Tag: diet

Chemists develop foolproof new test to track the fats we eat

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Philip Britz-McKibbin, Professor of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, McMaster University Credit: JD Howell, McMaster University

A team of researchers at McMaster University has developed a reliable and accurate blood test to track individual fat intake, a tool that could guide public health policy on healthy eating.

Establishing reliable guidelines has been a significant challenge for nutritional epidemiologists until now, because they have to rely on study participants faithfully recording their own consumption, creating results that are prone to human error and selective reporting, particularly when in the case of high-fat diets.

For the study, published in the Journal of Lipid Research, chemists developed a test, which detects specific non-esterified fatty acids (NEFAs), a type of circulating free fatty acid that can be measured using a small volume of blood sample.

“Epidemiologists need better ways to reliably assess dietary intake when developing nutritional recommendations,” says Philip Britz-McKibbin, professor in the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology at McMaster University and lead author of the study.

“The food we consume is highly complex and difficult to measure when relying on self-reporting or memory recall, particularly in the case of dietary fats. There are thousands of chemicals that we are exposed to in foods, both processed and natural,” he says.

The study was a combination of two research projects Britz-McKibbin conducted with Sonia Anand in the Department of Medicine and Stuart Phillips in the Department of Kinesiology.

Researchers first assessed the habitual diet of pregnant women in their second trimester, an important development stage for the fetus. The women, some of whom were taking omega-3 fish oil supplements, were asked to report on their average consumption of oily fish and full-fat dairy and were then tested with the new technology. Their study also monitored changes in omega-3 NEFAs in women following high-dose omega-3 fish oil supplementation as compared to a placebo.

Researchers were able to prove that certain blood NEFAs closely matched the diets and/or supplements the women had reported, suggesting the dietary biomarkers may serve as an objective tool for assessment of fat intake.

“Fat intake is among the most controversial aspects of nutritional public health policies given previously flawed low-fat diet recommendations, and the growing popularity of low-carb/high-fat ketogenic based diets” says Britz-McKibbin. “If we can measure it reliably, we can begin to study such questions as: Should pregnant women take fish oil? Are women deficient in certain dietary fats? Does a certain diet or supplement lead to better health outcomes for their babies?”

Researchers plan to study what impact NEFAs and other metabolites associated with dietary exposures during pregnancy, might have on childhood health outcomes in relation to the obesity, metabolic syndrome and chronic disease risk later in life.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-chemists-foolproof-track-fats.html

How exercise and diet affect coronavirus risk

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by MARY JO DILONARDO

How you move and how you eat could have an impact on how your body responds when faced with the coronavirus. Like so many other health complications, diet and exercise seem to affect the body’s ability to fight COVID-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus — and its complications.

Exercise and COVID-19 complications

Regular exercise may help reduce the risk of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a dangerous and potentially fatal condition caused by COVID-19, according to new research.

ARDS results when fluid builds up in in the tiny air sacs in the lungs, according to the Mayo Clinic. When this happens, lungs aren’t able to fill completely because of the fluid. That means less oxygen reaches the bloodstream, so organs don’t have enough oxygen to function.

Zhen Yan of the University of Virginia School of Medicine says medical research findings “strongly support” the possibility that exercise can prevent or at least reduce the severity of ARDS. Between 3% to 17% of all people with COVID-19 develop ARDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). An estimated 20% to 42% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients will develop ARDS. The range for patients admitted to intensive care is 67% to 85%.

According to earlier research, ARDS has a mortality rate as high as 45% for severe cases.

“All you hear now is either social distancing or ventilator, as if all we can do is either avoid exposure or rely on a ventilator to survive if we get infected,” Yan said in a statement. “The flip side of the story is that approximately 80% of confirmed COVID-19 patients have mild symptoms with no need of respiratory support. The question is, ‘Why?’ Our findings about an endogenous antioxidant enzyme provide important clues and have intrigued us to develop a novel therapeutic for ARDS caused by COVID-19.”

Yan, the director of the Center for Skeletal Muscle Research at UVA’s Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, reviewed medical research of an antioxidant known as extracellular superoxide dismutase (EcSOD). The antioxidant protects tissues from damage and increases healing. It’s naturally made by muscles, but production is increased during cardiovascular exercise. The results of the findings were published in Redox Biology.
According to Yan’s analysis, even just one workout session can increase production of the antioxidant. So, he’s encouraging people to find a way to exercise while making sure to maintain social distancing.

