When it comes to preventing osteoporosis, in addition to a healthy diet and supplementing with calcium, vitamins and other minerals - you also need to limit the risk factors by ensuring that you don’t lose excess calcium.

Preventing Osteoporosis - High Risk Factors:

• Carbonated soft drinks – these contain a large amount of phosphorous and research has shown a link between too much phosphorous and calcium loss. Teenagers in particular are at extreme risk. Carbonation also neutralizes stomach acid making it harder for you to absorb calcium.
• Excessive phosphorous in your diet will create poor bone structure. Phosphorous can be found in processed food, soft drinks and processed meat.
• Excess intake of caffeine, alcohol and sugar will cause calcium to be lost from the body.
• Cigarette smoking is also a significant risk factor for preventing osteoporosis - the bone mineral contents of smokers significantly lower than in men and women who don’t smoke. Also twice as many women with osteoporosis smoke compared to those women who don’t have osteoporosis.
• Antacids and pharmaceuticals such as anti-seizure drugs and diuretics can result in decreased absorption of calcium. Diuretics are commonly used to treat high blood pressure, swelling of the lower legs and congestive heart disease. Discuss this osteoporosis prevention measure with your health care professional.
• Fluoride - evidence suggests that drinking water with fluoride will increase your risk of hip fractures. We have high amounts of fluoride in our drinking water and toothpaste and when eating a normal diet the average person can exceed the recommended dose. If you’re at risk of osteoporosis or want to prevent it, we’d recommend you spend some money on a water filter that removes fluoride.
• Lack of exercise is definitely a significant factor in the cause of osteoporosis. Exercise keeps your bones strong and healthy and weight-bearing exercise can actually increase your bone density and assist in preventing osteoporosis. Weight-bearing exercises mean exercise where your body impacts eg walking and jogging as opposed to swimming.

Osteoporosis Prevention is Much Easier Than Cure

A very easy way you can prevent osteoporosis is to start improving your nutrient intake - particularly as we get older and for women post-menopause.

One way to do this is to make healthy food and lifestyle choices - and another very easy way to prevent osteoporosis is to supplement with nutrients that actually produce a result. Osteoporosis prevention is all about making sure that your bones are gaining more calcium and other minerals than they are losing.

To achieve this, we recommend you start a supplement program consisting of all 90 essential nutrients for preventing osteoporosis as well as a good calcium/magnesium supplement with additional minerals (including manganese and boron) and vitamins (especially Vitamin D).

Planning like this will make preventing osteoporosis and improved health apart of life and help you to stay active.

Summary
1.) Diet - Reducing and eliminating coffee, alcohol, sugar, processed foods and carbonated drinks are involved in preventing osteoporosis.
2.)Don’t smoke!
3.)Avoid antacids and prescription drugs that cause calcium loss.
4.)Drink pure, filtered water as much as you can.
5.)Weight-bearing exercises are important.
6.)No carbonated drinks - it's so important it's worth saying again.


About the Author
Paul Newland is a health writer, sports training consultant and martial arts instructor and runs the Global-Longevity.com website.
He is the author of numerous health information books and guides, including the Wellness Report, The Ultimate Arthritis Report, The Ultimate Nutrient Guide and The Healthy Exercise Guide - available Free through Global-Longevity.com.

Green Tea: The Eyes Have It

Feb. 18, 2010 -- Researchers say the compounds responsible for many of the health benefits of green tea are capable of penetrating the tissues of the eyes and have antioxidant activity there.

Green tea has been touted for a number of health benefits, such as fighting heart disease and cancer, thanks to its high concentration of disease-fighting antioxidants called catechins.

Researchers say catechins are among a number of antioxidants, including vitamin C, vitamin E, lutein, and zeaxanthin, thought to help protect the delicate tissues of the eye from glaucoma and other eye diseases. But until now it wasn't known if the catechins in green tea were capable of being absorbed into the tissues of the eye.

Another Health Benefit of Green Tea

In the study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers fed laboratory rats green tea extract and then analyzed their eye tissues.

The results showed that different parts of the eye absorbed varying amounts of catechins. The area with the highest concentration of catechins was the retina, which is the light-sensing tissue that lines the back of the eye. The area with the least absorption of catechins was the cornea, which is the clear, outer layer of the eye.

The study also showed that a measure of antioxidant activity lasted for up to 20 hours after the drinking green tea extract.

Researcher Kai On Chu of the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and colleagues say that their findings suggest that drinking green tea could be protective of the eyes. Further studies, however, will be needed to confirm a protective effect in humans.

Sugar Fuels Tumor Growth, Says Major New Study
(Feb. 8) -- Sugary soft drinks drastically increase the risk of developing pancreatic cancer, according to a long-term study of 60,000 people in Singapore.

A research team at the University of Minnesota followed thousands of men and women participating in the Singapore Chinese Health Study for 14 years. At the end of the study, published this month in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, the team found that those drank two or more soft drinks a week had an 87 percent higher risk of developing pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Mark Pereira, the study's lead researcher, warns that the findings likely apply to the United States and other industrialized nations as well. "Singapore is a wealthy country with excellent health care," he said. "Favorite pastimes are eating and shopping, so the findings should apply to other Western countries."

Oddly enough, those who drank fruit juice, which can have as much sugar as soda, didn't have the same cancer risk. Pereira suggests that soda drinkers might have poor health habits, which exacerbate their risk of illness. Of those studied in Singapore, individuals who drank soda were more likely to smoke and eat red meat -- two lifestyle factors already linked to cancer.

The connection between sugar and pancreatic cancer makes sense: insulin, which helps the body digest sugar, is made in the pancreas. Researchers suspect that sugary soda interferes with the body's insulin levels, which then contributes to cancerous cell growth in the pancreas.

