Thursday Aug 13, 2020
The Gary Null Show - 08.13.20
Lipoic acid supplements help some obese but otherwise healthy people lose weight
Oregon State University, August 12, 2020
A compound given as a dietary supplement to overweight but otherwise healthy people in a clinical trial caused many of the patients to slim down, research by Oregon State University and Oregon Health & Science University showed.
The research, published in the Journal of Nutrition, analyzed the effects of 24 weeks of daily, 600-milligram doses of lipoic acid supplements on 31 people, with a similarly sized control group receiving a placebo.
"The data clearly showed a loss in body weight and body fat in people taking lipoic acid supplements," said Balz Frei, director emeritus of OSU's Linus Pauling Institute and one of the scientists on the study. "Particularly in women and in the heaviest participants."
Produced by both plants and animals, lipoic acid sets up shop in cells' mitochondria, where it's normally attached to proteins involved in energy and amino acid metabolism. A specialized, medium-chain fatty acid, it's unique in having two sulfur atoms at one end of the chain, allowing for the transfer of electrons from other sources.
The body generally produces enough lipoic acid to supply the enzymes whose proper function requires it. When taken as a dietary supplement, lipoic acid displays additional properties that might be unrelated to the function in the mitochondria. They include the stimulation of glucose metabolism, antioxidant defenses and anti-inflammatory responses - making it a possible complementary treatment for people with diabetes, heart disease and age-related cognitive decline.
"Scientists have been researching the potential health benefits of lipoic acid supplements for decades, including how it might enhance healthy aging and mitigate cardiovascular disease," said Alexander Michels, another Linus Pauling Institute scientist involved with the study. "In both rodent models and small-scale human clinical trials, researchers at the LPI have demonstrated the beneficial effects of lipoic acid on oxidative stress, lipid metabolism and circadian rhythm."
The OSU/OHSU project addressed two issues commonly ignored by previous human trials, said Tory Hagen, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics in the OSU College of Science and the study's corresponding author.
"Many existing clinical studies using lipoic acid have focused on volunteers with pre-existing conditions like diabetes, making it difficult to determine if lipoic acid supplements simply act as a disease treatment or have other beneficial health effects," said Hagen, principal investigator and Helen P. Rumbel Professor for Healthy Aging Research at the institute. "Another issue is the formulation of the supplement. Many previous studies have used the S form of lipoic acid, which is a product of industrial synthesis and not found in nature. We only used the R form of lipoic acid - the form found in the body naturally."
Contrary to what was expected by the researchers, decreased levels of triglycerides - a type of fat, or lipid, found in the blood - were not seen in all the participants taking lipoic acid.
"The effect of lipoic acid supplements on blood lipids was limited," said Gerd Bobe, another LPI scientist who collaborated on the study. "But people who lost weight on lipoic acid also reduced their blood triglyceride levels - that effect was clear."
Other effects of the lipoic acid supplements were measurable as well.
"By the end of the study, some markers of inflammation declined," Hagen said. "The findings also suggest that lipoic acid supplementation provides a mild reduction in oxidative stress. It is not a perfect panacea, but our results show that lipoic acid supplements can be beneficial."
Identifying which patients will benefit the most from lipoic acid supplementation, and how much they need, is important for both clinical and economic reasons, he added.
"Lipoic acid supplements are often quite expensive," he said. "So understanding how we can maximize benefits with smaller amounts of the supplement is something we are interested in pursuing."
Meditation-relaxation therapy may offer escape from the terror of sleep paralysis
Cambridge University, August 12, 2020
Sleep paralysis - a condition thought to explain a number of mysterious experiences including alleged cases of alien abduction and demonic night-time visits - could be treated using a technique of meditation-relaxation, suggests a pilot study published today.
Sleep paralysis is a state involving paralysis of the skeletal muscles that occurs at the onset of sleep or just before waking. While temporarily immobilised, the individual is acutely aware of their surroundings. People who experience the phenomenon often report being terrorised by dangerous bedroom intruders, often reaching for supernatural explanations such as ghosts, demons and even alien abduction. Unsurprisingly, it can be a terrifying experience.
