Day: 12/11/2022
Why You Should Eat 2 Apples a Day
The old saying that eating an apple a day will keep the doctor away may have some scientific basis after all, as scientific literature is packed with findings that vouch for this fruit’s healthful benefits.Showing that the saying above goes beyond folk medicine fantasy, a study found that eating one apple a day for four weeks translated to lower blood levels of oxidized low-density lipoprotein/beta2-glycoprotein I complex, which may contribute to atherosclerosis, by 40 percent among healthy, middle-aged individuals.[i]Apple consumption has also been the subject of a few studies on reducing cancer risk, including liver cancer, breast cancer, and esophageal cancer.[ii] A study published in February 2020 points to apples’ ability to mediate significant gut microbial metabolic activity. All it takes is two apples a day. Apples are a frequently consumed fruit and a reliable source of polyphenols and fiber, an important mediator for their health-protective effects.[iii]Validated biomarkers of food intake (BFIs) have recently been suggested as a good tool for assessing adherence to dietary guidelines. New biomarkers have[iv] surfaced in recent decades from metabolic profiling studies for different foods, yet the number of comprehensively validated BFIs remains limited.BFIs offer an accurate measure of intake, independent of the memory and sincerity of the subjects as well as of their knowledge about the consumed foods.[v] They overcome food intake measurement processes with inherent limitations, such as self-reported dietary intake questionnaires, as they objectively assess food intake without biased self-reported assessment.The researchers sought to identify biomarkers of long-term apple consumption, exploring how the fruit affects human plasma and urine metabolite profiles. In their randomized, controlled, crossover intervention study, they recruited 40 mildly hypercholesterolemia patients and had them consume two whole apples or a sugar- and energy-matched beverage daily for eight weeks.At the end of the trial, they found 61 urine and nine plasma metabolites that were statistically significant after the whole apple intake compared to the control beverage. The metabolites included several polyphenols that could serve as BFIs.Interestingly, the study allowed the group to explore correlations between metabolites significantly modulated by the dietary intervention and fecal microbiota species at genus level—specifically, interactions shared by Granulicatella genus and phenyl-acetic acid metabolites.“The identification of polyphenol microbial metabolites suggests that apple consumption mediates significant gut microbial metabolic activity which should be further explored,” they wrote.[vi] The link between the gut microbiota and human wellness is being increasingly recognized, and it’s now well established that healthy gut flora is a key part of your overall health.[vii]Previous studies corroborate that the richness of the human gut microbiome correlates with metabolic markers. In a study on 123 non-obese and 169 obese Danish individuals, a group of scientists found two distinct groups displaying a difference in the number of gut microbial genes and thus the richness of gut bacteria in the two groups.[viii]Individuals with a low bacterial richness had more marked overall adiposity and insulin resistance, for instance, compared with high bacterial richness subjects. The obese subjects among the lower bacterial richness group also tended to gain more weight over time.A series of largely pre-clinical observations showed, too, that changes in brain-gut-microbiome communication may be involved in the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of irritable bowel syndrome, obesity, and several psychiatric and neurologic disorders.[ix] More benefits of apple intake are coming out of the medical literature, confirming its status as a healing food that shouldn’t be missed out on.These benefits include addressing common issues such as aging (reduced rate), allergies, alopecia or hair loss, diarrhea, insulin resistance, radiation-induced illness, and staphylococcal infection. In the area of cancer treatment, apples have been found to both prevent and suppress mammary cancers in animal studies, while carotenoids extracted from the fruit have been found to inhibit drug-resistant cancer proliferation in cell lines.[x]The GreenMedInfo.com database contains 156 abstracts with apple research, scrutinizing the health benefits of apples and their related compounds.References [i] Shi Zhao et al “Intakes of apples or apple polyphenols decease plasma values for oxidized low-density lipoprotein/beta2-glycoprotein I complex” J Funct Foods. 2013 Jan;5(1):493-97.[ii] Pierini R et al “Procyanidin effects on oesophageal adenocarcinoma cells strongly depend on flavan-3-ol degree of polymerization” Mol Nutr Food Res. 2008 Dec;52(12):1399-407. PMID: 18683822[iii] Ulaszewska M et al “Two apples a day modulate human:microbiome co-metabolic processing of polyphenols, tyrosine and tryptophan” Eur J Nutr. 2020 Feb 26. Epub 2020 Feb 26. PMID: 32103319[iv] Picó C et al “Biomarkers of Nutrition and Health: New Tools for New Approaches” Nutrients. 2019 May; 11(5): 1092. Published online 2019 May 16.[v] Münger L et al “Biomarker of food intake for assessing the consumption of dairy and egg products” Genes Nutr. 2018; 13: 26. Epub 2018 Sep 29.[vi] Ulaszewska M et al “Two apples a day modulate human:microbiome co-metabolic processing of polyphenols, tyrosine and tryptophan” Eur J Nutr. 2020 Feb 26. Epub 2020 Feb 26. PMID: 32103319[vii] Jandhyala S et al “Role of the normal gut microbiota” World J Gastroenterol. 2015 Aug 7; 21(29): 8787-8803. Epub 2015 Aug 7.[viii] Le Chatelier E et al “Richness of human gut microbiome correlates with metabolic markers” Nature. 2013 Aug 29;500(7464):541-6. [ix] Martin C et al “The Brain-Gut-Microbiome Axis” Cell Mol Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2018 ;6(2):133-148. Epub 2018 Apr 12.[x] Molnár P et al “Biological activity of carotenoids in red paprika, Valencia orange and Golden delicious apple” Phytother Res. 2005 Aug;19(8):700-7. 
