Strawberries could help reduce harmful inflammation in the colonUniversity of Massachusetts, August 20, 202
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a set of painful conditions that can cause severe diarrhea and fatigue. Treatments can include medications and surgery. But now researchers report that a simple dietary intervention could mitigate colonic inflammation and improve gut health. In this case, a strawberry—or rather, less than a cupful of strawberries—a day could help keep the doctor awa...
Strawberries could help reduce harmful inflammation in the colon
University of Massachusetts, August 20, 202
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a set of painful conditions that can cause severe diarrhea and fatigue. Treatments can include medications and surgery. But now researchers report that a simple dietary intervention could mitigate colonic inflammation and improve gut health. In this case, a strawberry—or rather, less than a cupful of strawberries—a day could help keep the doctor away.
The dietary consumption of fruits and vegetables has been associated with a lowered risk of IBD. To establish an effective and practical approach to decrease colonic inflammation in both IBD patients and the general population, Xiao and his team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst focused on strawberries due to their wide consumption.
The researchers found that dietary consumption of whole strawberries at a dose equivalent to as low as three-quarters of a cup of strawberries per day in humans significantly suppressed symptoms like body weight loss and bloody diarrhea in mice with IBD. Strawberry treatments also diminished inflammatory responses in the mice's colonic tissue.
But decreased inflammation wasn't the strawberry's only conferred benefit during this study. Following the dietary treatments of whole strawberries, the researchers observed a reversal of that unhealthy microbiota composition in the IBD mice. Xiao's team also obtained experimental data that indicated strawberries might impact abnormal metabolic pathways in the IBD mice, which in turn could lead to the decreased colonic inflammation they observed.
Higher diet quality relates to decelerated epigenetic aging
Tufts University, August 1, 2022
DNA methylation–based epigenetic age measures have been used as biological aging markers and are associated with a healthy lifespan. Few population-based studies have examined the relation between diet and epigenetic age acceleration. We aimed to investigate the relation between diet quality and epigenetic age acceleration.
We analyzed data from 1995 participants (mean age, 67 years; 55% women) of the Framingham Heart Study Offspring Cohort. Cross-sectional associations between the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) score and 3 whole-blood DNA methylation–derived epigenetic age acceleration measures—Dunedin Pace of Aging Methylation (DunedinPoAm), GrimAge acceleration (GrimAA), and PhenoAge acceleration (PhenoAA)—were examined.
Conclusions: Higher diet quality is associated with slower epigenetic age acceleration, which partially explains the beneficial effect of diet quality on the lifespan. Our findings emphasize that adopting a healthy diet is crucial for maintaining healthy aging.
Feeling anxious or blue? Ultra-processed foods may be to blame
Florida Atlantic University, August 25, 2022
Do you love those sugary-sweet beverages, reconstituted meat products and packaged snacks? You may want to reconsider based on a new study that explored whether individuals who consume higher amounts of ultra-processed food have more adverse mental health symptoms.
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine and collaborators explored a nationally representative sample of the United States population to determine if individuals who consume high amounts of ultra-processed foods report significantly more adverse mental health symptoms including depression, anxiety and mentally unhealthy days. They measured mild depression, number of mental unhealthy days and number of anxious days in 10,359 adults 18 and older from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Results of the study, published in the journal Public Health Nutrition, showed that individuals who consumed the most ultra-processed foods as compared with those who consumed the least amount had statistically significant increases in the adverse mental health symptoms of mild depression, "mentally unhealthy days" and "anxious days." They also had significantly lower rates of reporting zero "mentally unhealthy days" and zero "anxious days." Findings from this study are generalizable to the entire U.S. as well as other Western countries with similar ultra-processed food intakes.
Many types of leisure time activities may lower risk of death for older adults
National Cancer Institute, August 25, 2022
Older adults who participate weekly in many different types of leisure time activities, such as walking for exercise, jogging, swimming laps, or playing tennis, may have a lower risk of death from any cause, as well as death from cardiovascular disease and cancer, according to a new study led by researchers at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.
The findings suggest that it's important for older adults to engage in leisure time activities that they enjoy and can sustain, because many types of these activities may lower the risk of death, the authors wrote.
