Tag: diabetes

An explanation of blood sugar

On By A.P.In UncategorizedLeave a comment

By Alina Bradford

Blood sugar, or glucose, is the main sugar found in blood. The body gets glucose from the food we eat. This sugar is an important source of energy and provides nutrients to the body’s organs, muscles and nervous system. The absorption, storage and production of glucose is regulated constantly by complex processes involving the small intestine, liver and pancreas.

Glucose enters the bloodstream after a person has eaten carbohydrates. The endocrine system helps keep the bloodstream’s glucose levels in check using the pancreas. This organ produces the hormone insulin, releasing it after a person consumes protein or carbohydrates. The insulin sends excess glucose in the liver as glycogen.

The pancreas also produces a hormone called glucagon, which does the opposite of insulin, raising blood sugar levels when needed. The two hormones work together to keep glucose balanced.

When the body needs more sugar in the blood, the glucagon signals the liver to turn the glycogen back into glucose and release it into the bloodstream. This process is called glycogenolysis.

When there isn’t enough sugar to go around, the liver hoards the resource for the parts of the body that need it, including the brain, red blood cells and parts of the kidney. For the rest of the body, the liver makes ketones , which breaks down fat to use as fuel. The process of turning fat into ketones is called ketogenesis. The liver can also make sugar out of other things in the body, like amino acids, waste products and fat byproducts.

Glucose vs. dextrose
Dextrose is also a sugar. It’s chemically identical to glucose but is made from corn and rice, according to Healthline. It is often used as a sweetener in baking products and in processed foods. Dextrose also has medicinal purposes. It is dissolved in solutions that are given intravenously to increase a person’s blood sugar levels.

Normal blood sugar
For most people, 80 to 99 milligrams of sugar per deciliter before a meal and 80 to 140 mg/dl after a meal is normal. The American Diabetes Association says that most nonpregnant adults with diabetes should have 80 to 130 mg/dl before a meal and less than 180 mg/dl at 1 to 2 hours after beginning the meal.

These variations in blood-sugar levels, both before and after meals, reflect the way that the body absorbs and stores glucose. After you eat, your body breaks down the carbohydrates in food into smaller parts, including glucose, which the small intestine can absorb.

Problems
Diabetes happens when the body lacks insulin or because the body is not working effectively, according to Dr. Jennifer Loh, chief of the department of endocrinology for Kaiser Permanente in Hawaii. The disorder can be linked to many causes, including obesity, diet and family history, said Dr. Alyson Myers of Northwell Health in New York.

“To diagnose diabetes, we do an oral glucose-tolerance test with fasting,” Myers said.

Cells may develop a tolerance to insulin, making it necessary for the pancreas to produce and release more insulin to lower your blood sugar levels by the required amount. Eventually, the body can fail to produce enough insulin to keep up with the sugar coming into the body.

It can take decades to diagnose high blood-sugar levels, though. This may happen because the pancreas is so good at its job that a doctor can continue to get normal blood-glucose readings while insulin tolerance continues to increase, said Joy Stephenson-Laws, founder of Proactive Health Labs (pH Labs), a nonprofit that provides health care education and tools. She also wrote “Minerals – The Forgotten Nutrient: Your Secret Weapon for Getting and Staying Healthy” (Proactive Health Labs, 2016).

Health professionals can check blood sugar levels with an A1C test, which is a blood test for type 2 diabetes and prediabetes, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. This test measures your average blood glucose, or blood sugar, level over the previous three months.

Doctors may use the A1C alone or in combination with other diabetes tests to make a diagnosis. They also use the A1C to see how well you are managing your diabetes. This test is different from the blood sugar checks that people with diabetes do for themselves every day.

In the condition called hypoglycemia, the body fails to produce enough sugar. People with this disorder need treatment when blood sugar drops to 70 mg/dL or below. According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms of hypoglycemia can be:

Tingling sensation around the mouth
Shakiness
Sweating
An irregular heart rhythm
Fatigue
Pale skin
Crying out during sleep
Anxiety
Hunger
Irritability


Keeping blood sugar in control

Stephenson-Laws said healthy individuals can keep their blood sugar at the appropriate levels using the following methods:

Maintaining a healthy weight

Talk with a competent health care professional about what an ideal weight for you should be before starting any kind of weight loss program.