Apples may be one of the least exotic fruits in North America, but they are also surprisingly therapeutic in several conditions.(pavla/Shutterstock) Study Findings
Gut Health Affects Your Whole Body
Additional Apple Benefits
Brains with more vitamin D may work better
“We wanted to know if vitamin D is even present in the brain, and if it is, how those concentrations are linked to cognitive decline,” says Kyla Shea.
The brains of people with cognitive decline fare better with higher levels of vitamin D, research finds.
The study appears in in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.
“This research reinforces the importance of studying how food and nutrients create resilience to protect the aging brain against diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementias,” says senior and corresponding author Sarah Booth, director of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts and lead scientist of the HNRCA’s Vitamin K Team.
Vitamin D supports many functions in the body, including immune responses and maintaining healthy bones. Dietary sources include fatty fish and fortified beverages (such as milk or orange juice); brief exposure to sunlight also provides a dose of vitamin D.
“Many studies have implicated dietary or nutritional factors in cognitive performance or function in older adults, including many studies of vitamin D, but all of them are based on either dietary intakes or blood measures of vitamin D,” says lead author Kyla Shea, a scientist on the Vitamin K Team and an associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts. “We wanted to know if vitamin D is even present in the brain, and if it is, how those concentrations are linked to cognitive decline.”
Booth, Shea, and their team examined samples of brain tissue from 209 participants in the Rush Memory and Aging Project, a long-term study of Alzheimer’s disease that began in 1997. Researchers at Rush University assessed the cognitive function of the participants, older people with no signs of cognitive impairment, as they aged, and analyzed irregularities in their brain tissue after death.
In the study, researchers looked for vitamin D in four regions of the brain—two associated with changes linked to Alzheimer’s disease, one associated with forms of dementia linked to blood flow, and one region without any known associations with cognitive decline related to Alzheimer’s disease or vascular disease. They found that vitamin D was indeed present in brain tissue, and high vitamin D levels in all four regions of the brain correlated with better cognitive function.
However, the levels of vitamin D in the brain didn’t associate with any of the physiological markers associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the brain studied, including amyloid plaque buildup, Lewy body disease, or evidence of chronic or microscopic strokes. This means it’s still unclear exactly how vitamin D might affect brain function.
“Dementia is multifactorial, and lots of the pathological mechanisms underlying it have not been well characterized,” Shea says. “Vitamin D could be related to outcomes that we didn’t look at yet, but plan to study in the future.”
Vitamin D is also known to vary between racial and ethnic populations, and most of the participants in the original Rush cohort were white. The researchers are planning follow-up studies using a more diverse group of subjects to look at other brain changes associated with cognitive decline. They hope their work leads to a better understanding of the role vitamin D may play in staving off dementia.
However, experts caution people not to use large doses of vitamin D supplements as a preventive measure. The recommended dose of vitamin D is 600 IU for people 1-70 years old, and 800 IU for those older—excessive amounts can cause harm and have been linked to the risk of falling.
“We now know that vitamin D is present in reasonable amounts in human brains, and it seems to be correlated with less decline in cognitive function,” Shea says. “But we need to do more research to identify the neuropathology that vitamin D is linked to in the brain before we start designing future interventions.”
Support for the work came from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging, as well as the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. Complete information on authors, funders, and conflicts of interest is available in the published paper. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or the US Department of Agriculture.
