Veggies keep the brain young

New research has proven that eating vegetables keeps the brain young and slows the mental decline associated with ageing. A six year study conducted on 2000 Chicago-area men and women over 65 years of age and published in Neurology, provided evidence that older people who ate more than two servings of vegetables daily appeared about five years younger than those who ate few or no vegetables.

Green leafy vegetables including spinach, kale and collards are the most beneficial, presumably because they contain healthy amounts of vitamin E, an antioxidant which acts on chemicals produced by the body and damages cells. Vegetables also are often eaten with healthy fats such as salad oils, which help the body absorb vitamin E and other antioxidants. The fats from healthy oils can help keep cholesterol low and the arteries clear, which both contribute to brain health.

It was also observed in the study that it was vegetables which provided the benefit for the brain and not the fruits. A vegetable serving equalled about a half-cup chopped or one cup if the vegetable was raw leafy green like spinach. The study participants were subjected to mental function tests every two years through short-term memory by recalling elements of a story read out to them and reproducing numbers and symbols from a flashcard.

Although a decline in mental function was observed related to ageing, but it was noted that people eating more than two vegetable servings a day had 40 percent less mental decline compared to those who ate no or few vegetables. The study also found that people who ate lots of vegetables were more physically active, adding to evidence that “what’s good for your heart is good for your brain.” —Dr Fatema Jawad

Late angioplasty seems futile

New research has overturned one of the most fundamental beliefs among doctors treating heart attacks: that opening a blocked artery is always a good idea, even days or weeks later.

Instead, the study revealed that doing this too late may not help, and there were disturbing hints that it might even be harmful. People who had balloon angioplasty to open an artery three to 28 days after their heart attacks fared no better than those given standard medicines to prevent a second attack.

Opening arteries quickly is crucial to surviving heart attacks, and the study’s findings do not change the need for urgent action or the evidence that angioplasty saves lives when done soon after an attack. But one-third of heart attack victims in the US do not seek care within 12 hours, when angioplasty has the best chance of helping. Clot-dissolving drugs don’t always work. No guidelines say what to do in such situations, but most doctors assumed that an angioplasty, even if done late, still would help prevent further damage to the heart muscle and future attacks.

Researchers enrolled 2,166 people in 27 countries to get either angioplasty three to 28 days after their heart attack and standard drug treatment — medicines to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, and aspirin and other anti-clotting drugs — or medicines alone.

These were patients who had survived their original heart attack but had a single vessel completely blocked, yet were stable because the heart was still receiving sufficient blood and oxygen from other vessels. Four years later, 17 percent of those given angioplasty and drugs and nearly 16 percent of those given drugs alone had either died, suffered another heart attack or developed heart failure — results considered to be statistically the same.

The lack of benefit from angioplasty was not because the procedure didn’t work — it successfully reopened arteries more than 90 percent of the time. Instead, the findings suggest that once a blocked vessel had caused a heart attack, opening it was no better than taking standard medications for preventing future problems.

Angioplasty did seem to help prevent chest pain years after the procedure. Most people have angioplasties in non-emergency situations to relieve chest pain and this research does not apply to them. The new study underscores the importance of fast medical help for heart attacks. —AP

NASA joins search for woodpecker

NASA scientists have joined the search for the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought to be extinct but recently sighted in Arkansas.

NASA used a laser-equipped research aircraft to fly over the Big Woods area of the Mississippi Delta to learn more about the big woodpecker’s potential habitat, the US space agency said. Scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre and the University of Maryland used an instrument that sends pulses of energy to Earth’s surface, where light particles from the lasers bounce off leaves, branches and the ground and reflect back to the instrument.

These signals give scientists a direct measurement of the height of the forest’s leaf-covered treetops, the ground level below and everything in between, NASA said in a statement.

“We’re trying to understand the environment where these birds live or used to live,” said Woody Turner, a NASA scientist. Knowing the thickness of ground vegetation, the density of tree leaves and other factors including closeness to water and age of the forest might help in the search, he said.

NASA’s aerial effort is part of a quest that began in 2004 after a kayaker reported spotting the woodpecker along the Cache River in Arkansas. Before that, there had been no confirmed sightings of ivory-bills for half a century. Bird experts have searched on the ground, looking for nesting spots, leaving remote-controlled cameras and audio recorders in places that seem likely habitats for the woodpecker. But so far they have captured no confirmed images or sound recordings of the creature.

In 2005, researchers published a report in the journal Science that at least one male ivory-bill still survived, but this finding has been challenged. The NASA-University of Maryland project aims to give detailed information about the bird’s habitat to searchers on the ground, who can use it to look for new evidence of the ivory-billed woodpecker’s possible survival. — Samina Iqbal