More fruits and veggies, less salt prevents stones from forming
Researchers have found another reason to eat well: a healthy diet helps prevent kidney stones. Loading up on fruits, vegetables, nuts, low-fat dairy products, and whole grains, while limiting salt, red and processed meats, and sweetened beverages is an effective way to ward off kidney stones, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN).
Because kidney stones are linked to higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, increased body weight, and other risk factors for heart disease, the findings have considerable health implications.
Because a DASH-style diet may affect the development of hypertension, diabetes, and other chronic diseases associated with kidney stones, the researchers also performed an analysis limited to study participants without hypertension or diabetes. Even among those individuals the DASH diet reduced the risk of kidney stones.
Many of the medications used to treat kidney stones have unpleasant side effects. This study indicates that adopting a DASH-style diet may be an effective alternative.
High-Carb, High-Fat Diets Superior to High-Protein Diets in Improving Cognitive Performance
Deborah Brauser
September 1, 2009 — Diets high in carbohydrates or fat can lead to significantly better cognitive-performan ce and inflight-testing scores in pilots than diets high in protein, according to results reported in a poster presentation at the Military Health Research Forum (MHRF) 2009 in Kansas City, Missouri.
In addition, a high-carbohydrate diet helped study pilots sleep better, and a high-fat diet appeared to lead to significantly faster short-term memory.
"We started out thinking that the high-protein diet would lead to being the sharpest afterward," said colead investigator Glenda Lindseth, RN, PhD, licensed registered dietician and professor of nursing at the University of North Dakota (UND) in Grand Forks. "But we were surprised by our findings that it was actually the high-carb or high-fat diets that were the best. Eating a diet that's high in protein just isn't going to help you perform optimally."
The Lindseths report that human error has been implicated in 70% to 80% of civil- and military-aviation accidents and in up to 91% of general-aviation accidents. In addition, lack of proper nutrition was rated as the top stressor in the daily lives of professional airline pilots
Little Research on Diet and Cognition
There is currently little research on the potential connection between dietary intake and cognition. So in this study, the investigators sought to compare diets high in carbohydrates, fat, and protein to test their effects on cognition, flight performance, and sleep patterns.
During the first week, participants were randomized to receive 1 of 4 diets (3 full meals and 2 snacks) for 4 days: a diet high in carbohydrates, a diet high in fat, a diet high in protein, or a control diet. After a 2-week "phase-out" period, all pilots then randomly received a different study diet. This process was repeated until all pilots had received all 4 diets.
Worse Performance With High-Protein Diet
Results showed that overall flight-performance scores for the pilots consuming a high-protein diet were significantly worse (P < 05) than for those consuming a high-carbohydrate or a high-fat diet.
In addition, high-carbohydrate diets produced shorter sleep latencies than the other diets, especially the control diet (P < .03). In fact, the researchers found that if the pilots ate the high-carbohydrate diet, they seemed to sleep better, fall asleep quicker, and wake up less often.
"We're certainly not saying you always have to eat high fat," said Glenda Lindseth. "The take-away message is that a diet that is well balanced and has a lot of carbohydrates and a reasonable amount of fat in it is best for pilots to perform well cognitively. "
Findings Likely Generalizeable
In an interview with Medscape Psychiatry, Karen Tountas, PhD, MHRF conference chair and the event's peer-reviewed medical research program manager, said: "I think this is a very exciting study. They've focused on working with pilots but anything we can find out about diet and its relationship to cognition [will likely] translate across all people. [This study] does open up avenues of more questions to be asked."
"We know the brain's primary source of energy is glucose — that is sugar, just straight sugar," Captain E. Melissa Kaime, MD, director of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP), part of the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, told Medscape Psychiatry.
"In some ways it shouldn't surprise us that a diet high in carbohydrates is good for the brain because that's the glucose it needs. But we all know that there are other problems in society too, such as an obesity epidemic. So we want to certainly feed the brain but we don't want to overfeed it or the rest of the body."
"We're trying so hard to keep people healthy and we want the magic bullet — the 1 pill or the 1 vaccine that fixes everything." Captain Kaime said that this study is just 1 more that says the solution "is in your diet. And that is actually good news. Because if the solutions are . . . common sense and practical and available, [something] that you don't have to go out and buy with a prescription and that is at your fingertips anyway, that just makes it all the more powerful."
