Gazpacho ingredients lose vitamin C during preparation

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In summer, more dishes like gazpacho –a cold soup containing raw vegetables, bread, olive oil and vinegar– are consumed. A new study has revealed that ingredients' vitamin C content as well as other organic acids is lower in the resulting mixture, meaning that it should be eaten immediately after preparation.

Is it true that cutting fruit and boiling vegetables cause vitamin loss? A new study has examined gazpacho, one of the most popular Spanish summer dishes, comparing the levels of vitamin C (ascorbic and dehydroascorbic acid) and other organic acids (citric, oxalic, fumaric, malic and glutamic) found in each of the ingredients separately before preparation and in the resulting gazpacho.

"We found that the gazpacho showed a lower ascorbic/dehydroascorbic acid ratio than the vegetables used to prepare it," explained Elena María Rodríguez, co-author of the study conducted by the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of La Laguna (Santa Cruz de Tenerife). She added: "This suggests that some of the vegetables' antioxidant capacity is lost."

Of the ingredients, peppers had the highest vitamin C content, followed by tomatoes, and then the gazpacho itself. In general, tomatoes and garlic contained the highest levels of organic acids, whereas cucumbers presented the lowest content. Garlic and onions had the highest concentrations of the main organic acids present, glutamic and citric, than the other vegetables.

The authors therefore recommend eating gazpacho as soon as it has been prepared, or "preserving it correctly so that the vegetables maintain their antioxidant characteristics."

A drink to beat the heat

Gazpacho is a natural source of vitamins (A, C and E), carbohydrates, phosphorus, iron, calcium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, copper, potassium and sodium. It also provides fibre and antioxidant substances such as lycopene, which gives tomatoes their red colouring, and carotenoids. Given its mineral salt content, it is considered to be isotonic as it prevents over-hydration during summer.

Although there are recipes for all tastes, gazpacho generally contains bread, olive oil, vinegar and raw vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, onions and garlic). Given its low calorie content, it is usually served cold during the hot summer months.

Niacin slightly raised the risk of a stroke when combined with the cholesterol drug Zocor (simvastatin)

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Niaspan is a cholesterol drug manufactured by Abbott Laboratories. Doctors have customarily prescribed Niacin to raise levels of HDL (“good” cholesterol) in patients taking a statin pill that is successfully lowering their LDL (“bad” cholesterol). Yet this practice is now being questioned after a National Institutes of Health study released in late May, called AIM-HIGH, showed that Niaspan failed to prevent heart attacks and slightly raised the risk of a stroke when combined with the cholesterol drug Zocor (simvastatin).

According to the Los Angeles Times, doctors say that statins, including simvastatin, Lipitor and Crestor, are great at lowering bad cholesterol—so good that it’s not necessary to add another medication to a patient’s regimen. The new study, says the Times, is giving doctors more reason not to add Niaspan, which raises good cholesterol.
“Although this finding may be concerning for future drug development in the HDL field, it again exemplifies the vast complexity surrounding HDL biology,” says Amar A. Sethi, MD, PhD, Vice President of Research and Development at Pacific Biomarkers, Inc. (PBI), a Seattle-based provider of biomarker laboratory services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostics industries.

“Due to the large body of positive evidence from previous clinical trials on niacin (the active ingredient in Niaspan), the AIM-HIGH data deserves much more scrutiny and subgroup analysis to support the initial conclusions,” Dr. Sethi continues. “The HATS clinical trial, albeit much smaller, used a combination therapy of simvastatin and niacin demonstrating reduction in hard endpoints. Similarly, the ARBITER 6-HALTS study and the Oxford Niaspan study both suggested that the addition of niacin to statins halted the progression of carotid intima media thickness. Thus, we need to be very certain that the conclusions we are drawing at the current time are firm and well founded.”

Dr. Sethi says it is remarkable how the results from the AIM-HIGH study contradict earlier findings regarding niacin and cardiovascular disease. In his view, we need to wait for the much larger niacin trial study, called HPS-2 THRIVE, which should give definite answers in regard to this drug’s fate. The FDA, he notes, is not recommending any label change. If the AIM-HIGH results hold true in the ongoing much larger HPS-2 THRIVE study, one could, says Dr. Sethi, begin speculating whether HDL matters in cases where LDL-C is treated low enough.

