Dr. Jonny Bowden

Blog

  • Stress Management Increases Longevity in the Lab

    Stress Management Increases Longevity in the Lab

    Guest article from The Economist, April 9, 2011

    Telomeres are to chromosomes what plastic caps are to shoelaces- they stop them from fraying at the ends.

    Unlike shoelaces, though, chromosomes replicate themselves from time to time as the cells they are in divide. This shortens the telomere, and, after 50-70 such divisions (a number known as the Hayflick limit, after its discoverer), a chromosome can grow no shorter and the cell it is in can divide no more.

    That provides a backstop against cancer. The rapidly dividing cells in a tumour soon hit the Hayflick limit and the process is brought to a screeching halt. Which is a good thing.

    The bad thing is that reaching the limit is one of the markers of old age. You do not want it happening too quickly, particularly in tissues that have to do a lot of dividing in order to work properly, such as those in the immune system.

    It has been known for some time that chronic stress (caring for a child with a protracted illness, for example) causes premature shortening of the telomeres. What has not been clear is whether this is a one-way trip, with each stressful period turning the telomeric ratchet irreversibly.

    This week, though, at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Orlando, Florida, a group of researchers led by Edward Nelson of the University of California, showed that it isn’t.

    Their research suggests that stress management not only stops telomeres from shortening, it actually promotes their repair.

    Dr. Nelson drew this welcome conclusion from a previous study that measured the impact of telephone counseling on women who had been treated for cervical cancer. The study found that such counseling worked, both mentally and physically. Women who had been counseled reported that the quality of their lives had improved, compared with those of a control group who had not been counseled. They also showed improvements in the strength of their immune systems.

    Given those benefits, Dr. Nelson wondered if he could find others. So he reexamined the participants’ samples this time looking at the lengths of their telomeres.

    What he found surprised him.

    Not only did counseling stop telomere shrinkage, it actually promoted telomere growth!

    Those women for whom counseling had worked (i.e. those who reported a decrease in emotional stress) had longer telomeres at the end than they did at the beginning!

    Their Hayflick countdowns were being reset!

    A single such result must, of course, be treated with caution. But another study reported at the meeting, by Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco (who shared the Nobel prize for the discovery of the enzyme that repairs telomeres), gave some support. Her study showed that exercise has a similar effect to counseling on the telomeres of the stressed.

    If Dr. Nelson’s work is successfully replicated, it will shine more light on the ill-understood relationship between the health of the mind and the health of the body.

    For, as he points out, nothing actually changed in the lives of the women in question.

    They still had cancer, albeit under treatment, and they were still under stress.

    Nothing changed—that is—except their attitude.

    Dr. Jonny comments: I’ve long maintained that stress makes everything- including diseases- worse. In my book, “The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer”. I call stress one of the “Four Horsemen of Aging”

    While stress doesn’t necessarily cause diseases, it makes recovery harder (or impossible), and can exacerbate symptoms and destroy well-being. It can also bring on outbreaks of conditions as wide ranging as herpes and asthma. And stress contributes to inflammation which itself is a major factor in every degenerative disease of aging known to humankind.

    In my book, “The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth” I recommended a four minute breathing technique that almost anyone can do. This technique will go a long way towards bringing down stress levels.

    You simply sit quietly in a chair or lie on a couch, palms facing upwards, hands and legs uncrossed. Set a timer for four (or five) minutes. Then breathe in deeply on a count of four, hold the breath for the count of four and exhale slowly on the count of four, emptying the lungs completely. Repeat till the timer goes off.

    Try to do the four-minute deep breathing exercise several times a day. It’s like hitting the “reset” button on your stress levels.

     

  • 10 Superfoods for Weight Loss (Part One)

    Superfoods like berries, grapefruit and pumpkin can help you lose weight quickly!

    Look, there’s no shortage of books (and articles) telling you what not to eat if you want to lose weight. But information on what you should eat to control your weight? Not so much.

    The truth is you can lose weight eating just about any food, as a nutrition professor famously demonstrated when he lost 27 pounds on Twinkies. But, as the old saying goes, “Just because you run through a dynamite factory with a lighted match and live through it doesn’t mean you’re not an idiot.”

