New Hampshire Health News Digest

- WWW.THEDAILY.COM Interesting article that says some scientists would like to add lithium to the water supply to decrease suicides and violence, make us all happier.

Eating less salt doesn't cut heart risks: study - Yahoo! News : "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People who ate lots of salt were not more likely to get high blood pressure, and were less likely to die of heart disease than those with a low salt intake, in a new European study. The findings 'certainly do not support the current recommendation to lower salt intake in the general population,' study author Dr. Jan Staessen, of the University of Leuven in Belgium, told Reuters Health."

Scientists now saying carbs, not fat, are to blame for America's ills - latimes.com Most people can count calories. Many have a clue about where fat lurks in their diets. However, fewer give carbohydrates much thought, or know why they should. But a growing number of top nutritional scientists blame excessive carbohydrates — not fat — for America's ills. They say cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. "Fat is not the problem," says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases." It's a confusing message. For years we've been fed the line that eating fat would make us fat and lead to chronic illnesses. "Dietary fat used t...

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition - Abstract of article: Gastrointestinal transit, post-prandial lipaemia and satiety following 3 days high-fat diet in men Background/Objectives: High-fat (HF) diets of 2 weeks have been shown to accelerate gastric emptying (GE). To date, no studies have shown any alteration in GE following shorter HF diets. The aim of this study was to assess if an HF, high-energy diet of 3 days can adapt gastrointestinal (GI) transit, blood lipids and satiety. Subjects/Methods: Eleven male volunteers participated in a study consisting of three, 3-day interventions each separated by a test day. During the first intervention, volunteers recorded their diet. In the second and third interventions, volunteers repeated their food diary plus either a low-fat yogurt or HF yogurt supplement in randomized order. Test days involved measurement of GE using the 13C octanoic-acid breath-test, mouth-to-caecum transit time (MCTT) using the inulin H2 breath test and satie...

An inverse association of cardiovascular risk and frontal lobe glucose metabolism    Neurology. 2009 February 24; 72(8): 738–743. doi: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000343005.35498.e5. PMCID: PMC2677543 Copyright © 2009 by AAN Enterprises, Inc. An inverse association of cardiovascular risk and frontal lobe glucose metabolism B Kuczynski, PhD, W Jagust, MD, H C. Chui, MD, and B Reed, PhD From the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (B.K., W.J.); the Department of Neurology (H.C.C.), University of Southern California, Los Angeles; and University of California, Davis, Alzheimer’s Center and Northern California Veterans Affairs Health Care System (B.R.).  Abstract Objective: To investigate associations between vascular risk profile and cerebral glucose metabolism. Methods: Subjects ranged from normal to having dementia (age >55 years) and underwent neuropsychological testing, MRI, and FDG PET scanning (n...

Let Them Eat Meat : Interview With an Ex-Vegan: Melissa McEwen Interview With an Ex-Vegan: Melissa McEwen Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few months, you probably read “New Age Caveman in the City,” the New York Times feature on aspiring Stone Agers in NYC. If so, you may remember Melissa McEwen as the lone cavewoman of the group, providing some refreshing gender balance to the paleo diet argument that rice cakes and rolled oats aren’t health foods — meat is. Melissa discusses the paleo diet and all its meaty nutrients on her site Hunt.Gather.Love, on Twitter and sometimes in the comments of the blog you’re reading right now. On top of that, she’s scheduled to speak at the Ancestral Health Symposium in Los Angeles next summer and she’s just been interviewed by Let Them Eat Meat. You might say that Melissa is already a star in the paleo world. But of course none of this would have been possible if Melissa had stuck with veganism. Melissa holds building together What’s a...

The Case For Going Gluten Free Medical Journal References | Evolvify In the U.S., public awareness of gluten free diets has reached widespread recognition, but largely in name only. For those suffering with celiac disease or acute wheat allergies, it’s critical. For those with known reactions to gluten, it’s of serious importance. For those who don’t really know what it’s about, but see it on packaging, it seems to evoke a similar response as being forced to “Press 1 for English”. Journalists tend to frame the gluten free approach as legit for celiac treatment, but ultimately a fad diet controlling minions of mindless Gwyneth Paltrow lovers (AP Article). The paleo diet community views it as more of a religion (that’s tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, people!). Before we continue, here are my biases: I experience repeatable, specific, and boring symptoms from gluten intake, but I do not have celiac disease or a “gluten allergy”. Evolutionary biology is a scientific fact and I believe the pa...

Dietary Sugar and Mental Illness: A Surprising Link | Psychology Today Dietary Sugar and Mental Illness: A Surprising Link Sugar and Mental Illness: A Surprising Link Published on July 23, 2009 Noted British psychiatric researcher Malcolm Peet has conducted a provocative cross-cultural analysis of the relationship between diet and mental illness. His primary finding may surprise you: a strong link between high sugar consumption and the risk of both depression and schizophrenia. In fact, there are two potential mechanisms through which refined sugar intake could exert a toxic effect on mental health. First, sugar actually suppresses activity of a key growth hormone in the brain called BDNF. This hormone promotes the health and maintenance of neurons in the brain, and it plays a vital role in memory function by triggering the growth of new connections between neurons. BDNF levels are critically low in both depression and schizophrenia, which explains why both syndromes often lead to shri...