Improving diet

Look for and select whole, unprocessed foods, like fruits and vegetables, instead of highly processed or prepared foods. Foods that have a lot of simple carbohydrates, like cookies and crackers, that your body can digest quickly tend to spike insulin levels and put additional stress on the pancreas. Also, avoid saturated fats and instead opt for unsaturated fats and high-fiber foods. Consider adding nuts, vegetables, herbs and spices to your diet.

Getting physical

A brisk walk for 30 minutes a day can greatly reduce blood sugar levels and increase insulin sensitivity.

Getting mineral levels checked

Research also shows that magnesium plays a vital role in helping insulin do its job. So, in addition to the other health benefits it provides, an adequate magnesium level can also reduce the chances of becoming insulin-tolerant.

Get insulin levels checked

Many doctors simply test for blood sugar and perform an A1C test, which primarily detects prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. Make sure you also get insulin checks.

https://www.livescience.com/62673-what-is-blood-sugar.html#?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=05272018-ls

Houston’s health crisis: by 2040, one in five residents will be diabetic

On By A.P.In diabetes, Houston, Kebmodee, ObesityLeave a comment

houston

Diabetes is so common in Patricia Graham’s neighbourhood that it has its own slang term. “At churches you run into people you ain’t seen in years, and they say, ‘I’ve got sugar,’” she says.

Graham does not quite have “sugar”, but when foot surgery in 2014 reduced her activity level, her blood sugar level soared. And there is a history of diabetes in her family: three of four brothers and her mother, who lost a leg to it.

So three times a week she comes to the smart, modern Diabetes Awareness and Wellness Network (Dawn) centre in Houston’s third ward, a historically African American district near downtown. Used by about 520 people a month, Dawn is in effect a free, city-run gym and support group for diabetics and pre-diabetics: a one-stop shop for inspiration, information and perspiration. Last Friday Graham, 68, was there for a walking session.

Not that she or the half-dozen other participants went anywhere. This was walking on the spot to pulsating music. Had the class stepped outside they would have enjoyed perfect conditions for a stroll: a blue sky and a temperature of 21C. If they had worked up an appetite, a soul food restaurant was only a 15-minute walk away, serving celebrated (if not exactly sugar-free) food that belies its unpromising location in a standard shopping mall on a busy road next to a dialysis centre.

But most of Houston is not built for walking, even on a sunny January day. There’s the constant traffic belching fumes that linger in the humid air; the uneven sidewalks that have a pesky habit of vanishing halfway along the street; the sheer distances to cover in this elongated, ever-expanding metropolis. Walking can feel like a transgressive act against Houston’s car-centric culture of convenience – and its status as the capital of the north American oil and gas industry.

It’s one reason why Houston regularly finishes top, or close, in surveys that crown “America’s fattest city”. Unsurprisingly, it has a diabetes problem as outsized as its residents’ waistlines. By 2040, one in five Houstonians is predicted to have the disease.

According to data from pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the city is 9.1% – with an estimated one in four of these being undiagnosed. Almost a third of adult Houstonians self-describe as obese, according to a 2010-11 survey. Without action, the number of people with diabetes is projected to nearly treble by 2040 to 1.1 million people, with diabetes-related costs soaring from $4.1bn in 2015 to $11.4bn by 2040.

Graham is alarmed by the damage diabetes is wreaking on her community. “I was talking to my friends and saying, so many of the people we grew up with got diabetes and lost limbs,” she says. “It’s not even so much the seniors any more, it’s the young people. But it doesn’t scare them. They act like they’re not afraid.”

Another Dawn member, Verne Jenkins, was diagnosed three years ago. “I had picked up a bit of weight that I shouldn’t have,” says the 63-year-old. “I knew what to eat, I knew what I was doing, I just got out of control.”

Jenkins loves to bake but has cut back on carbs, red meat, salt and sugar, abstaining from one of her guilty pleasures, German chocolate cake. Not that it’s easy in a city with so much choice: “All these wonderful restaurants, all these different kinds of cuisines, of course you’re going to try some. I imagine it leads to our delinquency,” she says.

Graham has watched her diet since she was in her 20s. “I eat pretty good,” she said. “‘She eats like white folks’ – that’s what they tell me!”

Time poverty

Diabetes is a major cause of death, blindness, kidney disease and amputations in the US. While federal researchers announced last year that the rate of new diabetes cases dropped from 1.7 million in 2009 to 1.4 million in 2014, in Texas the percentage of diagnosed adults rose from 9.8% in 2009 to 11% in 2014.