“We cannot live in isolation forever,” he said. “Regular exercise has far more health benefits than we know. The protection against this severe respiratory disease condition is just one of the many examples.”

How diet impacts coronavirus risk

In addition to exercise, diet plays a key role in how our bodies respond to the coronavirus. We know that underlying conditions are what make so many people susceptible to COVID-19. Those with obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease or high blood pressure are at the highest risk. Many of these conditions are impacted by diet.

But it’s not just making a few smart food choices once in a while. It’s a complete lifestyle change that can be affected by everything from where and how you live to culture, resources and habits.

“Healthy living is very difficult for Americans facing relentless advertising for processed and unhealthy foods, addictive (salt and sugar) ultra-processed food, entrenched and culturally-reinforced taste preferences, limited access to healthy foods for many Americans, public policy that subsidizes disease-promoting foods, sedentary behavior, and a health care and medical education system that still largely emphasizes sick care over prevention,” writes Casey Means, M.D., a practicing physician with a clinical focus on nutrition, nutrigenomics and disease prevention, and Grady Means, a writer and former corporate strategy consultant, in The Hill.

Poor diet is “now the leading cause of poor health in the U.S.,” Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Freidman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, told Jane E. Brody of The New York Times. Fewer than one American adult in five is metabolically healthy, he said.

“Only 12 percent of Americans are without high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes or pre-diabetes,” he said. “The statistics are horrifying, but unlike COVID they happened gradually enough that people just shrugged their shoulders. However, beyond age, these are the biggest risk factors for illness and death from COVID-19.”

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions including high blood pressure, high blood glucose, poor cholesterol, high triglycerides and excess abdominal fat, according to the American Heart Association. Metabolic health and the immune system influence each other. When the former is lacking, infections can increase.

Many people are turning to unhealthy comfort foods during this crisis. Others are limited in what they can find because of empty store shelves. But the biggest problem is those who live in food deserts and poor communities that never had access to healthy foods in the first place.

“The COVID pandemic has cast a glaring light on longstanding costly and life-threatening inequities in American society. Those living in economically challenged communities, and especially people of color, are bearing the heaviest burden of COVID-19 infections. But while diet-related disorders increase vulnerability to the virus, limited national attention has been paid to lack of access to nutritionally wholesome foods that can sustain metabolic health and support a vigorous immune system,” Brody writes.

“Clearly, when this pandemic subsides, a lot more attention to the American diet will be needed to ward off future medical, economic and social calamities from whatever pathogen next comes down the pike.”

https://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/how-exercise-and-diet-affect-coronavirus-risk-and-complications?utm_source=Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7e2aecbd8c-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_MON0427_2020&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fcbff2e256-7e2aecbd8c-40844241

Eating too much salt seems to impair body’s ability to fight bacteria

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By Michael Le Page

Eating too much salt may impair the body’s ability to fight bacterial infections, according to studies in mice and in 10 human volunteers.

Christian Kurts at the University Hospital of Bonn in Germany and his team first showed that mice given a high salt diet were less able to fight kidney infections caused by E. coli and body-wide infections caused by Listeria monocytogenes, a common cause of food poisoning.

“The bacteria caused more damage before the immune system got rid them,” says Kurts.

Next, the team gave 10 healthy women and men who were 20 to 50 years old an extra 6 grams of salt a day on top of their normal diet, in the form of three tablets a day. After a week, some of their immune cells, called neutrophils, had a greatly impaired ability to engulf and kill bacteria compared with the same tests done on each individual before they took extra salt.

The team didn’t examine the effect of high salt intake on the body’s ability to fight viral infections.

The World Health Organization recommends that people eat no more than 5 grams of salt a day to avoid high blood pressure, which can cause strokes and heart disease. In the UK, people eat 8 grams on average, suggesting many consume as much or more than the volunteers in the study.

The team thinks two mechanisms are involved. First, when we eat lots of salt, hormones are released to make the body excrete more salt. These include glucocorticoids that have the side effect of suppressing the immune system throughout the body.

Second, there is a local effect in the kidney. Kurts found that urea accumulates in the kidney when salt levels are high, and that urea suppresses neutrophils.

