Watch out with oversleeping: Wake up to the risks
At the beginning of the 1999 comedy “Office Space,” corporate tech worker Peter’s hypnotherapist dies in the middle of his session, leaving him in a trance. As a result, he doesn’t care about his job, which he hates. The next morning, he lies in bed ignoring repeated voicemails from his boss, and doesn’t get up until 3:30 p.m., at which point his girlfriend leaves a voice message telling him she’s breaking up with him.
Peter discovered what a new analysis of 74 studies confirms: Oversleeping can cause serious problems! The research, reported in the Journal of the American Heart Association, found that people who sleep for more than eight hours a night are more likely to die over a set time period than folks who sleep the recommended seven to eight hours. And if you push it to 10 or more hours nightly? Then you have a 50 percent higher risk of death from stroke and a 49 percent higher chance of death from heart disease.
The researchers think that heart woes can come first, causing exhaustion and oversleeping. But if depression, for example, is making you stay hidden under the covers, then chances are you aren’t eating right, exercising regularly or enjoying a supportive social life — all risk factors for heart disease, too.
So if you find yourself hibernating, get a heart health checkup. Then talk to your doc about starting talk therapy and a nutrition and exercise redo. Also, set your alarm for eight hours after you go to bed.
Soy for your bones
You may think of soy as a food, but it’s also used in manufacturing. In the 1930s, Henry Ford hired chemists to turn it into artificial silk, which he named Azlon. While Azlon never reached the market, Ford still used soy in his automobile paints, and soy plastics eventually were used to make horn buttons, gearshift knobs and accelerator pedals in all Ford cars.
Now a new study has found that there may be yet another benefit from soy. Turns out that soy milk and other soy foods could help keep bones strong and stave off osteoporosis, a concern for women as they age (24.5 percent over age 65 have the condition). Plus soy milk dodges the worrisome proteins and sat fat in dairy — soy milk has
0.5 grams of sat fat per cup; whole milk has 4.6 grams.
For a new study in
Bone Reports, researchers divided rats into two groups. For 30 weeks, one ate a soy-based diet, the other a corn-based one. At the study’s end, the leg bones of the rats on the soy diet were significantly stronger. This was true for rats with ovaries and without, suggesting that the benefits could be the same for pre- and post-menopausal women.
So women (and older men — 5 percent of those over 65 have osteoporosis of the femur, neck and lumbar spine) might try adding more soybased products to their diet. Sub in tofu for meat a couple times a week (watch “Secrets to Flavorful Tofu” at Sharecare.com) or try cereal and coffee with soy milk.
Variety and the spice of life Question:
I am trying to take off a few pounds gradually, but in truth, it’s so slow that it’s adding up to nothing! I’ve been eating a wide variety of foods like the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines says to, so what’s wrong? — Abigail L., Springfield, Illinois
Answer: Losing weight gradually is the right way to shed it and keep it off. That said, we wonder about what you mean by “variety.” A milkshake and a carrot stick is not what’s meant by “variety” — but it’s what many folks seem to think they can get away with.
In fact, it’s gotten to be enough of a problem that the American Heart Association recently issued a position paper saying, “Greater dietary diversity is associated with suboptimal eating patterns, that is, higher intakes of processed foods, refined grains and sugar-sweetened beverages.”
So what is the variety that you should be aiming for? A variety of colors and types of veggies and fruits is a good place to start. You want to enjoy some legumes, some leafy greens, some cruciferous veggies like broccoli and cauliflower, some citrus and some fleshy fruits and berries daily. You can add lean proteins like skinless chicken and fish.
But if that variety doesn’t spice up your interest in healthy eating, just remember that while variety may be the spice of life, spices are the life of variety. Here are three of our favorites.
Turmeric: A main component of curry powder, turmeric delivers powerful flavor, and preliminary studies show it can reduce the number of heart attacks bypass patients have post-surgery and control knee pain from osteoarthritis as well as ibuprofen can. People from India, who use it frequently, have much lower rates of dementia. Animal studies confirm its brain benefits.
Cinnamon: Use this to flavor your coffee, zip up stews and make black beans sing with flavor. It’s also has anti-fungal properties, and helps to control glucose levels.
Pepper: Black pepper can combat cancer-causing properties of grilled foods —just coat lean chicken or veggies with ground pepper (after marinating in just about anything) before cooking over a flame.
Q: I’ve tried to reduce the amount of plastics, their waste and hormone disruptors in my life, but it’s difficult. Do you have any tips or helpful guidelines for me and my family to follow? — Candice B., San Diego
A: With all the recent media attention focused on plastic waste in our oceans and the trend away from BPAs in plastics, there are steps you can take, and some things you cannot, or do not, have to change. And there’s a new generation of entrepreneurial plastic recyclers — more are emerging every day — that are making recycling a much more effective way to manage the huge quantities that we discard daily.
So, here are a few things you can do in your everyday life to reduce your plastic footprint and recycle every chance you get.
The ReThink Plastics pilot study wanted to see if some pretty simple behavior changes could reduce exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals in plastics and printed register receipts — and it did! Along the way it also succeeded in reducing plastic use and waste. The study participants were asked to take the following steps:
Use glass or stainless steel water bottles.
■ Store food in glass or ceramic containers.
■ Skip canned foods and beverages.
■ Reduce take-out food.
■ Do not handle receipts with bare hands. (If you do, wash with soap and water as soon as possible. Hand sanitizer won’t wash BPAs off your hands, so wash them before you touch your food.)
And we have a few more tips for you as well.
■ Opt out of using plastic bags at the store, and rely on reusable cloth bags to carry groceries and brown paper bags to hold produce. Use cloth bags for purchases in other stores as well.
■ Use non-plastic containers to pack your lunch, and carry along reusable utensils — and no plastic straws.