New Hampshire Health News Digest

Nutrition & Metabolism | Full text | Ketogenic diets and physical performance Abstract Impaired physical performance is a common but not obligate result of a low carbohydrate diet. Lessons from traditional Inuit culture indicate that time for adaptation, optimized sodium and potassium nutriture, and constraint of protein to 15–25 % of daily energy expenditure allow unimpaired endurance performance despite nutritional ketosis. Introduction In the opinion of most physicians and nutrition scientists, carbohydrate must constitute a major component of one's daily energy intake if optimum physical performance is to be maintained [1]. This consensus view is based upon a long list of published studies performed over the last century that links muscle glycogen stores to high intensity exercise. It has also been reinforced by the clinical experience of many physicians, whose patients following low carbohydrate formula or food diets frequently complain of lightheadedness, weakness, and ea...

Nutrition & Metabolism | Full text | A low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet to treat type 2 diabetes Abstract Background The low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet (LCKD) may be effective for improving glycemia and reducing medications in patients with type 2 diabetes. [...] Conclusion The LCKD improved glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes such that diabetes medications were discontinued or reduced in most participants. Because the LCKD can be very effective at lowering blood glucose, patients on diabetes medication who use this diet should be under close medical supervision or capable of adjusting their medication. Background Prior to the advent of exogenous insulin for the treatment of diabetes mellitus in the 1920's, the mainstay of therapy was dietary modification. Diet recommendations in that era were aimed at controlling glycemia (actually, glycosuria) and were dramatically different from current low-fat, high-carbohydrate dietary recommendations for patients with diab...

Watch out for the wrong kind of sugar Watch out for the wrong kind of sugar WE KNOW about good and bad fats. Now suspicion is growing that not all sugars are created equal either. Overweight adults who consume large amounts of fructose have been found to experience alarming changes in body fat and insulin sensitivity that do not occur after eating glucose. Pure fructose is found in fresh fruit, fruit juice and preserves. But much of it sneaks into our diets though high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in soft drinks - which gets broken down into 55 per cent fructose and 45 per cent glucose in the body - or via sucrose (ordinary sugar), which is broken down into the same two sugars. Fears that fructose and HFCS are fuelling the obesity epidemic and triggering insulin resistance and diabetes have been circulating for years (New Scientist, 1 September 2001, p 26), but there have been few direct investigations in humans. So Peter Havel at the University of California, Davis, persuaded 33 overwei...

Daily pill that halts Alzheimers is hailed as "biggest breakthrough against disease for 100 years" | Mail Online : "A new drug halts the devastating progress of Alzheimer’s disease, say British scientists. It is said to be more than twice as effective as current treatments. A daily capsule of rember, as the drug is known, stops Alzheimer’s disease progressing by as much as 81 per cent, according to trial results. Patients with the brain disorder had no significant decline in their mental function over a 19-month period. ‘We appear to be bringing the worst affected parts of the brain functionally back to life,’ said Dr Claude Wischik, who led the research. It is the first time medication has been developed to target the ‘tangles’ in the brain that destroy nerve cells, leading to deteriorating memory. The drug helps to disrupt this process, preventing the formation of new tangles and loosening those already created. Last night the findings were hailed as the biggest breakt...

The ketogenic diet may have mood-stabilizing prope...[Med Hypotheses. 2001] - PubMed Result The ketogenic diet may have mood-stabilizing properties. El-Mallakh RS, Paskitti ME. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Kentucky 40292, USA. The ketogenic diet, originally introduced in the 1920s, has been undergoing a recent resurgence as an adjunctive treatment for refractory epilepsy, particularly in children. In this difficult-to-treat population, the diet exhibits remarkable efficacy with two-thirds showing significant reduction in seizure frequency and one-third becoming nearly seizure-free. There are several reasons to suspect that the ketogenic diet may also have utility as a mood stabilizer in bipolar illness. These include the observation that several anticonvulsant interventions may improve outcome in mood disorders. Furthermore, beneficial changes in brain-energy profile are noted in subjects on the ketogenic diet. This is i...

How High Fructose Corn Syrup Makes you Gain Weight How High Fructose Corn Syrup Makes you Gain Weight High Fructose Corn Syrup CandiesNew research from UT Southwestern Medical Center shows the amazing speed that our bodies make body fat from fructose. One of the reasons why low carb diets help you lose weight is that they reduce your intake of fructose. Even though fructose, a type of sugar, is found naturally abundance in fruit, it is also added to many processed foods. Fructose is probably best known for its presence in the sweetener called high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which is typically 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. It unfortunately has become the preferred sweetener for many food manufacturers. This is because it is cheaper, sweeter and easier to blend into beverages than table sugar. Sugar Type As Important as Calories Dr. Elizabeth Parks, lead author of the study , said her team’s findings infer that the right kind of carbohydrates you eat may be just as importa...

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Related To Advantageous Gene Between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago, anthropologists concur that humans were developing the first signs of complex societies, replete with agriculture, rudimentary governments and the creation of cities for the first time. Humans also were rapidly expanding and exploring the planet. These revolutionary changes in human societies may have changed the forces that selected for certain genetic traits. "Our data show that the creation of the 7R allele was an unusual, spontaneous mutation, which became an advantage for humans," Moyzis said. "Because it was an advantage, the gene became increasingly prevalent. This is very different from other genes that predispose to genetic disorders, where the mutations are detrimental. We believe this helps explain why a disorder with such a strong genetic association is so common today." The researchers are now working on determining how the genetic variations in D...

Is ADHD An Advantage For Nomadic Tribesmen? ScienceDaily (June 10, 2008) — A propensity for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might be beneficial to a group of Kenyan nomads, according to new research. Scientists have shown that an ADHD-associated version of the gene DRD4 is associated with better health in nomadic tribesmen, and yet may cause malnourishment in their settled cousins.