As many as one in five people experiences sleep paralysis, which may be triggered by sleep deprivation, and is more frequent in psychiatric conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder. It is also common in narcolepsy, a sleep disorder involving excessive daytime sleepiness and sudden loss of muscle control.
Despite the condition being known about for some time, to date there are no empirically-based treatments or published clinical trials for the condition.
Today, in the journal Frontiers in Neurology, a team of researchers report a pilot study of meditation-relaxation therapy involving 10 patients with narcolepsy, all of whom experience sleep paralysis.
The therapy was originally developed by Dr Baland Jalal from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge. The current study was led by Dr Jalal and conducted in collaboration with Dr Giuseppe Plazzi's group at the Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna/IRCCS Istituto delle Scienze Neurologiche di Bologna, Italy.
The therapy teaches patients to follow four steps during an episode:
1. Reappraisal of the meaning of the attack - reminding themselves that the experience is common, benign, and temporary, and that the hallucinations are a typical by-product of dreaming
2. Psychological and emotional distancing - reminding themselves that there is no reason to be afraid or worried and that fear and worry will only make the episode worse
3. Inward focused-attention meditation - focusing their attention inward on an emotionally-involving, positive object (such as a memory of a loved one or event, a hymn/prayer, God)
4. Muscle relaxation - relaxing their muscles, avoiding controlling their breathing and under no circumstances attempting to move
Participants were instructed to keep a daily journal for four weeks to assess sleep paralysis occurrence, duration and emotions. Overall, among the 10 patients, two-thirds of cases (66%) reported hallucinations, often upon awakening from sleep (51%), and less frequently upon falling asleep (14%) as rated during the first four weeks.
After the four weeks, six participants completed mood/anxiety questionnaires and were taught the therapy techniques and instructed to rehearse these during ordinary wakefulness, twice a week for 15 min. The treatment lasted eight weeks.
In the first four weeks of the study, participants in the meditation-relaxation group experienced sleep paralysis on average 14 times over 11 days. The reported disturbance caused by their sleep paralysis hallucinations was 7.3 (rated on a ten-point scale with higher scores indicating greater severity).
In the final month of the therapy, the number of days with sleep paralysis fell to 5.5 (down 50%) and the total number of episodes fell to 6.5 (down 54%). There was also a notable tendency towards reductions in the disturbance caused by hallucinations with ratings dropping from 7.3 to 4.8.
A control group of four participants followed the same procedure, except participants engaged in deep breathing instead of the therapy - taking slow deep breaths, while repeatedly counting from one to ten.
In the control group, the number of days with sleep paralysis (4.3 per month at the start) was unchanged, as well as their total number of episodes (4.5 per month initially). The disturbance caused by hallucinations was likewise unchanged (rated 4 during the first four weeks).
"Although our study only involved a small number of patients, we can be cautiously optimistic of its success," said Dr Jalal. "Meditation-relaxation therapy led to a dramatic fall in the number of times patients experienced sleep paralysis, and when they did, they tended to find the notoriously terrorising hallucinations less disturbing. Experiencing less of something as disturbing as sleep paralysis is a step in the right direction."
If the researchers are able to replicate their findings in a larger number of people - including those from the general population, not affected by narcolepsy - then this could offer a relatively simple treatment that could be delivered online or via a smartphone to help patients cope with the condition.
"I know first-hand how terrifying sleep paralysis can be, having experienced it many times myself," said Dr Jalal. "But for some people, the fear that it can instil in them can be extremely unpleasant, and going to bed, which should be a relaxing experience, can become fraught with terror. This is what motivated me to devise this intervention."
Why walking to work may be better for you than a casual stroll
Study finds people walk faster, report being healthier, when they walk with a purpose
Ohio State University, August 12, 2020
Walking with a purpose - especially walking to get to work - makes people walk faster and consider themselves to be healthier, a new study has found.
