WASHINGTON - Women with short legs may have a higher risk of liver disease, with both probably caused by diet or other factors early in life, British researchers reported on Monday.

Their study of 3,600 women showed that the shorter a woman's legs were, the more likely she was to have signs of liver damage.

The findings fit in with other studies linking leg length with diabetes and heart disease, Abigail Fraser of the University of Bristol and colleagues said.

Full story here.

The first question that came to my mind as I read this story was "How short is short?" I got my answer as I read further along the story. Short is described as the measurement of "leg length as compared to trunk length".

In that case my legs are not short. I am a short person but my legs are longer than my trunk, even though I think I have short hips. Well, that's a relief!

Well, I don't drink much alcohol so the likelihood of a liver damage is lessened. But medication that is taken over many years do affect the liver. Right now I am hydrochlorothiazide, a diuretic, for my blood pressure. I hope I can do away with this medication some day.

While past research has linked early sexual activity to health problems, a new study suggests that waiting too long to start having sex carries risks of its own.

Those who lose their virginity at a later age -- around 21 to 23 years of age -- tend to be more likely to experience sexual dysfunction problems later, say researchers at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute's HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies.

Full story here.

Losing your virginity around 21 - 23 is considered late?! And because of that "lateness" it could lead to sexual dysfunction later?

I think that conclusion is a big stretch. Indeed it is because as you read further in that news article, it says people who started sex early also had their share of problems.

I don't know if the age at which one starts sex is the real real reason for the dysfunction. I think the more obvious reason would be emotional, and upbringing that affects the dysfunction rather than the age.

I did not know that blueberries contain a powerful cholesterol- and fat-fighting compound. This is simply wonderful news! I have been looking around for some natural solutions for treating high cholesterol. My bad cholesterol level is a bit on the high side. The fact that I don't exercise is not helping my condition!

I am already taking hydrochlorothiazide to treat my blood pressure and I sure do not want to take more drugs to treat my blood sugar level or my cholesterol level in the future! If there are natural solutions that work, all the better. Lipitor, a cholesterol lowering drug made by Pfizer have some adverse side effects.

An article I came across said that a cup of blueberries a day is more effective than any statin drug in lowering LDL cholesterol.

The other exciting news about blueberries is that Pterostilbene - the fat-fighting compound in blueberries - has been found to have cancer-fighting and diabetes-fighting properties. Diabetes is one disease I am concerned about because of my family history.

Can you get fresh blueberries all year round? The price of freeze dried blueberries is exhorbitant! The cheapest I've found cost $29.99 for a 12 oz can. That translates to 10 cups of blueberries. :-(

You already know blueberries are good for you. They're already touted as antioxidant-rich fruits that protect against the ravages of aging, heart disease, and cancer. Now add potential cholesterol-fighting effects to the list of blueberry benefits, suggests Agnes M. Rimando, PhD, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Products Utilization Research Center in Oxford, Miss.

Rimando and colleagues tested a compound found in blueberries, pterostilbene, for its ability to turn on a switch in cells that breaks down fat and cholesterol. They reported their findings at this week's 228th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia.

"We are excited to learn that blueberries, which are already rich in healthy compounds, may also be a potent weapon in the battle against obesity and heart disease," Rimando says in a news release.

Pterostilbene -- the fat-fighting compound in blueberries -- has been found to have cancer-fighting and diabetes-fighting properties. It's similar to resveratrol, which is found in grapes. That's one reason why moderate amounts of red wine are good for you. Rimando and colleagues report that the blueberry compound may be even more potent than the red-wine compound.

Read the full story here.

Garlic has become a popular food supplement for the support of a healthy cardiovascular system. Garlic contains the chemicals alliin and allinase, and when combined produce allicin — the active ingredient in garlic which most scientists believe is responsible for providing this important support for cardiovascular health.

The following story about what garlic can do sounds very promising. A friend of mine died of brain cancer while in his early thirties.

CHARLESTON, S.C., Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Garlic can kill cells that cause glioblastoma, a brain cancer that is usually fatal, researchers in South Carolina have found.

Swapan Ray and Narendra Banik, neurosciences professors at the Medical University of South Carolina, said their discovery came during a search for a way to kill the cancer without harming healthy cells, The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier reported.

"In the disease, you want to kill the cells, but you want to protect others," Banik told the newspaper. "Our tests were to see how effective the compounds were."

Banik, Ray and post-doctoral fellow Arabinda Das tested several organic compounds on cancerous cells. They included garlic in the test program because of its reputation for having healing powers.

Three organo-sulfur compounds they tested effectively stopped the cancerous cells, Ray said.

"This research highlights the great promise of plant-originated compounds as natural medicine for controlling the malignant growth of human brain tumor cells," Ray said.

More studies are needed in animals before the therapeutic strategy can be applied to human patients, Ray said.

The research will be published next month in the American Cancer Society's journal, Cancer.

UPI Story via Science Daily News

I do not have a weight problem, but I do have a belly fat problem. Even when I was a skinny teenager I had a fat tummy in comparison to the rest of my body.

Now that I am older, I do not know if there is something I can do about reducing the belly fat. What bothers me is that the fat could be the inner abdominal fat, or visceral fat that is associated with heart disease and diabetes.

A Canadian study found that the Chinese and South Asian participants tended to have a greater proportion of visceral fat. That means Asians are more likely to develop weight-related illnesses like heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. :-(

By Terri Coles

TORONTO (Reuters) - The danger in putting on weight isn't just a matter of how much, but also where the fat goes -- and it seems some ethnic and racial groups have a tendency to gain fat where it does the most damage.

Compared with people of European ancestry, those of Chinese and South Asian ancestry tend to have relatively more inner abdominal fat, which puts them at a higher risk of developing weight-related illnesses like heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, a Canadian study found.

The results, published this month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, show that current methods of measuring body fat may not be accurate for people who are not of European descent because the targets generally used for waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) are based on studies whose participants were predominately of Caucasian European origin, said lead researcher Dr. Scott Lear, and an assistant professor at the School of Kinesiology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.

This inaccuracy could make it harder to identify weight-related problems and to treat people in certain ethnic populations, even when they are the same size as Europeans. "If we use targets based on Caucasians for the Asian population, we're not going to identify people until they're at a higher risk," Lear said.

The study, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's Institute for Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes, looked at 800 healthy Chinese, South Asian, Aboriginal and European subjects, evenly distributed among the four ethnic and racial groups.

The participants' amounts of abdominal fat were compared based on the same amounts of total body fat, Lear explained, because in a random sample, the Chinese and South Asians would tend to be smaller than the Europeans and would have less overall body fat even if they had the same BMI, a ratio of weight to height.

Inner abdominal fat, or visceral fat, is not the fat you grab when you pinch an inch on your stomach. Instead, it sits behind the abdominal wall around the internal organs, and tends to be more strongly associated with heart disease and diabetes.

The researchers found that Aborigines didn't have a difference in their body fat distribution compared with Europeans, but the Chinese and South Asian participants tended to have a greater proportion of visceral fat.

The research team recognized that other factors such as diet and physical activity might differ across ethnic groups, so those were taken into account, along with smoking, education and income. Even with those influences controlled for, the differences in body fat still remained.

"What that lends us to believe," Lear said, "is that there's some physiological or genetic rule that is deciding that a higher proportion of fat goes into the abdominal area in Asians than it does in Europeans."