New Hampshire Health News Digest

Heart problems? A special diet might help as researchers have found that the popular and controversial ketogenic diet could completely prevent, or even reverse heart failure caused by a metabolic process. For the findings, published in the journal Nature Metabolism, the research team looked at a metabolic process that seems to be turned down in failing human hearts. "In an animal model, drastic heart failure in mice was bypassed by switching to high fat or "ketogenic" diets, which could completely prevent, or even reverse the heart failure," said study author Kyle S McCommis from the Saint Louis University in the US. "Thus, these studies suggest that consumption of higher fat and lower carbohydrate diets may be a nutritional therapeutic intervention to treat heart failure," McCommis added. According to the researchers, the heart's myocardium requires vast amounts of chemical energy stored in nutrients to fuel cardiac contraction. To maintain thi...

Protective Role of Resting Heart Rate on All-Cause and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality : Results Highest cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) with lower mortality was found in individuals with a RHR <60 bpm. Similarly, participants with a higher RHR, >80 bpm, were at greater risk for both CVD and all-cause mortality when compared with RHR <60 bpm. This analysis was followed by the stratification of the data by hypertension, where hypertensive individuals with high RHRs (≥80 bpm) were found at greater risk for CVD and all-cause mortality when compared to those with hypertension and lower RHRs (<60 bpm). Additionally unfit individuals with high RHR had the greatest risk for CVD and all-cause mortality. Interestingly, the unfit with low RHR group had a similar risk for both CVD and all-cause mortality as the fit with high RHR group.

Exercise increased the growth of new muscle cells and blood vessels in the weakened muscles of people with heart failure, according to two new studies.  "If you have heart failure, exercise training can improve your health status, increase your ability to exercise and reverse patterns of muscle damage that are common in heart failure," said Axel Linke, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and a co-author on both studies. In chronic heart failure, the heart can't pump enough blood to other organs in the body. "In addition to getting out of condition because it becomes difficult to exercise, people with heart failure have cellular-level changes in their muscles that make them weaker, more prone to fatigue, and in later stages results in actual muscle shrinkage," he said. In one study (abstract 3797), researchers investigated whether exercise training could activate progenitor cells, a pool of immature cells in skele...

A Single Session Of Exercise Alters 9,815 Molecules In Our Blood - HotWnews.com Hot World News Daily News : The types of molecules also ranged widely, with some involved in fueling and metabolism, others in immune response, tissue repair or appetite. And within those categories, molecular levels coursed and changed during the hour. Molecules likely to increase inflammation surged early, then dropped, for instance, replaced by others likely to help reduce inflammation. “It was like a symphony,” says Michael Snyder, the chair of the genetics department at Stanford University and senior author of the study. “First you have the brass section coming in, then the strings, then all the sections joining in.” Interestingly, though, different people’s blood followed different orchestrations. Those who showed signs of insulin resistance, a driver of diabetes, for instance, tended to show smaller increases in some of the molecules related to healthy blood sugar control and higher increases i...

A Low-Carb Strategy for Fighting the Pandemic’s Toll — The Nutrition Coalition : Other studies have found that dietary changes can rapidly and substantially improve cardiovascular risk factors, including conditions like hypertension that are major risk factors for worsened Covid-19 outcomes. A 2011 study in the journal Obesity on 300 clinic patients eating a very low-carbohydrate diet saw blood pressure quickly drop and remain low for years. And a 2014 trial on 148 subjects, funded by the National Institutes of Health, found a low-carb diet to be “more effective for weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor reduction” than a low-fat control diet at the end of the 1-year experiment.  Since 2018, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and its European counterpart have considered a low-carb diet as one standard of care for people with Type 2 diabetes, in part because it lowers blood pressure and improves HDL, the “good” cholesterol. A 2019 ADA report stated that a low-carbohydra...