Epilepsy’s Big, Fat Miracle - NYTimes.com Starvation had long been one approach to treating epilepsy. Deny the patient food for, say, a week and often their seizures went away. But there were obvious limits on how long starvation could be used as a treatment. In the 1920s, researchers at the Mayo Clinic, looking for a way to treat diabetics, figured out that it was not fasting per se that helped control seizures. Rather, they found that it was what the body did during an extended fast that helped control them. Deprived of food, the human body starts burning body fat as fuel, and it was that process of ketosis that somehow had the antiepileptic effect. Trick the body into thinking it was starving by taking away its primary fuel of carbohydrates and forcing it to subsist on an all-fat diet, and you could create that antiepileptic effect as long as necessary. The diet was quickly adopted and widely used through the 1930s. And then, almost as fast as it had appeared, the keto diet disappea...

Treatment zaps high blood pressure at the source By Julie Steenhuysen Julie Steenhuysen – Wed Nov 17, 12:18 pm ET CHICAGO (Reuters) – A device that destroys nerves leading to the kidney safely lowered blood pressure in people with treatment-resistant hypertension, potentially offering a new option for millions of people who struggle to keep their disease in check, researchers said on Wednesday. The device, made by privately held Ardian Inc of Mountain View, California, lowered the top blood pressure reading by an average of 32 points after six months, compared with no change in patients who took the best available medicines. "There are a lot of questions, but it is very exciting," said Dr. Suzanne Oparil of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who reviewed the findings presented at the American Heart Association meeting in Chicago. The one-time treatment works by silencing nerves leading into and out of the kidney, which play a central role in the sympathetic nervous syst...

Statin RX may be overprescribed in healthy people without evidence of diseased arteries | e! Science News A statistical comparison of results showed that few if any heart attacks or strokes would have been prevented within five years had anyone taken the medication, unless there was already some calcium buildup in their blood vessels. In people with moderate calcium buildup, one heart attack would have been averted in every 94 people treated, and one stroke in every 54. For people with higher coronary calcium scores, the numbers of patients one needed to treat to prevent a heart attack or stroke were 24 and 19, respectively, which Blaha says were superior numbers to those in the JUPITER study or any prior statin trial. According to study co-investigator and cardiologist Roger Blumenthal, M.D., a professor and director of the Ciccarone Preventive Cardiology Center at Johns Hopkins, "statin therapy should not be approached like diet and exercise as a broadly based solution for preve...

Low fat diets could increase heart disease risk, say nutrition experts Low fat diets could increase heart disease risk, say nutrition experts By Caroline Scott-Thomas, 16-Nov-2010 Many Americans aim to eat low-fat foods but there is strong evidence that replacing fat with carbohydrates could be harmful to health, according to nutrition experts at the ADA conference in Boston last week. Recommendations to reduce saturated fat intake are largely based on the notion that high levels increase risk of cardiovascular disease, but unless saturated fat is replaced with other fats, many studies have suggested that fat reduction could increase risk of heart disease. During a symposium called “The Great Fat Debate: Is There Validity In the Age-Old Dietary Guidance?” at the American Dietetic Association’s (ADA) Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo, four leading experts presented evidence suggesting that low fat diets may be less healthy than those containing at least a moderate amount of fat. In...

Renal Function Following Long-Term Weight Loss in Individuals with Abdominal Obesity on a Very-Low-Carbohydrate Diet vs High-Carbohydrate Diet Renal Function Following Long-Term Weight Loss in Individuals with Abdominal Obesity on a Very-Low-Carbohydrate Diet vs High-Carbohydrate Diet Grant D. Brinkworth, PhDCorresponding Author Informationemail address, Jonathan D. Buckley, PhD, Manny Noakes, PhD, Peter M. Clifton, PhD Accepted 4 September 2009. Abstract A frequently cited concern of very-low-carbohydrate diets is the potential for increased risk of renal disease associated with a higher protein intake. However, to date, no well-controlled randomized studies have evaluated the long-term effects of very-low-carbohydrate diets on renal function. To study this issue, renal function was assessed in 68 men and women with abdominal obesity (age 51.5±7.7 years, body mass index [calculated as kg/m2] 33.6±4.0) without preexisting renal dysfunction who were randomized to consume either an energ...

PLoS ONE: Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward Conclusions Our findings clearly demonstrate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even 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. I'm sure many people would nod their heads in agreement with the assertion that sweet treats are addictive. What was once a rare treat for our paleo ancestors is now everywhere, and hard to say no to. There's some evidence that...

Mid-Life Cholesterol Levels Not Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease Mid-Life Cholesterol Levels Not Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease Released: 11/2/2010 2:40 PM EDT Embargo expired: 11/10/2010 4:00 PM EST Source: American Academy of Neurology (AAN) Newswise — Contrary to earlier research, a new, long-term study suggests that cholesterol level in mid-life may not be linked to later development of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in the November 10, 2010, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. However, the results suggest that large decreases in cholesterol levels in old age could be a better predictor of developing the memory-robbing disease. “While some studies suggest that cholesterol is a risk factor for dementia, others have not replicated this finding, so the possible association has been under debate,” said study author Michelle M. Mielke, PhD, with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.