August 16, 2022

Walking May Help Reshape Damaged Heart Tissue

Just 30 minutes of running on a treadmill can reshape damaged heart tissue, researchers have found in a study which proved that exercise could be just as important for heart health as controlled cholesterol and a healthy diet. The findings showed that just a single session of endurance exercise – activities that increase breathing and heart rate such as walking, jogging, swimming – increased the expression of genes that are used to repair damaged DNA and helped remodel heart tissue. “The genes that are important for genome stability are up-regulated in the heart tissue after a single bout of endurance […]
July 19, 2022

What Are 100 Year Olds Eating?

The secrets of an Italian village have long fascinated scientists from around the world. Scientists from Rome’s Sapienza University and the San Diego School of Medicine spent six months looking into why residents of Acciaroli and nearby tiny communities enjoy such extraordinary longevity—while also seeming to be largely immune from dementia, heart disease and other chronic conditions associated with ageing in most of the Western world. Acciaroli is part of the Cilento coast, a largely industry-free area that now has national park protected status. It was in Cilento that the late U.S. nutritionist Ancel Keys first established convincing evidence of […]
June 22, 2021

Don’t Sleep Shorter as the Summer Gets Longer

Summer is a time of abundance, everything from fresh vegetables in your garden to long hours of sunshine. The abundance of sunshine will provide our bodies with vitamin D, the “sunshine vitamin”, which supports healthy bones, our immune system and our nervous system. But the long hours of daylight affect people in other ways, such as limiting hours of sleep. There are about 15 hours of daylight between sunrise and sunset during June and July, and when you factor in the twilight and dusk hours, that leaves only about 8 hours of darkness. The long daylight hours can affect our […]
January 21, 2020

Rules for Living Longer

When it comes to age, most everyone desires to hit triple digits — 100 and more. Who wouldn’t want to join the centenarian club? Luckily for seniors living in the 21st century, it’s now easier for you to reach your 100th birthday today than ever before — if you take care of your health and follow experts’ advice. According to Science magazine, with the currently expanding life spans of modern man, all it would take for the average life span to reach 99 years is the elimination of heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Dr. Chris Matsko, coauthor of How to Live […]
April 16, 2019

Counting Calories Could Prevent Diseases

Research presented on February 11, 2019 at FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation) Week London supports the potential for calorie restriction to protect against several diseases. The studies were conducted under the auspices of the Center for Research on Redox Processes in Biomedicine, which is funded by FAPESP. “We are looking at how changes to the diet affect metabolism and how that ends up changing the odds of having diseases associated with aging,” commented researcher Alicia Kowaltowski, of the University of São Paulo. In one experiment, a group of mice was allowed to consume as much food as they desired, and the number […]
January 8, 2019

Curcumin Could Improve Exercise Tolerance

In an article published on November 21, 2018 in the Journal of Applied Physiology, University of Nebraska Medical Center researchers reported the outcome of a study which suggests that curcumin, a compound occurring in the spice turmeric, could help heart failure patients with exercise intolerance. “We hypothesized that reduced expression of nuclear factor E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) in skeletal muscle contributes to impaired exercise performance,” explain Ahmed M. Wafi and colleagues. “We further hypothesized that curcumin, a Nrf2 activator, would preserve or increase exercise capacity in heart failure.” “Although curcumin has been evaluated in several clinical trials for multiple diseases, its therapeutic potential […]
December 17, 2017

MIND Diet Could Help Prevent Dementia

Dementia is one of the most dangerous and distressing conditions anyone can face in their lives. It is a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes, caused by brain disease or injury, and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning. According to a previous report, almost 47 million people are living with dementia around the world with 4.1 million of them living in India. There are more than 9.9 million new cases of dementia diagnosed each year worldwide, implying one new case every 3.2 seconds. People are twice as afraid of losing their cognitive skills as they […]
September 4, 2016

Mediterranean Diet May Help Maintain Brain Health

Elderly people who follow a Mediterranean-style diet may benefit from better brain health and a lower risk for cognitive impairment later in life, according to a new US study. “It suggests that a healthy dietary pattern and specific dietary components have impact on biomarkers of brain pathology,” senior researcher Rosebud Roberts of the Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in Rochester, Minnesota, told Reuters Health by email. A Mediterranean-style diet includes fish, lean meat, legumes, nuts, whole grains, fruits, vegetables and healthy fats. The diet has been linked to better heart and bone health. Roberts and colleagues analyzed data from […]
August 8, 2016

The Ten “Super” Foods for a Well-stocked Kitchen

What is a “superfood”? Most doctors and nutritionists will say that there is no scientific definition of “superfood,” that it is a marketing buzzword applied to foods that are good for you. Functional medicine specialist Dr. Marsha Nunley, founder of H.E.A.L. Medical, agrees but says: “While it is true that there is no legal or medical specification for a ‘superfood,’ it is without question that there are foods that are high in healthful nutrients and adding them to your diet may reduce your risk of chronic disease and improve your overall health and well-being.” Superfoods are packed with combinations of […]