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2. Candace Owens debates Russell Brand
3. Dr. Julie Ponesse, Professor of Ethics at the University of Western Ontario, Provides a Lesson in Courage and Integrity
4. Governor of WV
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6. I’m willing to take my NATURAL COVID IMMUNITY case to the US Supreme Court
Avocados change belly fat distribution in women, controlled study finds
University of Illinois, September 6, 2021
An avocado a day could help redistribute belly fat in women toward a healthier profile, according to a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and collaborators.
One hundred and five adults with overweight and obesity participated in a randomized controlled trial that provided one meal a day for 12 weeks. Women who consumed avocado as part of their daily meal had a reduction in deeper visceral abdominal fat.
Led by Naiman Khan, an Illinois professor of kinesiology and community health, the researchers published their study, funded by the Hass Avocado Board, in the Journal of Nutrition.
“The goal wasn’t weight loss; we were interested in understanding what eating an avocado does to the way individuals store their body fat. The location of fat in the body plays an important role in health,” Khan said.
“In the abdomen, there are two kinds of fat: fat that accumulates right underneath the skin, called subcutaneous fat, and fat that accumulates deeper in the abdomen, known as visceral fat, that surrounds the internal organs. Individuals with a higher proportion of that deeper visceral fat tend to be at a higher risk of developing diabetes. So we were interested in determining whether the ratio of subcutaneous to visceral fat changed with avocado consumption,” he said.
The participants were divided into two groups. One group received meals that incorporated a fresh avocado, while the other group received a meal that had nearly identical ingredients and similar calories but did not contain avocado.
At the beginning and end of the 12 weeks, the researchers measured participants’ abdominal fat and their glucose tolerance, a measure of metabolism and a marker of diabetes.
Female participants who consumed an avocado a day as part of their meal had a reduction in visceral abdominal fat – the hard-to-target fat associated with higher risk – and experienced a reduction in the ratio of visceral fat to subcutaneous fat, indicating a redistribution of fat away from the organs. However, fat distribution in males did not change, and neither males nor females had improvements in glucose tolerance.
“While daily consumption of avocados did not change glucose tolerance, what we learned is that a dietary pattern that includes an avocado every day impacted the way individuals store body fat in a beneficial manner for their health, but the benefits were primarily in females,” Khan said. “It’s important to demonstrate that dietary interventions can modulate fat distribution. Learning that the benefits were only evident in females tells us a little bit about the potential for sex playing a role in dietary intervention responses.”
The researchers said they hope to conduct a follow-up study that would provide participants with all their daily meals and look at additional markers of gut health and physical health to get a more complete picture of the metabolic effects of avocado consumption and determine whether the difference remains between the two sexes.
“Our research not only sheds a valuable light on benefits of daily avocado consumption on the different types of fat distribution across genders, it provides us with a foundation to conduct further work to understand the full impact avocados have on body fat and health,” said study coauthor Richard Mackenzie, a professor of human metabolism at the University of Roehampton in London.
“By taking our research further, we will be able to gain a clearer picture into which types of people would benefit most from incorporating avocados into their diets and deliver valuable data for health care advisers to provide patients with guidance on how to reduce fat storage and the potential dangers of diabetes,” Mackenzie said.
Study links too much free time to lower sense of wellbeing
Research shows there is a ‘sweet spot’ and subjective wellbeing drops off after about five hours
The lesson of Goldilocks, that one can have too much of a good thing, even when it comes to the size of a chair, has applied in fields from astrobiology to economics. Now, it seems it may even govern our free time.
Researchers have found that while levels of subjective wellbeing initially rise as free time increases, the trend does not necessarily hold for very high levels of leisure.
“The sweet spot is a moderate amount of free time,” said Dr Marissa Sharif, a co-author of the study from the University of Pennsylvania. “We found that having too much time was associated with lower subjective wellbeing due to a lacking sense of productivity and purpose.”
Writing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Sharif and colleagues reported how they analysed results from two large-scale surveys, involving a combined total of more than 35,000 participants.
One was the American Time Use Survey, which was carried out between 2012 and 2013 and asked participants what they had done in the past 24 hours.
