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Research at Nottingham Trent University investigated the role of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) a molecule which is present in people's diets and produced by the body during digestion of fish. As foods containing TMAO are ingested, the molecule is broken down by bacteria in the gut. The breakdown product is taken up into the bloodstream and converted back to TMAO, which interacts with organs throughout the body. Importantly, the brain's circulatory and vascular system is exposed to TMAO, which interacts directly with the 'blood-brain barrier." This barrier works to prevent potentially harmful toxins in the body from reaching the brain. As...

This shows lewy bodies. Brown spots are immunostaining using an antibody specifically recognizing an abnormal form of alpha-synuclein. Clumps of α-synuclein protein in nerve cells are hallmarks of many degenerative brain diseases, most notably Parkinson's disease. "No one has been able to determine if Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites, hallmark pathologies in Parkinson's disease can be degraded," says Virginia Lee, PhD, director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. "With the new neuron model system of Parkinson's disease pathologies our lab has developed recently, we demonstrated that these aberrant clumps in...

Scientists have shown that feeding a simple polyamine called spermidine to worms, fruit flies and yeast significantly prolongs their lifespan. In addition, adding spermidine to the diet of mice decreased molecular markers of ageing, and when human immune cells were cultured in a medium containing spermidine, they also lived for longer.Spermidine - a simple linear molecule found in large quantities in human sperm and grapefruit - is known to be necessary for cell growth and maturation, and as cells age their level of spermidine is know to fall. Now, Frank Madeo from the University of Graz in Austria and his colleagues have shown...

With more than 10% of the world's population obese and 40% overweight, obesity constitutes one of the most crucial health challenges. However, existing therapeutic options remain scarce and poorly efficient. Few years ago, scientists discovered that the absorptive surface and function of the gut change due to certain external stimuli, such as exposure to cold. Increasing the food amount elevates the intestinal absorptive surface and function. Mechanistically, this is due to the enhanced expression of PPARα, a regulating protein necessary for the overeating-induced increase in the capacity of the gut to absorb calories. Furthermore, if high amounts of food increase...

Prevailing theories posit plaques in the brain cause Alzheimer's disease. New UC Riverside research instead points to cells' slowing ability to clean themselves as the likely cause of unhealthy brain buildup. Along with signs of dementia, doctors make a definitive Alzheimer's diagnosis if they find a combination of two things in the brain: amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. The plaques are a buildup of amyloid peptides, and the tangles are mostly made of a protein called tau. "Roughly 20% of people have the plaques, but no signs of dementia," said UCR Chemistry Professor Ryan Julian. "This makes it seem as...

Weight loss surgery significantly lowers the risk of major adverse liver outcomes as well as major acute cardiovascular events (MACE) in patients with biopsy-proven nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), compared with similar patients who didn't have surgery, new research shows. "This is the first study in the medical field reporting a treatment modality that is associated with decreased risk of major adverse events in patients with biopsy-proven NASH," senior author Steven Nissen, MD. As the authors point out, obesity is the main pathophysiologic driver of NASH and weight loss — however achieved — is currently the primary treatment for NASH. "However, bariatric...

Intermittent fasting may not only be a hot dieting trend, but it also has broader health benefits, including helping to fight inflammation, according to a new study. Previous research has shown that intermittent fasting, an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating, may improve health markers not related to weight. Now, the new research shows that intermittent fasting raises the levels of galectin-3, a protein tied to inflammatory response. "Inflammation is associated with higher risk of developing multiple chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. We're encouraged to see evidence that intermittent fasting is prompting the body...

Intermittent fasting is the new health trend that is slowly but steadily encroaching on the number 1 spot. It promises weight loss, improves metabolism and reverses many lifestyle-related diseases. Now a new study review led by University of Illinois Chicago researchers says that intermittent fasting can produce clinically significant weight loss as well as improve metabolic health in individuals with obesity. The findings of the study were published in the journal Annual Review of Nutrition. "We noted that intermittent fasting is not better than regular dieting; both produce the same amount of weight loss and similar changes in blood pressure,...

Maybe you’ve tried intermittent fasting (IF) to shed a few (pandemic!) pounds, since the hope and potential for weight loss is what this eating plan is best known for. And yes, scientists are looking into whether or not it really is effective at helping people slim down. But some studies show that IF—in which you only eat during a specified time period—may have other possible long-term health benefits as well. “The goal with IF is improving metabolic health, reducing the risk of certain conditions such as diabetes, and increasing longevity,” says Laura Kelly, C.N.S., L.D.N., an advanced genomic nutritionist at...

In a new USC study on the health effects of a low-calorie diet that mimics fasting in the body, researchers found regular five-day cycles of the diet in mice seemed to counteract the detrimental effects of their usual high-fat, high-calorie diet. The findings point to the potential of using a fasting-mimicking diet as "medicine," according to the researchers. A fasting-mimicking diet, or FMD, is a low-calorie diet that "tricks" the body into a fasting state. One group of mice ate a high-calorie, high-fat diet (with 60% of their calories from fat) and became unhealthy and overweight. A second group of...

