Is Meat Unhealthy? Part III

When we consider the health impacts of eating meat, cardiovascular disease is the first thing that comes to mind.  Popular diet advocates often hold diametrically opposed views on the role of meat in cardiovascular disease.  Even among researchers and public health officials, opinions vary.  In this post, I'll do my best to sort through the literature and determine what the weight of the evidence suggests.

Ancel Keys and the Seven Countries Study

Ancel Keys was one of the first researchers to contribute substantially to the study of the link between diet and cardiovascular disease.  Sadly, there is a lot of low-quality information circulating about Ancel Keys and his research (1).  The truth is that Keys was a pioneering researcher who conducted some of the most impressive nutritional science of his time.  The military "K ration" was designed by Keys, much of what we know about the physiology of starvation comes from his detailed studies during World War II, and he was the original Mediterranean Diet researcher.  Science marches on, and not all discoveries are buttressed by additional research, but Keys' work was among the best of his day and must be taken seriously.

One of Keys' earliest contributions to the study of diet and cardiovascular disease appeared in an obscure 1953 paper titled "Atherosclerosis: A Problem in Newer Public Health" (2).  This paper is worth reading if you get a chance (freely available online if you poke around a bit).  He presents a number of different arguments and supporting data, most of which are widely accepted today, but one graph in particular has remained controversial.  This graph shows the association between total fat intake and heart disease mortality in six countries.  Keys collected the data from publicly available databases on global health and diet:

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Five New Health Concerns for Americans

There are urgent new health concerns for Americans and some of them may surprise you. Whether it is Ebola, Obamacare, the FDA tightening restrictions on natural remedies, or the domination of the pharmaceutical companies—-these new health concerns should be on your radar.

Obamacare

Obamacare should concern you. The health insurance system that underpins the entire American healthcare system has shifted enormously. Hospitals, clinics, and physicians are all trying to learn the many new rules and policies that have come online in a very short time. It does not matter if you love Obamacare or hate it, it is new and all new things cause some problems when they first crank up. Let’s look at it this way. Obamacare has added over 10 million newly insured people to the healthcare system but it has made no provisions to add a single new doctor or hospital. Those 10 million people are going to go somewhere …

Medical Privacy

HIPAA will start to worry you soon, if it has not already. Medical privacy got thrown out the window in one day when Ebola hit. But even before Ebola, there was another threat on your privacy. A not-too-much-talked-about provision of Obamacare requires all hospitals to make their records electronic. Sounds reasonable. Until you realize how vulnerable electronic records are to compromise. Think identity theft is scary? Your medical privacy is about as secure as your credit card now.

Ebola

Ebola has to concern you. The ebola virus (actually there are several) is actually not all that robust and not
extremely contagious; believe it or not, it can be contained using currently available techniques and
technology. The threat to us is the fact that these best-available techniques and technologies are not being practiced.
The Ebola crisis in poor and underdeveloped African nations is a tragedy; the Ebola crisis in the US is a story of incompetence that has to make you wonder. The same people who thought that you could care for an ebola patient with exposed skin around your neck are the people who are making other healthcare decisions for you!

FDA

The FDA and natural health ought to concern you. For many reasons, the FDA and natural health do not get along. The two systems are not so much flawed individually as they are antagonistic. The FDA is set up to regulate big medicine, meaning it is geared to work with large pharmaceutical companies that can shell out millions of dollars for drug development and approval because they can patent their products and recoup their investment. Natural health relies on natural things, which cannot be patented, so there is no financial incentive (or ability) to spend millions of dollars to gain approval for treatments that are already available. The FDA is set up for modern medicine, which treats sickness. Natural health tends to emphasize wellness. Look for more clashes until these two important entities figure out they’re not talking the same language.

Weight loss surgery 'highly effective for preventing type 2 diabetes'

OBesity is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes, which is accountable for around 90-95% of diabetes cases in the US. But a new study claims that for obese individuals, weight loss surgery may dramatically reduce this risk.The research team, including Prof. Martin Gulliford of King's College London in the UK, publish their findings in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

Past studies have indicated that weight loss surgery, or bariatric surgery, may be an effective strategy to treat type 2 diabetes in obese patients. But Prof. Gulliford and colleagues note there have been very few studies looking at whether weight loss surgery can prevent the development ofdiabetes in obese patients. For their study, the team wanted to find out.

They analyzed health records from
the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink and identified 2,167 obese adults without diabetes who had undergone one of three surgical procedures: gastric bypass, gastric banding or sleeve
gastrectomy.

Gastric bypass, which involves redirecting the digestive system past the stomach, is the most common weight loss procedure. Gastric banding involves having an inflatable band placed around the top portion of the stomach, creating a smaller stomach, while sleeve gastrectomy involves removal of around 80% of the stomach.

