Discoveries that empower you to upgrade your health and happiness
With all the high-tech innovations in gene editing, immune therapy and 3-D printing of body parts that have made the news this past year, it’s easy to overlook the power of low-tech revelations that came along, too.
Revisiting those re-affirming health and wellness news items will help make your 2018 a transformative year for your health and happiness.
You are what you don’t eat — and more From morning coffee to your last bite of the day, you can slash your risk for cancer, diabetes, depression, arthritis, headaches, heart disease and more by making smart choices.
In the what-to-avoid
department
A study published in Physiology & Behavior showed how opting for a low-fat diet and sliding into indulgences marketed as healthy, but crammed with sugar, can change your gut biome, ramp up inflammation and pack on pounds. The study was reinforced by the recent revelation that for decades the sugar lobby worked to deflect attention from the major health risks associated with added sugar and syrups while blaming fats, when there’s plenty of blame all around for the polluted food supply and the current obesity epidemic.
If you don’t eat red meat, you can dodge Type 2 diabetes. That’s the finding of a large study out of Singapore. And that’s on the heels of the study that found that folks with Type 2 who went on a vegetarian diet lost more body fat and weight while improving insulin processing and glucose control.
What to drink Drinking three to four cups of coffee daily (compared with drinking none) increases longevity and helps prevent death from heart disease, said a study published in BMJ. You can drink more, but the benefits accumulate at a slower rate the more coffee you drink. In addition, coffee drinking is associated with lower risks of prostate, endometrial, skin and liver cancers, Type 2 diabetes, gallstones and gout. It may even reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Decaf has similar, but somewhat reduced, benefits for several of those outcomes.
Food o’clock news Timing your meals is as important as what you eat when it comes to weight management and control of glucose levels. University of Pennsylvania Medical School researchers found that if your habit is to eat dinner later in the evening, you’re at risk for increased weight, elevated insulin and cholesterol levels and are negatively affecting markers for heart disease, diabetes and more.
Food, mood and attitude According to a study in Nutritional Neuroscience, to stay happy, adults older than 30 should make sure not to skip breakfast and should increase consumption of fruits and other foods with lots of antioxidants and skip foods with a high glycemic index (processed carbs, sugars) that “inappropriately activate the sympathetic nervous system.”
Adding two extra servings of fresh fruits and vegetables — such as carrots, kiwi, apples and oranges — to your diet daily for two weeks can increase your vitality and motivation, according to a PlosOne study.
You are how you move Want to dodge depression? Even one hour of exercise a week can help. A study of more than 33,000 people found that 12 per cent of future cases of depression were blocked when participants got physical for even that small amount of time. And we know that 30 to 60 minutes a day of additional activity helps even more.
Yoga that emphasizes breathing has been found to ease depression in those not responding to antidepressant medications, according to a pilot study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.