tocopherol significantly decreased in plasma and LDL during vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol) supplementation"

Insulin Syndrome Affects Third of Americans - ABC News, 8/27/02 - "One in three of all Americans has a condition called insulin resistance syndrome ... also known as metabolic syndrome or syndrome X, refers to people whose bodies do not manage insulin well ... it can develop into diabetes as well as heart disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver and perhaps some cancers such as colon and ovarian cancer" - See "Alternative News" on my Syndrome X page for ways to help prevent it.

Sunflower Seed May Hold Key To Reducing Hypertension And Preventing Debilitating Strokes - Intelihealth, 8/27/02 - "One of the leading contributors to a stroke is hypertension. Before a stroke occurs, prolonged hypertension has been associated with a range of impairments and cognitive ability ... Now a researcher suggests that linoleic acid, a doubly unsaturated fatty acid, which is essential in nutrition in mammals. It cannot be produced in animals, the sources of this needed nutrient are vegetable seed oils, such as: safflower, sunflower, and hemp seed ... Linoleic acid administration seems to significantly decrease the systolic blood pressures of SHRs [spontaneously hypertensive rats] at three and six months ... This further supports the assertion that administering linoleic acid to SHRs did not only result in improvement of spatial reference memory but also significantly increased Bmax of D1 dopamine receptors" - That's with rats.  Experts believe most people get too much omega-6.  See:

• Omega 3: Implications in human health and disease - PowerPak, exp. 8/1/03 - "The omega 6 LA comprises 7% to 9% of our daily caloric intake, while the omega 3 LNA makes up about 0.7% of energy. It is therefore estimated that the dietary ratio of LA to LNA ranges from 10 to 20:1, at which level the metabolism of LNA is strongly suppressed. Again, this is far more than the recommended ratio of 2.3:1 ... From an evolutionary perspective, a significant change in the diet has occurred in a very short time. The diet of our ancestors in the Paleolithic period (400,000 to 45,000 years ago) was lower in fat and balanced in omega 6 and omega 3—a ratio of 1:1, or 10- to 20-fold lower than today's standard."
• GLA (Gamma Linolenic Acid): The Good Omega-6 Essential Fatty Acid - Total Health for Longevity Magazine, 9/00 - "many people have come to believe that "omega-6" fats are "bad" and that only omega-3s are good. Yes, some omega-6s are bad when consumed in excess - primarily linoleic acid, found in many vegetable oils, grains and seeds. But there is another fat in the omega-6 family which is a powerful key to vibrant health and radiant beauty: GLA, or gamma linolenic acid. In fact, your body needs the right balance of omega-3s as well as GLA from the omega-6 family"

Alcohol Found to Enrich 'Good' Cholesterol - ABC News, 8/26/02 - "the increase in HDL levels observed in regular drinkers is associated with an enrichment of HDL particles in polyunsaturated phospholipids, and particularly in those containing omega-3 fatty acids, an effect that might be, in itself, beneficial against cardiovascular diseases ... drinkers did not just have more HDL than nondrinkers, according to the report. Their HDL was of a different quality. In the men who drank alcohol, HDL contained higher levels of several types of blood fats"

Exercise May Cut Risk of Pre-Diabetic Syndrome - ABC News, 8/26/02 - "middle-aged men who get more than 3 hours of exercise each week are less likely to develop metabolic syndrome, an illness largely characterized by insulin resistance that often precedes development of so-called "adult-onset" type 2 diabetes and heart disease"

Stepping up the weight loss - USA Today, 8/26/02 - "Some of the most intriguing answers have been discovered by studying people in the National Weight Control Registry, a group of more than 3,000 people who have maintained a 30-pound weight loss for a year. Registry members lost weight in different ways, but they generally keep it off by exercising for about an hour a day, eating a relatively low-calorie, low-fat diet, weighing themselves regularly, having breakfast every day and keeping track of what they eat ... Brownell says that if people watch portion sizes, eat fruits and vegetables and less junk, "they'd be 90% of the way toward a healthy diet." And "if anything has become clear over the past 10 years, it's the importance of exercise in weight loss and maintaining.""

