Daily Health Tips: Trusted Medical Information, Health Tips and Advices

Eating foods rich in B vitamins and omega-3s, like hummus, can be a real memory booster, according to Samantha Heller, author of  Get Smart . And these nutrients will be especially brain-friendly if you combine them with a few extra ZZZs. The Hummus Has It Hummus is a Mediterranean staple made from vitamin B6-rich chickpeas and high-in-omega-3 olive oil -- nutrients that Heller says are key to a swift, sharp memory. A spinach salad with a little drizzle of olive oil and vinegar will net you brain-friendly nutrients as well, because spinach is rich in B9. And tuna is another great source of both B vitamins and omega-3s.   And a Side of Sleep Sleep helps consolidate newly learned information into your memory bank. So when you're working on a brain-friendly menu, remember to hit the hay early, too. Heller notes that combining B vitamins, omega-3s, and better sleep is a surefire recipe for improving your recall. To improve your sleep habits, keep a regular sleep schedule, elimi...

CDC Committee: To Stop Deadly Infant Whooping Cough, Give Vaccine Late in Pregnancy To halt a spike in whooping cough cases and deaths in infants, pregnant women now are advised to get a booster shot of the pertussis vaccine in their late second or third trimester. Vaccination against whooping cough -- pertussis -- can't start before age 2 months. But the disease is particularly deadly for unprotected infants. Of the 194 U.S. pertussis deaths from 2000 to 2009, 152 were in infants ages 1 month or less. Twenty-three deaths were in infants ages 2 to 3 months. Doctors have been fighting recent outbreaks of whooping cough by giving the Tdap booster vaccine to women as soon as they give birth -- and also vaccinating everyone else who comes into contact with an infant. The idea, called "cocooning," is a good one. But in the real world, it's been nearly impossible to vaccinate most fathers -- and even harder to find and vaccinate grandparents, siblings, an...

Give the frontline soldiers of your immune system some reinforcements by serving a skewer of white button mushrooms with your favorite meals. Nothing brings you down like a summer cold. But eating white button mushrooms may help make colds less likely. Seems something in mushrooms encourages your dendritic cells -- important immune system helpers -- to grow up and get to work. Mushroom Secrets Dendritic cells lasso viruses -- like the rhinoviruses and influenza viruses responsible for colds and flu. Then they bring those viruses to your germ-killing B lymphocytes to be finished off. And though it's not clear how or why, researchers think that polysaccharides -- compounds in white button mushrooms -- may help trigger the whole process. But there's no reason to hold out on mushrooms while researchers unravel the mystery. We already know that mushrooms have a host of health-promoting qualities: They're low in fat, low in calories, and full of a little antioxi...

Study Shows a Link Between Car Accidents and Drivers With Less Than Legal Limit for Alcohol in Blood Driving with a buzz can be as dangerous as driving when you are fully intoxicated, a new study suggests. The blood-alcohol content (BAC) limit in the U.S. is set at 0.08%, but levels well below this legal limit are associated with car accidents that cause incapacitating injury and death. According to the CDC, close to 30 people in the U.S. die every day in motor vehicle crashes involving an alcohol-impaired driver. This is the equivalent of one death every 48 minutes. "Buzz kills," says David Phillips, PhD a sociologist at University of California, San Diego. "No amount of alcohol seems to be safe for driving." The new study appears in Addiction. In the study, drivers who tested positive for blood alcohol at levels well-below the legal BAC limit were more likely to be in severe car accidents than sober drivers largely because they drove significant...

You can't go anywhere without being confronted by calories. Restaurants now print calorie counts on menus. You go to the supermarket and there they are, stamped on every box and bottle. You hop on the treadmill and watch your "calories burned" click upward. But just what are calories? The more calories we take in, the more flab we add—and if we cut back on them, then flab starts to recede too, right? After all, at face value, calories seem to be the factor by which all foods should be judged. But if that were true, 500 calories of parsnips would equal 500 calories of Double Stuf Oreos. Not quite. There's nothing simple about calories. Learn the distinctions and lose the lard. Want Health tips from our Expert Click Here  Myth #1: Calories Fuel Our Bodies   Actually, they don't A calorie is simply a unit of measurement for heat; in the early 19th century, it was used to explain the theory of heat conservation and steam engines. The term entere...