“The addition of Ezetimibe to almost one-third of those treated in the AIM-HIGH study may have added some confounding. We know from the ENHANCE study that ezetimibe, although reducing LDL-C, did not reduce carotid intima media thickness when compared to statin,” Dr. Sethi continues. “Also, the ARBITER-6 study comparing niacin with ezetimibe showed greater reduction in carotid intima media thickness for niacin. Therefore, a subgroup analysis of patients not on ezetimibe could be essential for providing some clarification to the overall results.”__

In Dr. Sethi’s view, the AIM-HIGH study was truly trying to “aim high,” as it was seeking additional cardiovascular benefits in a group of patients that already were very well treated with respect to their LDL-C levels. All patients had been on statin for a longer period of time, but had elevated triglycerides and low HDL-C levels. This, he says, is a very tough patient population to achieve any additional cardiovascular benefit from. “We know for a fact that there is a residual cardiovascular risk in patients on statin therapy, but currently we just don’t know how to treat them, if not with HDL increasing drugs such as niacin. Although no benefits were observed in this study it doesn’t mean that niacin would not be beneficial in other dyslipidemic phenotypes. For this reason, it would be of extreme interest to explore the effect of the niacin treatment in specific subgroups of the study population.”

Following the failure of the cholesterol drug Torcetrapib, evidence has accumulated that HDL-C alone is not a satisfactory biomarker to predict cardiovascular disease, says Dr. Sethi. The results from the AIM-HIGH study, he says, could spark further research into the usability of HDL function biomarkers, such as cholesterol efflux. “We clearly need better and more improved methods beyond the HDL-C measurement to assess the multiple functional properties of HDL—especially when considering that future HDL therapeutics could modify HDL function differently. PBI is currently evaluating several HDL function assays, including the cholesterol efflux method for potential future inclusion into clinical trials. This may help expand our knowledge of the exact role of HDL in clinical trials such as AIM-HIGH.”

Centenarians Just as Likely as the Rest of Population to Smoke, Drink and Pack on Pounds

People who live to 95 or older are no more virtuous than the rest of us in terms of their diet, exercise routine or smoking and drinking habits, according to researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

Their findings, published today in the online edition of Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, (the paper is titled "Lifestyle Factors of People with Exceptional Longevity") suggests that "nature" (in the form of protective longevity genes) may be more important than "nurture" (lifestyle behaviors) when it comes to living an exceptionally long life. Nir Barzilai, M.D., the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair of Aging Research and director of the Institute for Aging Research at Einstein, was the senior author of the study.

Dr. Barzilai and his Einstein colleagues interviewed 477 Ashkenazi Jews who were living independently and were 95 and older (95-112, 75 percent of them women). They were enrolled in Einstein’s Longevity Genes Project, an ongoing study that seeks to understand why centenarians live as long as they do. (Descended from a small founder group, Ashkenazi Jews are more genetically uniform than other populations, making it easier to spot gene differences that are present.)

The elderly participants were asked about their lifestyles at age 70, considered representative of the lifestyle they’d followed for most of their adult lives. They answered questions about their weight and height so that their body mass index (BMI) could be calculated. They also provided information about their alcohol consumption, smoking habits, physical activity, and whether they ate a low-calorie, low-fat or low-salt diet.

To compare these long-lived individuals with the general population, the researchers used data from 3,164 people who had been born around the same time as the centenarians and were examined between 1971 and 1975 while participating in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES I).

Overall, people with exceptional longevity did not have healthier habits than the comparison group in terms of BMI, smoking, physical activity, or diet. For example, 27 percent of the elderly women and an equal percentage of women in the general population attempted to eat a low-calorie diet. Among long-living men, 24 percent consumed alcohol daily, compared with 22 percent of the general population. And only 43 percent of male centenarians reported engaging in regular exercise of moderate intensity, compared with 57 percent of men in the comparison group.

"This study suggests that centenarians may possess additional longevity genes that help to buffer them against the harmful effects of an unhealthy lifestyle."

-- Nir Barzilai, M.D."In previous studies of our centenarians, we’ve identified gene variants that exert particular physiology effects, such as causing significantly elevated levels of HDL or ‘good’ cholesterol," said Dr. Barzilai, who is also professor of medicine and of genetics at Einstein. "This study suggests that centenarians may possess additional longevity genes that help to buffer them against the harmful effects of an unhealthy lifestyle."

