New Hampshire Health News Digest

The link between fast food and depression has been confirmed According to a recent study headed by scientists from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the University of Granada, eating commercial baked goods (fairy cakes, croissants, doughnuts, etc.) and fast food (hamburgers, hotdogs and pizza) is linked to depression. Published in the Public Health Nutrition journal, the results reveal that consumers of fast food, compared to those who eat little or none, are 51% more likely to develop depression. Furthermore, a dose-response relationship was observed. In other words this means that "the more fast food you consume, the greater the risk of depression," explains Almudena Sánchez-Villegas, lead author of the study, to SINC. The study demonstrates that those participants who eat the most fast food and commercial baked goods are more likely to be single, less active and have poor dietary habits, which include eating less fruit, nuts, fish, vegetables and olive oil. ...

Why Fast? Part 1 – Weight Loss Mark's Daily Apple So, yes: it works. But does fasting work solely through caloric restriction, or is it doing something special?http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif That’s the real question. There’s no question that fasting causes weight loss through caloric restriction. Obviously, when you don’t eat anything, your body turns to its own stored energy reserves, reserves that take up physical space and have mass. Depletion of those energy stores reduces mass and thus weight. Total and absolute caloric restriction. That’s elementary stuff and the studies from the 1960s show that. To dig a bit deeper, let’s look at how weight loss occurs during a fast. I’ll stick to research involving humans only (sorry, rodent personal trainers). Secretion of growth hormone, one of the premier fat burning hormones, increases during a fast. In a five-day fasting protocol, men experienced increased GH secretion on day one and day five (the only two days where GH was measu...

Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward Magalie Lenoir,# Fuschia Serre,# Lauriane Cantin, and Serge H. Ahmed* Conclusions Our findings clearly demonstrate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifeven in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction.

Hot pepper compound could help hearts SAN DIEGO, March 27, 2012 — The food that inspires wariness is on course for inspiring even more wonder from a medical standpoint as scientists today reported the latest evidence that chili peppers are a heart-healthy food with potential to protect against the No. 1 cause of death in the developed world. The rephttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifort was part of the 243rd National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, being held here this week. The study focused on capsaicin and its fiery-hot relatives, a piquant family of substances termed "capsaicinoids." The stuff that gives cayennes, jalapenos, habaneros and other chili peppers their heat, capsaicin already has an established role in medicine in rub-on-the-skin creams to treat arthritis and certain forms of pain. Past research suggested that spicing food with chilies can lower blood pressure in people with that condi...

The Case for Sleep Medicine By GAYLE GREENE [...]http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif The risks of sleeping pills are real, as I well know, having taken them for three decades. But so are the risks of chronic sleep loss. As the pioneering sleep scientist William Dement has argued, sleep is “the most important predictor of how long you will live — perhaps more important than smoking, exercise or high blood pressure.” Sleep deprivation ratchets up the stress system, leaving you more susceptible to even relatively mild sources of strain. When University of Chicago researchers led by Eve Van Cauter deprived young, healthy people of a few hours of sleep for six nights, they produced in them the hormonal profiles of much older people: higher levels of stress hormones and lower levels of growth hormone (essential to cell repair). The study’s participants developed hormonal imbalances conducive to weight gain and levels of insulin resistance like those of people with diabetes. Loss of sleep al...

Protein intake, calcium balance and health consequences Abstract High-protein (HP) diets exert a hypercalciuric effect at constant levels of calcium intake, even though the effect may depend on the nature of the dietary protein. Lower urinary pH is also consistently observed for subjects consuming HP diets. The combination of these two effects was suspected to be associated with a dietary environment favorable for demineralization of the skeleton. However, increased calcium excretion due to HP diet does not seem to be linked to impaired calcium balance. In contrast, some data indicate that HP intakes induce an increase of intestinal calcium absorption. Moreover, no clinical data support the hypothesis of a detrimental effect of HP diet on bone health, except in a context of inadequate calcium supply. In addition, HP intake promotes bone growth and retards bone loss and low-protein diet is associated with higher risk of hip fractures. The increase of acid and calcium excretion due to HP...