Source: Tufts University
Sleep Problems Can Be Harmful
It is common and normal for people to occasionally have difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep at night, but if this occurs on a regular basis and interferes with functioning during the daylight hours, you need a medical evaluation to find the cause. Getting fewer than seven hours of sleep each night is associated with increased risk for heart attacks (J Am Coll Cardiol, Jan 2019;73(2):134-144), depression (Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 2008;10(3):329-336), weight gain (BMJ Open Sport Exerc Med, Oct 4, 2018;4(1):e000392) and diabetes (Am J of Physiol-Endocrin and Metab, Nov 7, 2018;315(5)). More than 30 percent of North Americans do not meet their needs for sleep (MMWR, 2016;65(6):137-41).
Lack of Sleep, Lack of Sunlight and Mood Disorders
Lack of sleep can cause depression, difficulty concentrating, irritability, weight gain, and impaired work or school performance. Sustained difficulty falling and staying asleep is associated with serious mood disorders such as depression (Scientific World Journal, May 2, 2012;2012:640389). Lack of sleep and lack of sunlight reduce production of melatonin and serotonin by the brain’s hypothalamus to increase risk for depression (Chronobiol Int, Apr 2015;32(3):368-75).
Lack of Sleep and Heart Attack Risk
Researchers at Harvard Medical School did a study on mice in an effort to explain how sleep disruption can increase risk for heart attacks. They found that sleep disruption causes inflammation that can lead to heart attacks (Nature, Feb 13, 2019;566(7744):383-387). The authors found that lack of deep sleep markedly reduces production by a part of the brain called the hypothalamus of a hormone called hypocretin. Lack of hypocretin causes tiredness, decreased energy levels, and difficulty sleeping deeply. The sleep-deprived mice had high white blood cell counts signifying an overactive immune system, developed large plaques in their arteries, and had other markers of inflammation. Then the researchers gave hypocretin to the sleep-deprived mice and found that markers of inflammation and arteriosclerosis were reduced significantly. This study suggests that lack of sleep is another major risk factor for inflammation that is associated with increased risk for heart attacks in humans.
If You Have Sleep Problems . . .
First, make sure you are not causing your sleep problems by going to bed too late or trying to keep a schedule that requires you to wake up too early. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute recommends 7-8 hours of sleep per night. You should try to: go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, avoid daytime naps, and sleep in a clean comfortable bed with no sound or light to disturb your sleep.
Lifestyle changes to improve sleep quality include:
• Have an exercise program and stay active during the daytime
• Limit or avoid caffeine in the afternoon and evening
• Eat an anti-inflammatory diet with a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds; limit meat from mammals and processed meats, sugar-added foods and drinks, and fried foods
• Restrict or avoid eating and drinking at night
• Avoid smoke, tobacco and alcohol
• Lose weight if overweight
• Remove or turn off sources of light, including TV, computers, iphones or tablets, from the room where you sleep
• Have a comfortable mattress, pillows, and bedding
Circadian Rhythm Disorders
Any disruption in the time you normally go to bed or wake up can disturb your body’s normal circadian rhythms. People who have jobs that require frequent crossing of time zones, and those with alternating day and night shift jobs, frequently have serious sleep problems and increased risk for heart attacks (Eur Heart J, Oct 21, 2021;42(40):4180-4188). Even the time changes for daylight saving time can disrupt your sleep patterns because setting your clock backward in the fall and forward in the spring can confuse your body’s natural circadian rhythms to increase risk for heart attacks, injuries, mental and behavioral disorders, and immune-related diseases around the time-change days (PLoS Comput Biol, 2020 Jun; 16(6): e1007927).
Medical Treatments
If none of the lifestyle changes improve the quality of your sleep, check with your doctor to get tests to see if you have an underlying condition causing your problems. Common conditions that interfere with normal sleep include:
• Nasal and chest congestion from allergies, colds and respiratory diseases
• Sleep apnea
• Frequent urination from an infection or kidney problems
• Chronic pain from arthritis, fibromyalgia, inflammatory bowel disease, headaches, low back pain and so forth
• Stress or anxiety
• Nightmares or sleepwalking
• Many different diseases
Medical treatment for underlying conditions may include various drugs, but long-term use of sleeping pills such as melatonin can have serious side effects. Breathing devices or surgery for sleep apnea, or a dental guard for teeth grinding can help to correct those causes.
