An apple a day, recent British research shows, isn't the only thing that may keep the doctor away.

According to researchers from the British Medical Research Council's Environmental Epidemiology Unit in Southampton, England, an orange or grapefruit may also do the trick -- especially among the elderly.

The research, which was published in the British Medical Journal last week, came, in fact, to a dual conclusion: that a low intake of vitamin C was as strong a risk factor for strokes as having high blood pressure and that elderly people whose diets are rich in vitamin C are consequently less likely to die from strokes.

"Although this study has not looked at the mechanism behind the finding, scientists believe that the antioxidant properties of vitamin C are important in reducing the tendency of cholesterol and other fats to cause atherosclerosis, the disease which blocks up arteries,'' the MRC said in a statement.

The researchers from MRC, an organisation which funds medical research, analysed the cause of death of 643 elderly people whose diets had been monitored and examined by a doctor as part of a nutritional survey in 1973-74.

Among their findings was the discovery that the elderly people whose vitamin C intake was in the top third (more than 44.9 milligrams a day) faced less than half the risk of dying from stroke than those whose intake had been in the lowest third (less then 27.9 milligrams a day).

Said Dr. Christoper Martyn of the MRC: "Our research suggests that older people should be eating a diet containing plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.'' *** As Mary Poppins herself might have prescribed, a spoonful of sugar can help ease the pain of a crying baby, British doctors confirmed last week.

In conducting their research, Malcolm Levene and colleagues at the Leeds General Infirmary in northern England decided to test earlier findings that sugar seems to soothe pain in animals. Babies, they said, would be good subjects because doctors rarely did anything to ease their pain.

"Every newborn baby in Britain is subjected to several painful procedures,'' they wrote in the British Medical Journal. "Little is done to minimise the discomfort of these procedures.'' During their study, the doctors took 60 newborns and gave some sugar and others water before pricking their heels to take a standard blood sample.

When they measured how long the babies cried afterwards, they found that those given the sugar had cried less.

"Placing two millilitres of a 25-percent or 50-percent sucrose solution on the tongue before heel prick significantly reduces crying time,'' they wrote.

"Sucrose may be a useful and safe analgesic for minor procedures in (newborns).'' Doctors have only in the past few years found out that newborn babies feel pain. It was once believed that their nervous systems were not developed enough.

*** On the subject of infants, a nutrient which is the main constituent of fish oil and is also contained in breast milk has been found to be essential for the best visual and brain development in full-term babies, Australian researchers said recently.

Dr Maria Makrides and colleagues at the Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide found that babies fed with formula supplemented with the nutrient DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) got the same benefits as breast-fed infants.

"The best advice appears to be to breastfed for at least four months and, possibly, a year,'' they said in a report in the medical journal The Lancet.

The researchers compared the VEP, which measures how quickly brain waves respond to visual stimuli, of 79 babies who were fed on breast milk, formula milk (a placebo) or formula milk supplemented with a blend of fish oil and primrose oil.

The babies, who started the study four to six days after birth, were examined at the ages of 16 and 30 weeks.

"Breastfed babies had significantly better VEP acuities than infants fed placebo formula at both 16 and 30 weeks. Subjects fed supplemented formula had acuities matching those of fully breastfed infants at both time points,'' the study said.