From RealAge.com:

ere’s an easy trick for cranking up the disease-fighting power of your peanuts: Roast them.

Peanuts already pack a solid protein, fiber, and fatty-acid punch. But a new study suggests that dark roasting your peanuts will release more disease-fighting phenolic compounds from the nuts’ cellular structures.

Fire Up Those Antioxidants
Phenolic compounds are antioxidants that have a reputation for quelling inflammatory processes that can open the door to diseases like cancer and heart disease. Peanuts are already packed with a wide variety of antioxidants. And with the exception of vitamin E, the capacity of peanut antioxidants increased dramatically in a study when the nuts were roasted at about 330 degrees Fahrenheit for 21 minutes.

Keep the Skins
Roasting amped up the antioxidants in the peanut skins even more than in the peanut flesh, so shop for ones with the skins on. Some debate continues regarding the health benefits of raw versus roasted nuts, but in any form, they’re still packed with good-for-you nutrition. Just limit yourself to a handful or two a day, because they’re also high in calories.

From www.RealAge.com:

A low-glycemic-index diet has long been touted as a way to avoid blood sugar problems. And now it seems this approach to eating may help keep your eyes in good standing, too.

In a study, people who took a low-glycemic-index approach to their meals had a lower risk of both early and advanced age-related macular degeneration — a common sight stealer among older adults.

How Low Can You Go?
To follow a low-glycemic-index diet, you need your meals to be centered around foods that have a modest effect on your blood sugar. High-fiber foods are one example. They are digested slowly and therefore have a smaller impact on blood sugar than highly refined carbs.

The Usual Vision Suspects
In addition to eating a low-glycemic-index diet, you can further protect your vision by including certain sight-saving nutrients in your meals. People who ate a low-glycemic-index diet and also got plenty of zinc, lutein, zeaxanthin, vitamins E and C, and omega-3 fatty acids had the lowest risk of age-related macular degeneration.

Fruit, veggies, exercise — they all make the heart-healthy list. And now, according to a new study, so does this breakfast staple: cereal.

But we’re not talking about Cocoa Puffs. We’re talking about whole-grain cereals — like steel-cut oats, shredded wheat, or muesli. Men in a study who noshed at least once a week on whole-grain cereals were significantly less likely to experience heart failure.

Longer Life in Every Bowl?
Several studies suggest that it’s the fiber in whole-grain cereals that may quell risk factors for heart failure, including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and obesity. The other heart-protective habits addressed in the study: maintaining a healthy body weight, exercising regularly, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, drinking alcohol only in moderation, and not smoking.

A Combo Protects Best
Men who practiced at least four of the six lifestyle habits on the study’s heart-healthy list cut their risk for heart failure in half.

A small study suggests that eating healthy carbs in the morning may turbocharge your fat-burning furnaces when you exercise later on in the day.

Good Carbs, Bad Carbs
The key here is the whole grain — because the study showed that low-glycemic-index carbs (the high-fiber kind) were what moved the dial on fat burning. When sedentary women ate these kinds of carbs as part of a healthy breakfast, they burned far more body fat during an hour walk later in the day, compared with women who ate a wimpy-carb breakfast. The winning breakfast? Muesli, fresh fruit, skim milk, and low-fat yogurt.

The Pair that Prevents Prostate Cancer

courtesy of RealAge.com:

Each of these veggies can help fight prostate cancer. But eating them together providesbetter protection. We’re talking about tomatoes and broccoli.

In animal studies, the combined dietary impact of ‘maters and broccoli delivered an even more serious cancer-fighting punch than either produce item delivered alone.

A Dynamic Duo
What makes this pair so powerful? Not only are tomatoes our top source of the antioxidant lycopene, but also they deliver anticancer nutrients like vitamin C, folate, quercetin, kaempferol, and naringenin. Then there’s broccoli, the king of the cruciferous family. In addition to cancer-busting carotenoids and polyphenols, broccoli is rich in sulforaphane, a compound credited with clearing carcinogens from the body.

So Happy Together!
Both a tomato-rich and cruciferous-heavy diet have been shown to reduce prostate cancer risk. And researchers suspect that the cancer-fighting compounds in these two items have complementary two-pronged effects, promoting cancer cell death and also keeping cancer cells from multiplying and growing out of control.

Get more nutrition from your blueberries by tossing them into a steamy bowl of oatmeal instead of cold cereal and milk.

Why? Because a recent study revealed that combining blueberries and milk in the same meal could block your body’s absorption of the antioxidant goodness in the berries.

