Category: Health and Wellness

 

I have a problem with sugar, and I know it.  For me, chocolate seems to be the irresistible lure.  If I see anything with chocolate in it, be it chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake, or a big hunk of the good stuff itself, my willpower dissolves within seconds, and before you can say the word “chocoholic”, it’s found its way into my mouth.

For others, it’s the sugary drinks that get them.  Soft drink manufacturers have made a killing over the last several decades by offering us the ultimate vehicle for sugar injection.  The sugars found in soft drinks and other mass market juices are so easily absorbed that our blood sugar peaks within minutes, giving us a satisfying rush that is often likened to an addictive drug.

This collective love of sweetness has caused sugar consumption to increase from an average of 4 pounds per annum in the year 1700, to 100 pounds per annum today, and now accounts for a fifth of all calories consumed.   It’s likely because of the quick energy sugar provides that we crave it so much. The trouble is, once our tastebuds have been stimulated by the stuff, we can’t seem to stop.  According to a New York Times article on sugar written in 1977, “if saccharin is injected into the womb, the fetus will increase its swallowing of the sweetened amniotic fluid. Newborn rats will consume sugar water in preference to a nutritious diet, even to the point of malnutrition and death”.

While many doctors and researchers have warned of the negative effects of sugar for decades, it’s only recently that a loud consensus has been reached.  This is due to two recent revelations:  the first being the discovery of a number of 1967 memos proving that Harvard researchers were handsomely paid to downplay links between sugar consumption and heart disease in the past.  The second being the consequent promotion of a low fat diet by most public health bodies, which inadvertently caused carbohydrate consumption to spike, and resulted in alarmingly high rates of diabetes and obesity, while failing to provide the hoped-for reduction in heart disease.

Clearly, we should all be avoiding sugar as much as possible if we want to maintain our good health.  But how do we go about doing that?    Well, the old advice is still good advice.  As much as possible, eat real food, not snack bars, dessert-like breakfast products, or pre-made smoothies.   All of these foods have alarmingly high amounts of sugar added.  If you like to drink smoothies, make your own.  It’ll contain healthier ingredients and fewer calories.

Another good rule that’s tried and true:  never shop for groceries when you’re hungry.  You’ll always make poor food choices.  Finally, choose foods with plenty of colour, and by that I don’t mean coloured candy.   Fresh fruits and vegetables come in plentiful shades of green, red, orange, and yellow, all indicating a high nutrient content.  Try to bring a rainbow of colour to all your meals, by eating a wide variety of steamed or stir-fried vegetables, mixed with whole grains and small amounts of protein.  Ideally, your vegetable portion will make up at least half your plate.   Essentially, eat more like the Asians do, and you can’t go too far wrong.

As for other chocoholics like me, consider indulging in a single square of dark chocolate once in awhile.  Dark chocolate contains high amounts of flavenoids, which have antioxidant activity.  If you do it with a friend, you’ll stay honest and be prevented from finishing off the entire bar in one sitting.  My husband and I buy a dark chocolate bar every so often, and then we each eat one square a day until it’s gone.  Because I know he’s watching, I never eat more than one square at a time, and that small taste of chocolate each day is enough to satisfy me.

For women who chronically crave chocolate or other sugary treats, it can be a sign of “blood deficiency” in Chinese medicine.  Menstruating women can become blood deficient easily because of our monthly release.  I usually find that when my sugar cravings get out of control, it’s because I haven’t taken a blood tonic in awhile.  Consider trying our Shou Wu Plus tincture, which contains several Chinese tonic herbs known to nourish your liver, kidneys and blood.  I find that as long as my blood is well nourished with such longevity herbs, sugar holds a much weaker appeal for me, and I have less difficulty avoiding it, even when I’m hungry.

 

I learned about the power of intestinal bacteria about five years ago.  My cousin was struggling with an intestinal infection that just wouldn’t go away.  She’d been treated with successive rounds of antibiotics, but it had only made the problem worse, not better.  No longer able to work, she was taking probiotics and eating fermented foods in the hope of recovering her intestinal balance, but none of it was working.

Finally, she and her doctors decided to try a fecal transplant.  It was a very new treatment at the time, and sounded very strange, but the results were nothing short of amazing.  Within a few days of receiving the transplanted micro-organisms, she was finally back on her feet and re-entering life.  Ever since then, stories about the importance of a healthy microbial balance always catch my attention.

In the last few years, a mounting pile of research has demonstrated the importance of a healthy diversity of bacteria for overall good health.  Links have been found between our gut microbiome and conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mood disorders, Parkinson’s disease and even cancer, and has led some researchers to suggest that a potential cure may be found in fecal transplants, such as my cousin had, or perhaps through dietary changes that alter the balance of intestinal bacteria so these conditions can be prevented.

A new study from the University of Western Ontario and Tianyi Health Science Institute in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, China suggests that a healthy microbiome may also be linked to a long and healthy life.  For this study, a team of researchers analyzed the gut bacteria of 1,000 people between the ages of 30 and 100.  They then asked the older participants about their health status. 

Those older people who described themselves as being “extremely healthy” were found to have very diverse microbiomes, very similar to people decades younger than themselves.  In fact, these older participants had a gut microbiome resembling people in their thirties, leading the researchers to suggest that microbial diversity might be a strong factor in predicting a long and healthy life.

It’s important to note that this study is the first of its kind, and merely establishes baseline evidence for the importance of healthy gut bacteria.  Further studies will be needed to corroborate these findings.  For now, it’s hard to tell if healthy people naturally have a diverse gut microbiome, or if it’s the diverse microbiome that keeps you healthy.