To act as controls, the team also identified 2,167 obese individuals - matched for age, sex, body mass index (BMI) and blood sugar levels - who had not undergone weight loss surgery or had any other obesity-related treatments. Participants were followed for up to 7 years.

Weight loss surgery reduced type 2 diabetes risk by 80%

The researchers found that 177 of the control participants developed type 2 diabetes during follow-up, compared with only 38 participants who had undergone weight loss surgery.

The team calculated that even after accounting for other factors that influence diabetes among obese individuals - such as smoking, hypertension and high cholesterol - weight loss surgery reduced participants' risk of type 2 diabetes by 80%.

Commenting on these findings, Prof. Gulliford says: 

"Our results suggest that bariatric surgery may be a highly effective method of preventing the onset of new diabetes in men and women with severe obesity.

We need to understand how weight loss surgery can be used, together with interventions to increase physical activity and promote healthy eating, as part of an overall diabetes prevention strategy."

The researchers point out that there are some limitations to their study. For example, they did not include patients who had undergone less common weight loss procedures, such as duodenal switch - surgery that combines gastric bypass and creation of a smaller stomach pouch. Therefore, it is unclear how such procedures would affect type 2 diabetes risk in obese patients.

Furthermore, the team says that patients who underwent weight loss surgery may have been more adherent to diabetes prevention advice - such as adopting a healthy diet and exercise - than control patients. "However," they add, "we noted that people who received surgery were more likely to be prescribed antihypertensive drugs or statins, which can sometimes be associated with diabetes."

In an editorial linked to the study, Dr. Jacques Himpens, of Saint Pierre University Hospital in Belgium, says that the findings from Prof. Gulliford and colleagues bring us closer to understanding the effects of bariatric surgery for prevention of type 2 diabetes. However, she notes that "many questions remain unanswered."

"More evidence is needed to convince endocrinologists about the nature of this effect," she adds.

In February of this year, Medical News Today reported on a study revealing that although most women who undergo weight loss surgery say they do not regret having the procedure, many of them feel it causes emotional problems.

Written by Honor Whiteman

What kinds of exercise can boost long-term memory?

Think that improving your memory is all brain training and omega-3 supplements? Think again. A new study from researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta suggests that working out at the gym for as little as 20 minutes can improve long-term memory.

Previous studies have shown that memory may be improved by several months of aerobic exercises, such as running, cycling or swimming. However, the findings of the new study - published in the journal Acta Psychologica - demonstrate that a similar memory boost can be achieved in a much shorter period.

"Our study indicates that people don't have to dedicate large amounts of time to give their brain a
boost," says Lisa Weinberg, the Georgia Tech graduate student who led the project.

As well as looking at aerobic exercise, Weinberg's team also examined how resistance exercise - weightlifting, push-ups and sit-ups - might affect memory.

The team recruited 46 participants (29 women and 17 men), who were randomly assigned into two groups. For the first part of the experiment, all participants viewed a series of 90 images on a computer screen.

These images were split evenly been photographs that had been classed "positive," "neutral," and "negative." These ranged from pictures of children playing on a waterslide, to photographs of clocks, to images of mutilated bodies. The participants were asked to try and remember as many of them as they could.

Next, the participants were randomized into "active" and "passive" groups and seated at leg extension resistance exercise machines.

The active group were told to extend and contract each leg 50 times, at their personal maximum effort. The passive group were told to simply sit in the chair and allow the machine to move their legs.

The blood pressure and heart rate of the participants were monitored, and saliva samples were collected.

'Active' group showed improved recall of images

Two days later, the participants were again shown the original 90 images they had seen previously, but this time they were mixed in with 90 new photos that the participants had not seen before.

The researchers found about 50% of the original photos were recalled by the passive group, while the active group remembered about 60% of the images.

All of the participants were better at recalling the positive and negative images than the neutral images, but this was even more true for the active participants. The researchers suggest that this is because people are more likely to remember emotional experiences following short-term stress.

The team believes their results are consistent with previous research in a rodent model that found stress responses result in releases of norepinephrine - a hormone that may improve memory.

Analyzing the saliva from the participants, the team found that the active group showed increased levels of alpha amylase in their saliva - a marker of norepinephrine.

Audrey Duarte, an associate professor in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech, describes the results:

"Even without doing expensive fMRI scans, our results give us an idea of what areas of the brain might be supporting these exercise-induced memory benefits. The findings are encouraging because they are consistent with rodent literature that pinpoints exactly the parts of the brain that play a role in stress-induced memory benefits caused by exercise."