My Recommendations
If you go to bed at night and wake up each morning at the same times, get between 7- 9 hours of sleep each night, and you still have difficulty falling or staying asleep at night, check with your doctor to see if you can find a cause. If a medical workup does not reveal a cause, try to:
• Exercise in the morning and relax in the evening to prepare yourself for sleep
• Expose yourself to some daylight and sunshine during the day
• Avoid napping during the day
• Follow the rules for an anti-inflammatory lifestyle
Bruce Lee and Hyponatremia
Bruce Lee was the most influential martial artist of the 20th century. In the 1970’s, his fame as a movie star and martial arts instructor sparked North American interest in Asian martial arts. He brought martial arts to North America by founding Jeet Kune Do, which is the basis for modern mixed martial arts. On July 20, 1973, at age 32, he died suddenly with massive swelling of his brain. The cause of his brain swelling was not proven by an autopsy, but was originally reported as possibly caused by sensitivity to aspirin. Now, almost 50 years after his death, a well-researched paper with solid journal references explains that he probably died from hyponatremia, drinking too much water (Clin Kidney J, Dec 2022;15(12):2169–2176).
• Hyponatremia occurs when drinking too much water dilutes the salt level in your bloodstream.
• However, the level of salt in your brain usually remains normal or high.
• Fluid moves from tissues that have low-salt levels to dilute those that have high-salt levels.
• Blood fluids move from the bloodstream into the brain, so the brain expands with extra fluid.
• The brain is in a tight box called the skull that cannot expand, so the enlarged brain is crushed inside the non-expanding skull.
• The person stops breathing and dies.
Early Years and Movie Career
Lee was born in Chinatown, San Francisco, the son of Lee Hoi-chuen, a leading Chinese opera and film actor and Grace Ho, daughter of extremely wealthy Hong Kong entrepreneurs and philanthropists. Lee’s family returned to Hong Kong when he was three months old and he was raised there. His father arranged for him to get minor parts in movies, and he had roles in 20 films by the time he was eighteen.
Lee became the leader of a street gang, and after he came home from school one day with wounds from a fight, his father began to teach him martial arts. All this did was encourage him to get into more street fights with rival gangs. When he was 18, he beat up the son of a prominent gang leader and word got out of a contract to kill him. Fearing for his life, his father sent him to the safety of the United States to live with his older sister, Agnes Lee, in San Francisco.
In March 1961, Lee enrolled at the University of Washington to major in drama. There he met Linda Emery, and they were married in August 1964. They had two children, Brandon and Shannon, both of whom became actors. Lee dropped out of college in the spring of 1964 and moved to Oakland to open a martial arts studio with James Yimm Lee. He then moved to Los Angeles where he taught martial arts and starred in a television series, “The Green Hornet,” in 1966 and 1967. However, he was not able to get movie jobs in Hollywood, so he left Los Angeles for Hong Kong in the summer of 1971. There he quickly became a major star in “Fists of Fury,” followed by an even more popular film, “The Chinese Connection.” In 1972, he founded a company to make his own film, “Return of the Dragon.”
Top 10 BRUCE LEE MOMENTS
YOUTUBE URL:https://www.youtube.com/embed/Se1y2R5QRKU
Fitness and Health Food Obsession
Bruce ran virtually every day, usually in the late afternoon, and did a lot of stretching. Whenever he watched television he would exercise and stretch. He had almost no fat in his body and was always in top shape. He also became good enough at table tennis to compete successfully with some of the best players in his area.
Several times a day he would drink special protein mixes or vegetable cocktails. His drinks contained commercial protein powders, powdered milk, eggs with their shells, vegetable oils, peanut flour and bananas. He juiced carrots, celery and apples regularly. He also took a lot of vitamin and mineral pills and drank water frequently throughout the day. No good research supports any of these “health food” habits, but they may have been responsible for the tremendous amount of excess fluids that he took in that caused his death.
Events That Led to His Death
On May 10, 1973, two months before his death, Lee had an attack of brain swelling. He suffered headaches followed by a seizure, and fell on the floor while working on the movie “Enter the Dragon”. He was rushed to Hong Kong Baptist Hospital where doctors diagnosed that he had massive swelling of his brain. A very competent physician saved his life by immediately giving him intravenous mannitol. This drug increases the concentration of sugar in the bloodstream to shrink the brain by drawing fluid from the brain into the bloodstream. The mannitol also acts on the kidneys to draw the extra fluid out of the body and into the urine.
On July 20, 1973, while reviewing a movie script at the home of Taiwanese actress Betty Ting Pei, Lee complained of a headache and took a painkiller called Equagesic, which contained aspirin and meprobamate, a muscle relaxant. He went to sleep and then could not be awakened. A doctor and ambulance were called, but he was dead before he reached the hospital.
An autopsy showed that his brain was massively swollen. The only drugs found in his body were aspirin, meprobamate and small amounts of marijuana. A reaction to aspirin can cause brain swelling, confusion and seizures, but now researchers believe that hyponatremia was a more likely cause (Clin Kidney J, Dec 2022;15(12):2169–2176).
