BEST DIET : LOSE WEIGHT WITH BEST TRICK

When it comes to preventing cancer, can what you eat make a difference?

Certain foods are high in antioxidants, which mop up the free radicals that contribute to cancer. But in studies it’s been a challenge to tease apart the effects of diet alone on cancer risk, since people who eat foods rich in antioxidants also tend to exercise more and avoid smoking, other factors that are known to lower the chances of developing cancer.

Now, in a small study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research, researchers uncovered more intriguing evidence that diet may influence the cancer process, even before it begins. Among three dozen participants at high risk of developing esophageal cancer in China, it turned out that eating strawberries helped prevent early lesions from developing into tumors. That’s right — strawberries.

Tong Chen, a cancer researcher at Ohio State Comprehensive Cancer Center, decided to look at strawberries as a cancer-preventer in humans after animal studies showed that the fruit had anti-cancer effects. With plenty of dried fruit supplied by the California Strawberry Commission, which also funded the study, she focused her trial on 36 participants from three provinces in central China that have among the world’s highest rates of esophageal cancer. She gave the volunteers freeze-dried strawberry powder, which was mixed with water into a drink. The freeze-dried form tends to concentrate whatever beneficial properties the fruit might have. (In her animal work, Chen had tested black raspberries as well, but because that fruit isn’t as common in China, the current trial included only strawberries.)

In many cases, esophageal cancer progresses from pre-cancerous growths that are graded as mild, moderate and severe for their likelihood of advancing into malignancy. Among the participants in the new study, 29 saw their lesions revert to a less dangerous state — from mild to ungraded, or from moderate to mild — after six months of consuming the equivalent of two ounces of strawberries a day.

“We are very excited about this result,” Chen says. “I think this study is very important because we found that strawberries may decrease the histological grade of precancerous lesions and also may reduce some cancer-related events including cell proliferation, inflammation and gene [activity].”

She’s quick to point out, however, that gulping down pints of strawberries isn’t the answer to fighting cancer. A larger, more rigorous trial that includes both people at risk of esophageal cancer and healthy, low-risk controls, who are randomly assigned to dosing with strawberries or a placebo, needs to be conducted.

But in the case of a cancer in which half of those with moderate pre-cancerous lesions go on to develop malignant tumors, and 25% of those with mild lesions do, finding ways to halt their march can have a major impact on the incidence of the disease, especially in areas like central China where rates are high. “This shows us that strawberries may be an alternative or work together with other chemopreventive drugs in the prevention of esophageal cancer,” says Chen. And preventing cancer is always preferable to treating it.

Eating certain foods can help people lower their cholesterol levels, even without the aid of medication, a new study finds.

In the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, patients who started out with high or borderline high LDL, or bad cholesterol, levels (anything above 158 mg/dL) were able to lower their LDL by 14% over six months by sticking with a diet rich in cholesterol-lowering foods.

That diet cut participants’ LDL three times more than a standard low-fat diet.

So what foods were effective against artery-clogging fat? According to study leader Dr. David Jenkins, chair of nutrition, metabolism and vascular biology at the University of Toronto, there are four pillars of a cholesterol-lowering diet: plant oils or sterols such as margarine; viscous fibers including oats, barley and psyllium; nuts; and soy.

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For most people, Jenkins says, it wouldn’t require that much effort to boost consumption of these foods enough to achieve a cholesterol-reducing effect. In fact, he says, it would be sufficient to substitute oat bran or psyllium cereal in the morning in place of your regular breakfast, and to try soy milk products instead of dairy.

The six-month study was the first to look at the potential impact of a real-world diet on cholesterol levels. Rather than providing their 345 participants with foods to eat, researchers counseled them on how to shop for and incorporate more cholesterol-lowering products into their diet on their own. (The only food given to the study participants was plant sterol-based margarine, which was not permitted to be sold in Canada, the site of the study, at the time.) One group of participants received two nutritional counseling sessions of 40-60 mins. each, while another group received a more intensive schedule of seven sessions over six months. The control group got advice on how to eat a low saturated fat diet.

At the end of the six months, the two intervention groups showed an average 25 mg/dL drop in their LDL levels, compared with an 8 mg/dL decline in the low-fat-diet group. Both groups that received counseling on cholesterol-lowering diets showed similar reductions, suggesting that people were able to change their diets after just two sessions of instruction.

“The results show that we do have something worthwhile to add to the dietary formula,” says Jenkins.

He notes that the majority of people in the study were recruited through advertisements, which may have targeted people with a pre-existing interest in lowering their cholesterol levels, so they might have been particularly keen on adopting the necessary dietary changes to keep their lipid levels in check.

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Jenkins suggests that the results could be even more impressive among people who aren’t paying much attention to their diet at all and may therefore have more to gain. “The implication from our point of view is that if we take the couch potato, and they were to bite the bullet and adopt these changes, they could do much better in terms of reducing their cholesterol,” he says.

How much more tofu and oat bran would it take to make a difference? Based on an average 2,000-calorie daily diet, Jenkins said the study participants were instructed to aim for 2 g of plant sterol, nearly 20 g of fiber, and 40 g each of soy and nut products daily.