Still, the results are very intriguing.  As Greg Gloor, the principal investigator of the study, comments, “Maintaining the diversity of your gut as you age [could become] a biomarker of healthy aging,  just as a low cholesterol level is a biomarker for a healthy circulatory system”.    If that happens, probiotic supplements will become even more popular than they already are.

 

How many hours did you work last week?  Was it more than 40?  Please don’t tell me it was more than 60!   The number of hours you work each week has big implications for your health, a new study shows, and this is particularly true for women.

This new research was published in the journal Social Science and Medicine, and concludes that the average person should work no more than 39 hours a week to prevent a substantial decline in mental health.  For women, the magic number is just 34 hours per week.  Once those limits have been passed, mental health starts to suffer and people are less able to eat well, and take proper care of themselves and those they love.

A 40 hour work-week causes more distress to women than men because they perform more unpaid childcare and household chore responsibilities than men, which adds to their daily schedule.  In addition, women tend to have lower paid jobs, with less autonomy over workplace decisions, which can also increase workplace stress.

The research was conducted in Australia, where data was collected from 8,000 adults between the ages of 24 to 64.  Generally, it was found that once people began to work more than 45 hours per week, the risk of cardiovascular disease, angina, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and heart attack increased.

While it is true that some work is good for our physical and mental health, there is definitely a threshold whereby people begin to suffer, and that seems to occur when people regularly work more than 12 hours per day or 60 hours per week.

This new information should serve as a warning for people in North America, whose amount of leisure time has decreased from the mid-twentieth century until now.   According to a 2014 Gallup poll, the average full-time worker in the US now puts in about 47 hours per week, and 40% of workers work at least 50 hours per week.

True health is more than the absence of illness.  It also means having the space and time to enjoy what we have, rather than constantly reaching for more.  For many, life is a daily struggle just to make ends meet.  Somehow, we have to find a way to re-structure society so that we can all live comfortably, without stretching ourselves past our natural limits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though it’s been many years since I’ve sat, frustrated and confused, in a math or science classroom, I must admit that I still feel a lingering resentment towards quick learners.  You know the kids I mean.  The ones who pick up new concepts quickly, and then apply them with ease.  The ones who barely look at their notes and still get an A+ on their test, while the rest of us work all night long and only achieve a B+, at best.

Sure, some of them suffer with social difficulties that can offset many of their mental gifts, but for the most part, they’ve got it made.  Their ease with scholastic material means they’re more likely to get more advanced degrees, with higher paychecks.   Their ability to dazzle and impress educators as well as their parents, means they get more positive attention as they grow.  And now, according to new research,  it appears that people with a high IQ also live longer.

The first evidence linking high IQ with a long lifespan came from a Scottish study that began in 1932.   That year, a cohort of 11 year old children were given an IQ test, and researchers then followed them up until the age of 76.  When the results were analyzed, children with a 15-point IQ advantage were found to have a 21% greater chance of being alive than those with a more average IQ score. You might assume this increase in longevity might be due to differences in lifestyle, or better access to health care, but the researchers controlled for those factors.  Statistically, lifestyle choices or  socioeconomic advantages explained only 30% of the link between intelligence and life span.  The rest was genetic.

Further studies were done by Rosalind Arden and her colleagues from the International Journal of Epidemiology.  They found several groups of identical and fraternal twins in which both IQ and mortality were recorded, and used those numbers to help clarify how much of the IQ-lifespan advantage is genetic, and how much is environmental.  When the analysis was finished, the more intelligent twin was found to have a longer lifespan, even if both twins shared other lifestyle factors.  Clearly, there’s something about having a high IQ that also increases longevity.

The answer may be resilience.  Gro Amdam of Arizona State University and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences has theorized that the reason people with a high IQ live longer, is because they are just engineered better.  In addition to a more impressive performance on mental tests, he believes they also have a greater ability to survive environmental onslaughts.

He tested his hypothesis by strapping honeybees to straws and then dripping a sugary solution on them.  Honeybees are often used in neurological experiments because they can be trained with positive or negative reinforcement, and in this case, Amdam wanted to isolate the smart honeybees by preceding the drip of sugar with a certain smell.  The smarter honeybees identified the link between the smell and the sugar solution faster, and learned to stick out their proboscis to receive it. The slower honeybees lost out.

The second part of this experiment involved exposing all the bees to a high oxygen environment, to see who could endure it the longest.  A high oxygen environment is a metabolic stress test that simulates aging.  It turned out that the quick-learning honeybees lived, on average, four hours longer than the slow-learning bees when exposed to unnaturally high levels of oxygen.  This show of greater resilience among the smarter bees suggests a possible survival advantage that may also be present in humans.

This evident resilience among smarter bees – and possibly humans – may occur because of a faster reaction time.  When researchers tested the reaction time of 898 fifty-six year olds, they found that those who reacted more quickly to a stimulus also lived longer.  Study participants were required to press one of four keys on a keyboard in response to seeing the identical digit on a computer screen.  There was no complicated thinking involved; you would think that anyone could do well.

Yet, when they followed up on the participants more than a decade later, those who had a faster reaction time on the test, also lived longer.   What’s more, once the reaction time was taken into account, the correlation between mortality and IQ disappeared, meaning that relationship between reaction time and longevity is stronger.  The reason that high IQ people tend to live longer, is because they react faster to external events.

It appears that the benefits of having a high IQ are more widespread than just being able to do well in school and on tests.  Nevertheless, those of us who have more average intelligence shouldn’t despair. “The intelligence-longevity link is a small one”, says Rosalynd Arden of the International Journal of Epidemiology ,  “Nothing we found counteracts the good old stuff your grandmother would have told you about how to live well”.  Eat well, exercise regularly, avoid smoking and excessive drinking, and we can all hope to live a long and healthy life.  Even those of us who suck at math.