Eating For Health

My husband showed me an article on coffee and how drinking coffee can adversely affect the medications you may be taking.   Many Americans are on medications and probably give little thought as to how their morning cup of coffee might affect their medications.   And there are ways to still enjoy your coffee and avoid those coffee-drug interactions?   In what ways might coffee interfere with prescription medications? Absorption: Coffee can interfere with the absorption of a medication. Metabolism Changes: Coffee needs some liver enzymes for metabolism and these liver enzymes may also be needed to metabolize a medication.   This can lead to the levels of medication potentially increasing or decreasing in the bloodstream.   Blood Sugar:   Coffee, especially if mixed with sugar and/or milk, can affect blood sugar levels which can make it harder to manage diabetes.   Drug interactions:   Coffee can form complexes with some medications making them...

Obesity and Deaths:   Some interesting nutrition research was reported this week.   One study focused on obesity and noted more Americans are dying from obesity than previously thought.   Columbia University researchers have found that obesity accounts for nearly 20 percent of deaths for ages 40-85.   This is significant as previously they thought only 5% of deaths in adults was due to obesity.   So why is obesity causing more deaths than previously thought?   It seems researchers are now concluding that obesity has far worse consequences than previous reports indicated.   This increase in deaths due to obesity may shorten life expectancy.   "Ryan Masters, a co- author of the study noted, “Obesity has dramatically worse health consequences than some recent reports have led us to believe.   We expect that obesity will be responsible for an increasing share of deaths in the United States and perhaps even lead to declines in U.S. life expecta...