Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

If a healthy slurp is your aim, skip the banana when you whip up a smoothie. Researchers at the University of California-Davis found that adding banana may interfere with absorption of powerful compounds called flavanols, which are linked to brain and heart health. “We were really surprised to see how quickly adding a single banana decreased the level of flavanols in the smoothie and the levels of flavanol absorbed in the body,” lead author Javier Ottaviani said in a news release. He’s an adjunct researcher at UC-Davis and director of the Core Laboratory at Mars Edge, part of Mars Inc. Flavanols — which are found in such foods as apples, berries, cocoa and grapes — are natural compounds that help support memory, reduce inflammation and improve blood flow when consumed regularly. That is, unless banana or another ingredient get in the way, researchers say. The problem is an enzyme abundant in bananas called polyphenol oxidase (PPO). In experiments, banana-based smoothies dramatically cut flavanol absorption compared to berry-based ones, researchers reported recently in the journal Food and Function. They wanted to learn whether the same enzyme activity that quickly causes a banana or apple to turn brown when peeled affected how much of these beneficial flavanols the body absorbs when the fruits are combined in a smoothie. “We sought to understand, on a very practical level,… read on > read on >

The pricing applies to Medicare, Medicaid and a program launching later this year called TrumpRx read on >

Exercise can help women with advanced breast cancer better withstand both cancer treatments and the ravages of the disease, a new clinical trial shows. A nine-month program of supervised aerobic and resistant exercise improved muscle mass and strength among women with advanced breast cancer, particularly in their arms and legs, researchers found. The women put on nearly 2 pounds of additional muscle mass within the first three months, compared to a control group that didn’t have exercise classes, researchers found. While muscle mass did decline over time, the women still had just under a pound of extra muscle after six months compared to the control group, researchers added. “The results from our study are important since lean body mass is linked to better treatment tolerance, prognosis and overall health, and increased muscle strength correlates with improved quality of life and lower mortality risk,” said researcher Anne May, a professor of clinical epidemiology of cancer survivorship at the University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands. “This supports the call for exercise, and specifically supervised exercise with a resistance exercise component, to be integrated as a standard component of cancer care for patients with metastatic breast cancer,” May added in a news release. For the study, researchers recruited 357 patients with stage 4 breast cancer between 2019 and 2022. The women were being treated in hospitals in… read on > read on >

Folks who’ve had a recent concussion might not want to get behind the wheel anytime soon. Concussion victims are more likely to wind up in a traffic crash and that increased risk is highest during the first four weeks after their brain injury, researchers reported Nov. 6 in BMJ Open. A concussion causes brain problems that can affect driving skills, including insomnia, dizziness, depression, brain fog and slowed reaction times, researchers said. “I worry that sometimes a concussion requires more recovery time than most people realize,” lead researcher Dr. Donald Redelmeier, a scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto, Canada, said in a news release. “Rushing things might lead to another injury including a life-threatening traffic crash,” he said. For the study, researchers analyzed medical records for more than 3 million patients in Ontario who suffered either a concussion or an ankle sprain between April 2002 and March 2022. They identified more than 425,000 people who were treated for concussion and 2.6 million with an ankle sprain. People with a concussion had an overall 49% higher risk of being in a traffic crash than those who’d sprained their ankle, the study found. But their risk was six times higher in the first month following a concussion, researchers noted. About 1 in every 13 concussion patients wound up injured… read on > read on >

Losing weight is considered one way to improve male fertility, but how guys drop pounds also matters, a new evidence review says. Men who lost weight through diet and exercise did wind up with better sperm quality, even with modest weight loss, researchers recently reported in the journal Human Reproduction Update. However, losing weight through bariatric surgery did not cause any notable positive changes to sperm quality, even though men lost substantial amounts of weight quickly, researchers found. “Lifestyle changes are associated with modest improvements in sperm motility and morphology, even though the amount of weight lost was much smaller than surgical options,” lead researcher Andrew Peel of the University of Adelaide’s Freemasons Center for Men’s Health and Wellbeing in Australia said in a news release. “This indicates that for men with obesity, whilst obesity has detrimental effects, reproductive success may be more dependent on optimizing nutrition and exercise rather than substantial weight loss alone,” he said. For the new study, researchers analyzed data from 32 previous studies involving men with obesity 18 to 50 years old. The men were trying to lose weight through surgery, weight-loss medications, or diet and exercise programs. “Previous research has shown that infertility rates are approximately 50% higher in men with obesity compared to men of a normal weight, with the condition associated with reductions in basic sperm parameters… read on > read on >