How Inactivity Harms Your Health

I came across this nifty diagram showing how being inactive contributes to illness. Get moving to stay healthy! When you don't move you gain weight, especially around the middle. White blood cells from your immune system move into the fat around your organs. This ignites inflammation everywhere in your body, which leads to insulin resistance and more weight gain, and ultimately diabetes. This raises your risk for heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke. This inflammation also leads to brain issues like dementia, Parkinsons and Alzheimers. Also increased is your risk for cancer. It is worth saying again. Get moving to protect your health!

Antioxidant rich diet linked to lower diabetes risk in women.

Consuming a diet rich in antioxidant foods is associated with a reduction in risk of type-2 diabetes (T2D) in middle-aged women, according to a new study in the journal Diabetologia.

Women with the highest quintile of dietary antioxidant intake, measured by total antioxidant capacity (TOC), reduced their risk of T2D by 27 %.

Total antioxidant capacity (TOC) is an index which estimates the aggregated antioxidant capacity from the sum of all the individual antioxidant components in the diet.

The development of T2D may involve oxidative stress, recent evidence has suggested. A diet containing fruit, vegetables and beverages including tea contains a variety of compounds with antioxidative properties. In this study, “the food groups that contributed the most to the TOC were fruit (23%), vegetables (19%), alcoholic beverages (15%) and hot beverages such as tea, chicory and hot chocolate (12%).

Vitamin C delivers stunning benefits for obese individuals with hypertension and/or diabetes.

Vitamin C is certainly not something people get very excited about. We think of it as a means to avoid sniffles. And we envision a tall glass of orange juice. That's about it.

But there has been an amazing new finding involving the use of a daily supplement of 500mg of vitamin C in people at high risk for heart disease and diabetes related health complications.

In a group of obese people who had high blood pressure and/or diabetes taking a simple dose of 500mg of vitamin C for only eight weeks led to reductions, significant reductions in the inflammatory markers C Reactive Protein (51%), Interleukin 6 (36%) and in blood sugar levels (33%) and triglyceride levels (31%).

Slashing inflammation, reducing blood sugar levels and dropping triglyceride levels to this degree would be highly protective in these at risk individuals. It would be protective for anyone.

Never underestimate the power of simple things like vitamin C. My favorite is Carlson Non GMO Vitamin C Crystals. I stir a quarter of a scoop into water as I drink it throughout my day. (No sniffles here!)

Effect of vitamin C on inflammation and metabolic markers in hypertensive and/or diabetic obese adults: a randomized controlled trial. Drug Design, Development and Therapy, 2015;9:3405-3412

Sugary Drinks Linked to High Death Tolls Worldwide

Consumption of sugary drinks may lead to an estimated 184,000 adult deaths each year worldwide, according to research published today in the journal Circulation and previously presented as an abstract at the American Heart Association Council on Epidemiology and Prevention in 2013.

“Many countries in the world have a significant number of deaths occurring from a single dietary factor, sugar-sweetened beverages. It should be a global priority to substantially reduce or eliminate sugar-sweetened beverages from the diet,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., Dr.P.H., senior author of the study and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University in Boston.

In the first detailed global report on the impact of sugar-sweetened beverages, researchers estimated deaths and disabilities from diabetes, heart disease, and cancers in 2010. In this analysis, sugar sweetened beverages were defined as any sugar- sweetened sodas, fruit drinks, sports/energy drinks, sweetened iced teas, or homemade sugary drinks such as frescas, that contained at least 50 kcal per 8oz serving. 100 percent fruit juice was excluded.

Estimates of consumption were made from 62 dietary surveys including 611,971 individuals conducted between 1980 and 2010 across 51 countries, along with data on national availability of sugar in 187 countries and other information. This allowed capture of geographical, gender and age variation in consumption levels of sugar- sweetened beverages in different populations. Based on meta-analyses of other published evidence on health harms of sugar-sweetened beverages, the investigators calculated the direct impact on diabetes and the obesity-related effects on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.

In 2010, the researchers estimate that sugar-sweetened beverages consumption may have been responsible for approximately:

133,000 deaths from diabetes
 

45,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease

6,450 deaths from cancer

“Some population dietary changes, such as increasing fruits and vegetables, can be challenging due to agriculture, costs, storage, and other complexities. This is not complicated. There are no health benefits from sugar-sweetened beverages, and the potential impact of reducing consumption is saving tens of thousands of deaths each year,” Mozaffarian said.

