And Now For Something Completely Different

Blame The Blogess. It's all her fault.




(If you're having any trouble seeing it, try this link instead).

Avoiding some unpleasant task and need a distraction? Take it from the Queen of Procrastination. You can go to the xtranormal site and fritter away lots of time making your own dopey cartoons. (And if you do, please leave a link in the comments so I can watch it!)

Oh, um, health news? Well... here's something: don't drink your tea too hot! Apparently drinking hot tea can lead to throat cancer.

Sorry you asked? Here, have a nice dancing bear video. Mondays are hard enough without scary health warnings.



And my apologies to you folks with dial-up connections, as well as to those who have serious jobs and no headphones. Normal posts with actual words instead of videos will resume shortly!

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?

Stay young and win money, bicycles & stuff

[By Merry]
I have a confession to make – I buy Lipton brand black tea. On purpose. People make fun of me, because this is not a brand of tea that claims to have been hand-picked by Tibetan monks who’ve intermittently fasted for weeks before the tea harvest. But I’ve been drinking it for years because it helps with my migraines.

Migraines are bad. Trust me. When I get migraines, I develop an extreme sensitivity not just to light but also to smells. Hyper-sensitive to smells. Really, really hyper-sensitive. I can't stand the faintest smells. Migraines have something to do with dilated blood vessels, and black tea helps alleviate that condition. So if I have a migraine, I end up drinking lots of black tea.

When I’m in migraine-mode, I don’t want any damn fancy tea with oil of bergamot or some hint of lavender – that drives me crazy. I can't stand those smells, it’s the nasal equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. Nor do I want something that’s so strong it’s going to hurt my stomach (like most of the expensive brands of black tea) or something so weak it’s not going to do any good (like most of the generic brands of black tea). I like the Lipton brand because it delivers tea with a consistent amount of strength and quality, and because it doesn’t have a lot of frou-frou extras. And because I think it helps with the headaches.

So when I was approached to do a contest advocating Lipton white tea, I was all for it. Your mileage may vary, and I suspect Crabby might be humoring me. (I mean, have you read the things Crabby does to her tea?)

What did they do, offer you lots of goodies?

They offered me some free tea, which I’m going to try out. Sadly, no diamonds, rubies, or pearls were included in the offer. On the other hand, white tea (unlike jewels) delivers loads of antioxidants, which are a lot healthier for you if not so sparkly.

You’re just going to become a huckster and pitch products to people? How boring!

No, I’m also going to mention that you can win a free bicycle, money, and stuff.

Oh. Well, that’s okay then.

The Lipton people are very kindly sponsoring a contest. Since Lipton’s White Teas are made from young tea buds, plucked early in their life cycle, they're going for a "Free your Y" contest. It's about freeing your youth and drinking white tea. Look, if you want pertinent details, check out the link: The Free Your Y Video Contest.

I like the idea of drinking white tea, because it's got more antioxidants than Albert Einstein had brain cells (or at least a comparable number), and because I like the idea of being young much better than being old. Or at least the idea of feeling young, i.e. feeling healthy. The idea of freeing my inner youth sounds pretty good to me.

Besides, you’re not old, are you? I don’t care if you’re sitting in a rocking chair waiting for meals-on-wheels to stop by, you’re not old inside, no matter what your body may look like on the outside. The person inside doesn’t age. Why not show the world that you’re not old?

Why the hell drink white tea? What’s the difference?

All true teas are made from the same plant, Camellia sinensis. Black tea is heavily fermented, while green tea is moderately fermented, and white tea lightly fermented. The more fermentation, the more antioxidants are destroyed. (You still get some, just not as many.) White tea has the highest antioxidant levels of any true tea you can find. (I’m not talking about herb teas such as Red, or Rooibush, tea. Including them in this paragraph would make life far too complicated and probably bring on a headache for both of us.)

Wait a minute. Go back to the chance to win money and stuff.

Very simple. All you need to do is:

1 – Think up some way to show you’re young. To quote from the Free Your Y site:
MOVE & GROOVE:
Cut loose. Make it old school, original, or freestyle–whatever moves you. Use any of the music tracks we've supplied here, or your own originals. Please, no copyrighted tunes.

TRICKS AND FEATS:
Show us your skills, like a reverse dunk or a Triple Lindy. Let's see your best trick shot or athletic move.

FREE FOR ALL:
Here's your chance to showcase your unique talent–stupid human tricks, silly songs or watermelon juggling–whatever doesn't fit into the other categories. Anything goes!

2 – Videotape it. Do you have a digital camera or cell phone that tapes very short videos? Or do you have a friend or relative who does? There you go.

3 – Send it in to these people. Why?
• The grand prize winner will receive $25,000
• One second place winner will receive $10,000
• One third place winner will receive $5,000

What the hell, why not?

