Calcium Doesn't Directly Help Weight Loss

So here's a bummer for the dairy industry: contrary to what they would advertise in "Milk your diet. Lose weight!!" increasing your calcium intake doesn't help you burn more fat. 

The 20-week study, conducted by researchers from Switzerland's University of Lausanne and the Nestle Research Center, included 10 overweight or obese people identified before recruitment whose regular diets were low in calcium.

Study participants were randomly assigned to be given either placebo or 800 milligrams of dairy calcium daily for two five-week periods, separated by a 10-week washout phase.

Four weeks into the supplementation phases of the study, researchers performed a battery of tests designed to examine the impact of calcium on fat metabolism.

The tests revealed no differences between the people taking the placebo and the calcium in any of these measures, including resting energy expenditure, fat oxidation, and plasma-free fatty acid concentrations.

In addition, expression of seven key metabolic genes in biopsied fat tissue was not affected by calcium supplementation.

But that's not to say there are still very valid benefits to eating cheeses and drinking milk! It just means that this, like pretty much everything else, is not a quick-fix for your weight. It takes eating a moderate, balanced diet, and exercising! No excuses.

TC

Red Wine!

So this one is for the wine connoisseurs in the audience: Drinking moderate amounts of red-wine may lead to lower chances of developing lung cancer:

Moderate red wine consumption was associated with a reduced incidence of lung cancer, especially among smokers. Smokers who drank at least one glass of red wine a day had 60% lower chance of getting lung cancer than nondrinking smokers.

Of course, this comes with two very important points:

1. If you REALLY wanted to reduce your risk of lung-cancer, QUIT SMOKING! (If you already have, or never started, kudos to you!)

2. Don't go overboard with this study. It's only showing a link and not certain causality, and it definitely doesn't condone excessive drinking. Remember: the study said moderate red wine consumption.

3. The study didn't show the same benefits from drinking white wines or beers unfortunately. 

Be sure to check out the other benefits of red wine as well! 

There are tons of em.

TC

Train Your Brain

Even though the brain seems like some mysterious glob of knowledge in our heads, you can take some steps to train it one way or another, with an example below:

Exercise your weakest link to learn faster.
"The brain runs on the ‘use
it or lose it' principle," says Dr. Doidge. "For instance, if you have a stroke
and one of your arms stops working correctly—so you use it less—you will
probably begin to rely on your ‘good' arm, strengthening the brain cells devoted
to it. Putting the healthy arm into a sling will force you to rely on only the
injured arm, and you can often then strengthen its brain cells with incremental
exercises." The same goes for mental skills—you can put your ‘good' mental
abilities in a sling and exercise your ‘weak' ones to help your brain to rewire.
"When learning a new language, for example, you should immerse yourself in it
completely by going to a country where you can't fall back on your native
language," he says. "It's like putting a cast on your mother tongue and forcing
your brain to build new pathways so you'll pick up a different way of speaking
more quickly."

Sudoku is always a good time-killer/mental-booster. I go here: http://www.websudoku.com/ for my daily fix.

TC

Contact Contest

Eye infection is one of the biggests risks to wearing contact lenses, but new studies show that all contact lenses are not created equal:

Daily disposable wearers had 1.5 times higher risk of microbial keratitis than those who wore soft lenses that were replaced every one to four weeks, and those who wore rigid gas-permeable lenses had the least risk of infection.

''Gas-permeable lenses are safer than any other type of lenses,'' Dart says, although he adds that they are not a popular choice among contact lens wearers, who tend to find them uncomfortable.

Hard contacts are definitely uncomfortable (at least in my book), but I find the Acuvue Oasys 2-week disposables to be pretty comfortable compromise.

But no matter what, remember: don't wear them overnight! Even if you're dead tired just pull yourself out of the bed/sofa and spend 2 minutes to get them out. You don't want to risk a costly infection that could ultimately lead to blindness.

TC

Cheese Away!

Good news for cheese-lovers, and for those wanting to get into cheeses: Eating full-fat cheese may actually in the long-run help you lose weight. The rationale?

"The combination of protein and fat in regular, full-fat cheese is very satiating," says Alan Aragon, a nutritionist in Westlake Village, California, and the Men's Health Weight-Loss Coach. "As a result, eating full-fat cheese holds your appetite at bay for hours, and I've found that it cuts down my clients' food intake at subsequent meals." Aragon's advice: Enjoy snacks of full-fat cheese especially if you're on a diet. "Just don't eat it mindlessly," he says.

Although it's a rather higher-caloried food, eating more now might help you eat less overall! If you're worried about cholesterol:

 Danish scientists found that when men ate a whopping 10 daily 1-ounce servings of full-fat cheese for 3 weeks, their LDL (bad) cholesterol didn't budge. Which isn't to say you should live on the stuff--just that you don't need to fear it. 

Goes to show that natural foods like cheeses and milk, although high in fat, aren't as bad as the more processed foods that have...say...the same face-valued number of calories or grams of fat.

Sounds like a plan. (Remember though: moderation)

TC

Lower Your Breast Cancer Risk With....FOOD

I am a very strong proponent of the simplified idea of "you are what you eat," and that your dietary habits influence your overall health. There's been a recent surge of information regarding antioxidants, and Omega-3's and this article takes nutrition one step further and says that regulating what you eat may lower your risk of breast cancer.