Journal reference: Science Translational Medicine, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aay3850

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238629-eating-too-much-salt-seems-to-impair-bodys-ability-to-fight-bacteria/?utm_source=NSDAY&utm_campaign=8ea0a51a66-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_03_25_04_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1254aaab7a-8ea0a51a66-374123611

New ‘planetary health diet’ can save lives and the planet, major review suggests

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By Nina Avramova

An international team of scientists has developed a diet it says can improve health while ensuring sustainable food production to reduce further damage to the planet.

The “planetary health diet” is based on cutting red meat and sugar consumption in half and upping intake of fruits, vegetables and nuts.

And it can prevent up to 11.6 million premature deaths without harming the planet, says the report published Wednesday in the medical journal The Lancet.

The authors warn that a global change in diet and food production is needed as 3 billion people across the world are malnourished — which includes those who are under and overnourished — and food production is overstepping environmental targets, driving climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

The world’s population is set to reach 10 billion people by 2050; that growth, plus our current diet and food production habits, will “exacerbate risks to people and planet,” according to the authors.

“The stakes are very high,” Dr. Richard Horton, editor in chief at The Lancet, said of the report’s findings, noting that 1 billion people live in hunger and 2 billion people eat too much of the wrong foods.

Horton believes that “nutrition has still failed to get the kind of political attention that is given to diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria.”

“Using best available evidence” of controlled feeding studies, randomized trials and large cohort studies, the authors came up with a new recommendation, explained Dr. Walter Willett, lead author of the paper and a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health.

The report suggests five strategies to ensure people can change their diets and not harm the planet in doing so: incentivizing people to eat healthier, shifting global production toward varied crops, intensifying agriculture sustainably, stricter rules around the governing of oceans and lands, and reducing food waste.

The ‘planetary health diet’

To enable a healthy global population, the team of scientists created a global reference diet, that they call the “planetary health diet,” which is an ideal daily meal plan for people over the age of 2, that they believe will help reduce chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease, stroke and diabetes, as well as environmental degradation.

The diet breaks down the optimal daily intake of whole grains, starchy vegetables, fruit, dairy, protein, fats and sugars, representing a daily total calorie intake of 2500.

They recognize the difficulty of the task, which will need “substantial” dietary shifts on a global level, needing the consumption of foods such as red meat and sugar to decrease by more than 50%. In turn, consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables, and legumes must increase more than two-fold, the report says.

The diet advises people consume 2,500 calories per day, which is slightly more than what people are eating today, said Willett. People should eat a “variety of plant-based foods, low amounts of animal-based foods, unsaturated rather than saturated fats, and few refined grains, highly processed foods and added sugars,” he said.

Regional differences are also important to note. For example, countries in North America eat almost 6.5 times the recommended amount of red meat, while countries in South Asia eat 1.5 times the required amount of starchy vegetables.

“Almost all of the regions in the world are exceeding quite substantially” the recommended levels of red meat, Willett said.

The health and environmental benefits of dietary changes like these are known, “but, until now, the challenge of attaining healthy diets from a sustainable food system has been hampered by a lack of science-based guidelines, said Howard Frumkin, Head of UK biomedical research charity The Wellcome Trust’s Our Planet Our Health program. The Wellcome Trust funded the research.

“It provides governments, producers and individuals with an evidence-based starting point to work together to transform our food systems and cultures,” he said.

If the new diet were adopted globally, 10.9 to 11.6 million premature deaths could be avoided every year — equating to 19% to 23.6% of adult deaths. A reduction in sodium and an increase in whole grains, nuts, vegetables and fruits contributed the most to the prevention of deaths, according to one of the report’s models.

Making it happen

Some scientists are skeptical of whether shifting the global population to this diet can be achieved.

The recommended diet “is quite a shock,” in terms of how feasible it is and how it should be implemented, said Alan Dangour, professor in food and nutrition for global health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. What “immediately makes implementation quite difficult” is the fact that cross-government departments need to work together, he said. Dangour was not involved in the report.

At the current level of food production, the reference diet is not achievable, said Modi Mwatsama, senior science lead (food systems, nutrition and health) at the Wellcome Trust. Some countries are not able to grow enough food because they could be, for example, lacking resilient crops, while in other countries, unhealthy foods are heavily promoted, she said.

Mwatsama added that unless there are structural changes, such as subsidies that move away from meat production, and environmental changes, such as limits on how much fertilizer can be used, “we won’t see people meeting this target.”