Using data from 272,550 adults between the ages of 59 and 82 who had completed questionnaires about their leisure-time activities as part of the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, the researchers looked at whether participating in equivalent amounts of seven different exercise and recreational activities—including running, cycling, swimming, other aerobic exercise, racquet sports, golf, and walking for exercise—was associated with lowered risk of death.
The researchers found that achieving the recommended amount of physical activity per week through any combination of these activities was associated with a 13% lower risk of death from any cause compared with no participation in these activities. When they looked at the role of each activity individually, playing racquet sports was associated with a 16% reduction in risk and running with a 15% reduction. However, all the activities investigated were similarly associated with lower risks of death.
The levels of activity by the most active individuals (those who exceeded the recommended levels of physical activity) were associated with even greater reductions in the risk of death, but there were diminishing returns as activity levels increased. Even people who did some recreational activity, though less than the recommended amount, had a 5% reduction in risk of death than those who did not participate in any of the activities studied.
These activities were also associated with a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Playing racquet sports was associated with the greatest reduction in risk of cardiovascular deaths (27% reduction), while running was associated with the greatest reduction in risk of cancer deaths (19% reduction).
Avocado may resist the effects of leukemia
University of Waterloo (Canada), August 19, 2022
One of the many health benefits avocados offer is their ability to ward off cancer. Avocados contain avocatin B, which is a compound found to fight against a type of leukemia called acute myeloid leukemia (AML), according to a study carried out by a researcher from the University of Waterloo, Canada.
AML is known by many names, like acute myelocytic leukemia, acute myelogenous leukemia, acute granulocytic leukemia, and acute non-lymphocytic leukemia. AML is a type of blood cancer that is most common in older people. Approximately 90 percent of people with this type of cancer die within five years of diagnosis.
In the in vitro study, Canadian researcher Paul Spagnuolo found that avocatin B fights AML by targeting leukemia stem cells – which are the root of the disease – without harming healthy, non-cancerous cells. This indicated that the compound is both effective against AML and not toxic to the body.
Avocados can also fight against prostate and oral cancer cells. Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles conducted a review of studies on the potential health benefits of avocados and looked at evidence that specific avocado extracts can inhibit the growth of prostate cancer cells and oral cancer cells. They found that the active compounds in avocados make them potentially beneficial for preventing cancer.
News addiction is linked to not only poor mental well-being but physical health too, new study
Texas Tech University, August 25, 2022
People with an obsessive urge to constantly check the news are more likely to suffer from stress, anxiety, and physical ill health, finds a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Health Communication.
For many people, reading bad news can make us feel temporarily powerless and distressed. For others, being exposed to a 24-hour news cycle of continually evolving events can have serious impacts on mental and physical well-being—as these new findings, out today, show, with those who have a high-levels of news addiction reporting "significantly greater physical ill-being."
"Witnessing these events unfold in the news can bring about a constant state of high alert in some people, kicking their surveillance motives into overdrive and making the world seem like a dark and dangerous place," says Bryan McLaughlin, associate professor of advertising at the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University.
"For these individuals, a vicious cycle can develop, in which rather than tuning out, they become drawn further in, obsessing over the news and checking for updates around the clock to alleviate their emotional distress. But it doesn't help, and the more they check the news, the more it begins to interfere with other aspects of their lives."
To study this phenomenon, McLaughlin and his colleagues, analyzed data from an online survey of 1,100 US adults.
The results revealed that 16.5% of people surveyed showed signs of "severely problematic" news consumption. Such individuals frequently became so immersed and personally invested in news stories that the stories dominated the individual's waking thoughts, disrupted time with family and friends, made it difficult to focus on school or work, and contributed to restlessness and an inability to sleep.
73.6% of those recognized to have severe levels of problematic news consumption reported experiencing mental ill-being "quite a bit" or "very much"—while frequent symptoms were only reported by 8% of all other study participants.
61% of those with severe levels of problematic news reported experiencing physical ill-being "quite a bit" or "very much" compared to only 6.1% for all other study participants.
According to McLaughlin, the findings show that there is a need for focused media literacy campaigns to help people develop a healthier relationship with the news.
