Oh Goody, a New Health Horror!

Photo: Drunken Monkey

Important Legal Disclaimer: there are no actual Zombie-Prevention tips in this post. You will still be at the same risk level for Zombie attack after reading the Other Important Health Warnings below. Plan accordingly.

So as longtime Cranky Fitness readers may have noticed, I have a love/hate relationship with health studies. But one thing I always love about them, even when I'm busy hating them, is that they give me something to write about. Hooray for actual health-related subjects!

Fortunately, while I was busy taking a break from serious health reporting in order to frolic with friends, the Research Factories did not shut down and stop production. In fact, a bright shiny Annoying Study came off the assembly line recently just made to order for Cranky Fitness!

But rather than just whine about the study and warn you about the awful health hazard that's going to give you a bunch of horrible fatal diseases, wanna have a little fun with it? How about we look at this latest warning as sort of a personality test. A Research Rorschach, if you will.

Test? What test? You mean not everyone sees two
pesky beavers pulling on a skeleton-lady's pigtails?

Here's The Research.

According to a report in Medical News Today, a new study found "a substantial link" between the nitrates, nitrites and nitrosamines we ingest, and death rates from scary diseases like Alzheimer's, diabetes, and Parkinson's. The authors said, "not only do we consume them in processed foods, but they get into our food supply by leeching from the soil and contaminating water supplies used for crop irrigation, food processing and drinking."

According to the article, nitrites and nitrates are generally carcinogenic, and are found in lots of foods, like cured meats, cheese, beer and water.

So What's Your Reaction?

Don't worry, it's just a one question personality test.

After reading this study:

a. I am now going to drink only water that's purified and tested for nitrates, nitrites, and nitrosamines. I gave up processed foods long ago, but now I'm going to stop buying produce from any source that does not have data on the purity of its water supply, even if it means I have to live solely on beets and alfalfa sprouts and rutabagas grown in my own basement.

b. I don't give a crap. Nitrates, schmytrates, we're all gonna die someday. Pass the bacon!

c. I'm really afraid of Alzheimer's and those other diseases so I'm going to stay up all night worrying about this. And the next night. And probably the next too, unless I read some other study that's even worse. But how can I not panic about this if the poison is already in our water supply? We're all doomed! Doomed!

d. I already try to limit my intake of processed foods. But if I see more studies like this, perhaps I'll try to investigate the safety of my local water supply and consider a filtration system or bottled alternative if it turns out it's especially funky. Otherwise, there's not much I can do!

e. What kind of a horsesh*t study is this? I clicked on the link and looked at the methodology. They looked at the timelines for increase in fertilizer use, and the increasing death rates, and then concluded that there's a cause and effect relationship? Aren't there a million other lifestyle changes during this period that could also be responsible?

f. Nitrates? Did you just say something about nitrates? I thought this was supposed to be about Zombies.

What's Your Coping Style for dealing with Annoying Research?

Note: it is quite possible to combine strategies, so you may have more than one answer.

If you answered a, you may be an Extreme Health Activist! To prevent anxiety and/or premature death, you do every freakin' thing you can think of to limit your health risks. Upside: to the extent these studies are right, you may actually live longer. Downside: with all the time-consuming, pain-in-the-ass precautions you take, you need extra years just to come out even!

If you answered b, you may be a Devil-May-Care Hedonist! To prevent Annoying Health studies from spoiling your fun, you just ignore them. Who cares what a bunch of bespectacled lab geeks say is good or bad for you? Upside: Fun! Fun! Fun! Downside: sometimes, the studies all say the same things and if you ignore them you may croak early.

If you answered c, you may be a Professional Worrier. It's not that you enjoy worrying exactly, but it's such a natural state you prefer to freak yourself out rather than take concrete action to minimize your risks. Upside: Well, not a whole lot, but it's treatable! See your local shrink or consult an anxiety self-help book. Downside: Worrying about your health is actually bad for your health. Which will make you worry more about your health which will...

If you answered d you may be a Lifestyle Pragmatist. You do what you can to minimize risks, but you're not going to spend a whole lot of time panicking over things you can't control. Upside: you maintain a good balance between virtue and Fun. Downside: You will rarely be a Trendsetter or an Amusing Nutball, and thus might never get your 15 minutes on Jerry Springer or Oprah.