To enable populations to follow the reference diet, the report suggests five strategies, of which subsidies are one option. These fit under a recommendation to ensure good governance of land and ocean systems, for example by prohibiting land clearing and removing subsidies to world fisheries, as they lead to over-capacity of the global fishing fleet.

Second, the report further outlines strategies such as incentivizing farmers to shift food production away from large quantities of a few crops to diverse production of nutritious crops.

Healthy food must also be made more accessible, for example low-income groups should be helped with social protections to avoid continued poor nutrition, the authors suggest, and people encouraged to eat healthily through information campaigns.

A fourth strategy suggests that when agriculture is intensified it must take local conditions into account to ensure the best agricultural practices for a region, in turn producing the best crops.

Finally, the team suggests reducing food waste by improving harvest planning and market access in low and middle-income countries, while improving shopping habits of consumers in high-income countries.

Louise Manning, professor of agri-food and supply chain resilience at the Royal Agricultural University, said meeting the food waste reduction target is a “very difficult thing to achieve” because it would require government, communities and individual households to come together.

However, “it can be done,” said Manning, who was not involved in the report, noting the rollback in plastic usage in countries such as the UK.

The planet’s health

The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement aimed to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Meeting this goal is no longer only about de-carbonizing energy systems by reducing fossil fuels, it’s also about a food transition, said professor of environmental science at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, in Sweden, who co-led the study.

“This is urgent,” he said. Without global adaptation of the reference diet, the world “will not succeed with the Paris Climate Agreement.”

A sustainable food production system requires non-greenhouse gas emissions such as methane and nitrous oxide to be limited, but methane is produced during digestion of livestock while nitrous oxides are released from croplands and pastures. But the authors believe these emissions are unavoidable to provide healthy food for 10 billion people. They highlight that decarbonisation of the world’s energy system must progress faster than anticipated, to accommodate this.

Overall, ensuring a healthy population and planet requires combining all strategies, the report concludes — major dietary change, improved food production and technology changes, as well as reduced food waste.

“Designing and operationalising sustainable food systems that can deliver healthy diets for a growing and wealthier world population presents a formidable challenge. Nothing less than a new global agricultural revolution,” said Rockström, adding that “the solutions do exist.

“It is about behavioral change. It’s about technologies. It’s about policies. It’s about regulations. But we know how to do this.”

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/health/new-diet-to-save-lives-and-planet-health-study-intl/index.html

Gluten Triggers Strange Delusions in Woman with Celiac Disease

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By Sara G. Miller

Gluten has been implicated in a number of symptoms related to celiac disease that go beyond the digestive system, including rashes, anemia and headaches. But according to a recent case report, the wheat protein played a role in one woman’s severe psychosis.

The 37-year-old woman, whose case was described in the report, was studying for her Ph.D. when she started having delusions. Her symptoms began with a belief that people were talking about her as part of a conspiracy in which friends, family members and strangers were acting out scenes for her in a “game,” the doctors who treated the woman wrote in their report, published May 12 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

After making threats against her family, the patient was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and was diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, the doctors wrote. She was prescribed anti-psychotic medications to help control her symptoms, but they did not work very well, according to the report.

During the woman’s stay at the psychiatric hospital and at follow-up appointments after she was released, doctors noticed that she had several vitamin and mineral deficiencies, had lost a lot of weight and also had thyroid problems, according to the report.

These symptoms led doctors to suspect that the woman had celiac disease, said Dr. Alessio Fasano, director of the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and one of the doctors who treated the woman. It was at that point that the doctors who wrote the case report got involved, he said.

The doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital confirmed that the woman had celiac disease, according to the report. However, her delusions led her to believe that the doctors were being “deceitful,” and she refused to follow a gluten-free diet, they wrote.

The woman lost her job, became homeless and attempted suicide, the doctors wrote. Eventually, she was rehospitalized at a psychiatric facility, where she was successfully placed on a gluten-free diet, they wrote.

When the woman was on a gluten-free diet, her symptoms improved, Fasano said. She was once again functional and aware of what gluten was doing to her, he said. She knew that being exposed to gluten caused her to lose control of her life, and she wanted people to understand that the gluten was causing this bizarre behavior, he added.

