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Dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids was associated with a lower incidence of autoantibodies in the blood that signal the immune system to attack insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Omega-3 fatty acids are known to have anti-inflammatory properties, and inflammation is believed to play a major role in the development of type 1 diabetes through destruction of these insulin-producing cells.

“The thinking is that omega-3 may increase the body’s ability to fight the inflammation that leads to type 1 diabetes,” researcher Jill M. Norris, MPH, PHD announced yesterday.

“This is a preliminary study,” she says. “We really can’t make dietary recommendations based on these findings.”

The study appears in the Sept. 27 issue of TheJournal of the American Medical Association.

Omega-3, Diabetes Research
In adults, omega-3 rich diets are believed to lower cardiovascular risk, and in babies the fatty acid is believed to boost brain development.

A 2003 study from Norway was one of the first human trials to suggest a protective role for omega-3 fatty acids in type 1 diabetes. Researchers reported a lower incidence of omega-3-rich cod liver oil supplementation during infancy in children with diabetes, compared to children without the disease.

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Your knees are the pivot point for any kind of exercise be it running, biking or just about any team sport as well. Being critical to exercise it is important to keep your knees strong. There are a few things that you can do to protect your knees and care for them so that you can avoid the debilitating knee surgeries that so many people in even their 30s and 40s need to get.

You knees are made up of cartilage at the join on both the top and bottom bones and ligaments and tendons around the sides and through the middle. Over time it is the cartlage that wears and sometimes chips off, I can tell this myself as sometimes I will get a bit of a locking in my knees for a few hours until the bits of cartilage floating around become unstuck in the joint.

First of all there is a difference between protecting your knees and having an injury that involves the knee. As you no doubt have noticed your knees only going in one direction and either hyerextending (stretching to far) or having your knee go sideways can create an injury that will take anywhere from a few days to a few months to heal. If you do have a basic injury to your knee it is incredibly important to let it heal for as long as it takes. An injury that does not heal fully will be very susceptible to re injury afterwards as we have seen in many pro athletes.

If you injure you knee it will swell up very quickly as there is quite a bit of blood flow in your lower body so besides the obvious of going to the doctor to have you knee tested you also want to take down the swelling. Ice you knee for a half hour once an hour so 30 minutes on and 30 minutes off for the first day. On the second day and after alternate heat and ice for 20 minutes each as often as you can. The ice will keep the swelling down and the heat will help you speed up the healing. In this early healing time even though you may have a bit of strength in your knee always wrap your knee and be very careful not to push it at all you definitely do not want your knee to get hurt again this soon after.

I had a lot of problems with my knees over the years especially my left knee because I always did come back too quickly from injury. Now my knees seem to be pretty good because my main lower body exercise is low impact. I bike as much as I can and this has strengthened all of the muscles around my knee so that I am now quite strong. One problem that still persists though is running, I can not seem to do any consistent running for more than a few weeks without my knees hurting and having to give it up.

Another thing that will help your knees is to not lock out your knee during weight workouts. When doing squats or leg presses it is important to not lock out your knees as this is another way that you can cause harm to your knee cartilage.

Soccer has always been known as a great alternative to jogging as a great form of exercise but a new study seems to show that Soccer is actually much better as a form of exercise than jogging.

University of Copenhagen sports scientist Peter Krustrup and his colleagues conducted their research on 37 men. The researchers strapped heart monitors to their chests and compared blood samples and muscle tissue before and after matches and jogging sessions. The men were split into groups of soccer players, joggers, and couch potatoes.

After 12 weeks, researchers found that the body fat percentage in the soccer players dropped by 3.7 percent, compared to about 2 percent for the joggers. The soccer players also increased their muscle mass by almost 4.5 pounds, whereas the joggers didn’t have any significant change

So why these results? Well I think that the excitement that people feel when playing a team sport helps but more importnantly to play soccer means to jog around some and sprint some and the faster-slower type exercise confuses you muscles and helps you get in a much better workout.

Do you agree? Now that winter is coming it would be a great time to look into one of those fun indoor soccer leagues.