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Recent Longevity News for the seven days ending 2/27/08.  You should consult your doctor if you are taking any medications.

2/8/08 was the three year anniversary of my neck cancer.  It was cancer of the tonsil that spread to a lymph node in the neck.  The lymph node one was the size of a golf ball.  The doctor said it had to be more than one lymph node to be that big but it wasn't.  They said my chances of survival was 25% if I got surgery and radiation and almost nill if I didn't get the radiation.  I refused the radiation anyway and it looks like I still beat it.

Magnesium linked to fewer gallstones - Nutra USA, 2/26/08 - "After adjusting the results to account for age differences, which may affect the results, Tsai and co-workers calculated that men with the highest levels of magnesium intake (454 mg/d) were 28 per cent less likely to develop gallstones, compared to men with the lowest average intake (262 mg/d)" - I have it on my calendar to check for the abstract on Monday.  See magnesium supplements at Amazon.com.

Midnight Meals - New York Times, 2/26/08 - "If the calories are exactly the same, it shouldn’t make a difference, but my clinical impression is that people who eat late at night eat more ... They may be eating “an extra meal, if you will, ‘the fourth meal,’ as one ad put it"

Anti-depressants 'of little use' - BBC News, 2/26/08 - "the drugs helped only a small group of the most severely depressed, and in most cases had no more effect than taking a dummy pill ... even the positive effects seen on severely depressed patients were relatively small, and open to interpretation"

Hormone Therapy May Skew Mammograms - WebMD, 2/26/08 - "Women who take combined hormone therapy, even for a short time, are at significantly increased risk of having suspicious mammograms and undergoing breast biopsies as a result"

Whole Grains Fight Belly Fat - WebMD, 2/25/08 - "Both groups experienced a decrease in body fat, but the whole-grain group lost significantly more body fat from the abdominal region than the refined-grain group. Excessive fat around the midsection is linked to an increased risk of heart disease ... The whole-grain group experienced other benefits. For example, CRP levels dropped by 38% among those who followed a whole-grain diet"

Black tea may slash Parkinson's disease risk - Nutra USA, 2/22/08 - "Drinking at least 23 cups of black tea a month, or about three-quarters of a cup a day, may slash the risk of developing Parkinson's disease by a whopping 71 per cent ... Green tea contains between 30 and 40 per cent of water-extractable polyphenols, while black tea (green tea that has been oxidized by fermentation) contains between 3 and 10 per cent. Oolong tea is semi-fermented tea and is somewhere between green and black tea ... A key difference between black tea and green tea lies in the types and amounts of flavonoids. Green teas contain more of the simple flavonoids called catechins. But when black tea is made, the catechins undergo oxidation resulting in the generation of more complex varieties, called thearubigins and theaflavins" - [Abstract]

Magnesium Intake May Cut Risk of Gallstones - Medscape, 2/22/08 - "Magnesium deficiency is known to cause elevated triglyceride levels and decreased HDL cholesterol levels, both of which may raise the risk of gallstones ... Compared with the lowest quintile of total magnesium intake (median 262 mg/day), the highest quintile of intake (454 mg/day) reduced the risk of gallstone disease by 33%" - See magnesium supplements at Amazon.com.

Ingredient In Yellow Curry Can Reduce Heart Enlargement And May Prevent Heart Failure - Science Daily, 2/21/08 - "Eating curcumin, a natural ingredient in the spice turmeric, may dramatically reduce the chance of developing heart failure" - See curcumin products at Amazon.com.

Consumption of fish/fish oil associated with specific heart-rate variability parameters - theheart.org, 2/21/08 - "fish and omega-3 fatty-acid consumption are associated with "more optimal" values of various heart-rate variability (HRV) indices" - [Abstract] - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com.

FDA approves combination niacin and simvastatin - theheart.org, 2/19/08 - "The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a fixed-dose combination of extended-release niacin (Niaspan, Abbot) and simvastatin ... known as Simcor ... compared with simvastatin 20 mg, the fixed-dose combination reduced triglyceride levels an additional 27%"

Abstracts from this week's Doctor's Guide Nutrition/Dietetics plus abstracts from my RSS feeds (Click here for the journals, the PubMed ones at the top):

Lipoic acid significantly restores, in rats, the age-related decline in vasomotion - Br J Pharmacol. 2008 Feb 25 - "In old animals, endothelium-dependent relaxation in aortic rings was decreased, GSH levels and its redox state in aortic endothelia were over 30% lower and nSMase activity and endothelial ceramide levels were three-fold increased, relative to young (2-4 mo) rats. LA treatment of old animals improved relaxation in aortic rings, reversed the changes in endothelial GSH, in nSMase activities and in ceramide levels. Similar effects on GSH levels and nSMase activity in old rats were also induced by treatment with GSH monoethylester. Activation (by phosphorylation) of eNOS was decreased by about 50% in old rats and this age-related decrease was partially reversed by LA treatment" - See alpha lipoic acid at Amazon.com.

R-alpha-Lipoic acid and acetyl-L: -carnitine complementarily promote mitochondrial biogenesis in murine 3T3-L1 adipocytes - Diabetologia. 2008 Jan;51(1):165-74 - "Treatments with the combination of LA and ALC at concentrations of 0.1, 1 and 10 mumol/l for 24 h significantly increased mitochondrial mass, expression of mitochondrial DNA, mitochondrial complexes, oxygen consumption and fatty acid oxidation in 3T3L1 adipocytes. These changes were accompanied by an increase in expression of Pparg, Ppara and Cpt1a mRNA, as well as increased expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) gamma coactivator 1 alpha (Ppargc1a), mitochondrial transcription factor A (Tfam) and nuclear respiratory factors 1 and 2 (Nrf1 and Nrf2). However, the treatments with LA or ALC alone at the same concentrations showed little effect on mitochondrial function and biogenesis" - See alpha lipoic acid at Amazon.com and acetyl l-carnitine at Amazon.com.

Differential Effects of Black versus Green Tea on Risk of Parkinson's Disease in the Singapore Chinese Health Study - Am J Epidemiol. 2007 Dec 20 - "Black tea, a caffeine-containing beverage, showed an inverse association with Parkinson's disease risk that was not confounded by total caffeine intake or tobacco smoking (p for trend = 0.0006; adjusted relative risk for the highest vs. lowest tertile of intake = 0.29"

Dietary Fish and {omega}-3 Fatty Acid Consumption and Heart Rate Variability in US Adults - Circulation. 2008 Feb 19 - "Habitual tuna/other fish and marine omega-3 consumption are associated with specific HRV components in older adults, particularly indices of vagal activity, baroreceptor responses, and sinoatrial node function" - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com.

Reducing exercise-induced muscular injury in kendo athletes with supplementation of coenzyme Q10 - Br J Nutr. 2008 Feb 20;:1-7 - "These results indicate that CoQ10 supplementation reduced exercise-induced muscular injury in athletes" - See ubiquinol products at Amazon.com or ubiquinol products at Amazon.com.

Neat Gadgets:

Health Focus (Procyanidolic Oligomers/Grape Seed Extract/Pine Bark/Pycnogenol):

Note:  Some say that grape seed extract is the same as Pycnogenol((R)) without the patent markup.  I have moved the information on resveratrol to http://qualitycounts.com/fpresveratrol.htm.

Specific Grape Seed Recommendations:

Grape Seed News & Research:

Grape Seed Abstracts:

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