The research did find, however, that overweight centenarians tended to have lower rates of obesity than the control group. Although male and female centenarians were just as likely to be overweight as their counterparts in the general population, the centenarians were significantly less likely to become obese: only 4.5 percent of male centenarians were obese vs. 12.1 percent of controls; and for women, 9.6 percent of centenarians were obese versus 16.2 percent of controls. Both of these differences are statistically significant.

While longevity genes may protect centenarians from bad habits, healthy lifestyle choices remain critical for the vast majority of the population. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates there were nearly 425,000 people aged 95 and older living in the U.S. in 2010 − a fraction (.01) of the 40 million U.S. adults 65 and over.

"Although this study demonstrates that centenarians can be obese, smoke and avoid exercise, those lifestyle habits are not good choices for most of us who do not have a family history of longevity," said Dr. Barzilai. "We should watch our weight, avoid smoking and be sure to exercise, since these activities have been shown to have great health benefits for the general population, including a longer lifespan."

Researchers also asked study participants why they believed they had lived so long. Most did not attribute their advanced age to lifestyle factors. One-third reported a history of family longevity, while 20 percent believed that physical activity also played a role in their lifespan. Other factors included positive attitude (19 percent), busy or active life (12 percent), less smoking and drinking (15 percent), good luck (8 percent), and religion or spirituality (6 percent).

The research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health.

Even with regular exercise, people with inactive lifestyles more at risk for chronic diseases

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25 percent of Americans have inactive lifestyles (they take fewer than 5,000 steps a day) and 75 percent do not meet the weekly exercise recommendations (150 minutes of moderate activity each week and muscle-strengthening activity twice a week) to maintain good health. After reviewing recent literature, University of Missouri researchers contend that physical inactivity is the primary cause of chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity and fatty liver disease and that even people who set aside time for exercise regularly but are otherwise sedentary, may not be active enough to combat these diseases. Inactivity, in addition to the availability of high-caloric food has led to an increased rate of metabolic dysfunction in Americans.

In a recent study, John Thyfault, assistant professor in the departments of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology and Internal Medicine, found that negative physiological changes associated with a higher risk for type 2 diabetes, occur in people who transition from high amounts of activity (greater than 10,000 steps a day) to inactivity (fewer than 5,000 steps each day).

"If people spend the majority of their time sitting, even with regular periods of exercise, they are still at greater risk for chronic diseases," Thyfault said. "If people can add some regular movement into their routines throughout the day, they will feel better and be less susceptible to health problems. In the long term, they may not see big changes in the mirror, but they will prevent further weight gain."

Taking vitamin pills may undermine motivation to reduce smoking

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A new study has found that smokers who take multivitamins offset their healthy behaviour by smoking more cigarettes. This is an example of what psychologists call the licensing effect, which occurs when people make a virtuous choice that permits them to make a poor choice later on, such as when someone 'earns' a weekend binge by avoiding alcohol all week. In this case, smokers take multivitamins, a healthy choice that they believe reduces the risk of cancer and allows them to smoke more. In fact, there is no evidence that multivitamins protect against cancer.

The study, published online today in the journal Addiction, describes two experiments run by the authors. In the first experiment, run as a dummy health-food test, 74 daily smokers were given a placebo, but half were told they had taken a Vitamin C supplement. The smokers then took a one-hour unrelated survey during which they were allowed to smoke. Those who thought they had taken a vitamin pill smoked almost twice as much as those who knew they had taken a placebo (the control group) and reported greater feelings of invulnerability.

The second experiment was an expanded version of the first, with 80 participants taken from a larger community and half told they were taking a multivitamin pill. The one-hour survey also contained questions about attitudes to multivitamins. The smokers who thought they had taken a multivitamin once again smoked more than the control group. But this time, researchers found that among the multivitamin group, smokers with more positive attitudes toward multivitamins experienced a higher boost in perceived invulnerability and smoked even more than their less enthusiastic counterparts. In other words, the amount of extra smoking rose if the smoker expressed a conscious belief that multivitamins increased health.

Health-conscious smokers who take vitamins may thus trigger fundamental but false beliefs that they are invulnerable to the major health hazards associated with smoking, which will lead them to smoke more and increase their overall health risk. Says lead author Wen-Bin Chiou, "Smokers who take dietary supplements can fool themselves into thinking they are protected against cancer and other diseases. Reminding health conscious smokers that multivitamins don't prevent cancer may help them control their smoking or even encourage them to stop."

