The research evaluated the diets and measured telomere length of people at age 30, then repeated the measurements at age 42.  Those who ate the most food had shorter telomeres, with omega-6 oils showing as the worst offenders.

Omega-6 fatty acids permeate the American food supply.  You’ll find them in potato chips, corn chips, and French fries.  They are often the base oil in many salad dressings, and are the primary fatty acid in corn oil, soy oil, and other vegetable oils.  They are typically modified into partially hydrogenated vegetable oil for use in breads and packaged foods.

During human evolution the ratio of omega-6 oils to omega-3 oils (DHA and EPA) was 4 to 1.  Today, in a typical American diet that ratio is 20 to 1 or even worse.  The imbalance of omega-6 oils to omega-3 oils causes many problems, since there is competition for enzymes and the relative lack of omega-3 tilts one’s body into an inflammatory condition.  I have previously reported that omega-3 oils actually help preserve your telomeres.

Telomere length, a key marker of biological age, is shortened prematurely when an adverse state of biochemistry exists, such as the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 oils.  Overeating in general is one way to shorten your telomeres, and excess consumption of omega-6 oils appears to be the fastest way to grow old in a hurry.

In the first part of the study nerve cells were damaged in ways that mimic a typical injury, leading to nerve cell death.  Treatment with omega-3 oils gave the cells significant protection from injury and reduced the amount of nerve cell death. 

In the next part of the study damage was induced to the sciatic nerves of mice, which were then treated with omega-3 oils.  The results were consistent with the first part of the study.  Omega-3 fatty acids helped the mice recover more fully and quickly.  The mice also experienced less muscle wasting from the nerve injury.

This study offers a new remedy to assist patients with nerve injuries that are typically difficult to treat and often result in excessive pain, weakness, and muscle paralysis.  It also implies that if your nerves are adequate in omega-3 oils DHA and EPA, and you happen to get an injury you will have less damage and a faster recovery.

“Normal sperm cells contain an arc-like structure called the acrosome that is critical in fertilization because it houses, organizes, and concentrates a variety of enzymes that sperm use to penetrate an egg,” said Manabu T. Nakamura, an associate professor of biochemical and molecular nutrition at the University of Illinois.  The study shows that DHA is essential in fusing the building blocks of the acrosome together. “Without DHA, this vital structure doesn’t form and sperm cells don’t work,” said Timothy Abbott, doctoral student at the University of Illinois, who co-authored the study.

We have known for some time that DHA is abundant in your brain and arteries, playing vital roles in neurological and cardiovascular health.  Now we have a better understanding of why DHA is also highly concentrated in the testes.  Too bad so many men are deficient.

Exercise not only strengthens your body, but also burns fat.  When it comes to fat, we know that “you are what you eat.”  A small but relevant percentage of your fat per day needs to be in the form of omega-3 essential fatty acids, DHA, and EPA.  These accumulate in every cell membrane of your body and are required for proper cell communication and function.  The importance of these fatty acids to your nerve cells, brain, heart, and arteries is indisputable.  This study points out that they are also needed by muscle cells for more optimal function.

The ability to maintain muscle strength—especially as you age—improves blood sugar metabolism while helping pump more blood to your brain as you move about.  Better muscles contribute to better immunity, better balance, better bones, and overall better quality of health.  The fact that fish oil improves muscle response to exercise, actually improving aspects of muscle dynamics that otherwise do not improve at all with exercise alone, is a very important finding.  It is one more reason to ensure that you get your essential fatty acids, especially DHA, on a regular and consistent basis. 

This particular study was in older women.  However, the findings likely apply to people of every age.  This is also due to the fact that DHA and EPA help resolve the muscle inflammation that is produced during exercise, speeding your recovery for better muscle fitness.

Magnesium is a key anti-inflammatory mineral that relaxes your nerves and arteries, and supports healthy electrical signaling to your heart.  A majority of Americans lack optimal magnesium intake due to a refined-food diet, and soils that lack magnesium from poor farming methods. 

The current study, involving 241,378 participants, is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition along with an editorial asking for public health officials to take action.  For anyone with common sense, such public health action should be a “no-brainer.”  Who would not be in favor of easy nutrition recommendations to reduce strokes, the number one killer in America?  We could start with the American Heart Association and American Medical Association, not to mention the Food and Drug Administration.  Unfortunately, drug sales trump public health education, especially when good nutrition is the clear winner.

