Weight loss and health improvements with Mediterranean, fasting & Paleo diets

There were some weight loss and health benefits for overweight adults who followed the Mediterranean, Intermittent Fasting and Paleo diets, though adherence to the diets dropped off considerably during the one-year study, new University of Otago research shows.

Intermittent fasting -- whereby participants limit their energy intake to about 25 per cent of their usual diet (500kcal for women and 600kcal for men) on two self-selected days per week, led to slightly more weight loss than the other diets. The Mediterranean diet also improved blood sugar levels.

Co-lead author Dr Melyssa Roy, a Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine, says the amount of weight loss was modest -- on average two to four kilograms for the 250 participants, but for those choosing the fasting or Mediterranean diets, clinically significant improvements in blood pressure were also seen.

The aim of the research was to examine how effective all three diets were in a "real world" setting, where participants self-selected which diet they wished to follow, without any ongoing support from a dietitian.

Dr Roy says the evidence shows that for some people the Mediterranean, fasting or paleo (Paleolithic) diets can be "healthful, beneficial ways to eat."

"This work supports the idea that there isn't a single 'right' diet -- there are a range of options that may suit different people and be effective. In this study, people were given dietary guidelines at the start and then continued with their diets in the real world while living normally. About half of the participants were still following their diets after a year and had experienced improvements in markers of health.

"Like the Mediterranean diet, intermittent fasting and paleo diets can also be valid healthy eating approaches -- the best diet is the one that includes healthy foods and suits the individual."

The Mediterranean diet encouraged consumption of fruit, vegetables, whole-grain breads and cereals, legumes, nuts, seeds and olive oil with moderate amounts of fish, chicken, eggs and diary and red meat once a week or less.

The paleo diet consists of mostly less-processed foods with an emphasis on eating fruit and vegetables, animal proteins, nuts, coconut products and extra-virgin olive oil. While "original" Paleo diets strictly exclude all legumes, dairy and grains, this study used a modified version including some dairy as well as up to one serving daily of legumes and grain-based food.

Co-lead author Dr Michelle Jospe, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Medicine, says the results showed people found the Mediterranean diet to be the easiest to adhere to.

"Our participants could follow the diet's guidelines more closely than the fasting and paleo diets and were more likely to stay with it after the year, as our retention rates showed."

Most of the 250 participants (54 per cent) chose the fasting diet, while 27 per cent chose the Mediterranean and 18 per cent the paleo. After 12 months, the Mediterranean diet had the best retention rate with 57 per cent of participants continuing, with 54 per cent still fasting and 35 per cent still on the paleo diet.

After 12 months, the average weight loss was 4.0kg for those choosing the fasting diet, 2.8kg on the Mediterranean diet and 1.8kg on the paleo diet.

Reduced systolic blood pressure was observed among those participating in the fasting and Mediterranean diets, together with reduced blood sugar levels in the Mediterranean diet.

Dr Jospe explains participants who said they were still following their diet at 12 months lost even more weight, showing the importance of choosing a diet that is sustainable.

She believes the results of this study are relevant to the thousands of people following self-chosen diets with little supervision and indicates more realistic outcomes.

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Materials provided by University of Otago. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Dramatic health benefits following air pollution reduction

Dramatic health benefits following air pollution reduction

Reductions in air pollution yielded fast and dramatic impacts on health-outcomes, as well as decreases in all-cause morbidity, according to findings in "Health Benefits of Air Pollution Reduction," new research published in the American Thoracic Society's journal, Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

The study by the Environmental Committee of the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS) reviewed interventions that have reduced air pollution at its source. It looked for outcomes and time to achieve those outcomes in several settings, finding that the improvements in health were striking. Starting at week one of a ban on smoking in Ireland, for example, there was a 13 percent drop in all-cause mortality, a 26 percent reduction in ischemic heart disease, a 32 percent reduction in stroke, and a 38 percent reduction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Interestingly, the greatest benefits in that case occurred among non-smokers.

"We knew there were benefits from pollution control, but the magnitude and relatively short time duration to accomplish them were impressive," said lead author of the report, Dean Schraufnagel, MD, ATSF. "Our findings indicate almost immediate and substantial effects on health outcomes followed reduced exposure to air pollution. It's critical that governments adopt and enforce WHO guidelines for air pollution immediately."

In the United States, a 13-month closure of a steel mill in Utah resulted in reducing hospitalizations for pneumonia, pleurisy, bronchitis and asthma by half. School absenteeism decreased by 40 percent, and daily mortality fell by 16 percent for every 100 ?g/m3 PM10 (a pollutant) decrease. Women who were pregnant during the mill closing were less likely to have premature births.