    Not So “Super” Foods…

    So, although you can lose weight eating almost any food—including Twinkies—some foods make it really difficult to do so. Why? These foods create their own self-sustaining cravings, a fact all too well-known to anyone who’s ever found herself consuming six bowls of cereal while watching reruns of Friends.

    Processed carbs—like cereal, desserts, pasta and bread, potato chips—play havoc with your blood sugar, the appetite centers in the brain, and, ultimately, your waistline.

    But some foods do just the opposite, packing a ton of nutrition into a relatively small number of calories and filling you up at the same time. Plus, every one of them has the added advantage of stabilizing your blood sugar, making it far less likely that you’ll go on a waist-busting binge.

    Make these 10 superfoods part of your daily diet and watch the fat burn and pounds come off!

    Glorious Grapefruit…

    Remember the old “grapefruit diet?” Turns out there may actually be something to back up grapefruit’s reputation as a fat fighter.

    In a study from the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, researchers studied the effect of grapefruit on weight loss and found that eating half a grapefruit before meal actually helped people drop weight. The researchers studied the effect of grapefruit capsules, grapefruit juice, and real grapefruit. All three seemed to help, but the folks eating the real grapefruit got the best results.

    The mechanism isn’t completely understood, but the results speak for themselves. As an added benefit, grapefruit contains cancer-fighting compounds like liminoids and lycopene, and red grapefruit has been shown to help lower triglycerides.

    Plus, half of a grapefruit has just 39 calories!

    Sensational Sardines…

    I call sardines one of the greatest health bargains of all times, and it’s definitely a boon to anyone wanting to lose weight. Why? Let me count the ways!

    First, it’s loaded with protein, which helps stabilize blood sugar, makes you feel full (and less like overeating), and helps stimulate metabolism. Second, it’s a great source of omega-3’s, which boost mood and strengthen the cardiovascular system, not to mention making hair, skin and nails look better!

    Third, sardines are convenient, easy to find, and cheap! And because they’re very low on the food chain, they’re remarkably free of contaminants.

    Great Pumpkin…

    You may only know this vegetable for its central role in Thanksgiving celebrations, but it’s one of the great weight loss foods of all time.

    Plain old canned pumpkin is absolutely loaded with fiber—each ½ cup serving has a whopping 8 grams and only a mere 40 calories. Dozens of studies confirm that high fiber intake is associated with a host of health benefits, not the least of which is weight management.

    And here’s the deal: it’s the easiest food in the world to prepare. You can sweeten it with some xylitol (or erythritol), sprinkle it with blood-sugar lowering cinnamon, throw in some nutmeg and some nice healthy almonds, and make it into one of the best-tasting weight loss treats around. It’s filling and delicious.

    Glorious Grass-Fed Beef…

    I’ll be honest with you—meat is a great weight loss food, but it’s hard to recommend it when it so often comes with a nice unwanted helping of antibiotics, steroids, and hormones. Get grass-fed and avoid the problems while getting all the terrific benefits. (Hint: Buffalo burgers are a good alternative if you can’t find grass-fed beef).

    Higher protein diets are associated with weight loss for a variety of reasons. Protein stimulates the metabolism, helps you feel fuller longer, and helps decrease the desire to overeat.

    High-protein breakfasts are one of the best weight loss tricks in the book (try a buffalo burger for breakfast sometime and see what I mean!). And grass-fed beef has demonstrably higher levels of anti-inflammatory omega-3’s and lower levels of pro-inflammatory omega-6’s—a big plus for hard training athletes.

    Bountiful Berries…

    Berries are one of those non-controversial items that virtually every nutritionist agrees on. They’re on everybody’s and anybody’s list of superfoods.

    They assist in weight loss in a number of ways. They’re very low in calories, very rich in nutrients, high in fiber and, best of all, have a very low in impact on your blood sugar.

    Research confirms that blueberries especially deserve their growing reputation as that their brain food — feeding blueberries to rats actually slows their age-related mental decline3. Blueberries contain pterostilbene, a plant compound recently shown to have cholesterol-lowering properties. Their ORAC value (antioxidant rating) is the highest of any fruit.