As I mentioned yesterday, flavonoids are now shown to reduce the risk of stroke.  In addition to magnesium, so does DHA from fish oil and vitamin D.  All of these nutrients are common deficiencies in America.

Flavonoids are found in the pigments of many fruits and vegetables.  They represent a wide range of types and are found in red wine, chocolate, and many fruits and vegetables.  Flavonoids have antioxidant properties in general and also support gene signaling in multiple ways that vary considerably based on their type.

In the current study researchers looked at five main types of flavonoids as well as the total sum of flavonoid intake.  One of the encouraging results of the study was that even moderate intake of flavonoids conferred cardiovascular benefit.  Unlike cardiovascular drugs, which have many side effects and offer scant data showing they actually reduce mortality, simply including colorful fresh foods in your diet can make a positive difference to your health.

Many dietary supplements include the flavonoids observed in this study, so it’s easy to fortify your diet.  Some of these flavonoids, like grape seed extract and resveratrol, have built a considerable amount of scientific evidence showing they assist cardiovascular health in a variety of ways.  I would suggest that everyone have a diet with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. If there are additional cardiovascular concerns, based on family history or current circumstances, then I would suggest extra flavonoids that are known to be helpful to your cardiovascular system.

“It’s a rather dramatic effect,” says Rajesh Agarwal, PhD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center. “Cancer cells are fast-growing cells. Not only that, but they are necessarily fast growing. When conditions exist in which they can’t grow, they die.  Yet we saw absolutely no toxicity to the mice, themselves.  I think the whole point is that cancer cells have a lot of defective pathways and they are very vulnerable if you target those pathways. The same is not true of healthy cells.”

I have previously reported that grape seed extract reduces prostate cancer risk, helps prevent skin cancer, and is effective against leukemia cells.  One study shows that grape seed extract and resveratrol work synergistically to knock out colon cancer cells.

It is becoming clear that nutrition offers great hope for prevention of cancer as well as treatment, actually helping chemo drugs work better at lower doses.  Nutrition actually has intelligent gene-management function, demonstrating the ability to kill cancer cells while helping to assist healthy cells.  Other nutrients in this category include tocotrienols, curcumin, green tea catechins, quercetin, DHA fish oil, and many others.

Individuals should not consider any one nutrient or combination of nutrients as a sole treatment for cancer.  However, the ridiculous recommendation by many oncologists to discontinue all antioxidants during cancer treatment should be thrown into the trash bin of ignorance and incompetence.  It is high time the FDA and other public health institutions embraced the stunning ability of nutrition to prevent and help combat disease.

Poor thyroid function induces multiple stressful changes to your circulatory system that make it harder to function and more likely that blood pressure will elevate.  Some of those changes directly impact your kidneys, and there is now evidence linking salt sensitivity to poor thyroid function.

Your kidneys, operating in a state of metabolic stress, respond to stimulation.  Some of this stimulation is from adrenaline, which is often released in higher amounts by those who are overweight (adrenaline tries to break down fat, but irritates the kidneys).  In the sluggish thyroid state adrenaline is often over-released in an effort to compensate for one’s body being stuck in hibernation mode.  The kidneys respond to adrenaline by making excessive renin, which drives up blood pressure.

It has now been discovered that the renin gene is controlled by vitamin D.  If vitamin D is lacking it is like losing parental control, renin can now run wild and cause sustained elevation in blood pressure. 

I have previously reported that a lack of vitamin D leads to excessive thyroid inflammation and thyroid autoimmunity.

Thus, there are several good reasons why people with any type of thyroid issue should have their vitamin D levels checked and should strive for optimal vitamin D levels, not just somewhere towards the bottom of the normal range.  While vitamin D may not be a direct regulator of thyroid hormone, it appears that it puts the lid on how out-of-whack a stressed thyroid can become, as well as helps prevent an undesirable elevation in blood pressure.

Attention to this issue is especially important in winter months when cold temperatures pose a stress of their own to thyroid function and the lack of sun typically leads to low vitamin D levels.  There are good reasons more cardiovascular events occur in the winter months.  Optimizing vitamin D levels along with optimizing thyroid function will directly benefit your cardiovascular well-being.