News Letters - Health and Nutrition - How many is too many ?

The pile of health and nutrition newsletters at the end of the month, silently screaming "file me neatly", forces the thought "Am I buying too many newsletters ?" 

Then leading on to the unbidden thought "Am I getting anything out of all these newsletters ?"

The end of November is a good time to go through this month's pile to check for value and the pile is deeper than I thought. By the way, all of these are pay for news letters, so there is a limit to how much you can extract from the free web sites.

1. Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter  told me that if you want to increase intake of omega-3 (and I've no doubt that this is a good idea) then you need to supplement your food with  fish oil. Tufts reported on a test with 62 fire fighters over 12 weeks who took either flax oil or fish oil or the obligatory placebo. Only  fish oil made any real difference to the levels of EPA and DHA in  the blood stream. EPA and DHA are the long-chain omega-3 and are the only ones of any real value to our bodies. 
2. Wellness Letter from University of California, Berkley (The Newsletter of Nutrition, Fitness, and Self-care) told me that taking glucosamine or chondritin (or the two together) had only insignificant affect on knee cartilage. The hope had been that taking these supplements improved knee cartilage health and reduced knee pain. The GAIT study covered 1,600 people and for 60% of the participants the placebo worked as well as the supplements! A sad end to a lot of hope but my personal experience has been that glucosamine did not help.
3. Duke Medicine Health News has an interesting format whereby they report on research studies and then have Duke doctors and researchers comment on research findings. I think these are meant to be the voice of sanity and most of the time they are. I've often blog'd about Vitamin D so the article "Check Your Vitamin D intake to Avoid Multiple Health Consequences" immediately caught my eye with the message "Three 2008 studies link low vitamin D levels to depression, hip fracture, and increased risk of death." 
4. Mayo Clinic Health Letter strongly advocates colorectal cancer screening. I can feel smug about this having had a colonoscopy in 2006 and I am good to go through 2011. However I should have had the first colonoscopy at 50 not 62. About 2/3 rds of colorectal cancers are detected late. By contrast the 1/3 rd of colorectal cancers detected early have a 90% success rate.
5. Health After 50 (The Johns Hopkins Medical Letter) had just a paragraph on the health benefits of running. They reported briefly on a study at Stanford University Medical Center that after following runners and non-runners for 19 years (most participants are now in their late 70s) the runners were living longer and were healthier into old age. I blog'd on this item the moment I read it.
6. Nutrition Action Health Letter had a long piece on the key risk factors and warning signs for major cancers that are linked to diet, weight, or exercise. The chart below of Leading Cancer Killers illustrates the article. If one is lucky enough to avoid cancers of the lungs, breast, prostate, colon and rectum then chances of a long and happy life go up substantially.