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Some foods, like those with lots of sugar, can cause inflammation. And inflammation can impact the health of your feet.

When most people think about nutrition and their health, they have no trouble associating the foods they eat with weight loss or heart health, says Sherri Greene, DPM, a podiatrist in New York City who practices holistic foot care. However, your diet affects many other parts of your body, including your feet.

“When I explain to people that your feet are connected to the rest of your body, and what you put into your body is what makes up your body, they’re like, ‘Wow!’ When they feel better after they change their diet, then they get it,” she says.

 

Feet and Nutrition: Fighting Off Inflammation and Pain

One problem linked to nutrition that can affect your feet is inflammation, Dr. Greene says. Certain foods can increase chemicals in your body that cause tissue inflammation. This inflammation could appear in your foot as plantar fasciitis, which causes pain in the thick band of tissue that runs across the bottom of your foot, in your heel, or elsewhere in your foot.

 

Many common foods in the American diet encourage inflammation, such as the refined grains, sugar, and trans fats in many baked goods and junk foods; the saturated fat in red meat; and the omega-6 fats found in many commonly used vegetable oils, such as corn, soybean, and sunflower oils.

 

In addition, some people may have increased levels of inflammation in their bodies due to chronic allergies to common foods such as wheat, Greene says. Another factor that can contribute to inflammation is eating too many foods that cause your blood sugar to rise quickly, such as sweets, white flour, and pasta

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As a result, the nutritional approaches Greene discusses with patients to reduce inflammation include:

 

Eating more omega-3 fats. Fatty fish such as salmon, as well as fish oil supplements, are good sources of omega-3s, Greene says. Omega-3s help reduce inflammation, and nutrition studies suggest they should be properly balanced in the diet with omega-6s. Most people’s diets provide far more omega-6s than omega-3s, and a fish-rich diet can address this imbalance.

 

Doing a general diet makeover. Following an overall healthier diet can provide anti-inflammatory benefits to your feet and your total health. This includes eating more green vegetables and other fresh plant foods, and cutting out refined grain foods and sugary treats, Greene says.

 

Feet and Nutrition: Other Health Connections

Two common conditions that affect millions of Americans’ feet are peripheral artery disease and diabetes. Each of these conditions can harm your feet by damaging arteries that bring blood to your lower extremities.

 

Good nutrition can also help protect your feet from these conditions. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a diet low in saturated fat, trans fat, and sodium and rich in fruits and vegetables can help reduce your risk of peripheral artery disease. A 2008 study in the Journal of Vascular Surgeryspecifically found that omega-3s were associated with a lower risk of peripheral artery disease.

 

If you have diabetes, a healthy diet can help protect your feet from complications of that condition, too. In general, the NIH recommends a diet rich in whole grains, beans, vegetables and fruits, lean meats, and a limited amount of fats and sweets for people with diabetes.

 

Whether you eat more healthfully to counteract a medical condition or to avoid one, following the NIH’s recommendations will help ensure that your feet, along with the rest of your body, continue to serve you well.

Study adds to evidence that good living preserves mental abilities.

As if there weren’t already enough good reasons to avoid smoking and keep your weight, blood sugar levels and blood pressure all under control, a new study suggests these risk factors in middle age may cause your brain to shrink, leading to mental declines up to a decade later.

Evaluating data from 1,352 participants whose average age was 54 in the Framingham Offspring Study — which began in 1971 — researchers from the University of California, Davis found that smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and being overweight were each linked to potentially dangerous vascular changes in the brain.

“We can’t cure disease or cure aging, but the idea of a healthy body, healthy mind is very real,” said study author Dr. Charles DeCarli, director of UC Davis’ Alzheimer’s Disease Center. “People should stop smoking, control their blood pressure, avoid diabetes and lose weight. It seems like a no-brainer.”

Participants were given blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetestests and had their body mass and waist circumference measured. They also underwent MRI brain scans over the course of a decade, the first one about seven years after the initial risk factor exam.

Those with stroke and dementia were excluded at the outset, and between the first and last MRIs 19 participants suffered a stroke and two developed dementia.

Those with high blood pressure experienced a more rapid worsening of test scores of planning and decision-making, which corresponded to a faster rate of growth of small areas of vascular brain damage than those with normal blood pressure.

Those with diabetes in middle age experienced brain shrinkage in an area known as the hippocampus faster than those without, and smokers lost brain volume overall and in the hippocampus faster than nonsmokers, with a more rapid increase of small areas of vascular brain damage.

Meanwhile, participants who were obese at middle age were more likely to be in the top 25 percent of those with faster declines in tests of executive function, DeCarli said. Those with a high waist-to-hip ratio were more likely to be among the 25 percent with a faster drop in brain volume.

“I do think it’s an important study and has practical importance in confirming there are things we can do in middle age that can have effects 10, 20 and 30 years down the line to improve cognitive health,” said Dr. Raj Shah, medical director of the Rush Memory Clinic in Chicago. “It may seem we’re talking about things that are somewhat common knowledge, but really, we always hypothesize these things could happen, but to show they actually do in a study is very important.

” DeCarli noted that the effects of the risk factors studied are likely to be even more compelling in the general population, since study participants were largely healthy individuals with normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels and a low diabetes rate.

“It could be so much worse in a representative group of Americans,” he said, adding that all study participants were white and only 5 percent were diabetics, compared to a nearly 50 percent rate for Hispanics over age 65. And, “the study certainly doesn’t represent the growing obesity problem seen in the South.

” One of the strengths of the research was that it used a large sample of people from a well-known study, said Catherine Roe, an assistant professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. However, the results don’t prove these risk factors caused the brain changes, she added.

“We know smoking and being overweight are bad for other parts of your health,” Roe said. “This is just one more reason to get these things under control.”

Washington: This study  found that those who slept less didn’t burn additional calories.

“We tested whether lack of sleep altered the levels of the hormones leptin and ghrelin, increased the amount of food people ate, and affected energy burned through activity,” said Virend Somers, M.D., Ph.D., study author and professor of medicine and cardiovascular disease at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Leptin and ghrelin are associated with appetite.

The researchers studied 17 normal, healthy young men and women for eight nights, with half of the participants sleeping normally and half sleeping only two-thirds their normal time. Participants ate as much as they wanted during the study. They found that the sleep-deprived group, who slept one hour and 20 minutes less than the control group each day, consumed an average 549 additional calories each day. The amount of energy used for activity didn’t significantly change between groups, suggesting that those who slept less didn’t burn additional calories.

Lack of sleep was associated with increased leptin levels and decreasing ghrelin – changes that were more likely a consequence, rather than a cause, of over-eating. “Sleep deprivation is a growing problem, with 28 percent of adults now reporting that they get six or fewer hours of sleep per night,” said Andrew D. Calvin, M.D., M.P.H., co-investigator, cardiology fellow and assistant professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic.

The researchers noted that while this study suggests sleep deprivation may be an important part and one preventable cause of weight gain and obesity, it was a small study conducted in a hospital”s clinical research unit.