After crowdsourcing opinions on which activities would be equated with leisure time and then calculating this time for participants, the team found that while subjective wellbeing rose with the amount of free time up to about two hours, it began to drop once it exceeded five hours.
Meanwhile data from the National Study of the Changing Workforce, carried out between 1992 and 2008, revealed that beyond a certain point, having more free time was no longer linked to greater subjective wellbeing, but it did not dip – possibly because few of the participants reported having more than five hours of free time a day.
The team said the American Time Use Survey suggested the way people spent their leisure time mattered.
“Although an abundance of discretionary time spent on solo and nonproductive activities did produce a negative effect on subjective wellbeing, discretionary time spent on activities that were social or productive did not,” they wrote.
The team then carried out two online experiments, with data from 2,565 American participants in one and 4,046 in the other, in an attempt to ensure the findings were not simply down to, for example, a scenario in which people living with depression might find themselves with large amounts of free time.
In both experiments, participants were asked to imagine a defined amount of free time a day and what they would do with it, with one experiment looking specifically at whether it was spent on meaningful and productive activities, or “wasted”.
The team found more free time was not necessarily better when considered against imagined feelings of wellbeing, stress or productivity. More specifically, imagined wellbeing plateaued as hypothetical productive free time rose from moderate to high amounts, but was 0.4 points lower on a seven-point scale compared with moderate amounts of non-productive free time.
The team said the size of the effects was small and the optimal amounts of free time inexact.
Nonetheless, they said the work suggested people who feel they have too little free time should not quit all of their obligations, but instead try to find a couple of leisure hours a day. Meanwhile those with empty days should try spending their time with purpose, be it connecting with others or doing something productive.
Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics and behavioural science at the University of Warwick who was not involved in the study, welcomed the research.
“This is a valuable study because it provides all sorts of statistical evidence for a very intuitive idea: human beings like having spare ‘discretionary’ time – for leisure, home chores, hobbies, etc – in their day but not too much of it,” he said. “It’s a Goldilocks result – on time.”
Whey compound reduces age-related inflammation and cognitive decline
University of Tokyo, September 6, 2021
According to news reporting from Tokyo, Japan, research stated, “With the rapid increase in aging populations worldwide, there has been an increase in demand for preventive and therapeutic measures for age-related cognitive decline and dementia. Epidemiological studies show that consumption of dairy products reduces the risk for cognitive decline and dementia in the elderly.”
The news journalists obtained a quote from the research from University of Tokyo: “We have previously demonstrated in randomized trials that the consumption of b-lactolin, a whey-derived Gly-Thr-Trp-Tyr lactotetrapeptide, improves cognitive function in older adults. Orally administered b-lactolin is delivered to the brain and inhibits monoamine oxidase, resulting in alleviation of memory impairment. However, there is currently no evidence of the effects of long-term b-lactolin intake on aging. Here, we found that the discrimination index in the novel object recognition test for object recognition memory was reduced in mice aged 20 months compared with that in young mice, indicating that age-related cognitive decline was induced in the aged mice; in aged mice fed b-lactolin for 3 months, memory impairment was subsequently alleviated. In aged mice, impairment of light/dark activity cycles was found to be induced, which was subsequently alleviated by b-lactolin consumption. Additionally, the number of activated microglia in the hippocampus and cortex and the production of cytokines (tumor necrosis factor-a, macrophage inflammatory protein-1a, and macrophage chemoattractant protein-1) were increased in aged mice compared with those in young mice but were reduced in aged mice fed b-lactolin. The age-related hippocampal atrophy was improved in aged mice fed b-lactolin.”
According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Cytochrome c levels in the hippocampus and cortex were increased in aged mice compared with those in young mice but were also reduced by b-lactolin consumption. These results suggest that b-lactolin consumption prevents neural inflammation and alleviates aging-related cognitive decline.”
Link between positive emotions and health depends on culture
University of Wisconsin, September 8, 2021
Positive emotions are often seen as critical aspects of healthy living, but new researchsuggests that the link between emotion and health outcomes may vary by cultural context. The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that experiencing positive emotions is linked with better cardiovascular health in the US but not in Japan.
