Olive oil consumption is linked with longer life – and less risk from heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s. But how much do you need to live longer? A new study has provided a little more evidence that olive oil, is, in the words of one distinguished researcher, “virtually a magic substance”. The research, questioned 90,000 health workers about their consumption of olive oil over a 28 year period. It found that those who consumed olive oil – even in small amounts – reduced their risk of dying over the following 28 years by an impressive 19%. Of course, it’s not as…
Either Tea or Coffee Could Protect You from Stroke and Dementia, But Drink Both Each Day and They’re Even More Effective It stood to reason that tea and coffee, minimally processed plant products dissolved in water, were good for our health. The evidence for the benefit as well as the pleasure they give has accumulated rapidly in recent decades, including that separately each is able to reduce the risk of stroke and of dementia. Now, however, a study shows that the protective power of these two giants of the beverage world is multiplied when they are both consumed. Is this…
Oxidation Is Killing Us. Antioxidants in Foods Can Neutralize the Free Radicals Causing Aging and Disease Antioxidants in foods such as HealthSpan muesli can slow aging and disease There’s a lot of talk – including on these pages! – about the way free radicals age us and promote disease, and even more about the power of certain foods to prevent this damage. So here is an explanation of where free radicals come from, how food can neutralize them and how we can assess the antioxidant capacity of different nutrients. Thousands of phytonutrients, compounds made by plants that have the ability…
Breakfast Like a King and Dine Like a Pauper for Weight Loss and Better Health Research suggests that eating your highest calorie meal in the morning is better for you. At first glance it makes a lot of sense to eat most when more of the day’s activity is still ahead of you and you can expect to burn those calories rather than store them as fat. Like other ideas that appeal to common sense the maxim “breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dine like a pauper” is one appears to have wide currency. There’s reported to…
More Is Better: the Dose-Dependent Effect of Exercise on Health and Longevity Research has confirmed that government guidelines maximize the benefit to longevity for each hour spent exercising. Governments and health care providers tell us that we should eat a specified minimum amount of fruit and vegetables and take a particular minimum amount of exercise. But given that these recommendations mean changes – perhaps sometimes ones we’d prefer not to make – in our daily lives, how far can we trust them to deliver longer and healthier lives for the effort we’re being asked to make? It seems that we…
It’s Not Too Late! Even if You’ve Postponed Exercising to Middle Age, You Can Still Reap the Benefits of a Longer, Healthier Life Sedentary people who take up exercise in mid-life can lower their risk of premature death by almost as much as if they’d always been physically active. If you’re among the many people who’ve led a largely sedentary lifestyle into middle age, you can take up exercise and reverse much of the extra risk to health that usually results from inactivity. Better still, a new study suggests that you can gain almost all the health and longevity benefits…
Want to Reduce Your Risk of Death? Fitness Matters More Than Weight Says a New Study It’s long been clear that, for most people, long-term obesity places them at greater risk of developing conditions such as diabetes and heart disease that not only reduce their quality of life but increases the risk of premature death. But losing substantial amounts of weight by restricting what you eat can represent an enormous challenge. Can you protect your health and life by increasing physical activity instead? Might it make sense, in other words, to be “fat but fit”? Many studies have investigated this…
We Have a Hundred Trillion Little Friends. We Need to Keep Them Sweet if They’re to Keep Us Healthy.
We Have a Hundred Trillion Little Friends We Need to Keep Them Sweet if They’re to Keep Us Healthy In the average person, they weigh one or two kilos, are composed of around four thousand different species, and number a hundred trillion members. They are the bacteria in our guts. Evidence is multiplying that this huge workforce plays a critical role in our health, especially in avoiding obesity and the diseases caused by the needless activation of our immune systems, also known as inflammation. Obesity, associated with “western” diets containing a lot of saturated fat and sugar, and and with…
Eating Well On a Limited Budget Doesn’t Have to Mean Eating Fast Eat well – not fast. It doesn’t cost as much as you think If budgets are tight, and especially if time is even tighter, it’s easy to short-cut on what you eat. It can seem a lot easier to visit the kebab or fried chicken shop on the way home or get a Big Burger in place of the steamed vegetables you suspect you should be eating. And eating healthily – isn’t that something to worry about a few years down the road? Sadly – or perhaps, predictably…
Babies Are Dying in the Developing World for Lack of Breastfeeding. What’s the Effect on Infants in Developed Countries? Figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spell out the terrible toll taken on infants in some poorer countries. Even in a large and rapidly developing country such as Nigeria, more than one in ten babies do not make it to their fifth birthday. Nigeria has halved its child mortality rate since 1990; before that twenty-one percent of children died before they were five. The figures are similar to those for other west African nations such as Chad and the Central…