    Tip: Try them frozen with a little almond milk and a sprinkling of almond slivers. They taste like sherbert!

  • More Important Than Cholesterol?

    More Important Than Cholesterol?

    Readers of this newsletter know that I have long believed that the national obsession with cholesterol is ridiculous. Cholesterol is a relatively minor risk factor for heart disease compared with much more serious things like inflammation. And the emphasis on cholesterol to the exclusion of other more important risk factors has also led us to take our eye of the ball when it comes to a risk factor we can easily do something about without taking a single medication: triglycerides.

    Triglycerides are the main form in which fat is found in the body, the diet and the bloodstream. (A triglyceride is simply three (“tri”) fatty acids bound to a glycerol backbone.) High triglycerides are an independent risk factor for both heart disease and stroke. An even more important number than your cholesterol level is the ratio of triglycerides to HDL cholesterol. According to research published in Circulation, the Journal of the American Heart Association, and in the journal Clinics, this ratio is a powerful predictor of heart disease.

    It’s easy to figure your ratio. Look at any standard blood test that your doctor orders for you. It will contain a number for triglycerides and it will contain a number for HDL cholesterol. If your triglycerides are, for example, 150 and your HDL cholesterol is 50, your ratio is 150:50, or 3.

    The triglyceride to HDL ratio is also an excellent low-tech surrogate measure for insulin resistance. Those with high ratios (over 4 or 5) are very likely to be insulin resistant, a condition in which the muscle cells stop “listening” to insulin. Insulin resistance increases the risk for diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity and heart disease, and many health professionals are beginning to get on board with the idea that insulin resistance is actually the underlying cause of all of these.

    Triglycerides trigger the liver to produce more cholesterol, particularly the small dense particles known as LDLb which are particularly harmful.

    Elevated triglycerides can be due to being overweight, being inactive, smoking, or eating a diet very high in carbohydrates. You can bring triglyceride levels down rather easily by reducing sugar in the diet. High sugar diets- or diets high in processed carbs- raise insulin, a hormone which not only causes you to store fat but also signals the liver to produce more triglycerides.

    On a low-carb eating plan, triglycerides drop like a rock. This has been seen on virtually every low-carb diet study ever done. The more sugar and carbs you eat, the higher your triglycerides go. High carb diets raise triglycerides and low-carb diets lower them. It’s that simple.

    Don’t eat products that list sugar, fructose, corn syrup, sucrose, dextrose or honey as one of the first ingredients, and try eating more nuts. According to a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, people with elevated triglycerides were able to lower them by 10% by consuming approximately 2-3 ounces of nuts a day.

    Fish oil has also been shown to lower triglycerides, another reason to take this important daily supplement. (3,4,5,6)

  • Dancing Can Help Offset Weight Gain, Dementia

    Dancing Can Help Offset Weight Gain, Dementia

    (guest article from The Sacremento Bee)

    Want to avoid your risk of dementia holistically? Besides controlling your weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugars and decreasing your intake of inflammatory foods, what else can you do?

    Start dancing!

    Dancing has been shown to have numerous health benefits in various studies. The most obvious are increased socialization and improved physical functioning. Two recent studies conducted by University of Missouri researchers found that participation in dance-based therapy can improve balance and gait in older adults. This can reduce the risk of falls and injuries in this population.

    Studies also have shown a strong link to a decrease in the development of dementia among participants who danced. A study funded by the National Institute of Aging and published in 2003 in the New England Journal of Medicine showed a significantly reduced risk of dementia in older adults who danced frequently.

    The study looked at almost 500 adults aged 75 and older, tracking their activities and incidence of dementia for 5 years.

    It showed a surprisingly strong correlation between dancing and reduction in dementia _ a whopping 76 percent.

    Dancing also was the only physical activity that reduced dementia. There was, for example, no reduction in the development of dementia among those who golfed frequently. Other physical activities studied included playing tennis, swimming, bicycling, walking for exercise and doing housework.

    Some mental activities that did reduce the risk of dementia were reading and doing crossword puzzles.

