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February 2007 Vol. 12 No. 2

“True leadership is the art of changing a group from what it is into what it ought to be.”
- Virginia Allen
DUTY - HONOR - COUNTRY


Table of Contents:

AFPA Fitness Conferences for Spring 2007
Fruits and Vegetables Improve Male Fertility
Calcium Supplements Fail to Improve Children?s Bone Health
Veggies Keep Us Young
Grains Lower Diabetes Risk
Red Meat Increases Breast Cancer Risk
Beating Seasonal Affective Disorder the Natural Way
Get Your Folic Acid From Whole Food Sources
Use Your Brain A LOT More Often or Risk Losing It
Lack of omega-3s can contribute to childhood obesity: NewsTarget.com

AFPA Fitness Conferences for Spring 2007April 27-29 Beach Jam XIII Fitness, Trainer, Sports & Mind Body Conference, Ocean City,MD http://www.afpafitness.com/BeachJamLocationInfo2007.htm

May 10-12 Myrtle Beach Fitness, Trainer, Sports & Mind Body Conference,Kingston Plantation, Myrtle Beach,SC
http://www.afpafitness.com/MyrtleBeachLocationInfo2007.htm

Fruits and Vegetables Improve Male FertilityA new study shows that eating fruits and vegetables can improve fertility in men. Researchers from the University of Rochester compared the dietary intake of antioxidants of 10 fertile and 48 infertile men and correlated the findings with sperm motility.

Infertile men were twice as likely to have a low intake of fruits and vegetables (fewer than five servings per day) compared with fertile men. Also, men with the lowest overall intake of dietary antioxidants had lower sperm motility than men with higher intakes.

Lewis V, Kochman L, Herko R, Brewer K, Andolina E, Song G. Dietary antioxidants and sperm quality in infertile men.
Paper presented at: Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine; October 2006; New Orleans.

Calcium Supplements Fail to Improve Children?s Bone HealthA new analysis shows little benefit to using calcium supplements to improve bone health in children. Nineteen randomized controlled trials were reviewed to determine the effectiveness of calcium supplementation for improving bone mineral density in children.

Supplementation had no effect on the bone mineral density in the neck or spine and caused only a small increase in the density of the upper limb, equivalent to a 1.7 percentage increase in the supplemented group compared with the control. No lasting effect of supplementation was seen in the one study that reported total body density after supplementation stopped.

Winzenberg T, Shaw K, Fryer J, Jones G. Effects of calcium supplementation on bone density in healthy children: meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. BMJ. 2006;333:775

Veggies Keep Us YoungNew research suggests that eating vegetables helps slow mental decline as we age. In a six-year study, people 65 years of age or older who ate more than two servings of vegetables a day had about 40 percent less mental decline than people who ate few or no vegetables. Spinach, kale, and collards were among the most beneficial vegetables. Researchers suspect that is because they contain vitamin E, a powerful antioxidant.

Morris MC, Evans DA, Tangney CC, Bienias JL, Wilson RS. Associations of vegetable and fruit consumption with age-related cognitive change. Neurology. 2006;67:1370-1376.

Grains Lower Diabetes RiskAfrican-American women may be able to lower their risk of developing type 2 diabetes by eating plenty of magnesium-rich foods, especially whole grains, such as millet and barley, according to a recent report in Diabetes Care. Participants in the Black Women?s Health Study who consumed the most magnesium had a 31 percent lower risk of developing diabetes compared with those who consumed the least amount of magnesium.

Diabetes Care, October 2006.

Red Meat Increases Breast Cancer RiskNew data from Harvard’s Nurse’s Health Study II show that women who consumed one and a half or more servings of red meat per day had nearly double the risk of developing hormone receptor-positive breast cancer compared with women consuming three or fewer servings of red meat per week. Hormone receptor-positive breast cancer is the most common type of breast cancer and has been on the rise in recent years.

This study involved more than 90,000 premenopausal women age 26 to 46 who completed food surveys during a 12-year period. Animal fat and red meat intake were found to increase premenopausal breast cancer risk in a previous analysis of the Nurse’s Health Study II.

Possible reasons for this association include carcinogens produced as meat is cooked, hormones given to cattle for growth promotion, red meat’s high content of heme iron, which has been shown to increase estrogen-dependent tumor growth, and red meat’s high fat content.

