Category: Nutrition

Diets high in this ingredient could cause early death by producing a natural waste product in the body.

Foods and drinks high in sugar can cause serious health problems quite apart from obesity or diabetes.

Avoiding sugar-rich diets will increase our lifespan by many years, however a high sugar intake causes the accumulation of uric acid in the body resulting in early death.

Uric acid is a natural waste product from the breakdown of substances called purines that are fundamental building blocks of DNA.

However, uric acid has the ability to crystallize and form kidney stones as a study in fruit flies has found.

Dr Helena Cochemé, study co-author, said:

“Just like humans, flies fed a high-sugar diet show many hallmarks of metabolic disease—for instance, they become fat and insulin resistant.

Obesity and diabetes are known to increase mortality in humans, and so people always assumed that this was how excess sugar is damaging for survival in flies.”

Fruit flies, when fed a high-sugar diet, were dehydrated so researchers added more water to their diet.

Thirst is an early indicator of elevated blood sugar and so diabetes.

Dr Cochemé said:

“Water is vital for our health, yet its importance is often overlooked in metabolic studies.

Therefore, we were surprised that flies fed a high-sugar diet did not show a reduced lifespan, simply by providing them with an extra source of water to drink.

Unexpectedly, we found that these flies still exhibited the typical metabolic defects associated with high dietary sugar.”

Seeing the effect of water made the research team examine the fly urinary system.

They noticed that the high sugar intake led to accumulation of uric acid and build up of kidney stones in flies.

But they prevented the stones issue by reducing uric acid production with a drug or by diluting the fly’s food with water.

Consequently, this protected the flies from dying due to their sugar-rich diet.

Could this mean if we drink lots of water then we can eat as many as sweet treats we like?

No, unfortunately.

Dr Cochemé explained:

“The sugar-fed flies may live longer when we give them access to water, but they are still unhealthy.

And in humans, for instance, obesity increases the risk of heart disease.

But our study suggests that disruption of the purine pathway is the limiting factor for survival in high-sugar-fed flies.

This means that early death by sugar is not necessarily a direct consequence of obesity itself.”

To see if dietary sugars would cause any damage to kidney function in humans, the researchers carried out an experiment on a group of healthy adults.

Professor Christoph Kaleta , study co-author, said:

“Strikingly, just like flies, we found that dietary sugar intake in humans was associated with worse kidney function and higher purine levels in the blood.”

Uric acid build up has been known to cause gout and kidney stones in human.

With aging the levels of uric acid increase in the body.

An increased level of uric acid will also foretell the beginning of metabolic disorders like diabetes.

Dr Cochemé concluded:

“There is substantial evidence that what we eat influences our life expectancy and our risk for age-related diseases.

By focusing on the purine pathway, our group hopes to find new therapeutic targets and strategies that promote healthy ageing.”

The study was published in the journal Cell Metabolism (Van Dam et al., 2020).

Low levels have also been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, as well as cancer and heart disease.

A diet low in vitamin D could be causing brain damage, research suggests.

Scientists have found that rats fed a diet low in vitamin D have lower cognitive performance.

The rats also show damage to many different brain proteins caused by free radicals.

Professor Allan Butterfield, study co-author, said:

“Given that vitamin D deficiency is especially widespread among the elderly, we investigated how during aging from middle-age to old-age how low vitamin D affected the oxidative status of the brain.

Adequate vitamin D serum levels are necessary to prevent free radical damage in brain and subsequent deleterious consequences.”

Low levels of vitamin D likely leads to brain aging and cognitive decline.

Low levels of vitamin D have also been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, as well as cancer and heart disease.

Vitamin D can be obtained from the diet, by taking supplements and/or with 10-15 minutes exposure to sunlight every day.

The study was published in the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine (Keeney et al., 2013).

People following this diet have a healthier biomarker profile with a lower risk of cancer, age-related conditions and cardiovascular disease.

Vegetarians have a healthier biomarker profile than those who eat meat, a new study finds.

Biomarkers, or biological markers, are medical measures predicting whether a person is healthy or at risk of disease.

Biological markers help early diagnoses and treatment of conditions associated with ageing, cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s and other chronic illnesses.

A research team studied 177,723 UK adults using biomarkers to find out the impact of diet on health.

Subjects in this study were classified as meat-eaters or vegetarians who didn’t eat fish, red meat, and poultry.

Participants’ blood and urine samples were checked for 19 clinical biomarkers related to cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, liver and kidney disease, bone and joint health.

The results showed that levels of 13 biomarkers were notably lower in vegetarians than meat-eaters even when factors such as obesity, alcohol consumption, smoking, ethnicity, age, and sex were considered.

The biomarkers were:

• Insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1 linked to increased risk of developing cancer),
• apolipoprotein A and B (large proteins associated with cardiovascular disease),
• total cholesterol,
• LDL (bad) cholesterol,
• the liver and kidney function markers such as alanine aminotransferase (AST) and gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT), creatinine, and urate.

The results were not all good for vegetarians, who had:

• lower HDL (the ‘good’ cholesterol),
• lower levels of calcium and vitamin D (increased risk of joint, bone, and muscle pain),
• higher concentration of triglycerides (fat),
• and elevated levels of cystatin C (linked to kidney dysfunction).

Dr Carlos Celis-Morales, the study’s lead author, said:

“Our findings offer real food for thought.

