More on Calorie Restriction

The Longevity meme Reports:

Calorie restriction (CR) is a strategy - a lifestyle choice when practiced by humans - proven to extend healthy and maximum life span in rodents and primates. Some animal studies conducted over the past 20 years have shown up to a 40% increase in maximum life span.
CR also provides numerous secondary health benefits, such as a greatly lowered risk for most degenerative conditions of aging.

Recent studies have demonstrated these same secondary health benefits in humans. Many researchers believe the evidence to date shows the practice of CR will extend the healthy human life span, but consensus has not yet been reached on this topic.

A calorie restriction diet aims to reduce your intake of calories to a level 20-40% lower than is typical, while still obtaining all the necessary nutrients and vitamins. CR is also known as CRON, for "calorie restriction with optimal nutrition." Mild CR may be as easy as adopting a much healthier diet, taking a few supplements and not eating snacks.

The degree to which CR can extend the healthy human life span is open to debate - and is the subject of vigorous discussion within the scientific community - but the evidence for at least some healthy life extension is compelling.

The beneficial effects of CR in laboratory animals have been known for a long time, but only in the past decade - and in particular over the past few years - has more funding and effort been devoted to this field.

The genes and processes that control metabolism are notoriously complex, and scientists do not yet have a complete understanding of the way in which CR fits into the overall picture. But they are working on it.

You may have seen CR mentioned more often and in more detail in the mainstream media of late; the phrase "low-calorie diet" has also seen a lot of usage. To be precise about these terms, calorie restriction is simply the most widespread and well-researched form of low-calorie diet. You can find out more about the science and technical details of calorie restriction here at the

Weight loss should be mentioned in the context of CR, even though it is not the primary goal of a CR diet - if you eat fewer calories, you will slim down. Research indicates that being overweight, or carrying excess body fat, is harmful to your long term health in many different ways. Excess weight increases risk factors for conditions ranging from diabetes to cancer to Alzheimer's, most likely due to the relationship between fat cells and chronic inflammation.

It is no exaggeration to say that if you are overweight, you will have a shorter, less healthy life - many recent studies suggest that even comparatively little excess weight is bad for you over the long term, significantly raising your chances of suffering a range of age-related conditions.

For example, it appears that CR provides a boost to the process of autophagy. Autophagy is the way in which your cells remove damaged components in order to recycle the materials into new replacement parts. Several lines of research indicate specific types of damaged cellular components left to cause problems over time contribute to age-related decline and damage inflicted upon the rest of your body's machinery.
How to get started on CR You'll find a wealth of information and many, many starting points out there, some of which can be quite intimidating to the newcomer. You might find the following path useful:

One thing you'll find out quite early on in your journey into calorie restriction is that you'll have to stop eating a lot of highly processed, rich, modern foods. They are heavy in calories and light in nutritional value. In the US, you can walk into any corner store and eat 1500 Kcal of junk food (chips, chocolate, and so forth) at a cost of $10. You'll be hungry again a few hours later. That same $10 could feed you for two days if you buy vegetables, rice and tofu. You could eat 1500 Kcal a day and hardly be hungry at all.

If you were eating an unhealthy diet before trying this, you'll probably notice the benefits of healthy eating within a few weeks. Your palate will become more sensitive to subtle tastes, you'll need less sleep, feel more alert, and mood swings will be diminished. Much of this stems from cutting processed sugars.
Pay Attention to Calories
Counting calories is a good thing, and it's something that you have to pay attention to. Your body will let you eat far more than is good for you, so your brain is going to have to take over managing the process.
Almost everything you buy from the grocery or supermarket has the calorie content listed on the packet. Note that most manufacturers list calorie content by portion, and that even a lowly bar of chocolate usually has two portions. Marketing departments don't like the number of calories to be too high, as people won't buy it...so they'll just divide the product into more portions with a lower calorie count per portion. Sneaky!
Most foods have more calories than you might think. You can recognize the new practitioners of calorie restriction at the supermarket: they'll be the ones looking at many different product packages and muttering "wow, I had no idea!"
For foods like apples, rice, loose vegetables and so forth, you will need a book of calorie values. Recent editions tend to contain (fairly horrifying) values for fast foods as well as the more usual suspects.