Houston, America’s fourth-largest city, is one of five participating in the Cities Changing Diabetes programme, along with Mexico City, Copenhagen, Tianjin and Shanghai. Vancouver and Johannesburg are soon to join the project, which attempts to understand, publicise and combat the threat through cultural analysis.

“The majority of people with diabetes live in cities,” says Jakob Riis, an executive vice-president at Novo Nordisk, one of the lead partners in the programme alongside the Steno Diabetes Center and University College London. “We need to rethink cities so that they are healthier to live in … otherwise we’re not really addressing the root cause of the problem.”

One of the programme’s key – and perhaps surprising – findings, however, is that assessing the risk of developing diabetes is not as simple as dividing the population according to income and race. The problem is broad – much like Houston itself.

The view stretches for miles from Faith Foreman’s eighth-floor office next to the Astrodome, the famous old indoor baseball stadium. It’s an impressive sight, but for someone tasked with tackling the city’s diabetes epidemic, also a worrying one: the sheer scale of the urban sprawl is part of the problem. The threat of the disease has expanded along with the city.

A low cost of living and a strong jobs market helped Houston become one of the fastest growing urban areas in the US. In response, the city loosened its beltways. Its third major ring road is under construction, with a northwestern segment set to open soon that is some 35 miles from downtown.

Once completed, the Grand Parkway – whose northwestern segment has just opened – will boast a circumference of about 180 miles. That is far in excess of the 117 miles of the M25, although about 14 million people live inside the boundary of London’s orbital motorway, more than twice as many as reside in the Houston area.

Large homes sprout in the shadow of recently opened sections, promising cheap middle-class living with a heavy cost: a commute to central Houston of up to 90 minutes each way during rush hour, with minimal public transport options.
“A lot of time in Houston is spent in a car,” says Foreman, assistant director of Houston’s Department of Health and Human Services. This informs one of the Cities Changing Diabetes study’s most notable findings: that “time poverty” is among the risk factors in Houston for developing type 2 diabetes.

This means that young, relatively well-off people can also be considered a vulnerable population segment, even though they might not fit the traditional profile of people who may develop type 2 diabetes – that is, aged over 45, with high blood pressure and a high BMI, and perhaps disadvantaged through poverty or a lack of health insurance.

“You generally think of marginalised, lower income communities in poverty as your keys to health disparities but I think what we learned from our data in Houston is that we now have to expand the definition of what vulnerable is and what at-risk means. Just because we live in an urban environment, we may all indeed be vulnerable,” says Foreman.

In other words, not only its residents’ dietary choices but the way Houston is constructed as a city appears to be contributing to its diabetes problem, so tackling the issue requires architects as well as doctors; more sidewalks as well as fewer steaks.

Urban isolation is a key challenge, says David Napier of UCL, the lead academic for Cities Changing Diabetes. “Houston is growing so quickly and also expanding geographically at such a rapid rate. When you look at how difficult it is for people just to get out and walk, or walk to work; the fact that so many people commute long distances, spend a lot of time eating out – they have a number of obstacles to overcome,” he says.

A city with notoriously lax planning regulations is now making a conscious effort to put more care into its built environment, with more public transport, expanded bike trails, better parks and denser, more walkable neighbourhoods all evident in recent years, even as the suburbs continue to swell.

Foreman’s agency has more input when officials gather to map out the future city. “That is something that has been a big change over the last two or three years in Houston,” she says. “We are at the table and we are working with city planning to make those decisions.”

But prevention is a vital focus as well as treatment. Along with his team, Stephen Linder of the University of Texas’ school of public health – the local academic lead for Houston’s Cities Changing Diabetes research – gathered data on 5,000 households in Harris County, which includes much of the Houston area.

“One way to approach this project wasn’t to focus on diabetes itself but rather to look at some of the preconditioned social factors that seemed to generate the patterns of living that then led to the clinical signs that would designate people as being prediabetic,” he says from his office at the Texas Medical Center near downtown Houston – the world’s largest medical complex.

“These were people who had neither disadvantage nor biological risk factors. They tended to be the youngest group and would normally escape any kind of assessment – we called them the ‘time-pressured-young’. They’re the ones who did the long commutes; they’re the ones whose perception was they could not manage their day’s worth of stuff, that they have no time for anything.”

