CHI - Mercy Medical Centerville

EAT YOUR GREENS, PROTECT YOUR EYES? In addition to helping keep your waistline lean and your heart healthy, a diet rich in leafy green vegetables may help preserve your eyesight. A recent study conducted by researchers with Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, indicates that individuals who eat lots of dark green vegetables are less likely to develop glaucoma, an eye condition characterized by loss of vision caused by uid retention in the eye and damage to the optic nerve. Specically, the researchers analyzed two dierent studies conducted on nearly 105,000 participants between 1984 and 2014 and found evidence that individuals who eat an abundance of leafy greens are 20 percent less likely to develop the eye disease. healthbeat Keeping You Up to Date on the Latest Health News NEW HOPE FOR MS PATIENTS One of the most common neurological diseases in the United States, multiple sclerosis (MS) has been diagnosed in more than 250,000 Americans and causes symptoms including numbness, paralysis and vision problems. For years, researchers have developed drugs to help slow progression of the degenerative, debilitating disease. Now a drug therapy is showing promise in halting and reversing the disease's progression — a rst for MS therapies. In a study recently reported in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at Northwestern University followed 151 patients who were given a stem cell replacement therapy typically used to treat patients with blood and bone cancers. Two years after the treatment, half of the patients showed substantial improvement in their disability, and more than 80 percent remained relapse-free four years post-treatment. SOY AND THE FERTILITY FACTOR New research published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism notes that women who are going through treatment to boost fertility may have higher chances of conceiving if they are eating a diet rich in soy. Specically, a team of Boston researchers studied how soy helped protect the reproductive systems of women against bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in some plastics that may hamper fertility. While research is still ongoing, the scientists studied data collected from 2007 to 2012 that found women who consumed soy had higher-than-normal fertilityrates following in vitro fertilization (IVF)treatments. MERCY MEDICAL CENTERCENTERVILLE /// www.mercycenterville.org 2

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