Remember the Supplements
You should always take a good multivitamin supplement (at the very least) when on a calorie restriction diet. In theory, it's perfectly possible to obtain all the vitamins and micronutrients you need from your food. In practice, for most people living busy, working lives, this just isn't going to happen. Remember to take your supplements.
The Water Trick
Doctors tell us that few people in Western societies drink as much water as they should for optimal health, and many people mistake low-level thirst for low-level hunger. A very helpful tactic for those practicing calorie restriction is to drink a glass of water when first feeling hungry. If you are still hungry twenty minutes later, then maybe it's time to think about eating. Half the time, you were just thirsty, however.

Calorie Restriction - Not a D-I-E-T - Enhance Your Life and Live Longer

(NaturalNews) There is a growing body of believers, especially longevity-seeking Baby Boomers, who believe that by drastically limiting the amount of food they consume, they will slow the aging process and extend their life.

It's a radical, controversial premise; the less you eat, the longer you'll live.

CR, calorie restriction, doesn't mean deprivation or starvation, but it does require eating fewer calories than the body is accustomed to receiving and it flies in the face of conventional recommended daily calorie intake guidelines.

Typical diets focus on weight loss, but CR is a different kind of diet that reduces long term calorie intake and promotes the consumption of nutrient dense foods.

This pursuit holds the elusive promise of lengthening the human life span, and even -- as some submit -- immortality.

There are many compelling arguments to support the longevity issue, but advocates believe that at the very least, following CR precepts will enhance your health right now by minimizing body fat, inhibiting cell mutation, lowering blood glucose levels, decreasing inflammation, activating brain-alertness, promoting deep restful sleep, increasing energy levels and creating a more youthful biological age.

Recent studies from the National Institute on Aging, Harvard University, and Washington University concur and say that a calorie restricted diet includes many benefits, one of them being extending human life.

Lab studies dating back to the thirties show that mice and all sorts of laboratory critters, when placed on a severely restricted diet, lived fifty percent longer than the oldest members of their peer community.

Biosphere 2 seemed like a study out of a science fiction novel; nevertheless it proved an unintended point. In 1991 in the Arizona desert, eight scientists sealed themselves inside an airtight terrarium to prove they could live isolated for two years in a self-sustained ecosystem. Something went terribly wrong and they realized they couldn't grow enough food for them to survive the two years.

Without Roy Walford, a UCLA pathologist and team physician, the entire team would have starved to death, but fortuitously he had been studying calorie restriction for decades and was able to parse their meager food supply thereby drastically cutting their calories for the duration of the experiment.

You would think when they emerged from their habitat they would be gaunt, pasty and in need of medical help; quite the opposite. They were healthier in almost every respect than when they had sealed themselves in two years prior.

Dr. Walford later wrote a book, Beyond the 120-Year Diet: How to Double Your Vital Years.While there is no specified meal plan with CR, the recommendation is to eat twenty to thirty percent less than accepted conventional recommendations for healthy calorie intake. Sugar, saturated fats, and most dairy products are shunned.

Fruits, vegetables and whole grains are the mainstay foods which make up the bulk of the diet, but savvy people already know that these particular foods are the ones hallowed as the basis of a healthy diet anyway.

Be forewarned though lest you rush to throw everything out in your refrigerator. It has been shown that without an accompanying healthy lifestyle, including exercise in particular, strict calorie restriction can lead to loss of bone density.

A one year study of 46 participants at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, conducted by Dennis T. Villareal M.D. revealed that individuals in the CR group not only lost weight, but also lost an average of 2.2% of their bone density in the lower spine, 2.2% at the hip and 2.1% at the top of the femur, all high risk areas for fracture.