    Why does dancing help maintain the brain? The principle of Neuroplasticity hypothesizes that we continue to rewires synapses in the brain with continuous activity.

    This is literally a “use it or lose it” phenomenon.

    When we are dancing, we are using our cerebral cortex and hippocampus, which are critical to dancing. These areas of the brain are remarkably plastic, and they rewire themselves based upon their use. Researchers hypothesize that perhaps this greater cognitive reserve and increased complexity of neuronal synapses keeps dementia at bay.

    Note: For added brain protection, I strongly recommend the supplement I take each day: Brain Vibrance Gels. Each convenient strawberry-flavored gel pack contains clinically useful doses of three of the most important brain nutrients I know: Acetyl-L-Carnitine (750 mg), GlyceroPhosphoCholine (600 mg), and PhosphatidylSerine (150 mg).

  • A Safe and Inexpensive Way to Cut Your Personal Health Care Costs!

    A Safe and Inexpensive Way to Cut Your Personal Health Care Costs!

    With all the conflicting reports about the benefits of vitamin and supplements it’s no wonder people are confused. Do supplements really help? What’s the real deal?

    Well, not too long ago, a respected think tank called The Lewin Group was commissioned by the Dietary Supplement Education Alliance to do an objective, scientific evaluation of the research. Their findings are instructive, to say the least.

    The Lewin Group was specifically charged with looking at the possible role of dietary supplements in helping an aging population maintain their independence and quality of life. They chose two specific age-related conditions that contribute significantly to whether an older person can maintain his or her independence: Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), osteoporosis and age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of irreversible blindness in people over 65. (Visual impairment is one of the top four reasons for the loss of independence.)

    The Lewin Group researchers took a hard, cold look at the evidence concerning specific dietary supplements with an eye to estimating their usefulness. They specifically looked at omega-3 fatty acids for their potential impact on heart disese, lutein and zeaxanthin for their potential impact on macular degeneration, and vitamin D as it relates to the prevention of osteoporosis. They were also asked to estimate any potential health care savings from the regular use of these supplements.

    The findings were stunning. Here are some of the highlights from the report:

    Omega-3 Fatty Acids

    Using a Congressional Budget Office cost accounting methodology, the estimate of the five-year net savings in hospital expenditures and physician charges resulting from a reduction in the occurrence of coronary heart disease (CHD) among those over the age of 65 through daily intake of approximately 1800 mg of omega-3 fatty acids is $3.1 billion. Approximately 384,303 thousand hospitalizations due to CHD could be avoided just in the course of five years.

    The Lewin Report also referenced an important Italian study that found that patients who took omega3 fatty acid supplements had a risk of sudden death from heart failure that was 45 percent lower than those who did not. Furthermore, patients who took the supplements had a 20 percent lower risk of death from all-cause mortality.

    Lutein and Zeaxanthin

    These two superstar members of the carotenoid family are usually found together in foods (like kale, spinach and Swiss chard), and are now part of the best multiple vitamin formulas. The Lewin Group estimates that daily intake of 610 mg of lutein and zeaxanthin would result in a significant reduction in the risk of macular degeneration and further estimated a potential cost savings of a breathtaking 2.5 billion dollars if approximately 98,219 individuals avoided the increased dependency resulting from AMD and approximately 32,740 people were able to avoid admission to a nursing facility that would be necessitated by their loss of sight in a five year period.

    Vitamin D

    The researchers determined that older citizens with 1,200 mg of calcium and 400 IU of vitamin D would result in reduced bone loss and fewer hip fractures. They estimated these supplements could prevent more than 776,000 hospitalizations for hip fractures over five years at a savings of an incredible $16.1 billion. They also noted that studies have shown a substantial number of women aged 65 and older are deficient in vitamin D, and that’s not counting the enormous number of people who aren’t technically “deficient” but who are getting far from the optimal amount, a subject I’ve written about extensively on this blog and elsewhere.

    These are hardly the only supplements that make a difference, but they’re the ones the Lewin Group specifically studied.