The differences between how the woman behaved on a gluten-free diet and after being exposed to gluten was like “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Fasano said. “This was a bright young lady on her way to [getting] a Ph.D., and all of sudden,” something changed and she would do things that were harmful to herself and people around her, he said.

During the time the doctors were working with the woman, she inadvertently consumed gluten on several occasions, Fasano said. When this would happen, she would become completely lost, he said. But when she was gluten-free, she was well aware that she needed to avoid gluten because “she [didn’t] want to go to ‘that place,'” Fasano said.

When Fasano last saw the woman, around January 2016, he reported that she was doing very well. She was completely avoiding gluten, and her symptoms had gone away, he said. In fact, the woman was planning to participate in an experiment with her doctors so that they could study what happened to her when she consumed gluten, he said.

The plan was to do the experiment in a very controlled environment so that the patient would not do anything harmful, he said. The experiment would give the doctors the opportunity to study the inflammatory process that potentially caused these symptoms. They also planned to do some brain scans, he said.

But before the doctors could do the experiment, the woman accidentally ate some gluten, Fasano said. Her delusions returned, and she was put in jail after trying to kill her parents, he said.

https://www.livescience.com/55166-celiac-disease-gluten-psychosis.html

Mediterranean diet could add years to your life

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by MELISSA BREYER

If there’s a single way of eating that persists in laying claim as one of the healthiest, it’s the Mediterranean diet. Experts continue to sing the praises of eating plenty of olive oil, plant foods, fish and wine.

The latest research — following several years of headline-making studies — makes it hard to argue with them.

Following a Mediterranean diet can protect against the harmful effects of air pollution, according to a 2018 study conducted by New York University. The study analyzed about 550,000 people for 17 years and factored in their level of exposure to pollution. Those who followed the Mediterranean diet compared to those who didn’t had a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and heart attacks.

“Air pollution is hypothesized to cause bad health effects through oxidative stress and inflammation, and the Mediterranean diet is really rich in foods that are anti-inflammatory and have antioxidants that might intervene through those avenues,” said study author Chris Lim on Time.com.

It’s worth noting that the diet doesn’t protect against ozone exposure. (Researchers believe that ozone exposure effects the cardiac system differently.)

Why the hits keep on coming

Researchers have been uncovering the benefits of this particular diet for years. In fact, the diet’s benefits for heart health were so clear in one 2013 study that researchers ended the study early, saying it was unethical to continue.

Research from 2014 added to the accolades. Scientists in Boston looked at the nutritional data from 4,676 women participating in the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study — the well-known ongoing prospective cohort analysis ­— and discovered that those whose food choices most closely followed a Mediterranean diet had longer telomeres. Telomeres are the protective buffers on the ends of chromosomes and can be used as a biomarker of aging; the longer they are, the better.

“We know that having shorter telomeres is associated with a lower life expectancy and a greater risk of cancer, heart disease and other diseases,” said study coauthor Immaculata De Vivo, an associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Certain lifestyle factors like obesity, sugary sodas, and smoking have been found to accelerate telomere shortening, and now our research suggests the Mediterranean diet can slow this shortening.”

The key is cell aging

The Mediterranean diet isn’t a specific diet plan per se, but rather eating in the traditional style of those living in Mediterranean countries. It’s characterized by consuming a lot of vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes and unrefined grains. There is plenty of olive oil, but little saturated fat; a moderate intake of fish, but little dairy, meat and poultry. And while cookies and sugar are limited, a regular but moderate dose of wine is involved.

It’s thought that the antioxidants present in the favored foods protect against cell aging. While the researchers didn’t find that any specific food provided the silver bullet, they suggest that it was a combination of the components that predicted telomere length.

The researchers scored each woman’s diet according to how closely it adhered to Mediterranean components. What they found was that each one-point change in their grading system equated to an extra year and a half of life. A three-point change, the study notes, would correspond to an average 4.5 years of aging, which is comparable to the difference between smokers with non-smokers.

The researchers also concluded that women who may have veered slightly from the Mediterranean diet but who still ate a healthy diet — like eating chicken and low-fat dairy products in addition to the Mediterranean basics — also had longer telomeres than those who ate a standard American diet with red meat, saturated fats, sweets and empty calories. Those who followed the Mediterranean diet, however, had the longest telomeres on average.

https://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/stories/mediterranean-diet-could-add-years-to-your-life

New research suggests that these 5 healthy habits could help you live a decade longer: eating healthy, exercising, keeping a healthy BMI, not smoking and not drinking too much.

