Intersterified Oils: The New Trans Fats?

We have known for many years that trans fats increase risk for heart attacks and some cancers. Laws requiring trans fats or partially hydrogenated oils to be listed on nutrition labels went into effect last year, so food manufacturers are finally eliminating them from their products. One substitute that is appearing in some foods is a new type of fat made with a process called interesterification or fatty acid randomization. Interesterified oils have saturated fatty acids, usually from plants, inserted into other vegetable oils. A study from Brandeis University shows that both interesterified fats and partially hydrogenated oils raise the bad LDL and lower the good HDL cholesterol much more than the plant saturated fats found in palm, palm...

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New Key to Aging Well: Increase Mitochondria Efficiency

Why does risk for heart attacks, strokes or diabetes increase with age? A team from Yale University showed that as you age, you lose your ability to make AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). This enzyme functions to increase mitochondria in muscles. Anything that reduces the number or efficiency of mitochondria interferes with your body's ability to burn fat and sugar for energy. As a result, blood sugar, fat and cholesterol levels rise.Most cells in your body contain many mitochondria, small furnaces that burn food for energy. With aging, the number and the efficiency of mitochondria both decrease. This interferes with your body's ability to turn food into energy. The extra calories that are not burned accumulate in your body as fat in your...

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Raising Metabolism to Burn More Calories

Vigorous exercise is one of the best ways to lose weight and keep it off. A study from University of Alabama in Birmingham shows that your body burns calories at an increased rate for up to 24 hours after you finish exercising vigorously for 40 minutes. (Obesity, November 2006). Less than 20 percent of the energy you burn during exercise drives your muscles; more than 80 percent is lost as heat. You can tell if you are exercising vigorously enough to raise your metabolism because your rising temperature usually will make you sweat. If your exercise causes you to sweat, it will keeps your metabolism elevated for several hours after you finish and you will burn more calories all day long. Exercising at a casual pace does not cause you to sweat...

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Your Brain Can Grow Larger with Exercise

Regular exercise makes your brain larger, according to a study from the University of Illinois (Journal fo Gerontology, November 2006). With aging, your brain becomes smaller. This study showed that 60 to 79-year-old men who exercised regularly actually had their brains grow larger. Study participants who did only a stretching and toning program had their brains shrink.If you feel you are losing your ability to reason or think clearly, or if you suffer mood disorders such as depression, ask your doctor to do blood tests for homocysteine, folic acid, pyridoxine and vitamin B12. If these tests are normal, you should get tests for thyroid function, cholesterol and other causes of arterial damage.You can suffer from B12 deficiency even if your...

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Coffee Has More Soluble Fiber than Orange Juice

Coffee contains more soluble fiber than orange juice, according to a study from the Instituto del Frío in Spain (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, February 2007). Many people start the day with a glass of orange juice because they believe it is a health food, but it contains the same amount of sugar as a glass of Coca Cola. Soluble fiber is beneficial because it is not absorbed in the upper intestinal tract. It goes to your colon where bacteria ferment it to form short chain fatty acids that are absorbed through your colon into your bloodstream. The short chain fatty acids travel to the liver to block the formation of cholesterol, and also lower high blood pressure by widening arteries. Better dietary sources of soluble fiber include...

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Heart Attack Prevention with Strength Training

A study from the University of Tsukuba in Japan shows that strength training for the legs of older men may help to prevent heart attacks. Men over 60 performed 12 weeks of resistance training involving bending and straightening the knees against resistance, three sets of 10 repetitions a day, two days a week. They increased their ability to move heavy weights by 16 percent.Most measures of heart attack risk in the participants did not change, but their blood concentration of nitric oxide increased. Nitric oxide relaxes and opens arteries to increase blood flow to the heart and helps prevent heart attacks. This paper shows that resistance training may increase nitric oxide without stiffening arteries in healthy older men.The vast majority of...

