Beauty Health for Life

As a dedicated frugalist and aficionado of tree-like vegetables, I’m forever in search of ways to enliven broccoli. There are fewer cheaper, more nutritious foods in the produce aisle, and honestly, it’s tough to pretend you’re a forest giant with blueberries.

Heres one way to jazz it up:



And you can stir fry it, sure. And broccoli goes pretty well in pasta. But otherwise, if you don’t dig the Cruciferae smothered in cheese or doused in lemon, you’re kinda out of luck.

Enter Broccoli with Roasted Red Peppers. A buttery, sweet twist on a usually staid side dish, the recipe takes about ten minutes if you have jarred roasted red peppers handy. If you don’t, roasting your own pepper will add 20 to 30 minutes to the cooking time, and could be well worth the effort.

To those whove never done it before, the process can be somewhat intimidating. Trust: it’s not so bad. Simply follow these exciting rules:

• Preheat your broiler.
• Wash and dry the pepper, taking care to remove any stickers. While delicious raw, roasted stickers possess an unfortunate poison flavor.
• Place the pepper on a small pan and stick it under the broiler. When the skin becomes blackened, use tongs to turn it over.
• When the whole pepper becomes blackened, remove it from the oven, place it in a bowl, and cover the bowl with tin foil or plastic wrap. Walk away and do something awesome for a few minutes. Suggested: Settlers of Catan, knitting, cartwheels.
• Once the pepper is cool enough to handle, peel it, seed it, and use the flesh for your own nefarious purposes.
• Dance.

By the third and fourth time you roast your own pepper, it’s practically a trip to Disneyworld. (Minus the lines!)

Before we get to the recipe itself, two quick notes on the process: First, I made this at my parents house. (Hi, Ma and Pa!) While they have an excellent pantry and fine selection of produce, they’re not Safeway, and rarely carry fresh herbs. Fortunately, a teaspoon of dried substituted quite nicely. Second, nutrition numbers were provided by All Recipes, and are listed below. Only the price calculations are my own.

Sweet readers, how do you make broccoli less boring? If it involves ranch dressing, open flame, or mangoes, I’m all ears.

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If you like this recipe, you’ll surely enjoy:

• Broccoli Cheddar Soup
• Broccoli with Parmesan and Lemon
• Pasta with Broccoli and Chickpeas

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Broccoli with Roasted Red Peppers
Makes 6 servings, 2/3 cup each.
Adapted from All Recipes/Taste of Home.


5 cups broccoli florets, cut small
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup roasted red pepper, diced (or more, if you like)
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley OR 1 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

NOTE: If roasting your own pepper, please use the instructions in the above post. If using jarred peppers, read on.

1) Steam broccoli, either in your microwave or on your stovetop. For stovetop: Fill a small pot with 1 or 2 inches water. Place a steamer basket in pot. Add broccoli to basket. Cover, leaving a crack. Steam 3 to 6 minutes, until broccoli is crisp-tender (not limp).

2) While that’s happening, melt butter in a medium pan over medium heat. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant, 30 to 60 seconds. Add peppers, parsley, salt, and pepper. Warm through. Remove from heat.

3) In a medium bowl, combine broccoli and pepper mixture. Stir to coat. Add more salt or pepper if you like. Enjoy!

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, and Price Per Serving
41 calories, 2 g fat, 1 g fiber, $0.34

Calculations
5 cups broccoli florets, cut small: $1.48 (Broccoli on sale for $0.99/bunch.)
1 clove garlic, minced: $0.04
1 tablespoon butter: $0.08
1/4 cup roasted red pepper, diced: $0.39
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley OR 1 teaspoon dried parsley: $0.01 (dried)
1/2 teaspoon salt: $0.01
1/8 teaspoon pepper: $0.01
TOTAL: $2.02
PER SERVING (TOTAL/6): $0.34

Consuming omega-3 fish oils can help to prevent skin cancer, according to the first clinical trial exploring the influence of fish oils on the skin immunity of humans.