The George Washington University's Brian Richmond and team of researchers say chimps use 2 legs to reach and carry scarce resources http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif WASHINGTON—Most of us walk and carry items in our hands every day. These are seemingly simple activities that the majority of us don't question. But an international team of researchers, including Brian Richmond at the George Washington University, have discovered that human bipedalism, or walking upright, may have originated millions of years ago as an adaptation to carrying scarce, high-quality resources. This latest research was published in this month's "Current Biology." The team of researchers from the U.S., England, Japan and Portugal investigated the behavior of modern-day chimpanzees as they competed for food resources, in an effort to understand what ecological settings would lead a large ape - one that resembles the 6 million-year old ancestor we shared in common with living chimpanzee...

Brain insulin resistance contributes to cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease PHILADELPHIA – Insulin resistance in the brain precedes and contributes to cognitive decline above and beyond other known causes of Alzheimer's disease, according to a http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnew study by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Insulin is an important hormone in many bodily functions, including the health of brain cells. The team identified extensive abnormalities in the activity of two major signaling pathways for insulin and insulin-like growth factor in non-diabetic people with Alzheimer's disease. These pathways could be targeted with new or existing medicines to potentially help resensitize the brain to insulin and possibly slow down or even improve cognitive decline. This is the first study to directly demonstrate that insulin resistance occurs in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. The study is now on...

BPA's Diabetes Link Strengthened by New Study Growing evidence suggests that even minuscule amounts of BPA (used in everything from pesticides to water bottles) can scramble hormone signals, and trick fat cells into taking in more fat or mislead the pancreas into secreting excess insulin.... Advertisement Among the most ubiquitous and scrutinized of these so-called endocrine disruptors is bisphenol, better known as BPA. The chemical is a common ingredient in plastics and food-can linings. [...] Nadal's latest research, finds that the chemical triggers the release of almost double the insulin actually needed to break down food. High insulin levels can desensitize the body to the hormone over time, which in some people may then lead to weight gain and Type 2 diabetes. To achieve this feat, BPA fools a receptor into thinking it is the natural hormone estrogen, an insulin regulator. [...] "That pretty much nails it," Bruce Blumberg of the University of California, Irvine,...

Losing Belly Fat, Whether From a Low-Carb or a Low-Fat Diet, Helps Improve Blood Vessel Function Released: 3/12/2012 11:45 PM EDT Embargo expired: 3/13/2012 8:00 PM EDT Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine Newswise — Overweight people who shed pounds, especially belly fat, can improve the function of their blood vessels no matter whether they are on a low-carb or a low-fat diet, according to a study being presented by Johns Hopkins researchers at an American Heart Association scientific meeting in San Diego on March 13 that is focused on cardiovascular disease prevention. In the six-month weight-loss study, Hopkins researchers found that the more belly fat the participants lost, the better their arteries were able to expand when needed, allowing more blood to flow more freely. The researchers also found that participants in the study who were on a low-carb diet lost about ten pounds more, on average, than those who were on a low-fat diet. Being overweight increases the risk of cardiovascular...

Exercise changes your DNA You might think that the DNA you inherited is one thing that you absolutely can't do anything about, but in one sense you'd be wrong. Researchers reporting in the Marchttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifh issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, have found that when healthy but inactive men and women exercise for a matter of minutes, it produces a rather immediate change to their DNA. Perhaps even more tantalizing, the study suggests that the caffeine in your morning coffee might also influence muscle in essentially the same way. The underlying genetic code in human muscle isn't changed with exercise, but the DNA molecules within those muscles are chemically and structurally altered in very important ways. Those modifications to the DNA at precise locations appear to be early events in the genetic reprogramming of muscle for strength and, ultimately, in the structural and metabolic benefits of exercise. "Our muscles are really plast...