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How to Increase the Good Bacteria in Your Intestines

Normal intestinal bacteria are so numerous that they make up approximately 95 percent of the total number of cells in the human body. They help prevent bad bacteria from infecting you, and may help prevent intestinal diseases such as ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease and cancer. When you eat, enzymes from your intestines, stomach, liver and pancreas break down your food into its building blocks that can be absorbed into your bloodstream. Carbohydrates are broken down into sugars; proteins into amino acids; and fats into glycerol, fatty acids and monoglycerides. However, many foods contain undigestible starches that cannot be broken down into sugars, so they cannot be absorbed in the upper intestinal tract. When they reach the colon, the "good"...

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Insulin Resistance: Treat with Lifestyle Changes

Most people who develop diabetes in later life can be controlled so that they are not at increased risk for the many complications of diabetes such as heart attacks, strokes, blindness, deafness, amputations, kidney failure, burning foot syndrome, venous insufficiency with ulceration and stasis dermatitis. Late onset diabetes usually means that a person has too much insulin because his cells cannot respond to insulin. Too much insulin constricts arteries to cause heart attacks, and stimulates your brain and liver to make you hungry and manufacture fat. The insulin resistance syndrome (IRS) puts you at very high risk for a heart attack and is associated with storing fat in the belly, rather than the hips; having high blood triglyceride levels...

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High blood pressure during exercise: what it means and what you should do

People who develop very high blood pressure during exercise are the ones most likely to develop high blood pressure in later years, according to a study reported in the American Journal of Hypertension. These people have arteries that do not expand as much as normal arteries when blood is pumped to them.When your heart beats, it squeezes blood from inside its chambers to the large arteries. This sudden bolus of blood causes normal arteries to expand like balloons do when they fill with air. The walls of arteries have sensors that allow arteries to expand with each pulse of blood. If the arteries do not expand enough when blood enters them, blood pressure can rise very high. Blood pressure is determined by the force of the heart's contraction...

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Inflammation Can Cause Heart Attacks and Strokes

When a germ gets into your bloodstream, you are supposed to produce white blood cells and antibodies that help kill these germs. The white blood cells produce chemicals that cause swelling to bring fluid to carry body defense mechanisms, and other chemicals to call out other cells that increase swelling, redness and pain. So inflammation is good because it helps to protect you from infection. However, if you allow the inflammation to continue, or if your produce inflammation when you don't need it, swelling damages your tissues and you may suffer heart attacks, strokes, cancers, Crohn's disease, psoriasis, different types of arthritis, or even Alzheimer's disease.The fatty plaque buildup that lines blood vessels often becomes inflamed because...

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Leg Clots in Healthy People

Leg clots occur without warning with sudden pain and swelling in a leg muscle, usually the calf. This is a particularly dangerous condition because the clot can break lose from the veins in the leg, travel to the lungs and block blood flow to kill a person. In a report in the British medical journal, Lancet, doctors at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine showed that infections may cause sudden clotting in the leg muscles called Deep Vein Thrombosis. They showed a 20 percent increase in infections, particularly urinary and respiratory, one to two weeks before a person develops clots. This report supports the current theory of inflammation causing heart attacks, strokes, and clotting. Your immunity is good because it is supposed...

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Total Body Scans Not Recommended

I never recommend the full body CAT scans for healthy people. You've seen the advertisements. They tell you to come in, get a scan of your entire body, pay your thousand dollars and find out what's wrong with you before you have symptoms. CAT scans of the body are high-speed, highly sensitive X-rays that can find tiny tumors, weak spots on blood vessels that make them bulge out like balloons, and calcified areas that may be indicative of heart disease. As a result of intense competition, prices are dropping, from $1,000 or more to a few hundred dollars. New centers are springing up in cities and strip malls across the country. They advertise in newspapers, on the radio, on billboards and in fliers sent by mail. There are even mobile units that...

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Knee Surgery to Trim Cartilage Ineffective

In the United States, more than 650,000 knee surgeries called arthroscopic debridement or lavage are performed each year, at a cost of about $5,000 each. A report in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that knee surgery to remove cartilage is worse than doing nothing. The headline from Baylor Medical School, where the landmark study was performed, is "Study Finds Common Knee Surgery No Better Than Placebo." Patients with osteoarthritis of the knee who underwent placebo arthroscopic surgery were just as likely to report pain relief as those who received the real procedure. The researchers say their results challenge the usefulness of one of the most common surgical procedures performed for osteoarthritis of the knee. Lead investigator...

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