The study was conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Manchester and funded by the Association for International Cancer Research, and examined the effect of taking omega-3 on 79 healthy participants.

Findings of the study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, revealed that consuming regular doses of fish oils increases immunity to sunlight.

It directly decreases sunlight-induced immunity suppression - called immunosuppression - which affects the bodys power to combat skin cancer and infection.

Professor Lesley Rhodes, Professor of Experimental Dermatology from the Photobiology Unit Dermatology Centre at the Universitys School of Medicine and Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, said their study was the first of its kind conducted using humans:

"There has been research in this area carried out on mice in the past but this is the first time that there has been a clinical trial directly in people. It has taken a number of years to get to this stage and the findings are very exciting. This study adds to the evidence that omega-3 is a potential nutrient to protect against skin cancer. Although the changes we found when someone took the oil were small, they suggest that a continuous low level of chemoprevention from taking omega-3 could reduce the risk of skin cancer over an individuals lifetime."

The volunteers consumed a 4g dose of omega-3 - approximately one and a half portions of oily fish each day. Then they were exposed to either 8, 15, or 30 minutes of summer midday sun in Manchester using a specific light machine.

A number of other participants took a placebo before being exposed to the sunlight machine.

Immunosuppression was shown to be 50 percent lower in the subjects that took the omega-3 and were exposed to 8 and 15 minutes of sunshine compared with the volunteers who did not take the supplement. Little to no impact on those in the 30 minute group was shown.

The conclusions from this study are significant in the battle against skin cancer, because earlier studies have always shown that sunscreens are frequently applied incorrectly and only worn on vacation.

However, Professor Rhodes points out omega-3 is not a substitute for suntan lotion or physical protection, and that it should be seen as additional protection factor to help keep the skin from burning.

Historically, fish oil has already been associated with health benefits like protecting against cardiovascular disease, helping prevent age-related vision loss, and even slowing the growth of prostate cancer cells.

A new study demonstrates what researchers consider conclusive evidence that the red wine compound resveratrol directly activates a protein that promotes health and longevity in animal models. Whats more, the researchers have uncovered the molecular mechanism for this interaction, and show that a class of more potent drugs currently in clinical trials act in a similar fashion. Pharmaceutical compounds similar to resveratrol may potentially treat and prevent diseases related to aging in people, the authors contend.

These findings are published in the March 8 issue of Science.

For the last decade, the science of aging has increasingly focused on sirtuins, a group of genes that are believed to protect many organisms, including mammals, against diseases of aging. Mounting evidence has demonstrated that resveratrol, a compound found in the skin of grapes as well as in peanuts and berries, increases the activity of a specific sirtuin,SIRT1, that protects the body from diseases by revving up the mitochondria, a kind of cellular battery that slowly runs down as we age. By recharging the batteries, SIRT1 can have profound effects on health.

Mice on resveratrol have twice the endurance and are relatively immune from effects of obesity and aging. In experiments with yeast, nematodes, bees, flies and mice, lifespan has been extended.

"In the history of pharmaceuticals, there has never been a drug that binds to a protein to make it run faster in the way that resveratrol activates SIRT1," said David Sinclair, Harvard Medical School professor of genetics and senior author on the paper. "Almost all drugs either slow or block them."

In 2006, Sinclairs group published a study showing that resveratrol could extend the lifespan of mice, and the company Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, which was started by HMS researchers, was founded to make drugs more potent than resveratrol. (Sinclair is a co-founder of Sirtris, a GlaxoSmithKline company, and remains a scientific advisor. Sirtris currently has a number of sirtuin-activating compounds in clinical trials.)

But while numerous studies, from Sinclairs lab and elsewhere, underscored a direct causal link between resveratrol and SIRT1, some scientists claimed the studies were flawed.

