Eat noma diet to cut cholesterol
Scientists have found that eating Nordic cuisine — such as berries, fish and game — can lower cholesterol and may help to reduce the risk of heart disease.
Already being named as the Noma Diet, eating Scandinavian food could now provide an alternative to Mediterranean food for those looking for a healthy option. The Mediterranean diet, with high levels of olive oil, fish and sun-ripened vegetables, has long been considered to be the ideal eating plan as people who stick to it tend to have lower incidence of heart disease.
The new research by Professor Matti Uusitupa will now help to heighten the growing competition between the Mediterranean and Nordic culinary worlds.
Exercise12 minutes a week
Four-minute bursts of high-intensity exercise such as running on a treadmill, three times a week are enough to increase fitness, researchers found.
Overweight volunteers who undertook the regime for 10 weeks increased their body’s oxygen uptake — a measure of fitness — by 10 per cent and saw small decreases in their blood pressure and glucose levels. Health guidelines generally state that we should undertake at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 20 minutes of vigorous exercise per week in order to stay healthy.
But the new study suggests that just 12 minutes of high-intensity exercise, spread out across three sessions, could be enough to keep us fit and healthy, researchers said. The team from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim conducted the research.
Probiotic yoghurt relieves anxiety
Eating probiotic yoghurt twice a day could relieve anxiety and stress by reducing activity in the emotional area of the brain, a study has found.
Study participants who consumed yoghurt twice daily for a month showed lower levels of activity in the areas of the brain associated with emotion and pain, US researchers found, together with increased activity in areas associated with decision making.
Researchers have suggested that bacteria found in the gut send signals to the brain that can change over time depending on the person’s diet. Previous studies showed that beneficial gut bacteria affected the brains of rats but no research has confirmed that the same effect happened in human brains.