A longitudinal study of women from Oakland California has been following 19 thousand of their offspring since the early 1960s.
So far 68 people have been diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
Risk factors include: obesity in the mother, weight gain during pregnancy, and a high birthweight. This suggests that uterine life has something to do with why this cancer develops. This could explain why there has been a relatively recent increase in colorectal cancer in younger aged adults. Unfortunately there is little you can do yourself about these factors.
In young adults sleep deprivation has been found to cause fat accumulation in the belly for the first time.
Naima Covassin from the Mayo Clinic Rochester Minnesota studied 12 healthy slim young people aged between 19 and 39. The poor souls were randomised to two weeks of just 4 hours sleep a night or 9 hours sleep followed by a three day recovery period. During this time the subjects were kept in hospital and factors such as calorie intake and energy output were measured.
Over the two weeks of sleep deprivation, the subjects put on an average of a pound or half a kilogram and all of it on the belly.
This was because they consumed an extra 308 calories a day compared to the 9 hours a night group.
Despite stopping the study after two weeks and then during recovery sleeping more, eating fewer calories and their total weight coming down, their bellies continued to get bigger, by an average of 3 cm by day 21 of the study.
This could be why shift workers are so prone to gaining fat around the belly.
The continued rise in belly fat could have been missed if body weight, BMI and overall body fat percentage were the only factors measured.
Dr Harold Bays who is an endocrinologist and president of the Louisville Metabolic and Atherosclerosis Research Centre says “Sleep disruption results in fat dysfunction and this may result in increased cardiovascular risk factors and unhealthy body composition including an increase in visceral fat.”
In a German study of ten thousand people aged between 40 and 80 years old, 21% of men and 17% of women had white rings round their irises of the eyes. You may have noticed these in your parents or yourself and may have wondered what this means.
The average age of the group was 60. Researchers noted that corneal arcus is more likely in men than women, increases with age, and increases with lipid levels.
Corneal arcus has no relevance to socioeconomic status, body mass index, arterial blood pressure or HbA1c levels.
Adapted from A ketogenic drink improves cognition in mild cognitive impairment: Results of a 6 month RCT by Melanie Fortier et al. Alzheimer’s and Dementia.2021.
Brain energy rescue is being tested to see if it can reduce cognitive decline in patients with mild cognitive impairment. It has previously been discovered that the brain has problems using glucose for fuel even before symptoms develop, but brain ketone use remains constant in both Alzheimers (A) and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Increasing ketones available to the brain has been shown to improve cognitive symptoms.
A really easy way to increase blood ketone levels is to give a drink containing ketogenic medium chain fatty acids. This has been found to increase brain energy uptake via PET scans. This follow on trial was done to assess whether improvement in cognition after six months occurred.
This study was conducted in Quebec Canada. Very strict entry criteria were applied and the patients were randomised to the ketogenic drink or to a placebo drink. The drinks appeared and tasted identical.
122 participants were enrolled. In total 39 completed the ketogenic arm and 44 the placebo arm. They were well matched regarding age, sex, education, functional ability and cognitive scores, absence of depressive features, blood pressure, blood chemistry and APOE 4 status. ( A genetic variability that greatly increases the chance of developing dementia).
More participants dropped out of the ketogenic group mainly due to gastrointestinal side effects. The drop out rate overall was 32% and 38% in the ketogenic group. None of the side effects were serious.
The results showed that performance on widely used tests of episodic memory, executive function and language improved over 6 months in the ketogenic group compared to the placebo group. Improvement was directly correlated with the plasma level of ketones.
The dose used was 15g of kMCT twice a day.
This seems to be a very reasonable intervention for early cognitive decline particularly since no drugs are approved for MCI and drugs used for Alzheimers do not delay cognitive decline in MCI. It is possible that effects would be enhanced if patients also undertook a ketogenic diet. Further trials are now warranted to see if diagnosis of Alzheimers can be delayed in those suffering from mild cognitive impairment.
Adapted from Human Givens No 1 2013Brinol P et al. Treating thoughts as material objects can increase or decrease their impact on evaluation. Psychological Science 24.1, 41-7. 2013.
Writing down negative thoughts, crumpling them up, and throwing them away, as often advocated by therapists, really does reduce negative thinking. Conversely, writing positive thoughts down, and keeping them safe in a purse or pocket helps you feel better.
Teenage School students in Spain were asked to write down either positive or negative thoughts about their bodies and then Mediterranean diet and they were then evaluated on how much they became influenced by their lists later on.