The study, published online earlier this month in the Journal of Transport and Health, found that walking for different reasons yielded different levels of self-rated health. People who walked primarily to places like work and the grocery store from their homes, for example, reported better health than people who walked mostly for leisure.
"We found that walking for utilitarian purposes significantly improves your health, and that those types of walking trips are easier to bring into your daily routine," said Gulsah Akar, an associate professor of city and regional planning in The Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture.
"So, basically, both as city planners and as people, we should try to take the advantage of this as much as possible."
The study used data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey, a U.S. dataset collected from April 2016 to May 2017.
The researchers analyzed self-reported health assessments from 125,885 adults between the ages of 18 and 64. Those adults reported the number of minutes they spent walking for different purposes - from home to work, from home to shopping, from home to recreation activities and walking trips that did not start at their homes.
And, the survey respondents ranked how healthy they were on a scale of 1 to 5. The dataset the researchers analyzed included more than 500,000 trips.
The researchers - Akar and Ohio State doctoral student Gilsu Pae - found that walking for any duration, for any purpose, increased how healthy a person felt.
But they also found that an additional 10 minutes of walking per trip from home for work-based trips - say, from a person's house to the bus stop 10 minutes away - increased that person's odds of having a higher health score by 6 percent compared with people who walk for other reasons. People who walked from home for reasons not connected to work, shopping or recreation were 3 percent more likely to have a higher health score.
And, the researchers found, people who walked for work walked faster - on average, about 2.7 miles per hour - than people who walked for other reasons. People who walked for recreational purposes - say, an after-dinner stroll - walked, on average, about 2.55 miles per hour.
The researchers also found that walking trips that begin at home are generally longer than walking trips that begin somewhere else. The team found that 64 percent of home-based walking trips last at least 10 minutes, while 50 percent of trips that begin elsewhere are at least that long.
Akar has studied the ways people travel for years, and said she was surprised to see that walking for different purposes led to a difference in how healthy people believed they were.
"I was thinking the differences would not be that significant, that walking is walking, and all forms of walking are helpful," she said. "And that is true, but walking for some purposes has significantly greater effect on our health than others."
Akar said the findings suggest that building activity into parts of a day that are otherwise sedentary - commuting by foot instead of by car, for example - can make a person feel healthier.
"That means going to a gym or a recreation center aren't the only ways to exercise," Akar said. "It's an opportunity to put active minutes into our daily schedules in an easy way."
Eating raw organic fruits and veggies helps boost your gut health
Graz University of Technology (Austria), August 12, 2020
A study published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology found that consuming organic produce promotes gut microbiome diversity.
Birgit Wassermann, the first author of the study and a researcher at the Graz University of Technology in Austria, explained that consuming raw fruits and vegetables is key to maintaining a diverse microbial community, which is essential for a healthy gut microbiome and a strong immune system.
But these foods don’t need to just be raw, they should also be organically produced. In their study, Wassermann and her colleagues found that while the production method didn’t affect the abundance of microbes found in the different tissues of apples, the microbes present in organically produced apples were more diverse than those harbored by conventionally produced ones.
Wassermann and her team chose to study apples because they are popular worldwide. In 2018 alone, about 83 million apples were grown, and production continues to grow today.
Organic vs conventional
Using genetic analysis and fluorescence microscopy, the researchers found that both conventional apples and organic apples had roughly the same amount of total bacteria (about 100 million per apple). While different parts of the fruit contained distinct microbial communities, apple pulp and seeds had the largest bacterial colonies. Apple peels were surprisingly less colonized.
The researchers also found that organic apples had a more diverse bacterial population than conventionally grown apples. Additionally, organic apples contained beneficial bacteria, such as the common probiotic, Lactobacillus.
On the other hand, conventional apples had a greater chance of containing potentially pathogenic bacteria like Escherichia and Shigella, both of which are linked to food poisoning symptoms like cramps and diarrhea.
