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Maintaining healthy lifestyle might prevent up to 60% of inflammatory bowel disease cases, suggests new research
Massachusetts General Hospital, December 6, 2022
Adopting and maintaining a healthy lifestyle might prevent up to 60% of inflammatory bowel disease cases—Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis—finds a large international study, published online in the journal Gut. Previously published research has linked IBD risk with several lifestyle factors, but it’s not clear whether adopting and maintaining a healthy lifestyle might lower the risk of developing the condition in the first place. To find out, researchers drew on participant data from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS), NHSII, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS). The researchers created modifiable risk scores (MRS) for each participant based on established modifiable risk factors for IBD to estimate the proportion of IBD cases that could have been avoided. The MRS ranged from 0-6, with higher scores denoting more risk factors. These risk factors included weight (BMI); smoking; use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; physical activity; and daily intake of fruit, fiber, vegetables, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and red meat. The researchers then estimated the proportion of avoidable cases if an overall healthy lifestyle were adopted and maintained. Scores of 0-9 were assigned to each participant, with higher scores indicating a healthier lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle comprised: BMI between 18.5 and 25; never smoking; at least 7.5 weekly MET hours (METS express the amount of energy [calories] expended per minute of physical activity); at least 8 daily servings of fruit and vegetables; less than half a daily serving of red meat; at least 25 g of fiber/day; at least 2 weekly servings of fish; at least half a daily serving of nuts/seeds; and a maximum of 1 alcoholic drink/day for women or 2 for men. Based on the MRS scores, the researchers estimated that a low MRS could have prevented 43% and 44.5%, respectively, of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis cases.
Similarly, maintaining a healthy lifestyle could have prevented 61% of Crohn’s disease cases and 42% of ulcerative colitis cases.
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Vitamin D Decreases Pain in Women With Type 2 Diabetes, Depression
Loyola University Chicago, December 2, 2022
Vitamin D decreases pain in women with type 2 diabetes and depression, according to a study conducted at Loyola University Chicago. Researchers in this study tested the efficacy of weekly vitamin D2 supplementation (50,000 IUs) for six months on depression in women with type 2 diabetes. Depression significantly improved following supplementation. In addition, 61 percent of patients reported shooting or burning pain in their legs and feet (neuropathic pain) and 74 percent reported numbness and tingling in their hands, fingers, and legs (sensory pain) at the beginning of the study. Researchers found a significant decrease in neuropathic and sensory pain at three and six months following vitamin D2 supplementation.
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Twin study links exercise to beneficial epigenetic changes
Washington State University, December 6, 2022
Consistent exercise can change not just waistlines but the very molecules in the human body that influence how genes behave, a new study of twins indicates. The Washington State University study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found that the more physically active siblings in identical twin pairs had lower signs of metabolic disease, measured by waist size and body mass index. This also correlated with differences in their epigenomes, the molecular processes that are around DNA and independent of DNA sequence, but influence gene expression. The more active twins had epigenetic marks linked to lowered metabolic syndrome, a condition that can lead to heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. Since the identical twins have the same genetics, the study suggests that markers of metabolic disease are strongly influenced by how a person interacts with their environment as opposed to just their inherited genetics.
“The findings provide a molecular mechanism for the link between physical activity and metabolic disease,” said Michael Skinner, WSU biologist and the study’s corresponding author. “Physical exercise is known to reduce the susceptibility to obesity, but now it looks like exercise through epigenetics is affecting a lot of cell types, many of them involved in metabolic disease.”
The researchers collected cheek swabs of 70 pairs of identical twins who also participated in an exercise study through the Washington State Twin Registry. A team led by WSU Professor and Registry Director Glenn Duncan collected data on the twins at several different points in time from 2012 to 2019. They used fitness trackers to measure physical activity and measured the participants’ waistlines and body mass indexes. The twins also answered survey questions about their lifestyle and neighborhoods.
