Treelet Health provides the latest health news, disease prevention, nutrition and diet, and other professional health knowledge to help you maintain a healthy lifestyle.
While it is normal for people to experience mild cognitive impairment as we age, severe cognitive decline is not a healthy part of aging. Past research shows that making healthy lifestyle choices, such as not smoking, can help decrease a person’s risk of developing severe cognitive decline. A new study found that quitting smoking during midlife or later can still help in slowing down age-related cognitive decline.
Past studies show that depression can increase a person’s risk for several health conditions, including chronic pain and heart disease. A new study has found that different types of depression are correlated with an increased risk of different cardiometabolic diseases. Among these cardiometabolic conditions were type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, such as a heart attack or stroke.
Individuals with prediabetes, which involves elevated blood glucose (sugar) levels that do not meet the criteria for a diabetes diagnosis, are at a very high risk of progressing to diabetes. Clinical guidelines for delaying and preventing type 2 diabetes in individuals with prediabetes emphasize the importance of weight loss using lifestyle interventions or medications. A recent study showed that lifestyle interventions could lead to the normalization of glucose regulation in the absence of weight loss, and such a reversal of prediabetes was sufficient to reduce future risk of type 2 diabetes. These results suggest that clinical guidelines for type 2 diabetes prevention should also focus on normalizing blood glucose control in addition to achieving weight loss targets.
Getting enough high-quality sleep is essential for health and wellbeing but how do we know whether the sleep we are getting is meeting our needs? Now, a study has identified five distinct sleep profiles, linking brain activity and sleep quality with a number of different health and lifestyle outcomes. The researchers suggest that sleep profiles are linked to not only health and behavior, but also to the wiring and activity of the brain.
Many older women take calcium supplements to help with bone health. Previous research has raised concerns about calcium supplementation and risk for dementia. A recent post-hoc analysis suggests that calcium supplementation does not increase the risk of dementia, demonstrating the safety of its use.
Aerobic exercise reduces the risk of many health conditions, ranging from heart disease to dementia. Although all forms of physical activity provide some benefits, aerobic exercise is particularly effective because it causes the heart and lungs to work harder than usual.
Getting enough exercise is an essential part of keeping healthy and active, particularly as you get older, but many people struggle to fit exercise into their daily routines. Now, researchers have found that ‘exercise snacks’ — short bursts of physical activity — may be an effective way for less active people to enhance their cardiorespiratory fitness. Because exercise is taken in short bursts of around 5 minutes at least twice a day, people are more likely to stick to this exercise regime than other more time-consuming exercise plans.
Walking and running are both suitable forms of exercise for weight loss and heart health. The benefits and risks depend on a person’s goals and current level of health and fitness. While both activities allow a person to burn calories, lose weight, and lower their risk of heart disease, there is much debate over which is better. Read on to learn more about the benefits and risks.
Diet versions of beverages are often hailed as healthier than the sugar-sweetened original versions. Research is ongoing regarding the potential dangers of sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks. Recent study results identified a link between drinking higher amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages and low or non-sugar-sweetened beverages and an increased risk for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD).
In a recent study, mangoes more effectively improved prediabetes risk factors in a new study than low-sugar granola bars. The key to mangoes’ better results likely lies in their being a whole food with natural fiber, vitamins, and nutrients. However, experts agree that the best way to avoid type 2 diabetes is to eat a balanced, healthy diet and be physically active, rather than to depend on a single ‘superfood’ to prevent the condition.
A new study concludes that the speed at which the human brain evolved may help explain why our species experiences autism. According to the authors, certain genes associated with autism are downregulated in humans compared with other species. They argue that autism in humans may be a byproduct of the rapid evolution of human cognitive traits.
Researchers studied a group of adults to learn more about the connection between sleep quality and brain aging. The scientists used MRI scans to determine each person’s ‘brain age’ and compared that to sleep patterns. They learned that participants with poor sleep had brain ages that were an average of 1 year older than their chronological age. This finding was more pronounced in men than in women.