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