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A Sunny Workout is Best for Your Heart
Want to get fit? Check your vitamin D levels. Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) may well be linked to serum vitamin D levels. A study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology (October 30, 2018), looked at data from nearly 2,000 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Survey. Subjects were between the ages of 20…
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Deeper Dive into the Gut-Brain Connection
In an 1817 study on Parkinson’s disease (PD), James Parkinson noted that many of the patients with PD had gastrointestinal issues, and that up to 80% of these patients suffered from constipation. Even 200 years ago, we knew about the gut-brain connection. Currently, the literature demonstrates that the microbiome does, in fact, affect the function…
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Can Chocolate Help with Oxidative Stress?
Can eating chocolate or drinking wine, coffee or tea play a role in keeping us young? According to a team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Ivana Ivanovi-Burmazovi from the Chair of Bioinorganic Chemistry at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), together with researchers from the USA, compounds within these foodstuffs can activate with zinc to protect against…
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Probiotics May Improve Metabolic Profiles
Most people generally associate probiotics with fostering the growth of good bacteria in the gut, however, more and more clinical studies are highlighting the role of probiotics beyond the gut. One randomized, placebo controlled, double-blind study looked at the effects of probiotic supplementation on the metabolic profiles in diabetic patients with coronary heart disease (CHD).…
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Mineral-Rich Diet Beats Exercise for Bone Health
Exercise has always been highly recommended for maintaining bone mass and strength as we age, but there could be more to this story. A recent mouse study at the University of Michigan has demonstrated that a mineral-supplemented diet (high in calcium and phosphorous) had an even greater impact on bone density than exercise. The groups…
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Effects of Sleep Loss on Weight Gain
For a number of reasons, sleep loss has been associated with weight gain whether it’s because of an increase in appetite due to hormonal imbalances or craving sugar-laden products to stay awake. Few studies, however, have focused on underlying tissue-specific molecular responses to acute sleep loss. In a recent study, adipose and skeletal tissues were…
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SNPs Involved in Manganese Deficiency
According to a new study, scoliosis, a curvature of the spine, may be linked to the body’s inability to utilize manganese. In this exome-wide association study of 457 severe adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) cases and 987 controls, they observed “a missense SNP in SLC39A8 (p.Ala391Thr, rs13107325) associated with severe AIS (P = 1.60 × 10−7,…
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Berberine and Blood Sugar
Berberine has become synonymous with supporting the maintenance of healthy blood sugar levels, as well as having benefits for the gut, brain and heart. A recent article delves into the biological mechanisms of this botanical to confirm its influence on blood sugar. Although not fully understood, the pathogenesis of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) seems…
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BPA Disrupts Insulin Response
In a previous blog, we discussed the mechanisms by which Bisphenol A (BPA), a compound used to make polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins, induces undesirable weight gain. By disrupting the entire adipocyte metabolism and inducing a pro-inflammatory state, BPA is considered an “obesegen”.
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The Vagus Nerve Links to Reward Circuitry
The vagus nerve continues to make news as a significant player in the gut-brain connection. Once considered a nerve that primarily mediates suppressive functions such as fullness and nausea, recent research conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine (and published September 20 in the journal Cell) has established the vagus nerve as an essential component…