For this group, obesity is so prevalent in Houston that it distorts an understanding of what a healthy weight is, Linder found. “Their perception of their health was affected by their peers as opposed to other sorts of references. If all of their peers were overweight then in a relative sense they were fine. The judgments were about one’s peers and not relative to any sort of expert standard,” he says.

Three neighbourhoods were identified as having the highest concentration of people vulnerable to developing diabetes, and a Dallas-area research company, 2M, conducted detailed interviews with 125 residents. One place was particularly surprising: Atascocita, a desirable middle-class area near a large lake and golf courses, about 30 miles north of downtown.

Houston has become, according to a 2012 Rice University study, the most ethnically diverse large metropolitan area in the US. But this cosmopolitan air – one of the qualities sought by any place seeking to become a globally renowned city – may also unwittingly be contributing to the diabetes crisis, the study found.

Some in Atascocita, Linder said, “emphasised this sense of change and transition in their neighbourhoods, that that was a source of stress for them and that they were resistant to making changes in their own lives given the flux that was around them. Because that group happened to be older, even though they were economically secure they did have some other chronic diseases and they satisfied our biorisk characteristics.

“We call them concerned seniors. They weren’t making changes because there was too much else going on for them. And so if we were to say to them ‘you’ve got to change your diet’, they’d say ‘no, I can’t handle any more changes’.”

This matters since food portions are no exception to the “everything’s bigger in Texas” cliche, while Houston’s location near Mexico and the deep south, its embrace of the Lone Star state’s love of barbecued red meat and its enormous variety of restaurants serving international cuisine combine to unhealthy effect.

“The food that had a traditional aspect to it tended not to be the healthiest food – southern food that’s fried and lots of butter and lots of starch, then there’s African American soul food and then there’s Hispanic heavy fat, prepared tamales and the like, and so we found people kind of gravitated to what the UCL people called nourishing traditions,” Linder said.

“People used food as not only a reinforcement of tradition and ritual but also as a way of connecting socially. You’ve moved here from somewhere else, it’s a way to reinforce your identity, it’s a real cultural asset to have, but in a biological sense it’s not the best thing.”

For Linder, one lesson is that generalised advice about healthy eating that has long been part of diabetes awareness efforts may not be effective locally, given the complexity and variety of Houston’s neighbourhoods and the social factors that make populations vulnerable to diabetes.

“It does make the task of dietary change a much more complex one than the simple messages about changing your diet, eat more fruit and vegetables, get more colour on your plate would suggest. Those things bounce off, it’s not a useful set of interventions then for that particular group who rely on these nourishing traditions and find some solace in the change around them,” he said.

Foreman agrees that a targeted approach is vital. “How do you change diabetes in Houston? One neighbourhood at a time, in a sense, but at the same time you have bigger things that you can change systemwide in policies and how you work together collaboratively,” she said. “But then as you narrow it and get more granular it is neighbourhood, and what works in one neighbourhood may or may not work in another.”

Patricia Graham is hoping that the Dawn programme expands to other parts of the city to combat the dangerous union of unhealthy traditional food with a modern convenience culture. “Everything is food, and I mean lots of it and all the time,” she said. “Some people don’t know how to cook without grease or butter. That’s just the way we learn.”

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/11/houston-health-crisis-diabetes-sugar-cars-diabetic?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the It’s Interesting community.

Coffee drinkers may live longer

On By A.P.In coffee, HealthLeave a comment

Coffee lovers may live longer than those who don’t imbibe — with lower risks of early death from heart disease and neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, a large U.S. study finds.

Researchers said the study, published online Nov. 16 in Circulation, adds to a large body of evidence on the good side of coffee.

People often think of coffee-drinking as a bad habit that they need to break, said study leader Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

But, Hu said, many studies have linked moderate coffee intake to lower risks of developing various diseases — from heart disease and diabetes, to liver cancer, to neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s.

His team’s study, funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, adds another layer of evidence. It found that coffee drinkers were not only less likely to develop certain diseases — they also tended to live longer.

Over 30 years, nonsmokers who drank three to five cups of coffee a day were 15 percent less likely to die of any cause, versus nondrinkers. Specifically, they had lower rates of death from heart disease, stroke, neurological conditions and suicide.

Both regular coffee and decaf were linked to longer survival, the study found.

