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Category Archives: Longevity Medicine

Green Tea Shows Promise as a Cancer Killer, Study Says

A chemical compound called epigallocatechin gallate showed much promise by killing cancerous cells during a phase 2 clinical study.

According to a study performed by researchers from the Mayo Clinic, the extract of the world-popular green tea has been effective in regulating the growth and proliferation of cancer cells in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).  The study was classified as a phase two human clinical trial, and the results were very promising indeed.

Epigallocatechin gallate vs. cancer cells

The compound epigallocatechin gallate was shown to have the ability to kill cancer cells in patients with CLL.  The compound prevented the cancer cells from surviving, thereby effectively reducing the total cancer cell count. The first phase of the human clinical trial of epigallocatechin gallate also showed similar, positive results.

What does this all mean?  According to one of the Mayo researchers, Dr. Tait Shanafelt, the two clinical trials show that epigallocatechin gallate showed some promise in stabilizing or normalizing the condition of patients with CLL.  While the compound is not classified as a definitive cure for the condition, it shows promise in slowing down the progress of the medical condition.

Instead of a cure, Mayo clinic researchers state that the compound should be viewed as a cancer preventive rather than cancer cure. And there was a catch: the patients that were subjected to the nutraceutical treatment were patients who had early signs of CLL (not advanced stage CLL).

The study involved thirty-six respondents and resulted in a fifty percent reduction of leukemia cell count at the end of the human clinical trial.  Including the patients from the first clinical trial, the total number of CLL patients involved in the study is forty-two.  A third clinical trial is needed before the Mayo Clinic researchers can make a definitive recommendation regarding the use of epigallocatechin gallate for CLL sufferers.

Other benefits of green tea

Tea is the second most drunk beverage in the world (right next to water). It contains natural antioxidants and caffeine (50% less than regular coffee).  And did I mention that it’s good for you for a lot of reasons?  It’s more than just a cancer preventive.  Here are some more health benefits of drinking green tea:

1. According to a study published by the American Medical Association, 40,000 respondents (from Japan; all of them drank up three cups of green tea per day) showed no evidence of cardiovascular anomalies and coronary heart problems since the study started back in the year 1994.  Not one individual from the 40,000 strong group developed any cancer, too!

2. Drinking green tea reduces the risk of dying from heart disease by twenty six percent (for males).  For women, drinking three to five cups of the precious elixir reduced the risk of dying from heart attacks and other cardiac problems by a staggering thirty-one percent.

3. Having chronic problems with sleep apnea (disturbances during sleep) and poor sleep quality, generally?   Reach for green tea.  US studies found out that chemical compounds in green tea can help prevent cognitive troubles resulting from poor sleep.

4. If you have trouble memorizing for school, don’t drink soda.  Instead, make yourself a nice, warm green tea brew.  There is no reason not to enjoy this beverage as it now comes in many natural flavors, like blueberry, cinnamon, etc.

All you have to do is choose your favorite flavor and use a French press to make an instant cup of tea.  Or you can just buy tea bags and allow the tea to infuse itself into the water for a few minutes.  I recommend this and that’s how I make my green tea.  The longer you keep the teabag in the hot water, the stronger the tea.

You can also add a bit of cinnamon to make the tea more interesting.  Since tea has caffeine, it can also help keep you more alert and awake when working or studying.   Green tea also has theanine, which has been shown to have beneficial effects in that region of the human brain that is responsible for alertness.

5. Suffering from poor immunity against common illnesses like the flu and the common cold?  Green tea is rich in chemical compounds called polyphenols, which can help boost your immune system.  Polyphenols can also help slow down aging by reducing the oxidative stress that the body experiences from free radicals.  Polyphenols are capable of disabling free radicals in the body.

6. Substituting polyphenol-rich beverages like green tea for soda and the like can also reverse the spike in body weight.  Because green tea doesn’t have much sugar, it does not contribute much to your weight (apart from its water content).  If you are having trouble with ‘water weight’, then all you have to do is to sip on the green tea during the day instead of downing a whole cup in one go.  But don’t forget: being well-hydrated is more important.  Also, water helps the body lose weight by helping in better digestion and also by helping the body burn calories more efficiently.

7. According to researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the antioxidants present in green tea can also penetrate the tissues in the eyes and do a world of good there.  Increased antioxidant activity in any body tissue has always been linked to decreased inflammation and healthier tissues and cells.

