How Inactivity Harms Your Health

I came across this nifty diagram showing how being inactive contributes to illness. Get moving to stay healthy! When you don't move you gain weight, especially around the middle. White blood cells from your immune system move into the fat around your organs. This ignites inflammation everywhere in your body, which leads to insulin resistance and more weight gain, and ultimately diabetes. This raises your risk for heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke. This inflammation also leads to brain issues like dementia, Parkinsons and Alzheimers. Also increased is your risk for cancer. It is worth saying again. Get moving to protect your health!

Antioxidant rich diet linked to lower diabetes risk in women.

Consuming a diet rich in antioxidant foods is associated with a reduction in risk of type-2 diabetes (T2D) in middle-aged women, according to a new study in the journal Diabetologia.

Women with the highest quintile of dietary antioxidant intake, measured by total antioxidant capacity (TOC), reduced their risk of T2D by 27 %.

Total antioxidant capacity (TOC) is an index which estimates the aggregated antioxidant capacity from the sum of all the individual antioxidant components in the diet.

The development of T2D may involve oxidative stress, recent evidence has suggested. A diet containing fruit, vegetables and beverages including tea contains a variety of compounds with antioxidative properties. In this study, “the food groups that contributed the most to the TOC were fruit (23%), vegetables (19%), alcoholic beverages (15%) and hot beverages such as tea, chicory and hot chocolate (12%).

Teens with the hearts of old men. A cautionary tale.

Kale, parsley, broccoli, and spinach: according to new research, these leafy green vegetables may hold even more health benefits than previously thought, as vitamin K - found in abundance in all four - may contribute to a healthy heart.

A new study published in The Journal of Nutrition examines the link between vitamin K levels and heart structure and functioning in young people.

Vitamin K plays a key role in blood coagulation and bone health. Deficient levels of the vitamin raise the risk of hemorrhage, osteoporosis, and bone fractures.

In its dietary form, vitamin K is known as phylloquinone, or vitamin K-1. This is abundantly found in leafy green vegetables such as kale, parsley, broccoli, spinach, iceberg lettuce, and cabbage.

The new research suggests that insufficient levels of the vitamin may affect the structure of the heart, leading to a condition called left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH).

The left ventricle is the heart's major pumping chamber, and in LVH, this chamber is enlarged to an unhealthy degree. As the authors of the new study explain, a larger heart can malfunction with time, becoming less effective at pumping blood.

LVH tends to affect adults, but the researchers decided to study this heart structure in young people because cardiac abnormalities that begin in childhood tend to predict the risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. They found that teens with the lowest intake of vitamin K1 from foods had triple the rate of LVH of their counterparts who had the highest intake.

Your mom was right…eat your greens.

Here's the study.

Do you know your omega-3 status?

Many Americans don’t.

Currently, 95.7% of Americans are not consuming enough omega-3 EPA + DHA to reach cardioprotective levels. 1. 

A large and growing body of evidence shows that insufficient levels of omega-3 EPA + DHA may be associated with serious health complications for many Americans. 2.

Low levels of omega-3 are related to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death among both men and women in the United States. 3.

Harvard researchers evaluated the mortality effects of several dietary, lifestyle and metabolic risk factors in the United States. They found that insufficient levels of omega-3 were associated with serious health complications and nearly 100,000 premature deaths each year. 4.

Don't be a statistic when Omega-3s offer such a wealth of health benefits. Get 500 mg of EPA DHA Omega-3 daily. You can do that by having two fish meals each week that feature salmon, tuna, sardines or other high omega-3 fish.  

If you have heart disease or risk factors that lead to higher risk of heart disease you need 1000 mg of EPA DHA daily. 

Finally if you have elevated triglycerides you should aim for 4000 mg of EPA DHA daily.

Ask your doctor to run a simple blood test, the Omega-3 Index at your next visit. The goal for optimal health is 8%.

1. Murphy RA, Yu EA, Ciappio ED, Mehta S, McBurney MI.Suboptimal Plasma Long Chain n-3 Concentrations are Common among Adults in theUnited States, NHANES 2003–2004.

2.  Kris-Etherton PM, Harris WS, Appel LJ. Fishconsumption, fish oil, omega-3 fatty acids, and cardiovascular disease. Circulation.2002;106:2747-57.

3. Mozaffarian D, Benjamin EJ, Go AS et al. Heart Diseaseand Stroke Statistics-2016 Update: A Report From the American HeartAssociation. Circulation. 2016;133:e38-e360

4. Danaei G, Ding E, Ezzati M et al. The preventable causes of death in the United States: Comparative risk assessment of dietary, lifestyle, and metabolic risk factors. PLoS Med. 2009;6:e1000058