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Want to prolong your life expectancy by more than a decade? A new study suggests that you can do just that by following these five healthy habits: never smoke, maintain a healthy body-mass index, keep up moderate to vigorous exercise, don’t drink too much alcohol, and eat a healthy diet.

Adhering to those five lifestyle factors at age 50, compared with not adhering to any of them, was associated with 14 additional years of life expectancy among women and 12.2 additional years among men in the study, published in the journal Circulation on Monday.

Each of those factors is significantly associated with a reduced risk of dying from the top two killers in the United States, cardiovascular disease and cancer, according to the study.
About 610,000 people die of heart disease in the US each year, which is about one in every four deaths, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 609,640 Americans are expected to die of cancer this year, according to the American Cancer Society.

“These are some of the leading causes of premature death, so by preventing or reducing the incidence of those diseases, it promotes longevity, and it also improves survival after diagnosis of those diseases,” said Dr. Meir Stampfer, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who was a co-author of the study.

“We can do so much better for having a long healthy life by pretty simple minimal changes in our behavior, and only 8% of adults in our country are adhering to these,” he said. “The main take-home message is that there’s huge gains in health and longevity to be had just by simple changes in our behavior pattern, and as a country, I think we need to make it easier for ourselves to do this by promoting tobacco cessation, by providing better environments for physical activity and so on.”

Globally, the US ranks 43rd when it comes to life expectancy at birth, with an average life expectancy of 80, according to 2017 data from the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook.
The three countries ranked highest for life expectancy at birth are Monaco, with 89.4 years; Japan, with 85.3 years; and Singapore, with 85.2 years, according to those data.

The countries with the lowest life expectancy at birth, based on that data, are Chad, with 50.6 years; Guinea-Bissau, with 51 years; and Afghanistan, with 51.7 years.

The ‘surprising’ impact of behaviors on longevity

For the new study, researchers measured the association between those five lifestyle factors and premature death using data from the national Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. The data came from 1980 to 2014 and included more than 122,000 people combined.

Then, the researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys to estimate the distribution of those modifiable lifestyle factors among adults in the United States. Those data, from 2013 to 2014, consisted of 2,128 adults, 50 to 80 years old.

The researchers also derived death rates of US adults using the CDC’s Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research database.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that, in 2014, the overall projected life expectancy at age 50 was to live 33.3 more years for women and 29.8 more years for men.

Yet among the adults who reported that they adopted all five healthy lifestyle factors, the researchers found, they lived 43.1 more years among women and 37.6 more years among men.

Among those adults who reported that they adhered to none of the five healthy lifestyle factors, the researchers found that they lived only 29 additional years among women and 25.5 additional years among men.

“To me, the surprising outcome was how strong it was: what a big impact these simple behaviors could have on life expectancy,” Stampfer said. “I was surprised that it was that pronounced.”

Among the women, on average, about 30.8% of the life expectancy at age 50 that they gained from adopting five, versus zero, of those lifestyle factors was attributed to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease death; 21.2% was attributed to a reduced risk of cancer and 48% to other causes of death.

Among the men, those percentages were 34.1% attributed to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease death, 22.8% attributed to a reduced risk of cancer and 43.1% to other causes.

The study had some limitations, including that the data on adherence to the five lifestyle factors were all self-reported, making outcome vulnerable to measurement errors.

Also, the data analysis did not include measures of certain health conditions that are risk factors for a shorter life expectancy, such as diabetes or high blood pressure.

That limitation, however, “is both a strength and a limitation, in a way … because what we’re estimating here is the prolongation of life expectancy just based on behaviors,” Stampfer said.
“Obviously, it’s much better to do these healthy behaviors from childhood, really, but if you’re beyond age 50, beyond age 60, beyond age 70, it’s not too late,” he added.

The factor that was seen as more ‘powerful’

The findings should encourage and motivate people to adopt a healthier lifestyle, said Dr. Douglas Vaughan, chairman of the department of medicine in Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.

Though the study highlighted how the combination of all five lifestyle factors could help prolong life expectancy, Vaughan pointed out how each individual factor also was tied to a reduced risk of premature death.

“It looks like cigarette smoking has a more powerful effect than the other lifestyle changes or behaviors. Certainly, maintaining a reasonable body-mass index is a great way to protect oneself against the development of diabetes,” Vaughan said.