None of that proves coffee, itself, extends people’s lives or directly protects against certain diseases, Hu said. Other factors might explain the connection.

But, Hu added, his team did account for many of those factors. And the coffee benefit remained.

The findings are based on more than 200,000 U.S. doctors, nurses and other health professionals who were surveyed repeatedly over almost three decades. During that time, almost 32,000 study participants died.

It turned out that people who drank one to five cups of coffee at the outset had lower odds of dying during the study period when other lifestyle habits and certain health problems, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, were taken into account.

The relationship grew stronger when the researchers looked only at nonsmokers: Those who drank three to five cups of coffee a day were 15 percent less likely to die during the study period, compared with adults who didn’t drink coffee. Lower risks were even seen among the heaviest coffee drinkers (more than five cups a day), who had a 12 percent lower death risk than nondrinkers.

“The body of evidence does suggest coffee can fit into a healthy lifestyle,” Hu said.

That evidence, Hu noted, has already been incorporated into the latest U.S. dietary guidelines, which say that a healthy diet can include up to three to five cups of coffee a day.

But overall lifestyle is key, Hu said. That is, there’s a difference between a person who gets little sleep, then uses coffee to function during the day, and a person who sleeps well, exercises, and eats a balanced diet that includes some coffee.

Alice Lichtenstein, a spokesperson for the American Heart Association, agreed.

“This doesn’t mean you should start drinking coffee in the hopes of getting health benefits,” said Lichtenstein, who is also a professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University in Boston.

But, she added, the new findings build on years of evidence that coffee is not the bad guy many believe it is. “There’s this lingering idea that coffee must be bad for you because it’s enjoyable,” Lichtenstein said. “It’s almost like we’ve been trying to find something wrong with it.”

There are caveats, though. “You do need to be careful about what you’re putting in your coffee,” Lichtenstein pointed out. Some milk is fine, she said, but watch the sugar and heavy cream.

And why would coffee be related to health benefits? It’s not clear from this study, Hu said, but other research has suggested that compounds in coffee can reduce inflammation, act as antioxidants, and improve blood sugar regulation, among other things.

Also, when it comes to some neurological conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease, Hu said, there’s evidence that caffeine offers benefits.

SOURCES: Frank Hu, M.D., Ph.D., professor, nutrition and epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston; Alice Lichtenstein, D.Sc., professor, nutrition science and policy, Tufts University, Boston; Nov. 16, 2015, Circulation, online

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/health/HealthDay705311_20151116_Coffee_Drinkers_May_Live_Longer.html#rPogcDb2tVXwEFwz.99

Keeping gut bacteria in balance could help delay age-related diseases

On By A.P.In ageing, aging, gut, gut bacteria, MedicineLeave a comment

Why do some people remain healthy into their 80s and beyond, while others age faster and suffer serious diseases decades earlier? New research led by UCLA life scientists may produce a new way to answer that question—and an approach that could help delay declines in health.

Specifically, the study suggests that analyzing intestinal bacteria could be a promising way to predict health outcomes as we age.

The researchers discovered changes within intestinal microbes that precede and predict the death of fruit flies. The findings were published in the open-source journal Cell Reports.

“Age-onset decline is very tightly linked to changes within the community of gut microbes,” said David Walker, a UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology, and senior author of the research. “With age, the number of bacterial cells increase substantially and the composition of bacterial groups changes.”

The study used fruit flies in part because although their typical life span is just eight weeks, some live to the age equivalent of humans’ 80s and 90s, while others age and die much younger. In addition, scientists have identified all of the fruit fly’s genes and know how to switch individual ones on and off.

In a previous study, the UCLA researchers discovered that five or six days before flies died, their intestinal tracts became more permeable and started leaking.

In the latest research, which analyzed more than 10,000 female flies, the scientists found that they were able to detect bacterial changes in the intestine before the leaking began. As part of the study, some fruit flies were given antibiotics that significantly reduce bacterial levels in the intestine; the study found that the antibiotics prevented the age-related increase in bacteria levels and improved intestinal function during aging.

The biologists also showed that reducing bacterial levels in old flies can significantly prolong their life span.

“When we prevented the changes in the intestinal microbiota that were linked to the flies’ imminent death by feeding them antibiotics, we dramatically extended their lives and improved their health,” Walker said. (Microbiota are the bacteria and other microorganisms that are abundant in humans, other mammals, fruit flies and many other animals.)

