health briefs

Take Vinegar to Lower the Blues Try Lavender and Valerian to Reduce Fatigue

Depression relief may be as close as the vinegar bottle on the kitchen shelf, according to a new study from Arizona State University involving 25 healthy college students divided into two groups. Fourteen drank two tablespoons of Bragg’s apple cider vinegar diluted in one cup of water twice daily with meals, while 11 students consumed a vinegar tablet that contained 1/100 as much vinegar twice daily. After four weeks, using psychological tests and urine samples, the researchers found a 20 to 34 percent reduction in self-reported depression scores from the test group compared to slight increases in depression in the control group. Several metabolic alterations were found consistent with improved mood, including enzymatic dysfunction in the hexosamine pathway, as well as significant increases in glycine, serine and threonine metabolism. “With over 40 percent of college students self-reporting moderate-to-severe depression—a 77 percent increase over the past decade—simple and safe strategies that effectively reduce depression in this population are urgently needed,” the authors write.

Fatigue that hampers daily activities is a major symptom of heart failure, the leading cause of U.S. hospitalization for people over 65. To explore inexpensive and accessible herbal treatments, researchers at the Aja University of Medical Sciences, in Tehran, Iran, divided 120 heart-failure patients into three groups: one received aromatherapy, breathing in lavender essence every day; another took 530 milligram capsules of valerian root extract daily; and the third group had conventional medical therapy with no herbal supplementation. After 15 days, fatigue was significantly reduced in both herbal groups, while individuals receiving only conventional care did not experience a noticeable relief in fatigue.

Drink Coffee and Tea to Reduce Dementia and Stroke Risk

There’s good news for coffee and tea drinkers in recent research: consuming two to three cups a day of each beverage has been found to significantly lower the risk of stroke by 32 percent and of dementia by 28 percent compared to abstainers. Researchers from Tianjin Medical University, in China, analyzed a databank of 365,682 UK residents between 50 and 74 years of age that reported their coffee and tea consumption over 11 years and found that drinking both beverages in the course of a day correlates with a lower risk of stroke and dementia compared to drinking either one exclusively. Also, drinking three to six cups of coffee alone or in combination with tea was associated with a lower risk of post-stroke dementia. “Coffee and tea are distinct beverages with both overlapping and different contents. One potential mechanism may be related to the combined protective role of the different antioxidants and other biological contents in these two beverages,” the study concluded.