Overall, in younger adults, the percent of chronic disease attributed to sugar-sweetened beverages was higher than the percent in older adults.

The health impact of sugar-sweetened beverage intake on the young is important because younger adults form a large sector of the workforce in many countries, so the economic impact of sugar-sweetened beverage-related deaths and disability in this age group can be significant. It also raises concerns about the future. If these young people continue to consume high levels as they age, the effects of high consumption will be compounded by the effects of aging, leading to even higher death and disability rates from heart disease and diabetes than we are seeing now.

Singh GM, Micha R, Khatibzadek S, Lim S, Ezzati M, and Mozaffarian, D. “Estimated global, regional, and national disease burdens related to sugar-sweetened beverage consumption in 2010.” Circulation. Published online ahead of print 06-29-15. doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.114.010636

Sugary beverages start to wreck your health in just two weeks.

Still drinking soft drinks or sugar sweetened beverages? It is time to stop. A new study shows us what just two weeks of drinking soda can do to your heart. And the subjects were young healthy people.

Sugary drinks have been linked to obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. What is worse, the more soda (or sweet tea, or lattes) people drink the more likely these outcomes. The sugar industry and soft drink companies argue that association isn’t proof that one actually causes the other. But you have to agree that when population studies show a link again and again, and the mechanism of harm is plausible, it is silly to deny such strong evidence.

This is exactly how how we proved smoking cigarettes caused disease. But when it comes to discovering the effects on a habit on our health there’s nothing like controlled experiments. And the best evidence to prove cause and effect comes from double blind placebo controlled studies.

And when you’re studying heart disease, all the study has to do is look at changes in markers of heart disease risk, such as LDL cholesterol, apoB, triglycerides and uric acid in the blood.

A new study did just that. The study has been published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The researchers recruited a group of 85 people aged 18-40, and divided them into 4 groups. For 2 weeks participants drank beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) making up 0 percent, 10 percent, 17.5 percent or 25 percent of their daily caloric requirement. The participants were blinded to their drink content, and in order to do that the 0-percent drink for the control group was sweetened with aspartame.

Within 2 weeks, the people who were on the HFCS drinks had higher levels of LDL, triglycerides and uric acid, and the higher the HFCS they drank, the higher the level of heart risk factors.

Although the American Heart Association and the World Health Organization recommend that people limit added sugar to no more that 5 percent of daily calories, very few people do so, and levels of added sugar in the 10-20 percent are typical of the American diet. By this study’s assessment, the average American person’s sugar intake is certainly enough to increase cardiac risk.

Would replacing HFCS with regular sugar (sucrose) make a difference? Not likely. The fructose content in table sugar is 50 percent, compared to 55 percent in HFCS – just a slight difference – and since fructose is metabolized in our body in a way that promotes fat production, raises triglycerides and affects cholesterol levels, either one of these sweeteners would probably have the same negative effects; there's no reason to assume that sugar is any more safe than HFCS.

Alpha Lipoic Acid, Omega-3 EPA and DHA, and Vitamin E lower hemoglobin A1c in diabetics.

A study reported in the July-September 2013 issue of the Annals of Medical and Health Sciences Research, found a that supplementation with either 300 mg Alpha Lipoic Acid, 180 mg EPA and 120 mg DHA, or 400 iu Vitamin E resulted in a reduction of hemoglobin A1c and fasting glucose levels in diabetics. These three supplement groups experienced encouraging decreases in blood glucose and HbA1c with no adverse effect. The study authors noted that vitamin E was the most cost effective though the maximum improvement in blood glucose and HbA1c was with the omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA.

Get your Greek on!

Eating a Mediterranean diet -- rich in produce, olive oil and fish -- improves brain functioning and lowers the risk of Alzheimer's disease, according to a new review of the available research.

The review, which you can see here, was published in the journal Epidemiology. It includes 12 studies, nine of which showed an association between eating a Mediterranean diet and having lower Alzheimer's risk, improved cognitive functioning and lower rate of cognitive decline.

Missing however, were any links between the diet and development of mild cognitive impairment.

Mediterranean food is both delicious and nutritious, and the systematic review shows it may help to protect the aging brain and reduce the risk of dementia.

Other recent research has connected eating a Mediterranean-style diet with a lower risk of diabetes, longer life, and a reduced risk of heart disease.