8. All kinds of tea come from the same camella plant – and tea always has more than ten times the amount of antioxidant chemicals than regular vegetables and fruits.  So drink up!  Green tea can also help prevent dangerous blood clots from forming in veins and arteries (which can lead to heart attack and stroke).  You also reduce the risk for atherosclerosis when you drink plenty of tea, say Dr. John Weisburger, the US’s pro-tea champion and veteran researcher (who is also, incidentally, already eighty two years old!)

Cancer prevention

In the spirit of global cancer prevention, here are some easy steps that you can prevent different types of cancer.

Prostate Cancer

  • In a European study, it was discovered that regular intake of legumes and other vegetables lowered the risk of prostate cancer over the long term.
  • Nutrients like vitamin D, isoflavanoids and selenium can help reduce prostate cancer by stopping the chemical processes that can lead to the formation of cancer cells.

Skin Cancer

  • Increase your intake of antioxidants prior to sun exposure or take an umbrella with you when going out into the direct heat of the sun for a long period of time!
  • Beta-carotene has been linked to reduced risk of developing cancerous skin cells.

Lung Cancer

  • Long term tobacco smoke has been linked to lung cancer – so stop the habit before it leads to something much, much worse than just stained teeth.
  • Regular exercise produces a protective effect on the body – including the respiratory system. Get enough exercise to strengthen your breathing apparatus.

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
blogs.webmd.com
blogs.webmd.com
webmd.com
webmd.com
webmd.com
webmd.com
webmd.com

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To Eat or Not to Eat?

Researchers:  Skip Pre-Workout Meal, Increase Fat Loss

Why you may be better off postponing your meal until after you've exercised.

There are plenty of opinions out there regarding the benefits and detriments of eating immediately prior to working out.  Advocates say that food provides the fuel an athlete needs to perform at his or her best.  But detractors say that pre-workout meals prevent the body from burning off stored fat, thus reducing the benefits exercise has in helping people lose weight.

Both arguments have their validity, which is why you need to consider what your goals are before deciding on whether or not to chow down prior to working out.  If your goal is to maximize performance—to leg out that extra mile, or to bench that extra rep—then eating is the way to go.  Fat and carbohydrates provide the muscles with the fuel they need to perform rigorous tasks.

But if the purpose of your exercise program is to lose weight, you may be better off skipping out on that pre-workout shake.

Now, I know what you’re thinking:  Uh, duh Frank – if you want to lose weight, then of course you have to consume less than you’re burning!  But there’s a plethora of data out there suggesting that skipping meals is a bad way to try and lose weight.  Skipping meals slows down the body’s metabolic rate and it also encourages us to eat more later in the day because we’re feeling famished.  In fact, some studies suggest the best way to lose weight is to eat more.

But researchers from the University of Birmingham say that skipping the pre-workout meal “tricks” the body into tapping into fat stores for fuel.

They discovered this after following 14 people who either ate prior to working out or did not eat prior to working out.  For those that did eat, they waited one hour before mounting their bicycles.  Both groups used bicycling as their modes of exercise for the experiment.

At the end of one week, the researchers found that the pre-workout eaters outperformed those that didn’t eat prior to working out (i.e. they didn’t travel as many miles), but the fasting group wound up burning off more fat.

The study is published in the journal American College of Sports Medicine.

Now, does this mean that everyone should skip out on eating prior to working out?  Of course not.  Many people simply can’t exercise on an empty stomach without feeling dizzy.  If this is the case, then by all means, EAT!

Others are able to eat prior to working out and can lose weight just fine.  In fact they’ve tried fasting before exercising, but it left them feeling listless and lethargic, severely hampering their exercise efforts.

For everyone else, though, skipping your pre-workout meal may lead to big gains—or should I say “losses”—in your weight loss endeavors.

Source:
newsmaxhealth.com

Discuss this article in Frank Mangano’s forum!

Posted in Longevity Medicine | Comments Off on To Eat or Not to Eat?

Diabetes Prevention May Start with Breakfast

Could Coffee Reduce the Risk for Diabetes Development?

Lab tests show rats drinking coffee (black) had lower blood sugar levels than rats drinking water.

Coffee drinking is rarely associated as being a boon for someone’s health.  It’s derided for being too high in caffeine, disparaged as being a cause for tooth staining, and pilloried for being a high calorie diet buster.

While the negative health claims of coffee have elements of truth, the anti-coffee crusaders conveniently ignore the benefits of coffee, such as its ability to reduce a person’s risk of liver cancer and alcohol-related liver disease.

