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

A diet high in refined carbs increased depression in post-menopausal women by 22%.

Watch out for those refined carb food binges. A new study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has revealed a diet high in refined carbohydrates may lead to an increased risk of depression in postmenopausal women. One might also assume the foods are trouble for men, but women have higher rates of depression in general.

Carbs are found in a wide variety of foods and have often been the focus of new weight-loss diets. However, the emphasis should not be on how many carbohydrates we eat, but the type.

Refined carbohydrates are contained in refined grains, such as white flour, white bread and white rice. They differ from whole-grain foods because they have been milled - a process that increases the texture and shelf life, but that also removes much of the nutritional value which includes important fiber and vitamins.

Once carbohydrates are eaten, some of the sugar is broken down into glucose that then proceeds to enter the bloodstream. The glycemic index (GI) is a metric tool used to measure and rank the extent to which our body's sugar levels are raised after eating.

Low glycemic index foods take longer to digest and break down and, therefore, enter the blood stream slowly. Thus the blood's glucose level raises more slowly over an extended period of time.

High glycemic index foods cause a more rapid rise of the blood's glucose level. Refined grains fall into this category, and it is this reason why a high glycemic index ( refined carbs) diet can lead to a host of health problems, such as insulin resistance, obesity and type two diabetes.

Foods that have some of the highest GI scores include white bread, breakfast cereals like puffed wheat and rice and corn flakes, also instant oatmeal. Pasta, crackers, cookies, pretzels and popcorn.

Doctors at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), NY, set out to investigate the relationship between a diet high in refined carbohydrates and depression.

The researchers analyzed data from more than 90,000 postmenopausal women who participated in the National Institutes of Health's Women's Health Initiative Observational Study that was conducted between 1994-1998. The observational study enlisted postmenopausal women between the ages of 50-79 and tracked their health over an average of 8 years.

They examined the levels of depression reported, the types of carbohydrates consumed, the GI rank and the glycemic load.

It was found that refined carb diets increased the risk of depression in postmenopausal women by 22%. Also, a higher consumption of lactose, fiber, non-juice fruits and vegetables was significantly associated with a lower chance of developing depression.

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

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.

Omega-3 promotes weight loss.

 This study investigated whether supplementation with omega-3 alone, then consumed together with a very low calorie diet (VLED), facilitated weight loss, improvements in blood lipids and positive changes to inflammatory mediators. For 4 weeks of prior supplementation, one group consumed 6 × 1 g capsules per day monounsaturated oil (placebo), the other group consumed 6 × 1 g capsules per day of fish oil each comprising 70 mg EPA and 270 mg DHA, while consuming their usual diet. Each group continued with their supplements for another 4 weeks while both groups followed a VLED regimen. At 4 weeks levels of EPA and DHA doubled in the fish oil group, with no significant changes to anthropometric measurements for either group. At 8 weeks a significant reduction in weight and BMI with a greater percentage decrease for females was seen in the fish oil group compared to placebo.

Note that the dose of 2040mg combined EPA/DHA is not achievable through diet. You'll need a high quality supplement.

Munro IA, Garg ML. Prior supplementation with long chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids promotes weight loss in obese adults: a double-blinded randomised controlled trial. Food Funct. 2013 Apr 25;4(4):650-8.

Study: Soda and Sugar Drive Obesity

New research powerfully implicates soda and other sugary drinks as culprits in the obesity epidemic.

A huge, decades-long study involving more than 33,000 Americans has yielded the first clear proof that drinking sugary beverages interacts with genes that affect weight, amplifying a person’s risk of obesity beyond what it would be from heredity alone.

This means that such drinks are especially harmful to people with genes that predispose them to weight gain. And most of us have at least some of these genes.

In addition, two other major experiments have found that giving children and teens calorie-free alternatives to the sugary drinks they usually consume leads to less weight gain.

Collectively, the results strongly suggest that sugary drinks cause people to pack on the pounds, independent of other unhealthy behavior such as overeating and getting too little exercise, scientists say.

That adds weight to the push for taxes, portion limits like the one just adopted in New York City, and other policies to curb consumption of soda, juice drinks and sports beverages sweetened with sugar.

Soda lovers do get some good news: Sugar-free drinks did not raise the risk of obesity in these studies.

“You may be able to fool the taste” and satisfy a sweet tooth without paying a price in weight, said an obesity researcher with no role in the studies, Rudy Leibel of Columbia University.

The studies were being presented Friday at an obesity conference in San Antonio and were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

The gene research in particular fills a major gap in what we know about obesity. It was a huge undertaking, involving three long-running studies that separately and collectively reached the same conclusions. It shows how behavior combines with heredity to affect how fat we become.

Having many of these genes does not guarantee people will become obese, but if they drink a lot of sugary beverages, “they fulfill that fate,” said an expert with no role in the research, Jules Hirsch of Rockefeller University in New York. “The sweet drinking and the fatness are going together, and it’s more evident in the genetic predisposition people.”

Sugary drinks are the single biggest source of calories in the American diet, and they are increasingly blamed for the fact that a third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

Consumption of sugary drinks and obesity rates have risen in tandem —both have more than doubled since the 1970s in the U.S.

In one study, researchers randomly assigned 224 overweight or obese high schoolers in the Boston area to receive shipments every two weeks of either the sugary drinks they usually consumed or sugar-free alternatives, including bottled water. No efforts were made to change the youngsters’ exercise habits or give nutrition advice, and the kids knew what type of beverages they were getting.

After one year, the sugar-free group weighed more than 4 pounds less on average than those who kept drinking sugary beverages.

“I know of no other single food product whose elimination can produce this degree of weight change,” said the study’s leader, Dr. David Ludwig of Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health.

The weight difference between the two groups narrowed to 2 pounds in the second year of the study, when drinks were no longer being provided. That showed at least some lasting beneficial effect on kids’ habits. The study was funded mostly by government grants.

A second study involved 641 normal-weight children ages 4 to 12 in the Netherlands who regularly drank sugar-sweetened beverages. They were randomly assigned to get either a sugary drink or a sugar-free one during morning break at their schools, and were not told what kind they were given.

The studies “provide strong impetus” for policies urged by the Institute of Medicine, the American Heart Association and others to limit sugary drink consumption.

The genetic research was part of a much larger set of health studies that have gone on for decades across the U.S., led by the Harvard School of Public Health.

Researchers checked for 32 gene variants that have previously been tied to weight. Because we inherit two copies of each gene, everyone has 64 opportunities for these risk genes. The study participants had 29 on average.

Every four years, these people answered detailed surveys about their eating and drinking habits as well as things like smoking and exercise. Researchers analyzed these over several decades.

A clear pattern emerged: The more sugary drinks someone consumed, the greater the impact of the genes on the person’s weight and risk of becoming obese.

For every 10 risk genes someone had, the risk of obesity rose in proportion to how many sweet drinks the person regularly consumed. Overall calorie intake and lifestyle factors such as exercise did not account for the differences researchers saw.

This means that people with genes that predispose them to be obese are more susceptible to the harmful effects of sugary drinks on their weight, said one of the study leaders, Harvard’s Dr. Frank Hu. The opposite also was true — avoiding these drinks can minimize the effect of obesity genes.

“Two bad things can act together and their combined effects are even greater than either effect alone,” Hu said. “The flip side of this is everyone has some genetic risk of obesity, but the genetic effects can be offset by healthier beverage choices. It’s certainly not our destiny” to be fat, even if we carry genes that raise this risk.