Recent Longevity News for the seven days ending 2/2/05

Drinking Alcohol Increases Risk For Cancer - Science Daily, 2/1/05 - "Moderate alcohol drinking, less than 25 grams per day, has a favorable role on cardiovascular disease risk ... "[However] it is associated with increased risk of cancers of the upper digestive tract and larynx, and also of the intestines, liver, and breast"

Calcium Boost To Youths’ Bones Could Reduce Osteoporosis Risk - Science Daily, 2/1/05 - "elevated calcium use by pre-adolescent girls is likely to help prevent fractures and osteoporosis much later in life"

Calcium, Vitamin D Most Effective for Treatment of Crohn's-Related Bone Loss - Doctor's Guide, 2/1/05 - "calcium and vitamin D treatment alone can improve bone mineral density (BMD) in Crohn's patients by 3 to 4 percent per year"

Sun Exposure May Fight Some Cancers - WebMD, 2/1/05 - "The important message is that that this anticancer effect is very unlikely to be sunlight itself. It is more likely to be vitamin D generated by sun exposure"

Anti-Cancer Cows? - CBS 2 Chicago, 1/31/05 - "Studies in cell lines and animal models have shown CLA to be effective at preventing the formation of tumors ... research has also shown CLA can destroy cancerous cells ... the fatty acid may be effective in stopping breast cancer tumors" - See iHerb (15% discount code "qc") CLA products.

Green Tea Extract Boosts Exercise Endurance 8-24%, Utilizing Fat As Energy Source - Science Daily, 1/31/05 - "over 10 weeks, endurance exercise performance was boosted up to 24% with 0.5% GTE [green tea extract] supplementation, and 8% with 0.2% by-weight addition to food ... We estimate that an athlete weighing 75 kilograms (165 pounds) would have to drink about four cups (0.8 liter) of green tea daily to match the effect in our experiments" - See iHerb (15% discount code "qc") or Vitacost green tea products.

Green Tea: The Next Performance Enhancer? - WebMD, 1/28/05 - "Ten weeks of green tea supplements plus strenuous exercise made mice swim longer and stronger than mice that swam their laps without performance enhancement ... The mice got stronger because the green tea made them burn fat more efficiently ... the amount of green tea eaten by the mice would work out to about 4 cups of green tea a day for a 165-pound human athlete"

Slowing Age-Related Macular Degeneration with Vitamins - ABC News, 1/28/05 - "We grow food in big industrial farms in demineralized soil, we don't rotate crops, and we spray them with herbicides and pesticides. So the thought is that there is less actual antioxidant power in the food, so we need supplements to counteract the extra load of free radicals"

Fish Oil Supplements May Be Safer Than Eating Fish - Medscape, 1/28/05 - "The authors estimate that compared with fish oil supplementation, regular consumption of fish from the Great Lakes would expose humans to at least 70 times more PCBs and 120 times more OC pesticides"

Calcium may cut colon cancer risk in women - MSNBC, 1/27/05 - "Women who consumed more than 412 milligrams of calcium from dietary sources and also took more than 800 milligrams in supplement form had a 46 percent lower risk"

Green Tea Fights Fat - WebMD, 1/26/05 - "the first group drank a bottle of oolong tea fortified with green tea extract containing 690 milligrams of catechins, and the other group drank a bottle of oolong tea with 22 milligrams of catechins ... After three months, the study showed that the men who drank the green tea extract lost more weight (5.3 pounds vs. 2.9 pounds) and experienced a significantly greater decrease in BMI, waist size, and total body fat" - See iHerb (15% discount code "qc") or Vitacost green tea products.

Calcium Supplements: Benefits and Risks - Medscape, 1/26/05 - "Perhaps the most effective method of preventing osteoporosis is ingestion of adequate calcium. Experts suggest the daily requirement for calcium is 1,300 mg for people ages 9 to 18, 1,000 to 1,200 mg for adults 19 to 50, and 1,500 mg for people over 50 ... You should take only the amount of calcium recommended. Ingesting high doses of calcium each day can be harmful and can cause kidney stones"

Vinegar with a Splash of Cherry Extract for Diabetes? - ABC News, 1/26/05 - "The acetic acid in vinegar may inhibit enzymes that digest starch ... So the carbohydrate molecules aren't available for absorption and are eliminated as fecal matter ... When choosing a bottle of vinegar, she says, make sure that it contains 5 percent acetic acid ... According to Johnston, a diabetes medication called acarbose works the same way vinegar does" - Related article:

• Vinegar as a Sweet Solution? - Science News, 12/18/04 - "2 tablespoons of vinegar before a meal—perhaps, as part of a vinaigrette salad dressing—will dramatically reduce the spike in blood concentrations of insulin and glucose that come after a meal ... vinegar cut their blood-glucose rise in the first hour after a meal by about half ... a 2-pound weight loss, on average, over the 4 weeks in the vinegar group"

Phytoestrogens and Antioxidants - Medscape, 1/26/05 - "What if exogenous antioxidants also protect the tumor? Should physicians, and in particular radiotherapists, advise against their use for patients undergoing radiation treatments? Or should they, instead, recommend them to prevent damage to normal tissues associated with treatment? ... No significant difference was seen in the amount of radiation required for tumor control between mice receiving antioxidants in their diet and control animals. There was, however, a trend toward a slightly higher dose needed for tumor eradication in antioxidant-treated mice. On the other hand, there was a significant difference in the damages induced by radiation treatment in the 2 groups: Vitamin E and GTE-treated mice showed partial protection of normal tissues from radiation injury"

Hormone Replacement May Fight Aging Frailty - CBS 2 Chicago, 1/26/05 - "Researchers at the University of Southern California say restoring levels of testosterone and growth hormone may help aging seniors avoid frailty"

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

Effect of CLA supplementation on immune function in young healthy volunteers - Eur J Clin Nutr. 2005 Jan 12 - "CLA supplementation also decreased the levels of the proinflammatory cytokines, TNF-alpha and IL-1beta (P<0.05), but increased the levels of the anti-inflammatory cytokine, IL-10 ... This is the first study to show that CLA, a fatty acid naturally found in dairy and meat products, can beneficially affect immune function in healthy human volunteers" - See iHerb (15% discount code "qc") CLA products.

Circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin d levels indicative of vitamin d sufficiency: implications for establishing a new effective dietary intake recommendation for vitamin d - J Nutr. 2005 Feb;135(2):317-22 - "The current adult recommendations for vitamin D, 200-600 IU/d, are very inadequate when one considers that a 10-15 min whole-body exposure to peak summer sun will generate and release up to 20,000 IU vitamin D-3 into the circulation ... Recent studies reveal that current dietary recommendations for adults are not sufficient to maintain circulating 25(OH)D levels at or above this level, especially in pregnancy and lactation"

Chemotherapy Alone vs. Chemotherapy Plus High Dose Multiple Antioxidants in Patients with Advanced Non Small Cell Lung Cancer - J Am Coll Nutr. 2005 Feb;24(1):16-21 - "These results do not support the concern that antioxidants might protect cancer cells from the free radical damage induced by chemotherapy"

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