But there’s another reason to grab your cup o’ Joe before leaving for work tomorrow:  It may reduce your risk for diabetes.

With the recent health concerns of former Poison front man Bret Michaels, diabetes has been in the news headlines quite a bit lately.  Michaels suffers from type I diabetes and has become the diabetic community’s front man in helping garner attention to a condition that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide.  Michaels recently appeared on Donald Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” earning hundreds of thousands of dollars for his charity, the American Diabetes Association, in the process.

The hope is that that money will go a long way in helping discover a cure for a disease affects 23.6 million people in the United States alone, as diabetics cope with their disease day after day through insulin therapy, diet alterations and various other treatments.

No one is immune from getting diabetes, and while type I diabetes is usually acquired at birth, type II diabetes—or adult onset diabetes—can occur at any time in life.

But researchers think that people may be able to reduce their risk for type II diabetes by drinking coffee.

Dr. Fumihiko Horio found this link after feeding a group of laboratory rats either water or coffee.  Through blood testing, they found that the rats fed coffee showed an improvement in their sensitivity to insulin and had lower blood sugar levels compared to the water-drinking rats.  Researchers believe coffee’s prevention qualities is due to its high caffeine content, calling caffeine “one of the most effective anti-diabetic compounds in coffee.”

This latest round of research is in contradistinction to a 2008 study that said coffee tended to increase blood sugar levels among diabetics.  In that study, researchers followed 10 people with type II diabetes to see what, if any, effect high levels of caffeine had on their blood sugar levels.  They found that blood sugar levels increased by an average of eight percent when participants consumed a caffeine pill that contained about the same amount of caffeine as an eight ounce serving of coffee.

Of course the difference between the two studies is that one looked at how coffee prevented diabetes, while the other looked at how coffee affected people who already had diabetes.  Another difference is that one study used coffee, while the other used caffeine pills in place of coffee.

This fact alone suggests that it may be something other than caffeine that has diabetes preventive qualities, especially when past studies reached the same conclusions while using decaffeinated coffee.

More research is in the offing.  In the meantime, don’t beat yourself up over your coffee habit.  So long as you’re consuming coffee black and that you’re consuming no more than a couple cups a day, drinking coffee is a healthy habit to have.

Sources
latimesblogs.latimes.com
sciencedaily.com

Discuss this post in Frank Mangano’s forum!

Posted in Longevity Medicine | Comments Off on Diabetes Prevention May Start with Breakfast

Decitabine may target ovarian CSCs?

Two-Drug Phase I Trial Shows Promise in Treating Late-Stage Ovarian Cancer, ScienceDaily, June 13, 2010. Excerpt:

“Our hypothesis is that decitabine isn’t just targeting active ovarian cancer cells, but also cancer stem cells that seem to survive the first treatments,” [Kenneth] Nephew said. “By keeping tumor suppression genes from being methylated, carboplatin and other platinum-based treatments for ovarian cancer have a better chance of success in the late stages.”

This news release is about the publication entitled: A phase 1 and pharmacodynamic study of decitabine in combination with carboplatin in patients with recurrent, platinum-resistant, epithelial ovarian cancer by Fang Fang, Curt Balch and 9 co-authors, including Kenneth P Nephew and Daniela E Matei, Cancer 2010(Jun 8) [Epub ahead of print].

Posted in Longevity Medicine | Comments Off on Decitabine may target ovarian CSCs?

Diabetes Prevention May Start with Breakfast

Could Coffee Reduce the Risk for Diabetes Development?

Lab tests show rats drinking coffee (black) had lower blood sugar levels than rats drinking water.

Coffee drinking is rarely associated as being a boon for someone’s health.  It’s derided for being too high in caffeine, disparaged as being a cause for tooth staining, and pilloried for being a high calorie diet buster.

While the negative health claims of coffee have elements of truth, the anti-coffee crusaders conveniently ignore the benefits of coffee, such as its ability to reduce a person’s risk of liver cancer and alcohol-related liver disease.

But there’s another reason to grab your cup o’ Joe before leaving for work tomorrow:  It may reduce your risk for diabetes.

With the recent health concerns of former Poison front man Bret Michaels, diabetes has been in the news headlines quite a bit lately.  Michaels suffers from type I diabetes and has become the diabetic community’s front man in helping garner attention to a condition that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide.  Michaels recently appeared on Donald Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” earning hundreds of thousands of dollars for his charity, the American Diabetes Association, in the process.