“Our key finding is that positive emotions predict blood-lipid profiles differently across cultures,” says psychological scientist Jiah Yoo of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “American adults who experience high levels of positive emotions, such as feeling ‘cheerful’ and ‘extremely happy’, are more likely to have healthy blood-lipid profiles, even after accounting for other factors such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, and chronic conditions. However, this was not true for Japanese adults.”
“Our findings underscore the importance of cultural context for understanding links between emotion and health, something that has been largely ignored in the literature,” Yoo adds. “Although some studies have examined cultural differences in links between positive emotions and healthy functioning, this work is novel in that it includes biological measures of health and large representative samples from both countries.”
The fact that positive emotions are conceived of and valued differently across cultures led Yoo and colleagues to wonder whether the health benefits observed in tandem with positive emotions might be specific to Western populations.
“In American cultures, experiencing positive emotions is seen as desirable and is even encouraged via socialization. But in East Asian cultures, people commonly view positive emotions as having dark sides – they are fleeting, may attract unnecessary attention from others, and can be a distraction from focusing on important tasks,” says Yoo.
The researchers designed a cross-cultural comparison, examining data from two large representative studies of adults: Midlife in the United States and Midlife in Japan, both funded by the National Institute on Aging. Data included participants’ ratings of how frequently they felt 10 different positive emotions in the previous 30 days and measures of blood lipids, which provided objective data on participants’ heart health.
“Because of the global prevalence of coronary artery disease, blood lipids are considered important indices of biological health in many Western and East Asian countries,” Yoo explains.
As expected, the data indicated that experiencing frequent positive emotions was associated with healthy lipid profiles for American participants. But there was no evidence of such a link for Japanese participants.
The differences may be due, in part, to the relationships between positive emotions and BMI in each culture. Higher positive emotions were linked with lower BMI and, in turn, healthier lipid profiles among American participants, but not among Japanese participants.
“By demonstrating that the cultural variation in the connection between emotional well-being and physical well-being, our research has wide-ranging relevance among those who seek to promote well-being in the communities and the workplace, including clinicians, executives, and policy makers,” Yoo concludes.
In future work, the researchers will examine longitudinal data to determine whether the evidence suggests a direct causal link between emotions and health. They also hope to identify emotional profiles that may be more relevant or important to health outcomes in East Asian cultures.
Common medications accumulate in gut bacteria, which may reduce drug effectiveness and alter the gut microbiome
University of Cambridge, September 8, 2021
Common medications can accumulate in gut bacteria, a new study has found, altering bacterial function and potentially reducing the effectiveness of the drug. These interactions – seen for a variety of medications, such as depression, diabetes, and asthma drugs – could help researchers to better understand individual differences in drug effectiveness and side-effects, according to the study published in Nature.
It is known that bacteria can chemically modify some drugs, a process known as biotransformation. This study, led by researchers from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Toxicology Unit at the University of Cambridge and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Germany, is the first to show that certain species of gut bacteria accumulate human drugs, altering the types of bacteria and their activity.
This could change the effectiveness of the drug both directly, as the accumulation could reduce the availability of the drug to the body, and indirectly, as altered bacterial function and composition could be linked to side-effects.
The human gut naturally contains communities of hundreds of different species of bacteria, which are important in health and disease, called the gut microbiome. The composition of bacterial species varies significantly between people and has previously been shown to be associated with a wide range of conditions including obesity, immune response, and mental health.
In this study, the researchers grew 25 common gut bacteria and studied how they interacted with 15 drugs that are taken orally. The drugs were chosen to represent a range of different types of common drugs, including antidepressant medications, which are known to affect individuals dissimilarly and cause side effects such as gut problems and weight gain.
The researchers tested how each of the 15 drugs interacted with the selected bacterial strains – a total of 375 bacteria-drug tests.
They found 70 interactions between the bacteria and the drugs studied – of which 29 had not been previously reported.
While earlier research has shown bacteria can chemically modify drugs, when the scientists studied these interactions further, they found that for 17 of the 29 new interactions, the drug accumulated within the bacteria without being modified.
Dr Kiran Patil, from the MRC Toxicology Unit at the University of Cambridge, who co-led the study, said: “It was surprising that the majority of the new interactions we saw between bacteria and drugs were the drugs accumulating in the bacteria, because up until now biotransformation was thought to be the main way that bacteria affect the availability of drugs.”
