New Toasted Breakfast Burritos from Taco Bell in the U.S.

Cheesy Toasted Breakfast Burrito

Hash Brown Toasted Breakfast Burrito

Grande Toasted Breakfast Burrito

Beefsteak with Beet Salt

Ingredients

1 good-quality entrecôte of veal or beef
olive oil
pepper

Beet Salt

beet, grated
salt

Method

1. To make the beet salt, take a bagful of grated beets and mix it thoroughly with a generous handful of sea salt flakes, so that the salt soaks up the juice of the beets.
2. Then put the mixture on a tray covered with kitchen paper and leave it in a dry, sunny place where it will dry out completely. Store the beet salt in an airtight container.
3. If the steak is fairly thick, decide beforehand how well done you require it.
4. Put the griddle over the highest heat possible, drizzle on a few drops of oil, and sear the steak on one side for about 2 minutes, and then, if the steak is thick, on the other side. With this searing technique, the meat is crispy on the outside and succulent inside.
5. If you want the meat well done, put it on a very hot griddle in the same way, but once you have seared it lower the temperature to medium and continue cooking, so that it is done inside.
6. In either case, once the steak is cooked transfer it to a plate and season it with the beet salt. This not only enhances its flavor but also adds a pleasing visual touch.

Makes 1 serving.

Source: Paleo

Study: Daily Avocado Consumption Improves Attention in Persons with Overweight, Obesity

Liz Ahlberg wrote . . . . . . . . .

A diet including daily avocado consumption improves the ability to focus attention in adults whose measurements of height and weight are categorized as overweight or obese, a new randomized control trial found.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign conducted the 12-week study, published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology.

“Previous work has shown that individuals with overweight and obesity are at higher risk for cognitive decline and dementia in older age,” said kinesiology and community health professor Naiman Khan, who led the study. “We are interested in whether dietary approaches may have benefits for cognitive health, especially in midlife.”

The Hass Avocado Board and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture supported this work.

Avocados are high in lutein, a dietary component associated with cognitive benefits. Though avocado consumption’s benefits have been studied in older adults and children, no randomized controlled trials had studied its cognitive effects on adults with overweight or obesity, despite 70% of the American adult population falling into that category, said graduate student Caitlyn Edwards, the first author of the study.

In the new study, the researchers provided 12 weeks of daily meals to 84 adults with overweight or obesity. The meals were identical in calories and macronutrients, but one group’s meals included a fresh avocado every day, while the control group had no avocado in their meals.

At the beginning and end of the study, the participants completed three cognitive tests to measure attention and inhibition. In addition, the researchers measured lutein levels in the participants’ serum and in their retinas, which is associated with the lutein concentration in the brain.

They found that the participants whose diets included avocados improved their performance on one of the cognitive tests, called the Flanker task, which measures attentional inhibition – the ability to maintain focus on the task at hand even in the face of distraction. However, there was no difference in the other two cognitive tests.

“It could be that nutrients in avocados have a specific action in the brain that supports the ability to do this task in particular, or they could be more beneficial for certain cognitive abilities over others,” Khan said. “It’s also possible that with a longer study or different tests, we could see other effects. Other studies have found broader effects in other populations, so it is interesting to see a more specific benefit for this population.”

Another unexpected finding was that, while the participants who ate avocados had higher levels of lutein at the end of the study, the changes in lutein levels were not correlated with their cognitive changes.

“Avocados also are high in fiber and monounsaturated fats. It is possible that these other nutrients may have played a role in the cognitive effects we saw, but we focused on the lutein in our analyses,” Edwards said. “Future analyses may focus on other nutrients found in avocados, or avocado consumption’s impact on other measures such as weight status, inflammation and potential changes in the microbiome.”

Although this study focused on avocados, other dietary sources of lutein, fiber and unsaturated fats – such as green leafy vegetables or eggs – also have potential cognitive and health benefits. The researchers say their study shows that small dietary changes, such as eating avocados, can have measurable impacts on cognitive performance, even when other health behaviors remain the same.

“Our mission is to give people options. There are multiple ways people can eat to optimize brain health,” Khan said. “What we’re learning is that avocados may be one of those fruits that may be neuroprotective in certain ways. This work provides some evidence behind one option people have from a plethora of healthful foods that we can consume.”

Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

New Sleep Method Strengthens Brain’s Ability to Retain Memories

Process that uses smell can strengthen memories stored in one side of the brain, say TAU, Weizmann researchers

A new joint study by Tel Aviv University (TAU) and Weizmann Institute of Science researchers has yielded an innovative method for bolstering memory processes in the brain during sleep.

