1. Mediterranean Diet Protects Against Type 2 Diabetes

A Mediterranean diet rich in fruits and vegetables — already known to protect against heart disease — also appears to help ward off diabetes, Spanish researchers said on Friday.

The study published in the British Medical Journal showed that people who stuck closely to the diet were 83 percent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who did not.

"The new thing is that we have been able to assess adherence to a Med diet and the incidence of diabetes in people who were initially healthy," said Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez, an epidemiologist at the University of Navarra in Spain, who led the study. "We didn't expect such a high reduction."

The World Health Organisation estimates more than 180 million people worldwide have diabetes — a number likely to more than double by 2030 as more nations adopt a Western lifestyle.

Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90 percent of all cases and is closely linked to obesity and heart disease. The condition accounts for an estimated 6 percent of all global deaths.

For their study the Spanish researchers recruited 13,000 former students at the university with an average age of 38 who had no history of diabetes. They tracked their dietary habits and health over an average four years.

The volunteers also initially completed a food frequency questionnaire to measure the kinds of food they ate. The list included questions on the use of fats and oils, cooking methods and dietary supplements.

People who strictly adhered to a Mediterranean diet full of vegetables, fish and healthy fats such as olive oil, and low in red meat, dairy products and alcohol had lower odds of diabetes.

Only about 40 people in the study developed diabetes but Martinez-Gonzalez added in a telephone interview that further study is needed to confirm the diet's protective effects.

But the fact that the protection appeared to extend to older people, smokers and volunteers with a family history of diabetes — a group all the more prone to the disease — shows the diet works, Martinez-Gonzalez said in a telephone interview.

"These higher risk participants with better adherence to the diet, however, had a lower risk of diabetes, suggesting that the diet might have a substantial potential for prevention," the researchers wrote.

Copyright Reuters

Editor's Note:

Diabetes is Epidemic. Protect Yourself


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2. Exercise Cuts Cancer Deaths in Men

Men who exercise often are less likely to die from cancer than those who don’t exercise, according to a new study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet. In the study, the researchers looked at the effect of physical activity and cancer risk in 40,708 men aged between 45 and 79.

Over the seven year period of the study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, 3,714 men developed cancer and 1,153 died from the disease. Men who walked or cycled for at least 30 minutes a day had an increased survival from cancer with 33 per cent, than the men who exercised less or did nothing at all. The researchers also found that a more extensive programme of walking and cycling for between 60 and 90 minutes and a day, led to a l6 per cent lower incidence of cancer. But these activities only led to a five per cent reduction in cancer rates among the men who walked or cycled for 30 minutes day, a finding which could be due to chance.

The researchers surveyed men from two counties in central Sweden about their lifestyle and the amount of physical activity they did. They then scored these responses and compared the results with data officially recorded in a central cancer registry over a seven year period.

“These results show for the first time, the affect that daily exercise has in reducing cancer death risk in men aged between 45 and 79”, says Professor Alicja Wolk, who led the study. “We looked at more moderate exercise such as housework, undertaken over a longer period of time and found that this also reduced men’s chances of dying from the disease.”

Editor's Note:

Cancer Is Stalking You and Your Family. Stop It Now!


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3. How to Cope With Rising Food Prices

Prices for food staples such as wheat, eggs, milk and rice have increased substantially in the last year, leaving many to wonder how to affordably plan their next shopping trip. If you or a loved one has diabetes, you know the importance of stocking a well-balanced pantry and eating healthy foods to maintain good diabetes control.

So how do you plan healthy menus for you and your family without breaking the bank? According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), it is a common misconception that a healthy diabetes meal plan must be costly and consist of high-priced specialty foods.

“Eating well and spending less are not mutually exclusive,” commented Ann Albright, PhD, President, Health Care & Education, American Diabetes Association. “In fact, healthier foods can actually save you money by reducing portion sizes and buying fewer high-calorie, high-priced foods.”