Only about 40% of the volunteers reached this target, but Jenkins says anyone can easily start adding some of these foods into their diet gradually. “To eat more oats, for example, change your breakfast cereal and try some desserts made of oat bran with fruits and nuts,” he says. He acknowledges that boosting soy intake could be a little more difficult, particularly among westerners who still aren’t accustomed to the protein that’s such a staple of Asian diets.

But the effort may be worth it, especially for those who aren’t eager to start popping pills to lower their cholesterol, Jenkins says. In the first study his team did on these foods, in 2003, they showed that in a lab setting, when participants were provided with the adequate amounts of fiber, nuts, soy and plant sterols, they were able to lower their LDL levels by nearly 30% — with the reductions associated with early cholesterol-lowering statin drugs.

Jenkins says his next step is to follow-up with his diet-study patients to see whether the change in their eating habits translates to cleaner arteries and therefore to fewer heart events. He plans to conduct imaging studies of the major arteries to document any changes the diet may have on blood vessels.

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In the meantime, he says, “I don’t think it’s that difficult” to switch to a more powerful cholesterol-lowering diet. “You don’t have to hold your nose, but just change as much as you can and look for substitutes for high-fat foods that often fill the gap very, very well.”

Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

If you’ve ever sat at your desk scarfing a vending-machine lunch, then you’d probably agree with the authors of a recent editorial in the journal PLoS Medicine, who wrote: “[U]nhealthy eating could legitimately be considered a new form of occupational hazard.”

The authors are referring mainly to night-shift workers — doctors and nurses, for instance — who work in 24/7 industries. Off-kilter shift schedules are notorious for encouraging bad eating habits, and they also disrupt circadian rhythms and prevent adequate sleep — all of which conspires to make workers fat and increase their risk of Type 2 diabetes, among other ills.

The editorial writers cite the results of a recent study, also published in PLoS Medicine, and which we reported on Healthland earlier this month, that involved nearly 177,000 participants of the Nurses’ Health Studies. That study found that women who had rotating night shifts were more likely to develop diabetes over a 20-year follow-up, compared with women who worked during the day.

The longer women worked nights, the higher their risk: those who had rotating night shifts for 1 to 2 years had a 5% increased risk of diabetes; working nights on and off for 10 to 19 years upped the risk to 40%; and women who pulled graveyard shifts for more than 20 years were 60% more likely to develop diabetes than those who never worked at night.

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The study authors, led by Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, had multiple theories for why night work might lead to bad health. For one thing, shift workers are more likely to grab junky foods on the go — out of the aforementioned vending machines or from fast-food restaurants — which leads to weight gain, a risk factor for diabetes. They’re also less likely to get regular exercise, because of their screwy sleep schedules.

Previous research has shown that even going to bed mere hours later than normal — at 3:45 a.m., instead of 12:30 a.m. — can lead to unhealthy eating and weight gain. We reported on a study by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine researchers in May:

Being a night owl appeared to do more harm than good: for starters, people who stayed up late got less sleep overall (5 hrs. 33 mins. versus 6 hrs. 38 mins. for normal sleepers). Worse, compared with early-to-bed-early-to-risers, late sleepers had a much less healthful diet: they ate more fast food (five meals per week, compared with the normal sleepers’ three), drank more full-calorie soda (4.5 servings per week versus 1.3) and got significantly fewer fruits and vegetables (1.9 servings per day versus 3.4).

Notably, the late sleepers ate roughly the same number of calories per day as normal sleepers. … However, they ate a larger proportion of their food later in the day — at dinner or after 8 p.m. On average, late sleepers’ dinners contained 825 calories, while the normal sleepers’ suppers totaled 630 calories. Those who stayed up late consumed 754 calories per day after 8 p.m., while the normal sleepers ate only 376 calories.

The findings fall in line with animal research on the same phenomenon. A 2010 study found that when light-dark cycles were tampered with, so that mice were exposed to continuously dim light when they should have been sleeping, mice gained 50% more weight than animals living in a natural light-dark environment, even though all the mice ate and exercised the same amount.

Turns out, the animals exposed to late-night light — equivalent to the glow of a TV or computer screen for humans — ate most of their food during their normal sleeping hours, suggesting that it’s not only what you eat, but when that matters.

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Further, disrupted sleep itself — either not getting enough sleep or sleeping at the wrong time — interferes with your circadian rhythm, which may in turn wreak havoc with your appetite and metabolism, and increase blood sugar levels and insulin resistance, according to Hu. These factors also increase risks for obesity and diabetes.

The problem of shift work is no small matter: some 15% to 20% of the working population in the U.S. and Europe is engaged in night work. “As the world of work becomes increasingly 24 hour, shift work will become more common,” the editorial authors write, suggesting that it “has the potential to accelerate the progression of the global epidemic of obesity and diabetes.”

There may not be much to mitigate the effects of shift work — especially if it’s inconsistent — on the body’s internal clock, but workers’ eating habits are “obvious targets for intervention,” the authors note. Perhaps workplaces, particularly those that employ shift workers, can lead the way in improving workers’ diets and making sure it’s easier and cheaper for them to eat healthily than not, the authors said.

Many heroic efforts to change people’s eating behaviors have been launched and failed over the years, but the authors suggest that the field of occupational health now has reason to enter the fray.

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