Category: Health

Coffee

Study: Soda Consumption Increases Overall Stroke Risk

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According to a new study.

Researchers from Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Institute and Harvard University have found that greater consumption of sugar-sweetened and low-calorie sodas is associated with a higher risk of stroke. Conversely, consumption of caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee was associated with a lower risk.

The study — recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition — is the first to examine soda’s affect on stroke risk. Previous research has linked sugar-sweetened beverage consumption with weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, gout and coronary artery disease.

“Soda remains the largest source of added sugar in the diet,” said Adam Bernstein, MD, ScD, study author and Research Director at Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Institute. “What we’re beginning to understand is that regular intake of these beverages sets off a chain reaction in the body that can potentially lead to many diseases — including stroke.”

In sugar-sweetened sodas, the sugar load may lead to rapid increases in blood glucose and insulin which, over time, may lead to glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, and inflammation. These physiologic changes influence atherosclerosis, plaque stability and thrombosis — all of which are risk factors of ischemic stroke. This risk for stroke appears higher in women than in men.

In comparison, coffee contains chlorogenic acids, lignans and magnesium, all of which act as antioxidants and may reduce stroke risk. When compared with one serving of sugar-sweetened soda, one serving of decaffeinated coffee was associated with a 10 percent lower risk of stroke.

Well, I always drink sugar-free sodas. But, I suppose I should limit the intake and if I need an additional caffeine bump during the day, I will drink coffee.

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Diet

Fewer Americans Eating Healthy in 2011

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According to the latest Gallup Poll.

Americans’ self-reported healthy eating habits dipped slightly in 2011, after improving in 2010. The percentage of Americans reporting they ate healthy all day “yesterday” declined to 66.1% in 2011 from 67.7% in 2010. Likewise, 56.0% of Americans reported eating five or more servings of fresh fruits and vegetables on at least four days in the previous week last year, down from 57.1% in 2010. As a result, the gains observed from 2009 to 2010 were essentially undone last year.

This is not good news.

Come on folks, spend a little time in preparing an appropriate, nutritional diet and exercise a little bit.

It is for better health!

Healthy eating can help reduce people’s risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, and several types of cancer, as well as help them maintain a healthy body weight. Good eating habits mean consuming various nutritious foods and beverages, especially vegetables, fruits, and low-fat and fat-free dairy products; limiting intake of saturated fats, added sugars, and sodium; and balancing caloric intake with calories burned to manage body weight.

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Centers for Disease Control

CDC Using Scary Graphic Ads to Combat Smoking – Today Begins Ad Campaign

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If the ads work on getting folks to either quit or not start in the first place, go for them!

Federal health officials are unveiling Thursday a $54 million national media campaign to get smokers to quit and prevent anyone else, especially children, from starting.

The campaign, called “Tips From Former Smokers,” is intended to educate Americans about the dangers of smoking through the stories and graphic pictures of ex-smokers who have suffered severe health consequences of tobacco use.

The former smokers profiled have suffered ailments like stroke-related paralysis, limb amputation, lung removal and heart attack. One breathes through a stoma, a surgically created hole in the neck through which a person who has undergone larynx or voice box surgery can breathe.

The ads are the brainchild of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health. The agency says smoking remains the country’s leading cause of disease and preventable death, resulting in more than 443,000 fatalities annually. More than 8 million Americans live with a smoking-related illness or conditions, according to the disease agency.

The combination of public service announcements and paid advertising for television, radio, newspapers and magazines, also spotlights the dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke. The ads will also be featured on billboards, in theaters and online–including on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

You cannot ban tobacco smoking, but education campaigns that truthfully portray the results of smoking may be a way to reduce the amount of it.

Let’s hope these are successful – although I have my doubts that the shift will be huge, unfortunately.

The campaign includes eight television ads (one of them in Spanish); seven radio spots in 30- and 60-second versions; seven print ads and five billboard and bus stop ads.

The campaign marks the first time the CDC has run a paid, comprehensive national anti-tobacco advertising effort. The primary target is smokers ages 18 to 54, but public health experts also hope it will dissuade children from adopting the habit.

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Exercise

Why It Is Important to Stay Moving – Blood Sugar Levels

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Finishing the Disneyland Half Marathon last summer

Here is a good piece on why exercise is important, particularly why you should stay moving throughout the day.

Hoping to learn more about how inactivity affects disease risk, researchers at the University of Missouri recently persuaded a group of healthy, active young adults to stop moving around so much. Scientists have known for some time that sedentary people are at increased risk of developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. But they haven’t fully understood why, in part because studying the effects of sedentary behavior isn’t easy. People who are inactive may also be obese, eat poorly or face other lifestyle or metabolic issues that make it impossible to tease out the specific role that inactivity, on its own, plays in ill health.

So, to combat the problem, researchers lately have embraced a novel approach to studying the effects of inactivity. They’ve imposed the condition on people who otherwise would be out happily exercising and moving about, in some cases by sentencing them to bed rest.

But in the current study, which was published this month in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the scientists created a more realistic version of inactivity by having their volunteers cut the number of steps they took each day by at least half.

Read all of the piece.

And, keep moving……

A 7 mile easy run tomorrow in tapering mode for the Los Angeles Marathon on March 18th.

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