A couple of excerpts from Nutrition News focus
relating to recent topics.

Today's Topic: Don't Drop Dead – Eat Nuts

Many studies have shown that eating nuts on a regular
basis reduces
the risk of heart disease in men and women.  The
studies have ranged
from observational ones to controlled feeding trials
where people were
given weighed packs of nuts to eat.  The latest
installment of this
story is based on a large observational study of U.S.
physicians.

Over 21,000 men were asked about their diet and
followed for 17 years.
Sudden cardiac death in men who consumed nuts two or
more times per
week was about half the rate of men who rarely or
never ate nuts.
Total coronary heart disease death was reduced by
about a third.
However, the rate of nonfatal heart attacks was not
associated with
eating nuts.  The study appeared in the June 24, 2002
edition of the
Archives of Internal Medicine.
<
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/issues/v162n12/abs/ioi10632.html
>

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:  About 4,200 of the
participants ate nuts two or more times weekly, and an
equal number
didn't eat nuts.  But the actual number of deaths this
analysis is
based on are only around 200.  Big observational
studies can only
suggest ideas that need to be tested in interventions.
 But the
interventions with nuts have been restricted to
changes in serum
lipids – studying heart attacks would require too many
people and far
too much money.


Today's Topic: Cranberry Juice and Urinary Infections

It has been known for years that drinking cranberry
juice helps
prevent and treat urinary tract infections in women.
It had been
thought for a long time that the acidity of the juice
made the urine
more acid.  This was disproved many years ago, and it
is now known
that there is a chemical in the berry that prevents
bacteria from
adhering to the cells lining the bladder.

A new study in the June 19, 2002 edition of the
Journal of the
American Medical Association describes results of
culturing antibiotic
resistant E. coli (a major cause of these infections)
in the presence
of urine from women who had consumed 240 ml (about 12
ounces) of
cranberry juice cocktail.  Almost 80 percent of the
bacterial strains
were prevented from adhering to epithelial cells from
the urinary
bladder.
<
http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v287n23/ffull/jlt0619-6.html
>

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: It did not matter if the
bacteria were resistant or sensitive to antibiotics.
The authors
suggest that use of cranberry juice may help prevent
urinary tract
infections and reduce the need for antibiotics, which
would decrease
the tendency to develop antibiotic resistance by the
bugs.  The active
factor is called proanthocyanidins, which are
condensed tannins – in
plain English, they are the red pigments.




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