Flies with leaky intestines that were given antibiotics lived an average of 20 days after the leaking began—a substantial part of the animal’s life span. On average, flies with leaky intestines that did not receive antibiotics died within a week.

The intestine acts as a barrier to protect our organs and tissue from environmental damage.

“The health of the intestine—in particular the maintenance of the barrier protecting the rest of the body from the contents of the gut—is very important and might break down with aging,” said Rebecca Clark, the study’s lead author. Clark was a UCLA postdoctoral scholar when the research was conducted and is now a lecturer at England’s Durham University.

The biologists collaborated with William Ja, an assistant professor at Florida’s Scripps Research Institute, and Ryuichi Yamada, a postdoctoral research associate in Ja’s laboratory, to produce an additional group of flies that were completely germ-free, with no intestinal microbes. Those flies showed a very dramatic delay in intestinal damage, and they lived for about 80 days, approximately one-and-a-half times as long as the animal’s typical life span.

Scientists have recently begun to connect a wide variety of diseases, including diabetes and Parkinson’s, among many others, to changes in the microbiota, but they do not yet know exactly what healthy microbiota look like.

“One of the big questions in the biology of aging relates to the large variation in how we age and how long we live,” said Walker, who added that scientific interest in intestinal microbes has exploded in the last five years.

When a fruit fly’s intestine begins to leak, its immune response increases substantially and chronically throughout its body. Chronic immune activation is linked with age-related diseases in people as well, Walker said.

Walker said that the study could lead to realistic ways for scientists to intervene in the aging process and delay the onset of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, stroke, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other diseases of aging—although such progress could take many years, he said.

New scientific evidence that intermittent fasting has health benefits

On By A.P.In fastingLeave a comment

by Charles Q. Choi

Instead of eating three square meals a day, an eating schedule that involves “intermittent fasting” could help fight not just obesity but many related diseases of modern life, such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s, researchers say.

he advice given on fighting obesity usually focuses on consuming fewer calories and exercising more. The benefits of such foods as vegetables, fruits, nuts, fiber and fish, and the value of reducing or eliminating snacks are often also touted.

However, mounting evidence reveals that other key aspects of diet — when and how often people eat — can also play a major role in health. In fact, the most common eating pattern in modern societies of three meals daily, plus snacks, is abnormal from the perspective of human evolution, an international group of researchers wrote in an article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More and more research shows that intermittent fasting could have benefits, they said.

“Fasting alone is more powerful in preventing and reversing some diseases than drugs,” said Satchidananda Panda, an associate professor of regulatory biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California, and one of the co-authors of the article.

Ancient hunter-gatherers often ate only intermittently, the researchers noted in their article. This suggests that the ability to function at a high level both physically and mentally during extended periods without food may have been crucial in human evolution, and that the human body may have adapted to perform at its best with intermittent fasting.

Such intermittent fasting could consist of eating 500 calories or less either two days each week, or every other day, or not eating breakfast and lunch several days each week, the researchers said.

Prior research suggests that in animals, intermittent fasting can fend off or even reverse such illnesses as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and neurodegenerative disorders. Animal studies suggest that intermittent fasting provides these benefits by allowing the body to respond better to stress that might otherwise damage it. For example, fasting could starve tumors, reduce inflammation, or improve the removal of damaged molecules and other components of cells, the researchers said.

“Intermittent fasting helps the body to rejuvenate and repair, thereby promoting overall health,” Panda told Live Science.

In addition, the body may respond better to meals eaten at some times of the day rather than others because of the body’s circadian rhythms. In the years before artificial light, people depended on natural patterns of day and night, with food primarily eaten during the day and fasting occurring at night. This means that eating at certain times of the day may be healthier for the body’s metabolism — for example, in 2013, two studies in humans suggested that eating meals earlier in the day improved weight loss in overweight and obese people.

Panda said that it may be challenging for people to fast intermittently, instead of eating three meals every day. Eating breakfast is often promoted as a weight-control aid, but recent evidence has suggested it might not be, the researchers said.