Body-mass index, a calculation derived from a person’s weight and height, is used as a screening tool for body fatness. A normal or healthy body-mass index is typically said to be between 18.5 and 24.9.

“So, in aggregate, we see the effect on longevity, but you can imagine it’s largely through effects on cardiovascular risk and metabolic risk,” Vaughan said. “It suggests potentially at a defined point in life, say age 50, if you adhere to a healthy paradigm like this, you can have an impact on your longevity and on your health span.”

Dr. Jack Der-Sarkissian, a family medicine physician and assistant area medical director of Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, called smoking “the least-debated health risk factor.”

“Beyond cancer risk, smoking contributes to lung disease, heart disease and diabetes. The study shows that even minimal smoking — from one to 14 cigarettes a day — is associated with increased death due to cancer and heart disease,” said Der-Sarkissian, who was not involved in the new study.

As for some of the other lifestyle factors, “getting weight below a BMI of 30 appears to help considerably, according to the study. A higher body weight is linked to increased risk of diabetes and cancer, among other obesity-related conditions,” he said. “The study suggests physical activity of at least 30 minutes a day of moderate or vigorous activities, including brisk walking.”

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/30/health/life-expectancy-habits-study/index.html

Small tooth sensor can track what we eat

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by Vanessa Zainzinger

Wireless sensors are ubiquitous, providing a steady stream of information on anything from our physical activity to changes occurring in the world’s oceans. Now, scientists have developed a tiny form of the data-gathering tool, designed for an area that has so far escaped its reach: our teeth.

The 2-millimeter-by-2-millimeter devices (pictured) are made up of a film of polymers that detects chemicals in its environment. Sandwiched between two square-shaped gold rings that act as antennas, the sensor can transmit information on what’s going on—or what’s being chewed on—in our mouth to a digital device, such as a smartphone. The type of compound the inner layer detects—salt, for example, or ethanol—determines the spectrum and intensity of the radiofrequency waves that the sensor transmits. Because the sensor uses the ambient radio-frequency signals that are already around us, it doesn’t need a power supply.

The researchers tested their invention on people drinking alcohol, gargling mouthwash, or eating soup. In each case, the sensor was able to detect what the person was consuming by picking up on nutrients.

The devices could help health care and clinical researchers find links between dietary intake and health and, in the long run, allow each of us to keep track of how what we consume is affecting our bodies.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/tiny-sensor-your-tooth-could-help-keep-you-healthy

Fiber-Rich Diet Fights Off Obesity by Altering Microbiota

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Consumption of dietary fiber can prevent obesity, metabolic syndrome and adverse changes in the intestine by promoting growth of “good” bacteria in the colon, according to a study led by Georgia State University.

The researchers found enriching the diet of mice with the fermentable fiber inulin prevented metabolic syndrome that is induced by a high-fat diet, and they identified specifically how this occurs in the body. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions closely linked to obesity that includes increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels. When these conditions occur together, they increase a person’s risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Obesity and metabolic syndrome are associated with alterations in gut microbiota, the microorganism population that lives in the intestine. Modern changes in dietary habits, particularly the consumption of processed foods lacking fiber, are believed to affect microbiota and contribute to the increase of chronic inflammatory disease, including metabolic syndrome. Studies have found a high-fat diet destroys gut microbiota, reduces the production of epithelial cells lining the intestine and causes gut bacteria to invade intestinal epithelial cells.

This study found the fermentable fiber inulin restored gut health and protected mice against metabolic syndrome induced by a high-fat diet by restoring gut microbiota levels, increasing the production of intestinal epithelial cells and restoring expression of the protein interleukin-22 (IL-22), which prevented gut microbiota from invading epithelial cells. The findings are published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

“We found that manipulating dietary fiber content, particularly by adding fermentable fiber, guards against metabolic syndrome,” said Dr. Andrew Gewirtz, professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State. “This study revealed the specific mechanism used to restore gut health and suppress obesity and metabolic syndrome is the induction of IL-22 expression. These results contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms that underlie diet-induced obesity and offer insight into how fermentable fibers might promote better health.”

For four weeks, the researchers fed mice either a grain-based rodent chow, a high-fat diet (high fat and low fiber content with 5 percent cellulose as a source of fiber) or a high-fat diet supplemented with fiber (either fermentable inulin fiber or insoluble cellulose fiber). The high-fat diet is linked to an increase in obesity and conditions associated with metabolic syndrome.