The hope is that that money will go a long way in helping discover a cure for a disease affects 23.6 million people in the United States alone, as diabetics cope with their disease day after day through insulin therapy, diet alterations and various other treatments.

No one is immune from getting diabetes, and while type I diabetes is usually acquired at birth, type II diabetes—or adult onset diabetes—can occur at any time in life.

But researchers think that people may be able to reduce their risk for type II diabetes by drinking coffee.

Dr. Fumihiko Horio found this link after feeding a group of laboratory rats either water or coffee.  Through blood testing, they found that the rats fed coffee showed an improvement in their sensitivity to insulin and had lower blood sugar levels compared to the water-drinking rats.  Researchers believe coffee’s prevention qualities is due to its high caffeine content, calling caffeine “one of the most effective anti-diabetic compounds in coffee.”

This latest round of research is in contradistinction to a 2008 study that said coffee tended to increase blood sugar levels among diabetics.  In that study, researchers followed 10 people with type II diabetes to see what, if any, effect high levels of caffeine had on their blood sugar levels.  They found that blood sugar levels increased by an average of eight percent when participants consumed a caffeine pill that contained about the same amount of caffeine as an eight ounce serving of coffee.

Of course the difference between the two studies is that one looked at how coffee prevented diabetes, while the other looked at how coffee affected people who already had diabetes.  Another difference is that one study used coffee, while the other used caffeine pills in place of coffee.

This fact alone suggests that it may be something other than caffeine that has diabetes preventive qualities, especially when past studies reached the same conclusions while using decaffeinated coffee.

More research is in the offing.  In the meantime, don’t beat yourself up over your coffee habit.  So long as you’re consuming coffee black and that you’re consuming no more than a couple cups a day, drinking coffee is a healthy habit to have.

Sources
latimesblogs.latimes.com
sciencedaily.com

Discuss this post in Frank Mangano’s forum!

Posted in Longevity Medicine | Comments Off on Diabetes Prevention May Start with Breakfast

To Eat or Not to Eat?

Researchers:  Skip Pre-Workout Meal, Increase Fat Loss

Why you may be better off postponing your meal until after you've exercised.

There are plenty of opinions out there regarding the benefits and detriments of eating immediately prior to working out.  Advocates say that food provides the fuel an athlete needs to perform at his or her best.  But detractors say that pre-workout meals prevent the body from burning off stored fat, thus reducing the benefits exercise has in helping people lose weight.

Both arguments have their validity, which is why you need to consider what your goals are before deciding on whether or not to chow down prior to working out.  If your goal is to maximize performance—to leg out that extra mile, or to bench that extra rep—then eating is the way to go.  Fat and carbohydrates provide the muscles with the fuel they need to perform rigorous tasks.

But if the purpose of your exercise program is to lose weight, you may be better off skipping out on that pre-workout shake.

Now, I know what you’re thinking:  Uh, duh Frank – if you want to lose weight, then of course you have to consume less than you’re burning!  But there’s a plethora of data out there suggesting that skipping meals is a bad way to try and lose weight.  Skipping meals slows down the body’s metabolic rate and it also encourages us to eat more later in the day because we’re feeling famished.  In fact, some studies suggest the best way to lose weight is to eat more.

But researchers from the University of Birmingham say that skipping the pre-workout meal “tricks” the body into tapping into fat stores for fuel.

They discovered this after following 14 people who either ate prior to working out or did not eat prior to working out.  For those that did eat, they waited one hour before mounting their bicycles.  Both groups used bicycling as their modes of exercise for the experiment.

At the end of one week, the researchers found that the pre-workout eaters outperformed those that didn’t eat prior to working out (i.e. they didn’t travel as many miles), but the fasting group wound up burning off more fat.

The study is published in the journal American College of Sports Medicine.

Now, does this mean that everyone should skip out on eating prior to working out?  Of course not.  Many people simply can’t exercise on an empty stomach without feeling dizzy.  If this is the case, then by all means, EAT!

Others are able to eat prior to working out and can lose weight just fine.  In fact they’ve tried fasting before exercising, but it left them feeling listless and lethargic, severely hampering their exercise efforts.

For everyone else, though, skipping your pre-workout meal may lead to big gains—or should I say “losses”—in your weight loss endeavors.

Source:
newsmaxhealth.com

Discuss this article in Frank Mangano’s forum!

Posted in Longevity Medicine | Comments Off on To Eat or Not to Eat?