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Today’s Health Upgrade
The chocolate study
Does your gut hold the secret to a stronger immune system?
The DIY back pain fix
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Health
Can Chocolate Help Protect Your Health?
If you need a reason to feel better about the nights you have dessert, this is the science you’ve been waiting for.
A new study found that eating a moderate amount of dark chocolate could help reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes while satisfying your sweet tooth.
Type 2 diabetes affects millions of people worldwide and is a leading cause of chronic disease. So, Harvard researchers followed nearly 200,000 people over 30 years to understand lifestyle factors associated with the disease.
After considering risk factors such as age and exercise, the scientists found an interesting connection: people who enjoyed at least 5 ounces of dark chocolate per week had a 21 percent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
However, not all types of chocolate are created equal. While there was a 3 percent reduction in risk for every serving of dark chocolate, there was an increased risk from eating milk chocolate, potentially because it was associated with long-term weight gain.
While you can’t infer causation from observational studies like this, the researchers believe there are reasons dark chocolate was linked to better health. Dark chocolate tends to have fewer calories and sugar than milk chocolate. And, dark chocolate has plant nutrients that could help improve insulin sensitivity, which helps protect against type-2 diabetes.
To prevent type-2 diabetes, the best approach is any diet that helps you maintain a healthy weight. So, people who eat dark chocolate may have found a better way to balance healthy foods with treats to avoid too much overeating.
It’s one more example of why you don’t need to be perfect with your diet. With a bit of mindfulness, chocolate can be part of treating your body—and your taste buds—right.
Nutrition
Is Your Gut the Secret to a Stronger Immune System?
Do you try to boost your immune system during the winter months? While most people think they need to load up on Vitamin C or other supplements, most products don’t offer much protection.
However, research suggests that fermented foods could help support a stronger immune system.
The study was beautifully simple: it put people on two different diets — one with high-fiber foods and the other with six servings of fermented foods daily.
After 10 weeks, those eating fermented foods — such as yogurt, kimchi, and kombucha — had more gut diversity, less active immune cells (which is a good thing), and a decrease in 19 different markers of inflammation.
While fiber has seemingly endless benefits, it doesn’t appear to cause immediate changes to the microbiome that support better immune function.
The research suggests that tweaking your diet can directly influence your body’s ability to fight inflammation and infections. If you want to improve your microbial diversity and prevent sickness, start small a couple servings per day of yogurt, kefir, kimchi, or sauerkraut. Then, you can gradually include more fermented options like kombucha or miso to increase microbial diversity.
Fitness
The DIY Back Pain Fix
What if a simple stretch could reduce back pain and help you move better? Science says it can.
A new systematic review and meta-analysis reveals that hamstring stretching exercises significantly reduce pain intensity and improve function in people with low back pain. If you’ve been battling stiffness or discomfort, the key might lie in unlocking the tension in your hamstrings.
Lower back pain has been estimated to be the most common debilitating condition in the world. Yet, treating it remains somewhat of an enigma. One sign of research progress is the increasing recognition that physical activity is essential for managing back pain and preventing lower back pain episodes.
For too long, the standard advice for chronic lower back pain was to avoid exercise and instead take it easy and rest. And while that might be genuinely necessary when back pain is severe and intolerable, it’s bad advice for most people wanting to get better over the long term. Any physical activity you can tolerate, even walking, can be highly beneficial for chronic lower back pain.
Some researchers have also suggested that lower back pain might be improved by hamstring stretching, arguing that tight hamstrings pull on the lower back, leading to pain.
Researchers found that stretching your hamstrings just 2 to 3 times per week reduced pain and improved overall function and quality of life.
While hamstring stretching helps, it’s not the only — or even the best — option. Other studies have found that whole-body exercises like yoga, resistance training, or pilates can provide back relief. But, at the very least, a little stretching can go a long way, and it’s better than inactivity.
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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell
