New Hampshire Health News Digest

Excess Glucose May Harden Heart and Lungs Excess Glucose May Harden Heart and Lungs Research found that glucose suppressed ferroelectricity up to 50%.... New research conducted at the University of Washington and Boston University has shown that excess glucose in the body could damage the elastic proteins found in important organs such as the heart and lungs, which aid in breathing and pumping blood. In this study, aortic tissue was separated into two types of proteins, elastin and collagen. Ferroelectric switching is what allows the elastin to be flexible and convey repeated pulses, in organs such as the arteries. It is a response to an electric field in which a molecule switches from having a positive charge to a negative charge. Recent discoveries in animal tissue have traced this property to elastin in animal tissues. When researchers treated the elastin with sugar, they noticed a 50% suppression of the ferroelectric switching. The sugar-protein interaction mimics glycati...

The Inter-Relationships between Vegetarianism and Eating Disorders among Females The Inter-Relationships between Vegetarianism and Eating Disorders among Females Accepted 24 April 2012. Abstract When individuals with a suspected or diagnosed eating disorder adopt a vegetarian diet, health care professionals might worry that this choice could function as a socially acceptable way to legitimize food avoidance. Yet only limited research has examined vegetarianism in relation to eating disorders. Our study objectives were to compare individuals with and without an eating disorder history and individuals at different stages of eating disorder recovery on past and current vegetarianism and motivations for and age at becoming vegetarian. [...] The three recovery status groups (fully recovered, partially recovered, and active eating disorder) did not differ significantly in percentiles endorsing a history of vegetarianism or weight-related reasons as primary, but they differed signif...