Recent Longevity News for the seven days ending 11/10/04:

Anticancer Diet - Time, 11/15/04 - "eating at least 35 servings of fruits and vegetables a week can cut the risk of developing hormone-stimulated breast-cancer tumors by 35% in postmenopausal women ... leafy greens and colorful vegetables like carrots, squash, tomatoes and peppers, which are rich in lycopene and beta carotene, are especially potent cancer fighters"

Increase in DHEA May Help Decrease Abdominal Fat in Elderly Persons - Doctor's Guide, 11/9/04 - "DHEA replacement therapy induced significant decreases in both visceral fat (within the abdomen) and subcutaneous abdominal fat (below the skin surface) in elderly men and women. "The decrease in visceral fat relative to initial values averaged 10.2 percent in the women and 7.4 percent in the men. The DHEA therapy also resulted in a significant decrease in abdominal subcutaneous fat, averaging approximately 6 percent in both the men and women"

Metabolic Syndrome Associated with Cognitive Decline in Elderly Persons - Doctor's Guide, 11/9/04 - "persons with the metabolic syndrome (n = 1016) were 20 percent more likely to develop cognitive impairment ... Those with both metabolic syndrome and high inflammation (n = 348) were 66 percent more likely to have cognitive impairment than those without the metabolic syndrome"

Lipitor May Aid Memory in Alzheimer's - HealthDay, 11/9/04 - "Removing cholesterol either through the diet or with cholesterol-lowering drugs reversed the Alzheimer's path in animals ... 80 milligrams of Lipitor ... at one year, 53 percent of the Lipitor group had improved or stabilized vs. 28 percent of those in the placebo group. There was also a significant improvement in depressive symptoms at the end of the year"

Vitamin E: Reducing Diabetes Risk? - Physician's Weekly, 11/8/04 - "Although the improvement in insulin resistance was temporary, elevations in alanine transferase liver enzyme were sustained throughout the study period"

Exercise Increases Immunity in Older Men - Physician's Weekly, 11/8/04 - "older active seniors had significantly higher immune system responses than sedentary seniors, and that the immune response matched that of the younger men"

Omega-3 Fatty Acids: Good For The Heart, And (maybe) Good For The Brain - Science Daily, 11/8/04 - "There is mounting evidence that a diet containing omega-3 fatty acids, already known to help prevent cardiovascular disease, may also prevent depression"

Pollution May Hasten Hardening of Arteries - HealthDay, 11/7/04 - "air pollution can cause inflammatory responses both in the body's respiratory tract and in the blood vessels. In the case of the circulatory system, this can eventually lead to thickening of the artery wall and its attendant problems"

White Bread, Starchy Foods Linked to Diabetes - WebMD, 11/5/04 - "Participants who ate the most white bread -- more than 17 slices per week -- had the highest risk of diabetes ... A high-GI diet could also lead to insulin resistance (decreased ability for the body to respond to the hormone insulin), which can lead to diabetes ... participants who ate a lot of sugar, magnesium, and total carbohydrates had a lower risk of diabetes"

Location Of Body Fat Important In Predicting Heart Attack Risk - Science Daily, 11/5/04 - "intra-abdominal fat, or fat stored in and around the internal organs, is most predictive of heart attack risk"

Pesticides May Promote Parkinson's Disease And Exercise May Offer Protection, According To New Reports - Science Daily, 11/3/04 - "chronic exposure to the “organic” pesticide rotenone can cause Parkinson's-like pathology in monkeys. This finding builds upon their previous study in which they demonstrated that rotenone, a commonly used agricultural pesticide made from the extracts of tropical plants, can reproduce parkinsonian features in rats"

High-fat Diets Hammer Memory, More Than A Waistline Worry - Science Daily, 11/3/04 - "the mice on the high-fat and high-fat, high-sugar diets could not learn and remember the maze as well as those on the other diets"

Novel Dietary Supplement [Sytrinol™] Shows Dramatic Effects in Lowering Cholesterol, LDL, and Triglycerides - Life Extension Magazine, 11/04 - "four weeks of treatment with 300 mg of Sytrinol™ daily significantly reduced levels of total cholesterol (-25%), LDL (-19%), and triglycerides (-24%). HDL levels were unchanged and body mass remained relatively stable" - See iHerb Sytrinol products.

New uses for carnitine - Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals, 11/04 - "Because L-carnitine is central to the formation of energy from fat, the heart is therefore dependent on L-carnitine for most of its energy production ... L-Carnipure carries long-chain fatty acids into the mitochondria where they are oxidised for energy. Its ability to generate energy from fat makes carnitine useful as part of a weight management program ... L-carnitine plus its metabolite, acetyl-L-carnitine, can treat symptoms of male ageing, including sexual dysfunction, depressed mood and fatigue"

Effects of a genistein-rich extract on PSA levels in men with a history of prostate cancer - Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals, 11/04 - "a genistein-rich extract as the sole treatment for prostate cancer does not appear to be an effective treatment for prostate cancer when given alone. However, eight of 13 evaluated patients in the active surveillance group had either no rise or a decline in PSA levels of less than 50 per cent"

St. John’s Wort: Good for More than Depression - Healthwell, 10/21/04 - "SDs are a group of conditions characterized by several ongoing physical symptoms that cannot be explained by any identifiable illness ... Among those participants receiving SJW, 44% reported being completely improved, compared with only 25% in the placebo group. In contrast, 45% of the participants in the placebo group felt unchanged or worse compared with 17% in the SJW group. By the end of the study, one half of the participants taking SJW had improved so much that they were no longer considered to have SD"

Abstracts from this week's Doctor's Guide Nutrition/Dietetics:

Effect of garlic (Allium sativum) powder tablets on serum lipids, blood pressure and arterial stiffness in normo-lipidaemic volunteers: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial - Br J Nutr. 2004 Oct;92(4):701-6 - "garlic powder tablets have no clinically relevant lipid-lowering and blood pressure-lowering effects in middle-aged, normo-lipidaemic individuals. The putative anti-atherosclerotic effect of garlic may be linked to risk markers other than blood lipids"

The effect of low doses of betaine on plasma homocysteine in healthy volunteers - Br J Nutr. 2004 Oct;92(4):665-9 - "plasma tHcy is lowered rapidly and significantly by 3 or 6 g betaine/d in healthy men and women"

Meta-analysis of the health effects of using the glycaemic index in meal-planning - Br J Nutr. 2004 Sep;92(3):367-81 - "Results of the present meta-analysis support the use of the GI as a scientifically based tool to enable selection of carbohydrate-containing foods to reduce total cholesterol and to improve overall metabolic control of diabetes"

Circulating triacylglycerol and apoE levels in response to EPA and docosahexaenoic acid supplementation in adult human subjects - Br J Nutr. 2004 Sep;92(3):477-83 - "Our present results indicate that DHA may be more efficacious than EPA in improving the plasma lipid profile"

mpairment of coronary circulation by acute hyperhomocysteinaemia and reversal by antioxidant vitamins - J Intern Med. 2004 Nov;256(5):398-405 - "Our data suggest that acute hyperhomocysteinaemia reduces CFVR and increases plasma MCP-1 and IL-8 levels in healthy subjects. Pretreatment with antioxidant vitamin E and ascorbic acid prevents the effects of hyperhomocysteinaemia, suggesting an oxidative mechanism"

Vitamin D in Australia. Issues and recommendations - Aust Fam Physician. 2004 Mar;33(3):133-8 - "In cases of established vitamin D deficiency, supplementation with 3000-5000 IU per day for at least 1 month is required to replete body stores"

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