Since low blood salt levels can cause massive brain swelling, and the brain is enclosed in the skull and has nowhere to go, it is squashed to cause headache, nausea, and blurred vision. As blood salt levels drop even lower, the person becomes confused, develops seizures and falls unconscious.
Risk Factors for Hyponatremia
Lee had multiple risk factors for hyponatremia:
• High chronic fluid intake. he preached a high intake of fluids as the healthiest way to live and drank water throughout the day.
• Marijuana (found at autopsy) increases thirst so you drink more.
• Acute kidney damage causes the body to retain fluids. His physician said that blood urea nitrogen (a measure of kidney damage) at Baptist Hospital was very high at 92 mg/dL, but was normal on May 25 when Lee was examined previously.
• Alcohol (Lee drank frequently), which can cause low blood salt levels.
• Low dietary salt and high fluid intake. His wife says that in her husband’s final months, he had stopped eating solid food and was existing primarily on fluids, mostly carrot juice and apple juice
• Recent weight loss. He looked emaciated and had lost 15 percent of his total body weight in the previous two months, and he had minimal body fat to start.
• Active exercise and inadequate food and fluid intake. He continued to exercise every day on his meager diet. Exercise can cause salt loss through sweating (Wilderness Environ Med 2020; 33: 50–62)
• Some evidence that he was taking diuretics, which can deplete the body of salt.
• Possible prescription and over-the-counter drugs. Various reports say that he took aspirin, diuretics, phenytoin and painkillers.
• Possible anabolic steroids, which can cause adrenal insufficiency that causes salt loss
Lessons From Bruce Lee’s Death
You need extra fluid when you exercise, particularly in hot weather, but how much fluid should you drink? You will not become thirsty during exercise until you have lost between two and four pints of fluid, so you can’t wait for thirst to encourage you to drink. Blood has a much higher concentration of salt than sweat, so when you sweat, you lose far more water than salt, so you will not become thirsty until you are significantly dehydrated. Dehydration makes you tired and it is unlikely that you could maintain your race pace after you become thirsty, because you will have to slow down while you drink enough fluid to replace what you have lost.
The American College of Sports Medicine recommends up to five cups of fluid per hour, but for a person who is not exercising near their maximum, this could be too much. People slowed down by fatigue, or those out of shape, should limit fluid intake, probably to less than two water bottles per hour. If you are exercising for more than an hour, you should also replace salt, either with salted sports drinks or salted foods. More on hyponatremia
Bruce Lee
Nov 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973
Intense Exercise May Reduce Cancer Spread
A study from Israel found that intense exercise may help to prevent cancer from spreading, in humans and in mice, by using up body sugars so that less energy is available for the tumor cells to grow and spread (Cancer Res, Nov 15, 2022;82(22):4164–4178). Researchers selected 2,734 Israeli men and women, ages 25 to 64, who were non-smokers, took no medications, and did not have cancer or chronic lung, heart, metabolic (diabetes), or orthopedic diseases. These people were then compared in a running protocol with 14 serious male and female runners, ages 25-45, and followed for 20 years. Compared to non-exercisers, those who exercised regularly before they developed cancers had a slightly reduced incidence of cancer, while those who exercised at high intensity after developing cancer had a 72 percent lower incidence of metastatic cancer than those who did not exercise after developing cancer.
The authors wanted to find out how exercise could prevent cancer from spreading. Sedentary mice were compared with mice that were exercised in a progressively more intense and longer duration program every other day for eight weeks and then were injected with melanoma cancer cells. Then, the exercised mice were given four days to recover from their injections and were exercised vigorously on the treadmill for four additional weeks.
• Mice who exercised before they were injected with cancer cells were “significantly protected” against metastases to distant organs.
• Mice who exercised after they were injected had a marked depletion of sugar sources stored in all of their organs. They also had many markers showing efficient disposal of sugar so that it did not accumulate in their bodies.
The authors stated that cancer cells grow so fast that they need large amounts of sugar to supply them with energy for growth, and that depriving cancer cells of sugar deprives them of an energy source to grow and spread.
Supervised Exercise During Chemotherapy for Cancer May be Beneficial
The prospective ACT trial found that active physical exercise during chemotherapy for cancer may be safe, may help to prevent loss of heart-lung fitness, and may hasten a person’s return to normal physical activities (J Am Coll Cardiol CardioOnc, Nov 4, 2022;4 (4):491–503). In this study, 266 patients with breast, testicular, or colon cancer were randomly assigned either to:
• A 24-week exercise program of supervised exercise during 12 weeks of chemotherapy, followed by 12 weeks of home-based unsupervised exercise
• Three weeks of supervised exercise intervention starting three weeks after the administration of the final dose of chemotherapy
• Rest during and after chemotherapy.