If you answered e you may be a Perennial Research Skeptic. (D's and E's frequently occur together). You don't take the conclusion of a study or an "expert" seriously until you have some notion of how reliable the underlying data is. You may or may not have any clue what makes for reliable data (and may even think a peer-reviewed journal is something fisherman read), but you do know that you can't believe everything you read. Upside: less likely to worry about bogus health hazards. Downside: often over-analytical and kinda tedious at cocktail parties.

If you answered f you are... Normal! What are you doing reading Cranky Fitness? Instead of boring health news, you could be finding out which movie stars are cheating on each other and what Michelle Obama was wearing last night!

What's your coping style? Worried about nitrosamines or zombies attacks or do you take it all in stride?

Nature's Drug Store

Wait, where's the hair mousse and the dental floss?
You call this a drug store?

I know just did a post on how berries may fight cancer, but I seem to have collected a couple more studies with the same theme: sometimes the food we eat can help fight diseases we'd rather not get, or help us with other tiresome medical conditions.

And in addition to the most recent studies, the Google reminded me of some similar research that I'd seen lurking around the web but never got around to mentioning. So what the heck; I'll throw that in here too.

One annoying fact that totally messes with this post's "theme": often these studies used extracts and pills rather than actual food. But, at least what they stuffed into the pills was at one time real food.

So here's a quick quiz: can you match the food item with the particular health study that Crabby randomly landed on when she went to write this post?

Food:
Green Tea
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Tart Cherries
Fish Oil (Omega-3)
Cinnamon
Caffeine

Health Concern:
Hot Flashes and Menopausal Depression
Multiple Sclerosis
Diabetes
Inflammation leading to Heart Disease and Diabetes
Breast Cancer
Excess Fat


Pencils down? OK, let's see what we got:

Menopausal Depression and Hot Flashes:

Sounds like fun, I can't wait!

And the winner is: Omega-3!

A study of Omega-3 and menopausal symptoms recently published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition indicated that Omega-3 helped ease "psychological distress and depressive symptoms." The women were given one gram of EPA in a gel capsule every day for eight weeks. The study also found that hot flashes dropped from 2.8 a day to 1.6; comparable to results obtained with hormone therapy and antidepressants.


Increased Fat-Burning (plus glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity):

This recent study involved green tea, combined with exercise. Scientists found that young healthy men who were given the equivalent of 3.5 cups of tea (well, yeah, again it was actually Green Tea Extract), and then did cycling trials, had higher average fat oxidation rates than the control group who didn't get the green tea extract. Their "fat oxidation to total energy expenditure" was also significantly higher, which sounds like a good thing.
The researchers said "this has potentially positive effects for athletes who want to increase their fat burning capacity or obese and diabetic patients who want to burn fat and lose weight.”

They also found that the green tea had a helpful effect on glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity. Good stuff, that green tea!


Multiple Sclerosis:

Caffeine seems to help ward off multiple sclerosis--at least in animal studies. Mice given caffeine were 75 percent less likely to develop the animal model of MS than those not given it. The dosage was the equivalent of 6 to 8 cups of coffee a day for humans. In the animals given caffeine who did get MS, they had milder cases and less brain pathology.

Inflammation Leading to Heart Disease and Diabetes:

Tart cherries were shown to help reduce inflammation, potentially reducing the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. And again, these were just animal studies, so who knows. The antioxidant anthocyanin was believed to be the reason for the cherries' anti-inflammatory powers.

Breast Cancer:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil may help to fight breast cancer! How? Well, beats me, as this was one of the most indecipherable summaries of a research study I've ever read. But for those of you who can translate this, it is apparently good news!

"The study has shown the anti-HER2 effect of fractions of phenolic compounds directly extracted from extra virgin olive oil in breast cancer cell lines. They have used solid-phase extraction methods of semi-preparative liquid chromatography to isolate fractions of commercial oils and, later, separation techniques (capillary electrophoresis and liquid chromatography connected to mass spectrometry) to check the purity and composition of the fractions."

That's nifty, I guess! As someone who likes Extra Virgin Olive Oil but doesn't much like breast cancer, I'm pleased the scientists think it's good news.

Diabetes:

Cinnamon helps! Um, unless it doesn't.

So this one is kinda cheating. Several years ago there were some hopeful studies that said cinnamon could help diabetics with glucose levels, but since then, other studies have said: meh, maybe not so much. WebMD reviewed the cinnamon studies and was not impressed.

However, my own mother just reported that she significantly reduced her blood sugar levels by taking cinnamon capsules! She went from borderline pre-diabetic to a nice healthy number. (Her motivation? To stop getting those annoying pamphlets from the doctor telling her to do all the healthy lifestyle stuff she's already been doing for years).