In short, low carb gives you more energy to use. High carb stores that energy as fat instead.  How might a high-carb diet drive fat storage, increase hunger and slow metabolism? Our new study assessed calories in the blood available to fuel metabolism after eating. Following an initial surge, calories crashed on a high-carb diet. Intervention After achieving 10% to 14% weight loss on a run-in diet, participants were randomized to weight-loss-maintenance test diets varying in carbohydrate content (high-carbohydrate, 60% of total energy, n = 11; moderate-carbohydrate, 40%, n = 8; low-carbohydrate, 20%, n = 10) and controlled for protein (20%). During 24-hour metabolic ward admissions between 10 and 15 weeks on the test diets, metabolic fuels and hormones were measured. Main Outcome Measure Energy availability (EA) based on energy content of blood glucose, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and free fatty acids, in the late postprandial period (180 to 300 minutes). Insulin at 30 minutes into...

Death of the calorie | 1843 illions of dieters give up when their calorie-counting is unsuccessful. Camacho was more stubborn than most. He took photos of his meals to record his intake more accurately, and would log into his calorie spreadsheets from his phone. He thought about every morsel he ate. And he bought a proliferation of gadgets to track his calorie output. But he still didn’t lose much weight. One problem was that his sums were based on the idea that calorie counts are accurate. Food producers give impressively specific readings: a slice of Camacho’s favourite Domino’s double pepperoni pizza is supposedly 248 calories (not 247 nor 249). Yet the number of calories listed on food packets and menus are routinely wrong. Susan Roberts, a nutritionist at Tufts University in Boston, has found that labels on American packaged foods miss their true calorie counts by an average of 8%. American government regulations allow such labels to understate calories by up to 20% (to ensure t...

Egg consumption and cardiovascular disease | The BMJ “In over 215 000 people free of major chronic disease at baseline, researchers found no association between egg intake and risk of cardiovascular disease”

Effect of a ketogenic diet on hepatic steatosis and hepatic mitochondrial metabolism in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease : SIGNIFICANCE Ketogenic diet is an effective treatment for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Here, we present evidence that hepatic mitochondrial fluxes and redox state are markedly altered during ketogenic diet-induced reversal of NAFLD in humans. Ketogenic diet for 6 d markedly decreased liver fat content and hepatic insulin resistance. These changes were associated with increased net hydrolysis of liver triglycerides and decreased endogenous glucose production and serum insulin concentrations. Partitioning of fatty acids toward ketogenesis increased, which was associated with increased hepatic mitochondrial redox state and decreased hepatic citrate synthase flux. These data demonstrate heretofore undescribed adaptations underlying the reversal of NAFLD by ketogenic diet and highlight hepatic mitochondrial fluxes and redox state as potential treatment tar...

Reexamining the origins of human fatherhood: Dads emerged to reap the benefits of partnerships with females and other males, researchers say -- ScienceDaily : That paternal provisioning arose in humans seems remarkable and puzzling and has revolved around a discussion about two groups of males dubbed "Dads" and "Cads." With promiscuous mating, a would-be Dad who provides food for a mate and their joint offspring without seeking additional mates risks being outcompeted in terms of biological fitness by a Cad, who focuses only on promiscuous mating instead of investing in offspring. Such a competitive disadvantage creates a formidable barrier for Dads to emerge when Cads abound. An oft-invoked explanation for the evolution of paternal provisioning in humans is that ancestral females started mating preferentially with males who provided them with food, in exchange for female sexual fidelity. This explanation is insufficient for several reasons, the researchers wr...

Loss of smell and taste validated as COVID-19 symptoms in patients with high recovery rate: Study suggests clinicians should include sensory impairment as standard screening measure -- ScienceDaily :  Yan said the study demonstrated the high prevalence and unique presentation of certain sensory impairments in patients positive with COVID-19. Of those who reported loss of smell and taste, the loss was typically profound, not mild. But encouragingly, the rate of recovery of smell and taste was high and occurred usually within two to four weeks of infection. "Our study not only showed that the high incidence of smell and taste is specific to COVID-19 infection, but we fortunately also found that for the majority of people sensory recovery was generally rapid," said Yan. "Among the Covid-19 patients with smell loss, more than 70 percent had reported improvement of smell at the time of survey and of those who hadn't reported improvement, many had only been diagnosed r...

Our ability to focus may falter after eating one meal high in saturated fat: Study also looks at effect of leaky gut on concentration -- ScienceDaily