The moderate to vigorous intensity exercise program included riding a stationary bike, a resistance training program and playing badminton. After chemotherapy, those who exercised during chemotherapy for cancer:
• Had far less reduction in their maximal ability to take in and use oxygen (peak oxygen uptake), even though both groups suffered a reduction, and
• Had far less loss of muscle strength, quality of life, and fatigue.
More than 80 percent of patients suffer from extreme fatigue during chemotherapy. The supervised exercise program was far more effective than the home based part of the program in time spent exercising.
Exercise Helps to Prevent and Treat Cancer
A review of the world’s literature shows that active physical exercise reduces the risk of developing cancer (JAMA Intern Med, 2016;176:816–25), and the risk of a cancer spreading (Exerc Sport Sci Rev, 2020;48:67–73). Prospective studies show that exercise helps to prevent cancer both before and after inoculating cancer cells into animals (Cell Metab, 2016;23:554–62.3). These studies from Israel show that exercise may help prevent cancer and its recurrences by blocking the energy source of cancer cell growth. Tumors need more energy to grow faster than normal cells. Diabetes is a major risk factor for cancer because of the excess sugar in the blood stream to feed cancer cells (Trends Biochem Sci, 2016;41:211–8).
Exercise helps to prevent and treat cancers by:
• Making cells more responsive to insulin (US Endocrinol, 2008;04:23) so cancer cells do not have excess sugar available to power their growth
• Reducing inflammation (an overactive immune system ) that damages DNA to increase cancer risk (Aging Dis, 2012;3:130–40)
• Decreasing sex-steroid hormone levels that stimulate breast cancer and other cancers (Breast Cancer Res, 2015;17:139)
• Raising skeletal muscle hormones that inhibit tumor growth (Nat Rev Cancer, 2008;8:205–11).
My Recommendations
Cancer cells need a lot of extra energy to grow and multiply faster than normal cells. Exercise may help to prevent and treat cancer by depriving cancer cells of energy for their growth and spread. As long as you do not have a condition that can harm you by exercising, it is a good idea to exercise. There are several conditions that can worsen with exercise. If you already have a cancer, you should check with your doctor to find out if exercise could harm you or may be helpful.
Caution: Be aware that exercise can cause heart attacks in people who already have blocked arteries. Check with your doctor, partcularly if you have any markers for arteriosclerosis: high blood pressure, cholesterol or blood sugar, or being able to pinch more than three inches of fat over your belly.
Simple Test to Predict Risk of Diabetes and Heart Attacks
Two blood tests that are done during routine physical exams can be used to predict whether you are at increased risk for diabetes (Front Endocrinol (Lausanne), Feb 24, 2022;13:828581) and heart attacks (J of Clin Hypertension, Jan 13, 2016). It’s called the triglyceride/HDL ratio, calculated by dividing your triglycerides number by your HDL number.
• Your triglycerides should be below 150 mg/dL (in Canada less than 1.7 mmol/L)
• Your HDL cholesterol should be above 40 (in Canada, greater than 1.00 mmol/L)
• Thus your triglyceride/HDL ratio should be under 3.75
The triglyceride/HDL ratio can also be used to measure blood sugar control in people who are already diabetic (Med Arch, Jun 2019;73(3):163–168).
More than 40 percent of all North Americans will develop type II diabetes in their lifetime (Lancet Diab and Endo, Nov 1, 2014;2(11):867-874) and if you include prediabetes, that number goes up to 70 percent. These diseases can damage every cell in your body to cause heart attacks, strokes, dementia, impotence, many cancers, blindness, deafness, and premature death. If your triglyceride/HDL ratio is above 3.75, you are at increased risk for pre-diabetes or diabetes. Check with your doctor. Since the majority of cases of type II diabetes are caused by a faulty lifestyle, not just by genetics, type II diabetes is both preventable (Am J Lifestyle Med, Jan-Feb, 2018;12(1):4–20) and curable (Lancet, Diabetes and Endpcrinology, June 1, 2020;8(6):477-489) with lifestyle changes. Many people with pre-diabetes and early diabetes can return to normal by changing their lifestyle, long before they develop any symptoms of the disease (Glob J Health Sci, 2012 Oct 10;4(6):185-90).
