Over recent years society has been witness to an alarming change in Type 2 diabetes. Despite previously being seen primarily in those over the age of forty, increasing numbers of adolescents and children are also being diagnosed with the disease. Furthermore, it has become much more frequent, particularly in female African-Americans, who are twice as likely to suffer from it as Caucasian women.   Researchers from Boston University’s Slone Epidemiology Center set out to find the factor that makes African-American women more susceptible to Type 2 diabetes with the Black

Women’s Health Study. In their study, they sent out initial questionnaires to obtain information about the participants’ medical history, typical diet and other basic facts. Every two years more questionnaires followed in order to track any significant changes in lifestyle or the contraction of any serious illness, including diabetes. In the first ten years 2,713 of the participants developed diabetes.

Researchers studied the links between these women and were able to pinpoint sugary drinks as the common denominator. The women who were drinking two or more soft drinks a day had a twenty-four percent increase in diagnosis over those who were drinking less than one soft drink a month.

More surprisingly was a similar association found regarding sweetened fruit drinks.  There was a thirty-one percent increase in incidence with women drinking two or more fruit drinks daily.  Although the perception of fruit drinks has typically been a positive one, Julie Palmer, ScD, a professor at Boston University and lead author on the study warns, “The public should be made aware that these drinks are not a healthy alternative to soft drinks with regard to risk of Type 2 diabetes.” 

Although this research was compiled based on the lives of African-American women, it must be said that all can benefit from this information. The ingredients used in these drinks harmfully effect all who drink them, not just one particular group. Doctors and experts have cited sugary drinks as causing many problems. Michael Murray, ND and Joseph Pizzorno, ND write, “Soft drinks have long been suspected of leading to lower calcium levels and higher phosphate levels in the blood. When phosphate levels are high and calcium levels are low, calcium is pulled out of the bones.”  This can lead to osteoporosis.

Marion Nestle, PhD links sugar drinks to severe weight gain, writing, “The relationship between soft drink consumption and body weight is so strong that researchers calculate that for each additional soda consumed, the risk of obesity increases 1.6 times.” Obesity is known to cause its own slew of issues and illnesses. This is particularly unfortunate as “soft drinks are the single greatest source of caffeine in children’s diets.”

However, children are not the only ones who should fear the hazardous effects of sugar drinks. Earl Mindell, MD wrote, “For anyone over age 40, soft drinks can be especially hazardous because the kidneys are less able to excrete excess phosphorus, causing depletion of vital calcium.” Diet drinks are not even a safe alternative. According to the doctor, “Diet sodas that are low in calories are high in sodium. Too much salt in the diet may cause more calcium to be excreted in the urine and increase the risk of osteoporosis.”

The only healthy alternative is water. It removes harmful toxins and wastes from the body and helps to digest food properly. It improves energy and makes it easier to lose weight and keep skin healthy. Most importantly it can prevent heart attacks. The American Journal of Epidemiology found that women were forty-one percent less likely to die of a heart attack when drinking more than five glasses of water a day.

	If you’re obese and have committed to exercise, give yourself a hand. Exercise is not an easy thing to commit to and you should be proud of yourself for the proactive ‘steps’ (pardon the pun) you’ve taken to get your weight down. Hopefully, your commitments have borne fruit relatively quickly, dropping pounds of weight and feeling better than ever. But it may be the case that
after initially losing weight, you’ve gained a lot of it back. In fact, it may be that just as fast as you’ve lost weight, you’ve gained it all back – even faster than you lost it.

Rest assured, this is not uncommon. The reasons for this quick regain of weight are manifold. Perhaps you’ve underestimated the amount of exercise you’ve done and are eating more than you are burning. Or perhaps you’re not eating the right types of foods.  But a recent study suggests that the answer may lie in the amount of exercise you’re doing – which is to say not enough.

I know the thought of doing more exercise hurts, but hear me out, because the benefits of doing more will show. According to a study done by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, current guidelines calling on the obese to get two and a half hours of exercise per week  might be a lowball figure if one not only wants to take it off but keep it off.

To determine how much more exercise it takes, researchers enlisted approximately 200 obese women and assigned each woman to one of four exercise groups. Each of the groups followed their own respective exercise regimens for four years and the researchers followed the groups’ progress, extending from 1999 to 2003.

