New Hampshire Health News Digest

In diet studies, big question goes unexplored My Turn August 23, 2010|By Bob Kaplan, Special to the Los Angeles Times After losing weight and keeping it off on the Atkins diet, it seems odd that no one wants to find out why this higher-calorie option appears to be more effective. Researchers (funded by the National Institutes of Health) randomized half their subjects to a diet that limited both calories and fat — women ate no more than 1,500 calories a day; men no more than 1,800. The other half were told to avoid carbohydrate-rich foods, as I've been doing for 15 years, but could eat all the protein and fat they wanted. The study's authors concluded both diets were equally effective for weight loss, and that is how the press reported it. But the low-carb diet also was associated with better heart health. Let that sink in for a moment. The people on the low-fat, low-calorie diet were enduring what nutritionists used to call "semi-starvation diets." They were presumabl...

Can a High-Fat Diet Beat Cancer? By Richard Friebe The theory is simple: If most aggressive cancers rely on the fermentation of sugar for growing and dividing, then take away the sugar and they should stop spreading. Meanwhile, normal body and brain cells should be able to handle the sugar starvation; they can switch to generating energy from fatty molecules called ketone bodies — the body's main source of energy on a fat-rich diet — an ability that some or most fast-growing and invasive cancers seem to lack. The Würzburg trial, funded by the Otzberg, Germany–based diet food company Tavartis, which supplies the researchers with food packages, is still in its early, difficult stages. "One big problem we have," says Schmidt, sitting uncomfortably on a small, wooden chair in the crammed tea kitchen of Kämmerer's lab, "is that we are only allowed to enroll patients who have completely run out of all other therapeutic options." That means that most people in the ...

Low-salt diet increases insulin resistance in healthy subjects Low-salt diet was significantly associated with higher homeostasis model assessment index independent of age, sex, blood pressure, body mass index, serum sodium and potassium, serum angiotensin II, plasma renin activity, serum and urine aldosterone, and urine epinephrine and norepinephrine. Low-salt diet is associated with an increase in IR. The impact of our findings on the pathogenesis of diabetes and cardiovascular disease needs further investigation.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Eat your salt without fear!

Nutrition and Alzheimer's disease: The detrimental role of a high carbohydrate diet Alzheimer's disease is a devastating disease whose recent increase in incidence rates has broad implications for rising health care costs. Huge amounts of research money are currently being http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifinvested in seeking the underlying cause, with corresponding progress in understanding the disease progression. In this paper, we highlight how an excess of dietary carbohydrates, particularly fructose, alongside a relative deficiency in dietary fats and cholesterol, may lead to the development of Alzheimer's disease. A first step in the pathophysiology of the disease is represented by advanced glycation end-products in crucial plasma proteins concerned with fat, cholesterol, and oxygen transport. This leads to cholesterol deficiency in neurons, which significantly impairs their ability to function. Over time, a cascade response leads to impaired glutamate s...

Comparing Effects of a Low-energy Diet and a High-protein Low-fat Diet on Sexual and Endothelial Function, Urinary Tract Symptoms, and Inflammation in Obese Diabetic Men Introduction.  Abdominal obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus are associated with sexual and endothelial dysfunction, lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), and chronic systemic inflammation. Conclusions.  Diet-induced weight loss induces rapid improvement of sexual, urinary, and endothelial function in obese diabetic men. A high-protein, carbohydrate-reduced, low-fat diet also reduces systemic inflammation and sustains these beneficial effects to 1 year.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026049511001764 http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif The high-fat diet was also associated with a significant increase in LDL particle size (255.0 vs 255.9 Å; P = .01) and a significant decrease in the proportion of small LDL particle ( (larger particles are much healthier for you, and come about after only days on a low carb diet)

http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=16721831571j7360&size=largest http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Low calorie, low carb diet leads to remission of type 2 diabetes within a week.