Why Triglyceride/HDL Ratio Predicts Diabetes
Doctors often screen for diabetes by ordering a fasting blood sugar. However, some people with pre-diabetes have normal fasting blood sugar levels. The first thing that happens when you start to become diabetic is that your blood sugar rises too high after you eat, even if your fasting blood sugar is normal. If your blood sugar is greater than 140 two hours after you eat, you are at least pre-diabetic, even if all of your other tests are normal (Diabetes Care, October 2011;34(10):2237-2243).
High Triglycerides: When your blood sugar rises too high, your liver converts the extra sugar into a fat called triglycerides, so an early sign of diabetes is a triglyceride level above 150 mg/dL (above 1.7 mmol/L in Canada).
Low HDL Cholesterol: High blood fat levels can cause clots and heart attacks, so you use up your good HDL cholesterol to carry triglycerides from your bloodstream to your liver. A low HDL cholesterol is another early sign of diabetes.
Fatty Liver: Your HDL cholesterol carries extra fat from your bloodstream to your liver. Too much fat stored in your liver is called a fatty liver. Your liver is supposed to prevent blood sugar levels from rising too high. When blood sugar levels rise, the pancreas releases insulin which lowers high blood sugar levels by driving sugar from the bloodstream into the liver. However, if you have a fatty liver, it does not accept the sugar, so blood sugar levels remain high to cause diabetes.
My Recommendations
You can check your own triglyceride/HDL ratio. Look at your most recent blood tests for your triglycerides and HDL cholesterol numbers, and divide the triglycerides number by the HDL number. If your triglyceride/HDL ratio is greater than 3.75, you are likely to be at least pre-diabetic. If you can also pinch more than three inches of fat under the skin on your belly, you may already be diabetic. Check with your doctor. Realize that you cannot cure diabetes with drugs alone; you must change your lifestyle to prevent or cure diabetes and to reduce your risk for a heart attack:
• exercise
• lose weight if overweight
• restrict foods and drinks with added sugars, fried foods, red meat and processed meats
• eat more fruits and vegetables
• keep blood levels of hydroxy vitamin D above 30 ng/mL
Note: Pre-diabetics and diabetics can have triglyceride/HDL ratios under 3.75. Your doctor will probably do additional tests for your diagnosis and treatment. A more dependable test is blood sugar taken two hours after you eat. If this is above 140, you probably are at least pre-diabetic.
FDA Gives First-Ever Approval to Fecal Transplant Therapy
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) headquarters in White Oak, Md., on Aug. 29, 2020.
The U.S. health regulator on Wednesday approved Switzerland-based Ferring Pharmaceuticals’ fecal transplant-based therapy to reduce the recurrence of a bacterial infection, making it the first therapy of its kind to be cleared in the United States.
The therapy, Rebyota, targets Clostridium difficile, or C. difficile—a superbug responsible for infections that can cause serious and life-threatening diarrhea. In the United States, the infection is associated with 15,000–30,000 deaths annually.
While this is the first such therapy approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for recurrent C. difficile infections, fecal microbiota transplants—classified by the regulator as investigational—have long been the standard of care in the United States for this condition.
“As the first FDA-approved fecal microbiota product, [the] action represents an important milestone, as it provides an additional approved option to prevent recurrent CDI,” said Peter Marks, director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
Rebyota is delivered through an enema and works by replenishing good gut bacteria through samples of microbes distilled from faeces of healthy donors.
Approval for the therapy comes on the back of a positive vote from the regulator’s advisers in September, as most on the panel sought standardization of the therapy.
Ferring, which gained the therapy through its 2018 purchase of U.S.-based Rebiotix Inc., was not immediately available for a comment on pricing and availability of the therapy.
Besides Ferring, other companies including Seres Therapeutics, which is developing an oral treatment, are working on similar therapies based on fecal microbiota transplantation.
Green Tea may cause Liver damage.
Long-term use of a high-dose green tea extract may protect against cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes, but may also create liver damage in some people.
A new study points to two genetic variants that predict who may be at risk.
“Learning to predict who will suffer liver damage is potentially important because there’s growing evidence that high-dose green tea extract may have significant health benefits for those who can safely take it,” says Hamed Samavat, an assistant professor of nutrition sciences at the Rutgers School of Health Professions and senior author of the study in the Journal of Dietary Supplements.
Using data from the Minnesota Green Tea Trial, a large study of green tea’s effect on breast cancer, the research team investigated whether people with certain genetic variations were more likely than others to show signs of liver stress after a year of ingesting 843 milligrams per day of the predominant antioxidant in green tea, a catechin called epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG).
