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How Is Sleep Related to Both Mental and Physical Well-Being?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 13, 2009 Comment (4)
Both your psychological and physical well-being suffer when your sleep suffers. A good night's sleep is important to daily functioning; sleep deprivation makes us irritable, and sleep deprivation certainly can interfere with our performance at work and school. In fact, a sleep disorder can serve as a trigger for mood disorders, particularly depression. And it's a nasty two-way street: Being stressed or anxious or depressed can make it difficult to fall asleep, cause you to wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to get back to sleep, or cause you to awaken an hour or more before you are supposed to get up.Meanwhile, there's good evidence that chronic insomnia can provoke a number of negative immune changes. In particular, some of the newer studies suggest that chronic sleep deprivation boosts inflammation, which is linked with a series of age-related diseases, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis, periodontal disease, and frailty, as well as functional decline.
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What's the Link, if Any, Between Dietary Fat and Breast Cancer?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 13, 2009 Comment (8)I hear that a low-fat diet reduces the chance of having breast cancer. Does that include all fat or only saturated fats?
The belief that dietary fat is related to the risk of breast cancer developed because women in Japan and some other countries where dietary fat is low also had low rates of breast cancer. However, the difference in rates of breast cancer could have been due to many other aspects of diet and lifestyle that varied among these countries.More recently, many large follow-up studies have looked at the relationship between dietary fat and breast cancer and have consistently found little or no relationship. Also, in a very large randomized trial, the Women's Health Initiative, women assigned to a low-fat diet experienced rates of breast cancer not statistically different from that of women assigned to follow their usual diet. Thus, the available evidence does not support any substantial relationship between fat intake during midlife or later and the risk of breast cancer. Although the data are limited, some evidence suggests that high intake of red meat and high-fat dairy products during adolescence or premenopausal years may increase the risk of breast cancer before menopause.
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