What about the free bicycle?

Oh, you want more details about the bicycle contest on Cranky Fitness.

Details about the bicycle itself

1 - There's a picture of it shown up top. More information here.
2 - It's free if you win the Cranky Fitness contest.
3 - In addition to the bike, the winner will receive 5 coupons for Free 1.5L of Lipton White Tea and a $75 check for professional assembly of the bike.

Details about the contest

In keeping with the high standards here at Cranky Fitness, we decided you needed to work for this bike. Here's what you have to do:

1 - Figure out what you would recommend people do to stay young and active.
2 - Post your recommendation in the Comments section below. (I was going to say, email it to us, but Crabby has a very hungry spam filter, and this way your comment won't get eaten.)

It’s not enough to merely stay alive. I want quality years! I personally want to die of extreme old age on a yacht, with a champagne glass in my hand and a cabana boy massaging my feet, whilst watching a magnificent sunset -- not counting my wrinkles and thinking of all the things my body used to be able to do once upon a time. Any recommendations you have will help! That way everyone who reads the post will get useful tips on how to stay young and active.

Crabby and I will number the comments in the order received, and pick a number based on a random number generator.

Deadline: winning entry will be picked Friday, April 25.


Obligatory disclaimer
The Pepsi/Lipton Partnership will provide a check for $75.00 to be used for professional assembly of all Lipton Fuji bicycles awarded. Neither Pepsi Co. nor Unilever is liable for any injuries, damages or accidents that may result from the receipt, assembly or use of this bicycle.

"Fun-Sized" Posts and Lemony Tea

[Posted by Crabby.]

This week, we're introducing even more Shiny Newness at Cranky Fitness. First there was the news that Mary may be blogging here sometimes, allowing Crabby to sleep in until noon and surf the internet all day adding a fresh new voice and perspective to the blog. So what's next? Well, now Crabby is pleased to announce another new blog addition: the Fun-Size Post!

What's a Fun-Sized Post? Well, this is, for example. Sometimes little snippets of health news come to the Crab's attention, or she has stray complaints or observations, or she has some little announcement she wants to make about the blog. Crabby used to either (a) save these to fill up a Random Round-up type post, or (b) stretch them out into a full post even though there was really nothing interesting to say about it or (c) forget whatever it was entirely.

Now, a new option! Crabby will just throw these things out there whenever she feels like it.

Like... um... now!

So here's a random health snippet that caught Crabby's eye but she almost forgot about:

More News About Tea!

So according to a new study, a lot of the antioxidants in green tea that we're always hearing about aren't actually being absorbed by our bodies. (Which is frustrating for those of us who plan to live forever and conquer all health problems simply by drinking a beverage experts claim is good for us). In fact, less than 20% of the catechins (the Good Guys) survive the digestive process.

Well, turns out, adding lemon or vitamin C helps spare those antioxidants! With the addition of citrus, the mighty (but unstable) catechins are much better at surviving the perils of your digestive system.

And what about milk? Well, dairy and soy milk both helped preserve antioxidants too, though the scientists seemed to be distrustful of these additives for complicated reasons. (You may want to read the article to try to sort that out). Previous research has sent decidedly mixed messages about the whole adding-milk-to-tea thing. Plus, sometimes they study black tea and sometimes green, further complicating things.

Crabby just wishes researchers would hurry up and figure this all out because damn it, she likes milk in her tea!

Broccoli in Your Tea? Product Review, Part 2

So sorry! After keeping readers guessing what product Crabby would be reviewing for an entire day, Crabby will now reveal that it was something far less entertaining than her Smart Readers' ideas. More on that below!

But the first Free Thing Crabby received as a Blogger was not smoking-cessation yogurt or caffeinated soap, but Tea with Broccoli in it! (Okay, so the Brassica Tea people may not even know she is a blogger. But she Hinted and they Sent and for that she is grateful. Had they sent Magic Instant Six-Pack Abdominal Creme or Melt-the-Pounds-Away Chocolate Ice Cream she would have been Even More Grateful, but this was pretty cool too).

Crabby was curious about these teas because they contain a very potent antioxidant called SGS. This is the same stuff that comes in Broccoli and Broccoli Sprouts! Anyway, SGS is a kick-ass cancer-fighter and all-around nutritional Superstar.

If you want to read more about SGS, the Brassica people have a collection of research over at their blog. It's a list of actual scientific studies, so Crabby is not too embarrassed to send you over there even though they're also selling the tea and the Broccoli sprouts. (And they also have less technical, more user-friendly info at their site too).

