Highlight HEALTH

Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin that is used in many tissues throughout the body. The adrenal gland contains the highest concentration of vitamin C, and the vitamin plays a crucial role in both the adrenal cortex and adrenal medulla [1]. Humans are one of the few species that cannot manufacture the vitamin in the body and must depend on diet or nutritional supplementation as a source of vitamin C. The best sources of vitamin C are fresh fruit (especially in the citrus family, including oranges, lemons, limes and tangerines), strawberries, cantaloupe and currants. Green leafy vegetables, including Brussel sprouts, collard greens, lettuce, cabbage, peas and asparagus, are also good sources.

During the early days of sea exploration, European sailors were often afflicted with scurvy. Private firms would supply a ship’s crew with food for long voyages. These firms charged a flat rate, so the cheaper the food supplied, the more money a firm would make. Common sailors were given salt fish, salt beef and rye crackers, all of which lack vitamin C. The officers got a few extras including potatoes, which contain vitamin C and protected them against scurvy. Sailors from other parts of the world didn’t get scurvy because they ate foods containing vitamin C. The Vikings ate sauerkraut and the Chinese ate bean sprouts, both of which are high in vitamin C. The name chemical name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is derived from a-, meaning without, and scorbuticus, meaning scurvy.

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Habitual intake of caffeinated beverages provides protection against the risk of heart disease mortality among the elderly. The study, published in this months issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that participants 65 years of age or older with higher caffeinated beverage intake exhibited lower relative risk of cardiovascular disease and heart disease mortality than did participants with lower caffeinated beverage intake [1].

The analysis involved 6594 participants aged 32–86 with no history of cardiovascular disease. Analyses were conducted for 426 cardiovascular disease deaths that occurred over an 8.8 year period. The dose-responsive protective effect of caffeinated beverage intake against death from heart disease in the elderly is attributed to caffeine’s enhancement of blood pressure. The protective effect was found only in participants who were not severely hypertensive. No significant protective effect was found in patients less than 65 years of age and no protective effect was found against death from stroke regardless of age.

References

1. Greenberg et al. Caffeinated beverage intake and the risk of heart disease mortality in the elderly: a prospective analysis. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Feb;85(2):392-8.
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I took a break this weekend from writing articles to work on the Highlight HEALTH website. My host, DreamHost, is upgrading to PHP 5.2 (meaning a server-side HTML embedded scripting language that WordPress is powered by) and they informed me that any version of WordPress under 2.1 will have problems after the upgrade. Highlight HEALTH has been running on WordPress 2.0.6 since the beginning of the year and I’ve been putting off upgrading to 2.1 until I heard more about what types of problems, if any, to expect with the upgrade.

The process went rather smoothly, although I apologize if anyone was navigating the site over the weekend and experienced any problems. While I was at it, I installed some additional features to extend the interactivity of the website. I appreciate all the people that have made tools to extend the functionality of WordPress (called plugins in the WordPress world), but I especially have to thank Lester Chan as I’m using many of his updated plugins that work with WordPress 2.1. Lorelle on Wordpress, one of the best blogs on the internet about Wordpress and blogging, has dedicated the month of February for WordPress plugins and many of Lester’s plugins are featured.

New features that are now available on Highlight HEALTH include:

• A polling feature in the sidebar. The plugin uses AJAX (meaning Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). After you vote, the poll changes automatically to show you the results without refreshing the page. When you visit Highlight HEALTH again, the current polling results are displayed for you to see.
• A drop down page navigation menu at the bottom of the home page and subsequent pages so that you can navigate the site faster. Every page on Highlight HEALTH provides multiple ways to navigate the site. On article pages, there are links at the top of the page (Next and Previous Article) as well as a link back to the home page at bottom. You can always click on the Archive button located on the top right menu for a complete listing of articles available. Alternatively, you can choose the Search button, also located on the top right menu, if you want to search for specific topics or keywords.
• The number of times a post has been viewed is now shown beneath the title of each article (you have to be on the specific article page, not the home page) so you can see the popularity of each post.
• A print button located at the bottom of each post, which allows you to display a printable version of the article, including all references and links!
• Statistics in the sidebar. You can also see how many people are visiting the website when you visit.
• Reversed comment order so the newest comment is displayed directly beneath the article. You can also subscribe to comments, either with or without posting a comment. Additionally, I’ve disabled nofollow. Comments are moderated and any relevant links left in the comments deserve their due credit. So go ahead, leave a comment and link to your own website!

Browse the site and try some of the new features. I hope you find them useful. Let me know what you think!

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