According to Wassermann, the very diverse microbiome of organically grown apples can help fight human pathogens by outcompeting them. She explained that the microbial pool that organic apple trees are exposed to tends to be more diverse and more balanced, and this helps promote their health by bolstering their resistance to pathogens. (Related: Exploring the ”gut-heart” connection: Can heart failure be treated by boosting gut microbiota health?)
The difference between “organic” and “conventional” fruits
According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), organic is a label for foods that are grown in accordance with certain federal guidelines. These guidelines include factors like soil additives, pesticide use and how animals are raised.
On the other hand, conventional refers to modern, industrial agriculture that uses chemical fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Research suggests that organic produce has a similar nutritional profile to conventional produce, but the former helps reduce your exposure to pesticides and harmful bacteria.
When buying produce, consider other health factors like chronic conditions or pregnancy. To narrow down your search, start by learning about the fruits and vegetables that are more likely to be exposed to different kinds of pesticides.
Smiling can trick your mind into being more positive, study finds
University of South Australia, August 11, 2020
From Sinatra to Katy Perry, celebrities have long sung about the power of a smile—how it picks you up, changes your outlook, and generally makes you feel better. But is it all smoke and mirrors, or is there a scientific backing to the claim?
Groundbreaking research from the University of South Australia confirms that the act of smiling can trick your mind into being more positive, simply by moving your facial muscles.
With the world in crisis amid COVID-19, and alarming rises of anxiety and depression in Australia and around the world, the findings could not be more timely.
The study, published in Experimental Psychology, evaluated the impact of a covert smile on perception of face and body expressions. In both scenarios, a smile was induced by participants holding a pen between their teeth, forcing their facial muscles to replicate the movement of a smile.
The research found that facial muscular activity not only alters the recognition of facial expressions but also body expressions, with both generating more positive emotions.
Lead researcher and human and artificial cognition expert, UniSA's Dr. Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos says the finding has important insights for mental health.
"When your muscles say you're happy, you're more likely to see the world around you in a positive way," Dr. Marmolejo-Ramos says.
"In our research we found that when you forcefully practice smiling, it stimulates the amygdala—the emotional center of the brain—which releases neurotransmitters to encourage an emotionally positive state. For mental health, this has interesting implications. If we can trick the brain into perceiving stimuli as 'happy', then we can potentially use this mechanism to help boost mental health."
The study replicated findings from the "covert" smile experiment by evaluating how people interpret a range of facial expressions (spanning frowns to smiles) using the pen-in-teeth mechanism; it then extended this using point-light motion images (spanning sad walking videos to happy walking videos) as the visual stimuli.
Dr. Marmolejo-Ramos says there is a strong link between action and perception.
"In a nutshell, perceptual and motor systems are intertwined when we emotionally process stimuli," Dr. Marmolejo-Ramos says.
"A 'fake it 'til you make it' approach could have more credit than we expect."
Coriander is a potent weapon against antibiotic resistant bacteria
University of Beira Interior (Portugal) August 10, 2020
The problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria has been deemed a public health crisis, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting that invasive MRSA – or methicillin-resistant S. aureus – infections affect 80,000 people globally a year, and claim over 11,000 lives. But, what the CDC will never tell you is how coriander can potentially save lives.
Researchers in Portugal now say that that the oil from coriander – a common kitchen spice – is quite toxic to a wide range of harmful bacteria, leading to hopes that it may be enlisted in the fight against MRSA and other pathogens.
Researchers at University of Beira Interior used flow cytometry to study the effects of coriander oil on 12 different disease-causing types of bacteria, including E. coli, Salmonella, B. cereus and MRSA. In the study, published in Journal of Medical Microbiology, the oil significantly inhibited bacterial growth – especially that of MRSA and E. coli.
Researchers found that the coriander oil worked by damaging the membrane around the bacterial cell, interfering with vital functions such as respiration and eventually causing cell death.
Linalool, a terpenoid responsible for coriander’s pleasant scent, is the main constituent, but the coriander oil outperformed linalool alone – showing that interactions between the components in coriander oil made it even more bactericidal.
Finally, the team found that coriander tended to perform better on Gram-negative bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella – as it could more easily disrupt their cell membranes.