So who are you gonna believe, some smarty-pants researchers with their statistics and fancy laboratories and control groups and whatnot? Or your own mother? If my levels ever creep up, I may give the cinnamon capsules a try. (I suppose yummy frosted cinnamon rolls might be counterproductive for preventing diabetes?)

Sorry, this is kind of a boring post. Anyone have any favorite natural remedies, nutritional research updates, or amusing old wives tales to pass on?

Diabetic? Who cares?

Hear no diabetes, speak no diabetes, get photo from Flickr.

According to the CDC, 1/4 of Americans have prediabetes and don't know it.

Wait a minute. Back up and read that again. 1 out of 4?

Here's another statistic. The rate of people who already have diabetes has gone up by 90%. And WebMD says that may be an underestimate. (They also say the number of people who already have prediabetes is 1 out of 3.)

Type II Diabetes: easy to control, dangerous to ignore

Even though yes, I know, there are tons of people out there who are either at risk or already have the disease and don't know it, this still surprises me.

The trouble is that if you're reading this post, you probably are not one of the people with prediabetes, because you are interested in regular exercise and a healthy diet. But I will guarantee that someone you know -- maybe someone you love -- is one of the statistics.

I mean, damn! In the early stages at least, prediabetes and Type II diabetes are easily controllable disorders. And they can be controlled by the individual; it's not a situation where you have to put yourself in the hands of others and take a bucketful of weird and expensive drugs with powerful side effects.

People who know better and don't bother

It's frustrating. As an example, take this guy I know. Extremely well-educated (well, I assume lawyers are educated, they sure know a lot of words I don't) so you would think he could bother to read about the risks of Type II diabetes, you would think he would bother to find out the minimal steps necessary to deal with the condition. The only concession he made to his condition was to take his medication. (Yes, he did switch to lite beer, and he did minimize the amount of red wine to a couple of drinks a night, but I don't call those concessions.)

The thing is that Type II diabetes is one of those diseases that you CAN do something about: diet and exercise and (definitely 3rd in the list) medication can control the symptoms and progression of the disease.

So why are there so many people out there who can't be bothered?

Diabetes doesn't go away if you ignore it!

My anger in this case is all the stronger because if you don't take care of the situation, You Get Worse. Diabetes leads to serious and irreversible problems, especially when you combine it with alcohol. This lawyer is now forced to listen to doctors use phrases like "poor prognosis" and "experimental studies." His younger daughter is seventeen, and he'll be lucky to see her graduate from high school.

I don't know how (or even if it's possible) to get someone to listen when they're risking their life through sheer inertia. Maybe this post will help someone to become 'scared straight' or whatever.

Someone to talk to about diabetes

MyHealthVillage is hosting a series of diabetes chats, starting tonight.

The Chats will be hosted by Cindy Sears (RN, CDE) -- diabetes educator with years of experience working with persons with diabetes at Capital Regional Medical Center and private physician practices in Missouri, who has participated in a research study for rural primary care practices funded by the Missouri Foundation.

To participate in the diabetes chats, simply go to www.myhealthvillage.com and join the Chat on any of the following dates and times.

Tuesday, 11/18 at 8 p.m. ET -- Insulin Myths and Realities

Thursday, 11/20 at 1 p.m. ET -- Medication Know-How

Friday, 11/21 at 11 a.m. ET - Pondering Privacy

Tuesday, 11/25 at 8 p.m. ET -- Here Come the Holidays!

Okay, end of rant

This post was me ranting because someone I know is dying and it could have been avoided. It is inexpressibly frustrating to not be able to help with something like this.

I can't be the only person with friends or family who are digging their grave with their teeth, as it were. Anyone have any good suggestions on how to handle the frustration? I don't think there's much we can do to help people who don't want to change.

When sleep is just a dream

[By Merry]

"How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack." - Dorothy Parker


Sleep is good.

Working so much overtime that you get hooked on coffee is bad, but that's where I'm at right now. (I have to write documentation for an application, but the only time I can get access to the software without some bloody engineer tinkering with it is between 8pm and 5am, so I've become really, really appreciative of sleep.) The trouble is, if you get into the habit of punishing your body with excess caffeine, when you finally lay down you're still twitching with aggravated adrenalin jolts.

Trying to find research that has helpful suggestions led me instead to the ultimate vindication for your inner slug: getting up early can be harmful to your health. Apparently, "getting up early is also more likely to lead to muscle aches, cold symptoms, headaches and significantly worse moods." [They needed a study to figure that last one out?] Of course, not exercising because you slept in isn't great for your health either.