A promising finding was that all of the women involved lost weight – as much as 10 percent of their weight in most instances, in fact. What wasn’t so promising was that most of these same women gained the weight they’d lost back…except for a select few women who were assigned to exercise in a manner different from the others.

What were they asked to do differently? Simply exercise longer – an hour longer to be precise. Now, you might be thinking that these women must have picked the short end of the stick when the researchers were deciding who would have to exert more energy over the four-year period. Maybe they did pick the short end, but their extra efforts paid off, as the women who exercised 60 minutes longer were the only ones who did not gain the weight they’d lost back. 

True the women who didn’t gain the weight they’d lost back may be due to the fact that they also ate healthier, but the fact that they ate healthier is probably explained by their not wanting to abandon all their hard work by eating unhealthily. That alone is a motivating factor to exercise longer (just as we tend to be more careful with those things we spend a lot of money or time on, we tend also to be more careful with the things we eat when we spend a lot of time and energy exercising). 

Keeping the weight off is not the only reason to “kick it up a notch” when exercising. In a related study, among those with diabetes, it was found that an extra 45 minutes of exercise helped muscles better store the calories and sugar consumed from food, thus the body burned fuel more efficiently, thus blood sugar levels were kept in control for longer periods of time.

So, how much extra time should be spent exercising per week? Researchers say exercise should be nearly double the current recommendation – from 2 ½ hours per week to 4 ½ hours per week.

Now, I know this sounds like a lot, but if you’re currently walking for 30 minutes a day, five days per week, try and walk an extra 25 minutes per day. If 25 minutes per day is too much to start with, work your way up, going an extra minute per day until you reach that extra 25 minutes.

I can assure you – just as the researchers’ findings suggest – doubling your efforts will triple the amount of satisfaction you get out of yourself and out of life.

Can you imagine taking a dose of exercise with your daily multivitamin? In a million years, right? Well, researchers would have you believe this far-fetched notion could be reality, and sooner rather than later.  This is because researchers have recently developed a drug that when tested on mice apparently “mimics” the effects and benefits one gets from exercise.

The drug – dubbed AICAR by researchers – could be the next “super” pill because when it was given to sedentary mice, they were able to burn calories and fat more quickly and more efficiently than mice not given the drug. What’s more, among those mice treated with the pill and then tested on a treadmill, their performance was markedly better than those mice untreated – running farther (44 percent farther) and for a longer period of time (23 percent longer).

What’s the upshot to all this?  Researchers believe that if the results of taking the drug are in any way similar when tested on humans – which hasn’t been done as of yet – it could revolutionize the way we look at exercise by bottling it and selling it in tablet form.

While I agree the marketing of exercise in pill form would revolutionize how the world looks at exercise, it wouldn’t be a positive development.

First off, as the researchers say, even if the effects are found to be similar in humans, the only way one could actually see results is by taking the pill for a long period of time.  So basically in order to lose weight, you have to line the pockets of the yet-to-be-named pharmaceutical giant, and even then, there’s no knowing what side effects might result after prolonged usage.

Remember ephedra?  Ephedra was a stimulant found in an array of supplements at your local GNC, online retailer and virtually every other nutrition store throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.  It was believed that taking ephedra increased one’s athletic performance, enabling the avid workout fiend to work harder, run farther, and lift heavier.  The problem was that it was loaded with side-effects, like increasing one’s heart rate and blood pressure dramatically.  Ephedra rendered speed-like effects to its user, causing some to die from heart attacks or strokes (Baltimore Orioles and Minnesota Vikings fans know this all too well).

Thankfully, the FDA did the right thing (this time) and decided to ban the supplement in 2004.  While ephedra is no doubt bought and sold today, people do so at the risk of their own lives and their loved ones.

I have no doubt that this drug – if it winds up being marketed to people – will meet the same fate as ephedra.  Just as ephedra was initially believed to be safe, it didn’t take long before its true effects were made manifest. 

There’s nothing out there that mimics exercise and its benefits as effectively as exercise itself.  Not only does it do wonders for you physically, it also does wonders for you mentally.  And if the physical benefits of exercise can be put in tablet form – which I don’t believe they can – the mental benefits acquired from exercise cannot be.  Don’t fall victim to the hype.  Stick with the real thing – nothing beats it.

