Diet High In Potassium Lowers Risk Of Stroke, Study Says

A study , published and reported in the journal Stroke , says that people who eat high -potassium foods maybe less likely to suffer a stroke than those whose diet has little of the mineral.

Findings of the study comes from an analysis of 10 international studies involving  middle-aged and older adults participants.. Of the 270,000 study participants, 8,695 or about one in 30- suffered a stroke. But a drop in stroke risk was observed with each 1,000 mg. increase in daily potassium with factors such as age, exercise habits and smoking taken into account.

"Dietary potassium intake is inversely associated with risk of stroke," wrote Susanna Larsson, lead researcher from Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

Potassium is a mineral needed for the body's fluid balance, and is also involved in nerve and muscle control, and blood pressure regulation. High potassium foods include a variety of fruits and vegetables, beans and dairy products. The findings adds another reason for people to eat more high potassium foods , the lead researcher told Reuters Health thru email.

Sugar: Sweet And Dangerous

Most people do not realize how much sugar and sugar-rich foods we now eat.Few also have properly appreciated the harmful effects that can come from overloading our diet with sugar.

During the past years, research workers and studies from different countries have compared the effect, both in laboratory animals and in human subjects, of diets either with starch or with sugars. Some of the results from these studies : Sugar produces an increase in the blood in the amount of cholesterol, triglyceride (neutral fat), uric acid and at least two hormones, insulin and cortisol; Sugar produces a diminished glucose tolerance - that is , a dose of glucose taken by mouth causes an abnormally high and prolonged rise of the glucose in the blood, this is the main characteristics of diabetes; The liver and the kidney are enlarged; the kidney and the retina of the eye undergo abnormal changes as the same sort of way they do in diabetes.

These effects of sugar suggest that it is involved not only in producing diabetes but also in producing illness in other parts and organs of our body.

Cigarette Smoking Linked To Leukemia, Study Shows

Tobacco use has been strongly linked to many diseases, including heart disease, bronchitis, emphysema, and roughly one-third of all human cancers. It has been estimated that smoking is responsible for : 90% of all deaths from lung cancer ; 80% of all deaths from cancer of the larynx ; 78% of all deaths from esophageal cancer ; 48% of all deaths from kidney cancer ; and 17% of all deaths from stomach cancer ( H.B Simon : Staying well : your complete guide to disease prevention). Here’s one study that linked smoking to an increased incidence of leukemia.

A group of 610 patients, all newly diagnosed with acute leukemia, were compared with 618 healthy matched controls to detect the influence of cigarette smoking on leukemia risk. It was found that, for persons over 60, those who had ever smoked were at a two-fold higher risk of developing acute leukemia. For the particular sub-type of leukemia known as acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), smoking cigarettes increased the relative risk 3.4-fold among those over 60. However, the trends were not true for persons under 60 years of age. The discrepancy between older and younger person is unknown. It may be because there are simply too few cases of acute leukemia in younger person to detect the risk, researchers said. Nevertheless, the conclusion says that smoking can increase the risk of developing acute leukemia.

High Intake of Carotenoids Associated With Decreased Risk of Cancer, Study

A variety of published studies show that a high carotenoid intake is directly related to a decreased risk of cancer. The carotenoids are the pigments that give vegetables such as carrots, squash, and tomatoes their bright colors. All yellow and orange fruits and dark-green leafy vegetables have these compounds. Carotenoids were first discovered in carrots, which is how they got their name.

High dietary intake of carotenoids is known to result in high concentrations of carotenes in the bloodstream. A large study of the effect of beta-carotene in cancer prevention was reported in the American Journal of Nutrition (1991 : v.53, 2605-2645). This study involved 25,802 volunteers in rural Washington County, Maryland, representing about 30% of the population of the the whole country. Blood samples were carefully drawn and kept frozen during a follow-up period of more than 10 years. A total of 436 people developed cancer in this interval. The cancer cases were matched to 765 controls of the same age, then all of the case and control serum samples were analyzed, with a focus on cancers of the colon, rectum, pancreas, lung, skin, breast, prostate, and bladder.

Results of the study showed the ff: High serum beta-carotene levels showed a strong protective effect for lung cancer, and a somewhat weaker protective effect for melanoma and bladder cancer. High levels of serum lycopene, another major carotenoid, were strongly associated with a reduced risk of pancreatic cancer and less strongly associated with protection from bladder and rectal cancer. The study shows a reduced risk of cancers, particularly lung cancer, with increasing consumption of beta-carotene, researchers concluded.

Menopause And Hormonal Imbalance

Menopause is not an estrogen deficiency disease, and adding estrogen to the body of a menopausal woman is asking for problems, according to Dr. John R. Lee, the leading authority on the use of natural progesterone to balance hormones and popular author of What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause.

Dr. Lee explains what happens when a woman has an imbalance of hormones characterized by excess estrogen and not enough progesterone. The author informs that estrogen levels only drop 0 to 60 percent at menopause but progesterone levels may drop to near zero in some women resulting to hormonal imbalance, which he termed as “estrogen dominance.” In other words, it is not an estrogen excess per se that causes estrogen dominance but too much estrogen relative to not enough progesterone.

According to Dr. Lee , estrogen is not the hormone most women need to be taking for menopausal symptoms as this will do most women more harm than good, making them feel great for a few months and then dropping them into a kind of permanent postmenopausal PMS.  Dr. Lee also talks about the benefits of supplementing the body with natural progesterone in the form of a cream. Because progesterone is fat soluble, it is easily absorbed through the skin. The cream can be rubbed anywhere on the body, but areas where the skin is thin, such as the palms, inner arms, sides of the torso, and upper inner thighs, are probably best.