NNNNews April 20

Diet
If you care about aging gracefully, you will want to learn how to protect your telomeres. Like the plastic tip on the ends of your shoelaces, telomeres keep DNA strands from unravelling — and eating walnuts is a great way to keep telomeres laced up tight Science has established that diet plays a role in the length and integrity of telomeres,[i] the small protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that serve to protect the vital DNA information inside the nucleus of a cell.[ii] In December 2018, a cross-functional team of researchers from Spain and California deepened this body of knowledge by publishing their research into the effects of eating walnuts on leukocyte telomere length, or LTL.[iii] This opportunistic sub-study was conducted within a larger study called “Walnuts and Healthy Aging,” a parallel trial conducted between Barcelona, Spain and Loma Linda University in California.[iv] The study’s primary aim was to explore whether inclusion of walnuts in the diet for two years would maintain LTL in cognitively healthy elders as compared to a control group that abstained from walnuts.

Sleep and Rest
“Long-term high-dose use of painkillers such as ibuprofen or diclofenac is ‘equally hazardous’ in terms of heart attack risk as use of the drug Vioxx, which was withdrawn due to its potential dangers, researchers said.” The 2004 Vioxx recall, as you may remember, was spurred by the nearly 30,000 excess cases of heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths caused by the drug between 1999-2003. Despite the fact that scientific research had accumulated as early as 2000 linking Vioxx to increased heart attacks and strokes, the drug’s manufacturer Merck, and the FDA, remained silent as the death toll steadily increased. The Reuters report focused on new research published in Lancet indicating the risk of heart attack increases as much as a third and the risk of heart failure doubles among heavier users of NSAID drugs.