Many of the twin pairs were found to be discordant, meaning they differed from each other, on measures of physical activity, neighborhood walkability and body mass index. An analysis by Skinner’s lab of the cells in the discordant twins’ cheek swabs revealed epigenetic differences too. The twin in the discordant pair with a high level of physical activity, defined as more than 150 minutes a week of exercise, had epigenetic alterations in areas called DNA methylation regions that correlated with reduced body mass index and waist circumference. Those regions are also associated with over fifty genes that have already been identified as specific to vigorous physical activity and metabolic risk factors. Scientists have previously noted that the majority of identical twins develop different diseases as they get older even though they have the same genes. Epigenetics may help explain the reason why, said Skinner.
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Social stress messes up the hippocampus
Polish Academy of Sciences, December 3, 2022
How do you feel when you are stuck in a traffic jam for hours? Or when you are late for a flight? Or when you are waiting at the university hall to pass an exam? Obviously, you feel stressed, which might endanger your hippocampus according to a research paper recently published in PLOS One by Stankiewicz and colleagues. Stankiewicz and colleagues decided to evaluate the impact of acute and chronic stress in the hippocampal transcriptome (set of transcribed genes) using a behavioral protocol of social stress. This paradigm relies on the ability to induce stress-like responses based on social aggression. In order to induce agonistic behaviors characteristic of stressful social encounters in mice such as upright postures, aggressive grooming, fights, and escape, single-housed mice were exposed to group-housed mice several times per day. The authors then used transcriptomic approaches to identify gene clusters differentially regulated in acutely or chronically stressed mice compared to control animals. General genome-wide analyses revealed that acute and chronic stress (13 consecutive days of social stress) were able to modify the expression of dozens of genes. Interestingly, while a general downregulation of some genes was observed in acutely stressed mice, a robust upregulation of the same genes was detected in chronically stressed animals.
Stankiewicz and colleagues have previously reported similar changes in the patterns of expression of gene related to inflammation in the prefrontal cortex, another brain region highly sensitive to stress (Stankiewicz et al., 2014). The fact that both the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex of stressed mice exhibit such resemblances, led the researchers to believe that chronic stress may impact the whole brain. Therefore, even though a clear causal relationship between the transcriptomic changes and the altered phenotype is somehow missing, Stankiewicz and colleagues put forward the idea that “the regulation of genes involved in the function of vascular system, injury and inflammation suggest that the vascular system may constitute a link between stress and stress-induced brain pathology.”Thankfully, good news also came out from this study. We all have experienced the pleasant effects of rest following stressful periods; in fact, Stankiewicz and colleagues found that after 5 days of recovery from a protocol of chronic stress most of the altered genes had returned to basal levels, suggesting that maladaptive modifications are indeed reversible. This finding reinforces the idea that our brain is able to adapt to any circumstances, healthy or unhealthy, and that our life style could sometimes be the best cure to our messed up brains.
