Healthy Heart

Hoping past news headlines hinting it's OK to load up on butter were right? No such luck. Longstanding advice to eat unsaturated fat in place of saturated fat - also found in high amounts in foods such as fatty meats and mixed dishes like pizza - was recently reinforced by the findings of a large observational study published in The BMJ (British Medical Journal).

Microbes - bacteria and other tiny critters not visible to the naked eye but numbering in the trillions - are busy in your body. Many of these microbes benefit you. Others have the potential to cause harm. This community of microbes is called the microbiota. Their genes are called the microbiome.

Think you're destined to get cardiovascular disease since it runs in your family? Take heart. A recent New England Journal of Medicine study suggests a healthy lifestyle may cut risk of heart disease events by about half. Events included heart attack, heart bypass surgery (restoring blood flow to heart muscle) and heart-related death. The drastic reduction was regardless of inherited risk.

Nearly one in eight US adults may have "masked" hypertension, says new research in American Journal of Epidemiology. Thats high blood pressure not found during checkups. It raises risk of stroke and premature death.

Too much sitting and too little exercise may speed biological aging by as much as 8 years, suggests an American Journal of Epidemiology study. A group of 1,481 women (average age, 79) from a nationally-representative sample wore motion sensors for one week.

You may not give much thought to adding a splash of cream and a spoonful of sugar to your coffee or tea, but these add-ins can add up in calories. A study published in Public Health aimed to figure out just how much.

Not only can substitution save the day when you lack an ingredient called for in a recipe, but it also enables you to make a recipe better for you. That's helpful whether you are trying to improve your overall eating pattern or are cooking for a specific health condition.

Seeing you're down several pounds or finding your clothes are fitting looser may sound like a good thing - but not when you aren't trying to lose weight. Unwanted weight loss is of special concern in aging since it could point to an undiagnosed illness, leave you prone to infections or decrease your independence.

Should you buy the big 2-quart bottle of vegetable oil for $2.50 or spend $12 on a 1-quart bottle of extra-virgin olive oil? "Olive oil has been regarded by many as a unique oil for cardiovascular health, but the data dont really support it as being superior to common vegetable oils," says Alice H. Lichtenstein, DSc, director of Tufts' HNRCA Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory.

Have you read your groceries lately? Many of them tout reasons why health-minded shoppers should buy them, such as to lower cholesterol, reduce risk of osteoporosis or prevent cancer. Some sport bright red hearts claiming the products are heart healthy. But can you trust such health claims?