Natural Awakenings Twin Cities December 2019

health briefs
Eat Mushrooms to Lower
Risk of Prostate Cancer
Researchers followed more
than 36,000 Japanese
men older than 40 for an
average of 13.2 years.
They found that those
that consumed culinary
mushrooms three times a
week had a 17 percent lower
chance of developing prostate cancer compared to those
that ate mushrooms less than once a week. Participants
that ate mushrooms once or twice a week had an 8 percent
lower risk. The trend was even greater for those men over
the age of 50 and was unrelated to other dietary habits.
Maintain a Healthy Diet and
Weight to Lower Cataract Risk
A recent study published in The Journal of Nutrition used
adherence to dietary guidelines and total diet scores to
assess the effects of diet on cataract risk.
The researchers followed 2,173 older Australians
for five and 10 years in two phases. They found that
maintaining a healthy body mass index
(BMI) of less than 25, combined with a
healthy diet, reduced the risk of
developing cataracts.
Eat a Better
Diet to Improve
Gut Bacteria
Researchers at the University of
Hawaii Cancer Center tested stool
samples of 858 men and 877 women
in Los Angeles and Hawaii with a mean
age of 69—regarded as an ethnically
diverse study population with varied
food intakes. The study found that
those with higher quality diets also
had significantly better gut bacteria
diversity, a factor linked to reduced
risk for a variety of diseases. Diet quality and a
reduced risk of developing chronic disease is
strongly associated with fecal microbial diversity.
8 Twin Cities Edition NAtwincities.com
Reduce Blood Pressure and
Heart Attacks With Better
Gut Bacteria
New research offers potential
paths for treatment
for the nearly 20 percent
of patients with high blood
pressure that don’t respond
well to medications. University
of Florida College of
Medicine researchers, testing
105 volunteers, found
that the populations of gut
bacteria differed between
hypertensive individuals
with depression and those without depression. A second
study by Italian researchers found that patients with heart
attacks had different bacteria in their guts than patients
with stable angina.
Train Students in
Mindfulness to
Reduce Stress and
Improve Grades
Sixth-graders that received mindfulness
training each day for eight weeks
experienced lower stress levels, less
depression and improved academic
performance compared to their
peers in a control group
that studied computer
coding, report
Massachusetts
Institute of
Technology
researchers. In
addition to that
100-student
study, researchers
surveyed 2,000 students
in grades five
through eight and found
those that showed more
mindfulness tended to
have better grades and test
scores. They also had fewer
absences and suspensions.
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