New anti-depressant pill awaited - MSNBC, 8/26/02 - "Starting next week, psychiatrists will be able to prescribe an eagerly awaited new anti-depressant called Lexapro ... Experts estimate up to half of patients who try an anti-depressant stop altogether or switch to another within three months. Some can’t handle the side effects; others get little or no benefit — likely because there are different causes of depression that require novel treatments ... Lexapro is a fine-tuned version of the popular drug Celexa, the latest in the Prozac-spawned class of “selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors,” or SSRIs ... Lexapro hasn’t been proved superior to any anti-depressant"

Statin Quick to Reduce Heart Risk - WebMD, 8/26/02 - "A new study shows the statin drug Zocor was effective at not only lowering cholesterol, but it also significantly reduced the level of an inflammation marker known as highly sensitive C-reactive protein (hsCRP) ... Although the study looked at only one statin, Zocor, researchers say it's likely that other statins would have similar effects" - Note: Red yeast rice is a non-prescription statin.  See VitaminShoppe red yeast rice products.  Also, see my inflammation page for other ways to reduce it such as curcumin, aspirin, omega-3, enzymes, vitamin E and soy.

Good News, Bad News on Cancer for Caffeine Lovers - ABC News, 8/26/02 - "In the "good news" study, skin cancer was prevented in mice at risk of developing the disease if a lotion containing caffeine was applied to their skin. In the "bad news" study, when a dish of hamster cells was exposed to tumor-inducing radiation, adding caffeine appeared to inhibit the cells' ability to repair themselves, increasing their likelihood of becoming cancerous"

Key Ingredient of Mediterranean Diet Could Be Fiber - ABC News, 8/23/02 - "people who ate the most fiber were 86% less likely than those who ate the least fiber to suffer a non-fatal heart attack ... Our data suggest that a substantial part of the postulated benefits of the Mediterranean diet on coronary risk might be attributed to a high intake of fibre and fruit"

Vitamin E Is Important For Early Prevention Of Cardiovascular Disease In Middle-Aged Women - ABC News, 8/23/02 - "Low intakes of vitamin E were significantly associated with plaques in the carotid bifurcations, which are the sites where most early atherosclerosis begins. Women with the lowest intakes and plasma concentrations of vitamin E were more than twice as likely to have this type of plaque"

Whole Grains Said to Reduce Diabetes Risk - ABC News, 8/22/02 - "A trial of more than 42,000 men showed that those who ate the most servings a day of whole grains had a 42 percent lower risk of developing type-II diabetes than men who ate the least ... The bran and wheat germ in unrefined grains can cause the stomach to empty more slowly, which in turn slows the release of sugar into the blood ... Many experts believe type-II diabetes is caused when the body becomes overwhelmed by sugar and perhaps fat ... Whole grains also contain more magnesium than processed grains and studies suggest this can improve metabolism of sugar"

Nutrition watchdog praises fast food giants - USA Today, 8/22/02 - "Low-fat Select Sub sandwiches served at Subway "have helped lead the way to healthier fast food," the center said. The statement singled out the low-fat Honey Mustard Ham, Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki and Red Wine Vinaigrette Club sandwiches as "downright delicious" with calorie counts ranging from 310 to 370 with six grams of fat or less"

America's diet is bigger, fattier, and sweeter. That's not good news - US News & World Report, 8/19/02 - "More than 61 percent of adults are overweight, and 27 percent of them–50 million people– are obese, according to a U.S. surgeon general's report released last December. In the next decade, weight-related illnesses threaten to overwhelm the healthcare system. New evidence from the Framingham Heart Study shows that obesity doubles the risk of heart failure in women. A man with 22 extra pounds has a 75 percent greater chance of having a heart attack than one at healthy weight. Gaining just 11 to 18 pounds doubles the risk of developing Type II diabetes–an illness that has increased by nearly 50 percent in only the past decade"

Kava's Source of Liver Damage Pinpointed - Clinical Psychiatry News, 8/02 - "Swiss researchers have linked the toxicity with an acetone-extraction manufacturing process widely used in the German and Swiss products. Dr. Stoll expects that there will be a rapid response by the supplement industry to come out with safer formulations. Kava can also be extracted with ethanol or water"

Omega-3 May Cut Bipolar Symptoms in Pregnancy - Clinical Psychiatry News, 8/02 - "From studies on animals, scientists now know that omega-3 fatty acids provide for normal brain and central nervous system development. Depriving animals of these compounds is associated with abnormalities in offspring ... Omega-3 fatty acids are thought to dampen signal transduction pathways associated with the pathophysiologic characteristics of bipolar disorder, similar to medications such as lithium and valproate. Omega-3 fatty acids also boost the brain's levels of serotonin ... fish oil supplement capsules carry no danger for pregnant women, according to an FDA spokesperson" - See TwinLab TwinEPA at iHerb (5% discount code "qc") and Vitacost.

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