    According to my friend Mark Hyman, MD, a whopping 92% of us are deficient in one or more nutrients at the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) level. But the RDA is pathetically low to begin with, and doesn’t come close to recommending the optimal levels for nutrients, just the amount needed to prevent deficiency diseases!

    The Truth About Supplements
    The Truth About Supplements

    I’ve put together a webinar on the seven supplements I recommend for everyone, and I’ve also put together a basic package that contains the very basic vitamin supplements I think you should take every day, as well as an “advanced” package that includes everything I personally take. (There’s also an advanced package for women and an advanced package for men.)

    The evidence continues to mount that taking vitamin supplements in a sensible and targeted way not only makes good sense, but may save you a lot of money in the long run.

  • Are You a Food Addict?

    (This excellent article on food addiction was written by Kevin Helliker and was originally published in the Wall Street Journal.)

    A new study suggests that people who struggle to say no to chocolate, french fries or other junk food suffer from something more insidious than lack of willpower: They may actually have an addiction.

    Using a high-tech scan to observe the brains of pathological eaters versus normal eaters, the study found that showing a milkshake to the abnormal group was akin to dangling a cold beer in front of an alcoholic.

    Previous studies have shown that food photographs can activate the brain’s reward centers in much the way that booze imagery does for alcoholics. This study from Yale University researchers purports to be the first to distinguish so-called food addicts from overeaters.

    Beyond a Craving

    Study subjects who scored high on the Yale Food Addiction Scale had addict-like neural responses to food during an MRI. Before the MRI, they answered questions including this one, with 26 foods to choose from.

    Please circle ALL of the following foods you have problems with:

    Before subjecting 39 women to magnetic resonance imaging scans, researchers asked them to complete the 26-question Yale Food Addiction Scale, a two-year-old test designed to identify pathological eaters. Fifteen of the women scored high on the test for addictive-like eating behaviors. When placed inside an MRI machine, those 15 women had dramatically greater neurological responses to the image of a milkshake than the others, according to the study, published online this week in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

    Just as most people who abuse alcohol or smoke marijuana aren’t addicts, this study suggests that no single explanation or solution exists for overeating. In cases where the underlying problem is addiction, psychiatrists say that neither gastric-bypass surgery nor lifestyle changes are likely to prove effective. Among addicted eaters, “the current emphasis on personal responsibility…may have minimal effectiveness,” concluded the paper.

    Ashley N. Gearhardt, lead author of the study, said that those who score high on the food-addiction scale report needing to consume greater and greater quantities of food to achieve the same earlier emotional effect. For some, thinking about anything other than food becomes difficult, she said.

    “Some of them actually stop socializing because it gets in the way of their eating,” said Ms. Gearhardt, who is a doctoral student in clinical psychology at Yale University who was involved in devising the food-addiction scale.

    The study suggests that food addicts could benefit from a checklist akin to those that exist for measuring alcoholism and drug addiction.

    “It’s the first study to ask whether a paper-and-pencil checklist for food addiction correlates with brain regions known for drug reinforcement,” said Mark Gold, University of Florida chairman of psychiatry and a prominent addiction researcher who wasn’t involved in the study.

    Dr. Gold said such a checklist could be valuable for individuals considering gastric bypass.

    The publishing of the study comes at a time when American psychiatry is wrestling with whether to regard pathological eating as an addiction akin to alcoholism.

    Skeptics note that the brain’s reward centers are designed to light up at the promise of food, because food is necessary for survival. Those centers also brighten in some cases at the thought of whiskey or cocaine, they said. Moreover, skeptics note that food addiction less commonly results in the consequences that characterize drug addiction—stealing, negligent parenting and deteriorating workplace performance.

    “The skeptic’s position is that drugs are uniquely powerful reinforcers that hijack the brain’s reward center,” says Michael M. Miller, a Wisconsin psychiatrist and board member of the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

    Calling himself “middle-of-the-road” on the issue of food addiction, Dr. Miller said ASAM will vote this month on a policy change that would embrace food addiction—among other compulsions—as a genuine addiction.

  • Getting Older Doesn’t Mean Giving Up Muscle Strength!

    Not only can adults fight the battle of strength and muscle loss that comes with age, but the Golden Years can be a time to get stronger, say experts at the University of Michigan Health System.