As well as not eating red and processed meat which have been linked to heart diseases and some cancers, people who follow a vegetarian diet tend to consume more vegetables, fruits, and nuts which contain more nutrients, fibre, and other potentially beneficial compounds.

These nutritional differences may help explain why vegetarians appear to have lower levels of disease biomarkers that can lead to cell damage and chronic disease.”

The study was presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO), May 2021.

Foods rich in this vitamin will improve muscle mass and prevent age-related muscle loss.

People with the best muscle mass tend to get lots of vitamin C, a study reveals.

Vitamin C is found in vegetables like red bell pepper and broccoli, citrus fruits including oranges, berries, cantaloupe, melon, and kiwi.

Vitamin C is crucial for building muscle and maintaining it as we get older, particularly over the age of 50.

Losing skeletal muscle mass is typical in older people which often results in a condition called sarcopenia.

Sarcopenia or muscles wasting can even effect persons in their 30s and those who have an inactive life.

The symptoms are decline in muscle size and function, weakness, difficulty with movement, poor balance, and so poor quality of life.

Professor Ailsa Welch, the study’s lead author, said:

“As people age, they lose skeletal muscle mass and strength.

People over 50 lose up to one percent of their skeletal muscle mass each year, and this loss is thought to affect more than 50 million people worldwide.

It’s a big problem, because it can lead to frailty and other poor outcomes such as sarcopenia, physical disability, type-2 diabetes, reduced quality of life and death.

We know that Vitamin C consumption is linked with skeletal muscle mass.

It helps defend the cells and tissues that make up the body from potentially harmful free radical substances.

Unopposed these free radicals can contribute to the destruction of muscle, thus speeding up age-related decline.

But until now, few studies have investigated the importance of Vitamin C intake for older people.

We wanted to find out whether people eating more Vitamin C had more muscle mass than other people.”

Researchers analysed data on 13,000 adult aged between 42 and 82 who participated in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study.

Along with calculating the participants’ skeletal muscle mass, their blood vitamin C levels were tested and their vitamin C intake was estimated using a seven-day food record.

Dr Richard Hayhoe, study co-author, said:

“We studied a large sample of older Norfolk residents and found that people with the highest amounts of vitamin C in their diet or blood had the greatest estimated skeletal muscle mass, compared to those with the lowest amounts.

We are very excited by our findings as they suggest that dietary vitamin C is important for muscle health in older men and women and may be useful for preventing age-related muscle loss.

This is particularly significant as Vitamin C is readily available in fruits and vegetables, or supplements, so improving intake of this vitamin is relatively straightforward.

We found that nearly 60 percent of men and 50 percent of women participants were not consuming as much Vitamin C as they should, according to the European Food Safety Agency recommendations.

We’re not talking about people needing mega-doses.

Eating a citrus fruit, such as an orange, each day and having a vegetable side to a meal will be sufficient for most people.”

The study was published in Journal of Nutrition (Lewis et al., 2020).

One way of brewing coffee increases the chance of heart attacks while another leads to longevity.

Methods for brewing coffee can strongly influence the risk of heart disease and life expectancy.

According to scientists, the healthiest way to make a coffee is a filtered brew because it lowers the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and heart attacks.

Unlike filtered coffee, an unfiltered brew is linked to more heart attacks and death from heart disease.

Professor Dag S. Thelle, study co-author, said:

“Our study provides strong and convincing evidence of a link between coffee brewing methods, heart attacks and longevity.

Unfiltered coffee contains substances which increase blood cholesterol.

Using a filter removes these and makes heart attacks and premature death less likely.”

Coffee is not only a popular drink but also the most commonly used stimulant and most likely the safest one.

Professor Thelle, through his work 30 years ago, found that coffee consumption elevates levels of total cholesterol and the “bad” cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein) in such a way that can damage the heart.

With more research, Professor Thelle and colleagues detected substances such as diterpenes kahweol and cafestol in coffee, that are responsible for the damage but can be removed by a filter.

In contrast to filtered coffee, a cup of unfiltered coffee has a 30 times higher amount of lipid-raising diterpenes kahweol and cafestol.

Professor Thelle siad:

“We wondered whether this effect on cholesterol would result in more heart attacks and death from heart disease.

But it was unethical to do a trial randomising people to drink coffee or not.

So we set up a large population study and several decades later we are reporting the results.”

They enrolled more than half a million healthy Norwegian adults from 1985 to 2003.

Their data show that drinking coffee was generally a safe habit and actually a filtered brew was healthier compared to not having coffee.

Drinking filtered coffee was associated with a decreased risk of death from any cause by 15 percent.

It also reduced the risk of dying from heart disease by 20 percent in women and 12 percent in men.

The lowest death rate was observed amongst participants who had 1 to 4 cups of filtered coffee daily.

Unfiltered coffee was linked to an increased risk of death from heart disease, heart attacks, and any cause compared to filtered brew.

Professor Thelle said:

“Our analysis shows that this was partly because of the cholesterol-increasing effect of unfiltered coffee.

For people who know they have high cholesterol levels and want to do something about it, stay away from unfiltered brew, including coffee made with a cafetière.

For everyone else, drink your coffee with a clear conscience and go for filtered.”

The study was published in European Journal of Preventive Cardiology (Tverdal et al., 2020).