The eating disorder charity Beat said the findings were groundbreaking.
Anorexia stems from body as well as mind – study
Reply
Category Archives: Mind Building
Health24.com | Cutting out just 300 calories a day can make a big difference to your health
If you trim out only 300 calories a day – the equivalent of six Oreo cookies – that could be all it takes to cut diabetes and heart disease risk, new research suggests.
In the study, just over 200 adults younger than 50 with a healthy weight or just a few extra kilograms were told to reduce their calorie intake by 25% for two years.
Their ability to achieve that goal varied, and the average calorie reduction in the group was about 12% (300 calories a day).
Even so, they managed a 10% decline in weight, 71% of which was fat.
What did that modest weight loss bring? Significant improvements were seen in already good levels of cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar and other markers of risk for metabolic disease.
The volunteers also had lower levels of a biomarker for chronic inflammation, which has been linked to heart disease, cancer and mental decline.
Small changes
“There’s something about caloric restriction, some mechanism we don’t yet understand that results in these improvements,” said study author Dr William Kraus, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina.
“We have collected blood, muscle and other samples from these participants and will continue to explore what this metabolic signal or magic molecule might be,” he added in a Duke news release.
The findings show “that even a modification that is not as severe as what we used in this study could reduce the burden of diabetes and cardiovascular disease that we have in this country,” Kraus said.
“People can do this fairly easily by simply watching their little indiscretions here and there, or maybe reducing the amount of them, like not snacking after dinner,” he suggested.
The study, published July 11 in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, is part of an ongoing project with the US National Institutes of Health.
Image credit: iStock
Ebola in DR Congo: Case confirmed in Goma
It is the first time Ebola has been diagnosed in Goma, a city of more than a million people.
5G health risks: What’s the evidence?
Exposure from mobile networks including 5G fall well below limits set by international regulators.
Health24.com | Why older women have less sex: It’s not as simple as you think
More than biology is at play when it comes to why older women have less sex as they age.
A number of psychological factors contribute to the drop in libido, a new study claims.
Biological causes
Those factors include body image concerns, self-confidence, perceived desirability, stress, mood changes and relationship issues.
Previous research has focused mostly on biological causes of reduced sexual activity in older women, such as hot flashes, sleep disruption, vaginal dryness and painful intercourse.
This new study included nearly 4 500 postmenopausal women in the United Kingdom enrolled in a trial of ovarian cancer screening.
Before the start of annual screening, about half of the women were sexually active, but there was a decrease in all areas of sexual activity over time. Sexual activity was less frequent, not as pleasurable, and more uncomfortable.
The main reason for no sexual activity was the lack of a partner, mainly due to widowhood, according to the study.
Partner factors
Other commonly reported reasons for decreased sexual activity included: partner’s medical condition; partner’s sexual dysfunction; the woman’s own health problems; menopause-related symptoms, and prescribed medications.
The most commonly reported reasons for low libido were: relationship problems; logistics, and perceptions of ageing. Only 3% of the women in the study described positive sexual experiences, and only 6% sought medical help for sexual problems.
The study was published online in Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS).
“Sexual health challenges are common in women as they age, and partner factors play a prominent role in women’s sexual activity and satisfaction, including the lack of a partner, sexual dysfunction of a partner, poor physical health of a partner, and relationship issues,” said Dr Stephanie Faubion, NAMS medical director.
“In addition, menopause-related problems such as vaginal dryness and pain with sex have been identified as problems affecting sexual function, yet few women seek treatment for these issues, despite the availability of effective therapies,” she said in a journal news release.
Image credit: iStock
NEXT ON HEALTH24X
Healthy lifestyle may offset genetic risk of dementia
Living a healthy lifestyle may help offset a person’s genetic risk of dementia, according to new research.
The study was led by the University of Exeter — simultaneously published today in JAMA and presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2019 in Los Angeles. The research found that the risk of dementia was 32 per cent lower in people with a high genetic risk if they had followed a healthy lifestyle, compared to those who had an unhealthy lifestyle.
Participants with high genetic risk and an unfavourable lifestyle were almost three times more likely to develop dementia compared to those with a low genetic risk and favourable lifestyle.
Joint lead author Dr El?bieta Ku?ma, at the University of Exeter Medical School, said: “This is the first study to analyse the extent to which you may offset your genetic risk of dementia by living a healthy lifestyle. Our findings are exciting as they show that we can take action to try to offset our genetic risk for dementia. Sticking to a healthy lifestyle was associated with a reduced risk of dementia, regardless of the genetic risk.”
