Dear Healthy Friend,

We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare... The tortoise trudging along eventually overtaking and beating the hare in a race to the finish line... It has a wonderful meaning behind the lesson! But what if the hare was right? What if faster is better? What if slower could be a faster way... Well, to the grave anyway...

Keep reading to see what Dr Douglass has to say...

In the name of good health,

Taryn Strugnell
Managing Editor of Nutrition & Healing

P.S. In Health Bytes from June 23rd we brought you some benefits of the Mediterranean diet for your heart and this week we uncover another...

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Slow and steady may win the race after all - if it's a race to the graveyard.
Dr William Campbell Douglass
Editor, Healthier News

Researchers now claim that walking speeds can actually predict how long you'll live - and if you're a bit on the slow side, you might want to get on the phone with your lawyer and make sure your will is up to date.

Put the phone down, I'm kidding. No need to panic - yet - because I'm not sold on this one. But it's an interesting theory, so let's take quick a look at it.

Researchers crunched the numbers on some 35,000 seniors who took part in nine studies that, among other things, measured their walking speeds.

Since all of them were still living at home, these weren't patients shuffling through hospitals and nursing homes, but independent seniors... Some of whom just so happened to leave the rest in the dust, in more ways than one.

Here's the over-under: Walk faster than about 90cm per second (3.62Kmph) and you might outlive your life insurance policy. Walk slower than 60.96cm per second (2.18Kmph) and you might be on borrowed time.

More specifically, a 70-year-old man who cruises at 3.62Kmph will live an average of eight years longer than one who trudges at 1.61Kmph, while women that age can expect an extra decade.

But does your walking speed REALLY make that much of a difference?

I doubt it... Not on its own anyway. Despite any adjustments these researchers may have made in their study, anyone who's limping along at 1.61 measly kilometers per hour has something seriously wrong - and maybe it just hasn't been diagnosed yet.

If you have all the speed of a tortoise and you're not suffering from an obvious leg, foot or calf injury, you need to find out why your motor coordination is so out of whack - because THAT, and not your walking speed by itself, is probably the real culprit here.

But at the same time, maybe you should pick up the pace a little. Just in case.

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Not just for your heart health...
Christine O'Brien
contributor, Nutrition & Healing

You already know the Mediterranean diet - rich in olive oil, fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts and fish - is excellent for heart health.

But new research shows that eating this style isn't just good for your heart - it also offers another major benefit: A slower rate of cognitive decline.

That's right - the Mediterranean diet could be the very thing to deliver a one-two punch to keep your ticker AND your thinker going.

Participants in the study had an average age of 75.4 years and were enrolled in the Chicago Health and Ageing Project, an ongoing study of people aged 65 and older. They completed cognitive function tests at three-year intervals.

The results, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, show that people who most closely adhered to the diet had brains "years younger" than people who didn't dine from the Mediterranean menu.

The researchers behind the study say the mechanisms are pretty clear. The foods in the Mediterranean diet reduce markers of oxidative stress and reduce the inflammation that plays a role in both heart disease and Alzheimer's.

People eating a Mediterranean diet also had lower rates of stroke, hypertension and depression.