Recent Longevity News for the seven days ending 2/16/05

Green Tea's Record Against Cancer Grows - WebMD, 2/15/05 - "In effect, the green tea extract may keep the cancer cells confined and localized, where they are easier to treat and the prognosis is better ... you should drink four cups a day. Green tea supplements are also available, and at least one study has shown that you may actually get more powerful antioxidants from supplements than from drinking tea" - See iHerb (15% discount code "qc") or Vitacost green tea extracts.  Related article.

• Green tea for a healthy prostate? - MSNBC, 1/21/05 - "phytochemicals called polyphenols attack growth factors and proteins, interrupting processes that increase the size of tumors, thus preventing them from spreading to other parts of the body ... green tea in mice with an aggressive form of cancer can decrease the spread or metastasis of prostate cancer to liver, bone and other sites ... the phytochemicals in green tea could inhibit the early stages of prostate cancer development"

Can Coffee Protect Against Common Cancers? - WebMD, 2/15/05 - "Recent studies have shown that regular coffee consumption may lower the risk of developing diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's ... people who drank coffee every day or almost daily had about half the liver cancer risk as those who never drank coffee. The more coffee people drank the lower their risk"

Turn to Tomatoes for Prostate Health - ABC News, 2/15/05 - "More and more research shows that antioxidants in vegetables, particularly tomatoes and broccoli, can lower prostate cancer risk, while foods from animals may increase risk ... Lycopene is one of the components of tomato that's very important, but it's not the only one ... there are other carotenoids in tomatoes that we are also studying, such as beta-carotene and some other, lesser-known carotenoids ... How many tomato-based products do you recommend weekly? ... Seven to ten servings a week" - See Lyco-Sorb with Lyc-O-Mato at iHerb (15 % discount code "qc").

Doctors Say Kids Should Skip Juices - ABC News, 2/14/05 - "All of these beverages are largely the same. They are 100 percent sugar ... Juice is only minimally better than soda" - Yeah but what about the potassium and all those phytochemicals!!!

Underactive Thyroid Cuts Breast Cancer Risk - WebMD, 2/14/05 - "an underactive thyroid was shown to protect against developing breast cancer. The study also showed that women who developed breast cancer and who had an underactive thyroid had a less aggressive disease compared with women with a normally functioning thyroid"

Vitamin E From Food Sources May Reduce Risk of AD - Medscape, 2/11/05 - "High intake of vitamin E from food (tocopherol), but not from supplements (which usually contain α-tocopherol), is inversely associated with Alzheimer disease ... various tocopherol forms rather than α-tocopherol alone may be important in the vitamin E protective association with Alzheimer disease"

St. John's Wort Useful for Severe Depression - WebMD, 2/10/05 - "At the end of six weeks, 71% of the patients taking St. John's Wort and 60% of those taking Paxil had responded to treatment. Half of the St. John's Wort-treated patients and 35% of the Paxil-treated patients were free of depression symptoms"

• Acute treatment of moderate to severe depression with hypericum extract WS 5570 (St John's wort) - NPI Center, 2/11/05 - "This extract (WS(R) 5572) contains the same patented, standardized and stabilized hyperforin content as WS(R) 5570, and is marketed as Perika(R) St. John's Wort by Nature's Way Products, Inc" - See Perika St. John's wort at iHerb

Popular Supplement Melatonin Found To Have Broader Effects In Brain Than Once Thought - Science Daily, 2/11/05 - "In experiments on the Japanese quail, the researchers found that melatonin switches on a recently discovered hormone called gonadotropin inhibitory hormone (GnIH), which has been found to have the opposite effect to the key hormone priming the body for sex – gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH). In birds, switching off GnRH causes the gonads – testes and ovary – to shrink as part of the birds' yearly cycle"

Carrots may help ward off cancer - BBC News, 2/9/05 - "After 18 weeks, rats who ate carrots along with their ordinary feed, and those given feed and falcarinol supplement were one third less likely to develop full-scale tumours than rats who were given just ordinary feed"

Vivus Says Testosterone Spray Helps Women - ABC News, 2/9/05 - "its testosterone spray improved sexual desire in women with low libido in a clinical trial"

Diet Can Lower Bad Cholesterol Like Statin Drug - WebMD, 2/8/05 - "Load up on fiber and vegetables: They lower cholesterol almost as much as cholesterol-lowering statin drugs ... Here's your shopping list: Cholesterol-lowering margarines containing plant fats such as "Benecol" or "Take Control", soy proteins and soluble fibers like oats, barley, psyllium, plus all kinds of vegetables, including eggplant and okra"

Can Prostate Cancer Be Prevented? - Medscape, 2/8/05 - "The Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT) demonstrated that finasteride can prevent prostate cancer, albeit with an apparently increased risk of high-grade disease. A substantial amount of epidemiologic, molecular, and clinical evidence suggests that both selenium and vitamin E might also prevent prostate cancer ... vitamin D exerts an antiproliferative effect on prostate cancer cells"

T3 Therapy Not Yet Ready for Psychiatric Use - Clinical Psychiatry News, 2/05 - "Today, many patients with complaints of chronic malaise or fatigue approach their physician seeking T3 therapy, but the fact is that none of the handful of well-designed randomized controlled trials done since then has been able to confirm the initial report of superior outcomes ... There is reason for concern that supraphysiologic doses of T3 in this setting could interfere with protein and fat metabolism and interact synergistically with catecholamines to increase myocardial oxygen demand, with resultant increased arrhythmia, MI, heart failure, and death"

In Medicating Anger, Consider Comorbidities - Clinical Psychiatry News, 2/05 - "When the severity of anger outbursts makes it difficult to wait for the antidepressant to become fully effective, a low-dose atypical antipsychotic such as 100 mg/day of quetiapine (Seroquel) might be added initially. The same agent, or a mood-stabilizing anticonvulsant, can be used adjunctively when anger remains problematic after other symptoms have resolved"

Cardiovascular Exercise Improves the Aging Brain - Clinical Psychiatry News, 2/05 - "Cardiovascular exercise improves cognitive performance and cortical function in elderly people, and it also appears to roll back age-related losses in brain volume"

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

Omega-3 fatty acids decreased irritability of patients with bipolar disorder in an add-on, open label study - Nutr J. 2005 Feb 9;4(1):6 - "Omega-3 Fatty Acid intake helped with the irritability component of patients suffering from bipolar disorder with a significant presenting sign of irritability. Low dose (1 to 2 grams per day), add-on O-3FA may also help with the irritability component of different clinical conditions, such as schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder and other psychiatric conditions with a common presenting sign of irritability" - See Mega Twin EPA at iHerb or Vitacost.

Glycosylated haemoglobin levels and the severity of erectile function in diabetic men - BJU Int. 2005 Mar;95(4):615-7 - "This study suggests that the severity of ED is associated with increasing HbA(1c) levels in diabetic men"

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