An article in the Archives of Internal Medicine - JAMA, states that without exercise, restricting calories may lead to bone density loss.This would seem to be the green light; if we exercise and restrict calories maybe then we can live forever, but not so.

Other studies have shown that if people with very little body fat drastically cut calories they can actually do more harm than good to their health. So, we have to count every calorie, know if our body fat is appropriate, exercise enough to keep our bones strong -- then it could be worth it.

The fountain of youth, living forever; the temptation to jump on board is tantalizing. The prudent thing to do is proceed with caution, understand the positives and negatives and keep a discerning mind. It might be wonderful to live a long life, but not if it's one burdened by osteoporosis and fractured bones.

Your health mate,Deanna Dean

Do Mammograms Cause Cancer?

Mammograms are a Bust
REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News

MAMMOGRAMS ARE A BUST

by Raymond Francis
Evidence continues to accumulate that mammograms cause cancer, while doing little to save lives. Unfortunately, the medical establishment, including the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society, has brainwashed most of us into thinking the opposite. As a result, millions of women march off to get mammograms every year, exposing themselves to cancer-causing x-rays.
The misinformation is so bad that when women were asked in a poll what they could do to prevent breast cancer, the number one response was "get a mammogram." (Exactly how mammograms are supposed to "prevent" breast cancer was not explained.)
In truth, mammograms cause cancer; they are the leading cause of breast cancer. Mammograms have put a very large number of women at risk for cancer and many have died as a result.
Mammograms are routinely performed without the patient being warned of the radiation hazard. Yet Dr. John Gofman, a medical doctor, nuclear physicist, and noted radiation expert, in his 1999 book Radiation from Medical Procedures in the Pathogenesis of Cancer and Ischemic Heart Disease, concluded that 60 percent of all cancer and 83 percent of all breast cancer is caused by medical radiation.
As early as 1974, Professor Malcolm Pike of the USC School of Medicine warned the National Cancer Institute that, "...giving a woman under age 50 a mammogram on a routine basis is close to unethical." In 1992, Dr. Samuel Epstein, professor of medicine at the University of Illinois said, "The high sensitivity of the breast...to radiation induced cancer was known by 1970."
In 1995, the Lancet (one of the world's five leading medical journals) reported that since mammographic screening began, the incidence of one type of breast cancer (ductal carcinoma in situ) had increased by 328 percent and that the incidence in women under 40 had gone up over 3000 percent.
The report's conclusion regarding mammograms was,
"The benefit is marginal, the harm caused is substantial, and the costs incurred are enormous..." Similarly, Dr. Charles Simone, a former researcher at the National Cancer Institute said, "Mammograms increase the risk of developing breast cancer and raise the risk of spreading or metastasizing an existing growth."
After hearing all these negatives, is there any justification for mammograms? This question was answered in the September 2000 Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which reported on a study of 40,000 women between the ages 50 to 59. The mammograms found tumors that were smaller, but finding the tumor when it was smaller had no effect on the mortality rate. The study concluded that mammograms are no more effective at saving lives from breast cancer than regular breast examinations. With findings like these, on what basis can anyone recommend a mammogram to you or anyone you care about? While there are occasions when medical x-rays serve a necessary purpose, regular mammograms do not help prevent and even contribute to breast cancer.
It looks to me like mammograms are an expensive bust. In addition to causing cancer, and not saving lives, regular mammograms can also result in useless and painful breast biopsies. Alternative Medicine, in January 2001, pointed out that for every one case of diagnosed breast cancer, between 5 and 10 women will undergo a useless and painful biopsy. Statistically, a woman getting annual mammograms for 10 years will have a 50 percent chance of undergoing at least one biopsy.

Not only do mammograms result in useless biopsies, the clinical interpretation of mammograms often misses an existing cancer. According to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 1996, doctors missed finding an existing cancer 21 percent of the time.

