Public Health

Continued from Part 1: I interviewed Gary Taubes by phone a few weeks ago, shortly after he gave a talk about the main ideas of his new book — Good Calories, Bad Calories — at UC Berkeley. The interview lasted about 2 hours. This is part 2. SETH: What do you think about prions? GARY TAUBES: Here’s the problem with prions: the claim is that here’s a radical discovery — an infectious agent that doesn’t have nucleic acid — and it’s based fundamentally on a negative result, which is that when researchers have gone looking for the nucleic acids they failed to find them. Therefore, so the logic…

A study carried out by researchers from the Department of Radiology and Physical Medicine of the University of Granada found that 100% of Spaniards analyzed had at least one kind of persistent organic compound (POC´s), substances internationally classified as potentially harmful to one’s health, in their bodies. These substances enter the body through food, water or even air. All of them tend to accumulate in human adipose tissue and easily enter into the organism through the aforementioned mediums. The study, conceived by Juan Pedro Arrebola Moreno and directed by professors Piedad Martín…

I interviewed Gary Taubes by phone a few weeks ago, shortly after he gave a talk about the main ideas of his new book — "Good Calories, Bad Calories" — at UC Berkeley. The interview lasted about 2 hours. SETH: I just spoke to someone who reduced the carbohydrate in his diet, for various reasons, including your book. He found that his performance on mental problems started improving again. It had stopped improving; it had been constant for a long time, and then it started getting better. So it may be that when you reduce the carbohydrate in your diet, your brain starts working better. GARY…

Just as additives help gasoline burn cleaner, a research report published in the January 2008 print issue of The FASEB Journal shows that the food industry could take a similar approach toward reducing health risks associated with fatty foods. These “meal additives” would be based on work of Israeli researchers who discovered that consuming polyphenols (natural compounds in red wine, fruits, and vegetables) simultaneously with high-fat foods may reduce health risks associated with these foods. “We suggest a new hypothesis to explain polyphenols,” said Joseph Kanner, senior author of the…

This is one of those good-fat–bad-fat stories for your holiday reading. Ma et al. examined the lipid regulation of an ApoE/low-density lipoprotein receptor, the neuronal sortilin-related receptor (SorLA or LR11). LR11 can reduce â-amyloid production by guiding APP in recycling Golgi and early endosome pathways, thus trafficking APP away from â- and ã-secretase. Polymorphisms that reduce LR11 expression also have been associated with increased Alzheimer’s disease (AD) risk. The authors report that the essential omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) increases LR11 in a neuronal cell…

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the name given to two lung diseases that frequently co-exist, bronchitis and emphysema, characterized airflow obstruction that interferes with breathing. COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in America, claiming the lives of 122,283 Americans in 2003 and the number of women dying from the disease has surpassed the number seen in men. Patients with severe COPD may benefit more from therapy that combines salmeterol and fluticasone [SFC] than treatment with tiotropium, according to results from a long-term, multi-center study, “Investigating…

People with high triglycerides and another type of cholesterol tested but not usually evaluated as part of a person’s risk assessment have an increased risk of a certain type of stroke, according to research published in the December 26 issue of Neurology®. “LDL or ‘bad’ cholesterol has been the primary target for reducing the risk of stroke, but these results show that other types of cholesterol may be more strongly linked with stroke risk,” said study author Bruce Ovbiagele, MD, of UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA, and member of the American Academy of Neurology. The researchers…

Not all individuals who have epilepsy respond to traditional treatments and these individuals are said to have medically refractory epilepsy. Strict use of a ketogenic diet high in fats and extremely low in carbohydrates is sometimes used for treatment of refractory epilepsy, and is effective about half of the time. However, the mechanisms whereby ketogenic diets suppress epileptic symptoms have long been a mystery. New data generated by Kelvin Yamada and colleagues at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, has revealed that intranasal delivery of leptin, a hormone…

Heart attacks among cigarette smokers may have less to do with tobacco than genetics. A common defect in a gene controlling cholesterol metabolism boosts smokers’ risk of an early heart attack, according to a new study in Annals of Noninvasive Electrocardiology. The findings also show that smokers without the defect normally have heart attacks no sooner than their non-smoking peers. Although the link between smoking and heart disease was established decades ago, the reasons for that link were unclear. More recent studies suggest smoking interferes with cholesterol metabolism, lowering smokers…

The press release had a curious title: “Omega-3 fatty acids protect against Parkinson’s.” The certainty suggested an experiment, but Parkinson’s is too rare to study prevention experimentally. The press release turned out to be about a rat study that used a drug called MDPT to cause brain damage that resembles Parkinson’s. Rats given a high-omega-3 diet suffered much less damage — apparently none — from the drug. Rats given the high omega-3 diet had much less omega-6 in their brains than control rats — one more reason, in addition to the Israeli Paradox, to think that omega-6 may be just as…