Much ado has been made about yogurt as a treatment for “irregularity,” so much so that one major vendor of yogurt specifically markets their new blend of bacteria and fermented milk for the improvement of “long intestinal transit time.” It all sounds wonderful, just eat a cup of yogurt and the trains run on time. That’s actually proven to be true in multiple studies, which is great for most people.

For those who suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), a condition that makes a mockery of regularity, things are always a little more vexing. For them, yogurt induced regularity would be a godsend. Publishing in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, researchers have taken a good look at this very question. Read the rest of this entry »

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While many researchers have been looking to exotic plants of the tropics and Far East for life extending and enhancing compounds, it turns out that one of the hottest areas for research is a humble fruit native to North America. Cultivated since the 1800s and harvested wild from bogs and forests by Native Americans for centuries, the blueberry has long been known to be loaded with vitamin C and more recently been noted for a variety of other beneficial plant compounds. Blueberries are fairly low calorie and carry a low glycemic load and should be on the shortlist of anyone looking for a healthy snack.

Recent years have seen volumes of research on the compounds in blueberries. Our friends at the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry have published no less than 53 papers in last year on the berry. Topics have been wide ranging, most recently they’ve found some interesting effects on vision and memory. Read the rest of this entry »

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This week the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published the results of a 6 year study on over 3000 older adults to see if Ginkgo biloba really lives up to claims that it helps the memory and can stave off dementia. The results: a resounding no.

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As children our mothers told us to finish our milk because it would make us big and strong. It turns out that the vitamin D enriched creamy goodness many thoughtlessly poor over cereal every morning doesn’t just build strong bones. 2009 has been a banner year for vitamin D related research and has seen the publication of numerous studies revealing that vitamin D isn’t only essential for building bones but serves in a variety of ways to help age against the machine. Read the rest of this entry »

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Resveratrol has been one of the more promising compounds to come out of anti-aging research in recent years. One news item this week suggests that its anti-inflammatory properties could “be used to treat potentially deadly inflammatory disease, such as appendicitis, peritonitis, and systemic sepsis.” Wow, that’s one heck of a claim. Harvard scientist David Sinclair, the man whose research discovered the anti-inflammatory properties of resveratrol, thinks a lot of the claims are over-stated.

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