We tend to ascribe the prevalence of obesity to people’s inability to express self-control over their eating habits. But new research reveals that some people carry a gene that actually makes it more difficult to tell whether or not they’re full, causing someone to eat more than they need.  The gene is referred to as “FTO” and researchers from the University College London and the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London are adding to the body of research on what might be referred to as the “obesity gene.”  In previous

research, it was found that those who had two copies of this gene in their bloodstream tended to weigh more – an average of six pounds more – than those who had one copy of the gene. But researchers from the above mentioned colleges and universities wanted to investigate the gene a bit further, to see what it was about the gene that made people gain more weight.Â

Researchers analyzed the eating habits and measurements of 3000 children between the ages of 8 and 11 to see if those who carried the gene had an altered appetite.  What determined, or defined an “altered appetite”?  By giving the kids’ parents questionnaires that pertained to their child’s eating habits, as well as gathering information on their height, weight and waist circumference, the researchers were able to assess a child’s appetite.

What they found was that among those children who carried the FTO gene, they were indeed more likely to have an altered appetite, in that they weren’t able to tell when they were in fact full.  Apparently, this FTO gene “switches off” the body’s ability to tell when it’s satiated.

So if people that carry this gene aren’t able to tell whether or not they’re full, this explains away their obesity.  In other words, it’s not the person’s fault, it’s the gene’s fault, right?  Not so fast.

While the study’s lead researcher Jane Wardle says the gene makes people “more vulnerable” to eating excessively, the effects are small.  Further, there wasn’t a “hugely strong association” between obesity levels and whether one carried the FTO gene.  Nevertheless, Wardle does believe it’s more difficult for people with the gene to know when they’re full because, seemingly, they don’t have as strong an indicator to their “internal signals” as others.

But ask representatives from the Heart Research UK, a charity dedicated to the advancement in knowledge about the heart, and they’ll give you a more reasoned response.  To quote Heart Research UK’s director, Barbara Harpham, the finding is “an explanation, not a reason” for obesity.

In other words, while this study may help explain how different people’s bodies operate in determining food consumption, we ultimately have the choice of whether or not we are going to eat that extra scoop of ice cream or have a slice of cantaloupe instead.

This study helps us understand the role genes play in regulating hunger, but it does not explain away the prevalence of obesity, in America particularly.  It puts the medical world no closer to finding a cure for obesity, either.  But that cure won’t need to be found in the medical world.  After all, the cure lies within our own willpower to resist temptation.  Unfortunately, that temptation may be stronger in some more than others.

Although the traditional activities of exercise and diet are cited as the best contributors toward better blood pressure, current research shows that potassium intake can also be an effective factor. As was published in the July 2008 issue of Journal of Clinical Hypertension, an adjustment in one’s consumption of high potassium foods can not only prevent the risk of high blood pressure, but also help in lowering the blood pressure of those already afflicted with hypertension.

Tennessee Doctors Mark C. Houston of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Karen J. Harper of Harper Medical Communications, Inc. both note the reasoning behind high blood pressure and heart disease is the lack of potassium in the typical diet. They refer to vegetarians and people living in isolated areas to solidify this point. Potassium is found in fruits and vegetables and both of these groups are known to include a significant amount in their diet. Furthermore, they are also prone to consume less sodium. A healthy balance between the levels of potassium and sodium one eats is what helps potassium function efficiently within the body. 

This is a tremendous contrast with the average person’s processed diet, which has them eating double the recommended amount of sodium and half the recommended amount of potassium (which is 4.7 grams per day, according to the American Heart Association as of 2006). In societies where fruits and vegetables are typically undesirable and rarely eaten, the effect is startling.  Houston and Harper found that while only one percent of those living in isolated areas have been diagnosed with hypertension, a staggering one out of three citizens of industrious areas suffer from it.    

Houston and Harper strongly advocate eating potassium as an effective strategy, saying, “An increase in potassium with a decrease in sodium is probably the most important dietary choice (after weight loss) that should be implemented to reduce cardiovascular disease.” Should those living with hypertension heed this vital advice, more than ten percent of them can lower their blood pressure significantly.  The daily intake of five hundred to a thousand milligrams of magnesium and over eight hundred milligrams of calcium have also been proven through other studies to assist with blood pressure.

It must be noted that potassium provides other benefits and to be deficient allows room for risks to the body. This can range from acne or extremely dry skin to hypoglycemia or hypokalemia to even insomnia or depression. The most obvious way to lack potassium is through diet, but there are other ways that make it difficult for the body to absorb it. Taking certain prescription drugs like steroids, penicillin, ACE-inhibitors and diuretics, eating disorders, alcohol or laxative abuse can all negatively affect potassium intake. 