Future research needs to further explore the benefits and drawbacks of different types of intermittent fasting in a variety of populations. “Its effectiveness in both preventing and reversing diseases, as well as interaction with standard medications for chronic metabolic diseases, should be tested in appropriate volunteer groups,” Panda said.

http://www.livescience.com/48888-intermittent-fasting-benefits-weight-loss.html

Sleep or die — growing body of research warns of heart attacks, strokes

On By A.P.In Medicine, SleepLeave a comment

We have all experienced the aftermath of a bad night’s sleep: grogginess, irritability, difficulty carrying out even the simplest of tasks. A growing amount of research suggests that not getting enough shut-eye could also have insidious effects on heart disease, obesity and other conditions.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the largest physician-based organization for sleep medicine, recently put out their first recommendations for what is the right amount of sleep. It advises that adults get at least seven hours every night based on research on the link between inadequate sleep and a number of poor health outcomes.

Although most of us already know that we should get at least seven hours of sleep, a study last month suggested that Americans are creeping down to that cutoff. The average amount of sleep that they reported getting a night has dropped from 7.4 hours in 1985 to 7.29 hours in 1990 to 7.18 in 2004 and 2012.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which requested and helped support the development of the current recommendations, has called not getting enough sleep a public health epidemic.

For many aspects of health, “it was quite clear that seven to nine hours was good,” said Dr. Nathaniel F. Watson, president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and a professor of neurology at University of Washington. Watson led the panel of experts that wrote the recommendations. The group looked at more than 300 studies.

Getting only six hours of sleep a night or less was associated with setbacks in performance, including mental alertness and driving ability, and increased risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes and obesity, Watson said.

There were not enough studies looking at the health of people who got between six and seven hours of sleep or more than nine hours to know how their health fared.

The panel did not put an upper cutoff on the amount of sleep a person should get because, in addition to the lack of evidence, “there are instances where a person might sleep longer if they are recovering from a sleep debt or illness, and we had trouble coming up with a biological way that sleep would be bad for you,” Watson said.

Although there have been reports that sleeping nine hours or more a night is associated with increased risk of death, that link probably has more to do with the fact that the people who slept a lot had underlying illnesses that ultimately did them in, said James Gangwisch, a sleep researcher at Columbia University who helped develop the current recommendations.

In addition, reports of sleeping a lot may actually be an indicator that a person is not exercising or socializing, which can carry health risks.

Sleep and how it relates to body mass and more

The panel looked at studies that reported connections between the amount of sleep that people said they got and their health over long periods. The panel also took into consideration studies that monitored people in sleep labs that controlled how much sleep they got.

For example, Gangwisch and his colleagues have reported a connection between getting less than seven hours of sleep a night and high body mass index. Separate studies in sleep labs suggest how inadequate sleep could lead to obesity: it drives up the levels of appetite-inducing hormones.

The weight gain that might be caused by inadequate shut-eye could, in turn, increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, Gangwisch said. In addition, sleep deficits seem to increase blood pressure as several studies have found, which could be bad for heart health.

One small study found that healthy adults had higher blood pressure after a night when they were only allowed to sleep four hours compared with a night when they were allowed to sleep for eight hours.

It is hard to say, however, if depriving people of sleep for an extended period would have lasting effects on blood pressure and appetite, even though studies linking sleep deprivation with heart disease and weight gain suggest so.

Sleep lab studies usually only investigate the effect of abridged snoozing for several nights, but people might adjust somewhat to sleep deprivation if it became the norm for them, Gangwisch said.

Although the recent recommendations are for the appropriate amount of shut-eye, getting bad sleep could be just as harmful as not getting enough sleep. Among the most common sleep disorders are insomnia and obstructive sleep apnea, which causes people to stop breathing intermittently throughout the night. About 10% of adults have chronic insomnia; obstructive sleep apnea affects an estimated 24% of men and 9% of women.

Obstructive sleep apnea in particular can take a toll in many ways beyond just shortening the amount of sleep you get, Watson said. The condition can increase blood pressure (separately from the effect of not getting enough sleep), deprive the body of oxygen, cause irregular heartbeat and make the blood more sticky, all of which can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke, he said.

A study that was presented this week at the European Society of Cardiology meeting found that men who had a sleep disorder were between 2 and 2.6 times more likely to have a heart attack and 1.5 to 4 times more likely to have a stroke over the 14-year period of the study.

Not sleeping well? Talk to the doc

“This study underscores to me the importance that if a person doesn’t think they are sleeping well, they should talk to their doctor,” said Kristen Knutson, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the study.