A 17-day "transportation strategy," in Atlanta, Georgia during the 1996 Olympic Games involved closing parts of the city to help athletes make it to their events on time, but also greatly decreased air pollution. In the following four weeks, children's visits for asthma to clinics dropped by more than 40 percent and trips to emergency departments by 11 percent. Hospitalizations for asthma decreased by 19 percent. Similarly, when China imposed factory and travel restrictions for the Beijing Olympics, lung function improved within two months, with fewer asthma-related physician visits and less cardiovascular mortality.

In addition to city-wide polices, reducing air pollution within the home also led to health benefits. In Nigeria, families who had clean cook stoves that reduced indoor air pollution during a nine-month pregnancy term saw higher birthweights, greater gestational age at delivery, and less perinatal mortality.

The report also examines the impact of environmental policies economically. It highlights that 25 years after enactment of the Clean Air Act, the U.S. EPA estimated that the health benefits exceeded the cost by 32:1, saving 2 trillion dollars, and has been heralded as one of the most effective public health policies of all time in the United States. Emissions of the major pollutants (particulate matter [PM], sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, and lead) were reduced by 73 percent between 1990 and 2015 while the U.S. gross domestic product grew by more than 250 percent.

Given these findings, Dr. Schraufnagel has hope. "Air pollution is largely an avoidable health risk that affects everyone. Urban growth, expanding industrialization, global warming, and new knowledge of the harm of air pollution raise the degree of urgency for pollution control and stress the consequences of inaction," he says. "Fortunately, reducing air pollution can result in prompt and substantial health gains. Sweeping policies affecting a whole country can reduce all-cause mortality within weeks. Local programs, such as reducing traffic, have also promptly improved many health measures."

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Materials provided by American Thoracic Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Drinking tea improves brain health, study suggests

Lady holding a cup of Tea.

A recent study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) revealed that regular tea drinkers have better organised brain regions -- and this is associated with healthy cognitive function -- compared to non-tea drinkers. The research team made this discovery after examining neuroimaging data of 36 older adults.

"Our results offer the first evidence of positive contribution of tea drinking to brain structure, and suggest that drinking tea regularly has a protective effect against age-related decline in brain organisation," explained team leader Assistant Professor Feng Lei, who is from the Department of Psychological Medicine at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

The research was carried out together with collaborators from the University of Essex and University of Cambridge, and the findings were published in scientific journal Aging on 14 June 2019.

Benefits of regular intake of tea

Past studies have demonstrated that tea intake is beneficial to human health, and the positive effects include mood improvement and cardiovascular disease prevention. In fact, results of a longitudinal study led by Asst Prof Feng which was published in 2017 showed that daily consumption of tea can reduce the risk of cognitive decline in older persons by 50 per cent.

Following this discovery, Asst Prof Feng and his team further explored the direct effect of tea on brain networks.

The research team recruited 36 adults aged 60 and above, and gathered data about their health, lifestyle, and psychological well-being. The elderly participants also had to undergo neuropsychological tests and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The study was carried out from 2015 to 2018.

Upon analysing the participants' cognitive performance and imaging results, the research team found that individuals who consumed either green tea, oolong tea, or black tea at least four times a week for about 25 years had brain regions that were interconnected in a more efficient way.

"Take the analogy of road traffic as an example -- consider brain regions as destinations, while the connections between brain regions are roads. When a road system is better organised, the movement of vehicles and passengers is more efficient and uses less resources. Similarly, when the connections between brain regions are more structured, information processing can be performed more efficiently," explained Asst Prof Feng.

He added, "We have shown in our previous studies that tea drinkers had better cognitive function as compared to non-tea drinkers. Our current results relating to brain network indirectly support our previous findings by showing that the positive effects of regular tea drinking are the result of improved brain organisation brought about by preventing disruption to interregional connections."

Next step in research

As cognitive performance and brain organisation are intricately related, more research is needed to better understand how functions like memory emerge from brain circuits, and the possible interventions to better preserve cognition during the ageing process. Asst Prof Feng and his team plan to examine the effects of tea as well as the bioactive compounds in tea can have on cognitive decline.

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Materials provided by National University of Singapore. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Drinking tea improves brain health, study suggests

A cup of Tea

A recent study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) revealed that regular tea drinkers have better organised brain regions -- and this is associated with healthy cognitive function -- compared to non-tea drinkers. The research team made this discovery after examining neuroimaging data of 36 older adults.

