Health for life

People who like to nap say it helps them focus their minds post a little shut eye. Now, a study from Georgetown University Medical Center may have found evidence to support that notion.

The research, presented at Neuroscience 2012, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, found that when participants in a study rested, the right hemisphere of their brains talked more to itself and to the left hemisphere than the left hemisphere communicated within itself and to the right hemisphere – no matter which of the participants hands was dominant. (Neuroscientists say right-handed people use their left hemisphere to a greater degree, and vice versa.)

Results of this study, the first known to look at activity in the two different hemispheres during rest, suggests that the right hemisphere "is doing important things in the resting state that we dont yet understand," says Andrei Medvedev, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Center for Functional and Molecular Imaging at Georgetown. The activities being processed by the right hemisphere, which is known to be involved in creative tasks, could be daydreaming or processing and storing previously acquired information. "The brain could be doing some helpful housecleaning, classifying data, consolidating memories," Medvedev says. "That could explain the power of napping. But we just dont know yet the relative roles of both hemispheres in those processes and whether the power nap might benefit righties more then lefties."

To find out what happens in the resting state, the research team connected 15 study participants to near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) equipment. This technology, which is low cost and portable, uses light to measure changes in oxygenated hemoglobin inside the body.

The study participants wore a cap adorned with optical fibers that delivers infrared light to the outermost layers of the brain and then measures the light that bounces back. In this way, the device can "see" which parts of the brain are most active and communicating at a higher level based on increased use of oxygen in the blood and heightened synchronicity of their activities.

"The device can help delineate global networks inside the brain — how the components all work together," Medvedev says. "The better integrated they are, the better cognitive tasks are performed."

To their surprise, the researchers found that left and right hemispheres behaved differently during the resting state. "That was true no matter which hand a participant used. The right hemisphere was more integrated in right-handed participants, and even stronger in the left-handed," he says.

Medvedev is exploring the findings for an explanation. And he suggests that brain scientists should start focusing more of their attention on the right hemisphere. "Most brain theories emphasize the dominance of the left hemisphere especially in right handed individuals, and that describes the population of participants in these studies," Medvedev says. "Our study suggests that looking at only the left hemisphere prevents us from a truer understanding of brain function." The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants # RR025786, GM103526 and EB006589). Medvedev and his co-authors report having no personal financial interests related to this study.

The way you prepare broccoli and related vegetables can alter their potentially cancer-fighting powers, new research shows.

Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables are a good source of sulforaphane, a phytochemical (naturally occurring plant compound) that has shown strong anti-cancer properties in lab studies.

However, the enzyme myrosinase in broccoli is needed for sulforaphane to form. If the myrosinase is destroyed, sulforaphane cannot form.

Researchers compared boiled, microwaved and steamed broccoli, and found that steaming broccoli for up to five minutes was the best way to retain its myrosinase. Boiling and microwaving broccoli for one minute or less destroyed the majority of the enzyme, according to Elizabeth Jeffery, a researcher at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Jeffery also found that if you do eat well-cooked broccoli, you can still get sulforaphane to form by adding raw foods containing myrosinase to your meal. Study participants ate a broccoli supplement with no active myrosinase. When some of them ate a second food with myrosinase, their blood and urine levels of sulforaphane were significantly higher than those who did not eat the second food with myrosinase.

The findings were presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Institute for Cancer Research in Bethesda, Md. Findings presented at medical meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

"Mustard, radish, arugula, wasabi and other uncooked cruciferous vegetables such as coleslaw all contain myrosinase, and weve seen this can restore the formation of sulforaphane," Jeffery said in an institute news release.

Previous research has found that:

* Crushing or chopping garlic, and then waiting 10 to 15 minutes before exposing it to heat allows its inactive compounds to convert into the active, protective phytochemical known as allicin.
* Cooking tomatoes and other foods that contain lycopene allows our body to more easily absorb the beneficial phytochemical.
* Boiling vegetables for a long time means you lose water-soluble vitamins, such as vitamin C, folate and niacin that leach into the water.

"As were learning, food processing isnt just what happens to food before it reaches the grocery shelves," AICR associate director of nutrition programs Alice Bender said in the news release. "This research highlights that what you do in your kitchen can make those fruits and vegetables on your plate even more cancer-protective."