Are you — or your doctor — shrugging off early warnings of brewing blood pressure trouble? The answer is yes if any of these “little” problems haven’t prompted you to take steps to lower your blood pressure:

It’s “high-normal.”

Thirty percent of American adults have slightly elevated blood pressure levels, between 121/81 and 139/89. But this gray zone is no small problem: It nearly doubles stroke risk. Researchers warn that many family doctors see pre-hypertension as a borderline condition that should be watched, rather than a warning that needs prompt attention.

It’s creeping up slowly

In one eye-opening study, women’s blood pressures inched upward 8 to 10 points each decade, and men’s by 4 to 5 points, between the ages of 35 and 64. That’s enough to land you in the pre-hypertensive or even the hypertensive category — and a good reason for you and your doctor to nip rising blood pressure in the bud.

It’s only high in the doctor’s office

So-called white-coat hypertension — elevated blood pressure readings in the doctor’s office but not other places (such as at a health fair, on a home monitor, or from a drugstore blood pressure machine) — isn’t a fluke you can ignore. In one Scottish study, people with this sign of raised blood pressure under stress showed early signs of stiff arteries and an overworked heart that could lead to higher blood pressure later on.

Diet soda

Though it has fewer calories and less sugar than regular soda, diet soda may actually keep you from losing weight. New research suggests that dieters who choose to drink diet soda may actually add weight instead of losing it.

Smoothies

Although they can be packed with powerful nutritional benefits, smoothies can also carry loads of calories, fat, and sugar. Make sure your smoothie is filled with whole fruits and vegetables and low fat milk or milk alternatives. Skip smoothies laden with peanut butter, chocolate, or fruit syrups.

Artificial sweeteners

Research is still being conducted on the safety of artificial sweeteners, but some research to date has shown that they can actually make you hungrier than natural sugar. Look for foods that contain natural sugar, or little or no sugar at all, for dieting success.

Light salad dressings

Though they carry less fat and calories than full-fat dressings, light dressings are often high in sugar or high fructose corn syrup, which are added for flavor. Look for natural dressings that don’t list sugar as the first ingredient.

Processed diet foods and snacks

Switching to a frozen diet meal from the freezer seems like a good choice when trying to lose weight, but often these foods are high in sodium and sugar. Check the nutrition labels on the foods that you purchase. Look for a short ingredient list that relies on whole foods, rather than ingredients you don’t recognize.

Flavored yogurt

Yogurt is filled with calcium and protein that’s great for keeping your diet in check, but flavored yogurt can also carry loads of extra sugar and calories that sabotage your healthy eating. Try plain yogurt and adding in a small teaspoon of honey for sweetness.

Baked chips

Although these are a good alternative to saturated fat-laden chips, baked chips usually have tons of sodium, sugar, and empty calories. If you’re in the mood for something crunchy, try snacking on a bag of fresh, raw veggies or plain rice cakes.

1. Dark chocolate. In a recent study, volunteers who ate 3.5 ounces of dark chocolate (the gourmet kind that’s 70 percent cacao) every day for a week raised their HDL by 9 percent. That’s a load of chocolate (about 550 calories’ worth!), but study coauthor Paul A. Gurbel, MD, of Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, says eating smaller daily doses (say, 1/2 ounce) over an extended period of time should also help.

2. Salmon. HDL rose 4 percent in adults who ate two 4-ounce servings of salmon a week for four weeks, according to a Loma Linda University study. Other fatty fish — mackerel, herring, sardines — should deliver similar benefits, researchers say.

3. Berries. They needn’t be fresh, just plentiful: HDL levels rose 5 percent when adults ate about a cup of frozen berries a day for eight weeks.

4. Eggs. Healthy adults who ate a whole egg every day for 12 weeks increased HDL as much as 48 percent in a study from Thailand. Eggs are rich in lecithin — which, animal studies have shown, raises HDL.

Eating nuts helps your heart. Discover how walnuts, almonds and other nuts help lower your cholesterol when eaten as part of a balanced diet.

Eating nuts as part of a healthy diet can be good for your heart. Nuts, which contain unsaturated fatty acids and other nutrients, are a great snack food, too. They’re inexpensive, easy to store and easy to take with you to work or school.

The type of nut you eat isn’t that important, although some nuts have more heart-healthy nutrients and fats than do others. Walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts — you name it — almost every type of nut has a lot of nutrition packed into a tiny package. If you have heart disease, eating nuts instead of a less healthy snack can help you more easily follow a heart-healthy diet.

Can eating nuts help your heart?

People who eat nuts as part of a heart-healthy diet can lower the LDL, low-density lipoprotein or “bad,” cholesterol level in their blood. High LDL is one of the primary causes of heart disease.

