Medical Forum / Diseases and Disorders / Diabetes / March 2006
Mediterranean Diet Lowers C-Reactive Protein Levels
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Ozgirl - 10 Mar 2006 03:48 GMT http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/525130
"Adherence to a Mediterranean diet, high in fruits and vegetables and low in saturated fats, lowers levels of inflammation in the elderly, as reflected by lower levels of C-reactive protein."
""The (positive) effects of the Mediterranean diet might be the anti-oxidant components of fruits and vegetables," Dr. Fair told Reuters Health, "and the anti-inflammatory effects of the diet may be one explanation for its protective effect against cardiovascular disease.""
Kurt - 10 Mar 2006 03:58 GMT > http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/525130 > [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > of the diet may be one explanation for its protective effect > against cardiovascular disease."" I think another important factor here (and with most diets) is that if someone makes a major lifestyle change with their diet they are going to be healthier for it. Unless of course it's a really silly diet like eating nothing but hot dogs all day. :)
It would be interesting to compare someone's general health while faithfully following a diet like the Mediterranean Diet, South beach, Atkins, Weight Watchers, etc. with their health while eating the "average" diet of fast and processed foods that the majority of people eat. I would put money on the fact that one's health improves dramatically when making conscious decisions about what they put in their tummies.
One other thing, Ozgirl, why did you request your post to NOT be archived? It's a good post and might be something someone would want to reference down the road. Just curious.
Best, Kurt
Ozgirl - 10 Mar 2006 04:15 GMT >> http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/525130 >> [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > archived? It's a good post and might be something someone would want > to reference down the road. Just curious. Lol, a friend created a utility that changes something in the registry re archiving. I love playing with utilities, so I played with it ;)
Kurt - 10 Mar 2006 04:26 GMT > >> http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/525130 > >> [quoted text clipped - 45 lines] > the registry re archiving. I love playing with utilities, so > I played with it ;) Okay, that explains it. But I guess it WILL be archived anyway because I've posted it twice! LOL
Best, Kurt
Quentin Grady - 10 Mar 2006 07:45 GMT This post not CC'd by email On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 03:48:09 GMT, "Ozgirl" <are_we_there_yet@maccas.com> wrote:
>http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/525130 > [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] >of the diet may be one explanation for its protective effect >against cardiovascular disease."" G'day G'day Ozgirl,
"There are other markers of inflammation that we haven't assessed yet in terms of diet, such as high coronary artery content, which we found in 200 patients. We have the blood available, we just haven't run the tests yet," Dr. Fair said.
I found the statement puzzling.
1. What is coronary artery content?
2. How does one measure it with a blood test?
Best wishes,
 Signature Quentin Grady ^ ^ / New Zealand, >#,#< [ / \ /\ "... and the blind dog was leading."
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/quentin
Ozgirl - 10 Mar 2006 10:41 GMT > G'day G'day Ozgirl, > [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > > 2. How does one measure it with a blood test? Lol, no idea, hopewfully someone here can figure it out.
The important stuff in that article (for me anyway) was whether the study showed improvement because of what they ate or because of what they didn't. I have to say that in my personal observations, people in the 65+ age group tend to eat far less than people a lot younger.
Also I am always wary of questionnaire studies but in this case, if the outcome helped proved the theory that obviously was the reason for this study then people probably answered honestly. Whatever, it seems that if anyone ate a similar diet with the emphasis on all things in moderation they could most likely have the same results regardless of what factor determined the outcome.
Quentin Grady - 10 Mar 2006 17:57 GMT This post not CC'd by email On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 10:41:07 GMT, "Ozgirl" <are_we_there_yet@maccas.com> wrote:
>The important stuff in that article (for me anyway) was >whether the study showed improvement because of what they >ate or because of what they didn't. G'day G'day Ozgirl,
One thing I liked was the use of a technique similar to linear subjective analysis. Hey, I'm on my first coffee for the morning so I might not have the terminology correct. Be kind if you are knowledgeable about these things.
It works like this. Humans are fabulous when it comes to making decisions in a LIMITED field. They are lousy and self deluding when it comes to making over all assessments subjectively. Interviews are well known for being the most highly trusted method of selection by executives and yet having the worst track record. Such is the strength of the self delusion factor.
Are people eating vegetables? That sort of thing. We can do those sort of assessment objectively or subjectively. It doesn't matter much. People do them well. It is with collective assessment that humans often get it wrong. We get hooked up on one or two items and they colour everything else. It has been found that expert systems regularly outperform the experts that devised them because they ask a simple set of questions eg
1. Do they eat sufficient vegetables? 2. Do they eat a lot of meat? 3. Do they eat a lot of dairy? 4. Do they eat plenty of legumes (beans and peas)
Notice how subjective each of these assessments are. OK, they probably kid themselves that they are objectively comparing them to soma mythical Mediterranean diet but like who cares. The reality is words like "sufficient" "a lot of" "plenty of" are fuzzily defined subjective concepts. They give them (+) and (-) scores. Then they add them up taking account of the signs. Its gross. One would think it would work better if some items had greater weightings than others but in practice the simpler the totally device the better it works.
