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I received Dr. Perricone's newsletter in my email and thought it would be great to share with all of you. I am not sure if any of you are familiar with his work but much of what he has found in his research on anti aging and how foods affect the body is similar to what DR A found. In many ways, I appreciate DR Perricone's research in addition to DR A's just because he goes into great detail on almost every sort of food and how it affects every organ based on how much insulin it causes the body to produce.
Spinach Sharpens Minds, Helps Hearts </B>
Savory, leafy green is abundant in nutrients shown to boost fading brain function and ease blood pressure </B>
by Nicholas V. Perricone
Spinach has long been one of my favorite vegetables. But I'm not talking about the overcooked mush served at cafeteria steam tables, which also results from cooking frozen spinach. Ideally, you should choose fresh spinach and serve it lightly sautéed to preserve its nutrients and appealing deep-green color.
But there is much more to spinach than good taste. Calorie for calorie, spinach and other dark-green leafy vegetables provide more preventive-health nutrients and anti-aging antioxidants than most other foods.
Spinach is extraordinarily rich in a variety of powerfully antioxidant, anti-inflammatory phyto-nutrients, including flavonoids like quercetin and carotenoids such as beta-carotene and lutein.
Carotenoids: the color of health
While fruits and vegetables obtain their vivid hues from natural antioxidant pigments, these bright colors impart important health benefits as well as eye appeal.
Prominent among the plant kingdom's natural colors are the carotenoids, whose name derives from the role these antioxidant yellow-red pigments play in giving carrots their characteristic color.
In fact, carotenoids are responsible for the red-yellow-orange hues in fruits and vegetables, egg yolks, wild Alaskan salmon, steelhead trout, shellfish (e.g., shrimp and lobsters), and the feathers of birds, notably flaming-pink flamingos. Fish and fowl alike get their red-yellow-orange hues from eating large quantities of carotenoid-rich aquatic plants, algae, and plankton.
Dark, leafy greens like spinach, kale, chard, and collards are rich in carotenoids, but their red-yellow-orange colors are masked by green-hued chlorophyll, which is a more dominant pigment.
These are some of the key benefits you may enjoy from eating carotenoid-rich foods like spinach:
Spinach offers extraordinary amounts of several essential nutrients. Together with its potent antioxidant, anti-aging pigments, these metabolic basics make it a preventive-health powerhouse:
· Excellent source of vitamin C and of vitamin K, which is essential to bone health.
Excellent source of the B-complex vitamin folate, a B-complex vitamin essential for cell growth, reproduction, and proper fetal development. (Boiled, it contains 146 mcg per 3.5 ounce serving, or about 37 percent of the recommended daily allowance.) Folate also allows the body to neutralize a blood chemical called homocysteine that can lead to heart attack or stroke. And, low folate intake has been linked to increased risk of a number of cancers.
· Excellent source of magnesium, which can help lower high blood pressure and protect against heart disease.
· Good source of calcium, but also high in oxalic acid, which blocks its absorption. For this reason, spinach is not as good a source as its calcium content suggests.
Food-borne folate found to boost brain function
Researchers at Tufts University report that men who consumed foods high in folate (such as spinach) for three years displayed sharper cognitive skills at the end of the study period. The researchers tested two mental capacities that typically decline with age: verbal skills and the ability to copy complex figures.
Referring to the latter task, Tufts nutritional epidemiologist Katherine Tucker described the challenges this task presents the brain: "You have to visualize it spatially, locate it in your brain and then tell your hand to draw it."
The Tufts team attributed the cognitive benefits to the fact that folate opens up blood vessels, thereby increasing the blood supplies to the brain. However, based on the findings from several animal studies, it seems likely that the brain-boosting antioxidant effects of the carotenoids in spinach may also have played a beneficial role.
Folate lowers blood pressure
Another study, this one involving young women, found that those who consumed at least 1,000 micrograms of folate a day were 46 percent less likely to develop high blood pressure than those who consumed less than 200 micrograms.
Since high blood pressure is a major cardiovascular risk factor, this is a very exciting finding. Experts recommend that all adults consume at least 400 micrograms a day, which is the amount it is considered essential for women to take to prevent birth defects. (Note: a high-folate diet can cause seizures in those taking anti-convulsion medications.).
Spinach Sharpens Minds, Helps Hearts </B>
Savory, leafy green is abundant in nutrients shown to boost fading brain function and ease blood pressure </B>
by Nicholas V. Perricone
Spinach has long been one of my favorite vegetables. But I'm not talking about the overcooked mush served at cafeteria steam tables, which also results from cooking frozen spinach. Ideally, you should choose fresh spinach and serve it lightly sautéed to preserve its nutrients and appealing deep-green color.