“These will likely be very personal differences between individuals, depending on the composition of their gut microbiota. We saw differences even between different strains of the same species of bacteria.”
Examples of drugs that accumulated in bacteria include antidepressant duloxetine and anti-diabetic rosiglitazone. For some drugs, such as montelukast (an asthma drug) and roflumilast (for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), both changes happened in different bacteria – they were accumulated by some species of bacteria and modified by others.
They also found the bioaccumulation of drugs alters the metabolism of the accumulating bacteria. For example, the antidepressant drug duloxetine bound to several metabolic enzymes within the bacteria and altered their secreted metabolites.
The researchers grew a small community of several bacterial species together and found the antidepressant duloxetine dramatically altered the balance of bacterial species. The drug altered the molecules produced by the drug-accumulating bacteria, which other bacteria feed on, so the consuming bacteria grew much more and unbalanced the community composition.
The researchers tested the effects further using C. elegans, a nematode worm commonly used to study gut bacteria. They studied duloxetine, which had been shown to accumulate in certain bacteria but not others. In worms grown with the species of bacteria that had been shown to accumulate the drug, the behavior of the worms was altered after being exposed to duloxetine, compared with worms that were grown with bacteria that did not accumulate duloxetine.
Dr Athanasios Typas, from EMBL, who co-led the study, said: “Only now people are recognising that drugs and our microbiome impact each other with a critical consequence to our health.”
Dr Peer Bork, from EMBL and a co-lead of the study, said: “This calls for us to start treating the microbiome as one of our organs.”
Dr Patil said: “Next steps for us will be to take forward this basic molecular research and investigate how an individual’s gut bacteria tie with the differing individual responses to drugs such as antidepressants – differences in whether you respond, the drug dose needed, and side effects like weight gain. If we can characterise how people respond depending on the composition of their microbiome, then drug treatments could be individualised.”
The researchers caution that the study findings are only on bacteria grown in the lab and more research is needed to understand how bioaccumulation of medications by gut bacteria manifests inside the human body.
The study started as a collaborative project at EMBL Heidelberg and was concluded in the group of Kiran Patil after his move to Cambridge. It involved researchers from EMBL’s Typas, Bork, Zimmermann, Hennig, Schultz, and Beck groups and Savitski team, as well the Genomics, Proteomics, and Metabolomics Core Facilities at EMBL Heidelberg.
This study was funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020, MRC and EMBL.
Dr Megan Dowie, Head of Molecular and Cellular Medicine at the MRC, said: “This study highlights the importance of the microbiome in drug delivery, effectiveness and safety. There’s still a great deal that is not well understood about the microbiome and it’s clear that further work needs to be done to understand the important molecular aspects involved here, which could lead to a positive impact on an individual’s response to a range of commonly used drugs.”
Social isolation can be deadly for older adults
Yale University, September 7, 2021
Socially isolated older adults who enter intensive care units (ICUs) are more likely to die and are at increased risk of disability after discharge compared with those who are more connected to family and friends, a new Yale University study shows.
The study, published Sept. 7 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, “illustrates the need for hospitals to identify older patients who lack social networks and connect them with programs designed to provide isolated individuals support,” said Dr. Lauren E. Ferrante, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the paper.
Patients over 65 are more likely to have functional problems such as problems dressing or walking after discharge from a hospitalization that included an ICU stay. More than one in three of those who experience few social connections die within three years of discharge, a rate three to five times higher than the general older adult population, the researchers found.
“Our work is focused on understanding and improving the functional recovery of older adults who survive the ICU,” said Ferrante, a critical care doctor at Yale New Haven Hospital. “We know from prior studies that older adults value functional independence even more than staying alive.”
In collaboration with former colleague Jason Falvey, now a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Ferrante and the Yale team looked at data from patients participating in the National Health and Aging Trends study who were admitted to intensive care units between 2011 and 2018. Participants were asked questions about their social interactions, such as whether they talk with family or friends about important matters, visit with family members or friends, and participate in social events or church. Levels of social isolation were ranked from 0 to 6.
Each increase in social isolation scores corresponded to an increased risk of functional disability and death, the researchers found. The most socially isolated older adults had a 50% higher burden of functional disability in the year after an ICU admission and a 119% greater risk of death.
