July 2015 Health Trends
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11 years
Older people who eat one to two daily servings of leafy green vegetables are mentally 11 years younger than those who eat none, according to a Rush University study of 954 people with an average age of 81. “Since declining cognitive ability is central to Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, increasing consumption of green leafy vegetables could offer a very simple, affordable, and non-invasive way of potentially protecting your brain from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia,” said lead researcher Martha Clare Morris, ScD.
72%
Routinely getting insufficient sleep increases the odds of being obese by 72 percent, according to a study of 552 people who had just been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The research, presented at an annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, found that losing as little as 30 minutes of sleep daily increased risk for both weight gain and diabetes.
2 hours
People who watch less television walk faster and are physiologically younger, according to a study of more than 6,000 British men and women between the ages of 48 and 92. The study, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, found that those who watched less than two hours of TV daily were, in terms of walking speed, four years younger than those who watched more than four hours per day.