In this edition of the Newsletter:
-Girl Bone Breaks Linked To Cola
-Banana Bones
-An apple a day may keep stroke at bay
-Heartburn Hotel
 

-Girl Bone Breaks Linked To Cola

Teen-age girls who drink soda - particularly cola - are far more likely to break a bone, a Harvard study found.

Grace Wyshak, an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, speculated that girls drinking soda aren't getting enough milk, which contains calcium that strengthens bones.   But she also suggested that a chemical in colas - phosphoric acid -may actually weaken bones.  Due to the phosphoric acid "pulling" the calcium out of the bones.  The risk of broken bones was three times greater for girls who drank carbonated beverages in general and five times greater for active girls who drank colas.  Five of the 57 active girls who didn't drink colas suffered fractures, compared with 38 of the 107 active girls who reported drinking colas.  The study comes amid growing concern among experts, who say Americans are not getting nearly as much calcium as they need, in part because they are drinking soft drinks instead of milk.

"This should be a wake-up call for parents and health care professionals alike," said Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition at the Center For Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group.  In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Neville H. Golden, director of the Eating Disorders Center in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Schneider Children's Hospital in New Hyde Park, N.Y., said the study suggests that "osteoporosis is a pediatric disease as opposed to a disease of older people and that we can have some impact on it early."

In a previous study, Wyshak found increased bone fractures among adult women who drank carbonated beverages.

-Banana Bones
Do you know about the latest power food to prevent osteoporosis? It's the lowly banana. Researchers at Tufts University conducted a four-year study to test the effects of various dietary components on bone mineral density in elderly people. They found that greater potassium intake was associated with the highest bone mineral density. It is thought that potassium plays a role in inhibiting the loss of calcium from bones.

Eat foods high in potassium, such as bananas and leafy green vegetables, help keep your bones strong.

-An apple a day may keep stroke at bay.

According to a report in the May issue of the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, men and women who ate the equivalent of one apple per day had a lower risk of stroke than individuals who did not eat apples.
While it is not clear why apples appear to lower stroke risk, the authors suggest that lifestyle factors such as good diet and exercise habits, which may be associated with eating apples, or other beneficial compounds in the fruit, may play a role.

"One speculative possibility is that the effect comes from some phenolic acids present in apples," lead author Paul Knekt from the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki, Finland, said in an interview with Reuters Health.  Phenolic acids are a class of antioxidants, or compounds that quench free radicals. These unstable molecules are byproducts of normal metabolism that clog arteries and cause changes to DNA that can lead to cancer and other diseases.

Men who ate more than 54 grams of apple a day and women who ate more than 71 grams of apple a day--the equivalent of about one apple--had a lower risk of stroke than those with the lowest apple intake.  Based on the findings, Knekt recommends that people continue to eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, "since it is apparent that this will protect us from cardiovascular diseases and some cancers," he told Reuters Health.

-Heartburn Hotel

Want to minimize heartburn at night? Roll over.

Researchers studied various sleeping positions to determine the best position for heartburn sufferers. They found that sleeping on the left side produces the fewest symptoms of heartburn. Laying on the right side causes the most symptoms, probably because this position allows stomach acid to flow more easily into the esophagus.!!
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Information in this Newsletter was compiled from Men's Health Magazine, Real Age Health Systems, and Voice For Health.  © 2000