The contention lay in the way SIRT1 was studied in vitro, using a specific chemical group attached to the targets of SIRT1 that fluoresces more brightly as SIRT1 activity increases. This chemical group, however, is synthetic and does not exist in cells or in nature, and without it the experiments did not work. As a response to this, a paper published in 2010 surmised that resveratrols activation of SIRT1 was an experimental artifact, one that existed in the lab, but not in an actual animal. SIRT1 activity in mice was, the paper claimed, at best an indirect result of resveratrol, and perhaps even a sheer coincidence.

As a result, a debate erupted over the particular pathway that resveratrol and similar compounds affected. Does resveratrol directly activate SIRT1 or is the effect indirect? "We had six years of work telling us that this was most definitely not an artifact," said Sinclair. "Still, we needed to figure out precisely how resveratrol works. The answer was extremely elegant."

Sinclair and Basil Hubbard, then a doctoral student in the lab, teamed up with a group of researchers from both the National Institutes of Health and Sirtris Pharmaceuticals to address this question.

First, the team addressed the problem of the fluorescent chemical group. Why was it required for resveratrol to rev up SIRT1 in the test tube? Instead of dismissing the result as an artifact, the researchers surmised that the chemical might be mimicking molecules found naturally in the cell. These turned out to be a specific class of amino acid, the building blocks of proteins. In nature, there are three amino acids that resemble the fluorescent chemical group, one of which is tryptophan, a molecule abundant in turkey and notable for inducing drowsiness. When researchers repeated the experiment, swapping the fluorescing chemical group on the substrate with a tryptophan residue, resveratrol and similar molecules were once again able to activate SIRT1.

"We discovered a signature for activation that is in fact found in the cell and doesnt require these other synthetic groups," said Hubbard, first author of the study. "This was a critical result, which allowed us to bridge the gap between our biochemical and physiological findings.

"Next, we needed to identify precisely how resveratrol presses on SIRT1s accelerator," said Sinclair. The team tested approximately 2,000 mutants of the SIRT1 gene, eventually identifying one mutant that completely blocked resveratrols effect. The particular mutation resulted in the substitution of a single amino acid residue, out of the 747 that make up SIRT1. The researchers also tested hundreds of other molecules from the Sirtris library, many of which are far more powerful than resveratrol, against this mutant SIRT1. All failed to activate it.

The authors propose a model for how resveratrol works: When the molecule binds, a hinge flips, and SIRT1 becomes hyperactive.

Although these experiments occurred in a test tube, once the researchers identified the precise location of the accelerator pedal on SIRT1—and how to break it—they could test their ideas in a cell. They replaced the normal SIRT1 gene in muscle and skin cells with the accelerator-dead mutant. Now they could test precisely whether resveratrol and the drugs in development work by tweaking SIRT1 (in which case they would not work) or one of the thousands of other proteins in a cell (in which they would work). While resveratrol and the drugs tested revved up mitochondria in normal cells (an effect caused activating by SIRT1), the mutant cells were completely immune.

"This was the killer experiment," said Sinclair. "There is no rational alternative explanation other than resveratrol directly activates SIRT1 in cells. Now that we know the exact location on SIRT1 where and how resveratrol works, we can engineer even better molecules that more precisely and effectively trigger the effects of resveratrol."

This one fails to support the benefit of cinnamon for blood glucose management.

The study appeared in Septembers issue of Diabetes Care:

Effect of Cinnamon on Glucose and Lipid Levels in Non–Insulin-Dependent Type 2 Diabetes

It was a small study - 43 adults with type 2 diabetes. The intervention group took 2, 500 mg capsules of cinnamon daily. (One gram ground cinnamon is about 3/4 teaspoon.) The placebo group took capsules filled with wheat flour.

After three months, the cinnamon users failed to show improvements in blood glucose, insulin, or cholesterol levels.

One sticking point, participants in the current study were taking diabetes medications. Participants in the promising Pakistani study were not.

The jury is still out on cinnamon use.
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