New Hampshire Health News Digest

The case for a breakfast feast : "Having the largest meal in the morning appears to have advantages for weight control compared with having a large meal in the evening, she said, since the digestive process and the action of insulin, the pancreatic hormone that the body uses to process the sugars in carbohydrates and store glucose, appear to be at their peak performance early in the day. As a result, “our body can use the nutrients as a source of energy the easiest,” Kahleova said. A person eating identical meals at different times of the day might deposit more fat after an evening meal than a morning meal, she said. That’s because insulin action is more efficient in the morning, experts say. “If you give a healthy individual a big bolus of glucose in the morning, the blood glucose might stay high one or two hours before coming back to normal,” said Dr. Satchidananda Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. “You take that same normal health...

Hunter-gatherers' seasonal gut-microbe diversity loss echoes our permanent one -- ScienceDaily : More evidence that our intestinal microbes are profoundly influenced by the foods we eat -- or don't: The gut ecosystems of members of a small group of hunter-gatherers inhabiting Tanzania's Rift Valley show a strong cyclicality consistent with the population's seasonally changing diet. A study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine is the first to look at seasonal variations in the gut-microbial composition, or microbiota, of the Hadza, one of the world's few remaining traditional hunter-gatherer populations. The findings confirm that the Hadza microbiota is more diverse than, and substantially different from, that of industrialized countries' urban-dwelling denizens.

New Research Discovers That Depression Is An Allergic Reaction To Inflammation : "New research is revealing that many cases of depression are caused by an allergic reaction to inflammation.  Tim de Chant of NOVA writes: “Inflammation is our immune system’s natural response to injuries, infections, or foreign compounds. When triggered, the body pumps various cells and proteins to the site through the blood stream, including cytokines, a class of proteins that facilitate intercellular communication.  It also happens that people suffering from depression are loaded with cytokines.”  Inflammation is caused by obesity, high sugar diets, high quantities of trans fats, unhealthy diets in general, and other causes.  By treating the inflammatory symptoms of depression — rather than the neurological ones — researchers and doctors are opening up an exciting new dimension in the fight against what has become a global epidemic.  Caroline Williams of The Guardia...

"Much ado has been made of the neuronal damage inflicted by aggregates of tau, but what about the cost of losing normal tau protein to these proteopathic snarls? In the June 26 Journal of Experimental Medicine, researchers led by David Blum of the University of Lille in France made the case that loss of tau function triggers insulin resistance in the brain. In tau knockout mice, hippocampal neurons responded sluggishly to insulin, laying low synaptic plasticity. Metabolic disturbances extended beyond the brain: The mice overate, were obese, and tolerated glucose poorly. The researchers proposed that loss of normal tau function in early stages of Alzheimer’s could explain the brain insulin resistance observed in some people with the disease. They claim it could even contribute to systemic metabolic disorders—such as Type 2 diabetes—that emerge prior to cognitive symptoms." http://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/loss-tau-function-triggers-insulin-resistance-bra...

Hard choices? Ask your brain's dopamine : Researchers have learned how dopamine governs ongoing decisions, yielding insights into Parkinson's, drug addiction. Say you're reaching for the fruit cup at a buffet, but at the last second you switch gears and grab a cupcake instead. Emotionally, your decision is a complex stew of guilt and mouth-watering anticipation. But physically it's a simple shift: instead of moving left, your hand went right. Such split-second changes interest neuroscientists because they play a major role in diseases that involve problems with selecting an action, like Parkinson's and drug addiction. In the March 9, 2017 online publication of the journal  Neuron , scientists at the Salk Institute report that the concentration of a brain chemical called dopamine governs decisions about actions so precisely that measuring the level right before a decision allows researchers to accurately predict the outcome. Additionally, the scientists found that ...

THOMAS E. BROWNa AND WILLIAM J. MCMULLEN, JR.b aClinic for Attention and Related Disorders, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06519, USA bCalifornia Pacific Epilepsy Center, San Francisco, California 94115, USA ABSTRACT: Many children, adolescents, and adults with Attention Deficit Disorders report chronic difficulties with falling asleep, awakening and/or maintaining adequate daytime alertness. These problems may be due to a variety of factors, including environment, lifestyle, and psychiatric comorbidities. Impairments in sleep/arousal may also be related more directly to the underlying pathophysiology of ADD. This chapter describes clinical manifestations of sleep/arousal problems often associated with ADD and reviews behavioral and medication options for treatment. KEYWORDS: ADD; ADHD; Sleep disturbances; Sleep disorders. "Given the above, it is not surprising that a fair degree of overlap exists between these two disorders, though the r...

The interaction between nutrition and the brain and its consequences for body weight gain and metabolism; studies in rodents and men. - PubMed - NCBI :  The interaction between nutrition and the brain and its consequences for body weight gain and metabolism; studies in rodents and men. la Fleur SE1, Serlie MJ2. Author information Abstract Aberrant feeding behavior can lead to obesity and obesity-related medical consequences, such as insulin resistance and diabetes. Although alterations in glucose metabolism (i.e. insulin resistance), in the presence of excessive fat tissue are often explained by the consequences of dysfunctional adipose tissue, evidence is emerging that also altered brain functions might be an important determinant of insulin resistance. In this review, we provide an overview of how feeding behavior and obesity interact with brain circuitry and how these interactions affect glucose metabolism. Because brain circuitries involved in food intake have been shown ...

Do Dopaminergic Impairments Underlie Physical Inactivity in People with Obesity? - PubMed - NCBI : Do Dopaminergic Impairments Underlie Physical Inactivity in People with Obesity? Kravitz AV1, O'Neal TJ2, Friend DM2. Author information Abstract Obesity is associated with physical inactivity, which exacerbates the negative health consequences of obesity. Despite a wide consensus that people with obesity should exercise more, there are few effective methods for increasing physical activity in people with obesity. This lack is reflected in our limited understanding of the cellular and molecular causes of physical inactivity in obesity. We hypothesize that impairments in dopamine signaling contribute to physical inactivity in people with obesity, as in classic movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease. Here, we review two lines of evidence supporting this hypothesis: (1) chronic exposure to obesogenic diets has been linked to impairments in dopamine synthesis, release, and...

Exercise can help adults better cope with ADHD symptoms : Exercise, even a small amount, can help alleviate symptoms of ADHD in adults, according to a new study. About 6 percent of American adults report symptoms consistent with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, which lead to anxiety, depression, low energy and motivation, poor performance at work or school and also increased traffic accidents. The study tested 32 young men with elevated ADHD symptoms who cycled at a moderate intensity for 20 minutes on one day, and on another day sat and rested for 20 minutes as a control condition. The participants were asked to perform a task requiring focus both before and after the different conditions, and researchers noted leg movement, mood, attention and self-reported motivation to perform the task. As a result, researchers found that it was only after the exercise when the participants felt motivated to do the task; they also felt less confused and fatigued and instead felt...

Zinc Supplements Could Help Treat ADHD : An article published in BMC Psychiatry this week shows that zinc supplements could increase the effectiveness of stimulants used to treat children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). " The effects of ADHD on individual children differ, but symptoms include inattention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness. Stimulants are the most common treatment prescribed, but recent findings that vitamin and mineral deficiencies correlate with ADHD suggest that dietary supplements could also play a role in disease management. Researchers from Iran carried out a controlled trial to assess the benefits of prescribing supplementary zinc alongside the more conventional methylphenidate treatment. They found that children taking additional zinc sulphate on a daily basis improved faster than those taking a placebo. "The efficacy of zinc sulphate to increase the rate of improvement in children, seems to support the role of zinc deficienc...