> I have to say that in my >personal observations, people in the 65+ age group tend to >eat far less than people a lot younger. True. People in the 65+ group also represent a survivor population. This is one reason I studied the dietary beliefs of ELDERLY Greeks.
>Also I am always wary of questionnaire studies but in this >case, if the outcome helped proved the theory that obviously [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] >could most likely have the same results regardless of what >factor determined the outcome. I think you are onto the basic issue here. It is about assessing a diet in total. Some of the most successful diets in the world were deficient in some aspects yet they worked better than the others.
Best wishes,
 Signature Quentin Grady ^ ^ / New Zealand, >#,#< [ / \ /\ "... and the blind dog was leading."
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/quentin
Jefferson - 10 Mar 2006 19:55 GMT > http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/525130 > [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > of the diet may be one explanation for its protective effect > against cardiovascular disease."" Identification of Lignans as Major Components in the Phenolic Fraction of Olive Oil - http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/46/7/976
It makes a difference if the olive oil is virgin versus refined.
Antioxidant effect of virgin olive oil in patients with stable coronary heart disease: a randomized, crossover, controlled, clinical trial. The Mediterranean diet, in which olive oil is the main source of fat, has been associated with a reduced incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) and low blood pressure levels. Virgin olive oil (VOO), besides containing monounsaturated fat, is rich in phenolic compounds (PC) with antioxidant properties. The aim of this study was to examine the antioxidant and anti-hypertensive effect of two similar olive oils, but with differences in their PC (refined: 14.7 mg/kg versus virgin: 161.0 mg/kg), in 40 males with stable CHD. The study was a placebo controlled, crossover, randomized trial. A raw daily dose of 50 mL of VOO and refined olive oil (ROO) were sequentially administered over two periods of 3 weeks, preceded by 2-week washout periods in which ROO was used. Lower plasma oxidized LDL (p < 0.001) and lipid peroxide levels (p = 0.003), together with higher activities of glutathione peroxidase (p = 0.033), were observed after VOO intervention. Systolic blood pressure decreased after intake of VOO (p = 0.001) in hypertensive patients. No changes were observed in diastolic blood pressure, glucose, lipids, and antibodies against oxidized LDL. Consumption of VOO, rich in PC, could provide beneficial effects in CHD patients as an additional and complementary intervention to the pharmacological treatment. PMID: 15939067 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Frank
Chris Malcolm - 15 Mar 2006 12:09 GMT >> http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/525130 >> [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] >> of the diet may be one explanation for its protective effect >> against cardiovascular disease.""
> Identification of Lignans as Major Components in the Phenolic Fraction > of Olive Oil - > http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/46/7/976
> It makes a difference if the olive oil is virgin versus refined.
> Antioxidant effect of virgin olive oil in patients with stable coronary > heart disease: a randomized, crossover, controlled, clinical trial. [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > complementary intervention to the pharmacological treatment. > PMID: 15939067 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Nice to have scientific confirmation of my virgin habit :-) I've long been a fan of eating most of things, whether they be fruits or vegetables, simply on the general grounds that that's what most animals have been doing for most of evolutionary history. I like liver and gland meats as well as the usual muscle meat, and I like my fish whole and ungutted, because when I gut them I sometimes find the very nutritious roes inside which my cats and I greatly enjoy.
My liking of the whole thing clearly goes back a long way. When I was little my mother objected to me leaving bits of orange peel lying round the house, so I simply ate them. I came to like them, and today I'll still eat the peel that other folk discard.
One day when I was four a health visitor came to see if my mother was looking after me properly. While quizzing my mother about diet, bowel movements, and so on, the lady observed me bite a bit of peel off an orange and eat it. She thought I was too young to understand, so she started to tell my mother a story about a little boy she knew who had eaten the peel of an orange and become very ill. I realised she was making it up, so I sat in front of her staring fixedly at her while all the time slowly eating the entire orange, pips included, until not a trace was left of it. She got increasingly flustered and told ever more exaggerated stories about parasites and germs and chemicals.
My mother completely ignored me, fed the health visitor tea and biscuits, and made polite exclamations of astonishment at every successively more frightful story of boys who had eaten orange peel.
After the lady had gone my mother said "I don't like people who talk as though you weren't there. You *were* a bit naughty though." But she said that with a grin suggesting that there were extenuating circumstances.
That was the last time the health visitor visited us :-)
 Signature Chris Malcolm cam@infirmatics.ed.ac.uk +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205 IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK [http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]
Anil - 15 Mar 2006 13:23 GMT Chris,
Oh great story Chris. Thanks for sharing. What is most interesting is as a child somehow you knew that eating the skin was the key. And you had a good sense to ignore the "experts" who claim they know what they are talking about!