The study analysed data from 196,383 adults of European ancestry aged 60 and older from UK Biobank. The researchers identified 1,769 cases of dementia over a follow-up period of eight years. The team grouped the participants into those with high, intermediate and low genetic risk for dementia.
To assess genetic risk, the researchers looked at previously published data and identified all known genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. Each genetic risk factor was weighted according to the strength of its association with Alzheimer’s disease.
To assess lifestyle, researchers grouped participants into favourable, intermediate and unfavourable categories based on their self-reported diet, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption. The researchers considered no current smoking, regular physical activity, healthy diet and moderate alcohol consumption as healthy behaviours. The team found that living a healthy lifestyle was associated with a reduced dementia risk across all genetic risk groups.
Joint lead author Dr David Llewellyn, from the University of Exeter Medical School and the Alan Turing Institute, said: “This research delivers a really important message that undermines a fatalistic view of dementia. Some people believe it’s inevitable they’ll develop dementia because of their genetics. However it appears that you may be able to substantially reduce your dementia risk by living a healthy lifestyle.”
The study was led by the University of Exeter in collaboration with researchers from the University of Michigan, the University of Oxford, and the University of South Australia.
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Exeter. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Health24.com | Is your mattress releasing toxins while you sleep?
Most people consider their bed a safe haven, but new research suggests your body heat might trigger the release of potentially harmful chemicals from your mattress.
Mattresses are known to release minute amounts of gaseous chemicals called volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These VOCs come mainly from the polyurethane used in the mattress, but also from other chemicals used in flame retardants and plastics, the researchers said.
Levels of concern for infants
Unfortunately, your body heat appears to increase VOC emissions from your mattress, according to tests conducted on eight different types of polyurethane mattresses.
But don’t toss out your mattress just yet: The estimated doses of most VOCs remained well below the levels that could cause health effects, researchers noted.
However, some compounds did reach levels of concern for infants and young children, if their ages were considered in exposure calculations, the researchers added.
“There is no reason to panic, and yet it is important to understand that air quality in our sleeping micro-environment is important with regard to our exposure to various pollutants such as VOCs,” said senior researcher Yael Dubowski, an associate professor with the Israel Institute of Technology. “Hence, we should make an effort to improve it.”
Health effects associated with VOCs range from eye, nose and throat irritation to headaches and organ damage, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Some VOCs, including benzene, acetaldehyde and formaldehyde, have been associated with increased cancer risk.
For the study, Dubowski and her colleagues subjected eight different mattresses to simulated sleeping conditions, mimicking the elevated body heat, humidity and carbon dioxide caused by humans when they sleep for even a few hours.
Body heat
The mattresses had been allowed to air out for at least six months prior to the study, noted Sarah Evans, an assistant professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
“Often we think, well, if you let something air out for a little while, you can dramatically reduce the level of chemicals that are off-gassed,” said Evans, who wasn’t involved with the study. “In this case, even after six months they still saw appreciable levels of off-gassing.”
Body heat appeared to increase each mattress’ release of VOCs, compared with the levels released when the mattresses were not in use, researchers found.
Estimated exposures remained below the “No Significant Risk Levels” (NSRL) set under strict California environmental laws, researchers noted.
However, if the exposure levels took into account a child’s age, the picture took on more concern. For example, compounds linked to cancer such as acetaldehyde, formaldehyde and benzene approached or exceeded age-adjusted levels, researchers said.
The new study was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Heightened vulnerability
Experts are generally more concerned about children’s exposure to VOCs, said Dr Kenneth Spaeth, chief of occupational and environmental medicine at Northwell Health in Great Neck, New York.
Babies in particular spend a lot of time in their crib, lying on foam mattresses that produce these gases, said Spaeth, who had no part in the study.
“By virtue of their age and size, they have heightened vulnerability to potential toxic effects,” he said.
Even if these chemicals don’t do immediate harm, there is concern that exposure will increase their lifelong risk of cancer, Evans and Spaeth said.
The best way to protect against VOCs is to maintain good ventilation inside your home, by opening windows and using fans, they said.
“Indoor air can have as much as 10 times higher VOCs than outdoor air,” Evans said. “Getting fresh air in can really help reduce those exposures.”
A very difficult position
Consumers also can choose mattresses made of materials other than polyurethane foam, Evans said. Mattresses containing cotton, wool and natural latex will all produce lower levels of gases.
