Trudy’s Take - I just love documenting new information which confirms or refutes previous information! Hope you enjoy these!


•Maintaining healthy blood sugar levels helps preserve brain function as you age, whether or not you have diabetes, according to researchers from Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. They used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of 240 whose average age was 80. The MRIs showed that the area of the brain related to age-related cognitive decline was damaged by high blood sugar levels. The researchers concluded that lowering blood sugar might benefit cognition in older people and suggested that exercise could help.
-Annals of Neurology, December 2008.



•A high intake of meat and fat seems linked to a higher risk of ovarian cancer. That’s what Australian researchers concluded after studying the dietary habits of 1,460 women, half of whom had ovarian cancer; the other half were healthy. Women with a pattern of eating that included the most meat and fat were two and a half times more likely to have ovarian cancer than those whose eating pattern was least tied to meat and fat. Wine also was linked to much less risk, whereas as fruit and vegetables seemed to offer no protection.
-The American journal of Clinical Nutrition, January 2009.



•Cranberry extract is almost as effective as antibiotics for delaying the recurrence of chronic urinary tract infections (UTI) in women. So Scottish researchers found, when they tested 137 women who had been treated with antibiotics for at least two UTI in the previous year. Half of the women got 500 milligrams a day of cranberry extract; the other half got the antibiotic trimethroprim (100 milligrams daily) for six months. Not only was the cranberry extract nearly as affective as the antibiotic, but it had fewer side effects.
-Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, February 2009.