They discovered a diet supplemented with inulin reduced weight gain and noticeably reduced obesity induced by a high-fat diet, which was accompanied by a reduction in the size of fat cells. Dietary enrichment with inulin also markedly lowered cholesterol levels and largely prevented dysglycemia (abnormal blood sugar levels). The researchers found insoluble cellulose fiber only modestly reduced obesity and dysglycemia

Supplementing the high-fat diet with inulin restored gut microbiota. However, inulin didn’t restore the microbiota levels to those of mice fed a chow diet. A distinct difference in microbiota levels remained between mice fed a high-fat diet versus those fed a chow diet. Enrichment of high-fat diets with cellulose had a mild effect on microbiota levels.

In addition, the researchers found switching mice from a grain-based chow diet to a high-fat diet resulted in a loss of colon mass, which they believe contributes to low-grade inflammation and metabolic syndrome. When they switched mice back to a chow diet, the colon mass was fully restored.

https://www.technologynetworks.com/tn/news/fiber-rich-diet-fights-off-obesity-by-altering-microbiota-296642?utm_campaign=Newsletter_TN_BreakingScienceNews&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=60184554&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9YDsGiTl44CBfQpgNtYgc43xBeVKpAbPZym9Lh_GzlHoEVts0rAwMhHHXIDam3Jit0D3aTqKGhCceUREgr6sZfLGMWpQ&_hsmi=60184554

Fountain of youth? Dietary supplement may prevent and reverse severe damage to aging brain, research suggests

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Jennifer Lemon, Research Associate, Department of Biology, McMaster University. A dietary supplement containing a blend of thirty vitamins and minerals–all natural ingredients widely available in health food stores–has shown remarkable anti-aging properties that can prevent and even reverse massive brain cell loss, according to new research. It’s a mixture scientists believe could someday slow the progress of catastrophic neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, ALS and Parkinson’s.

A dietary supplement containing a blend of thirty vitamins and minerals — all natural ingredients widely available in health food stores — has shown remarkable anti-aging properties that can prevent and even reverse massive brain cell loss, according to new research from McMaster University.

It’s a mixture scientists believe could someday slow the progress of catastrophic neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, ALS and Parkinson’s.

“The findings are dramatic,” says Jennifer Lemon, research associate in the Department of Biology and a lead author of the study. “Our hope is that this supplement could offset some very serious illnesses and ultimately improve quality of life.”

The formula, which contains common ingredients such as vitamins B, C and D, folic acid, green tea extract, cod liver oil and other nutraceuticals, was first designed by scientists in McMaster’s Department of Biology in 2000.

A series of studies published over the last decade and a half have shown its benefits in mice, in both normal mice and those specifically bred for such research because they age rapidly, experiencing dramatic declines in cognitive and motor function in a matter of months.

The mice used in this study had widespread loss of more than half of their brain cells, severely impacting multiple regions of the brain by one year of age, the human equivalent of severe Alzheimer’s disease.

The mice were fed the supplement on small pieces of bagel each day over the course of several months. Over time, researchers found that it completely eliminated the severe brain cell loss and abolished cognitive decline.

“The research suggests that there is tremendous potential with this supplement to help people who are suffering from some catastrophic neurological diseases,” says Lemon, who conducted the work with co-author Vadim Aksenov, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Biology at McMaster.

“We know this because mice experience the same basic cell mechanisms that contribute to neurodegeneration that humans do. All species, in fact. There is a commonality among us all.”

In addition to looking at the major markers of aging, they also discovered that the mice on the supplements experienced enhancement in vision and most remarkably in the sense of smell — the loss of which is often associated with neurological disease — improved balance and motor activity.

The next step in the research is to test the supplement on humans, likely within the next two years, and target those who are dealing with neurodegenerative diseases. The research is published online in the journal Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis.

Journal Reference:
1.J.A. Lemon, V. Aksenov, R. Samigullina, S. Aksenov, W.H. Rodgers, C.D. Rollo, D.R. Boreham. A multi-ingredient dietary supplement abolishes large-scale brain cell loss, improves sensory function, and prevents neuronal atrophy in aging mice. Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis, 2016; DOI: 10.1002/em.22019

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160602095204.htm