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Researchers reveal why fat increases after dieting and how protein might help
Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, December 4, 2022
A study published in Nature Metabolism and led by Prof. Zhai Qiwei from the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has revealed that an increase of Lactobacillus and its metabolites after dieting enhanced intestinal lipid absorption and led to quick fat accumulation and obesity in mice. It also showed that this effect could be prevented by a high-protein diet or specific antibiotics that inhibit the growth of intestinal Lactobacillus. An article commenting on this work was published in the News and Views section of Nature Metabolism. In this study, the researchers used 10 dieting protocols to investigate the effect of post-diet “refeeding” on fat mass in mice. All the data demonstrated that refeeding after dieting leads to quick fat mass accumulation and obesity. Further analysis revealed that enhanced intestinal lipid absorption, increased lipid anabolism in white adipose tissue (WAT) and decreased total lipid oxidation are the main causes of fat mass increase after dieting. To identify potential dietary interventions to prevent fat mass increase after dieting, the researchers fed mice either a high-protein diet, low-protein diet, or normal-protein diet supplemented with essential amino acids during the post-dieting phase.The results showed that the high-protein diet prevented quick fat mass accumulation and obesity, and even partially maintained the fat loss induced by dieting. Pair-feeding experiments involving equal-calorie normal-protein or high-fat diets showed that diet composition was more important than caloric intake in blocking fat mass increase after dieting.Further tests also revealed that a high-protein diet after dieting reduced the levels of bile acids in the intestine and in serum, attenuated intestinal lipid absorption, decreased lipid anabolism in WAT and increased total lipid oxidation. The researchers then analyzed the composition of intestinal microbiota and found that refeeding with a normal-protein diet after dieting dramatically increased the abundance of Lactobacillus (Lam-1) by about 50%, and this increase was markedly suppressed when refed with a high-protein diet. This study demonstrates that refeeding after DR contributes to the development of obesity and provides important animal models for obesity research. It also suggests that using a high-protein diet or antibiotics to target Lactobacillus and inhibit intestinal lipid absorption is likely an effective strategy for preventing obesity after dieting.
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Krill oil: Can it protect the brain from age-related degeneration?
University of Illinois, December 1, 2022
Researchers investigated the effects of krill oil on age-related neurodegeneration and Parkinson’s disease.
They found that krill oil can protect against many neurodegenerative processes in worms and human cell lines.
Marine oils like fish oil have been extensively researched for their health-promoting properties. Until now, however, krill oil has remained relatively understudied. Krill oil has a high content of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, and choline, an essential nutrient that aids healthy brain development and function. One study found that dietary supplements of krill oil inhibited memory loss in mouse models of Alzheimer’s. A review also suggested that the lipid nature of krill oil improves bioavailability and efficiency of absorption, making it more beneficial than other marine oils for inflammation and cognitive function. Further study of krill oil could help develop dietary supplements and therapeutics that protect against neurodegeneration. Recently, researchers studied the effects of krill oil on a roundworm model of Parkinson’s disease (PD).
They found that krill oil protected dopaminergic neurons from age-related degeneration and improved cognition. The degeneration of dopaminergic (DA) neurons is thought to play a key role in Parkinson’s.“The study shows the potential of omega-3 fatty acids, choline, and antioxidants in slowing the age-related damage to neurons. However, it is important to repeat the studies in animal models, using appropriate controls. Furthermore, the [pretreated] krill oil may be more effective in animal models than natural krill oil.”
In the current study, the researchers first measured the effects of krill oil on worm models of PD, characterized by DA neurons degrading over time. Worms untreated with krill oil experienced deterioration of over 30% of dopaminergic neurons after six days. However, worms treated with krill experienced no reduction in DA neurons. Buildups of proteins alpha-synuclein are also a key hallmark of PD. The researchers found that while controls had around 50 clumps of protein by day 6, those treated with krill oil only had 17. PD is also known to affect movement. The researchers found that worms fed krill oil had significantly faster movement and higher activity levels than untreated worms. Further experiments showed that krill oil also reduced senescence—the loss of cells’ ability to grow and divide. The researchers reported similar results from tests with human connective tissue cells.More tests showed that krill oil led to a 6-fold decrease in oxidative stress in worms and improved their cognition. The researchers also found that krill oil promoted genetic activity known to promote healthy aging.Dr. Subbaiah noted that choline in krill oil is another benefit. Choline is a precursor to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and is thus crucial for multiple neurological functions, such as regulating memory, mood, and muscle control. Lastly, Dr. Subbaiah said that the presence of antioxidants like astaxanthin also makes krill oil beneficial. The potential benefitsTrusted Source of astaxanthin include the following:
anticancer activity
antidiabetic effects
neuroprotective effects
promoting cardiovascular health
promoting ocular health
promoting skin health
The researchers concluded that krill oil might promote healthy aging in multiple ways, making it a good candidate for further preclinical and clinical explorations.