Broccoli is a superfood. Almost every week there’s another study pointing out some healthful benefit of eating it. I’ve been linking over to them fairly often. Today’s example is a study presented at a recent American Association for Cancer Research conference indicating broccoli may lower the cancer risk for current and former smokers.The lesson remains the same - eat your broccoli, raw or steamed (but don’t overcook it!), it’s fantastic for you.
Archive for the 'Health' Category
No, I’m not talking about the razor blade in the apple type stuff. A reminder to folks as your kids wander about harvesting candy tonight: when companies make announcements like this (halloween candy from a particular manufacturer has no melamine problems in the US - it’s only the Canadian candy you have to watch out for) you should really watch out. I have no idea how pervasive the melamine poisoning really is, but it’s clear it’s in some and possibly many products that made it into North America. I remain concerned and if I had kids they wouldn’t be eating chocolate from anywhere I was remotely unsure of.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=873e46f6-b37a-4034-85a8-4eecb1c2d386)
- Image via Wikipedia
Susan’s a member of a local CSA farm, and she often picks up celeriac, which I’d never had until a month or so ago. Celeriac is the root of a particular kind of celery plant. It looks like a very large gnurled potato, but it has almost no starch content so it’s perfect for diabetics. You can prepare it much like you would prepare mashed potatoes, or you can dice it and steam, boil. or stirfry it and serve it as a side vegetable with your dinner. It’s great! It has a very mild celery taste, it’s versatile, and when you can find it it’s dirt cheap. Definitely worth trying if you’re looking to add some healthy variety to your diet.
That title pretty much sums up what recent statements by US federal health officials revealed, reported on here on US News & World Report’s website. I don’t have too much to add to this, just getting the word out. They don’t go into much detail in terms of causes of type 2 diabetes beyond the typical ‘sedentary lifestyle, obesity = higher incidence of the disease.’ The one aspect of it that I don’t think I’ve noted here before is how incidence rates are much higher in the poorer southern states than in the northern states. Education is a critical component of the disease that folks don’t seem to focus on as much - new drugs and approaches to treatment are great, but making sure kids are taught from a young age that fried twinkies + 2 quarts of soda + 6 hours of videogame daily = you’re going to be fat and get diabetes seems to be as big if not the biggest piece of the puzzle.
Lost in all the noise about the economic crisis we’re facing is that we may also be facing a crisis in our food supply. The same rationale of deregulating the financial markets appears to be impacting the oversite of our food supply as well, the chinese milk melamine tainting scandal being only the latest issue to crop up. This stuff is creeping out in the global food supply and it’s making me increasingly leery of processed foods. From numerous ground beef issues over the past couple of years, spinache, lettuce, tomatoes, and more, there’s a constant stream of news about tainted food, and with the global connectedness it’s really hard to track where this stuff turns up. What set me off about this today was news that Cadbury had to pull some of its chocolate off the market because they detected melamine in some batches of it and another vendor of creamer for coffee had to do the same. None of this particular scandal’s food has been detected in the US food supply as of yet but I’m not going to be surprised if it does, and increasingly I feel like folks are best advised to steer clear of processed foods. That frozen pizza won’t seem as convenient if it turns out the cheese was made with melamine, and that bag salad will stop seeming like a time saver if you end up ingesting ecoli because it had cow poop on it.
I should note I’m not really sure what to make of all of this. I read an analysis in the last couple of months that suggested the food supply has actually never been safer, it’s just that regional threats like ecoli outbreaks get more widely reported than in the past. At the same time though there’s overwhelming evidence that the Bush administration systematically went after regulatory systems, and it’s not clear to me what impact that had at the FDA and other government inspection and regulatory bodies that oversee the food supply. It seems better to be prudent than sick is what I guess it boils down to.
Fortunately Susan and I eat pretty danged healthy and we don’t eat all that much processed food, so here’s hoping our exposure to risk is as minimal as it seems.
