SaluGenecists Science Blog

A new report presented at the Military Health Research Forum shows that fighter pilot performance and mental acuity is superior on a high-carb or high-fat diet when compared to a high-protein intervention. This challenges the claims of many in the low-carb diet fad world who claim that high-protein diets improve mental function.

According to news reports, the researchers compared the results on standardized tests of neurological function after four day dietary interventions. Diets were matched for caloric intake and micronutrient content. Flight performance, sleep, and memory were all significantly worse after the high-protein intervention than after other dietary interventions.

This is hardly a definitive study. The group surveyed is likely to be much more intelligent and much better physically conditioned than the average American population. It may be that less extreme outliers may not see the subtle differences in function as acutely. Still, it is hard to see how these results could be consistent with a hypothesis that high-protein improves performance.

My former students know that there are few dietary fads that I take more delight in debunking than the protein faddists, so this news makes my week. I hope the authors publish their results in a peer-reviewed journal soon so the rest of the world can see them.

*even if you don’t smoke very much.

A new article in Circulation, a journal published by the American Heart Association, is sure to make the news after concluding that second-hand smoke is much more dangerous to the heart than previously known. This is an interesting finding, and will probably lead to more states and communities adopting smoking bans in bars and restaurants.

But what I found even more interesting was the suggestion that the relationship between amount of smoking and cardiovascular mortality is pretty steep, even at fairly low levels. In fact, smoking only three or less cigarettes per day raises your heart attack risk almost 2/3 as much as smoking a whole pack. This is the most compelling evidence I’ve yet seen that cutting back doesn’t equal quitting.

The American Heart Association (AHA) has issued recommendation guidelines on dietary sugar for the first time in their history. These guidelines, which vary by age, gender, and activity level, are aimed at keeping calorie intake down, presumably lowering the risk of obesity.

These guidelines, if followed, could lead to profound changes to the average American diet. Currently, an estimated 15-20% of total U.S. calorie intake comes from added sugars.

Read the rest of this entry »

All of the sudden, health care rationing is the big issue related to a national health care program. The opponents of the program have stated that rationing will lead to “death panels” who will decide which citizens live and which will die. Proponents of the program refuse to acknowledge aloud that rationing exists as a concept, let alone that we need to do more of it to manage health care costs.

If anybody is truly interested in how scarce health care resources might best be rationed - whether it be a limited number of transplant organs, vaccines, or meds in an emergency setting - I recommend reading Ezekiel Emmanuel’s article in the January 31st issue of the Lancet. Basically, this article recommends that scarce resources be allocated related to several criteria - age, number of expected lives saved, patient prognosis. If this is still not enough differentiation, random chance (lottery, if you will) is the final determinant.

Most importantly, and directly refuting the argument made in the link above, the article recommends that resources only be allocated based on the value of an individual to society in a public health emergency. For example, if providing immediate care to a nurse might in turn provide care to an additional 20 people, that nurse should be a priority for care.

Of course, the system we have now rations care almost exclusively by this “instrumental value” criterion, measured simply by income potential. In other words, care is allocated to people who can afford it. People who can’t afford care are treated through overburdened public institutions and often after they develop emergent problems.

Medical ethics is a tricky business, and a complicated conversation. To see this conversation treated in such a shabby manner in the political world is both disappointing and unsurprising.

A review article published last week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has ignited controversy by concluding that organic foods are not demonstrably more nutritious than conventionally grown foods.

This review article summarized 55 research trials and looked at 11 specific nutrient categories (for plant foods). Looking at the nutrients surveyed and the ones that were not is probably the key to understanding the significance of this research. The nutrients studied were nitrogen, vitamin C, phenolic compounds, magnesium, calcium, phosporus, potassium, zinc, soluble solids, copper, and total acidity.

Read the rest of this entry »

A new report in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that a blue dye found in M&Ms may have a specific anti-inflammatory effect that aided in the healing of damaged neurons. The authors speculated that this action might be worthy of further study to see if it would help humans with spinal injury.

Three comments on this:

1. Hundreds of these types of basic sciences articles come out every month, and most never make it to human research trials. I frequently find myself baffled by how one of them ends up being newsworthy.
2. Now that we’ve got a potential beneficial effect of a food additive, can we start having a realistic conversation about potential health risks related to other similar chemicals? We could maybe start with yellow #5 or red #3.
3. Perhaps the whole brown M&M controversy of the early 1980s was an early indication of folk use of this food dye as medicine. The tour manager for Van Halen was unavailable for comment.

Sorry for the lack of posts for the past couple of weeks, we’ve had some technical problems with the blog access, but I think we now have them fully resolved.

A couple of new studies published this week in the online version of the journal Hypertension shed more light on the relationship between dietary sodium and hypertension (what did you think this journal would be writing about? tennis?).

The relationship between sodium intake and blood pressure is a complex one, and for that reason can be difficult to distill into a quick public health sound bite. Reducing sodium intake can reduce blood pressure by several points (about 3-5 mmHg in most research) in the majority of hypertensive adults. There is also a subset of hypertensives - roughly 20-25% by the estimates I’ve read - who have a much larger magnitude of response to salt restriction.

Read the rest of this entry »

I apologize for the lack of posts over the past two weeks. We’ve been switching servers over, and I hadn’t realized the posts weren’t posting. Here’s a brief recap of a longer one that never made it.

An International Expert Committee with members from the American Diabetes Association (ADA) issued a new recommendation this month about diagnostic testing for diabetes. For the first time, the hemoglobin A1c test is considered the standard for diagnosis of diabetes, with values above 6.5% and greater being considered abnormal.

Read the rest of this entry »

Need an excuse for your addiction to that morning cuppa? Quenching your morning thirst for java may help you remember what day it is and where you left those keys.
When aged mice specially bred to develop the mouse equivalent of Alzheimer’s Disease were given caffeine — in amounts a human would get from drinking about 5 cups of coffee a day — their memory impairment was not just slowed down but actually reversed!
Studies by researchers at the Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center showed that caffeine rapidly reduces levels of beta-amyloid protein in the blood and in the brain. (The appearance of clumps of beta-amyloid in the brain is a signature finding in Alzheimer’s.) The Florida research group also determined that caffeine given to elderly non-demented humans also quickly affects their beta-amyloid levels, just like it does in the Alzheimer’s prone mice.
The Alzheimer’s mice got a daily caffeine dispensation comparable to a human tossing back 500 milligrams of caffeine — the amount found in 2 espresso drinks, 14 cups of tea or 20 caffeinated soft drinks.
After two months, the caffeinated mice demonstrated memory and thinking skills identical to normal aged mice without dementia. The Alzheimer’s mice drinking plain old water just continued to wonder where on earth they had left the keys.
When the mice were sacrificed (yes, these little critters gave their lives for you), the brains of the caffeinated critters showed nearly a 50% reduction in levels of beta-amyloid. Other experiments by the same research group indicate caffeine protects and restores memory by inhibiting the activity of the enzymes involved in producing beta-amyloid, and also suppress inflammatory changes in the brain that promote beta-amyloid formation.

I saw this article earlier today, and am not too surprised by it. It is part of an ongoing campaign by CSPI to act as a watchdog against dubious and illegal claims by supplement manufacturers.

There was a sentence half-way through the article that caught my attention, though. It reads: “Even the more general claim Bayer uses to promote that and another men’s supplement that selenium “supports prostate health” is deceptive and illegal since it is unsubstantiated by scientific evidence and implies that the product can reduce the risk of prostate cancer. ”

Read the rest of this entry »