    “Resistance exercise is a great way to increase lean muscle tissue and strength capacity so that people can function more readily in daily life,” says Mark Peterson, Ph.D., a research fellow in the U-M Physical Activity and Exercise Intervention Research Laboratory, at the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

    Through resistance training adults can improve their ability to stand up out of a chair walk across the floor, climb a flight of stairs — anything that requires manipulating their own body mass through a full range of motions.

    Normally, adults who are sedentary beyond age 50 can expect muscle loss of up to 0.4 pounds a year.

    “That only worsens as people age. But even earlier in adulthood – the 30s, 40s and 50s – you can begin to see declines if you do not engage in any strengthening activities,” Peterson says.

    “Our analysis of current research show that the most important factor in somebody’s function is their strength capacity. No matter what age an individual is, they can experience significant strength improvement with progressive resistance exercise even into the eighth and ninth decades of life,” he says.

    Progressive resistance training means that the amount of weight used, and the frequency and duration of training sessions is altered over time to accommodate an individual’s improvements.

    A review article by U-M researchers, published in The American Journal of Medicine, shows that after an average of 18-20 weeks of progressive resistance training, an adult can add 2.42 pounds of lean muscle to their body mass and increases their overall strength by 25-30 percent.

    Recommendations for Those Over Age 50

    Peterson says that anyone over age 50 should strongly consider participating in resistance exercise.

    A good way for people to start on a resistance training program, especially for people who are relatively sedentary – and after getting permission from their doctor to do so – is to use their body mass as a load for various exercises.

    Exercises you can do using your own body weight include squats, standing up out of a chair, modified push-ups, lying hip bridges, as well as non-traditional exercises that progress through a full range of motion, such as Thai Chi or Pilates and Yoga.

    Transition to the Gym

    After getting accustomed to these activities, older adults can move on to more advanced resistance training in an exercise and fitness facility. A certified trainer or fitness professional that has experience with special populations can help with the transition.

    Peterson says you should feel comfortable asking a trainer whether they have experience working with aging adults before you begin any fitness routine.

    “Working out at age 20 is not the same as at age 70. A fitness professional who understands those differences is important for your safety. In addition, current recommendations suggest that an older individual participate in strengthening exercise two days per week,” Peterson says. “Based on the results of our studies, I would suggest that be thought of as the minimum.”

    Don’t Forget to Progress

    As resistance training progresses and weights and machines are introduced, Peterson recommends incorporating full body exercises and exercises that use more than one joint and muscle group at a time, such as the leg press, chest press, and rows. These are safer and more effective in building muscle mass. “You should also keep in mind the need for increased resistance and intensity of your training to continue building muscle mass and strength,” he says.

    A good fitness professional can help plan an appropriate training regimen, and make adjustments based on how you respond as you progress.
    “We firmly believe based on this research that progressive resistance training should be encouraged among healthy older adults to help minimize the loss of muscle mass and strength as they age,” Peterson says.

  • The Four Horsemen of Aging

    The Four Horsemen of Aging

    Did you know that the life expectancy the United States is lower than 49 other countries? (We’re ranked number 50 out of 195 countries in the CIA World Factbook, 2009!)

    Or worse, that the vast majority of our medical expenses occur in the last three to five years of life, and that those years are frequently plagued by memory loss, disability and general ill health?

    Enter “The Four Horsemen of Aging”.

    When I was doing research for my latest book, “The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer”, I looked at all the ways our bodies break down. Specifically, I investigated what the research showed about the heart, the brain, the muscles, the joints, the bones, the hormone system and the immune system.

    What I found was fascinating.

    No matter what organ or system in the body that I looked at, the same four processes kept showing up.

    I named these “The Four Horsemen of Aging” because their effects on the body were so systemic, so profound and so far-reaching that they literally were at the bottom of the iceberg of individual diseases. Conquer these four horsemen and you might literally wipe out- or at least significantly diminish- most of the disease we now associate with “aging”.