After older patients are discharged, she suggested, hospital staff could make sure they receive weekly phone calls from volunteers or arrange transportation to appointments. Also, social workers can help enroll the elderly in programs that facilitate social engagement.
“Hospitalization may be our only chance of identifying people who are socially isolated,” Ferrante said. “In the hospital, we are all aware of the patient’s medical details, but we need to be more aware of the patient’s social situation as well.”
Placing broccoli under pressure enhances its disease-fighting compounds
Friedrich Schiller University (Germany), September 2, 2021
A high-pressure processing method could rid broccoli of harmful bacteria while preserving the vegetable’s cancer-fighting glucosinolate compounds, according to German researchers.
The method subjects broccoli to pressures of 400 – 600 megapascals (MPa), a process that increases the amount of glucosinolates that turn into the anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory isothiocyanate compounds.
Trials carried out at the Friedrich Schiller University in Germany found that the highest degree of conversion (85%) was observed after treatment with 600 MPa
“High pressure pasteurization (HPP) treatments use pressures in the range of 600 MPa at chilled or ambient temperatures for specified duration,” explained the team, led by professor Volker Böhm, lecturer at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena in Germany.
“Because more glucosinolates were turned over into isothiocyanates after HPP at 400–600 MPa, these treatments may be interpreted to have a positive effect on the health potential of broccoli sprouts.”
Broccoli’s health credentials
Broccoli sprouts are a rich source of glucosinolates, a group of phytochemicals that may play a role in tackling multiple types of cancer.
Broccoli sprouts have recently become popular as a result of their 10–100 times higher levels of glucoraphanin compared to that of mature broccoli.
Thus, consuming smaller amounts of broccoli sprouts may exert the same efficacy in reducing cancer risk as much higher quantities of mature broccoli.
The predominant glucosinolates in broccoli and broccoli sprouts are glucoraphanin and glucoerucin, which are hydrolysed into the isothiocyanates sulforaphane and erucin, respectively.
The plant enzyme myrosinase is released when the tissue of broccoli is attacked by insects, herbivores, or microorganisms.
As a result, glucosinolates are hydrolysed to various breakdown products, including isothiocyanates, thiocyanates, and nitriles.
Study details
Along with colleagues from Ohio State University in the US, the team took 6-day-old broccoli sprouts and placed 1.5–2 grams (g) into sterile filter bags that were vacuum-packed and heat-sealed.
The broccoli sprout samples were treated for 3 min at 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, and 600 MPa (±5 MPa) at 30 ± 2 °C.
After the pressurization, the pouches were flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at −80 °C until glucosinolate and isothiocyanate analysis.
Additional pouches with 1.5–2.0 g of fresh, raw broccoli sprouts were prepared by vacuum packaging the sprouts and heat-sealing the samples.
A mild heat treatment at 60 °C and boiling at 100 °C were used as positive and negative controls, respectively.
These control sprouts were flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at −80 °C until analysis.
The team found that raw, untreated sprouts had a total isothiocyanate content of 0.57 micromols per gram (μmol/g).
The 60 °C mildly heated sprouts (positive control) had significantly increased levels, while the boiling at 100 °C (negative control) resulted in concentrations that were not quantifiable.
The isothiocyanate contents of the sprouts treated at 100–300 MPa were comparable to the raw, untreated sprouts.
However, a significant increase of the isothiocyanate content was recorded for the sprouts treated at 400, 500, and 600 MPa.
“From 400 MPa onward, the degree of conversion increased up to 85% for 600 MPa,” the study commented.
“With increasing pressure, more decompartmentalisation was achieved, myrosinase remained active, and possibly ESP was selectively inactivated, to effect the conversion to isothiocyanates.
“The formation of isothiocyanates was observed in all HP-treated broccoli sprouts, suggesting that myrosinase was active after HPP.”
The results are in keeping with a previous study that found after pressure treatment considerable amounts of glucosinolates were also hydrolysed into isothiocyanates.
After a 35 min treatment, the 300 MPa treatment exhibited the highest conversion. After the 500 MPa treatment, only a small amount of sulforaphane were formed, which was explained by myrosinase inactivation.
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