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Vitamin B12 Keeps Your Brain Young

The structure of Vitamin B12
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Older individuals with low levels of vitamin B12 are at increased risk of having brain atrophy or shrinkage. Brain atrophy is associated with Alzheimer’s disease and impaired cognitive function.

Vitamin B12 deficiency is a public health problem, especially among older people.

In a study involving more than 100 volunteers aged 61 to 87, all participants underwent annual clinical exams, MRI scans and cognitive tests, and had blood samples taken. Individuals with lower vitamin B12 levels at the start of the study had a greater decrease in brain volume. Those with the lowest B12 levels had a sixfold greater rate of brain volume loss compared with those who had the highest levels.

However, none of the participants were actually deficient in vitamin B12 — they just had low levels within a normal range.

Other risk factors for brain atrophy include high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol.
You may click to see->Depression-Vitamine B12 may be answer

Vitamin B12 comes from Animals

Sources:
U.S. News & World Report September 8, 2008
Neurology 2008; 71: 826-832

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3 Myths About Running and Your Health

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Every person who takes up running has been confronted by a “helpful” critic who is more than happy to reel off the reasons running will ruin your life. Here’s a look at three questionable claims about running and health:

1. Running will give you a heart attack or other heart problems. It is true that exercise temporarily raises the odds of a heart attack while you’re mid-workout, but doing it consistently reduces that risk over the long haul, leading to a net benefit. Going for a run most days of the week is doing far more good than bad for your heart.

2. Running will ruin your bones and joints. A study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found no evidence of accelerated rates of osteoarthritis among long-distance runners. Weight-bearing exercise like running helps stave off osteoporosis by maintaining bone mineral density.

3. Running will kill you before your time. According to a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, running and other vigorous exercise in middle age is associated with a longer life. Not only that, it will make your later years more pleasant by reducing disability.

Sources:
U.S. News & World Report August 13, 2008
American Journal of Preventive Medicine August 2008; 35(2):133-8
Archives of Internal Medicine August 11, 2008; 168(15):1638-46

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Just Say No to Nuts During Pregnancy

Recent research has found that regular consumption of nut products during pregnancy raises the odds of your child having asthma symptoms by nearly 50 percent.

About 4 percent of American children have food allergies, and roughly 3 million people in the U.S. are allergic to peanuts or tree nuts. It’s already recommended that children under 3 not be given nuts or nut products, because their immune systems are still developing and may be more susceptible to allergens.

Daily consumption of nut products increases the odds that a child will have wheezing by 42 percent, shortness of breath by 58 percent, and steroid use to ease asthma symptoms by 62 percent.

Overall, the odds of developing asthma symptoms for a child whose mother ate nuts daily are 47 percent higher.

Sources:
U.S. News and World Report July 15, 2008

American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine July 15, 2008; 178(2):113-4

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Eating less, exercising more equally good

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 Eating less and exercising more are equally good at helping take off the pounds, US researchers said on Friday in a study that challenges many of the popular tenets of the multibillion dollar diet and fitness industry…..click & see

Tests on overweight people show that a calorie is just a calorie, whether lost by dieting or by running, they said.

They found there is no way to selectively lose belly fat, for instance, or trim thighs. And their carefully controlled study added to evidence that adding muscle mass does not somehow boost metabolism and help dieters take off even more weight.

“It’s all about the calories,”said Dr. Eric Ravussin of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, part of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

“So long as the energy deficit is the same, body weight, fat weight, and abdominal fat will all decrease in the same way.”

Ravussin said the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism is one of the few done under controlled conditions that can actually show what happens to a human body while dieting and exercising.

Ravussin’s team has been testing volunteers for another reason — to see if taking in fewer calories helps people live longer.

Strict diets have been shown to help animals from worms to dogs live longer, but it takes longer to study monkeys and humans.

They tested 24 people, 12 who ate a calorie-restricted diet, and 12 who dieted and also exercised five times a week for six months.

The dieters ate 25% less than normal, while the exercisers reduced their calorie intake by 12.5% and increased their physical activity to lose an extra 12.5 in calories.

Another 10 volunteers acted as controls. All food was provided in carefully measured portions for most of the study.

The volunteers in both groups lost 10% of body weight, 24% of fat mass, and 27% of abdominal visceral fat. Visceral fat is packed in between the internal organs and is considered the most dangerous type of fat, linked with heart disease and diabetes.

The distribution of the fat on the body was not altered by either approach — helping prove that there is no such thing as “spot reducing”, Ravussin said in a telephone interview. This suggests that “individuals are genetically programmed for fat storage in a particular pattern and that this programming cannot easily be overcome”, he added.

Ravussin has published other studies that also dispute the idea that exercise builds muscle that helps people lose weight.

“If anything, highly trained people are highly efficient, so they burn fewer calories at rest,”Ravussin said. Dieting alone also did not appear to cause the volunteers to lose muscle mass along with fat, Ravussin’s team found.

“There is a concept that if you exercise, you are going to lose less of your muscle,”he said. But his team found no evidence this is true.

Source:The Times Of India

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