Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

People who consume high levels of dietary vitamin C and E may lower their risk for Parkinson’s disease by almost a third, a new study suggests. Foods high in vitamin C include oranges, strawberries, broccoli and Brussels sprouts. Foods high in vitamin E include spinach, collard greens, pumpkin and nuts such as almonds and peanuts. How might the two nutrients ward off Parkinson’s? According to the European researchers involved in the new study, vitamins C and E are also antioxidants that could ward off the cell damage Parkinson’s causes. Specifically, antioxidants might help counteract “unstable” molecules and the oxidative stress that can lead to a loss of a brain chemical called dopamine, which is a hallmark of the condition. “The protective effect of vitamins on Parkinson’s disease risk might be limited to specific vitamins, such as vitamins E and C. Therefore, eating foods that are rich in vitamins E and C might help to prevent the development of Parkinson’s disease,” said researcher Essi Hantikainen, from the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy. “Also, high concentrations of vitamin C are found in the central nervous system, where it has neuroprotective properties,” she explained. Hantikainen noted that this study can’t prove that vitamins E and C prevent Parkinson’s, only that high levels of these vitamins are associated with a lower risk of developing the disease. “Further research is… read on > read on >

If you want to burn fat this winter, take your exercise outdoors, researchers say. A Canadian study suggests that vigorous exercise in cold weather may burn more fat than working out indoors. Regular physical activity speeds metabolism and helps regulate fat in the blood (“lipids”), and high-intensity training is better for burning fat than moderate-intensity exercise, the researchers said. Temperature also plays a role in metabolism during exercise. In the study, a group of moderately fit, overweight adults participated in two high-intensity exercise sessions. In both, they completed 10 one-minute cycling sprints at 90% effort. A 90-second recovery period of cycling at 30% effort followed each sprint. In one session, the temperature was about 70 degrees Fahrenheit (“thermoneutral”). In the other session, it was 32 degrees Fahrenheit. During both sessions, the researchers measured participants’ skin temperature, core body temperature, heart rate and the amount of oxygen delivered to the large thigh muscle. “The present study found that high-intensity exercise in the cold increased lipid oxidation by 358% during the exercise bout in comparison to high-intensity exercise in a thermoneutral environment,” according to the report published online recently in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Longer-term metabolic responses after eating a high-fat meal did not change substantially after the cold condition, the researchers noted in a news release from the American Physiological Society. The lead researcher was… read on > read on >

Cases of anaphylactic shock caused by COVID-19 vaccines are very rare, based on numbers from the first week and a half of vaccinations in the United States, federal public health officials said Wednesday. There have been 21 cases of anaphylaxis out of nearly 1.9 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine administered in the very first days of the national COVID-19 vaccination program, said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We’re in the setting of 2,000 COVID deaths per day. If you make that comparison, I think it’s still a good value proposition for someone to get vaccinated,” Messonnier said. “Their risk from COVID and poor outcomes from COVID is still more than their risk of a severe outcome from the vaccine.” The average rate is 11.1 anaphylaxis cases per one million doses administered, which is higher than the rate of anaphylaxis for flu vaccine of 1.3 per one million doses administered, Messonnier noted. “I guess you could mathematically say that’s 10 times the amount, but I think that misses the point,” Messonnier said. “This is exceedingly rare, and I think that is still the message that the public should be getting from this.” Anaphylaxis occurs rapidly following COVID-19 vaccination, with symptom onset within 13 minutes of receiving the shot… read on > read on >

A return to normal life in America might happen sooner than many expect, one of the nation’s leading vaccine experts told HD Live! this week. As the new coronavirus rages across the country, President-elect Joe Biden has set a goal of one million doses of vaccine delivered every day once he takes office. If that ambitious target is realized, everyday conditions in the United States might return to normal as soon as the summer, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “I think if we can do that, if we can get a million people vaccinated a day, I think then that by summer or late summer we should be able to have enough people vaccinated that we are able to have a normal life again,” Offit said during an HD Live! interview. So far, the rollouts of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have been rather rocky. Only about 4.2 million people have had the first of two doses, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracker — far fewer than the 20 million doses that Trump administration officials promised to put in people’s arms by the end of 2020. But Americans are further ahead than many might think in one crucial aspect, Offit said — a good chunk of the U.S. population… read on > read on >