Burgers May Feed Kids’ Asthma Risk
February 11, 2011 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 11th, 2011
USNews.com
By: Steven Reinberg
Children who eat three or more hamburgers a week may raise their odds for asthma and wheeze, a new study suggests.
However, eating the so-called “Mediterranean diet” — rich in fruits, vegetables and fish — could cut kids’ respiratory risk, the researchers say.
“Our results support previous reports that the adherence to a Mediterranean diet, which is characterized by a high intake of fruit, vegetables and fish and a low intake of meat, burger and fizzy drinks, may provide partial protection against asthma in childhood,” said lead researcher Dr. Gabriele Nagel, from the Institute of Epidemiology at Ulm University in Germany.
The report is published in the June 3 issue of Thorax.
For the study, Nagel’s team collected data on about 50,000 children from 20 rich and poor countries. Parents were asked about their children’s typical diet and whether they had asthma or not. In addition, almost 30,000 of the children were tested for allergies.
While diet did not appear to influence allergies, it was associated with the risk of asthma and wheeze, the researchers found.
Children in both rich and poorer countries who ate a lot of fruit had lower rates of wheeze.
Eating lots of fish seemed to protect children in rich countries, and a diet high in cooked green vegetables protected children in less developed countries from wheeze, Nagel’s group found.
Fruits and vegetables are rich in antioxidant vitamins and biologically active agents, and the omega 3 fatty acids prevalent in fish have anti-inflammatory properties, which might explain these findings, the researchers said.
“Overall, a Mediterranean diet was associated with a lower lifetime prevalence of asthma and wheeze,” Nagel said.
On the other hand, children who ate a lot of burgers had a higher lifetime prevalence of asthma and wheeze, the researchers found. The finding was especially true for allergy-free children from more affluent countries.
But the burger finding could be a marker for other lifestyle factors that could boost a child’s for asthma, the researchers note. Meat in general was not seen to increase the risk of wheeze, the study found.
Pulmonologist Dr. Michael Light, a professor of medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, agreed that diet can influence asthma.
“The data is fairly consistent that antioxidants and unsaturated fatty acids play a role in the big picture,” Light said. “This doesn’t mean if you change your diet today you are going to cure your asthma. All the study is saying is that one of the explanations for asthma is probably related to diet,” he said.
Echoing these findings, results of a study presented May 16 at the American Thoracic Society International Conference in New Orleans showed that fatty meals were linked to impaired lung function.
In that study, Australian researchers tested people with asthma before and after a high-fat meal or after a low-fat meal. They found that the high-fat meal increased inflammation and reduced lung function.
“If these results can be confirmed by further research, this suggests that strategies aimed at reducing dietary fat intake may be useful in managing asthma,” the study’s lead author, Lisa Wood, a lecturer in biomedical sciences and pharmacy at the Hunter Medical Research Institute in New Lambton, said at the time.
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Olive Oil, Green Leafy Vegetables Prevent Heart Disease
January 4, 2011 by admin
Filed under News Stories
January 4th, 2011
Natural News
By: Jonathan Benson
Italian researchers have confirmed that diets rich in leafy green vegetables and olive oil are vital for heart health. Dr. Domenico Palli from the Cancer Research and Prevention Institute in Florence and his colleagues discovered that women who eat at least one serving of leafy greens a day are 46 percent less likely to develop heart disease than women who eat less. And those who consume at least three tablespoons of olive oil a day earn roughly the same benefit.
“Probably the mechanisms responsible for the protective effect of plant-origin foods on cardiovascular diseases involve micronutrients such as folate, antioxidant vitamins and potassium, all present in green leafy vegetables,” explained Palli to Reuters Health, confirming what previous studies on the “Mediterranean Diet” have already found.
Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the study collected data from about 30,000 Italian women and tracked their health over the course of eight years. They then correlated cases of heart disease to dietary habits and found that the amount of olive oil and leafy green vegetables consumed is directly correlated to heart health.
Besides improving heart health, eating a diet rich in vegetables and olive oil has been shown to prevent and treat type-2 diabetes, reduce the risk of breast cancer, maintain healthy weight and prevent obesity, prevent and treat prostate cancer, prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, and even lengthen lifespan.
“It appears that the various components of the Mediterranean Diet do promote lower inflammation, oxidative stress, and serum protein levels, which in turn lower risk for vascular problems that can contribute to brain aging — hypertension, cardiovascular disease, stroke, dyslipidemia, and diabetes,” explain Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel George in their book The Myth of Alzheimer’s: What You Aren’t Being Told About Today’s Most Dreaded Diagnosis.