Eating nuts reduces your risk of developing blood clots that can cause a fatal heart attack. Nuts also improve the health of the lining of your arteries. The evidence for the heart-healthy benefits of nuts isn’t rock solid — the Food and Drug Administration only allows food companies to say evidence “suggests but does not prove” that eating nuts reduces heart disease risk.

What’s in nuts that’s thought to be heart healthy?

Although it varies by nut, most nuts contain at least some of these heart-healthy substances:

• Unsaturated fats. It’s not entirely clear why, but it’s thought that the “good” fats in nuts — both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats — lower bad cholesterol levels.
• Omega-3 fatty acids. Many nuts are also rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3s are a healthy form of fatty acids that seem to help your heart by, among other things, preventing dangerous heart rhythms that can lead to heart attacks. Omega-3 fatty acids are also found in many kinds of fish, but nuts are one of the best plant-based sources of omega-3 fatty acids.
• Fiber. All nuts contain fiber, which helps lower your cholesterol. Fiber also makes you feel full, so you eat less. Fiber is also thought to play a role in preventing diabetes.
• Vitamin E. Vitamin E may help stop the development of plaques in your arteries, which can narrow them. Plaque development in your arteries can lead to chest pain, coronary artery disease or a heart attack.
• Plant sterols. Some nuts contain plant sterols, a substance that can help lower your cholesterol. Plant sterols are often added to products like margarine and orange juice for additional health benefits, but sterols occur naturally in nuts.
• L-arginine. Nuts are also a source of l-arginine, which is a substance that may help improve the health of your artery walls by making them more flexible and less prone to blood clots that can block blood flow.

What amount of nuts is considered healthy?

Nuts contain a lot of fat; as much as 80 percent of a nut is fat. Even though most of this fat is healthy fat, it’s still a lot of calories. That’s why you should eat nuts in moderation. Ideally, you should use nuts as a substitute for saturated fats, such as those found in meats, eggs and dairy products.

Instead of eating unhealthy saturated fats, try substituting a handful of nuts. According to the Food and Drug Administration, eating about a handful (1.5 ounces, or 42.5 grams) a day of most nuts, such as almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts, pecans, some pine nuts, pistachio nuts and walnuts, may reduce your risk of heart disease. But again, do this as part of a heart-healthy diet. Just eating nuts and not cutting back on saturated fats found in many dairy and meat products won’t do your heart any good.

Does it matter what kind of nuts you eat?

Possibly. Most nuts appear to be generally healthy, though some more so than others. Walnuts are one of the best-studied nuts, and it’s been shown they contain high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids. Almonds, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts and pecans are other nuts that appear to be quite heart healthy. Even peanuts — which are technically not a nut, but a legume, like beans — seem to be relatively healthy. Coconut, which is technically a fruit, may be considered by some to be a nut, but it doesn’t seem to have heart-healthy benefits. Both coconut meat and oil don’t have the benefits of the mono- and polyunsaturated fats.

Keep in mind, you could end up canceling out the heart-healthy benefits of nuts if they’re covered with chocolate, sugar or salt.

Here’s some nutrition information on common types of nuts. All calorie and fat content measurements are for 1 ounce, or 28.4 grams (g), of unsalted nuts.

*The saturated and unsaturated fat contents in each nut may not add up to the total fat content because the fat value may also include some nonfatty acid material, such as sugars or phosphates.

How about nut oils? Are they healthy, too?

Nut oils are a good source of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E, but they lack the fiber found in whole nuts. Walnut oil is the highest in omega-3s. Nut oils contain saturated as well as unsaturated fats. Consider using nut oils in homemade salad dressing or in cooking. When cooking with nut oils, remember that they respond differently to heat than do vegetable oils. Nut oil, if overheated, can become bitter. Just like with nuts, use nut oil in moderation, as the oils are high in fat and calories.

It has been established for some time now that adding nuts to the diet can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. But data on peanuts – the most popular “nut” – has been lacking. Since peanuts are actually legumes and not nuts, some (DrRich, for instance) have worried that their nearly compulsive consumption of peanuts may be adding only calories, without providing benefit of the much-touted “nut effect” on cardiac health.

Thankfully, researchers from Purdue University have now demonstrated that chronic peanut consumption has a beneficial effect on markers of cardiac health. They studied 15 healthy men and women for 30 weeks, in a complex study assessing the effect of peanut consumption under 3 different dietary conditions. Their conclusions were that peanut consumption reduces serum triglyceride levels by up to 24%, even in situations where peanuts were added to the regular diets, and thus ought to reduce cardiovascular risk by up to 6 – 8%. Furthermore, peanuts added significant magnesium, folate, fiber, copper and arginine to the dietary intake.

The researchers also noted no increase in body weight during the 30-week trial. They speculated that peanuts may create a sense of satiety (fullness,) thus reducing their subjects’ overall caloric consumption.

