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Tart Cherries Lower Heart Disease Risk

A new study by University of Michigan researchers has linked tart cherries, one of today’s hottest ‘Super Fruits,’ to lowering risk factors for heart disease.

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Besides lowering cholesterol and reducing inflammation, the study found that a cherry-enriched diet lowered body weight and fat – major risk factors for heart disease.

In the study, at-risk, obese rats that were fed a cherry-enriched diet saw significant decreases in body weight and fat while maintaining lean muscle mass.

After twelve weeks, the cherry-fed rats had 14 percent lower body fat compared to the other rats who did not consume cherries.

The researchers suggested cherry consumption could have an effect on important fat genes and genetic expression.

The animals were fed a “Western diet,” characterized by high fat and moderate carbohydrate – in line with the typical American diet – with or without added whole tart cherry powder, as 1 percent of the diet.

“We know excess body fat increases the risk for heart disease. This research gives us one more support point suggesting that diet changes, such as including cherries, could potentially lower heart disease risk,” said study co-author Dr. Steven F. Bolling, a cardiac surgeon at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center who also heads the U-M Cardioprotection Research Laboratory, where the study was performed.

Cherry-enriched diets in the study also reduced total cholesterol levels by about 11 percent and two known markers of inflammation – commonly produced by abdominal fat and linked to increased risk for heart disease.

Inflammation marker TNF-alpha was reduced by 40 percent and interleukin 6 (IL-6) was lowered by 31 percent.

In their genetic analysis, the researchers found that the cherry-enriched diets reduced the genes for these two inflammation compounds, suggesting a direct anti-inflammation effect.

While inflammation is a normal process the body uses to fight off infection or injury, according to recent science, a chronic state of inflammation could increase the risk for diseases and may be especially common for those who are overweight or obese, at least in part because of excess weight around the middle.

Researchers say the animal study is encouraging and will lead to further clinical studies in humans to explore the link between diet, weight, inflammation and lowering heart disease risk.

The study is being presented at next week’s American Dietetic Association annual meeting.

Sources: The Times Of India

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Older Brain May be a Wiser Brain

When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.

Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit

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The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, Progress in Brain Research .

Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer’s disease, for example, strikes 13% of Americans 65 and older. But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.

“It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”

For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand.

That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it.
When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students.

“For the young people, it’s as if the distraction never happened,” said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. “But for older adults, because they’ve retained all this extra data, they’re now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they’ve soaked up from one situation to another.”

Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real world, where it is not always clear what information is important, or will become important. A seemingly irrelevant point or suggestion in a memo can take on new meaning if the original plan changes. Or extra details that stole your attention may help you assess the speaker’s real impact.

“A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what’s going on than their younger peers,” Dr Hasher said. “We believe that this characteristic may play a significant role in why we think of older people as wiser.”

Sources: The Timers of India

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Aerobics at Middle Age Delays Aging

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A new study has found that staying aerobically fit, especially through middle age and beyond, can delay biological aging by up to 12 years and prolong independence during old age.

Aerobic exercise, such as jogging, swimming, cycling or walking – improves a person’s oxygen consumption and boosts their metabolism.

But maximal aerobic power starts to fall steadily from middle age, decreasing by around 5 ml/ [kg.min] every decade.

When it falls below around 18 ml in men and 15 ml in women, it becomes difficult to do very much at all without severe fatigue.

In a typical sedentary man, the maximal aerobic power will have fallen to around 25 mil/ [kg.min] by the age of 60, almost half of what it was at the age of 20.

But the evidence shows that regular aerobic exercise can slow or reverse the inexorable decline, even in later life.

Research by scientists at the University of Toronto in Canada has shown that high-intensity exercise, taken regularly for more than a year, can boost maximal aerobic power by 25 percent, equivalent to a gain of 6 ml/ [kg.min], or 10 to 12 biological years.

“There seems good evidence that the conservation of maximal oxygen intake increases the likelihood that the healthy elderly person will retain functional independence,” an author said.

The other positive spin-offs of aerobic exercise are reduced risks of serious disease, faster recovery after injury or illness, and reduced risks of falls because of the maintenance of muscle power, balance, and coordination.

The results are published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine .

Sources: The Times Of India

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