What to do? Avoid medical radiation in all forms, including mammograms and other types of x-rays because these procedures cause cancer. Also, watch out for certain lifestyle habits. New research on breast cancer, published in Epidemiology, found that women who drink alcohol and do not get enough folic acid (primarily found in fresh vegetables) are 60 percent more likely to develop breast cancer. You can go a long way toward preventing breast cancer (and every other manifestation of disease) simply by eating a good diet, taking high-quality supplements, and getting plenty of exercise, sunlight, and sleep.

In my opinion, mammograms constitute a criminal assault against women. Instead, have physical breast exams by your doctor, using manual examination techniques, as well as thermography (not mammography).
Thermography is a noninvasive, safe technique used for measuring differences in temperature in the breast. Not only is thermography much safer, it appears to be far more accurate than mammography. And, as always, diet is critically important in preventing breast cancer; eat plenty of fresh foods and avoid nutritionally deficient, processed foods.

Raymond Francis is an M.I.T.-trained scientist, a registered nutrition consultant, author of Never Be Sick Again and Never Be Fat Again, host of the Beyond Health Show, Chairman of the The Project to End Disease and an internationally recognized leader in the field of optimal health maintenance.

Reprinted with permission from: Beyond Health® News Subscriptions: Call 800-250-3063
website: http://www.beyondhealth.comemail: mail@beyondhealth.com Copyright 2001, Raymond Francis

How To Lower Blood Pressure

How to Lower Your Blood Pressure Naturally, Without Drugs

Full Article by Dr. Mercola at http://www.mercola.com/

Before I get into how you can lower your blood pressure, it’s important to make sure you’re getting an accurate reading to begin with.
A significant number of people may actually be receiving altered blood pressure readings because the arm cuff used is the wrong size – which is a problem particularly for overweight or obese patients -- or because your arm is incorrectly placed while your blood pressure is taken.
You’ll want to make sure your arm is slightly flexed at the elbow with your wrist held at heart level, and that the blood pressure cuff is an appropriate fit for your arm. Also do not move your arm while the test is conducted as this may also lead to a faulty reading.

High blood pressure is a serious issue that can kill or permanently impair you, and it should not be ignored. It usually kills people slowly, over time, but very elevated blood pressures can surely cause a stroke.
Normally, high blood pressure goes down quite quickly and easily by addressing these three important factors:

1. Eliminate grains and sugars as described in my nutrition plan. This will lower insulin levels and normalize blood pressure in about 75 percent of people.
2. Address the common stresses in your life that tend to elevate blood pressure. EFT is a simple, effective, and inexpensive tool that you can use to help in this area.
3. Getting one hour of exercise a day seems to be an important contributor to the long-term benefits of those currently suffering from high blood pressure.

If you want to incorporate olive leaves as a natural adjunct, I’d recommend sticking with the fresh leaf liquid extracts for maximum synergistic potency. You can also prepare your own olive leaf tea by placing a large teaspoon of dried olive leaves in a tea ball or herb sack. Place it in about two quarts of boiling water and let it steep for three to 10 minutes. The tea should be a medium amber color when done.................................................................

Here is what Byron Richards has to say at www.wellnessresources.com

The Basic Approach to Blood Pressure
Diet, exercise, stress management, and dietary supplements form a terrific approach to healthfully managing your blood pressure fitness.