What they found was that people who threw the list in the trash right away were not influenced, those who kept the list in their desk were somewhat influenced, but that those who kept the list more personally in a pocket or purse were most influenced.
To see if the effect worked with word lists via a computer, the experiment was repeated. The thoughts were put into storage or the trash list. Repeating the experiment but simply asking the students to imagine putting the list in a particular location without physically doing anything was also done.
Professor Richard Petty, a co-author of the paper from Ohio University said, ” The more convinced the person is that negative thoughts are really gone, the better. Just imagining that you throw them away doesn’t seem to work”.
So, to get over a difficult event, write it down, and then bin it and be physical.
If you want to boost your mood, write positive facts or feelings and keep it close and personal.
Adapted from BMJ 13 Nov 2021from American Journal of Epidemiology.
Measurements using an Actigraph were taken from 13,000 adults and children in the USA to determine what a “normal” sleep duration was. The amount of sleep taken by individuals can be highly variable, and this can also change due to their age and stage of life and occupation.
For females, the 50th centile, the middle of the sleep range, was 8.3 hours a night, starting from age 6. As a young adult, this reduced to just over 7 hours and stayed constant till there was a small increase at age 65.
For males, the middle of the sleep range was 8.1 hours at age 6 and reduced to 6.5 hours in early adulthood and increased slightly at age 60.
My comment: I’ve always needed a lot more sleep than this. 10 or 11 is better for me and in autumn, just after the clocks change, I can sleep for 14 hours a night if I am not disturbed. I perk up a little bit in the spring and can cope with 9 hours a night. For much of my life, particularly working as a doctor on call and having young children I had a lot less sleep than I really needed. I have seen that sleeping a lot is associated with a higher rate of dementia, but too bad!
In California, a longitudinal study of more than 50,000 women, looked at how environmental influences affected how long it took to get to sleep and how long the sleep lasted.
Shorter sleep duration was associated with exposure to artificial light at night and air pollution. (Associated with cities). Where there was a lot of environmental noise, it took longer to fall asleep.
Contrasting with this, living in areas with more green space led to women falling asleep faster and staying asleep longer.
After a heart attack, the risk of sudden death is influenced by your past levels of physical activity.
People who performed moderate levels of leisure time exercise reduced their risk by 33% and those who performed high levels of exercise reduced the risk by 45%.
This study combined data from ten European longitudinal studies and found 30,000 people who had a heart attack. Around 5,000 people (18%) died within 28 days. Of these, 3,000 (62%) died instantly.
European Journal of Preventative Cardiology
Fish oil supplements however had no worthwhile cardioprotective effects according to a Cochrane Systemic Review done several years ago. A study looking at secondary prevention in 70-80 year olds, recently found similar effects. There was no difference between the omega 3 fish oil supplemented group and placebo over two years.
Adapted from Diabetes in Control Antibiotic Treatment increases risk for type one diabetes by Chardae Whitner May 15 2021
Both prenatal and first year of life antibiotic exposure may increase the risk for developing type one diabetes in childhood.
It is believed that early life risk factors which include antibiotic treatment can influence the risk of type one diabetes by affecting the gut microbiome. This affects the development of the immune system. Type one diabetes children have been found to have lower microbial diversity in their gut compared to children without diabetes. Antibiotic exposure in early life delays microbiota maturation.
Sweden has the highest rates of type one diabetes in the world despite a relatively low antibiotic prescription rate. They studied siblings, some affected by diabetes and some not. They looked at antibiotic prescriptions, mode of delivery, sex, birth year and genetic predisposition to type one diabetes. The children studied were born between 2005 and 2013. 797,318 children were studied.
Overall 800 prescriptions for antibiotics were issued in the first year of life. These were most commonly for ear infections, then respiratory tract infections, urinary tract infections, and then skin and soft tissue infections.
Exposure to antibiotics prenatally was associated with an increase in type one diabetes in childhood of 1.15 (so weakly associated). Antibiotic exposure in the first year of life raised this a little to 1.19. (still weak. You would need to have 1,475 babies have antibiotics to have one extra case of childhood diabetes before the age of ten).
Siblings of type ones have a risk of 1.36, so this is a stronger risk than antibiotic exposure.
Caesarian section did give an increased rate of type one diabetes in childhood but sex, genetic predisposition and birth year did not. The risk was 1.10 in vaginally delivered babies and 1.60 in the little caesars. So this was again a bit stronger than sibling risk.
Wernroth, Mona-Lisa et al. Early childhood antibiotic treatment for otitis media and other respiratory tract infections is associated with risk of type one diabetes. Diabetes Care May 2020.