The method relies on a memory-evoking scent administered to one nostril. It helps researchers understand how sleep aids memory, and in the future could possibly help to restore memory capabilities following brain injuries, or help treat people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for whom memory often serves as a trigger.

The new study was led by Ella Bar, a PhD student at TAU and the Weizmann Institute of Science. Other principal investigators include Prof. Yuval Nir of TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sagol School of Neuroscience, as well as Profs. Yadin Dudai, Noam Sobel and Rony Paz, all of Weizmann’s Department of Neurobiology. It was published in Current Biology on March 5.

“We know that a memory consolidation process takes place in the brain during sleep,” Bar explains. “For long-term memory storage, information gradually transitions from the hippocampus — a brain region that serves as a temporary buffer for new memories — to the neocortex. But how this transition happens remains an unsolved mystery.”

“By triggering consolidation processes in only one side of the brain during sleep, we were able to compare the activity between the hemispheres and isolate the specific activity that corresponds to memory reactivation,” Prof. Nir adds.

Bar says, “Beyond promoting basic scientific understanding, we hope that in the future this method may also have clinical applications. For instance, post-traumatic patients show higher activity in the right hemisphere when recalling a trauma, possibly related to its emotional content.

“The technique we developed could potentially influence this aspect of the memory during sleep and decrease the emotional stress that accompanies recall of the traumatic memory. Additionally, this method could be further developed to assist in rehabilitation therapy after one-sided brain damage due to stroke.”

The researchers began from the knowledge that memories associated with locations on the left side of a person are mostly stored in the right brain hemisphere and vice versa. While exposed to the scent of a rose, research participants were asked to remember the location of words presented on either the left or right side of a computer screen. Participants were then tested on their memory of the word locations, then proceeded to nap at the lab. As the participants were napping, the scent of roses was administered again, but this time to only one nostril.

With this “one-sided” odor delivery, the researchers were able to reactivate and boost specific memories that were stored in a specific brain hemisphere.

The team also recorded electrical brain activity during sleep with EEG. The results showed that the “one-sided” rose scent delivery led to different sleep waves in the two hemispheres. The hemisphere that received the scent revealed better electrical signatures of memory consolidation during sleep. Finally, in the most crucial test of all, subjects were asked after waking up to undergo a second memory test about the words they had been exposed to before falling asleep.

“The memory of the subjects was significantly better for words presented on the side affected by smell than the memory for words presented on the other side,” Bar says.

“Our findings emphasize that the memory consolidation process can be amplified by external cues such as scents,” she concludes. “By using the special organization of the olfactory pathways, memories can be manipulated in a local manner on one side of the brain. Our finding demonstrates that memory consolidation likely involves a nocturnal ‘dialogue’ between the hippocampus and specific regions in the cerebral cortex.”

Source: Tel Aviv University American Friends

Low Blood Pressure Linked to High Mortality in Older Adults

International blood pressure guidelines may require review, according to new research that found a link between low blood pressure and higher mortality rates.

A largescale study led by the University of Exeter, published in Age and Ageing and funded by NIHR, analysed 415,980 electronic medical records of older adults in England.

The research was conducted after some countries have changed blood pressure guidelines to encourage clinicians to take measures to reduce blood pressure in a bid to improve health outcomes. UK blood pressure guidelines are within safe parameters for all. However, previous research has not considered the impact on frail older adults, who are often omitted from trials.

The team found that people aged 75 or over with low blood pressure (below 130 / 80) had increased mortality rates in the follow-up, compared to those with normal blood pressure. This was especially pronounced in ‘frail’ individuals, who had 62 per cent increased risk of death during the ten year follow-up.

Although high blood pressure increased risk of cardiovascular incidents, such as heart attacks, it was not linked to higher mortality in frail adults over 75. Older people aged 85 and over who had raised blood pressure actually had reduced mortality rates, compared to those with lower blood pressure, regardless of whether they were frail or not.

Jane Masoli, a geriatrician and NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow, who led the study as part of her PhD at the University of Exeter, said: “Internationally, guidelines are moving towards tight blood pressure targets, but our findings indicate that this may not be appropriate in frail older adults. We need more research to ascertain whether aggressive blood pressure control is safe in older adults, and then for which patient groups there may be benefit, so we can move towards more personalised blood pressure management in older adults.”

She added: “We know that treating blood pressure helps to prevent strokes and heart attacks and we would not advise anyone to stop taking their medications unless guided by their doctor.”

Source: University of Exeter

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