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Eating a Mediterranean Diet Can Reduce Osteoporosis July 11, 2018 Eating a Mediterranean-type diet could reduce bone loss in people with osteoporosis, according to new research published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The findings show that sticking to a diet rich in fruit, vegetables, nuts, unrefined cereals, olive oil, and fish can reduce hip bone loss within just 12 months.
... The study is the first long-term, pan-European clinical trial looking at the impact of a Mediterranean diet on bone health in older adults.
More than 1,000 people aged between 65 and 79 took part in the trial, and volunteers were randomised into 2 groups - 1 which followed a Mediterranean diet and a control group which did not.
Bone density was measured at the start and after 12 months. The diet had no discernible impact on participants with normal bone density, but it did have an effect on those with osteoporosis.
People in the control group continued to see the usual age-related decrease in bone density, but those following the diet saw an equivalent increase in bone density in the femoral neck.
Susan Fairweather-Tait, PhD, DSc, Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, Norfolk, United Kingdom, said: “This is a particularly sensitive area for osteoporosis as loss of bone in the femoral neck is often the cause of hip fracture, which is common in elderly people with osteoporosis.
“Bone takes a long time to form, so the 12-month trial, although one of the longest to date, was still a relatively short time frame to show an impact. So the fact we were able to see a marked difference between the groups even in just this one area is significant.”
The trial was completed by 1142 participants recruited across 5 centres in Italy, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Poland and France. Those following the Mediterranean diet increased their intake of fruits, vegetables, nuts, unrefined cereals, olive oil, and fish, consumed small quantities of dairy products and meat and had a moderate alcohol intake.
People in the intervention group were provided with foods such as olive oil and wholemeal pasta, to encourage them to stick to the diet, and were also given a small vitamin D supplement, to even out the effects of different levels of sunlight on vitamin D status between the participating countries.
At the start and end of the trial, blood samples were taken to check for circulating biomarkers. Bone density was measured in over 600 participants across both groups at the lumbar spine and femoral neck. Of these participants, just under 10% were found to have osteoporosis at the start of the study.
Amy Jennings, PhD, University of East Anglia, said: “Although this is a small number it is sufficient for the changes in femoral neck bone density between the two groups to be statistically significant.
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I have been a natural therapies practitioner/trainer for 20 years now and have seen a lot of changes. One thing has remained, I love what I do. I love giving people choices and tools for better health. I love seeing people discover their best selves. Sometimes the greatest reward is a heartfelt "you;re a godsend".

Adequate Vitamin D Levels Prior to Conception Improve Birth Odds Pam Harrison
June 11, 2018 2Read Comments ... Add to Email Alerts Women with a history of pregnancy loss but who are not infertile are more likely to become pregnant and deliver a live infant if their preconception levels of vitamin D are sufficient, new research indicates.
Vitamin D levels prior to conception also influenced the risk of pregnancy loss, the same analysis shows.
"We are excited about the findings because vitamin D is easy to measure, and it's safe and relatively inexpensive to take supplementation, so it's an exciting field of research," author Robert M. Silver, MD, professor and chairman of obstetrics and gynecology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, told Medscape Medical News.
Silver cautioned, however, that "the association we observed does not yet prove that [vitamin D] supplementation will change outcomes," so more research is needed.
The study was published online May 30 in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, by Sunni L. Mumford, PhD, of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues.
Good Preconception Vitamin D Levels Tied to More Live Births Although previous research in non-IVF populations has suggested a beneficial role of vitamin D, these studies typically recruited women in early pregnancy, and thus had limited ability to record and assess early pregnancy losses. Moreover, these studies did not take into account the importance of preconception health, say Mumford and colleagues.
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High Vitamin D Levels Linked to Lower Cholesterol in Children June 7, 2018 KUOPIO, Finland -- June 7, 2018 -- There is a link between higher serum vitamin D levels and lower plasma cholesterol levels in primary school children, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
The study was part of the Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children (PANIC) Study, which is a lifestyle intervention study in the Institute of Biomedicine at the ...
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Yoga Appears to Reduce Incontinence in Women May 21, 2018 By Matt Silver
SAN FRANCISCO -- May 21, 2018 -- Promising preliminary evidence demonstrates that yoga can improve urinary incontinence in older women, and that implementing a yoga schedule for ambulatory women with incontinence is feasible, according to results of a prospective study presented here on May 19 at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA).
... After 3 months of yoga, women over the age of 50 with years-long incontinence struggles reported an over 75% average decrease in the frequency of their incontinence episodes.
“The improvement in incontinence that we saw in the yoga group was definitely much greater than we would expect to see if women were left to practice usual self-management techniques for incontinence on their own,” said Alison Huang, MD, MAS, MPhil, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California
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