Signs that you are not sleeping well or enough include needing a lot of caffeine to get through the day and falling asleep during a meeting or movie, which Knutson said does not usually happen in well-rested people no matter how bored they are.

ome people might need more or less than seven hours of shut-eye. To know what is right for you, see how long you sleep when you are a couple of days into a vacation and the alarm does not go off, Knutson suggested. (The first couple of days you might sleep longer because you are catching up.)

Knutson agrees with the advice that there does not seem to be a danger in sleeping too much. “People generally don’t sleep more than they should, and if you are laying in bed and can’t sleep, the general recommendation is to get up,” she said.

There are a number of strategies for making the most of your slumber. These include going to sleep and waking up about the same time every day, making your bedroom dark and cool and avoiding caffeine too close to bedtime.

“Some people view sleep as an obstruction to success, and we would rather have people view it as a tool for success,” Watson said. “We really want people to prioritize their sleep and understand that it is as important to their overall well being as diet and exercise,” he added.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/health/sleep-or-die/index.html

Sitting too much may be twice as dangerous for your health as being obese.

On By A.P.In Health, Obesity1 Comment

There’s been a fast growing body of evidence in the last several years that lack of exercise – or sedentariness – is a major risk factor in health. It’s been linked to heart disease, cancer, and to an early death. And now, a new study finds that lack of exercise may actually be even more of a risk than obesity in early mortality: The researchers calculate that a sedentary lifestyle may actually confer twice the risk of death as being obese. That said, the two are both important and, luckily, closely related: So if you start getting active, you’ll probably lose a little weight along the way, which itself is a very good thing.

The new study looked at data from over 334,000 people who participated in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) Study. Over a period of 12 years, the participants’ height, weight, and waist circumferences were tracked, along with self-reports of activity levels, both at work and in free time. All-cause mortality (i.e., death from any cause) was the main outcome of interest.

It turned out that lack of physical activity was linked to the greatest risk of death – and the greatest reduction in death risk was in the difference between the lowest two activity groups. In other words, just moving from “inactive” to “moderately inactive” showed the largest reduction in death risk, especially for normal weight people, but true for people of all body weights. And, the authors say, just taking a brisk 20-minute walk per day can move you from one category to the other, and reduce the risk of death anywhere from 16% to 30%.

Using a statistical model, the team also calculated that being sedentary may account for double the death risk of obesity. According to their math, of the 9.2 million deaths in Europe in 2008, about 337,000 were attributable to obesity, whereas 676,000 were attributable to sedentariness.

Another takeaway from the study, however, is that waist circumference is a bigger player in mortality risk than overall body weight, which has certainly been suggested by previous studies. Belly fat seems to be disproportionately linked to chronic health issues like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and of course, early mortality. So reducing belly fat is always a significant benefit to one’s health.

“This large study is rather complex in its details, but the take-away messages are actually both clear and simple,” says David L, Katz, Director of the Yale University Prevention Research CenterGriffin Hospital. “At any given body weight, going from inactive to active can reduce the risk of premature mortality substantially. At any given level of activity, going from overweight to a more optimal weight can do the same. We have long known that not all forms of obesity are equally hazardous, and this study reaffirms that. Losing weight if you have an excess around the middle, where it is most dangerous, exerts an influence on mortality comparable to physical activity. Losing excess weight that is not associated with a high waist circumference reduces mortality risk, but less — as we would expect.”

But perhaps the main point in all of this is that being active and being a healthy weight are inextricably linked. Though activity by itself can offer an immediate health benefit if you remain overweight, getting active also leads naturally to loss of body weight. “This study reminds that being both fit and unfat are good for health,” says Katz, “and can add both life to years, and years to life. These are not really disparate challenges, since the physical activity that leads to fitness is on the short list of priorities for avoiding fatness as well. The challenge before us now is for our culture to make it easier to get there from here.”

Earlier this month a study showed that the concept of “healthy obesity” may be very misleading, since health markers in an obese person tend to deteriorate over time. Though the current study suggests that fitness may matter more than fatness, the two are really two sides of a coin: It would be silly to become active and not lose weight — and it would be very hard to do, since the one leads to the other. But perhaps given the great benefits of exercise alone, public health campaigns should focus not just on losing weight, but on encouraging people to add just small amounts physical activity to their lives right off the bat, and to see where it goes from there.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/01/15/is-lack-of-exercise-worse-for-your-health-than-obesity/