White rice link seen with Type 2 diabetes, says study Health researchers said on Thursday they had found a troubling link between higher http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifconsumption of rice and Type 2 diabetes, a disease that in some countries is becoming an epidemic. Further work is need to probe the apparent association and diets that are notoriously high in sugar and fats should remain on the no-go list, they cautioned. "What we've found is white rice is likely to increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes, especially at high consumption levels such as in Asian populations," Qi Sun of the Harvard School of Public Health told AFP. [...] In the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Sun's team said the link emerged from an analysis of four previously published studies, carried out in China, Japan, Australia and the United States. These studies followed 350,000 people over a timescale from four to 22 years. More than 13,000 people developed Type 2 diabetes. In the studies carrie...

Acid trip could help treat alcoholism, report suggests By Linda Thrasybule MyHealthNewsDaily MSNBC The mind-altering drug LSD could be used to treat alcoholism, a new report says. LSD prevented alcoholics from relapsing during treatment, according to researchers in Norway who analyzed six previous studies of alcoholism treatment. The studies involved 536 heavy drinkers in all, two-thirds of whom were given LSD while others received comparison treatments. Fifty-nine percent of the LSD users avoided relapsing into alcohol abuse, compared with 38 percent of the others, the new study noted. Advertise | AdChoices "LSD worked in an entirely different way than any current psychiatric drugs," said study researcher Teri Krebs of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. "Many patients said they had gained a new appreciation for their alcohol problem and new motivation to address it." The study appeared Thursday (Mar. 8) in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Too Often, Doctors Overlook Narcolepsy By JANE E. BRODY, Columnist http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif In someone without a sleep disorder, it typically takes about 12 minutes to fall asleep; the rapid eye movement stage of sleep, so-called dream sleep, occurs after more than an hour of non-R.E.M. sleep. Clea’s test showed that she fell asleep almost immediately and quickly lapsed into R.E.M. sleep. In normal R.E.M. sleep, muscles become paralyzed in a sense to prevent people from acting out their dreams. In someone with narcolepsy, the R.E.M. stage is often accompanied by muscle movements that result in restlessness and frequent awakenings. The disordered nights are reflected in excessive daytime sleepiness, which in turn can cause mental fogginess, difficulty concentrating, lack of energy, depression, extreme exhaustion and sometimes memory lapses. After their unavoidable naps, people with narcolepsy are only briefly refreshed. Within an hour or two, the uncontrollable sleepiness re...

Scientists explain marijuana short-term memory loss By Charles Cooper (CNET) -- Scientists have long been puzzled to explain short-term memory loss that results from marijuana smoking. But while an open-and-shut explanation still remains elusive, a couple of neuroscientists may be getting close. Writing in the journal Cell, Xia Zhang of the University of Ottawa Institute of Mental Health Research, and Giovanni Marsicano of the University of Bordeaux, France, came up with a working explanation by focusing on a kind of signalling mechanism called astrocytes that previously had only been considered important for protecting neurons. http://en.wikipedia.orghttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif/wiki/Marinol#Dronabinol Dronabinol Dronabinol is the International Nonproprietary Name (INN) for a pure isomer of THC, (–)-trans-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which is the main isomer in cannabis.[81] It is sold as Marinol (a registered trademark of Solvay Pharmaceuticals). Dronabinol is also marketed, ...

March 9, 2012, 6:47 pm Will There Be “Pink Slime” in Your Child’s School Lunch? By KJ DELL'ANTONIA “Pink Slime:” it’s tasty (well, probably not), nutritious (oops, not that either) and cheap (got that right) and it’s probably found in a hamburger near you. Most particularly, in the hamburger or cheeseburger that almost certainly graced the lunch menu at your child’s school this month. “Pink Slime” is the appetizing term for a ground-up amalgam of beef scraps, cow connective tissues, and other beef trimmings, once useful only for dog food and cooking oil, that are treated with ammonia to kill pathogens and then added to stretch the use of “traditional” ground beef (what most people once called simply “ground beef”). [..] As The Times described in 2009, faced with a glut of fat, connective tissue and other once largely unsaleable remnants, the company’s founder developed a process that turned those slaughterhouse trimmings, which were more prone to contamination with E. coli an...