But there is much more to spinach than good taste. Calorie for calorie, spinach and other dark-green leafy vegetables provide more preventive-health nutrients and anti-aging antioxidants than most other foods.
Spinach is extraordinarily rich in a variety of powerfully antioxidant, anti-inflammatory phyto-nutrients, including flavonoids like quercetin and carotenoids such as beta-carotene and lutein.
Carotenoids: the color of health
While fruits and vegetables obtain their vivid hues from natural antioxidant pigments, these bright colors impart important health benefits as well as eye appeal.
Prominent among the plant kingdom's natural colors are the carotenoids, whose name derives from the role these antioxidant yellow-red pigments play in giving carrots their characteristic color.
In fact, carotenoids are responsible for the red-yellow-orange hues in fruits and vegetables, egg yolks, wild Alaskan salmon, steelhead trout, shellfish (e.g., shrimp and lobsters), and the feathers of birds, notably flaming-pink flamingos. Fish and fowl alike get their red-yellow-orange hues from eating large quantities of carotenoid-rich aquatic plants, algae, and plankton.
Dark, leafy greens like spinach, kale, chard, and collards are rich in carotenoids, but their red-yellow-orange colors are masked by green-hued chlorophyll, which is a more dominant pigment.
These are some of the key benefits you may enjoy from eating carotenoid-rich foods like spinach:
- The body converts the carotenoids in spinach to vitamin A (retinol) as needed. Carotenoids may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, in part because of their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties (NOTE: unlike food sources, supplemental carotenoids such as alpha- and beta-carotene do not produce consistently positive results against cardiovascular disease.) Carotenoids neutralize the free radicals responsible for general oxidative stress-the primary force behind the symptom-free "sub-clinical" inflammation that accelerates the internal aging process and manifests externally as wrinkles. may reduce the risk of cancer: especially cancers of the lung, bladder, breast, esophagus, and stomach. The lutein and zeaxanthin abundant in spinach, kale, and collard greens exert protective antioxidant effects in the retina, and, accordingly, they appear to help prevent cataracts and macular degeneration.
- Carotenoids help block sunlight-induced inflammation in the skin, which leads to wrinkles and can cause skin cancer.
Spinach offers extraordinary amounts of several essential nutrients. Together with its potent antioxidant, anti-aging pigments, these metabolic basics make it a preventive-health powerhouse:
· Excellent source of vitamin C and of vitamin K, which is essential to bone health.
Excellent source of the B-complex vitamin folate, a B-complex vitamin essential for cell growth, reproduction, and proper fetal development. (Boiled, it contains 146 mcg per 3.5 ounce serving, or about 37 percent of the recommended daily allowance.) Folate also allows the body to neutralize a blood chemical called homocysteine that can lead to heart attack or stroke. And, low folate intake has been linked to increased risk of a number of cancers.
· Excellent source of magnesium, which can help lower high blood pressure and protect against heart disease.
· Good source of calcium, but also high in oxalic acid, which blocks its absorption. For this reason, spinach is not as good a source as its calcium content suggests.
Food-borne folate found to boost brain function
Researchers at Tufts University report that men who consumed foods high in folate (such as spinach) for three years displayed sharper cognitive skills at the end of the study period. The researchers tested two mental capacities that typically decline with age: verbal skills and the ability to copy complex figures.
Referring to the latter task, Tufts nutritional epidemiologist Katherine Tucker described the challenges this task presents the brain: "You have to visualize it spatially, locate it in your brain and then tell your hand to draw it."
The Tufts team attributed the cognitive benefits to the fact that folate opens up blood vessels, thereby increasing the blood supplies to the brain. However, based on the findings from several animal studies, it seems likely that the brain-boosting antioxidant effects of the carotenoids in spinach may also have played a beneficial role.
Folate lowers blood pressure
Another study, this one involving young women, found that those who consumed at least 1,000 micrograms of folate a day were 46 percent less likely to develop high blood pressure than those who consumed less than 200 micrograms.
Since high blood pressure is a major cardiovascular risk factor, this is a very exciting finding. Experts recommend that all adults consume at least 400 micrograms a day, which is the amount it is considered essential for women to take to prevent birth defects. (Note: a high-folate diet can cause seizures in those taking anti-convulsion medications.).
. I love the cabbage greens the southern way too!!!! Only way to have them!
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