So after all the beauty is skin deep eh!
Anil
Chris Malcolm - 16 Mar 2006 12:19 GMT > Chris,
> Oh great story Chris. Thanks for sharing. What is most interesting is > as a child somehow you knew that eating the skin was the key. I was only four. I had no idea that orange skin was good for me. I did know that my mother didn't think it was bad for me, and that I'd been eating it for a long time without bad effect. I was also sure that if the frightful stories of what happened to kids who ate orange peel were true, this wouldn't be the first time my mother would have heard of them, and it wouldn't be so easy to buy them. Kids often tell each other lurid made up horror stories like earwigs which eat their way from one ear to the other while you sleep, and I recognised that this woman was doing the same thing.
> And you > had a good sense to ignore the "experts" who claim they know what they > are talking about! After the woman had gone my mother made some comment about how stupid she was. It's quite likely that before the woman arrived, or perhaps at a previous visit I'd heard the same kind of remark. I was probably doing nothing much smarter than preferentially paying attention to mummy, which is a good survival trategy for children :-)
 Signature Chris Malcolm cam@infirmatics.ed.ac.uk +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205 IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK [http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]
bj - 15 Mar 2006 19:15 GMT > One day when I was four a health visitor came to see if my mother was > looking after me properly. Why? Were you or your family under some sort of supervision? Was this a followup to some sort of problem you were known to have? Is this a UK practice or something? bj
Chris Malcolm - 16 Mar 2006 12:08 GMT >> One day when I was four a health visitor came to see if my mother was >> looking after me properly.
> Why? > Were you or your family under some sort of supervision? > Was this a followup to some sort of problem you were known to have? > Is this a UK practice or something? I don't know what the current rules for these visits are, but it has for long been the case in the UK that the family of every young child gets visited to see if there are any health or other problems, and to make sure that the mother knows about any special services or benefits that she might qualify for because of her special needs or those of the kid. The child of poor parents, for example, is not supposed to go short of medical treatment or food because of that. They do pick up quite a lot of badly cared for children, and of course some abused children.
Every now and then there's a big scandal because some child is found to have died of parental abuse and the social services failed to pick it up in their visits, or failed to notify the appropriate people, etc.. Heads usually roll.
 Signature Chris Malcolm cam@infirmatics.ed.ac.uk +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205 IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK [http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]
bj - 16 Mar 2006 18:08 GMT Oh. We just don't have anything like that here in the USA. The only time social services in its various forms gets involved is if there's already a problem that's been reported. I think Americans would go ballistic, anyway, if the gummint started sending people around to check up on their parenting!
But when they do get involved, if there's a Bad Outcome, we also have our Big Scandals. Sometimes heads roll, but not always & probably not enough of the right ones. But that's just IMO. bj
>>> One day when I was four a health visitor came to see if my mother was >>> looking after me properly. [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > it up in their visits, or failed to notify the appropriate people, > etc.. Heads usually roll. Quentin Grady - 15 Mar 2006 19:43 GMT This post not CC'd by email On 15 Mar 2006 11:09:29 GMT, Chris Malcolm <cam@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>My liking of the whole thing clearly goes back a long way. When I was >little my mother objected to me leaving bits of orange peel lying [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] > >That was the last time the health visitor visited us :-) G'day G'day Chris,
Thank you for a delightful story. The response of the health worker is all too typical of human nature. Make a post anywhere mentioning the benefits of fish and someone feels compelled to mention mercury. They never seem to be aware that most of the fish in the world is not contaminated and that the assumptions made on the toxicity of mercury in fish were exaggerated by a factor of ten. Yes, in some countries that put profit ahead of the health of their people there is a problem. What I'm addressing here is how the typical response people have to new ideas is often one of anxiety.
Last weekend I put together a new method of accelerated learning for updating skills. I call it the hoon technique. Hoons view anxiety differently and in a way that accelerates their learning.
To them, anxiety is a thrill seeking appreciation.
Best wishes,
 Signature Quentin Grady ^ ^ / New Zealand, >#,#< [ / \ /\ "... and the blind dog was leading."
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/quentin
Nicky - 17 Mar 2006 21:11 GMT > One day when I was four a health visitor came to see if my mother was > looking after me properly. While quizzing my mother about diet, bowel [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > a trace was left of it. She got increasingly flustered and told ever > more exaggerated stories about parasites and germs and chemicals. Oh, ghods, I had TWO like that : ) Visits from the health visitor (which were standard in the UK until the child starts school, or hits 5, whichever happens first) were always somewhat worth holding your breath during : ) One health visitor was a Mum, and knew when a rugrat was winding her up - the other was single, childless, and clueless : )
Nicky.
 Signature A1c 10.5/5.4/<6 T2 DX 05/2004 1g Metformin, 100ug Thyroxine 95/74/72Kg
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