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Great news for Coffee drinkers Think twice before kicking your coffee habit. In a recent study of about 400,000 older adults, researchers from the National Cancer Institute determined that coffee-drinking could help boost your longevity. At the start of the study, each participant was between the ages of 50 and 71, had no history of heart disease or cancer, and answered a series of questions about coffee consumption and health-related behaviors like smoking and exercise. At a 12year follow-up, researchers found that participants who drank the most coffee were up to 15 percent less likely to have died since the study's beginning. While there was no link between coffee consumption and cancer-related death, coffee drinkers had a lower incidence of death due to heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes and infections. According to the study's authors, the longevity beneits of coffee-drinking seemed to be similar for those who sipped two to three cups per day and those who guzzled greater amounts of java. Although the study didn't look at how or why coffee might help lengthen your lifespan, past research suggests that moderate coffee consumption may protect against diabetes and cardiovascular disease. There's also some evidence that drinking several cups of coffee each day may help protect against depression, as well as preserve brain health as you age. As noted by study author Neal Freedman, Ph.D., not all coffee drinks are created equal when it comes to their health value. "More and more people [in the United States] drink espresso-based drinks that typically include a lot of fat, for example cream and caramel on top," Freedman points out in a recent interview in the Journal of Caffeine Research. "All of these preparation differences may affect associations with disease." timing is everything in weight loss Those late-in-the-day meals might be messing with your weightloss efforts. According to a new study from the International Journal of Obesity, people who eat their largest meal earlier in the day may shed more pounds and slim down faster than dieters who save their most sizeable meal for later on. The study involved 420 overweight people in Spain, where lunch serves as the biggest meal of the day (accounting for 40 percent of daily calorie consumption). For 20 weeks, one group of study members ate lunch anytime before 3 p.m., while a second group took their lunch after 3 p.m. While all study members followed the same weight-loss program, the late-eaters lost signiicantly less weight than the early-eaters. They also had a slower weight-loss rate, as well as lower insulin sensitivity (a key risk factor for diabetes). omega-3s keep Breasts healthy One more reason to ill up on omega-3s: a new study from the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry shows that the essential fatty acids found in ish oil and laxseed may help cut your breast cancer risk. In tests on mice genetically engineered to develop mammary tumors, scientists discovered that animals exposed to omega-3 fatty acids for their entire lives ended up developing just two-thirds as many tumors as a control group of mice. rock Body your By Elizabeth Barker the Clear-skin diet If you're still struggling with blemishes way past your teen years, take a look at your eating routine. A report recently published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics indicates that overdoing it on foods high on the glycemic index could leave you more acne-prone, and that shaking up your diet might help banish breakouts. Looking at a host of studies from the past four decades, the report's authors found "convincing evidence" that diets with a high glycemic load may aggravate acne. A measure of how carbohydratecontaining foods affect blood sugar and insulin, the glycemic index assigns higher numbers to foods that trigger blood-sugar spikes. For instance, high glycemic foods include starchy items like white bread and white rice, while low glycemic foods include iber-rich oatmeal, barley, lentils and similar. Previous studies show taking on a low glycemic diet may help tame acne by curbing chronic inlammation (a common problem closely linked to acne lare-ups). WL.indd 15 April/May201315 3/26/13 4:22 PM