In the news

            Most of us in California are pretty familiar with avocados and we have some good news to share. A Harvard study showed that in two studies involving more than 100,000 people over 30 years, having two or more servings (one half of an avocado) on a weekly basis lowered the risk of coronary artery disease by more than 20 percent. Considering that in the first couple of decades of these studies avocados were not a particularly popular food item, it’s likely that even better results will be observed in the future.

            Another bit of good news is that avocados were at the top of the Environmental Working Group’s 2022 list of the Clean Fifteen – the fruits and vegetables that had the lowest levels of contamination with pesticides.

            (Caveat: the EWG is not without controversy and so is its list of the Dirty Dozen – the ones with the highest levels of pesticide residue. The EWG has been criticized for being alarmist, castigating levels of pesticides that are far below those deemed to be harmful, using data that are far out of date, and of doing sloppy research. A group of toxicologists has dismissed their findings. We will discuss these topics in detail in a future post.)

            Let’s get back to avocados. They are loaded with beneficial nutrients such as vitamins, antioxidants, potassium, magnesium, fiber, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (i.e., the ones that do not contribute to heart disease but without which our health would suffer significantly).

            The studies showed that persons who savored avocados were less likely to eat much saturated fat, cheese and meat products. That of course would also lower their risk of heart disease.

            But let’s face it, avocados are an acquired taste – maybe not as bad as okra or tofu but not as appetizing as most other fruits and vegetables. The good news is that you can get your one-half-of-an-avocado serving in a sandwich or salad, where the sweetness adds a good deal to the overall flavor of the item.

            There are several varieties of avocados so don’t give up on them if your first taste leaves you unimpressed. It’s worth trying different varieties to gain some outstanding health benefits. And there’s even avocado ice cream! But it’s called frozen dessert☹

Lifestyle

            For the last couple of decades there have been scary stories about the link between cell phone usage and brain tumors. It’s probably time to stop worrying.

            In a study that involved nearly 800,000 women in the U.K. there was no apparent link between cell phone usage and any kind of brain tumor. Although this information is reassuring it will probably take a decade or more to really know if cell phones can lead to brain cancers. This is a moving target. When cell phones first came on the scene they were huge. Do you remember “the brick” – phones that were ten or twenty times as large as the ones we use now? New technology has resulted in lower radiation levels from  these phones; many of us use earbuds and no longer hold the device against our skull.

            Considering how many deaths occur because of driving while dialing, talking or texting, and the occasional phone-distracted pedestrian who walks into the path of a bus, it doesn’t make much sense to lose sleep over the risk of acquiring a brain tumor from a cell phone.

In the news

More on COVID-19 and diabetes – and a heads-up on screening

            In the last post I mentioned that in some persons who experienced abnormally high blood sugar after having been infected by the coronavirus, their sugar metabolism returned to normal. That left the rest with persistent elevations, meaning that they had developed type 2 diabetes. This has been confirmed by physicians at the VA health facility in St. Louis, Missouri.

            Among more than 180,000 persons with prior COVID-19 infection many still had a diabetes profile at the end of one year. Nearly all had type 2 diabetes. That surprised me, since some observers noted that this coronavirus damaged insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, a hallmark of type 1 diabetes. But then, these cases didn’t entirely resemble the pattern of type 2 diabetes either. The good news is that we can expect to learn much more about both types of diabetes, an eventual benefit for mankind.

            I have long encouraged annual diabetes screening for persons at greater risk as early as age ten!: those who are overweight, of black, Hispanic or Pacific Islander ancestry, persons with a family history of type 2 diabetes. Everyone over the age of 40 should be screened every year. You can add another group that should be screened: anyone who has experienced COVID-19, even if the symptoms were mild. Remember that prediabetes or the early stages of type 2 diabetes show no symptoms but the diagnosis can be made in many cases with a simple blood test and in nearly everyone with the next level of testing.

Lifestyle

Low-carb diet can include good carbs

Your grocery cart should be full – of fruits and vegetables. That might seem to be a challenge for persons on a low-carb diet that limits even the beneficial carbs in plant foods, especially in the early phases of the diet. However, the South Beach Diet lists 83 (!) legumes and vegetables that can be eaten in Phase One. The key, of course, is to limit the serving size to no more than ½ cup of legumes and two cups of vegetables with any meal. Two cups may sound like a lot for a weight-reduction diet but it is not a lot of calories because vegetables are comprised mostly of water and fiber.

            A two-cup “serving” is about the size of a medium-sized person’s fist. You can confirm the size of your own fist by putting 2 cups of water in a 4-cup measuring cup. Immerse your fist and see where the water level ends up. Your fist then becomes a practical guide to a 2-cup serving size. If you’re a big guy it might be only 2/3 of your fist; if you are small-framed it might be a little more. Don’t get hung up on small differences!!

            Vegetables – and even fruits — have very few calories per ounce; their fiber and water content give you a feeling of fullness that goes a long way to relieving hunger and especially, cravings. And the more colorful they are the higher content of antioxidants. Plants give us more vitamins than any other food and although they lose some of these in storage and shipping, only whole grains even come close. And junk food? Forgeddaboutit!