Unfortunately, it can be very difficult for consumers to suss out what’s in a mattress and what sort of VOCs those materials might produce, Spaeth said.
“Consumers are in a very difficult position,” Spaeth said. “It’s very hard to get good information about what a mattress contains, and even if you know that, unless you have a good understanding of the different materials it’s hard to know what chemicals might be emitted from those materials.
“The chemicals that are being emitted are not going to be listed in a label that indicates what the mattress is made of,” Spaeth said. “These are by-products of the materials.
Image credit: iStock
Dementia: Lifestyle changes that could lower your risk
Research suggests up to a third of cases may be preventable with lifestyle changes.
Study gives insight into sun-induced DNA damage and cell repair
A team led by a Baylor University researcher has published a breakthrough article that provides a better understanding of the dynamic process by which sunlight-induced DNA damage is recognized by the molecular repair machinery in cells as needing repair.
Ultraviolet light from the sun is a ubiquitous carcinogen that can inflict structural damage to the cellular DNA. As DNA carries important blueprints for cellular functions, failure in removing and restoring damaged parts of DNA in a timely fashion can have detrimental outcomes and lead to skin cancers in humans, said lead author Jung-Hyun Min, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences.
Min and her team showed how the repair protein Rad4/XPC would bind to one such UV-induced DNA damage — 6-4 photoproduct — to mark the damaged site along the DNA in preparation for the rest of the nucleotide excision repair (NER) process in cells.
The study — “Structure and mechanism of pyrimidine-pyrimidone (6-4) photoproduct recognition by the Rad4/XPC nucleotide excision repair complex” — is published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) as a “breakthrough article.”
Breakthrough articles present high-impact studies answering long-standing questions in the field of nucleic acids research and/or opening new areas and mechanistic hypotheses for investigation. They are the very best papers published at NAR, constituting 1 to 2 percent of those received by the journal.
UV light threatens the integrity of the genome by generating cellular DNA damage known as intra-strand crosslink damage, Min said. Two major types of these lesions are cyclobutane pyrimidine dimer (CPD), which makes up about 70 percent of such damage; and 6-4 photoproduct (6-4PP), which constitutes about 30 percent.
The cellular DNA repair system (NER), which is responsible for clearing these lesions, works much faster for 6-4PP than CPD, Min said. This is because a DNA damage-sensing protein (called Rad4/XPC) that initiates NER is more efficient at recognizing 6-4PP than it is at recognizing CPD.
Once a lesion is bound by Rad4/XPC, it can be removed by the NER pathway. NER works in all organisms, ranging from yeast to humans. How the Rad4/XPC protein recognizes the lesions and what leads to the differences in the recognition efficiencies remains unclear, Min said.
The team first determined a 3D structure of Rad4 protein bound to a DNA substrate containing a 6-4PP lesion, using a technique called X-ray crystallography. The structure showed that the proteins flips outward the portions of the DNA containing the 6-4PP and thus “opens” up the DNA double helix. This was accompanied by severe untwisting and bending of the DNA strands.
However, it was not the damaged portion of the DNA that the protein directly contacted, Min said.
Instead, the protein bound specifically to the healthy bits of the DNA opposite the lesion. This shows that the protein could in principle bind to the CPD as well as other environmentally induced DNA lesions that are known to be recognized by Rad4/XPC. But it could not directly explain why the recognition efficiencies among the lesions may be different.
To address this, Min then collaborated with Suse Broyde, Ph.D., at New York University and used molecular dynamics to computationally simulate the process by which Rad4 initially may latch on to the DNA containing either 6-4PP or CPD.
The simulation studies showed that the protein readily engages with 6-4PP to untwist, bend and partly “open” the DNA at the lesion site. But remarkably, the CPD-containing DNA resisted the untwisting and bending that was readily happening with 6-4PP.
Altogether, the team was able to assemble a 3-D molecular trajectory that depict the key steps during the DNA “opening” carried out by Rad4/XPC and unveiled the reasons behind the different recognition of 6-4PP and CPD.
Min believes the discovery of these mechanics of nucleotide excision repair could provide benefits beyond understanding UV-induced damage, as NER also is an important pathway that repairs much of environmentally induced DNA damage — including that caused by industrial pollutants, cigarette smoke and even some chemotherapeutic drugs.
