Healthy Eating
Vitamin D, nutrient that we can get for free when the sun’s rays hit our skin, has been associated with a reduction in risk of a wide range of health issues including heart disease, cancer, diabetes and multiple sclerosis. In theory at least, having high levels of vitamin D in the body should protect against […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
Conventional nutritional wisdom dictates that heart disease risk can be influenced through our intake of fat. Specifically, saturated fat (found in foods such as meat, dairy products, eggs and coconut) promotes heart disease, while certain foods (for example, omega-3 fats found in oily fish) do the reverse. I do think there’s a good deal of […]
Brain and Behaviour
Coffee and tea may taste quite different, but one thing these beverages they have in common is their rich content of ‘antioxidants’ including ‘polyphenols’. The presence of these supposedly health-giving substances may explain, at least in part, the reason why these drinks have been associated with a reduced risk of chronic conditions including cardiovascular disease […]
Brain and Behaviour
When people change their diets for what they think is the better, they usually have some aim in mind such as weight loss (the usual one) or improved health and wellbeing. Making dietary changes can, however, involve time and effort, not to mention a sense of sacrifice and/or deprivation. Obviously, for changes to be sustainable, […]
Exercise and Activity
Back in March one of my blog posts focused on the effects of green tea constituents known as catechins had on the metabolism of fat in the body. A recent study has found that green tea catechins stimulated fat-burning in the body, something which is an obvious boon to individuals seeking to attain or maintain […]
Children's Health
Short-sightedness (the medical term for which is ‘myopia’) is a common condition in industrialised countries. This condition probably has many potential underlying causes. Some of these were reviewed in a recent paper published in the journal Optometry and Vision Science [1]. One quite clear finding from this review was that spending time outdoors is linked […]
Brain and Behaviour
For a beverage that doesn’t enjoy the healthiest of reputations, coffee has been the subject of quite a few studies that link its consumption with benefits for health. Specifically, there has been several studies now that link coffee drinking with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease (e.g. heart disease) or diabetes. Now there is some […]
Healthy Eating
I make no secret of the fact that I favour protein-rich diets, particularly where weight loss and weight maintenance is concerned. Only last month I highlighted a study which found that a protein-rich diet was better for maintaining weight loss than a diet rich in carbohydrate. In this particular study, the protein-rich diet had been […]
Healthy Eating
Of the many different dietary strategies that can be used to lose weight, I favour a relatively low-carbohydrate, protein-rich diet. Some of the rationale about the low-carb element of such a regime is that carbohydrate (say from sugary and starchy foods) is the dietary element that most disrupts blood sugar, which tends to knock on […]
Healthy Eating
I was out of the UK two weeks of January, but if I’d been here I have a feeling I’d have witnessed a fair few magazines touting healthy regimes for the New Year on the ‘detox’ theme. A key element of such regimes is usually a good intake of water. This, it is often said, […]