What a Bee Wants

What a Bee Wants

There’s a type of bee in South America that could have a significant impact on your cognitive health.

Actually, this variety of bee (known as Euglossa, or orchid bee) would have no impact on your health at all if it weren’t for a unique orchid with a fragrance that drives orchid bees mad with desire.

This equation of orchid + fragrance + bees = romance ensures that plenty of orchid bees thrive throughout virgin forests along the Amazon – an area where the cannon ball tree grows.

Cannon ball trees? Bees? Orchids? I promise, this is all leading up to something good.

Look out below!

The cannon ball tree produces an unusual yellow flower with a tightly coiled hood. Your average bee can’t do much with this flower, but the orchid bee happens to have a tongue long enough to fit neatly into the coil.

The resulting pollination prompts the growth of hard, round seedpods that give the cannonball tree its name. If you split open one of these pods, you’ll find several woody shells that contain large seeds known as Brazil nuts.

This long and winding road that nature takes just to produce a Brazil nut is well worth the trouble, because this seed contains generous amounts of magnesium, thiamine, alpha-linolenic acid (which the body converts to omega-3 fatty acids), and selenium. In fact, no other food contains nearly as much selenium as the Brazil nut: about 840 micrograms (mcg) per ounce.

And every one of those micrograms will do you good.

New benefit

As I’ve noted in previous e-Alerts, selenium has been shown to help produce several important health benefits, including increased insulin efficiency, enhancement of the immune system, and defense against autoimmune disorders. Selenium has also been shown to reduce the risk of developing cancer: specifically liver, colorectal and prostate cancers.

A new study from the University of Montpellier in France reveals another key benefit of selenium intake.

STUDY ABSTRACT

• Researchers recruited nearly 1,400 subjects between the ages of 60 and 71
• Over nine years, researchers measured each subject’s selenium level six times, and used periodic neuropsychologic tests to evaluate changes in cognitive function
• Results showed that subjects with the greatest selenium decrease had the highest probability of cognitive decline
• Among subjects who experienced a rise in selenium levels, those with the smallest increase showed greater cognitive decline compared with those who had the greatest increase

In their write up of the study in the January 2007 issue of Epidemiology, the Montpellier researchers note that selenium levels naturally decrease with age, and their study suggests that this tendency “may contribute to declines in neuropsychologic functions among aging people.”

The U.S. RDA for selenium is 55 mcg for women and 70 mcg for men. Fruits and vegetables are generally good selenium sources, but only when they’re grown in selenium-rich soil. In the U.S., selenium is highly concentrated in the soil of only six states: North and South Dakota, Utah, Colorado, Montana and Wyoming. Bread, fish and meat also deliver some amounts of selenium

You can use the link below to find out more about the benefits of selenium and how it helps support the effectiveness of vitamin E.
http://www.hsionline.com/ealerts/ea200212/ea20021218.html