Researchers led by Laura Acosta, then a doctoral student and now a graduate, selected two genetic variations in question because each controls the synthesis of an enzyme that breaks EGCG down.
They selected the Minnesota Green Tea Trial because it was a large, well-designed study of a unique population. The year-long, placebo-controlled trial included more than 1,000 postmenopausal women and collected data at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months.
An analysis showed that early signs of liver damage were somewhat more common than normal in women with one variation in the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) genotype and strongly predicted by a variation in the uridine 5′-diphospho-glucuronosyltransferase 1A4 (UGT1A4) genotype.
On average, participants with the high-risk UGT1A4 genotype saw the enzyme that indicates liver stress go up nearly 80% after nine months of consuming the green tea supplement, while those with low-risk genotypes saw the same enzyme go up 30%.
“We’re still a long way from being able to predict who can safely take high-dose green tea extract,” says Samavat, who notes the risk of liver toxicity is only associated with high levels of green tea supplements and not with drinking green tea or even taking lower doses of green tea extract.
“Variations in this one genotype don’t completely explain the variations in liver enzyme changes among study participants. The full explanation probably includes a number of different genetic variations and probably a number of non-genetic factors.”
“Still,” Samavat continues, “we do think we have identified an important piece of the puzzle and taken a step toward predicting who can safely enjoy any health benefits that high-dose green tea extract provides.”
Low Vitamin B12 May Increase Risk for Bleeding Strokes.
A surprising study from the UK shows that vegetarians and pescatarians (those who eat fish but not meat) appear to be at increased risk for suffering bleeding strokes, even though they are at reduced risk for heart attacks and are not at increased risk for clotting strokes (Brit Med J, September 2019;366:l4897). Researchers followed 48,188 healthy people, average age 45, for an average of 18.1 years.
The subjects were classified as:
• meat eaters,
• fish eaters who ate no meat, and
• those who ate neither meat nor fish.
In agreement with most previous studies, this study showed that, compared to meat eaters, the fish eaters had a 13 percent reduced rate of heart disease and the vegetarians had a 22 percent lower rate. The meat eaters also had a significantly higher rate of conditions that can cause heart attacks and strokes: high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and obesity. The authors did not check blood levels of nutrients in patients in this study, but vegetarians are at high risk for deficiencies of vitamins B12 (Med J Aust, 2013;199(4):S27-S32), vitamin D (J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad, Jan 2013;25(1-2):152-5) and in poorer countries, other B vitamins and amino acids, the protein building blocks.
Risk Factors for Stroke
About 90 percent of strokes are caused by clots blocking blood flow to the brain and 10 percent are caused by bleeding into the brain (Stroke, 1993;24:35–41).The most potent risk factors for clotting strokes are high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, and an irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation. A high-plant diet that restricts meat and processed foods is associated with decreased risk for strokes and for heart attack risk factors that include obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes (Curr Atheroscler Rep, 2012;14:300–306). A plant-based diet helps to reduce stroke risk by reducing high blood pressure, sodium to potassium ratio, atrial fibrillation, overweight/obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis, cholesterol, systemic inflammation, endothelial function, and TMAO; and by increasing endothelial progenitor cells (J Geriatr Cardiol, May 2017;14(5):321–326).
Sources of Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D
Plants do not contain vitamin B12, so a vegetarian can get B12 only from eggs, milk, yogurt, cheese, and B12-fortified foods, or supplements. Deficiencies of vitamin B12 are common, even in people who are not vegetarians. For example, people who take pills to reduce stomach acidity are at very high risk for B12 deficiency (Nature, June 2017). The stomach produces a chemical called intrinsic factor that helps absorb Vitamin B12 from food. Infections such as Helicobacter pylori can damage the stomach to prevent the production of intrinsic factor and interfere with vitamin B12 absorption. Vitamin B12 deficiency can cause weakness, tiredness, lightheadedness, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, memory loss, dementia, nerve damage such as numbness or tingling, and many other problems.
Plants are a very poor source of vitamin D, so vegetarians who do not get enough vitamin D from sunlight can get some from eggs, mushrooms, foods fortified with vitamin D, or supplements.
My Recommendations
We do not know why a plant-based diet may increase risk for bleeding strokes, but if you are a person who eats mostly a plant-based diet, you are at risk for suffering a deficiency of vitamin B12, vitamin D, and amino acids. With aging you can lose a lot of your ability to absorb B12. I recommend that you get blood tests for B12 and hydroxyvitamin D with your yearly physical examination. If you have a deficiency of B12, you also should get blood tests for methylmalonic acid and homocysteine. Check with your doctor.
Republished from DrMirkin.com
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