It is always worth taking a look at studies linking health issues with food. Today we are going to look at a variety of these links and see which ones affect your lifestyle.
Some people can’t resist a midnight snack. However, let’s look at it with a different focus. Not snacking after your last meal of the evening is a form of a mini-fast.
This helps to stabilise your blood sugar levels. Every three-hour period of fasting (time without eating) reduces glucose levels by four per cent. Therefore, if you stop eating at 8pm and don’t have breakfast until 8am the following day, your glucose levels will have fallen by 16 per cent.
A recent study has linked this with lowering the chances of developing breast cancer. Cancer feeds off glucose and the less glucose circulating in your blood, the smaller the energy source available to the cancer cells.
“This is a simple dietary change that we believe most women can understand and adopt. It may have a big impact on public health without requiring complicated counting of calories or nutrients,” said researcher Catherine Marinac from the University of California at San Diego (Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers. Prev., 2015).
Another link to breast cancer is related to the drinking of coffee. Research states that women who have already had breast cancer can halve the risk of it recurring if they drink two or more cups of coffee each day. They are also more likely to have smaller tumours and fewer hormone-dependent tumours, say researchers from Lund University in Sweden (Clin. Cancer Res., 2015).
The researchers analysed data for 1,090 breast cancer patients, including the drugs they were taking and their coffee drinking habits. Those drinking two or more cups per day had half the risk of recurrence compared with those who drank less or no coffee at all.
The researchers believe that two ingredients in coffee (caffeine and caffeic acid) reduce cell division and increase cell death by switching off the ‘signalling pathways’ that cancer cells require in order to grow and divide. Coffee also seems to ‘supercharge’ the cancer drug tamoxifen, which all the women on the study were taking, thereby making it more effective.
Eating vegetables and fruits is an important factor in our overall health. However, studies have now seen how eating apples and drinking green tea can also prevent cancer, heart attack and stroke in particular.
Green tea and apples are rich in compounds called ‘polyphenols’. These have a protective effect by blocking a signalling molecule called ‘vascular endothelial growth factor’.
Every three-hour period of fasting reduces glucose levels by four per cent
This is the main driver behind blood vessel formation, a process responsible for cancerous growth, as well as the build-up of plaque in arterial walls, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes.
This is a process that researchers at the Norwich Institute of Food Research were able to observe in blood samples. Polyphenols also activate another enzyme that helps promote nitric oxide in the blood. This helps to relax blood vessels and prevent arterial damage (Mol. Nutr. Food Res., 2015).
The media recently highlighted the ‘heavy’ drinking habits of the over 50s. There is a train of thought that drinking a few glasses of red wine is good for us. However, a new study suggests that it is important to have a few non-drinking days throughout the week.
Drinking one or two glasses of alcohol each day greatly increases the risk of developing cirrhosis of the liver, the World Health Organisation has discovered. This liver disease had previously been attributed to really heavy drinking habits and not the frequency with which people drink.
WHO has reported that six per cent of all deaths around the world are caused by drinking alcohol. Most of these are due to alcoholic cirrhosis. This disease is scarring of the liver, caused by long-term damage, with half of all cases being caused by alcohol.
WHO researchers analysed the alcohol consumption and drinking patterns of 193 countries and found that the frequency of drinking had a bigger effect than the amount of drink consumed.
Most people don’t eat enough wholegrains, such as corn, oats, brown rice and rye. Instead, there is a tendency to eat processed foods such as white bread and white rice.
We should be eating three servings, or 48g, of wholegrains each day. This is equivalent to three slices of wholemeal bread or a bowl of porridge.
A high, wholegrain diet has been linked to lower body weight and may even reduce the risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and some cancers.
People who eat plenty of wholegrains may also have a less stressed immune system, with lower white blood cell counts and lower levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), both markers of inflammation.
When researchers at Newcastle University reviewed data from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey, they found that 80 per cent of the country was not eating three servings and 20 per cent was not eating any wholegrains at all.
Wholegrain foods include barley, buckwheat, corn, millet, oats, quinoa, brown rice, rye and wheat such as spelt, durum and bulgur.
kathryn@maltanet.net