It is very important to follow the Five Rules of The Leptin Diet as failing to do so excessively elevates blood fats between meals (triglycerides) which place too much sludge in your circulation and thus your system has to push harder to move important nutrients.
Exercise is important because muscle contractions are just as important for pumping blood around your body as your heart -- it is a real team effort. If you don't use your muscles consistently you force your heart to work harder and do more than its fair share.
Some stress is fine and normal, even helping your cardiovascular system to condition itself as a form of fitness. However, too much stress causes inflammation and irritation that reduces the flow of blood and causes your body to compensate by once again pushing harder to move nutrition around your body. Stress management skills, including getting 7 hours of restful sleep per night, are important.
Basic dietary supplements for blood pressure fitness provide the key nutrients that are oftentimes lacking in your diet, used up by stress, or decline with age.*
More about Leptinal
Leptinal provides nutrients that are vital for your circulatory system. The endothelial cells that line your arteries send out signals that work with your heart and muscle contractions to create the ebb and flow of your blood pressure (systolic=higher number and diastolic=lower number). These cells accomplish this by using regulatory signals called prostaglandins. Leptinal contains the important essential fatty acids of DHA and GLA, both of which are needed for normal prostaglandin regulation of blood pressure. One friendly prostaglandin is called PGE3, which is supported by DHA supplementation. The other friendly prostaglandin is called PGE1, which is supported by GLA supplementation. The synergistic balance of DHA and GLA in Leptinal are fundamental nutrition for healthy artery function and maintenance of normal blood pressure fitness. Since DHA and GLA are generally lacking in the American diet, supplementation is a convenient way to boost dietary intake.*
DHA plays additional vital roles in maintaining the flexibility in the structure of your arteries. It is a preferred fatty acid for the structure of cell membranes that comprise the arteries and overall lining of the circulatory system, contributing to proper structural integrity of arterial walls. DHA in these cell membranes helps to maintain natural flexibility of the circulatory structure that in turn enhances the normal flow of blood through your circulation. DHA has also been shown to support healthy heart function. GLA is the most important omega 6 essential fatty acid, also helping to build healthy cell membranes, including those cells lining the walls of arteries.*
Stress chemicals and pollution of all types typically enter the general circulation and act as irritants that pose a challenge to healthy blood pressure fitness. A variety of nutrients, typically antioxidants, help modulate this form of stress. In Leptinal we place several of the finest circulatory antioxidants known to work synergistically with the vital essential fatty acids. Our pomegranate extract contains the antioxidant power of the punicalagins found only in pomegranate, a proven circulatory support nutrient. This important antioxidant is degraded in juice products and lost almost entirely by pasteurization. In Leptinal, it’s potency is maintained and standardized, helping to maintain healthy circulation and protecting your cardiovascular system from free radicals.* The tocotrienols in Leptinal, a special type of vitamin E, are also protective to the lining of your circulatory system, helping to promote normal and healthy function.*

Simply put, Leptinal is a stellar cardiovascular support nutrient providing an array of the finest nutrients known to support healthy blood pressure function.*

Your "Natural" Peanut Butter May be Peanut Butter Spread!

Check out a great website http://www.mouseprint.com/ You may not have noticed, but Skippy has a new product on the shelves (or at least new to MrConsumer), called Skippy Natural. Many would expect that this product will be nothing but ground peanuts and salt.
Not so fast.
*MOUSE PRINT: Here is the ingredients listing:
How can this be? The recipe is like regular Skippy: peanuts, sugar, oil, and salt. First, the federal government does not have strict rules about use of the word “natural”. So we shouldn’t assume it means just nuts, even though competitors like Smuckers Natural Creamy peanut butter and Teddie Old Fashioned Natural peanut butter contain only nuts and salt. More interesting is another bit of Mouse Print* that most people miss:
*MOUSE PRINT:
The product is not really peanut butter, but rather “peanut butter spread.” What in the world is peanut butter spread? It is a fanciful term used by product manufacturers when they cannot legally call their product “peanut butter” because it does not meet the federal standard of identity for peanut butter.

Oregano Oil for colds - What is the Carvacrol content?

The following info is from wellnessresources.com

Oregano oil is a staple of the Mediterranean diet and has been in traditional use for thousands of years.

Its name comes from a Greek word meaning "joy of the mountains".
This powerful aromatic oil has long been regarded as an aid for sinus or lung congestion. Wild oil of oregano's traditional use is for general immune system support.*

The Oregano Oil Quality Difference
There is a large quality difference in oregano oil nutritional supplements. Wellness Resources® Oregano Oil contains a full 100 mg of wild oregano oil per capsule, containing 55%-65% carvacrol. Carvacrol is the active component in oregano oil.*

Many companies will not list the carvacrol content of their oregano oil, as the potency is so low they don't want you to know. Other companies hide the amount of wild oregano oil in a "proprietary blend," deceiving customers.

