10 facts about superfoods

1. Two apples a day can reduce cholesterol by ten percent.
2. Eating at least three servings of fruits, vegetables, and salads daily can half your risk of heart and circulatory disease.
3. Eating one portion of any of the cabbage family daily significantly reduces the risk of lung, colon, and breast cancer.
4. Two portions a week of spinach, sorrel or beet tops reduces the risk of adult macular degeneration (AMD) by fifty percent.
5. The equivalent of six ripe tomatoes daily -- whole fruit, purée, sauce, soup, ketchup, sun-dried or juice -- halves the risk of prostate cancer in men and helps prevent blood clots and high blood pressure.
6. One clove of garlic daily reduces cholesterol and makes the blood less sticky, preventing blood clots.
7. Southern Europeans get twice as much of their energy (ten percent) than people in North America (four-and-a-half percent) from the protective fruit and vegetable superfoods.
8. The Mediterranean diet, with its high level of superfoods, means less disease and longer life expectancy; for example, Greeks have the lowest amount of bowel cancer in the whole of Europe.
9. Vitamin pills are not a substitute for superfoods. All the studies using pills to replicate the benefits of the Mediterranean diet for heart disease have failed.
10. Superfoods explain "the French Paradox:" a diet of cheese, pâté, sausage, wine, and cigarettes but with massive intakes of superfoods means that the average French person has a sixty percent lower risk of premature death from heart disease than his or her equivalent in the UK.

Dandelion Greens

Nutritional Highlights
Dandelion greens are a nutritional powerhouse. The plant has been used since antiquity as a diuretic, a liver tonic, to treat skin conditions and a whole host of other health problems.

They are packed with vitamins and minerals. One cup of cooked dandelion greens has more calcium than a cup of cottage cheese but only 34 calories. It provides 12% of the fiber, 19% of the iron and 28% of the Vitamin C that (averaging for adults and children) the USDA suggests that we get in our diets each day.
Dandelion provides more vitamin A than an equal amount of kale, collard greens or summer squash, giving you 85% of the daily recommended intake.

The one cup serving also contains 2.1 grams of protein, many minerals including potassium, magnesium and phosphorous as well as vitamin E, thiamin, riboflavin, B-6 and folate.

To wash dandelion greens (or any other leafy green) fill a large pot or bowl with cold water and place the leaves into the bowl. Swish them around to loosen the sand. Since the sand is heavy, it will fall to the bottom of the bowl and the leaves will float on top. Place a strainer next to the bowl and pull the leaves out and place them in the strainer. Don't pour the leaves and dirty water into the strainer because you will just pour all of the sand back into the greens. Rinse the bowl, refill with water and repeat until they are clean.

Green Tea Compounds Prevent Memory Loss From Lack of Oxygen

People with sleep apnea, a disorder that affects more than 12 million people in the United States, literally stop breathing repeatedly during their sleep, sometimes for a minute or longer. With the most serious form, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), this can happen hundreds of times during a single night and deprive the brain of oxygen.

The result? Possible brain damage causing memory problems. In fact, people with OSA are known to have increased markers of oxidative stress and exhibit changes in their brain tissue in areas involved in learning and memory.

But natural substances in green tea appear to stave off these OSA-caused cognitive deficits according to new research published in the second issue for May of the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Scientists studied the effects of green tea polyphenols (GTP, for short) on rats who were intermittently deprived of oxygen in order to simulate the lack of oxygen, known as hypoxia, that humans with OSA experience. Chronic hypoxia in rats is known to produce similar neurological deficit patterns seen in humans with sleep apnea.

Previous research has shown that GTPs may reduce the risk of a variety of different diseases, most likely because they possess anti-oxidant properties and act as free radical scavengers. "OSA has been increasingly recognized as a serious and frequent health condition with potential long-term morbidities that include learning and psychological disabilities," David Gozal, M.D., professor and director of Kosair Children's Hospital Research Institute at the University of Louisville, said in a prepared release for the press. "A growing body of evidence suggests that the adverse neurobehavioral consequences imposed by hypoxia stem, at least in part, from oxidative stress and inflammatory signaling cascades."

Substance in Red Wine Slows Aging

Writing this week in the online, open-access journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE, researchers, including from the University of Florida, report that low doses of resveratrol — a natural constituent of grapes, pomegranates and red wine — can potentially boost the quality of life by improving heart health in old age. The scientists included small amounts of resveratrol in the diets of middle-aged mice and found that the compound has a widespread influence on the genetic causes of aging. Specifically, the researchers found that low doses of resveratrol mimic the heart-healthy effects of what is known as caloric restriction, diets with 20% to 30% fewer calories than a typical diet.
[Source: UF News]

Calcium, vitamin D and cancer risk

In a study conducted in 2007, researchers found that women taking a combination of calcium and vitamin D supplements had a 60 percent lower incidence of all cancers than women not taking the tested supplement.

Research in the June 2007 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has shown a reduction in cancer rates among postmenopausal women taking vitamin D combined with calcium.

This four-year, double blind, randomized placebo-controlled study involved over 1,100 postmenopausal women who were divided into three treatment groups. The first group received a supplement containing calcium and vitamin D, the second group received just calcium, and the third group received a placebo. The researchers found that the women taking the calcium and vitamin D supplement had a 60 percent lower incidence of all cancers than women not taking the supplement.

This new study takes an important step in extending several decades of research involving the role of vitamin D in health and disease. The results further strengthen the case made by many specialists that vitamin D may be a powerful cancer preventive and that it is commonly found lacking in the general population, particularly the elderly.

Source: Vitamin D and calcium supplementation reduces cancer risk: results of a randomized trial, Lappe et al, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2007 June;85(6):1586-91