The ADA offers these tips to save money and help cost-conscious consumers navigate the grocery store shelves:

Boneless cuts are often better buys, since you are not paying for the weight of the bone. Think of cost per edible serving rather than cost per pound. Turkey has 46% edible meat per pound, while chicken has 41%.
There is no nutritional difference between brown and white eggs. Choose white eggs since they cost less.
Vegetables frozen in butter sauce cost twice as much as plain frozen vegetables — and they have more calories.
Instead of buying small containers of yogurt, buy a quart and separate it into 1-cup servings yourself.
Avoid individually packaged snacks. Reap significant savings with a do-it-yourself approach.
Price fruits with an eye on the cost per edible serving. If you are paying by the pound, you will be paying for the inedible seeds and rinds.
If fresh fruit is too expensive, buy frozen or canned fruit packed in water. If you buy fruit canned in syrup, rinse it before eating.
Use nonfat dry milk for drinking, cooking and baking. It is inexpensive and has a long shelf life.
Make your own cooking spray by putting vegetable oil in a spray bottle.
Cook your own hot cereal to save money. Regular or quick-cooking oats are much less expensive than instant oats.
Dry beans triple in volume when they are soaked and cooked. A 1-pound bag will make six 1-cup servings.
When buying fresh greens by weight, be sure to shake off the excess water before you put them in your cart. It is amazing how much water can be hidden in between the leaves.
The costs of special "dietetic or diabetic" foods are high and not necessary.
Editor's Note:

Five Foods Are Great For Your Heart — Five Are Dangerous


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4. Social Ties Delay Memory Loss in Seniors

Staying connected with family and friends may delay memory decline among the elderly, new research confirms.

"Our results suggest that increasing social integration may be an important component of efforts to protect older Americans from memory decline," Dr. Lisa F. Berkman from the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health at Harvard School of Public Health, Boston and colleagues conclude in a report in the American Journal of Public Health.

They looked at the impact of social integration on changes in memory over 6 years in 16,638 Americans aged 50 and older enrolled in the Health and Retirement Study. Memory was gauged by immediate and delayed recall of a 10-word list, and social integration was assessed by marital status, volunteer activity, frequency of contact with children, parents, and neighbors.

The average memory score declined from 11.0 in 1998 to 10.0 in 2004, the investigators found.

People with high social integration and low social integration had similar memory scores in 1998 but that changed over the subsequent 6 years. People who were highly socially integrated in 1998 suffered slower rates of memory decline over time than their less social peers. Memory among the least socially integrated declined at twice the rate as among the most socially integrated.

"Being in the highest level of social integration ameliorated more than half of the age-related decline in memory," Berkman and colleagues state.

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, online May 29, 2008.
Copyright Reuters

Editor's Note:

Brain Surgeon Reveals How to Save Your Brain from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Other Diseases


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5. SIDS May Be Linked to Bacteria

A baffling phenomenon known as sudden infant death syndrome is one of the leading causes of death for children under 1. Now, British researchers say they may have found a contributing factor: bacteria.

They found potentially dangerous bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus and E. coli in nearly half of all babies who died suddenly and without explanation over a decade at a London hospital. Their findings are in Friday's Lancet medical journal.

The researchers cautioned, however, that while the bacteria were found in the SIDS babies, that does not necessarily mean the bugs were responsible. Bacterial infections have long been suspected by some doctors to play a role in SIDS.

"We don't know whether it's a cause or if it's identifying another potential risk factor," said Dr. Nigel Klein, a professor at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, where the study was conducted, and one of the paper's authors.

He said that the higher level of bacteria might be evidence of another condition that killed the baby, such as a room that was too hot or had poor ventilation. Or it may have been coincidental.

The researchers used autopsy samples from 470 infants who died suddenly and unexpectedly between 1996 and 2005. They found dangerous bacteria in 181 babies, or nearly half of the 365 whose deaths were unexplained. There were similar bacteria in about a quarter (14 of 53) of the babies who died of known causes, excluding those who died of bacterial infections.

Most of the bacteria were detected in the babies' lungs and spleens.

At birth, mothers transfer some of their antibodies against infection to their babies. But when babies are from 8 to 10 weeks old, the maternal antibodies have nearly run out and the babies typically have not started producing enough of their own.

That could make them particularly vulnerable to bacterial infections, said James Morris, a pathologist at the Royal Infirmary in Lancaster, who co-authored an accompanying commentary in the journal.

SIDS typically strikes when babies are between 8 and 10 weeks old.