For example, they do not tell you on the label how much wild oregano oil is contained in each serving. Instead, they hide the oregano oil amount in a proprietary blend of olive oil, wherein the oil is listed as the first ingredient. This means that olive oil is at least half the milligrams listed and potentially 90% or more of the product; the consumer never knows.

At Wellness Resources you know you are getting a full 100mg of the finest wild oregano oil available. Furthermore, we will state the actual amount of active carvacrol on the label. Discover the difference that high quality wild oregano oil can make for you!

Directions: Take 1-3 capsules, as desired, before meal and/or bed.

Note: oregano oil is a fairly strong oil, thus it is suggested to start with smaller amounts. Cut back the amount or discontinue use if there is any digestive discomfort or diarrhea. If you burp up the oil, try drinking tea or warm water after taking it.

Is Your Vinegar made from petroleum?

Distilled White Vinegar is a terrific product for everything like cleaning, gardening, and laundry.

Vinegar Tips

BUT not all vinegars are safe for use in cleaning!

Some are made from petroleum!!

Is Your vinegar safe? Read entire article.

From Tinychoices.com:
We talk a lot about using vinegar as a cleaning product - in fact, the entire eco-cleaning and frugal community talk about it a lot, too. But a friend of mine tipped me off to a potential problem with vinegar -

turns out that some vinegars may be made from petroleum.

When my friend told me this I was like: WHAT THE HECK THIS IS GROUNDSHAKING HORRIFYING INFORMATION.

Vinegar is our magical eco-friendly cleaning solution! it just *can’t* be made from petroleum products!
So I tried to do a little research. Thing is, there isn’t very much out there. Just a lot of rumors. For example, from the Heinz Vinegar webpage:
The Only All Natural National Brand Vinegar*Heinz® Vinegars have no additives or preservatives. Vinegar’s key ingredient is alcohol.

Unlike many budget brand vinegars which derive their alcohol from petroleum, Heinz® Vinegars are the only national brand to use only sun ripened corn or crisp, juicy apples and water.

click on the link above to read more.

Read the labels - el cheapo vinegars might be made with petroleum!

Useless prescribing of Antibiotics for Sore Throat & Ear Infections or Upper Respiratory Infections

Natural News:
In spite of a government effort to reduce the unnecessary prescribing of antibiotics, general practitioners in the United Kingdom are still giving out the drugs in cases where they are neither necessary nor helpful, according to a study conducted by researchers at the UCL Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiology in London and published in the British Medical Journal.

Government guidelines advise against prescribing antibiotics for sore throats, ear infections, or upper respiratory infections such as coughs, colds and sinusitis, because such infections tend to be caused by viruses.

Antibiotics, which are only effective against bacteria, cannot be used to treat viral infections.
Yet researchers found that in the year 2000, two-thirds of respiratory infections were still being treated with antibiotics, along with 90 percent of chest infections, 80 percent of ear infections and 60 percent of sore throats.

While many doctors appear to believe that antibiotics reduce the risk of developing complications from such infections, the current study indicates that this is not the case.

The researchers found that it would take 4,000 patients being treated with antibiotics to avoid one serious complication in cases of upper respiratory infection, ear infection or sore throat.In contrast, it would only take 39 courses of antibiotics in chest infection patients 65 and older to prevent pneumonia. For this reason, the British government does recommend antibiotics in cases of pneumonia, and lead researcher Andrew Hayward said that more research is needed to help doctors differentiate between pneumonia and other chest infections.

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Better ways to treat colds and sore throats!!

Vitamin C

Zinc

Echinacea

(NaturalNews.com)

The first thing that comes to mind when treating a cold is that taking vitamin C will help, and this instinct is correct.

Dr. Michael T. Murray, in Natural Alternatives to Drugs, writes,

"While the vitamin C studies have consistently demonstrated results superior to over-the-counter cold medications, manufacturers of vitamin C products are prevented from making any claims for their product, while the makers of OTC common-cold medications spend hundreds of millions of dollars brainwashing the American public into believing these products are the answer to the common cold."