    My good friend Mark Hyman, MD, explains it very well. He says:

    “The way we think about disease, mental illness, and our brain aging, actually has nothing, nothing to do with how our body actually works … The way we think about disease is all wrong … the name of the disease tells us nothing about the real reason or the causes of them. Diseases don’t exist.“

    Now Mark might be using a bit of poetic license here; certainly “diseases” exist as diagnostic categories. But what he means- and what I talk about in “The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer”—is that what we call “diseases” are actually just specific manifestations of systemic problems, the same basic problems I call the “Four Horsemen of Aging”.

    What are those “Four Horsemen of Aging”?

    Glad you asked.

    They are: Inflammation, Glycation, Oxidative Damage and Stress.

    • Inflammation is associated with every major degenerative disease on earth, from Alzheimer’s to diabetes, from obesity to cancer. It’s also a big factor in less “life-threatening” diseases like asthma, acne, migraines and arthritis.
    • Glycation is the process by which excess sugar (from the diet) “gums up the works”, causing circulation problems that- in extreme cases- are the cause of so many diabetes-related issues including amputations. The “thickened” blood can’t get through small blood vessels in the eye and foot, not to mention the kidneys.
    • Oxidative damage is what happens when nasty rogue molecules called “free radicals” attack your cells and DNA, damaging the body and aging you from within.
    • Stress hormones wreck havoc on the body and its systems. They cause extra weight around the abdominal region, and shrink an important part of the brain called the hippocampus that’s central to thinking and memory. (No wonder you can’t remember anything when you’re under stress!)

    There is not a disease on earth that doesn’t involve one or more (usually all four) of these issues.

    Getting at the heart of how to prevent them can go a long way towards helping us age in the most healthful, robust way possible, so that we can live a life of vibrant good health, optimism, joy, well-being and vitality.

  • Vitamin Angels: Making A Difference

    Vitamin Angels: Making A Difference

    In 2008 the Copenhagen Business School asked eight eminent economists to imagine they had $75 billion to spend on causes that would most help the world.

    Five of their top ten involved nutrition: vitamin supplements for children, adding zinc and iodine to salt and breeding extra micronutrients into crops.

     

    Lack a Day

    Deficiencies and their effects

    Micronutrients, RDA                          Deficiency Effects

    Calcium, 1000-1300 mg Rickets, osteoporsis
    Iodine, 150 ug Goitre, mental retardation
    Iron, 8-18 mg Anemia
    Sodium, 1.5 g Nausea, fatigue, confusion
    Zinc, 8-11 mg Infections, Diarrhea
    Vitamin A, 900 mg Night-blindness
    Folic acid, 400 mg Birth Defects
    Vitamin C, 90 mg Scurvy
    Vitamin D, 5-10 mg Rickets

    Source: Institute of Medicine of the National Academies

    Of the 40 nutrients people need, four are in chronically short supply: iron, zinc, iodine and vitamin A.

    • Vitamin A is essential for the mucous membranes that protect the body’s organs, such as the eyes. Lack of it causes half a million children to go blind every year; half of them die within a year as their other organs fail. Vitamin A supplements were the Copenhagen experts’ top choice.
    • Zinc deficiency impairs brain and motor functions and causes roughly 400,000 deaths a year.
    • Iron deficiency (anemia) weakens the immune system and affects, in some poor countries, half of all women of child-bearing age.

    Too hungry to think properly

    The missing nutrients bite wide and deep. Education levels drop (malnourished children concentrate poorly); earning-power weakens. Even marriage chances wane: malnourished boys marry women of lower educational levels when they grow up.

    One third of all childhood deaths are caused by undernutrition. For young children, essential nutrients help build the foundation for good health and the opportunity to lead meaningful and productive lives.

    Handing out vitamin pills (and fortifying common foods with micronutrients such as iodine in salt) are simple strategies that can make a huge difference. One group that’s doing exactly that is called Vitamin Angels.

    What You Can Do

    Vitamin Angels is a non-profit organization whose mission is to mobilize and deploy private sector resources to advance the availability, access and use of micronutrients- especially vitamin A- by newborns, infants and children in need. Essential nutrients enable young immune systems to fight infectious diseases, helping children attain good health and the opportunity to lead meaningful and productive lives.

