“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” Pythagoras. Add my name to it.
Also add that diverting all the resources used to feed one carnivore, we could feed 70 herbivores.
Hugo Rodier, MD
Gut microbiome in infancy may predict future type 1 diabetes
Healio Minute, March 27, 2023. Study published in J. Diabetologia
“Children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes have differences in their gut microbiome at age 1 year from those without diabetes. Gut microbiome composition during infancy may be used to predict future diabetes risk.”
Comment: mothers pass on their microbiome to their children. Best to avoid antibiotics and processed diets before and during pregnancy. Also, be thankful when a doctor tells you your child’s cold/cough/ear pain do not warrant an antibiotic.
Screen use may alter developing brains, increase their risk for mood disorders
“HealthDay (3/29/23, Thompson) reports, “Children’s screen use could be altering their developing brains as they enter adolescence and increasing their risk for mood disorders.” (Published online March 20 in the Journal of Behavioral Disorders.) The study revealed that “children ages nine and 10 who spend more time on smartphones, tablets, video games and TV exhibited higher levels of depression and anxiety by the time they were 11 and 12.” Additionally, the study team tied “some of these mood disorders to actual structural changes occurring in the kids’ developing brains.”
Comment: ditch the babysitting iPad and get back to books with lots of pictures.
‘Potential cardiovascular risk’ for some on keto-style diet
Healio Minute, March 27, 2023
“Certain traditional risk factors including severe high cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension and smoking may increase CV risk among those following a low-carbohydrate, high-fat “keto-style diet,” a speaker reported here. In a population-based cohort study, regular consumption of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet was associated with elevated LDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B levels, and an increased risk for incident major adverse coronary events (MACE), Iulia Iatan, MD, PhD, FRCPC, postdoctoral fellow in cardiovascular disease prevention, clinical lipidology and cardiometabolic health at the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, said during a presentation at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Session.”
Comment: obesity is such a tough problem that we condone practically anything to lose weight. BUT some answers are not sustainable.
Exercise as effective at treating depression as standard drugs, psychotherapy
“The Washington Post (3/15/23, Reynolds) reports, “Exercise as a treatment for severe depression is at least as effective as standard drugs or psychotherapy and by some measures better, according to the largest study to date of exercise as ‘medicine’ for depression.” The new research “pooled data from 41 studies involving 2,265 people with depression and showed that almost any type of exercise substantially reduces depression symptoms, although some forms of exercise seemed more beneficial than others.” The review findings were published online February 16 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.”
Comment: I was able to cope with a horrendous 2020 by hiking all the peaks along the Wasatch front.
Frequent marijuana use linked to heart disease
“Researchers caution that cannabis use is not without risk. People who used marijuana daily were found to be about one-third more likely to develop coronary artery disease (CAD) compared with people who have never used the drug, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology.”
Comment: marihuana smokers may not care about this report!
Inability to walk & talk at the same time may be harbinger of dementia
“HealthDay (3/21/23, Reinberg) reports, “Problems walking and talking or thinking at the same time might be a warning sign of impending dementia,” investigators concluded after collecting and then analyzing “data on nearly 1,000 people in Spain who took part in the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative between May 2018 and July 2020.” More than 600 of these people “were evaluated for their ability to walk and think at the same time.” The study also revealed that the ability to “juggle two tasks simultaneously” begins “to fall off in middle-age.” The findings were published online in The Lancet Healthy Longevity.”
Comment: don’t even think about chewing gum at the same time.
Vitamin D may be viable strategy for dementia prevention
“Medscape (3/6/23, Brooks) reports, “Vitamin D supplementation has the potential to prevent dementia, especially when initiated early…research suggests.” In the “large prospective cohort study, people who took vitamin D were 40% less likely to develop dementia than peers who did not take vitamin D.” According to J. Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment and Disease Monitoring, “the effects of vitamin D were most pronounced in women, those with normal cognitive function, and apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 noncarriers.”
Comment: vitamin D is not a vitamin; it’s a pro-hormone. It works on the same nuclear receptors as thyroid hormone, which is critical for many organs, particularly the brain.
Diet may play important role in endometriosis
“Healio (3/6/23, Welsh) reports, “Diet may play an important role in the pathophysiology of endometriosis, with a plant-based diet and vitamin D possibly beneficial in preventing and treating the disease, according to a review published in Frontiers in Nutrition.” In addition, the researchers “noted that consumption of seaweed may result in estrogen effects, as a previous trial found an inverse dose-response relationship between seaweed consumption and serum estradiol concentrations among postmenopausal women.”
Comment: One of the microbiome’s functions is to detoxify xenoestrogens, chemicals in the environment that have an estrogen effect. They have been implicated in the development of not only endometriosis, but all sex-hormone issues, including prostate problems. Eat cruciferous veggies. Antioxidants therein (I3C and Sulfaranes,) improve detoxification.
Some forms of hormonal birth control tied to increased breast cancer risk
“NBC News (3/21/23, Bendix) reports a new study found that “the relative risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer was 20-30% higher among women who use or recently used birth control pills with a two-hormone combination, progestogen-only pills or hormonal IUDs compared to women who did not. PLOS Medicine.” STAT (3/21/23, Chen) reports that an “exception may be for people who already have an elevated risk of breast cancer due to certain pathogenic mutations or a family history of breast cancer.” In “these individuals, a 20% to 30% increase in cancer risk may translate to higher absolute odds of getting breast cancer, although” researchers “cautioned that there’s less research done specifically on groups of women with high-risk mutations and hormonal contraceptives.”
Comment: see above. Think of BCP as xenoestrogens. Best to advise women of all side effects. The most concerning remains clotting, including pulmonary embolisms.
Caffeine intake causally associated with lower BMI, type 2 diabetes risk
Healio Minute, March 17, 2023. BMJ Medicine
“A study found evidence that supports causal associations of higher plasma caffeine concentrations with lower weight and type 2 diabetes risk. The reduction in BMI was attributed to nearly half of caffeine’s effect on the risk for type 2 diabetes.”
Comment: coffee is great, unless it irritates your stomach and raises your blood pressure. And look out for addiction.
