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Can Healthy Living Delay Dementia?

To Your Heath from Pinnacle!

New research from York University suggests so and could be important news not just for seniors, but all of us.  Cited is the combination of eating plenty of fruits and vegetables along with regular exercise leading to higher brain function in both younger and older adults.

And best of all, for many is that their combination may also delay the onset of dementia.

Over 45,000 Participants Studied

By any measure, this was a substantive and impressive study.  Eating more than 10 daily servings of fruits and vegetables and moderate exercise led to better cognitive functioning for participants who were either of normal weight or moderately overweight.

Dangers of an Unhealthy Lifestyle

As the benefits of eating right foods and exercise benefit brain function, the opposite is also true. Those with weight issues who exercised less and ate little or no fruits and vegetables, had far poorer brain function.

Lifestyle Risk Factors and Behaviors

Around the world, especially in Western cultures, we’ve seen rising rates of inactivity and skyrocketing rates of obesity. What’s clear is how lifestyles ingrained over lifetimes can directly link to cognitive function – and how healthier habits can potentially delay decline.

Researchers are already planning additional studies of participants at all stages of life to gain a more comprehensive and complete life-span understanding.  The aim is to study younger, middle-aged and older adults collectively.  Hopes are high that the study will yield a better understanding of the risks and links to dementia, and things regular people can do to reduce the incidence.

The goal is to better understand how lifelong behaviors contribute to cognitive decline.

The Best Advice

For now, the best advice is to go easier on the treats, sweets, fried and highly-processed foods, and replace them with fruits and vegetables.  Stay active and make exercise part of a new, healthier lifestyle, and you may benefit from better health and improved brain function.

You’ll likely feel better and enjoy better health.

Difference between Naturopath and Western Medicine

Migraines and Your Diet

To Your Heath from Pinnacle!

For those who suffer migraine headaches, the pain is overwhelming and can also be totally debilitating.  For the countless chronic sufferers that have tried just about everything but have been unable to find relief, a new study offers new and inspiring hope.

From the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center comes a study that shows that caffeine, processed foods high in nitrites or the flavor enhancer mono sodium glutamate (MSG), imbibing alcohol to excess and too much of your Morning Jo are all potential triggers and things to cut-back on or consider eliminating entirely.

Avoid Migraine Triggers

This could mean saying goodbye to foods and beverages that are the best-known culprits. Favorite foods you may have to take another look at for their high MSG content include frozen and canned foods, soups, snack foods, seasonings, salad dressings, condiments and some Asian and international foods.

Additional Rewards

There are additional benefits as well. From overall better health from a diet of more nutritious foods and lower sugars to more effective and natural weight management and dental health. There are many dietary options to discuss with your healthcare professional.

A Stricter Diet

This is one area where dozens upon dozens of studies provide the inarguable link between these foods and beverages and the consensus of experts concluding how they trigger migraine headaches. Consuming less processed food and drinking less alcohol, especially vodka and red wine which are widely popular but have the highest histamine content, can be big helpers to limit Migraine triggers.

Your Morning Cuppa

If you are prone to having a morning cup of coffee - do it in moderation. Too much is considered another migraine trigger; it’s recommended that no more than 400 milligrams of caffeine – a little of three cups – is the limit for headache sufferers.  Be forewarned, however, cold turkey caffeine elimination may give you ‘morning headaches’ while your body readjusts.

Eat healthier and feel better has long been a mantra for so many ailments.

Lower carbohydrate intake and fats limited to 20 percent or less of food intake while adding foods boosting omega-3 fats and lessening omega-6 levels can help with migraine headaches and much more.

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Sugar, Fat and REM Sleep Loss Link

To Your Heath from Pinnacle!

From a study conducted by the University of Tsukuba comes strong evidence of a direct link between sugary and high-fat foods and REM sleep loss. 

The university’s researchers in their International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine have probed this connection with a new chemical-genetic technique to attempt to reverse the effect of sleep loss and sucrose consumption.

What is the Connection?

Until now, what wasn’t so clear is how REM sleep loss impacts the brain’s messaging, and how that messaging serves to trigger the desire to eat unhealthy foods. 

In a quick summary, the medial prefrontal cortex may play a controlling role in what we want to eat.  When we’re sleep deprived, an increased desire is triggered for the foods that are best at packing on unwanted pounds. 

What is REM Sleep?

Most all living creatures sleep, but REM sleep is unique to mammals, and many aspects of REM sleep have always fascinated – and perplexed – researchers.

REM sleep is most closely associated with dreaming. Signs include random or rapid eye movement.  Our bodies remain astonishingly still during REM sleep. Researchers have found that obese people, typically exposed to more high calorie foods by their lifestyle choices, commonly have increased prefrontal cortex activity.

Study Inhibited Mice

Researchers induced REM sleep loss in mice to block prefrontal cortex neurons and impact the behaviors they control and influence. This part of the brain plays a major role in how we respond to what we eat – by taste, smell and texture.  Unknown until now, was how this part of brain also impacts our desire for specific foods that are fatty and high in sugar, increasingly so when we’re short on sleep.

Sleeping better may even prove to ultimately play a role in more effective weight control.

So, get your sleep! You’ll feel better, be healthier and more!

Want to Feel Happier? Eat Fruits and Vegetables!

To Your Heath from Pinnacle!

Researchers at the University of Warwick in collaboration with the University of Queensland in Australia have confirmed what mothers around the world have been telling their kids forever – eating fruits and vegetables really is good for you.

And not only good for your health, but as a surprising aspect of this new study, there are very real and measurable happiness benefits, too.

Benefits of Antioxidants

We’ve long heard the accepted finding that antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of cancer and heart attacks - that’s not new. What is news is that this study is the first to explore and quantify the psychological benefits.

Over a period of 24 months, people who changed from a diet of no fruit and vegetables to one of eight portions a day, experienced a positive change in their overall life satisfaction.

Study Followed 12,000 People

The study used food diaries of randomly selected people; over 12,000 of them.  The unexpected finding is that the benefits of incorporating fruits and vegetables into diets, appearing  as a sense of well-being, seem to appear earlier than the medical benefits such as higher resistance to cancer and heart attack; a couple of years versus a couple of decades. Benefits from eating each extra daily portion, up to 8 portions per day, of fruits and vegetables showed as a higher sense of happiness.

Help for the Western Diet

The Western Diet has long been viewed as unhealthy, or at least less healthy.  It is expected that health professionals will cite this study to encourage even more of their patients to add fruits and vegetables to their diets.  Not just better health far in the future, but feeling happier - the psychological reward – and that reward comes much sooner.

What’s Next?

Researchers will continue to probe, conducting research into antioxidants.  Current research suggest links between carotenoid levels in the blood and optimism; imagine that!

What would Mum say?

Eat more fruits and vegetables!