The ABCs of Antioxidant Absorption
Blueberries are packed with powerful phenolic antioxidants that help keep you young by combating oxidative stress. Problem is, these superchemicals don’t always make it from your mouth to your bloodstream; you probably absorb less than 5 percent of the phenolics you get from foods. And certain food combos don’t help. When researchers had volunteers eat blueberries with a chaser of water or milk, the blueberry-and-milk combo resulted in significantly fewer phenolics being absorbed compared with the berries-and-water combo.

hen Milk Doesn’t Do You Good
Researchers believe that the proteins in milk somehow interfere with antioxidant absorption. And other milk research has already shown similar results with tea and chocolate phenolics. So what to do? Skim milk in your cereal may be an option. Although skim milk still interfered with phenolic absorption in the blueberry study, it interfered less than whole milk. You could also wait a couple of hours between eating blueberries and having milk.

blueberries

Via www.RealAge.com:

eep your skeleton strong and fracture-free by serving that calcium supplement with a salad on the side.

Salad? Yep, salad. A 4-year study found that older adults with the highest intakes of carotenoids — think tomatoes, carrots, and leafy greens for major sources — retained more bone mineral density than folks eating fewer fruits and veggies.

Antioxidant Bone Protection
Fruits and vegetables are bursting with antioxidants called carotenoids — including compounds like lycopene, beta carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin, to name a few. Don’t bother trying to pronounce them. Just know that veggie-stacked salads will probably provide your daily needs and then some.

How They Work
Carotenoids may protect bones by stymieing the oxidative stress thought to play a role in age-related weakening of bones. Carotenoids may also act synergistically with vitamin D to boost bone-cell growth.

Fruit, veggies, exercise — they all make the heart-healthy list. And now, according to a new study, so does this breakfast staple: cereal.

But we’re not talking about Cocoa Puffs. We’re talking about whole-grain cereals — like steel-cut oats, shredded wheat, or muesli. Men in a study who noshed at least once a week on whole-grain cereals were significantly less likely to experience heart failure.

Longer Life in Every Bowl?
Several studies suggest that it’s the fiber in whole-grain cereals that may quell risk factors for heart failure, including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and obesity. The other heart-protective habits addressed in the study: maintaining a healthy body weight, exercising regularly, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, drinking alcohol only in moderation, and not smoking.

Question Mark

What would you like to see Encourage Health cover this year? What should 2010 be for Health and Fitness?

Are you following any specific health or fitness program?  Is there one you think is better than another?

Tell is in the comments!

By Georgiann Caruso, CNN Medical News

The National Multiple Sclerosis defines MS as a “chronic, often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system, which is made up of the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves.” Symptoms of MS include extreme fatigue, difficulty walking, problems with memory and heat sensitivity.

The most common form of MS is relapsing-remitting, in which people have acute attacks followed by periods of remission. In secondary progressive, however, the disease worsens steadily and there are no acute flare-ups. People with relapsing-remitting may later develop secondary progressive MS.

ow it works

Two phase III clinical trials of Ampyra showed 35 and 43 percent of patients experienced, on average, a consistent improvement in their walking speed, increasing it by about 25 percent.

According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, even a modest improvement in walking ability could mean that thousands of people could benefit from the drug.

Dr. John Richert, executive vice president of Research & Clinical Programs at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, says the drug can be used by most people with MS. However, the drug is not for people with a history of seizures or people who have moderate to severe kidney disease.

Richert says approval means patients can now skip the compounding pharmacy and get a consistent, exact dosage in a guaranteed time-released formula, which would lower the risk of getting a toxic dose instead of a therapeutic dose.

“It’s likely that further study and clinical practice may help to determine the extent to which the drug may impact other functions, and may also provide hints as to which patients are most likely to respond positively to the therapy,” Richert said.

He added that the drug would not help nerves that have been destroyed and emphasized that people should try the drug to see if it works for them

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/22/fda.approval.ms.drug/index.html

From www.RealAge.com:

For blood sugar as balanced as a Russian gymnast, try adding lentils to your diet.

According to Jonny Bowden, PhD, author ofThe 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, these earthy little legumes are chock-full of soluble fiber — one of nature’s niftiest gifts for keeping blood sugar in check.

A Slow, Steady Drip
Lentils and other foods high in soluble fiber have a low glycemic load; the fiber in them delays digestion. That in turn triggers a slow, steady release of sugar and insulin into the bloodstream. And that’s way better for your body — and your diabetes risk profile — than the sudden spikes you get from eating quickly digested, low-fiber foods like white pasta, white bread, and sugary cookies.

her Blood Sugar Stabilizers
Whether you already have high blood sugar or are trying to avoid it, add these simple strategies to your steady-as-she-goes efforts:

• Try a little resistance, with strength training.
• Use spices, not salt!
• Beat the Blues: find ways to beat depression.