The FDA now allows peanuts – along with walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, and pistachios – to be advertised as providing a health benefit.

When most people hear “cholesterol” they think “evil.” Like most things in life, the reality is more complex; cholesterol can be very bad and very good. On its own, cholesterol is a crucial body component. That’s why you make the white, waxy substance (about 75% of the cholesterol in your blood is made by the liver and cells elsewhere in your body). Cholesterol insulates nerve cells in your brain and provides structure for cell membranes.

“If you want to see what it looks like in a solidified form, go get yourself a can of Crisco at the grocery store,” says Gregory Dehmer, MD, director of the division of cardiology at the Texas A&M College of Medicine. “If you open up a can of Crisco, it’s this white, lard-like substance.”

When it comes to heart disease, though, some types of cholesterol are too much of a good thing.

How cholesterol can clog arteries
Not all cholesterol is created equal. It’s a fatty substance, so cholesterol can’t dissolve in the blood to be carried to where it’s needed in the body. “Your body is mostly water, and fat and water don’t mix,” says Dr. Dehmer.

So cholesterol is packaged into proteins that can shuttle the fatty stuff around your body. One is high-density lipoprotein (HDL, or good cholesterol) and another is low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or bad cholesterol).

What’s the difference? LDL can stick to the smooth lining of the blood vessels, where it is absorbed. HDL appears to do the opposite—it actually mops up excess cholesterol and removes it from the blood vessels

The amount and type of cholesterol in your blood are determined by genetics, age, diet, and exercise. When you eat a diet that’s rich in saturated and trans fats, or dietary cholesterol (which is found in animal products such as eggs, milk, and meat), LDL cholesterol levels go up.

“The problem is that many individuals—and probably including myself—eat a diet that is very excessive in all the wrong kind of fats, of which we are talking about animal fats and dairy fats, and therefore we get our cholesterol up too high,” says Dr. Dehmer.

But when you exercise, HDL cholesterol goes up—and that’s a good thing. “The bottom line is that there are some people out there who have fairly high levels of HDL cholesterol,” says Stephen Nicholls, MBBS, PhD, a research cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic. “That may drive their total cholesterol to look higher than it actually is in terms of how bad that level is.”

How cholesterol affects the heart
If LDL cholesterol is too high, some is absorbed into the artery walls, where it acts like an irritant that triggers inflammation in the body. White blood cells crawl into the artery wall and start “gobbling up fatty particles” in a fruitless effort to heal the damage, says Dr. Dehmer.

The end result is big, fatty deposits in the blood vessels. This causes the vessels to become stiff, narrow, and less responsive to triggers to expand and constrict, a process that ensures a steady flow of life-giving oxygen to the body’s tissues. (While you may think of blood vessels as akin to the plumbing in your house, they’re more dynamic; they constantly adapt to meet the body’s needs.)

This process can happen all over your body. If the fatty buildup is in the blood vessels in the legs (a condition known as peripheral arterial disease), you may experience cramping and have difficulty walking; if it’s in the penis, you can develop erectile dysfunction; and if it’s in the neck arteries, it can cut off the blood supply to the brain and cause a stroke.

The biggest danger, however, is to the heart. The arteries that cover the surface of the heart are particularly prone to clogging. Once fatty plaques clog these blood vessels, blood flow to the heart tissue is reduced. This can cause chest pain, or angina.

If plaque ruptures, a clot can form and cause a heart attack—a dramatic decline in the blood supply that causes heart tissue to die. (To find out if youre at risk for having a heart attack, take this test.)

What you can do about bad cholesterol
The artery-clogging process can start early in life. A 2008 autopsy study of adults ages 16 to 64 who died of non-heart-disease-related causes found that 83% had signs of heart disease and 8% had advanced disease. “We’re seeing evidence of abnormality of blood vessels and obvious plaque in teenagers,” says Dr. Nicholls.

Luckily, there are many things you can do to help prevent this process. “We know that lowering LDL cholesterol, the bad form, is clearly a good thing,” says Dr. Nicholls. “The other thing we would highlight is the emerging role of HDL, or good cholesterol, the other player here.”

Diet and exercise are critical for lowering LDL and raising HDL, notes Dr. Nicholls. (Click here for specific lifestyle changes that can lower heart disease risk.)

Cholesterol-lowering medication can also help, but you still need to watch your diet and exercise. “You can’t just say, ‘I’m being treated, so I can therefore not exercise and eat whatever I want,’” says Dr. Nicholls. “It doesn’t work that way.”

Older adults with high levels of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins B, C, D and E in their blood performed better on certain measures of thinking abilities, and also tended to have larger brain volume, a new study finds.

Seniors with high levels of trans fats in their blood fared worse on certain thinking tests than those with lower levels of the unhealthy fats, and also had more brain shrinkage.