Cho E, Chen WY, Hunter DJ, Stampfer MJ, Colditz GA, Hankinson SE, Willett WC. Red meat intake and risk of breast cancer among premenopausal women. Arch Intern Med. 2006;166:2253-2259.

Beating Seasonal Affective Disorder the Natural WayA bedside device that simulates sunrise may provide relief from the winter depression known as seasonal affective disorder or SAD. “Negative air ionization” may also be effective. A new study has shown that the two techniques, when activated toward the end of sleep, are as effective as bright light therapy upon waking up, an established treatment for SAD.

Dawn simulation and negative air ionization are more convenient than bright light therapy, which involves sitting at a bright light box for 30 minutes each morning.

In the study, 99 adults with SAD were randomly assigned one of five treatments: dawn simulation, a brief dawn “pulse,” bright light therapy, high flow rate negative air ionization, or low flow rate ionization. Full dawn simulation, high negative air ionization, and bright light therapy were roughly equal in terms of the improvement in SAD symptoms; improvement was seen in between 48 percent and 57 percent of subjects receiving these therapies.

In contrast, only 23 percent of those receiving low flow rate ionization showed improvement. Further, 43 percent of those receiving sunrise pulse treatment showed improvement, but it also exacerbated depressive symptoms in other patients.

American Journal of Psychiatry December 2006; 163(12): 2126-2133
Reuters January 3, 2007

Get Your Folic Acid From Whole Food SourcesFolic AcidA pair of recent studies have shown how a lack of the B vitamin folate can harm the health of athletes as well as young women and, quite possibly, their babies.

A CDC study that examined blood tests of 4,500 women of childbearing years over a period of five years found an 8 percent to 16 percent decline in folate levels. This marks the first time a decline has been observed since the start of health campaigns urging women to get enough folic acid.

Folate deficiencies in mothers have previously been shown to be a factor in serious birth defects of the spine and brain, known as neural tube defects.

Meanwhile, another study has shown that athletes who are deficient in B vitamins, including folate, perform less well and repair and build muscle tissue more slowly.

MMWR January 5, 2007
International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism October 2006; 16(5)
USA Today January 4, 2007

Use Your Brain A LOT More Often or Risk Losing ItA new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association once again indicates that keeping mentally active improves you memory and cognitive capacity.

About 3,000 seniors from six cities (ranging in size from Boston to State College, Pennsylvania) participated in a five-year study involving short sessions of “brain exercise” over six weeks. Some patients took classes involving memory, reasoning or faster mental processing. then refresher classes at the one- and three-year marks, while others were only tested, but weren’t exposed to mental training.

Seniors benefited from exposure to such classes, especially those taking speed training; 90 percent of those study participants showed immediate improvements. Moreover, those improvements lasted the duration of the study, and were especially long-lasting for those who took refresher classes.

Journal of the American Medical Association December 20, 2006; 296(23): 2805-2814
Yahoo News December 19, 2006

Lack of omega-3s can contribute to childhood obesity: NewsTarget.comA lack of healthy fats can actually cause children to become overweight, according to a study published online by the Swedish Research Council. Researchers based at the Sahlgrenska Academy at Goteborg University studied the lifestyle, dietary habits and insulin levels of a group of four-year-old children, and correlated these factors with measurements of Body Mass Index (BMI).

According to the BMI measurements, 23 percent of the children were overweight and another 2 percent were obese. Surprisingly, however, the children with the healthier BMIs actually had higher fat intake than the overweight children. The difference was that the less overweight children were consuming more unsaturated fats, omega-3s in particular.

Researchers also noted a correlation between insulin levels, weight gain, and fat consumption. The children with the highest weight gain had the highest levels of insulin in their blood. By contrast, girls who consumed the most unsaturated fats were those with the lowest insulin levels.

The conclusion of this article appears on NewsTarget.com, the independent natural health news source for consumers. This article, along with other uncensored news on important consumer health topics, can be found at:

Lack of omega-3s can contribute to childhood obesity
http://www.newstarget.com/021531.html

Selected segments are reproduced from Dr. Mercola’s excellent website:
http://www.mercola.com/index.htmPhysicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
http://www.pcrm.org