Some helpful suggestions include: staying away from bbq/charred meat, eating more produce, and increasing your intake of calcium and vitamin D.

And even if some of the data isn't entirely solid/conclusive, they're good suggestions. (like eating less saturated fat is probably a good thing overall--anti-cancer or not. )

TC

Push Ups: Perfect Workout?

I thought the perfect exercise was always swimming (still number 1 in my book!) but this latest article talks about the virtues of the "perfect push-up" and why it's probably one of the most cost-efficient exercises in the book. It's said that:

"One of the reasons the push-up has endured so long is it's cheap, it's easy, it doesn't require any equipment, it can work multiple parts of the body at the same time -- and pretty much everyone, from beginners to athletes, can derive benefits," says personal trainer Jonathan Ross, a spokesman for the American Council on Exercise (ACE)."

I used to watch the Simpsons and every time Homer said "D'oh!" I'd do 5 pushups. Needless to say, there were some episodes that had me really sore the next day.

TC

Make your bad breath better!

Got bad breath? WebMD lists 8 ways to make sure the next time you're talking to someone be it interviewer or potential date, that the conversation doesn't stop before it starts. My favorite way would be with the gum:

Chew gum like it's going out of style.

Believe it or not, saliva is your best weapon against bad breath. That's why dry mouth, often caused by certain medications or medical conditions, leads to odor problems. By washing away food particles and bacteria, saliva helps to eliminate odor, too.

If you're wondering why your breath stinks in the morning, it's largely because saliva production slows while you sleep, allowing particles and odor to linger longer. That's where sugarless gum comes in handy, as chewing it will stimulate saliva production. Mints, on the other hand, don't usually stimulate saliva production and only temporarily mask bad odor.

"When you chew gum it makes you salivate, and the more saliva you have in your mouth the fewer bacteria you have. It not only mechanically washes bacteria out, but we have antiseptic and enzymes in our saliva that kill bacteria," says Wolner.

While anything that makes you salivate will improve your breath, a gum that is sweetened with xylitol is your best option. Xylitol is a sugar substitute that not only increases salvation but also works to prevent bacteria from replicating in the mouth.

Check the other 7 reasons out. Your mouth will thank you.

TC

Chocolate Heart Healing

Chocoholics rejoice! 

An Italian study shows that dark chocolate can significantly reduce the inflammation that leads to cardiovascular disease. The ideal amount is 6.7 grams per day (0.23 ounces). A typical Hershey chocolate bar weighs about 43 grams. That means eating one dark chocolate bar over the course of 6 1/2 days to get 6.7 grams per day.

Milk chocolate doesn't appear to offer the same benefits.

I wouldn't recommend Hershey's persay. My personal favorite source of chocolate would be the delicious scharffen berger (http://www.scharffenberger.com/) chocolate covered nibs. I highly recommend you try some!

TC

Fish Help

Recent studies show that eating fish during pregnancy may lower eczema risk in children. The study also found interestingly enough, that this had little to do with the omega-3 (thought of so highly these days) content of the fish eaten. It's something else in the seafood. But check this out: 

Babies in a newly published study whose diets included fish before the age of 9 months were 24% less likely to develop eczema by their first birthdays than babies who did not eat fish.

The infants were enrolled in an ongoing health study in Sweden that is following almost 17,000 children from birth though childhood.

Having a mother or sibling with eczema was the strongest risk factor for developing the allergic skin condition during the first year of life.

But the impact of early fish consumption on risk was significant, lead author Bernt Alm, MD, PhD, of Sweden's Queen Silvia Children's Hospital, tells WebMD.

 

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Fish has always been purported as a wonderfully nutritious, healthy food (as long as it's coming from clean sources) and there's no reason why a mother should be avoiding it during, and post-pregnancy. 

TC

Smells like Romance.

I always thought that the birth control was a bit of a scary thing: yeah, sure it's a sexually liberating and revolutionary contraceptive for women everywhere, but still, there had to have been some kind of side effect for essentially mimicking a pregnancy hormonally. Who knew that the pill would have an effect on the kind of mate women chose?

In earlier T-shirt-sniffing studies, women taking birth control pills seemed to be attracted to the "wrong" men. Intrigued, Roberts and colleagues took a closer look.

They paid 37 women to smell men's T-shirts before and after going on the pill. Then they compared the women's before- and after-pill ratings of the odors to those of 60 women who did not use oral contraceptives.

The result: After taking the pill, women shifted toward preferring genetically similar men. Women who did not take the pill slightly increased their preference for genetically different men.

Why? Roberts notes that when they become pregnant, female animals switch to preferring the scent of genetically similar males. This may allow them to seek out males that will help them protect and raise the baby. Claus Wedekind, PhD, who performed the original T-shirt-sniffing studies, has suggested that birth control pills somehow mimic this process.

The question, of course, is what happens when a woman taking birth control pills marries a man to whom she's attracted -- and then stops taking the pill.

Uh oh. That last sentence sounds a little foreboding. I guess we'll have to see where this novel issue takes some couples. Let's hope people don't have to choose between physical attraction and emotional intimacy. Solution: Nose plugs?

Until Next Time!
TC