Lead researcher Dr. Fernanda Domingues noted that using coriander in foods could help prevent bacterial spoilage and food-borne illnesses, and possibly function as a natural alternative to pharmaceutical antibiotics. The team called for further study to explore practical applications and delivery systems.
Coriander, scientifically known as Coriandrum sativum L. and also called cilantro and Chinese parsley, is an herb used in Mediterranean, Asian, Indian and Mexican cuisine, where it lends its spicy, bracing flavor to chutneys, pickles, sauces and salads.
A staple of folk and herbal medicine, coriander has pain-relieving, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial effects. The seeds have even been used for their mild relaxant, anxiety-easing and mood-elevating properties, and the diluted essential oil has been used to treat topical skin infections.
For this study, researchers used essential oil of coriander, but other research on coriander’s antimicrobial qualities has used other forms, such as freeze-dried powder. Coriander essential oil is one of the most widely-used in the world, and is already in use as a food additive.
The need to develop safe, non-chemical preservatives – and the need to find natural solutions for antibiotic resistant bacteria – mean that studies on natural, herbal substances such as coriander are a “research hotspot.”
Coriander has impressed researchers with its antimicrobial properties, and additional studies attest to that fact.
In a study published in International Journal of Food Nutrition and Safety, researchers found that a water extract of coriander had a very strong inhibitory effect on E. coli and B.subtilis. Many serotypes of E.coli can cause illness, and B. subtilis, while not a disease-causing pathogen, can contaminate food, and cause potatoes to rot.
Researchers found that the coriander extract worked best to inhibit bacteria when it was prepared in a concentration of 10 percent, with a pH of 6 and a salt concentration of 2 percent.
And, a 2015 study published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition showed that coriander seed oil exhibited antimicrobial activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria – along with some yeasts and fungi. Researchers expressed their belief in the successful development of a food preservation strategy featuring coriander oil.
MRSA continues to threaten lives, while food-borne illnesses affect up to 30 percent of the population of developed countries – yearly. The CDC reports that a type of infection called STEC – Shiga toxin-producing E. coli – strikes a whopping 265,000 people every year in the United States alone, causing symptoms of severe stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea.
And, finally, coriander seed oil – non-toxic, non-chemical, and packed with beneficial flavonoids – may very well be the food preservative and antibacterial agent of the future.
Exercise can improve mental health
Dr. Farhan Khawaja has launched a campaign to make men aware of how important regular fitness is to their mental health and well-being. The fitness experts have said regular exercise can help deal with stress and reduce mental health problems.
According to a recent report, more than 450 million people in the world suffer from mental health issues. In the UK more than 16 million people suffer from stress and mental health problems, in the USA that figure stands at 46.6 million. The World Health Organization has said that one in four men suffer from mental health problems and men are more likely than women to lose their life to this rising killer disease. Dr. Farah Khawaja who has called for more to be done to help men who suffer from stress and depression, and mental health problems want more men to turn to exercise to beat this rising problem.
"Exercise and going to the gym and running in the park is not just about losing weight, it can also help with people's well-being. Regular fitness can be a very highly effective way of dealing with stress, anxiety, and depression. It is the perfect way to help a person to fight the negative feelings they have," explained Dr. Farhan Khawaja.
In 2019, 6507 deaths were recorded due to suicide, in the USA 129 people take their own life due to mental health problems. Those figures show the importance of why more needs to be done according to Dr. Farhan Khawaja.
It is not just Dr. Farhan Khawaja who has said that regular exercise can help fight depression, stress, and anxiety, scientists have also written many reports on the subject. They have said they have found through studies that exercise can reduce the levels of tension a person may feel and can help elevate and stabilize mood, improve sleep patterns, and improve a person's self-esteem. According to one scientist report, even five minutes of aerobic exercise can have a positive impact on someone suffering from anxiety and stress.
"We want to see more people exercise. They don't have to join an expensive gym; they can do exercise in the home or at the park. Through regular exercise it can help boost a person's overall mood and well-being," explained Dr. Farhan Khawaja.