I mean, I do realize some of the bad things that can happen to you if you don't sleep:

• Lack of sleep can affect men's hormone levels as well as women's fertility, and it makes people of both sexes age faster.
• Lack of sleep has also been linked to the body's inability to handle insulin, which can lead to diabetes.
• Lack of sleep can help you become obese.
  
• In addition, a lack of sleep slows down your mental processes, which is awkward when you're in a meeting and someone wants you to give them an expert opinion. (The trouble with being the only writer in a vast herd of engineers is that they expect you to know everything about words. The other day, my manager asked me -- in front of a lot of upper management important peoples -- how to spell the word obsolescence. Luckily, I managed, but it was still a tricky moment.)

How do you get to sleep when you're wired-but-tired? I'd love to hear how you manage it. Here are some of the suggestions that I've gathered so far:

• Do try that deep breathing/counting stuff. Even if the mind is going around and around like a Starbucks-addicted hamster on an exercise wheel, the body can affect the mind; besides, if you’re lying there in the dark staring at the ceiling, it gives you something to do besides being irritated.
• Don’t drink when trying to get to sleep. Helps you fall asleep, but can cause you to wake in the middle of the night, which is invariably the most depressing time of the whole 24-hour cycle. Besides, unless you’re on the Wine diet, it’s not going to help the waistline.
• Avoid 12 Frappacinos before bedtime. (Okay, so some of the suggestions were pretty obvious.)
  
• Try some milk, if you can stomach it. Or a turkey sandwich. (Or both, since both contain tryptophan.)
• Instead of regular sleeping pills, try the homeopathic ones like Moondrops. [Note: this is not an endorsement or a warning against this stuff. I'm passing on a suggestion I received.]
• Avoid if possible sleeping pills that might cause strange behavior. Several cases have been reported about people taking Ambien, which apparently made them get up in the middle of the night, not fully conscious, and go driving. Even if it doesn't have that effect on you, it has been known to get people up in the middle of the night to raid the frig. Seriously. (If you're going to raid the frig, you should at least enjoy the moment!)

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Until I find a solution, it's comforting to know that scientists are tirelessly working on this problem. Researchers at Wake Forest have discovered a naturally occurring brain peptide that can improve the cognitive performance of sleep-deprived monkeys. Hell, if it can make monkeys think better when they're short on sleep, maybe it can do the same for technical writers. Very similar species, after all.


Sketch courtesy of Flickr.

Amazing "Portion Control Tool" Helps Diabetics Reduce Meds

A fun new study on portion control out of the University of Calgary found that diabetics using a special "portion control tool" lost weight--in fact, as much weight as they would have by going on medication.

Seventeen percent of participants using this special "tool" lost five percent or more of their body weight. And twenty six percent who used the "portion control tool" were able to decrease their use of diabetic medications. Hooray! That's impressive.

And what was this cutting edge "portion control tool" that was so successful?

It's a plate! A really funny-looking plate! Well, it's actually kind of cute, especially if like your plates on the whimsical side.

Crabby doesn't want to make a habit out of using people's pictures without permission (sorry, IGallop), or at least not until she figures out what the rules are. So she'll refer you to the Diet Plate website to show you what it looks like. Sort of adorable, no?

The study that used the Diet Plate has already been discussed all over the blogosphere by people much smarter than Crabby. So you may have already formed your own opinions. But that won't stop Crabby from tossing in her two cents! After all Portion Control is a favorite subject here at Cranky Fitness. (And Crabby has lots more sneaky tricks, but she doesn't want to use them up just yet. She's going to need material for future posts).

So one thing Crabby likes about this study is that it's more proof of one of her favorite theories: people are dimwits! And this is very good news, because we can use our own dimwittedness to great advantage.

Because of course there's no reason you can't put less food on your plate all by yourself. If you know you need to eat less, then eat less. But we don't do it! Now, however, maybe we will because someone has invented a "special" plate. It's actually clever: it's got smaller surface area than normal (but a nice big rim), and they've put little lines on it that label various parts of our meal and set limits on how much to eat. And research says it actually works! How cool (and dumb) is that?

However, there's one surprising downside to the amazing new Diet Plate: it costs $30! Doesn't that seem awfully high for one plate? If you want a matching bowl with that, and the whole "plan," it will run you quite a bit more. (Crabby was going to give you that figure too, but the website went down as she was writing this because the Diet Plate people were getting too much traffic!)

