Eating to beat the blues

Our kids always liked passages like this when they weren’t feeling well, and there’s a lesson in it for you, too! In Winnie the Pooh, gloomy Eeyore tries to push aside depression: “It’s snowing still,” he says gloomily. “So it is.” (Answers Pooh.) “And freezing.” “Is it?” (Pooh again.)

“Yes,” says Eeyore. “However ... we haven’t had an earthquake lately.”

If that doesn’t bring a smile to your face, head to the kitchen for some comfort food, but choose wisely! If you’re feeling blue, go for great-tasting fresh food, and here’s why: A new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reveals that eating inflammation-producing refined carbs and sugary foods can make you flat-out depressed.

Looking at data about added and total sugars consumed by around 70,000 women, researchers discovered that those who ate high-glycemic index diets increased their risk of depression by 22 percent. The GI ranks foods by how fast it is converted to sugar in your blood stream from 1 (lowest/slowest) to 100 (highest/fastest). Foods with the highest GI include white bread, instant oatmeal, short-grain white rice, you get the idea. In general, processing and cooking style ups the GI. Juice is way higher than fresh fruit; mashed potatoes higher than baked; and soft cooked pasta higher than al dente.

Study participants who ate the most fiber, non-juice fruits and vegetables had a much lower risk of depression. So dig into 100 percent whole-grain cereal topped with fresh berries and walnut halves and a dollop of nonfat Greek yogurt. That’s happy food!

Blowing up ear infections

The European Union stepped squarely into the party-pooper zone a few years ago by issuing a Toy Safety Directive declaring that it was off-limits for kids 8 and younger to blow up a balloon on their own.

Now it’s been found that kids with persistent ear infections (otitis media with effusion or OME) who used a device to blow up a balloon using one nostril eased their own discomfort and resolved ear infections without having to resort to antibiotics or surgery.

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 90 percent of kids have at least one ear infection before age 10; many have long-term infections that cause sticky fluid buildup, risking hearing damage. Avoiding deafness with antibiotic treatment may be necessary in the case of chronic ear infections, but often kids are given antibiotics unnecessarily -- 80 percent of the time, the infections would clear up on their own. Overprescribing contributes to antibiotic resistance and damages the gut biome, making kids vulnerable to health problems later in life.

A journal report on the balloon contraption, called Otovent, shows that it provides significant improvement in kids’ OME: 47 percent of children 4 to 11 using balloon therapy achieved normal inner-ear pressure in a month.

If your child has a temperature above 100 F, discharge of pus or blood from the ear, lingering or worsening symptoms, or if your child is younger than 3 months old and has a fever, get her to a doctor pronto, but see if your child’s ear problems can be deflated without using antibiotics or surgery.

A new way to reverse fatty liver disease

Morgan Spurlock made his documentary “Super-Size Me” by eating nothing but food from McDonald’s for a month. The consequences? His weight and LDL cholesterol zoomed up, he felt lethargic and depressed and, said one of his doctors, his liver turned into pate. Now, that might not be the standard definition of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, but it sure paints a vivid and accurate picture of a condition that afflicts around 30 percent of Americans.

NAFLD is the infusion of liver cells with fat, caused by insulin resistance, obesity, diabetes, elevated triglycerides and poor nutrition. You see, as you put on weight, your body becomes insulin-INSENSITIVE. Then you can’t use insulin efficiently to shuttle sugar into your cells for energy. Instead, sugar gets stored in the liver as fat -- and you’ve got NAFLD. Although most folks with fatty liver don’t develop cirrhosis or liver cancer, the risk is there.

Making lifestyle changes, such as avoiding fast food (remember Morgan!), losing weight and becoming less insulin-resistant often can reverse fatty liver. Now researchers at the University of Haifa found that there’s another way to restore liver health: Doing several sets of resistance exercises using your arms, chest and legs for 40 minutes, three times a week. It measurably reduces the fat content of the liver by reducing inflammation and lowering blood sugar levels. So get some stretch bands and hand weights, and let your liver live.

Green packing

When the roadies strike the stage and load the trucks for Billy Joe Armstrong’s pop-punk band, some might say that’s Green Day Packing. In 1919, when Frank Peck gave Curly Lambeau $500 for team uniforms, well, that was the start of the Green Bay Packers. And when you go and pack big greens into your diet, you’ll have “The Time of Your Life,” teaming up with these defenders of really good health.

A new study, published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition says that spinach is packed with thylakoids (little packets of goodness found in a plant’s green-making chlorophyll) that actually make you feel fuller, block fat digestion and boost weight loss and reduction of lousy LDL cholesterol.

The researchers used spinach extract. They fed overweight and obese women 5 grams of it before breakfast for 12 weeks. But we say the smartest move is to make every day a Green Day.

Spinach, kale, collards, beet greens, watercress, Swiss chard and arugula pack the powers of thylakoids, plus much more. They’re huge sources of fiber, vitamins C, K and anti-aging A (it makes skin smooth and soft), along with folic acid (it guards your heart and memory, and fights birth defects), lutein (a vision protector) and essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron and potassium. Go for two servings a day (1 cup cooked, or 2 cups raw). Or spin some leaves up in a blender in a tasty green drink with berries for sweetness; make it 3 parts greens to 1 part fruit.

Being undernourished can pack on pounds

Actor Jack O’Connell went on a 700-calorie-a-day diet to portray the emaciated prisoner of war Olympian Louis Zamperini in Angelina Jolie’s movie “Unbroken.” In the short term, he could get away with it, but it’s no surprise that in the long term, robbing the body of essential nutrients can trigger metabolic problems, hormone disruptions and immune system challenges.

What might surprise you is that even if you eat a lot more than 700 calories, you can still be undernourished or malnourished, and it may be what’s causing you to pack on pounds and raise your levels of lousy LDL cholesterol, blood glucose and blood pressure.

That’s the conclusion of researchers who looked at how eating two fruit-based micronutrient- and fiberdense supplement bars (the researchers’ own recipe) every day affected normal-weight, overweight and obese folks. Their findings: Eating essential (and previously missing) nutrients, triggered weight loss in overweight and obese folks. And in everyone it improved health indicators such as inflammation, insulin resistance, LDL cholesterol, blood pressure and glucose levels.

So, for your personal best, fill up on nine servings of produce daily (37 percent of U.S. adults eat vegetables less than once a day), along with lean protein and 100 percent whole grains. Dodge added sugars and syrups, trans and most sat fats. Take a daily multivitamin (half in the morning, half at night), along with 900 mg of algal oil. Ask your doc for a blood test to check your vitamin D levels and to see what else you need to protect yourself from undernutrition.