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Archive for August, 2007
You’ve heard of a green thumb. But how about green knees?
Could be a good way to describe the youthful knees of a green-tea devotee. Potent compounds in green tea — EGCG and ECG — may help battle cartilage and collagen destruction in arthritic joints.
Catechin Delight
The EGCG and ECG found in green tea are powerful flavonoids known as catechins. Seems these particular catechins may help fight inflammation, as well as some of the underlying mechanisms at work in both osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.
A Better Plan?
Of course, drinking a few cupfuls of green tea each day is no guarantee against knee pain, so here are a few of the more tried-and-true methods for keeping knees healthy:
| • | Lose weight if you are overweight. Excess pounds raise your risk of knee arthritis. Check your BMI here. |
| • | Play it safe. A knee injury will triple your risk of knee osteoarthritis. When you exercise, take proper precautions to avoid getting hurt. |
| • | Strengthen your quads. Weak quadriceps muscles are associated with knee arthritis, so work them out regularly, along with your hamstrings and all of your other leg muscles. Try this workout program for exercises that use your own body as resistance. |
Feel something crunching and creaking in your knees? Early intervention can slow arthritis progression. Answer these questions to see if you could have osteoarthritis.
Compliments of RealAge.com
True, tomatoes are rich in lycopene. But which kind has more: red ones or orange ones?
Trick question. You see, although red tomatoes do typically have more lycopene than orange ones, you can get more of the stuff from some orange varieties because their kind of lycopene is more bioavailable. (see below ↓)
Luscious Lycopene
Lycopene comes in lots of different forms, some of which are easier for your body to absorb than others. Take the tangerine tomato used in a recent study. It was specially engineered to have lots of highly bioavailable lycopene. And when people in the study group ate pasta with sauce made from the specially engineered tangerine tomato, they absorbed 2.5 times more lycopene compared to when they ate a pasta-and-sauce meal made with red tomatoes.
Designer T’maters
The tomatoes in the study aren’t commercially available, but many varieties of tangerine tomato have the very bioavailable form of lycopene. They’re just not easy to
find — you can try ordering the seeds online or checking local farmers markets. Orange heirloom tomatoes also may have the more bioavailable lycopene. (What’s so great about lycopene? Check out this tip.)
3 Ways to Unload More Lycopene
For those of us noshing on red tomatoes, here are three tricks to unleash their lycopene:
| 1. | Slice, dice, or puree them. Processing tomatoes helps unleash the lycopene. |
| 2. | Eat them with a bit of fat. Lycopene must latch on to fat (so you might as well make it healthy, like olive oil) to be absorbed by the intestinal wall. |
| 3. | Heat ’em up. Heat converts the lycopene in red tomatoes into a form that’s easier for your body to absorb.Compliments of RealAge.com |