Diabetes, another illness in which the body's insulin production is compromised, is a known risk factor for pancreatic cancer. The onset of diabetes later in life can also be an early symptom.

Determining the cause of pancreatic cancer could save thousands of lives a year: 230,000 people are diagnosed worldwide each year, and the American Cancer Society estimates that only 5 percent survive for five years.

But the study isn't a definitive answer. Out of the 60,000 individuals studied, 140 developed pancreatic cancer. Of those, 18 cases occurred in patients who'd consumed large quantities of soda, 12 occurred in those who drank soda occasionally, and 110 occurred in those who never consumed the sugary beverages.

In their analysis, the researchers acknowledge that the small numbers limit the power of the data, and "giv[e] potential to a chance association." The team also cites four previous studies that found little or no connection between soda and pancreatic cancer.

There are a handful of definitive or suggested causes for pancreatic cancer, making this study even more difficult to interpret. Aside from red meat consumption, smoking and diabetes, risk factors include genetics, ethnicity, old age, obesity and even excessive alcohol consumption.

The American Heart Association advises that women should consume fewer than 6.5 teaspoons of added sugar a day, and men should limit their consumption to 9.5 teaspoons. Given that a single can of soda contains 13 teaspoons, Americans would be wise to cut down, whether or not they're motivated by a potential cancer risk.

Study Shows Decrease in Lung Cancer Risk for Smokers Who Drink Green Tea

Jan. 12, 2010 (Coronado, Calif.) --

Drinking a cup or more a day of green tea may counteract the effect of smoking on lung cancer, especially in smokers who may not be genetically susceptible to the cancer, according to a Taiwanese researcher.

''The antioxidants may inhibit tumor growth," I-Hsin Lin, a master's degree student at Chung Shan Medical University in Taiwan, tells WebMD. She presented her findings today at the American Association of Cancer Research -- International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer meeting in Coronado, Calif.

Lin found the protective effect especially evident in a group of smokers she studied who have specific genotypes that have not been linked to cancer risk in some studies.

Lin's team evaluated 170 patients with lung cancer and 340 healthy patients. They asked the participants to describe their cigarette smoking habits, green tea drinking habits, and other lifestyle factors.

They asked participants to describe habits for the previous five years, Lin says.

The researchers performed genotyping in the participants to see if they had any of the genotypes found in some studies to be associated with cancer risk. These include IGF1 ( insulin-like growth factor 1), IGF2, and IGFBP3.

Overall, the smokers and nonsmokers who didn't drink green tea had a more than five times greater risk of lung cancer compared to those who had at least a cup of green tea, Lin found.

Among the smokers, the non-green-tea drinkers had a nearly 13 times increased risk of lung cancer compared to the smokers who drank one cup or more of green tea per day.

Even more dramatic was the protective effect of the green tea in those who did not have the susceptible genotypes for lung cancer, the researchers found.

The green tea drinkers who didn't have a genotype termed by the researchers as susceptible had a 66% reduced risk in lung cancer compared to the green tea drinkers who were susceptible.

Those who smoked heavily and had the susceptible genotype had an even higher risk.

While Lin says the best way to avoid lung cancer is to stop smoking, green tea appears to reduce risk. "Green tea can protect them from lung cancer risk, a cup or more a day," she says.

About 23% of U.S. adults still smoke cigarettes, according to the CDC.

Nathan Pennell, MD, PhD, a doctor at the Taussig Cancer Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, expressed caution at the findings.

He notes that "only seven smokers had one or more cups of green tea a day." That means the majority did not drink a cup or never drank it.

''Certainly no one has shown a definitive association between drinking green tea and lung cancer," he tells WebMD. And some antioxidants have not borne out as cancer preventives.

Also check out this blog and others at http://greenteahpbygrenx.wordpress.com/

Effects of Green Tea and EGCG on Cardiovascular and Metabolic Health

Swen Wolfram, PhD
DSM Nutritional Products Ltd, Department of Human Nutrition and Health, CH-4002 Basel, SWITZERLAND

Address reprint requests to: Dr. Swen Wolfram, DSM Nutritional Products Ltd, Department of Human Nutrition and Health, P.O. Box 3255, Bldg. 241/425, CH-4002 Basel, SWITZERLAND

Since ancient times green tea has been considered a health-promoting beverage. In recent years, scientists throughout the world have investigated the potential benefits of green tea and its most abundant catechin, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). The anti-cancer effects of green tea and EGCG were the focus of early research, and encouraging data from in vitro, animal model, and human studies have emerged. Due to the dominant role of cardiovascular disease and the dramatic rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus as major and interlinked healthcare problems, green tea and EGCG are increasingly being investigated in these areas. Dose-response relationships observed in several epidemiological studies have indicated that pronounced cardiovascular and metabolic health benefits can be obtained by regular consumption of 5–6 or more cups of green tea per day. Furthermore, intervention studies using similar amounts of green tea, containing 200–300 mg of EGCG, have demonstrated its usefulness for maintaining cardiovascular and metabolic health. Additionally, there are numerous in vivo studies demonstrating that green tea and EGCG exert cardiovascular and metabolic benefits in these model systems. Therefore, green tea and EGCG can be regarded as food components useful for the maintenance of cardiovascular and metabolic health. To prove the effectiveness for disease prevention or treatment, several multi-center, long-term clinical studies investigating the effects of one precisely-defined green tea product on cardiovascular and metabolic endpoints would be necessary. The aim of this manuscript is to provide an overview of the research investigating the effects of green tea and green tea catechins on cardiovascular and metabolic health.