Staying Healthy Archive

Q. Should I be drinking the orange juice that has calcium and vitamin D added to it?

A. Major brands are selling orange juice with about 350 milligrams (mg) of calcium and 100 international units of vitamin D added to each 8-ounce serving. Many Americans don't get enough vitamin D, so I am happy to see the addition of vitamin D. I have some concerns about the additional calcium.

By now, virtually everyone with a driver's license has heard that distracted driving causes motor vehicle accidents. It's a very important message, but it's only half right. Distracted driving is indeed the culprit, but the calamities that result are not accidents. Far from being random, unpredictable events that qualify as accidents, the consequences of distracted driving are all too predictable. And since these car crashes are predictable, they are preventable. If you understand the hazards of driving under the influence of cell phones and other mobile devices, you can arrive safely at your destination with enough time to make your calls and send your texts.

Triple threat

There are three major types of distraction: visual distraction (taking your eyes off the road), manual distraction (taking your hands off the wheel), and cognitive distraction (taking your mind off the complex task of driving). All are important, and when they occur simultaneously, the risk multiplies exponentially (think texting).

Dr. Angelo Volandes, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, is producing videos to educate patients and help them make informed medical decisions. We interviewed him recently in his office at Massachusetts General Hospital.

What made you think of using videos?

I have always been interested in film. My godfather was an amateur filmmaker. And after my third year at Yale Medical School I spent a year as a student in the university's film studies program.

One of the obvious rewards of exercising hard is that you burn up calories while you're doing it. That added calorie combustion helps you stay trim and may even help you lose weight, although you also have to watch the number of calories you put into your body.

Exercise scientists have found that vigorous exercise has an added bonus: an "afterburn" of revved-up metabolism — and the calorie-burning needed to supply it — that continues after the huffing and puffing are over. Some studies have indicated that this lasts 20 to 30 minutes and burns 30 or so calories, which is fine but really not all that impressive. But researchers in North Carolina have reported some results that are.

People doing tai chi look like they're moving in graceful slow motion, but something about those carefully controlled movements — and perhaps the mindset they put people in — seems to have health benefits. Tai chi has been tested in dozens of studies, and the findings suggest that it can help people with conditions ranging from heart failure to osteoporosis to fibromyalgia. Now it seems that Parkinson's disease can be added to that list.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Parkinson's study was that it wasn't done sooner. Parkinson's disease, a brain disorder that affects muscle control, causes trembling and stiffness. Balance is adversely affected, so falls are a major problem. Doctors already recommend that Parkinson's patients exercise, although perhaps not as often and as forcefully as they might. This study included 195 people with mild-to-moderate Parkinson's disease (1 to 4 on a scale of 5). They were randomly assigned to twice-weekly sessions of tai chi, strength-building (resistance) exercise, or stretching. After six months, the patients who did tai chi performed better on tests designed to measure balance and the ability to control movement than the patients in the other two groups. The difference was especially pronounced on the movement tests. The patients in the tai chi group also performed better on some secondary tests involving gait and reach and fell less often than those in the stretching group (the difference with strength-building wasn't large enough to reach statistical significance on those measures). The results were reported in the Feb. 9, 2012, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Start by downsizing it. Then swap out some of the white flour, use plenty of vegetable oil, and add whipped egg whites, zest, and nuts.

If you want to see a good example of where the American diet has gone wrong, you needn't look any further than the morning muffin. It used to be smaller than a coffee cup, short and stout. Now the muffins you buy at a supermarket or coffee shop are big, top-heavy things, brimming out of the corrugated paper that cinches in their bottoms. Always sweet, now they are sweeter, sometimes with sugar sprinkled on top. Salt is added to enhance the flavor.

Q. I know someone who swears by Vaseline as a face cream. What do you think?

A. There are two important differences between the skin on your face and the skin on the rest of your body. First, the skin on the face heals much faster. Cosmetic surgery is possible because facial skin heals so well and so fast, even in older people. Second, facial skin has more pores than skin elsewhere. Pores allow sebum, the oily substance produced by sebaceous glands, to reach the surface.

Note: The Healthy Eating Plate was developed by Harvard Health Publications and the Harvard School of Public Health's nutrition department as an alternative to MyPlate, the federal government's eating guide based on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines. Check out the Healthy Eating Plate at www.health.harvard.edu/plate/healthy-eating-plate. Send a question to health_letter@hms.harvard.edu.

Q. The Healthy Eating Plate says to eat small quantities of meat and to avoid bacon, cold cuts, and other processed meats. But what if you buy only very small quantities of good-quality ham or roast beef and therefore less unprocessed meat?

Choline may labor in obscurity — if you haven't heard of it, you're in the majority — but it's an essential nutrient that does important work in the body.

And now there's some research that lends some credence to claims that the nutrient may be something of a "brain food" that fends off cognitive decline in old age.