Posts Tagged ‘Research’

Research – Watermelon can reduce the chances of developing cardiovascular disease

Watermelon is recommended as a food for the health conscious. Because of the high water content of watermelon, it is meant for people in hot countries to use as a snack that replenishes the water content of the body and really does not cause harm. The sugars present in watermelon are easily absorbed by the body and are a simple form of sugar (very much unlike the complex sugars used in processed foods and sugary foods). However, are there other benefits of this simple fruit ? There is research conducted on whether the watermelon has any other benefits, and it turns out that the research moves to the area of blood pressure, prehypertension, and eventually to cardiovascular disease (link):

A pilot study led by food scientists at The Florida State University suggests that watermelon can be an effective natural weapon against prehypertension, a precursor to cardiovascular disease. This is the first investigation of its kind in humans.
“These findings suggest that this ”functional food” has a vasodilatory effect, and one that may prevent prehypertension from progressing to full-blown hypertension, a major risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. “Given the encouraging evidence generated by this preliminary study, we hope to continue the research and include a much larger group of participants in the next round,” he said.

This does not mean that you can reduce blood pressure problems by earing more watermelon, but it does mean that you can cause yourself no harm by making sure that watermelon is a part of your regular diet.

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Vitamin D – Vitally important to human health, and deficiencies can cause major problems

Doctors and people in the health industry know that Vitamin D is vitally important to human health, with the lack of Vitamin D influencing many problems in the human body. At the same time, a large number of people in the world suffer from Vitamin D deficiency (projected numbers of 1 billion the world over). Considering the huge impact of Vitamin D deficiency, it seems more clear that providing Vitamin D in the form of nutrition tablets / supplements is necessary. This becomes even more important when one considers the results of this study (link)that considered the impact of deficiency of Vitamin D on various genes in the human body that can impact cancer (and bet many of you never thought that Vitamin D could have something to do with cancer – one normally thinks of Vitamin as health supplements, not connected in any way to dangerous diseases).

Scientists have found that vitamin D influences more than 200 genes, including ones related to cancer and autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis — a discovery that shows how serious vitamin D deficiency can be. Vitamin D deficiency is a well-known risk factor for rickets, and some evidence suggests it may increase susceptibility to autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes, as well as certain cancers and even dementia. With this is mind, the group looked at disease-associated regions of the gene map to see if they had higher levels of VDR binding. They found VDR binding was “significantly enriched” in regions linked to several common autoimmune diseases, such as MS, type 1 diabetes and Crohn’s disease, as well as in regions associated with cancers such as leukaemia and colorectal cancer.

Vitamin D is created by the exposure of the skin to sunlight, something that has reduced over a period of time. Vitamin D can also be found in some natural occurring foods such as fish liver oil, eggs and fatty fish such as salmon, herring and mackerel. In addition, Vitamin D can also be provided as supplements, and it seems to be important that health departments ensure that people are getting these supplements.