Tag Archive for: Health Professionals Follow-up Study

News on Food as Medicine

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As a conventional medical journal and one of the leading medical journals in the world, The Journal of the American Medical Association doesn’t often publish reviews of the impact of food on health. However, a recent edition of the Journal included a summary of three such studies, and that’s the topic for this week.

The first study examined whether mushrooms, which are full of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients, decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) or type 2 diabetes (T2D). The researchers re-analyzed the data from the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. When they compared more than five servings of mushrooms per day with less than one serving per day, they found no differences in the rate of symptoms or markers associated with CVD or T2D. One interesting note was that if mushrooms were substituted for meat, there was a decreased risk of T2D.

This is one of the first studies to acknowledge the problems with nutrition data in these types of studies. The data on mushrooms were only collected at the beginning of the studies; that doesn’t allow for comparisons over time. Further, the questionnaire didn’t allow for data on a variety of types of mushrooms. The best observation at this point is that we don’t know whether mushrooms or specific types of mushrooms are beneficial for reducing the risk of disease until more research is done.

We do know they’re good for you, so enjoy your mushrooms; sautéed mushrooms are a great addition to many dishes. Here’s another way to enjoy mushrooms: Creamy Mushroom Soup from the Health Info page at drchet.com. Check out the other recipes while you’re there.

We’ll look at another study on Thursday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

P.S. Don’t forget to complete the survey on Dr. Chet’s Traveling Health Show. I could be coming to a city near you in 2020! Click the link below to go to the survey.

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Reference: AJCN https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqz057.

U.S. Life Expectancy Is Down—Again

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Life expectancy is the average time a person might live; a baby born in 2017 will be expected to live 78.6 years according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. That’s a long time, but it could be better. After reaching a high in 2015, U.S. life expectancy decreased in 2017 (1). It was only a tenth of a year, just over a month, but it’s the second year in a row life expectancy in the U.S. decreased.

Where do other major countries stand on life expectancy? Japan still leads the world at 85 years (2). Other notable countries are Australia and Italy at 82.3 and Sweden at 82.1. Our neighbors to the north in Canada are at 81.9 years, tied with France and Norway. The lowest quartile is mostly African countries; click the second reference below to find where other countries rank. Where does the U.S. rank? In the mid-40s. Seems like we should be higher, doesn’t it?

Researchers decided to examine how lifestyle could impact life expectancy. They used data from the Nurses Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study with a combined subject pool of over 120,000 men and women who’ve been followed since the 1980s. They then calculated a health score for each subject, examined who died and what they died from over the past 30 or so years, and examined how health habits related to mortality. We’ll check out the results in Thursday’s Memo.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

References:
1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db293.pdf.
2. http://bit.ly/2sl8TcH
3. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.117.032047.