“The hallmark of NER is that it repairs a very broad range of DNA damage. That is quite important in terms of how our genomes are protected from environmentally caused DNA damage,” Min said.
“While it has been known for many decades that this Rad4/XPC protein can recognize 6-4PP very efficiently, there has been no structure to show how it really binds to the lesion and why the recognition is so efficient compared with lesions such as CPD,” she said. “Basically, our study nicely fills this missing gap and details what that mechanism must be.”
While this research showed how Rad4/XPC can bind to the damage in a DNA duplex, it is still unknown how the protein can find such damage if it is on DNA that is compactly organized as it does in cells (called chromatin).
Min said most DNA in chromatin are spooled around proteins called histones and how Rad4/XPC can get around to find a lesion is another mystery.
Also, she said it is unknown how Rad4/XPC would recruit the next player of the repair pathway, called Transcription Factor II H complex (TFIIH), which is important in verifying the damage before other proteins come and actually cut out the damaged portion.
“We hope the knowledge we uncover can be helpful in solving major problems in human health,” Min said. “This is how we imagine we can help — by understanding how things work with full 3-D structural detail.”
*The study was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Co-researchers include Debamita Paul, Ph.D., chemistry and biochemistry, Baylor University; Hong Mu, Ph.D., biology, New York University; Hong Zhao, Ph.D., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City; Ouathek Ouerfelli, Ph.D., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Philip D. Jeffrey, Ph.D., macromolecular crystallography, Princeton University; and Suse Broyde, Ph.D., biology, New York University.
Adults with HIV who have compassionate care providers start and remain in treatment longer
Adults with HIV are more likely to continue life-saving treatments if their primary health care providers show respect, unconditional empathy without judgement and demonstrate an ability to partner with patients in decision making to address their goals, a Rutgers study finds.
The systematic review appears in the Joanna Briggs Institute Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports.
The findings showed that the complexity of the illness, treatment regimen and overall healthcare system frequently overwhelms the patient and fear of stigma often prevents them from beginning or continuing treatment. The researchers found that patients need help in understanding their illness and care needs using understandable language to translate complex information, letting patients know what to expect and reinforcing that HIV is now a treatable, yet complex, chronic illness.
“Today, HIV is considered a chronic, treatable condition. However, this study found that many patients continue to view it as a death sentence,” said lead author Andrea Norberg, executive director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center at Rutgers School of Nursing, which provides care for people with HIV, infectious diseases and immunologic disorders. “We know that people who are knowledgeable about HIV, who are engaged in care and taking antiretroviral therapy medications remain relatively healthy. Our challenge is to reach those people diagnosed with HIV and who are not retained or engaged in ongoing care. In the United States, this is approximately 49 percent of the 1.1 million people diagnosed.”
The researchers included 41 studies published between 1997 to 2017. The sample populations included adults with HIV and their healthcare providers. All adults with HIV were between the ages of 18 and 65, represented diverse races and ethnicities, sexual orientations and gender identities. Healthcare providers included physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, social workers and others. The included studies had 1,597 participants.
They found that many patients experience stigma and a lack of compassion that is often grounded in primary care providers’ ignorance about HIV and transmission risks. The resulting poor communication between providers and patients results in many patients’ failure to seek or remain in care and adhere to antiretroviral therapy medications.
Patients reported feeling “grilled” by providers who often assumed they were not taking medications. Norberg suggested providers would be more successful in getting information from patients by allowing them to be honest, inquiring about their health goals and telling them how other patients have managed treatment.
Conversely, the researchers found that patients were more inclined to adhere to HIV treatment when their primary care providers showed empathy, true listening, trust, consideration of the whole person and involvement in decision making. However, many patients reported that healthcare providers viewed care only as “prescribing antiretroviral therapy medicine.”
“Providers should use common language, not medical jargon, to educate patients about HIV, medications and how they can live a healthy life,” Norberg said. “They should thoroughly teach them about the disease, the medications and side effects, and the meaning of the tests.”
The researchers noted that providers who help patients navigate the health system, offer one-stop location of services and provide connections to psychological support, health insurance, medicine, transportation and other services, can help their patients stay engaged in care.
Primary healthcare providers can enroll in professional education to improve their knowledge about HIV, use of motivational interviewing skills and seek opportunities for experiential learning, observation and hands-on practice working directly with patients with HIV, Norberg said.
Other Rutgers authors included John Nelson, Cheryl Holly, Sarah T. Jewell and Susan Salmond.