Cooked green vegetables, dried fruit, legumes, and brown rice associated with fewer colon polyps

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Eating legumes (beans, peas, soybeans, chickpeas) at least three times a week and brown rice at least once a week was linked to a reduced risk of colon polyps by 33 percent and 40 percent respectively, according to Loma Linda University research recently published in Nutrition and Cancer. High consumption of cooked green vegetables and dried fruit was also associated with greater protection, the study shows.

"Eating these foods is likely to decrease your risk for colon polyps, which would in turn decrease your risk for colorectal cancer," says lead author Yessenia Tantamango, MD, a post-doctoral research fellow with Adventist Health Study-2 at Loma Linda University. "While a majority of past research has focused on broad food groups, such as fruits and vegetables, in relation to colon cancer, our study focused on specific foods, as well as more narrowed food groups, in relation to colon polyps, a precursor to colon cancer. Our study confirms the results of past studies that have been done in different populations analyzing risks for colon cancer."

Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States and the third most common cancer in both men and women, according to the American Cancer Society.

Results also show that consuming cooked green vegetables once a day or more, as compared to less than five times a week, was associated with a 24 percent reduction in the risk of rectal/colon polyps. Consuming dried fruit three times a week or more, versus less than once a week, was associated with a 26 percent reduced risk.

The protective effects of these foods could be due in part to their cancer-fighting agents, the study reported.

"Legumes, dried fruits, and brown rice all have a high content of fiber, known to dilute potential carcinogens," Dr. Tantamango says. "Additionally, cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, contain detoxifying compounds, which would improve their protective function."

Past studies examining the effect of meat intake and legumes on colon cancer have shown that people eating meat, associated with an increased risk of colon cancer, may receive some protection when they also consume legumes. Dr. Tantamango says this suggests that besides fiber content, there may be something else present in legumes that provides a protective effect.

Researchers analyzed data from 2,818 subjects who participated in Adventist Health Study-1 (administered from 1976-77) and who answered a follow-up survey 26 years later from Adventist Health Study-2. The first survey asked respondents to indicate how often, on average, they consumed specific foods. The follow-up survey asked respondents who had undergone colonoscopies to indicate physician-diagnosed colorectal polyps. During the 26-year follow-up, 441 cases of rectal/colon polyps were identified.

The study assessed several possible confounding factors, including a family history of colorectal cancer, education, physical activity level, alcohol intake, smoking, constipation, intake of sweets, pain medication, and multivitamins, as well as different food variables. The study then adjusted for those factors that were shown to distort the effect of the foods and food groups under study. About 25 foods and food groups in total were examined.

Dr. Tantamango says there is a need for future studies to examine foods shown to reduce the risk of colon polyps, since it is possible that interactions between various nutrients with anti-cancerous properties will be better able to explain these findings.

Colon cleansing has no benefit but many side effects including vomiting and death

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Colon cleansing - it's been described as a natural way to enhance well-being, but Georgetown University doctors say there's no evidence to back that claim. In fact, their review of scientific literature, published today in the August issue of The Journal of Family Practice, demonstrates that colon cleansing can cause side effects ranging from cramping to renal failure and death.

The procedure, sometimes called colonic irrigation or colonic hydrotherapy, often involves use of chemicals followed by flushing the colon with water through a tube inserted in the rectum. It has ancient roots, but was discredited by the American Medical Association in the early 1900s, yet colon cleansing has staged a comeback.

"There can be serious consequences for those who engage in colon cleansing whether they have the procedure done at a spa or perform it at home," says the paper's lead author, Ranit Mishori, M.D., a family medicine physician at Georgetown University School of Medicine. "Colon cleansing products in the form of laxatives, teas, powders and capsules with names such as Nature's Bounty Colon Cleaner tout benefits that don't exist." She also says it's important to remember the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has no authority to monitor these products.

Mishori and her colleagues examined 20 studies published in the medical literature published in the last decade. She says that while these reports show little evidence of benefit, there is an abundance of studies noting side effects following the use of cleansing products including cramping, bloating, nausea, vomiting, electrolyte imbalance and renal failure.

"Some herbal preparations have also been associated with aplastic anemia and liver toxicity," she says.

And Mishori points out that colon cleansing services are increasingly being offered at spas or clinics by practitioners who call themselves 'colon hygienists' but they have no significant medical training. In fact, organizations such as the National Board for Colon Hydrotherapy and others who promote colon cleansing require hygienists to have little more than a high school diploma.

Mishori says there are much better ways to enhance well-being: "Eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly, get six to eight hours of sleep and see a doctor regularly."