Rather than spend $30, Crabby prefers to just take the idea, which is free, and eat on a smaller plate. (And actually, Smart Readers already suggested this idea back in the comment section of the previous portion control post). And perhaps we can use some sort of barely edible garnish, like skinny carrot sticks or celery slivers, as a divider to make sure we go way easy on the potatoes and way less easy on the broccoli.

Or, better yet, we can wait a few weeks for some discount chain to crank out a cheap Diet Plate knock-off. (Is that too mean? But Crabby sort of thinks the Diet Plate People have it coming for trying to charge $30 for one plate). On the other hand, if you've got the cash and don't want to wait or try to arrange garnishes or paint lines on your plate--just go ahead and order it! If it helps, it's worth thirty bucks. Crabby promises she won't make fun of you.

Oh, and another thing that tickles Crabby about the Diet Plate people is their marketing. Here's one of the come-ons for this plan:

"Want to eat with your family without being made to feel different because you want to lose weight?"

Then buy the Diet Plate?

Because Lord knows, eating off your own weirdly painted and brightly colored "special plate" will make you feel much less conspicuous when dinnertime comes around!

Unless, of course, you decide to spring for special Diet Plates for the whole family... Oh.

Actually, Crabby thinks the whole idea is a good one. She just thinks it could be cheaper. She is someone who is easily fooled by the shape and size of the containers her food is served in, so she would probably be a good candidate for her own Very Special Plate!

So what do you guys think? (And no need to stay on topic--any thoughts about anything are always welcome at Cranky Fitness).

Tea: Green, Black, Red, and Encapsulated

Fortunately, tea tends to be Really Good for you, so this will be mostly a cheerful post.

But first, a blogging aside--non-bloggers may want to skip this next paragraph.

So who knew that accidentally hitting "Control S" (which is the way to save a file in Word, so a natural thing to do), would publish the damn post you're working on when you're still in the middle of it? Crabby certainly didn't. At least she thinks that's what happened. She was compiling notes for a post and was only trying to save the draft and then suddenly a "Congratulations, You Successfully Posted" message appeared. Crabby screamed "Nooooooo!" and deleted it (deleting her notes in the process), but she suspects it's still out in there in an RSS feed or a blog index or something, just waiting to embarass her.

Anyway, back to tea.

So we know green tea has a lot of health benefits. According to Whole Foods, (which has a pretty good database of nutritional info if you ever need one), green tea can lower risks for a bunch of diseases: bacterial or viral infections, cardiovascular disease, cancer, stroke, periodontal disease, and osteoporosis.

However, taking green tea supplements (or drinking more than ten cups a day of green tea) can actually be harmful to your kidneys and liver. So, as with most healthy foods and beverages: have the real stuff, don't try to cheat and get your polyphenols in a handy-dandy supplement.

And in other tea news, drinking a couple of cups of tea a day (they didn't say which kind, which was rude of them) seems to offer some protection against skin cancer.

Black tea also seems to offer some pretection against diabetes and cardiovascular problems, but there's a catch:

The cardiovascular protection doesn't work if you add milk.

Crabby drinks her tea with milk, and can't seem to do without, so she didn't like this result much.

Crabby actually drinks a mixture of green, black and red teas. Red tea, or rooibos, is not really a tea at all, but has lots of antioxidants and associated health benefits. (She knows her source is only a Rooibos tea promotional site, but she swears she's seen Real Research that bears this out.)

And coffee drinkers, don't worry. Crabby likes coffee better than tea and there's plenty of good news about coffee too, which will be the subject of a future post.

Maggots and Diabetic Foot Ulcers: Gross, but Kinda Cool, Too

You can read the full article here, but then you'd have to see the picture. (Which is actually fascinating, and just as icky as you might expect). But in case you're eating or something, we'll play it safe here and just go with the quote:

"University of Manchester researchers are ridding diabetic patients of the superbug MRSA - by treating their foot ulcers with maggots. Professor Andrew Boulton and his team used green bottle fly larvae to treat 13 diabetic patients whose foot ulcers were contaminated with MRSA and found all but one were cured within a mean period of three weeks, much quicker than the 28-week duration for the conventional treatment."

This seems like good, if weird, news. "Superbugs" are super-deadly, because they're resistant to antibiotics. You can read more about the whole problem of overuse of antibiotics here, but talking about maggots is much more fun.

"Maggots are the world's smallest surgeons. In fact they are better than surgeons - they are much cheaper and work 24 hours a day," Professor Boulton said.

Yay maggots!