Not as in missing my hometown, as in like, I have spent the past two days lounging about the house nursing a miserable cold. It’s not excruciatingly bad, it just features sniffles, headaches and a sore throat. Susan is suffering the same fate as I, which we’ve been debating. Is it better to both be sick at the same time, or in sequence so one partner can take care of the sick partner? We haven’t decided yet. Whatever we have has been making the rounds at the office. My weekly IT heads meeting had half the staff out sick yesterday, including me. Must be the time of year.
That’s right - I haven’t been to a dentist in over a decade, with the exception of an oral surgeon who removed my wisdom teeth about 6-7 years ago. I fell out of the practice of getting annual cleanings shortly after college when I moved away from my family dentist and didn’t have dental coverage during my early career. One way or another I always managed to avoid going until yesterday. The oral surgeon didn’t help things much back when I had my teeth removed, because he scoped out my teeth and commended me on them being in such good shape. Unfortunately they’d started to stain recently, and one stain in particular was driving Susan nuts, so after much cajoling I made an appointment.
The good news: no cavities. Brushing and flossing plus some help from genetics seem to have protected my teeth over the years, which I was greatly relieved about. The bad news: I have gum disease and have to go in for some serious under gum cleansing procedures which will apparently be pretty unpleasant. Once that’s done I have to go to the dentist every three months for a couple of years for followup cleanings which should entirely clear up the gum issues and protect my teeth for the long term.
The other good news is that the stains will all come off, and the dentist things I should consider a bleach treatment for them once the cleaning is finished, which should remove the yellow coloration. He also thinks I should get braces to fix my front teeth. I’m not sure on the braces but I’ll probably do the bleach treatment next spring since it seems to mean so much to Susan.
Anyway I’m not sure if there are any lessons learned. I avoided a decade of the discomfort of the dentists chair with seemingly little consequence, though I’ll reserve judgement and possibly sing a different tune after I’ve been through a couple of these undergum cleansing treatments.
Backpacker or backwoods camper? Check out this great post over on cool tools that has some handy links to recipes and sources of supply for freeze dried foods that can save you a bundle of money. This is especially great for diabetics whose choices are further limited by the high carb counts in most pre-packaged freeze dried foods.
Andrew pointed out to me that I ought to write up a recent study that showed a correlation between the presence of inorganic arsenic in urine and the incidence of diabetes in humans. Scary stuff - maybe it wasn’t the high fructose corn syrup after all, which is what I’ve been convinced is the primary cause of me developing type 2 diabetes in my mid-30’s. Here’s an article covering the research over on google, and here’s the article over on the Journal of the American Medical Association website.
Before I got Soolin, my awesome Golden Retriever, I spent a couple of years running regularly for my health. It was pretty great - I was as slim as I’ve ever been as an adult, and in absolutely superb cardio shape. I was running this ~4 mile loop at least 3 times a week, and sometimes as often as 5. The move to NY and Soolin moving in with me mostly got me out of the habit, though I’ve tried now and again to restart including this spring. I thought of this today because of this recent study from the Stanford University School of Medicine that basically concluded ‘running is really good for you, long term.’ It’s worth a quick look.
Eat your broccoli. It’s already well known that broccoli is great for you, with its high fiber content, high vitamin c content, suggestions that it’s an effective cancer fighter. Now there’s evidence that it may be really helpful for folks with diabetes and heart disease. Eating green veggies in general is fantastic for your overall health - making sure broccoli is a big part of the mix is even better. Fortunately I love the stuff, cooked or raw, and already eat a lot of it.
I knew the headline ‘Good Cholesterol dementia risk’ was going to be a problem when I saw it, and clicking through proved me right. Research in Europe suggests a link between a lack of “good” (HDL) cholesterol and poor memory functions. Anyone who knows me knows I have a terrible memory for details. What they may not know is I have a chronic problem with low HDL cholesterol. When I was first diagnosed with diabetes years ago, my HDL/LDL ratio was atrocious, and despite years of experimenting with various diet and drug regimens, the highest I’ve ever gotten my HDL is 20. Anything below 40 is considered a risk for heart disease. I’ve been as low as 12. The only good thing about all this is I probably won’t remember it’s a problem in a month or two 
The article’s over here, for those who are curious.