    Their “Operation 20/20” for example, connects infants, children and lactating women to Vitamin A. An estimated 190 children worldwide suffer from vitamin A deficiency and Operation 20/20 has dramatically decreased mortality rates in areas targeted by this program by 23%. In 2010, Operation 20/20 reached approximately 20 million infants and children and another approximately 4 million lactaing women in 30 countries on three continents.

    Vitamin Angels also has a program called Thrive to Five which currently distributes around 100 million doses of essential micronutrients annually in about 20 countries on four continents (including the United States).

    You can find out more about the Vitamin Angels Program here.

  • Whey Protein May Reduce Symptoms of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

    Whey Protein May Reduce Symptoms of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

    New research published in the Journal of Dairy Science suggests that compounds in whey protein may reduce some of the symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease.

    Inflammatory bowel disease is the collective name for two diseases in which the intestines become deeply inflamed: Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Unlike irritable bowel syndrome, in both forms of inflammatory bowel disease there is active pathology in the tissues. A biopsy of the tissue of someone with IBD would come back with visible, active inflammation (which would not be the case in irritable bowel syndrome). It’s estimated that as many as 1.4 million people in the US alone suffer from either Crohn’s or colitis.

    The exact cause of IBD is not known, but like most multifaceted, highly complex disorders, it probably has a genetic component and is certainly made worse by trigger foods, bad nutrition in general, and stress. It’s more common among whites, and it’s higher in Ashkenazi Jews than in other groups, and slightly higher rates are seen in females.

    One feature shared by both diseases is an abnormal immune system response. In people with IBD, the immune system mistakenly identifies harmless materials in the gut- such as food and bacteria- for foreign substances, and it mounts an attack on the intestinal cells. This attack involves dispatching white blood cells to the intestines which in turn produces chronic inflammation.

    The present study investigated the effects of whey protein on various markers of inflammation associated with IBD.

    Whey is one of the two proteins found in milk and is a product of the cheese making process. The other protein found in milk- casein- is separated out to make cheese and the remaining liquid whey goes is filtered, dried and processed into whey protein powder, a very digestible protein that provides all the essential amino acids. “Whey protein contains bioactive proteins and peptides such as lactoferrin and, in the case of whey protein obtained from the cheese-making process, glycomacropeptide that can be beneficial in preventing colitis”, the researchers said.

    The researchers reasoned that whey protein might be beneficial for IBD because of its high concentration of two amino acids– threonine and cysteine—which have been found to be necessary for the production of mucin. “Mucin is the mucous like substance that allows the gut to better protect itself“, explained Joseph Brasco, MD, a gastroenterologist and nutrition expert from the Center for Colon and Digestive Disorders in Huntsville, Alabama, and my go-to source for all things having to do with digestive health.

    The researchers induced colitis in rats (using a chemical called DSS- dextran sulfate sodium) and then fed them one of three diets. In one diet the main source of protein was casein, in the second it was also casein but supplemented with the two amino acids threonine and cysteine, while the third was whey protein.

    The whey protein diet increased mucin secretion and protected against gut inflammation in general. In addition, the whey protein increased the production of lactobacilli and bifidobacteria, two important strains of bacteria known as “probiotics”. Probiotics are the beneficial bacteria that live in the gut and help support immune function.

    “The standard treatment for these diseases has been drug therapy”, Dr. Brasco told me, “with the intent of modifying the immune response in order to slow down the progression of the disease. What’s so interesting about this study is that they are trying to alter and improve the gut itself through nutrition. I’m encouraged by the fact that researchers are beginning to think that the immune system itself might be responding to abnormalities in the gut and that correcting those abnormalities might be a first order of business, one in which nutrition plays a huge part”.

    But while encouraged by the decidedly nutritional approach of the researchers, Dr. Brasco stated that it was far too early to recommend that all patients with IBD start scarfing down whey protein drinks by the gallon. “This is a mouse study”, he cautioned, “and we really don’t know about dosing. Nor do we know if the amounts given to the animals in this study is in any way comparable to the amount of whey protein a human might reasonably consume.”