Tag: Diet

Diet for a Healthy Heart

A Healthy Heart of Fruits and VegetablesYou’ve probably heard it before, but it’s worth repeating:

  • Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women
  • Diet and lifestyle choices can have a dramatic effect on the development of heart disease and other conditions affecting the cardiovascular system

It’s never too late to start taking measures to prevent the onset or progression of cardiovascular disease—the more changes you make now, the healthier you’ll be in years to come. In addition to getting regular physical activity and not smoking, what you eat makes a big difference.

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The Cancer “Bad Luck” Hypothesis and Its Aftermath

Smoking is a leading cause of cancer

 

Forget smoking, sunburns, infections, and bad diet: two-thirds of cancers are due to “bad luck.”  That was the takeaway—and subsequent media headlines—from an article published in Science last year by researchers at Johns Hopkins Unversity.

Fast forward several months and another study looking at the same question came out in Nature with the opposite conclusion: lifestyle and other external factors account for over 70% of most cancers.

Two big name journals.  Two different conclusions.  So which is right?  What should be the new takeaway?

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Feeding the Microbiome: New ways that Diet affects your Health

bacteriaTrillions of microorganisms – mainly bacteria and yeast – inhabit your intestines and make up your microbiome.

Don’t worry – most of them are generally harmless, and even sometimes beneficial. Many of these microbes help us obtain nutrients from food we normally can’t digest, and they also help protect us from opportunistic infections caused by pathogenic (disease-causing) bacteria.

However, we are only beginning to understand the importance of the microbiome in maintaining our health.

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