healthbriefs
Milk Chocolate Also Benefits Heart Health
igh-cacao dark chocolate contains high levels of flava- nol, a compound known for its heart health benefits, but less is known about diluted foods such as milk chocolate candy. Harvard researchers followed 55,502 subjects for 13 years,
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comparing levels of high blood pressure, diabetes and cardiovascular disease to lifestyle traits. They found those eating one to three servings of chocolate a month (including milk chocolate) displayed a 10 percent lower risk of irregular heartbeat than those eating an ounce or less a month. Eating one serving per week of choco- late yielded a 17 percent lower risk and two to six servings a week 20 percent, and then leveled off after eating one or more servings per day. “Eating excessive amounts of chocolate is not recommended, because many
chocolate products are high in calories from sugar and fat, and could lead to weight gain and other metabolic problems,” advises Elizabeth Mostofsky, author of the study.
GUT BACTERIA IMBALANCE LINKED TO CHRONIC FATIGUE
Fifty healthy patients and 50 with chronic fatigue syndrome were tested for bacteria and immune molecules by research- ers from Columbia University. They discovered that imbalances in the levels of certain gut
bacteria are prevalent in individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome, a disorder often accompanied by extreme fatigue, muscle and joint pain, cognitive issues and insomnia.
Regular Sleep Times Promote Health A
report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that 35 percent of U.S.
adults don’t get adequate sleep. Dr. W. Chris Winter, of the Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine clinic, recommends we pick a wake-up time that works for every day and stick with it, regardless of bedtime; it pays off by eventually training the brain to fall asleep at the same time every night. Swedish scientists found that sleep loss reduces the presence of hormones that pro- mote feelings of fullness in the stomach and increases the amounts of those that promote hunger, leading to obesity.
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Naps Boost Toddler Talk R
esearchers from the University of Oxford, in the UK, have found that infants that take more daytime naps tend to develop a larger vocabulary at an earlier age than their peers by examining sleeping patterns of 246 babies between the ages of 7 months and 3 years for 10 days. Parents also completed a language analysis at the start of the study and three and six months later to determine how many words each child understood from a list 416 words typically learned in infancy. Infants that napped more frequently during the day performed better on both understanding and expressing vocabulary than the others.
DEAR DIARY COMFORTS
THE ELDERLY A UK study of 19 elderly volunteers participat- ing in a 12-week training program for providing companionship to dying patients showed that con- sidering their own views about death and dying is an important component of serving in this role. Evaluation of the trainees’ diary entries focused on key themes such as reflec- tions about dying alone, the importance of being present, self-awareness, personal loss, the meaning of life, self-preser- vation and coping strategies.
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