Cardiovascular Consequences of a Poor Diet During Childhood

Wow! What an amazing month it's been for traffic to this site. I want to say "thank you" to all who have subscribed to the blog and those who are regular visitors. It's great to see such a positive response, which encourages and motivates me to continue. You could be reading any of the other thousands of health-related sites on the net, but you're here with me. I appreciate that.

So back to the program...the developmental origins hypothesis suggests that undernutrition during fetal life, infancy, or childhood is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood.

Since data on postnatal developmental programming are scarce, and the fact that it's unethical to conduct a clinical trial where you starve half the children, the researchers studied 7845 women who lived through the Dutch Famine during the mid 1940s, to see whether exposure to undernutrition during childhood, adolescence, or young adulthood is related to coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke in adult life.

Overall, stronger famine exposure was associated with higher CHD risk. Among those who experienced the famine between ages 10 and 17 years, CHD risk was 38% higher among severely exposed women compared with unexposed women.

So all you kids out there reading this (yeah right, who am I kidding?)...say "ahhh."

Source: Cardiovascular consequences of famine in the young

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Sodium Linked to Cognitive Decline

According to new research out of the University of Toronto, a high-salt diet, especially in the presence of low physical activity, is damaging to cognitive health in older individuals.

The evidence shows that consuming larger amounts of sodium (table salt being our main source), is not only detrimental to cardiovascular and heart health, but also cognitive function and brain health.

What's interesting is that while high salt intake with sedentary lifestyle was linked to cognitive decline, those who were sedentary, but consumed low amounts of salt were able to maintain cognitive health over the three-year study period.

This suggests that sodium reduction, especially in a sedentary population may help improve or maintain cognitive health (or at least slow down the rate of cognitive impairment).

Source: Sodium intake and physical activity impact cognitive maintenance in older adults: the NuAge Study

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Ginger Loves Your Prostate

Ok, so here is the breakdancing video I mentioned in my last post. Click on the text below the picture, which will take open YouTube (I couldn't embed the video directly on my site here). This guy is amazing.

Click HERE to watch the vid (not the pic above)

Ok, now back to the program... it is now commonly recognized that higher and regular intake of fruits and vegetables is linked with significant anticancer benefits -- this includes herbs and spices. Ginger is extensively consumed as a spice in foods and beverages worldwide, and is an excellent source of several bioactive compounds (e.g. gingerols, paradols, shogaols, and gingerones). Ginger has been known to display anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antiproliferative activities, indicating its promising role as a chemopreventive agent.

This new study shows that whole ginger extract exerts significant growth-inhibitory and death-inductory effects in a spectrum of prostate cancer cells. In the in vitro (test tube studies) and in vivo animal trials this study conducted, ginger resulted in numerous benefits against prostate cancer cells, but most importantly, ginger did not exert any detectable toxicity in normal, rapidly dividing tissues such as gut and bone marrow.

Source: Benefits of whole ginger extract in prostate cancer

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