Some time ago I linked to a research study suggesting that eating curries helps stave off the onset of Alzheimer’s. Now there’s evidence that it can also help combat the effects of diabetes and obesity. Specifically, compounds found in Tumeric, a spice often used in curries, show promise. There are more details over on sciencedaily.com if you’re curious.
That’s the conclusion of a recent European medical journal article, which found a strong correlation between drinking green tea and better blood vessel function. This is another piece in the growing evidence of the positive influence flavonoid consumption has - green tea, red wine, and dark chocolate have all had recent studies published correlating their consumption with positive health outcomes. Here’s a recent webmd article covering the green tea research study, and here’s another article covering similar research into red wine and fruits and veggies. I’m adding green tea to my diet after already having added dark chocolate and (if only I could get over drinking red wine on hot summer days!) red wine.
So, check out my poor dog:
This looked much worse on Tuesday and Wednesday last week. It’s the largest part of a hotspot that formed as part of a rash she developed across the whole upper half of her torso and extending in small patches across her entire body. I brought her into the vet in a panic about this on Tuesday and discovered not only did she have this rash and hotspot, she had a urinary tract infection, a yeast infection in her ears, and Lymes disease (again). I went from the weekend, with what I thought was a happy healthy dog, splashing around in the river in the dog park, to the unhappiest, unhealthiest Soolin I’ve seen. It was really heartbreaking to see. She’s normally always got this happy go lucky grin on, and Monday and Tuesday that was nowhere to be seen, her tail was tucked completely under her rear, and she was moping around with her head hung low.
So, that’s the bad news. The good news is that so far she seems to be making a good recovery. The cheek outbreak is already looking tons better, it’s no longer weeping constantly, she’s often back to her happy go lucky self, and the rash seems to be receding. The bad news is we don’t know for sure what happened, though Lymes is a good guess, and she’s got to be on 6 different drugs over the next couple of months - 2 weeks of a course of antibiotics for the hotspot, ear drops for the yeast infection, topical skin stuff for the rash and hotspot, and an antihistamine to try and keep her from scratching, then 8 weeks of a different antibiotic to fend off the Lymes. She also can’t swim or be bathed for the first 2 weeks and man does she ever stink from the yeast infection, plus it’s been hot and humid so she’s dying to get in the water and cool herself off.
Anyway that’s the story at present. I’ll post again if anything significant happens with her from all of this. I’m seriously considering shaving her next summer to try and help her avoid another hotspot outbreak too. She may look ridiculous but she’ll look less ridiculous than she does now with her patchwork shaved spots.
So check out this delicious pizza from the Japanese Pizza Hut:
Pigs in a blanket, fakeburgers, edamame, and corn, just to mention a few of the deliciously greasy items you can get on your pie. Sign me up!
Sorry on the lack of updates. A little vacation and a little illness have conspired to keep me away from blogging. I’m off to the doctor today for a look-see. I got bitten by a tick while I was on LI and am a little worried that I have Lymes, but my symptoms aren’t really consistent. If not for the tick, I would have said I simply have the flu or something similar.
So this is only preliminary, and I’m a bit suspicious of one of the sponsors, but still, this BBC article covers research suggesting that drinking black teas can have beneficial effects for type 2 diabetics. Since I already like black tea this becomes an easy one for me.
And not for the reasons you think! There’s a lot of research on amphibians and type 2 diabetes these days because of the way they’re able to metabolize sugars. There’s a story over on the BBC covering research into a compound found in the secretion on the skin of a species of frog in south america shows promise for new drug treatments. Worth a quick read if you’re obsessed with diabetes-related news like me.
Here’s a potential game changer. Type 2 diabetes is not as well understood as Type 1. Recent research demonstrates a correlation between skeletal system’s secretion of a hormone and the metabolization of sugars. This is interesting on a couple of levels, first because it provides additional insight and avenues of research for understanding Type 2 Diabetes, and because it offers clues that there may be new possibilities for treatments.
Recent Comments