Researchers said the findings suggest that nutrients work “in synergy” with one another to be protective of brain health.

“For people with a vitamin profile high in B, C, D, E, those particular nutrients seem to be working together on some level,” said lead study author Gene Bowman, an assistant professor in the department of neurology at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. “Having high scores for those vitamins was associated with better cognitive function and larger brain volume.”

The study is published in the Dec. 28 online edition and the Jan. 24 print issue of the journal Neurology.

In the study, researchers measured levels of more than 30 nutrients in the blood of 104 people with an average age of 87. Overall, participants were well-educated, healthy nonsmokers who had relatively few chronic diseases and were free of memory and thinking problems. Researchers also did MRI scans of 42 participants to measure their brain volume.

Some amount of brain atrophy, or shrinkage, occurs with aging. More significant shrinkage is associated with mental decline and Alzheimer’s disease.

The investigators found that the various nutrients seemed to affect different aspects of thinking, suggesting that they work on different pathways in the brain.

People with high levels of vitamins B, C, D and E performed better on tests of executive function and attention, and had better visuospatial skills and global cognitive function. They also had bigger brains, the study authors noted.

Omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in foods such as salmon, were associated with better executive function and with fewer changes to the white matter of the brain, but there was no association between omega-3s and any of the other measures of mental abilities.

“Executive function” is a term used to describe higher level thinking involving planning, attention and problem solving. In this case, seniors were asked to do an exercise that involved matching the number 1 with the letter A, the number 2 with B, and so on, which shows flexibility in thought, Bowman explained.

White matter changes can be indicative of damage to the small blood vessels of the brain, he said.

The people with high levels of trans fats performed worse on tests of mental abilities and had smaller brains, according to the report.

Dr. Marc Gordon, chief of neurology at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y., said the study is “intriguing.” While most studies ask people to recall what they ate, in this one, researchers actually measured what participants had absorbed by using blood biomarkers.

“Two issues make this approach more valid,” said Gordon, also an Alzheimer’s researcher at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y. “One could be the unreliability of people’s recollections about what they ate, and the other is that just because someone ate something doesn’t mean they absorbed it.”

However, he said, the group studied was unique in that they were unusually healthy for their age. The results might be different in a less healthy group of seniors. Prior research, for example, looked at giving people with Alzheimer’s omega-3 fatty acid supplements and found it didn’t help.

The researchers noted that because their study was observational, meaning they found an association between certain nutrients and brain characteristics rather than showing cause-and-effect, it’s too soon to tell everyone to start taking a vitamin containing B, C, D and E.

In addition, another variable is that older people who eat lots of foods containing those nutrients may have difficulty absorbing them.

Even so, the study suggests it makes good sense to limit trans fats, which are often found in fried foods, doughnuts, pastries, pizza dough, cookies, crackers and stick margarines and shortenings, and to eat lots of fruits, vegetables and fatty fish.

“The question is: Do people need to eat healthier foods, or do they need to stay away from unhealthy foods? It looks like you need to do both. Eat more healthy foods and stay away from unhealthy foods,” Bowman said.

Some foods and food ingredients or their components can cause severe allergic reactions including anaphylaxis.

Most food allergies are caused by peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, sesame seeds, fish and shellfish, soy and wheat, and these must be declared on the food label however small the amount added. Gluten, also an allergen, needs to be declared on the label so people with Coeliac Disease or wheat allergy can identify these products. Sulphite preservatives must also be declared on the label if added at 10 (or more) milligrams per kilogram of food..

A food must have a warning statement when people may be unaware of a severe health risk posed by an allergen. Only food containing the bee product royal jelly is required to have a warning statement. This is because royal jelly has been reported to cause severe allergic reactions and, in rare cases, fatalities, especially in asthma and allergy sufferers.

‘May contain’

Some food labels say ‘may contain’ certain allergens, such as ‘may contain nuts’. This is because the manufacturer is concerned that traces of nuts might be present in the food unintentionally, if, for example, the food is prepared on the same equipment as products that contain nuts. Allergy consumer support groups are working with industry to make these labels more helpful to allergy sufferers.

Lupin

Lupin is a legume related to peanuts and soy that is increasingly valued as a nutritious food. Lupin and lupin products have been used in Europe for many years and recently in Australia. In 2004 the Medical Journal of Australia reported three cases of allergic reactions after eating products containing lupin. FSANZ is gathering   information on lupin allergy in Australia to be considered in consultation with allergy experts.

Other names for major allergens

Sometimes ingredients derived from known allergenic foods are not clearly identified in the ingredients list, for example soy might be listed as ‘textured vegetable protein’. Allergy consumer groups are working with the food industry on industry guidelines to provide more meaningful information in plain English.