When potassium is consumed correctly it can aid in allergies and blood pressure, as previously discussed. It is a mineral that brings nutrients to the cells and carries waste away from them. Again, it requires a healthy balance with sodium to be effective. The balance lessens the chance of a stroke and assists in the conversion of carbohydrates to energy. The level of potassium must be larger than the level of sodium in the body. This creates the membrane potential, which contributes to a person’s nerve, muscle and heart functions through the carrying of electrical messages between them.

	“If everything you do is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.”  Those were the words spoken by Jerry Seinfeld to his good friend George Costanza, after George woefully told Jerry that every decision he’d made in his life had turned out wrong. To correct this trend, George and
Jerry thought that perhaps if George started making decisions that went contrary to what his gut told him, his luck might change. To make a long story short, doing the opposite worked out well for George.

Of course, Seinfeld is a sitcom, and while the idea of doing the opposite of what your gut tells you sounds intriguing, it probably isn’t the best modus operandi to follow for all of life’s vicissitudes.  But in one particular aspect of life, it is precisely the modus operandi one should adopt.

I speak of one’s attitude.  How often do we say, “You’re putting me in a bad mood,” or “I woke up on the wrong side of the bed”?  While assigning blame may seem like legitimate excuses to our poor attitudes, ultimately, we – and we alone – choose how we are going to feel, act and react to life’s many permutations.  Something as simple as smiling at someone in the supermarket – even when we don’t particularly feel like it – helps give us a more positive attitude about our day and life in general.  But having a positive attitude may do more than just help us have a better outlook on life.  It may also save our life.

According to research recently published in the July-August issue of the journal Annals of Family Medicine, men who suffered from a heart attack or stroke were three times more likely to survive it if they believed they were at a lower than average risk of cardiovascular disease.

Doctor Robert Gramling from the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, NY, and his team of researchers spent 15 years studying over 2,800 adult participants, all from New England, between the ages of 35 and 75.  The participants were asked at the study’s outset how at risk they believed they were to having a heart attack or stroke in the next five years compared to other people their age.  Near to the end of the study, the researchers gathered information from the National Death Index to see who, if any, of the study’s participants died in the intervening 15-year period and from what cause.  Among the men who believed they were at low risk for heart problems, but did in fact suffer from a heart attack or stroke, they were three times more likely to survive their heart attack or stroke compared to those who believed that they were likely to have a heart attack or stroke. 

This positive attitude was felt even among those who, by any objective measure, would have been labeled “high risk” for heart attack or stroke.  But despite the objective measures, those that were optimistic about not having a heart attack ended up surviving their heart attack more often than those who were pessimistic about their chances. 

In discussing the results, Gramling made a great point.  To paraphrase his comments, he said that perhaps the best thing doctors can do in the future is raise people’s optimism about living a life free of a heart attack and promoting changes in behavior, as opposed to raising people’s fears about having a heart attack if one lives a certain lifestyle.

This is precisely the point.  How we approach life so often determines the ultimate result.  If a baseball player approaches the plate with the attitude of “I think I’m going to strike out,” he’s going to strike out more often than not.  Instead, if he approaches the plate saying, “I’m going to score the runner from third,” he’ll often get that RBI.  It’s all in how we approach things.  And as this study shows, it can wind up saving – or costing – our lives.

	You normally don’t associate hypertension with men and women in their early 20s. After all, hypertension is more often diagnosed, shall we say, in the winter of life (Age 40 and upward) as opposed to the spring (i.e. early 20s). This being the case, moderately high blood pressure readings among young adults may not seem all too disquieting. “Why do I need to worry; I’m young, I
exercise, I can get my blood pressure down in no time,” is often the refrain of these young whippersnappers. But according to recent data published in a medical journal, even moderately high blood pressure readings can significantly increase one’s risk for atherosclerosis – particularly among young adults.

Publishing their results in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers studied over 3,500 young men and women over the course of 10 years. During that 10-year period, the researchers routinely checked the participants’ blood pressure levels in order to identify what effect elevated blood pressure levels had on long-term health.  What they found was that among those with just moderately high blood pressure levels – i.e. pre-hypertensive blood pressure levels, which are levels between 120 and 139 for the systolic and between 80 and 89 for the diastolic – they increased their chances of developing atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis occurs when the blood vessels narrow due to plaque build-up, which essentially blocks blood from getting to its destination. Atherosclerosis can often lead to stroke, heart attack, congestive heart failure and a number of other life-threatening diseases.

