Vitamins, minerals & supplements Archive

Researchers examining dietary data from over 50,000 postmenopausal women found that women who ate foods with a higher glycemic index, and foods with more added sugars, were more likely to have insomnia.

Eating more unprocessed, plant-based foods is one of the best ways you can protect your heart.

What do you usually eat for breakfast? How about for lunch and dinner? These questions are standard fare during a consultation with Dr. Ron Blankstein, a preventive cardiologist at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital. The answers help him tailor the dietary advice he gives, which can have a profound effect on the future health of his patients' hearts.

"Most people really aren't aware of the importance of a healthy diet, or they're confused about what they should be eating," says Dr. Blankstein. About five years ago, he revamped his own diet to follow what the current evidence suggests is the best way to avoid heart disease: a whole-food, plant-based style of eating. "I find that when I tell my patients I follow this diet myself, they're far more likely to buy into it," he says. (For an idea of what he typically eats, see "A day of plant-based meals.")

Ask the doctor

Q. Just before the holidays, I heard that a study said it was okay to eat red meat. Previously, you've said just the opposite. Help!

A. We got lots of letters like yours. The bottom line is that we stick by our longstanding advice: avoid frequent meals of red meat, and especially processed meat.

Report new symptoms immediately if you take one of these.

Taking blood thinners and prescription painkillers such as opioids can have potentially life-threatening complications. But many medications — even over-the-counter drugs — have the potential for dangerous side effects. "In most cases, the risk of serious side effects is very rare — much less than 1% of the time," says Dr. Joshua Gagne, a pharmacist and epidemiologist with Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.

If you're taking any of the following drugs, learn the rare risks.

Research we're watching

Replacing just one sugary drink each day with water may reduce your risk of developing diabetes, according to a study published online Oct. 3, 2019, by Diabetes Care. Researchers from Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health looked at more than two decades' worth of data collected in three long-term studies, involving more than 192,000 adults. By tracking beverage intake over time, they found that people who increased their consumption of sugary drinks (including 100% fruit juice) by more than 4 ounces a day over four years had a 16% increase in diabetes risk over the next four years. Turning to "diet" versions might not help, either: an 18% jump in diabetes risk occurred in people who increased their intake of artificially sweetened drinks by more than 4 ounces a day over the same period, although some of that risk could have reflected other factors, said researchers.

The bottom line: If you want to reduce diabetes risk, it's better to skip sweet drinks and stick to unsweetened tea, coffee, or water. When people drank one of those beverages once a day instead of a sweetened drink, diabetes risk dropped by 2% to 10%.

Research we're watching

If you suffer from migraine headaches, there's a new option available to relieve your pain. In October 2019, the FDA approved lasmiditan (Reyvow) to treat migraine pain in adults. Taken as a pill, it works for migraines either with or without an aura (a visual disturbance within the hour before migraine pain starts). Lasmiditan is not designed to prevent migraines. Lasmiditan is the first migraine treatment in a class of drugs known as serotonin (5-HT) 1F receptor agonists. In studies, researchers found that it could relieve pain and other migraine symptoms within two hours.

Migraines affect an estimated 28 million women in the United States, according to the American Migraine Foundation, and the World Health Organization ranks them among the top 10 disabling conditions. Pain and other symptoms, which may include nausea, sensitivity to light and temporary vision changes, result in lost work days, reduced productivity, and diminished quality of life for many people.

Editor's note: This year, we're highlighting grains and seeds on this page. Starting in February, we'll showcase a different grain or seed every month, with nutritional information and suggestions for adding these healthy foods into your diet. Here's some general background about these plant-based foods and why they're beneficial for cardiovascular health.

What, exactly, is a whole grain? Technically, they're dry, hard seeds of plants. Some are from grasses known as cereal grains, such as wheat, rice, corn, and oats. Others are from plants in different botanical families, such as quinoa, amaranth, and buckwheat, known as pseudo grains or pseudo cereals. A whole grain is one that contains all three layers of the grain kernel: the bran, the endosperm, and the germ.