. . .  with cooking and green tea. Wild fish are chock full of healthy omega 3 fats; unfortunately they're also usually chock full of toxic mercury. But here's some great news from researchers at the University of Montreal. They discovered that cooking fish and consuming it along with coffee or tea reduces the mercury that gets into your system to almost negligible amounts! Using laboratory techniques that simulate digestion, these scientists tested three kinds of fish (tuna, shark and mackerel) raw, boiled or fried. Compared with raw, boiling reduced mercury bioaccessibility by 40%; frying by 60%. In separate experiments they combined the fish with black coffee or black or green tea. All three beverages lowered mercury bioaccessibility by 50-60%. The combined effect of cooking and coffee or tea ingestion reduced bioaccessibility to extremely low levels. Here's another reason to add green tea to your healthy lifestyle -- a far healthier choice than either…

. . . it could double your risk for macular degeneration A European study on nearly 4,700 men and women over 65 found that daily aspirin users more than doubled their risk of late stage, "wet" macular degeneration. Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of legal blindness resulting in loss of independence among older Americans. The macula is a tiny, highly sensitive region in the center of the retina that allows you to see fine details and colors. Without it, you aren't totally blind, but all you see is shapes and movement in shades of black and white. With age, the macula can deteriorate in one of two ways. It can become thin and sprinkled with debris called drusen (the dry form), or blood vessels beneath the retina may push up into the macula and leak blood and fluids (the wet form). The wet form, which is considered the more serious, was the form associated with aspirin use in the above study. (Aspirin is known to cause small hemorrhages under the retina.) Other…