Intermittent fasting and time-restricted feeding in general limit food, but not overall caloric intake, to specific hours of the day. (In contrast, dietary restriction, which also has been shown to increase longevity, reduces caloric intake.) "Because intermittent fasting restricts the timing of eating, it's been hypothesized that natural biological clocks play a role," says Mimi Shirasu-Hiza, Ph.D. The researchers put their flies on one of four different schedules: 24-hour unrestricted access to food, 12-hour daytime access to food, 24-hour fasting following by 24-hour unrestricted feeding, or what the researchers called intermittent time-restricted fasting or iTRF (20 hours of fasting followed...

Eating your daily calories within a consistent window of 8-10 hours is a powerful strategy to prevent and manage chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, according to a new manuscript published in the Endocrine Society's journal, Endocrine Reviews. Time-restricted eating is a type of intermittent fasting that limits your food intake to a certain number of hours each day. Intermittent fasting is one of the most popular diet trends, and people are using it to lose weight, improve their health and simplify their lifestyles. "People who are trying to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle should pay...

…19TH CENTURY: DIETS AND DIABETIC DOGS Diet became the rage around 1800 after John Rollo confirmed the existence of excess blood sugar in people with diabetes, concluding that low-carb, high-protein diets worked best. Seventy years later, French physician Appolinaire Bouchardat discovered during a food shortage that starvation worked well for his patients. By the 1880s, periodic fasting and starvation were the norm. German medical student Paul Langerhans first identified islet cells in the pancreas in 1869. In 1889, Josef von Mering and Oskar Minkowski removed the pancreas of a dog and voilà! — instant diabetes. Scottish endocrinologist Edward Sharpey-Shafer made...

An intermittent fasting diet could help protect older people from falls and other injuries by building up their muscles, a study has discovered. Intermittent fasting, also known as time-restricted eating, could also be a cost-efficient intervention to prevent type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and liver cancer, a team from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California says. Fasting for a longer period could also better protect against infectious diseases like COVID-19 and even save people from dying of sepsis. Intermittent fasting is a dietary regimen that’s growing in popularity. The diet holds people to eating between an eight-hour...

Intermittent-fasting diets may help prevent infections in those who practice them, a study published Thursday by the journal PLOS Pathogens found. Mice orally infected with a bacteria responsible for most stomach viruses that were put on a fast for 48 hours before exposure had fewer signs of bacterial infection compared with those that were fed, the researchers said. The mice in the study were infected with Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, which causes gastroenteritis, an infection humans experience as abdominal cramps, diarrhea and vomiting, researchers said. However, when fasted mice were infected with Salmonella intravenously, they did not have similar protection...

Fasting before and during exposure to Salmonella enterica bacteria protects mice from developing a full-blown infection, in part due to changes in the animals' gut microbiomes, according to new research. When people or animals develop an infection, they often lose their appetite. However it remains controversial whether fasting protects a host from infection, or increases their susceptibility. In the new study, mice were fasted for 48 hours before and during oral infection with the bacteria Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, a common cause of foodborne illness in people. Fasting decreased the signs of bacterial infection compared to fed mice, including nearly...

A new University of Kentucky College of Medicine study suggests that time-restricted eating may be able to help people with Type 2 diabetes reduce nocturnal hypertension, which is characterized by elevated blood pressure at night. The study found that imposing time-restricted feeding prevented diabetic mice from developing nondipping blood pressure. The practice also effectively restored the disrupted blood pressure circadian rhythm in mice that already had nondipping blood pressure. Normally, blood pressure falls at night and increases upon awakening, in line with the body's circadian rhythm. In some hypertensive patients, the typical nighttime decrease does not occur. This "nondipping" blood...

At Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. David J. Durgan and his colleagues are dedicated to better understand hypertension, in particular the emerging evidence suggesting that disruption of the gut microbiota, known as gut dysbiosis, can have adverse effects on blood pressure. …”Previous studies from our lab have shown that the composition of the gut microbiota in animal models of hypertension, such as the SHRSP (spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rat) model, is different from that in animals with normal blood pressure," said Durgan, assistant professor of anesthesiology at Baylor. "This result told us that gut dysbiosis is not just a consequence of...

This past spring, after 18 months of great success on the keto diet, I tested my fasting blood sugar on my home glucose monitor for the first time in many months. The result shocked me. I had purchased the device, which also tests ketones, when I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes in the fall of 2015. As I embarked on low-carb keto eating, I tested my blood regularly. Soon my fasting blood sugar was once again in the healthy range. I was in optimal ketosis day after day. Not only that, I lost 10 lbs (5 kg) and felt fantastic —...

Sometimes it seems as if the diet world is nearly as polarized as the political sphere. Especially when it comes to Intermittent Fasting (IF). I wrote a piece about it last year and, almost immediately, saw people sub-tweeting me to complain about promoting an eating disorder in the name of wellness. That’s a pretty stock response to the mere mention of IF in some circles. On the other end of the spectrum are the die-hard devotees of this popular weight-loss plan, which places more emphasis on when people eat than what they eat. Earlier this fall, when Dr. Ethan Weiss,...