My comment: My son Steven has type one diabetes and had a strong family history on his dad’s side of autoimmune disorders including type one diabetes in several generations. He also was a caesarian section delivery and also had a peri-orbital skin infection when he was about seven months old that required antibiotics. Poor wee soul! These days no one gets a caesarian section without a good reason and antibiotics are well thought out. There isn’t much you can do about being a sibling of someone with diabetes. What you can do is take vitamin D in pregnancy and give it to your children from birth onwards.
Ketogenic diets have been used to treat drug resistant epilepsy in children for over one hundred years.
Now they are being used for other neurological conditions such as schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder and binge eating disorder.
There is strong evidence that common biological pathologies underlie these conditions such as abnormal glucose metabolism, neurotransmitter imbalances, oxidative stress and inflammation. These factors are all improved with a ketogenic diet.
Controlled clinical trials have shown improvement in: Obesity, Type Two Diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, Epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease and Autistic Spectrum Disorder.
Uncontrolled clinical trials have shown improvement in: Parkinson’s disease and Schizophrenia.
Case series and animal models have shown improvement in: Cardiovascular Disease, Binge eating disorder, Major Depressive disorder, Bipolar disorder and ADHD.
It is estimated that people who have mental illness live around 7 to 10 years less than those who do not have a mental illness. Sometimes this is due to suicide, but more often it is due to concurrent diabetes, heart disease, respiratory disease, infectious disease and cancer. All of these conditions are raised in people with mental illness. Sometimes this is due to poor health behaviours such as smoking or other lifestyle issues, and drug side effects can also cause problems. But even in people of a healthy weight and who are not on drugs, if they have mental illness, they are also more likely to have physical illness. Could switching the body and brain away from glucose use towards fat and ketone use improve matters?
Cerebral glucose hypometabolism and insulin resistance are features of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Schizophrenia, and Epilepsy. In one recent Cochrane review of epilepsy, as many as 55% of patients had complete remission of their fits on a ketogenic diet.
GABA/glutamate imbalance is a feature of Epilepsy and Schizophrenia. Oxidative stress is a feature of Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder and Major Depressive Disorder. Oxidative stress and inflammation are mutually reinforcing processes. Major Depressive Disorder, Schizophrenia have these issues.
The Virta Health Group has demonstrated that a ketogenic diet is a well tolerated and effective strategy for treating type two diabetes. It reversed the condition in 54% of patients compared to 5% who received standard care. Alzheimer’s patients also improved on a ketogenic diet and also benefitted from medium chain triglyceride supplementation. (MCTs). Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis patients also showed improvement in studies. About 50 to 80% of patients with Alzheimer’s disease have cross over symptoms with schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. These conditions all share common metabolic abnormalities.
It is thought that the ketogenic diet affects the gut microbiome and gut issues are thought to influence Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Two clinical trials reported sometimes complete symptom remission in patients with Childhood Autism when treated with a ketogenic diet.
Some case studies involve psychiatric patients who embarked on ketogenic diets for weight loss and gut problems, only to find a massive improvement in their mental conditions as well. Dr Christopher Palmer reported about an elderly woman with over 50 years of schizophrenia who was able to stop all her antipsychotic medication and has been symptom free for over 12 years. Another middle aged woman who had schizophenia and depression went into complete remission and was able to get her degree and a full time job in the last four years. Both remain unmedicated and on their ketogenic diets.
Results with Binge eating disorder have also been impressive. These patients are usually on 20-30g of carbohydrate a day.
From Geobel A et al Journal of Clinical Investigation 1 Jul 2021
Many of the symptoms in fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) are caused by antibodies increasing the activity of pain sensing nerves throughout the body according to new research led by the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London.
This is at odds of the currently held view that the condition arises centrally in the brain.
The researchers injected mice with antibodies of people who have FMS and saw that the mice rapidly developed increasing sensitivity to pressure and cold as well as reduced movement grip strength.
In contrast, mice who were injected with antibodies from healthy people were unaffected.
The injected mice recovered from their symptoms after a few weeks once they had cleared the antibodies from their systems. The researchers wonder if treatments that would reduced antibodies in patients with FMS could become an effective treatment.
Dr David Andersson, the lead investigator said, ” Treatment for FMS is currently focused on gentle aerobic exercise, and drug and psychological therapies designed to manage pain, although these have been proven to be ineffective in patients. There is an enormous unmet clinical need. Our work has uncovered a whole new area of possible therapeutic options and should give real hope to fibromyalgia patients”.
Diabetes Diet 