Zinc is also recommended for those just beginning to come down with a cold. "Zinc is not only seen to be an important regulator of immunity, but has also been found clinically to be an excellent mineral to take in the event of viral illness, such as the common cold," writes the Life Extension Foundation.

Homeopathic medicine also offers a range of treatments to try.

A homeopath can recommend treatments like eyebright, monkshood, wild hops and belladonna, among others. Echinacea, cinnamon, elder flower, ginger and licorice are all on the list of what a naturopath might recommend to those fighting off a cold. The great thing about these items is that they help improve your immune system, not just cover up symptoms, so you can decrease the actual duration of your cold. Echinacea in particular has been popularized as a cold treatment, so much so that you can even find it in many regular drug stores.

"I have found that echinacea can help prevent the common cold as well as reduce the symptoms and shorten the duration – but results differ. Some people respond almost miraculously, while others get no benefits at all," writes Mark Stengler in Natural Physicians Healing Therapies.

"Overall, though, echinacea is more effective than over-the-counter medicines, which only help to reduce some of the symptoms of a cold and do nothing to assist the immune system or battle the infection."

2 Things to do for Muscle Damage in Athletes

The following info is from an Article in Life Extension Magazine, Aug. 2008

Coenzyme Q10 Relieves Muscle Damage in Athletes

Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) supplementation significantly reduces muscle injury and oxidative stress due to intensive exercise, a new study reveals.1

In this double-blind study, 18 elite athletes took 300 mg/day of CoQ10 or placebo for 20 days, during which time they exercised intensively for 5.5 hours daily for six days. Various blood markers of muscle wear and tear and oxidative stress were measured before, during, and after the study period.1

Myoglobin and creatine kinase, proteins that indicate muscle damage, increased in both groups, but the increase was significantly less in the CoQ10 group. Levels of lipid peroxide, a measure of oxidative stress, were also lower among subjects taking CoQ10 than among control subjects.1

These results complement recent findings that CoQ10 supplementation may reduce exercise-induced fatigue and improve physical performance.2,3
—Dale Kiefer
Reference
1. Kon M, Tanabe K, Akimoto T, et al. Reducing exercise-induced muscular injury in kendo athletes with supplementation of coenzyme Q10. Br J Nutr. 2008 Feb 20;:1-7 [Epub ahead of print].
2. Cooke M, Iosia M, Buford T, et al. Effects of acute and 14-day coenzyme Q10 supplementation on exercise performance in both trained and untrained individuals. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2008 Mar 4;5:8.
3. Mizuno K, Tanaka M, Nozaki S, et al. Antifatigue effects of coenzyme Q10 during physical fatigue. Nutrition. 2008 Apr;24(4):293-9.

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Green Tea Combats Exercise-Induced Oxidative Damage

Consuming green tea protects against exercise-induced oxidative damage, according to a new study.*

Oxidative damage, which results from metabolic activity and is increased following exercise, is linked to degenerative changes associated with aging and chronic disease.

Fourteen study volunteers participated. One group consumed green tea three times daily for seven days, while a control group did not drink green tea. Researchers then had the subjects perform a strenuous bench-press exercise and measured various blood markers for signs of oxidative stress before and after the activity.
The group who consumed green tea had significantly lower levels of blood markers that indicate oxidative tissue damage both before and after exercising.
This group also had significantly higher post-exercise blood levels of glutathione, which is a key antioxidant, and greater blood antioxidant potential.

Green tea, a beverage rich in polyphenols, may thus offer protection against the oxidative damage incurred by athletes and everyone who exercises.
—Michael J. Hall, ND

Reference
* Panza VS, Wazlawik E, Ricardo Schütz G, Comin L, Hecht KC, da Silva EL. Consumption of green tea favorably affects oxidative stress markers in weight-trained men. Nutrition. 2008 May;24(5):433-42.
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2008/aug2008_In-The-News_01.htm