Increase your intake to nine veggies a day

May 16, 2014

In the 2010 Wimbledon Championship, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut served up the tennis ball for 11 hours and 5 minutes, the longest match ever. (Isner won.) Now, that's a lot of servings! And yet, people complain about having to eat nine or more servings of veggies and fruits a day.


But only around 60 percent of you eat four servings of veggies a day at least four days a week. And french fries (your most favorite veggie) don't win you any points. So here's how you can ace your veggie serves:


2Snack smart: Midmorning and afternoon, grab carrot and celery spears with no-fat, no-sugar-added Greek yogurt or ¼ cup hummus. (1-2 servings)






RX for medication conflicts

When Rosemary Butler belted out the chorus on Jackson Browne's version of "Stay (Just a Little Bit Longer)" almost four decades ago, a lot of 50- to 60-year-olds apparently decided to take that advice. There are now over 53,000 centenarians in the U.S. - a 66 percent increase in 30 years.

Advances in chronic disease treatment and prevention are extending your lifespan and increasing the number of medications you take: 75 percent of you, 65 or older, take drugs for at least two chronic disorders; almost a third of you take five or more medications; you also take 35 percent of all over-the-counter drugs. No wonder drug interactions are an increasing problem.

A recent study found that combining prescription meds for high blood pressure (HBP) and osteoarthritis is the most common cause of a risky drug interaction. If you add a cox-2 inhibitor for pain on top of a beta blocker for HBP, the cox-2 inhibitor blocks the beta blocker; your blood pressure stays too high. Other combos of prescription and/or OTC meds cause just as much trouble.

To minimize drug interactions:

1 Write down each prescription, nonprescription med and supplement you take.

2 Schedule time with your pharmacist to review your list, checking for drug interactions; take notes.

3 Take your list and notes to your primary care physician. Create a wellness plan that includes stress management, walking and avoiding the Five Food Felons. This will reduce your need for chronic-disease meds. Medicare and most insurance companies cover this visit annually without any co-pay.

Q: I just read that saturated fats aren't really bad for your heart. So cheeseburgers are OK now?

Gary T., Mobile, Ala.

A: Hold on, Gary; take a step back from the drive-through. The reporting on a couple of new studies about the health effects of eating saturated fats is missing a nutritional boatload of information. We've seen the headlines that declare "Low saturated fat diets don't curb heart disease risk" and "Omega-3 fatty acids: studies don't support heart benefit." But that's not actually what the studies showed.

In study No. 1, published in Open Heart/BMJ, researchers concluded that if you replace saturated fat in your diet with known heart-damaging foods such as refined carbohydrates and excess amounts of omega-6 fatty acids, you are not doing your heart any favors. Well, duh!

The real point? You can't boot trans and most saturated fats out of your diet and then ignore our advice on eating only 100 percent whole grains or avoiding added sugars and sugar syrups and expect to stay heart healthy.

And in study No. 2 from the Annals of Internal Medicine, well, we have no way of knowing about the general dietary or lifestyle habits of the thousands of people in the 76 studies that got lumped together to somehow determine the nonbenefits of omega-3 supplements. How many had a diet loaded with processed and refined carbs, added sugars and syrups, and an excess amount of omega-6 fatty acids from corn oil, for example? They didn't say.

So our advice to you remains the same: Boot trans fats from your diet; don't eat red meat (its relationship to heart disease and cancer is valid); skip any skin from two-legged creatures; eat 100 percent whole grains (there are tasty choices like barley, buckwheat and faro); and eat 9 servings of fruits and veggies daily. And get the anti-inflammatory benefits of omega-3 fatty acids (most North Americans don't consume enough) from salmon, walnuts and a 900-milligram DHA supplement daily. You'll have a younger RealAge and a healthier heart.