Now, this finding might not seem all that surprising. In fact, it sounds logical: the higher your blood pressure is, the worse it is for your health. But what makes this finding so noteworthy is that even moderately high blood pressure levels should be cause for concern. Even among the young. It should be noted that approximately 20 percent of the 3,500 young adults in the study developed pre-hypertension in the 10-year period – way too high for such a young group of people.

As the lead researchers said, making blood pressure a health priority among young adults will be a challenge. Remaining lean and physically active are important aspects of our health, but so is maintaining a healthy blood pressure. And I think anyone would admit blood pressure does not receive the same media attention as weight loss and exercise receive. That needs to change. After all, there are many people with high blood pressure without their even knowing it (they don’t call hypertension “the silent killer” for nothing). This is because hypertension is no respecter of sizes. In other words, while overweight people are more likely to have hypertension, thin people are at risk for it as well.  If you have a history of it in your family, if you’re African American, if you smoke, if you drink a lot of alcohol, if you eat a lot of salty foods, if you’re pregnant, or if you simply don’t exercise much – you are at an increased risk for hypertension.

No one is immune from hypertension – not even young adults. Not even moderately high blood pressure levels are acceptable. And as the study revealed, the longer your blood pressure levels hover in the “moderately high” range, the greater the risk for developing atherosclerosis.

 

There is always news coming out of the health world regarding advances in our knowledge of diseases and what can be done to prevent them. Here’s the latest news that is really no news at all in terms of our knowledge of how good it is for our health. But to this point, we didn’t know it was so good for battling a certain disease.

Published in the July edition of the journal Neurology, researchers from the University of Kansas and its school of medicine have discovered that people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease can slow its debilitating effects depending on how fit they are.

The researchers examined the brain size of 121 participants 60 years of age or older. Approximately half of the participants had been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s; the other participants had not been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s nor did they show any signs of other dementia-related diseases.

When the researchers compared the participants’ brain sizes and measured their level of fitness – which was determined by measuring their oxygen consumption while walking on a treadmill – they found that brain size was correlated with how fit the participants were. For example, among the participants with Alzheimer’s, those who were the fittest exhibited the smallest amount of brain shrinkage compared to the patients not diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. But the least fit among the Alzheimer’s group exhibited the largest amount of brain shrinkage when compared to the non-Alzheimer’s group. It’s believed that the larger the brain is for someone suffering from Alzheimer’s, the longer he or she will be able to function before succumbing to the crippling effects of the disease, such as frequent forgetfulness, inability to communicate, changes in behavior, no longer recognizing common faces and not being able to do what were once common tasks (e.g. Writing a check, feeding one’s self, driving, etc).  

While there was no observable change in the participants’ brain size among those without Alzheimer’s and were also fit, the researchers point out that previous studies point to how regular exercise can help keep the brain from changing its formation as people age. 

While this is indeed an important, encouraging and motivating reason to exercise regularly, the researchers caution not to read too much into the results. This is because their testing examined how fit participants were at one given point in time. If they truly want to test how effective exercise is to Alzheimer’s patients and their health, they’d likely have to examine their fitness levels for an extended period of time.

Nevertheless, as I recently wrote, more and more good news regarding Alzheimer’s and what can be done to prevent – or lessen its severity – is making headlines today (see “Fixing Memory Goofs with Grape Juice”). Like cancer, Alzheimer’s is something more and more of us are touched by in one way or another. Let us hope that these findings will hasten the arrival of a cure to Alzheimer’s so that it can no longer extend its pernicious tentacles over us or the generations to come.

If you’ve been even somewhat attuned to political news in the past year, you’ve no doubt heard the word “flip-flop” with some regularity. But pols aren’t using the word to refer to their foot attire. No, they’re using the word to refer to their political adversaries’ modifying views on taxes, foreign policy, immigration and abortion.

What I’m about to tell you, though, may cause you to do a flip-flop of your own regarding your view on the flip-flop.  Confused?  Don’t be.

It might come as a bummer, but an Alabama study’s results should leave your flip-flops finished for the summer. That’s because flip-flops can incur serious damage on the two things that get you from here to there: your feet.