Dr. Farhan Khawajabelieves that if more people spent just ten minutes a day exercising, it could help reduce the number of people who suffer from stress.
Study shows how food preservatives may disrupt human hormones and promote obesity
Cedars-Sinai Medicine Institute, August 9, 2020
Can chemicals that are added to breakfast cereals and other everyday products make you obese? Growing evidence from animal experiments suggests the answer may be "yes." But confirming these findings in humans has faced formidable obstacles - until now.
A new study published today in Nature Communications details how Cedars-Sinai investigators developed a novel platform and protocol for testing the effects of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors on humans.
The three chemicals tested in this study are abundant in modern life. Butylhydroxytoluene (BHT) is an antioxidant commonly added to breakfast cereals and other foods to protect nutrients and keep fats from turning rancid; perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a polymer found in some cookware, carpeting and other products; and tributyltin (TBT) is a compound in paints that can make its way into water and accumulate in seafood.
The investigators used hormone-producing tissues grown from human stem cells to demonstrate how chronic exposure to these chemicals can interfere with signals sent from the digestive system to the brain that let people know when they are "full" during meals. When this signaling system breaks down, people often may continue eating, causing them to gain weight.
"We discovered that each of these chemicals damaged hormones that communicate between the gut and the brain," said Dhruv Sareen, PhD, assistant professor of Biomedical Sciences and director of the Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Core Facility at the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute. "When we tested the three together, the combined stress was more robust."
Of the three chemicals tested, BHT produced some of the strongest detrimental effects, Sareen said.
While other scientists have shown these compounds can disrupt hormone systems in laboratory animals, the new study is the first to use human pluripotent stem cells and tissues to document how the compounds may disrupt hormones that are critical to gut-to-brain signaling and preventing obesity in people, Sareen said.
"This is a landmark study that substantially improves our understanding of how endocrine disruptors may damage human hormonal systems and contribute to the obesity epidemic in the U.S.," said Clive Svendsen, PhD, director of the institute and the Kerry and Simone Vickar Family Foundation Distinguished Chair in Regenerative Medicine. More than one-third of U.S. adults are considered to be obese, according to federal statistics.
The new testing system developed for the study has the potential to provide a much-needed, safe and cost-effective method that can be used to evaluate the health effects of thousands of existing and new chemicals in the environment, the investigators say.
For their experiments, Sareen and his team first obtained blood samples from adults, and then, by introducing reprogramming genes, converted the cells into induced pluripotent stem cells. Then, using these stem cells, the investigators grew human epithelium tissue, which lines the gut, and neuronal tissues of the brain's hypothalamus region, which regulates appetite and metabolism.
The investigators then exposed the tissues to BHT, PFOA and TBT, one by one and also in combination, and observed what happened inside the cells. They found that the chemicals disrupted networks that prepare signaling hormones to maintain their structure and be transported out of the cells, thus making them ineffective. The chemicals also damaged mitochondria - cellular structures that convert food and oxygen into energy and drive the body's metabolism.
Because the chemical damage occurred in early-stage "young" cells, the findings suggest that a defective hormone system potentially could impact a pregnant mother as well as her fetus in the womb, Sareen said. While other scientists have found, in animal studies, that effects of endocrine disruptors can be passed down to future generations, this process has not been proved to occur in humans, he explained.
More than 80,000 chemicals are registered for use in the U.S. in everyday items such as foods, personal care products, household cleaners and lawn-care products, according to the National Toxicology Program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. While the program states on its website that relatively few chemicals are thought to pose a significant risk to human health, it also states: "We do not know the effects of many of these chemicals on our health."
Cost and ethical issues, including the health risk of exposing human subjects to possibly harmful substances, are among the barriers to testing the safety of many chemicals. As a result, numerous widely used compounds remain unevaluated in humans for their health effects, especially to the hormone system.
"By testing these chemicals on actual human tissues in the lab, we potentially could make these evaluations easier to conduct and more cost-effective," Sareen said.