And Crabby likes the Brassica people! They're scientists associated with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and they sound smart and well-informed. For whatever reason, Crabby trusts them when they say something is good for her. But any actual scientists among Crabby's readers who have different information, please feel free to weigh in and set Crabby straight.

Crabby knows some of you disapprove of any food on principal that has been supplemented or tinkered with by scientists. But Crabby does not fear all Franken-Food! To her, it sort of depends on whether the Tinkering is done to make food healthier, or just more profitable. And adding some extra Really Good for Your stuff to tea seemed like a fine idea to Crabby. (The Brassica people, by the way, still tell you to eat your vegetables; you don't get out of it entirely by drinking their tea. Crabby appreciates their honesty on this point, as much as she'd like to replace 90% of her vegetables with cupcakes).

So Crabby was thrilled to get her samples in the mail yesterday, but then she started to worry. What if the tea tasted, well, like broccoli? Being an honest Crab, she knew she'd have to say so, but she really hoped she wouldn't have to be mean to the nice Brassica people.

So she brewed up a cup of Green Tea with Orange and...

It tasted just fine! No broccoli-ness was detectable. Hooray!

(Caveat: Crabby made that cup the way a normal person would, with just one teabag, but usually, she drinks her tea in a Freakish Way. She puts in anywhere from 4-7 teabags in a mug, all different colors and flavors, brews it for 5-10 minutes, then dumps in Splenda (horrors!) and milk. She's really more of a coffee drinker so "normal" tea tastes too watery for her to enjoy. The Brassica tea, it turns out, also tastes good when a bunch of different flavors are combined in freakishly large quantities).

The SGS tea has actually been around for a few years, but it was new to Crabby. She will be ordering some soon and paying with her very own money!

More information about the tea and about ordering it can be found at the BrassicaTea website.

Now Crabby said she would acknowledge the most amusing Reader Guess about what she might be reviewing, but that is so hard when there were many funny ones! For readers who do not regularly visit the Comments Section (click on the link at the end of the post that says how many comments there are), do go back to yesterday's post and see what commenter's guessed. Crabby had many favorites, including one that the author seems to have removed! She hopes it will reappear someday.

So Crabby appreciates all your creative guesses. She hates to just pick one! But having said she would, she found Katieo's guess that Crabby would be testing samples of this appalling food item, to be perhaps the most Amusing. And for those who have not, for some reason, been visiting Sister Skinny on a daily basis, do not miss this recent post of Katieo's, which is very much worth clicking an additional link to read.

Thanks to all who guessed! And to any of you who have either more ideas, Very Silly or Not, for products Crabby should check out in the future, or any other comments about Tea or FrankenFood or Anything at all, please feel free to share your thoughts!

Tea As Cancer-Fighter: an Update

This is just a quick good-newsy post: at least if you like tea; and like it brewed strong, with milk.

Tea, though it seems a refined beverage, is nonetheless a scrappy bad-ass cancer fighter. Antioxidants, those nutritional Superheroes, are the reason. And in a previous post, Crabby reviewed some of the health benefits of various kinds of tea, but noted this disturbing caveat: drinking tea with milk seemed to negate some of the cardiovascular benefits.

At least this news was disturbing to Crabby, because she drinks her tea strong, and likes to dump in both milk and Splenda. And she feared that if milk somehow negated the heart-disease fighting properties of tea, that it might also mess with antioxidant levels and tea's cancer-fighting ability too.

But here's what a recent study on antioxidants and black tea just found:

Adding milk to a cup of tea had no effect on its cancer-fighting properties.

And the folks who drank tea that had been brewed for five minutes had blood antioxidant levels 60% higher than those who drank a one-minute infusion.

But brewing longer than five minutes yielded no extra health benefits.

There was also something about brewing tea in a pot being better than brewing it in a cup. Given that this was in the title of the article, Crabby was expecting a bit more information about what this meant exactly and why it might be true. She is a cup-brewer herself. However, there were no such details provided. Crabby was not willing, however, to forage around the web much herself to figure it out. As we've established, Crabby is lazy.

Cup or pot, could it really make all that much difference? Rather than worry too much about the question, Crabby resolved to use a bigger cup in the future with more room for the teabags to spread out and get comfortable. (And since she uses a frightening number of teabags per cup, steeps for longer than 5 minutes, and squeezes every bit of tea liquid from the soggy bags before tossing them out, she probably already has more antioxidants swimming around in her bloodstream than her body knows what do with).

Because this a short and boring post, but one that is actually health-related, Crabby plans to indulge herself in another post later today that has nothing whatever to do with health but everything to do with Blogs. So please check back later for further adventures in Cranky Fitness.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE!
Bob over at Slashfood, a new favorite site of Crabby's, has even better news about tea. At least if it's Oolong. Looks like it might also help with weightloss!

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.