"Our results offer the first evidence of positive contribution of tea drinking to brain structure, and suggest that drinking tea regularly has a protective effect against age-related decline in brain organisation," explained team leader Assistant Professor Feng Lei, who is from the Department of Psychological Medicine at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

The research was carried out together with collaborators from the University of Essex and University of Cambridge, and the findings were published in scientific journal Aging on 14 June 2019.

Benefits of regular intake of tea

Past studies have demonstrated that tea intake is beneficial to human health, and the positive effects include mood improvement and cardiovascular disease prevention. In fact, results of a longitudinal study led by Asst Prof Feng which was published in 2017 showed that daily consumption of tea can reduce the risk of cognitive decline in older persons by 50 per cent.

Following this discovery, Asst Prof Feng and his team further explored the direct effect of tea on brain networks.

The research team recruited 36 adults aged 60 and above, and gathered data about their health, lifestyle, and psychological well-being. The elderly participants also had to undergo neuropsychological tests and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The study was carried out from 2015 to 2018.

Upon analysing the participants' cognitive performance and imaging results, the research team found that individuals who consumed either green tea, oolong tea, or black tea at least four times a week for about 25 years had brain regions that were interconnected in a more efficient way.

"Take the analogy of road traffic as an example -- consider brain regions as destinations, while the connections between brain regions are roads. When a road system is better organised, the movement of vehicles and passengers is more efficient and uses less resources. Similarly, when the connections between brain regions are more structured, information processing can be performed more efficiently," explained Asst Prof Feng.

He added, "We have shown in our previous studies that tea drinkers had better cognitive function as compared to non-tea drinkers. Our current results relating to brain network indirectly support our previous findings by showing that the positive effects of regular tea drinking are the result of improved brain organisation brought about by preventing disruption to interregional connections."

Next step in research

As cognitive performance and brain organisation are intricately related, more research is needed to better understand how functions like memory emerge from brain circuits, and the possible interventions to better preserve cognition during the ageing process. Asst Prof Feng and his team plan to examine the effects of tea as well as the bioactive compounds in tea can have on cognitive decline.

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Materials provided by National University of Singapore. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

New findings could lead to improved vaccinations against sexually transmitted infections

In a study published today in the Nature Communications, researchers from King's College London have shown how skin vaccination can generate protective CD8 T-cells that are recruited to the genital tissues and could be used as a vaccination strategy for sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

One of the challenges in developing vaccines for STIs, such as HIV or herpes simplex virus, is understanding how to attract specialised immune cells, called CD8 T-cells, to take up residence in the part of the body where the virus first enters. These cells need to be in place, armed and ready to provide an immediate protective immune defence, rather than waiting for immune cells in the blood to enter the tissues which takes time.

Before this study, it was thought that vaccines ideally needed to be delivered directly to the body surface (e.g. female genital tissue) where the infection might start, so that the immune system can generate these CD8 T-cells, travel back to the vaccination site and eliminate any future virus that is encountered. However, delivering vaccines directly to the female genital tissue is neither patient friendly nor efficient.

Now the team from King's have found that their vaccination strategy marshals a platoon of immune cells, called innate lymphoid cells (ILC1) and monocytes, in the genital tissues to work together and release chemicals (chemokines) to send out a call to the CD8 T-cells generated by the vaccine to troop into the genital tissue.

This research builds on the team's earlier work to develop skin vaccination techniques using a dissolvable 'microneedle' vaccine patch that once placed against the skin dissolves and releases the vaccine without requiring a hypodermic needle injection and generates immune responses.

Lead author, Professor Linda Klavinskis from King's College London said: "This study highlights how specialised groups of 'innate' immune cells in distant tissues can be harnessed to attract protective CD8 T-cells, arming the body's frontline tissues from infection.

"We now need to confirm these results with other types of vaccines from the one used in the study to see if a common pathway is triggered by skin vaccination. If proven, this could have a significant impact in improving the effectiveness of vaccines against sexually transmitted infections."

Hypothalamus very important region.

Yea Hypothalamus very important region.

The hypothalamus is a small region of 
the brain. It's located at the base of the 
brain, near the pituitary gland. While it's 
very small, the hypothalamus plays a 
crucial role in many important functions, 
including: releasing hormones. regulating 
body temperature.

Saffron, Kesar.

Ever knew from where Kesar is extracted from?

- The saffron flower is composed of 6 purple petals, 3 golden yellow stamens and one red pistil. It is this famous pistil made up of 3 stigmas (filaments) which when dried up gives the spice saffron.

Now, another question is how saffron is grown?

- When you plant your saffron crocus bulbs, place them in the ground at about 3 to 5 inches deep and at least 6 inches apart. About 50 to 60 saffron flowers will produce about 1 tablespoon of saffron spice, so keep this in mind when figuring how many to plant.