Gnash Healer?

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To Your Health

Of grinds, greens and simply going for a stroll.

When it concerns the fitness of body, mind or spirit, the editors of American Health are there, staying on top of up-to-date medical research, separating fad from fact and helping you preserve and improve life's most precious gift—your good health. Here are just a few items culled from recent and upcoming issues, including another connection between nutrition and cancer prevention.

Bruxer Busters

Bruxers are people who clench, grind and gnash their teeth, accelerating tooth wear and frequently giving themselves broken fillings and headaches. University of Florida psychologist Jeff Cassisi and other researchers at the University of Missouri tracked 10 heavy-duty bruxers who wore nighttime sensors attached to their cheeks for two weeks. Whenever the sensor detected extreme tension in the chewing muscle (the masseter), a bedside alarm went off, which the bruxer had to get up and turn off: As a result, those bruxers reduced nocturnal gnashing for two weeks after treatment. Cassisi hopes the alarm can permanently change behavior, eliminating the need for the traditional antibruxing plastic mouthpiece.

A Folic Acid/B 12 Connection

Beta-carotene has gotten a lot of press as a cancer preventive, but another healthboosting ingredient of leafy green vegetables is folic acid.

A 1985 USDA survey found that the diets of women average only 51% of the RDA for folic acid, of men 76%. Furthermore, studies have found that smokers with injured lung cells have particularly low levels of both folic acid and B 12 . These deficiencies may lead to DNA mutations, making lung cells even more susceptible to such carcinogens as cigarette smoke.

More recently, nutrition scientist Douglas Heimburger, M.D., and colleagues at the University of Alabama Medical Center in Birmingham studied 73 male heavy smokers with potentially precancerous lung cells. Half the group received daily doses of 10 mg folic acid (25 times the U.S. RDA) and 500 mcg B 12 (83 times), and the other half were given placebos. At four months, six of the 37 untreated controls spontaneously showed reduced lung-cell injury, but two-and-a-half times more of the treated men—14 of 36—had reduced injury.