The study out of Auburn University (Go Tigers!) studied 39 college-aged men and women (a good sample, as there are lots of college-aged men and women who travel from class to class in flip-flops).  To test the effect of flip-flops on the participants’ feet, they had each participant walk on a special platform that measured the impact their feet made with the platform and the length of their stride when they walked. They also had them walk across the platform wearing athletic shoes to see if there was a difference.

According to the study’s chief researcher and author, Auburn graduate student Justin Shroyer, the participants’ altered their gait depending on whether they were wearing flip-flops or athletic shoes. When participants wore flip-flops, the length of their stride tended to be shorter and the impact with which their feet hit the platform was lessened compared to when they wore athletic shoes. This suggests that the participants were modifying their walking patterns because flip-flops don’t support the foot as properly as athletic shoes and they were trying to keep the flip-flops from flying off their feet. If the participants were to wear flip-flops with regularity – like throughout the summer months, for instance – it comes as no surprise that that lack of support will cause their feet to ache. 

The results of the study led doctors and the study’s researchers themselves to better understand why so many people develop foot and joint problems, such as plantar fasciitis and tendonitis.

Flip-flops are great for lounging around the house in the summer, fall, winter or spring. But if you’re using them for walking a length of any significance – even if that walking is in the mall or drug store – you’re using them for the wrong reasons. 

Remember the movie Forrest Gump? There’s a part in the movie where Forrest and his good friend Bubba talk to their platoon leader, Lieutenant Dan Taylor. At the end of their conversation, Taylor gives Bubba and Forrest the platoon’s two standing orders:  try not to do anything stupid, and take care of your feet. That applies to the non-soldier as well. If you take care of your feet, you’re protecting yourself from a lifetime of pain and aggravation that comes with arthritis and tendonitis. But if you wear flip-flops for the wrong reasons – like walking – you’re violating both of Lieutenant Dan’s standing orders.

A few months ago, I wrote about broccoli and why those who never liked the cruciferious veggie when they were young might want to give it another try now that they’re older and wiser (see article entitled, “Broccolicious!”). If you’re now eating more broccoli than you ever were – and I hope you are – I’m glad to hear it. Here’s my next suggestion: Eat more of it!

My last article extolled the virtues of broccoli based on a study out of UCLA that said eating broccoli significantly slowed down the aging process.  This decrease in aging, the researchers believed, was due to the high sulforaphane content in broccoli, which helps to increase the amount of antioxidants in the body that fight free radicals.  Now new research from Britain’s Institute of Food Research says that men who increase their broccoli intake “activate” genes in their body that fight off prostate cancer while “deactivating” genes that help form malignant tumors. 

Researchers came to this conclusion after studying 24 men, all with a pre-cancerous legion of some kind, and asked the men to start consuming four extra servings of broccoli a week for 52 weeks.  The researchers found that all of the men exhibited changes in their gene patterns by the study’s conclusion.  These gene-pattern variations were examined throughout the test period, as the researchers took tissue samples from the men on various occasions.  The researchers said that the way in which these genes changed were changes that help ward off cancer from forming.

And what do researchers believe the ingredient is in broccoli that has such an impact in warding off cancer?  You guessed it – sulforaphane.  Just as sulforaphane plays a role in fighting the aging process, it also aids in the fight against various forms of cancer.  As this study found, it helps in fighting the second deadliest cancer among men, prostate cancer (Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among men).  Sulforaphane is also believed to play a protective role among women in the prevention of breast cancer.  Like prostate cancer among men, breast cancer is the second deadliest form of cancer among women (Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among women as well).

Remember, sulforaphane is a phytochemical that’s found most prevalently in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and kale.  But broccoli sprouts are the thing to eat if you’re looking for a vegetable with a lot of it.

So, how does one get more broccoli into their diet?  Well, there’s the obvious way of having broccoli as a side dish more frequently.  But broccoli can easily be melded into your diet as it is now, without it seeming like a constant presence.  For instance, when you’re preparing a salad, throw in some steamed or raw broccoli for a change.  When eating your whole wheat pasta, instead of having it with tomato sauce, throw in some broccoli florets with your pasta, tossed with olive oil and parmesan cheese.  It’s a nice, light alternative to the same old spaghetti and marinara.  How about broccoli on pizza?  Topping some homemade pizza with broccoli gives it the pizzazz (and nutrition) a pizza often needs (Peppers and mushrooms are great, but they are among the most common pizza toppings).

Be creative.  Just start getting more of it in your diet.