You might think of daydreaming as a slacker habit, but it turns out that it's good for your brain. So let your mind wander a little bit today. Zoning out doesn't mean your mind is on vacation. Just the opposite. New research involving brain scans showed that when people daydream, the brain actually works harder, and in different ways. Stop Paying Attention A new study compared brain activity during two different conditions -- when people played an easy game and when their minds simply wandered freely. And daydreaming lit up the brain areas that researchers expected it to, such as those areas that handle routine daily activities. But, surprisingly, the activity of daydreaming also activated the lateral prefrontal cortex and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex -- the so-called executive network of the brain, where complex problem-solving happens. Which led researchers to conclude that giving your brain a break allows these higher-function areas to work on the w...

Get more blood flowing to your brain -- and more clever thoughts flowing from it -- by drinking a little beet juice in the morning. Like every other part of your body, your brain requires good blood flow in order to function quickly and effectively. And research shows that a morning shot of beet juice may help ensure good circulation to your cranium. Brainy Beets Why beet juice instead of apple or orange? Beets are a good source of nitrates, helpful little substances that get converted into nitr ites by bacteria in our saliva. And nitrites do a world of good for blood vessels, helping them to relax and better assist blood flow and oxygen circulation. When researchers recently upped participants' nitrate intake by having them drink 16 ounces of beet juice with breakfast, among other dietary changes, a brain scan done just a day later showed noticeably better blood flow to white matter in the frontal-lobe region of the brain, an area where blood flow often suffers ov...

Making a simple switch in your cereal bowl or coffee cup could mean better appetite control. The switch in question? Pouring low-fat instead of full-fat milk. According to a new study, palmitic acid -- a type of saturated fat found in full-fat dairy products -- may cause your brain to ignore "I'm full" signals. So you end up going back for more helpings. Can't Eat Just One Palmitic acid makes up about 60 percent of the saturated fat we eat. Which is a good reason to avoid saturated fat as much as possible. Because when your body gets ahold of palmitic acid, bad things happen. Just minutes after ingesting it, your body begins to ignore satiety signals. In the study, researchers found that, almost immediately, bossy palmitic acid dialed down important chemical signals in the brain that normally help people regulate their appetite. And I'm-full hormones like insulin and leptin are reduced to a mere whisper, so cells simply ignore their "hey, tim...

Nearly One-Quarter of U.S. High School Students Drink Regular Soda Every Day Two new reports provide a snapshot of the physical activity and beverage habits of U.S. high school students. About one in 10 high school students gets the recommended amount of aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercise, and nearly a quarter of students drink at least one sugary soda every day. Both reports, which appear in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, analyzed data from the 2010 National Youth Physical Activity and Nutrition Study that looks at the height/weight, diet, and exercise habits of high school students. In the physical activity study, 12.2% of high school students met the Healthy People 2020 objective for aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity, which calls for 60 or more minutes of aerobic activity every day and some muscle strengthening on three or more days per week. Healthy People 2020 sets 10-year national goals for improving the health of A...

You can make your brain as sharp as someone 4 to 7 years younger just by getting a little more sleep. Most Americans fall short of the recommended 6 to 8 hours. But in a recent study of middle-aged folks, those who consistently slept 6 to 8 hours a night scored the best on cognitive-function tests. The Long and Short of It In the study, people reported how many hours of sleep they got on an average weeknight. And then they did so again more than 5 years later. They also took cognitive-function tests on both occasions. And those who fell short of the recommended 6 to 8 hours of sleep had the lowest scores. In fact, their scores were akin to someone many years older. But interestingly, getting too much sleep was problematic as well. Those who got more than 8 hours also had super-low scores on the cognitive-function tests. So while you're getting more ZZZs, try not to be a total sleepyhead. Sleep and Your Brain It's not clear why too little or too much slee...