New Blood and Hair Test Can Measure Your Sugar Consumption

Scientists have developed a test similar to a drug test that can accurately measure a person’s history of drinking sugar-sweetened beverages.

Researchers from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, have discovered a biomarker that can measure how much sugar a person has consumed in his or her diet in the past few months.
With obesity on the rise, a great deal of research is devoted to understanding the biology of weight gain. However, scientists can only study what they can accurately measure, and measuring a subject’s diet is notoriously difficult.
“Measuring what people eat is actually very difficult,” explained Diane O’Brien, an associate professor of biology at the University of Alaska, in an interview with Healthline. “Most people can't estimate intake very accurately, especially over long time spans like months. For dietary sugars and sugar-sweetened beverages, self-reporting is even more problematic—people tend to under-report what they view as their ‘less healthy’ dietary behaviors, and to an unpredictable extent.”
As the body grows new cells, it uses materials drawn from the person’s diet. Traces of those materials are used to create new amino acids, the building blocks used to manufacture proteins. The study, led by O’Brien, found that the sugar from sweetened beverages leaves a distinctive marker in the body’s proteins as they produce new hair and blood cells.

One of These Carbons Is Not Like the Others

According to a report from the Harvard School of Public Health, half of Americans drink at least one sugar-sweetened beverage every day. Most of this sugar comes from sugar cane and corn syrup.
Unlike most of the crops grown in the United States, sugar cane and corn are both tropical grasses. Tropical plants undergo a different photosynthesis process than cooler-climate plants when they use sunlight to make food, and in the process, they select a type of heavy carbon called carbon-13.
But we don’t get carbon-13 from sugar alone. Livestock like chicken and cattle that have been corn-fed will also have carbon-13 in their meat. To home in on sugar, O’Brien’s team examined one particular amino acid called alanine. The body manufactures alanine from sugar, rather than by taking apart proteins found in meat, making alanine an ideal sugar intake marker. Once the alanine is used to create hair or blood proteins, it can be measured.
As with some illicit drugs, traces of sugar remain at measurable levels in the body for quite some time. O’Brien explains, “Red blood cells only live about 90 to 120 days, and the time for 50 percent of your red blood cells to be replaced is about two months. So red blood cells reflect diet integrated over a period of one to three months. Hair grows at about 1 cm a month. So, if you have a crew cut, your hair is only reflecting diet over the last few weeks. If you are Rapunzel, you've got a [carbon-13] record over your entire lifetime!”

Sugar From Any Other Plant Would Taste as Sweet

Although O’Brien’s results are promising, follow-up tests will have to be done to establish the efficacy of this test worldwide. Her team examined the Yup’ik, a native population in southwest Alaska. The Yup’ik consume fewer processed foods and corn products than the general American population.
“The marker works really nicely in the Yup’ik population,” O’Brien said. “I think it would work well in other U.S. populations, but we need to test it against other dietary backgrounds to see how generalizable it is and how well it would work across other populations.”
In particular, the Yup’ik don’t eat very much sugar from the other primary sugar source in the United States, the sugar beet. Sugar beets, native to Europe, do not process heavy carbon the way corn and sugar cane do. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, sugar beets make up more than half of the country’s sugar production.
O’Brien’s method would miss sugar from this source. In Europe and Japan, which make sugar almost exclusively from sugar beets, this measurement might not be useful at all.
However, despite this limitation, O’Brien’s test still remains far more accurate than anything currently available. It could be used as a basis of comparison to develop additional tests and could also help doctors monitor patients' diets without the handicap of inaccurate self-reporting.
“The thing to keep in mind about our study is that the very nature of the design is kind of biasing us against finding anything,” O’Brien said. “That's why it was exciting to find results—we know we were comparing against an imperfect measure.”

New Drug Mimics the Effects of Exercise on Muscles

A new compound called SR9009 increases metabolism, fat burning, and muscle growth in the lab.

Soon, there may be a pharmaceutical fix for those who struggle with diet and exercise. Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have successfully tested a drug, called SR9009, in mice that kickstarts metabolism and results in increased muscle development.
Essentially, it's an exercise regime in a pill.
“SR9009 alters the metabolic profile of skeletal muscle in a manner similar to the changes observed [in] animals [that] are endurance trained. Basically, the drug sends a signal to the muscle to tell it to modify its metabolism,” says drug developer Thomas Burris, Ph.D., a professor in the department of molecular therapeutics at TSRI.
Half of the mice studied showed improved running endurance in terms of both time and distance. “What was clearly interesting was that a small, drug-like molecule could increase metabolic rate in skeletal muscle and increase exercise endurance,” Burris adds.

Not Just a “Diet” Pill

There’s no way to sugarcoat it—though many have tried—maintaining a healthy weight can be difficult. Because it’s hard, many have tried “miracle" weight-loss pills and other quick fixes for something that ultimately requires a lifestyle change. Many over-the-counter diet and weight-loss pills are unregulated and may contain dangerous ingredients.

SR9009, however, isn’t like appetite suppressants, laxatives, or “fat blockers.” And you won’t find SR9009 in the ingredient lists of protein powders or exercise supplements.
The difference between SR9009 and other diet pills is in its chemistry. “SR9009 is not an appetite suppressant—as many weight-loss drugs are—and directly works by increasing the metabolic rate of muscle,” Burris says.

Your metabolism speeds up and slows down naturally during the day, meaning that sometimes food is used for energy and sometimes it’s stored as fat. By re-synching a dysfunctional metabolic clock, SR9009 ensures that food and excess fat are used as energy.
SR9009 is one of a pair of compounds developed at TSRI by Burris and his team. The drug binds to Rev-erbα, a natural protein in the body that influences lipid and glucose metabolism in the liver, inflammatory responses, and fat-storing cells. By binding to Rev-erbα, SR9009 can kickstart metabolism with another pleasant side-effect: increased muscle strength.
“It ‘transforms’ muscle into muscle that by many attributes appears to be exercising,” Burris explains.

Coming to a Pharmacy Near You?

“We were the first to develop drugs that target Rev-erbα that could be used in animals, and our first observations were that the animals increased their metabolic rate,” Burris says. Burris and his team have been working on Rev-erbα since 2005 and were aware that it plays some role in the regulation of metabolism.
Now, after modulating Rev-erbα's activity with drugs, studies have shown its direct effect on skeletal muscles.
With such strong results, Burris and his team are pursuing funding for a biotechnology company that would focus primarily on the development of SR9009 and other similar compounds for safe use in humans.

In the next year or so, they hope to start phase I clinical trials. Just imagine, weight loss and improved musculature in a bottle.

The Raw Meat Diet and 5 Other Bizarre Food Fads

From algae to cotton balls, people have found extreme and sometimes dangerous ways to fuel their bodies.

Some people take their quest to be lean to the extreme.
Take Derek Nance, for one. The Kentucky man told Vice Magazine that he’s been eating nothing but raw meat from animals he’s slaughtered for the past five years. He now keeps a severed goat head in his freezer, but it all began as a way to solve his chronic nausea and vomiting. Now he says he’s feeling great.
His diet is a spinoff of the Paleo diet and is also based on the research of Weston Prince, a dentist from the 1930s who found that Native Americans who survived on a “guts-and-grease” diet were healthier than modern Americans.
And Nance isn’t anywhere near the top of the strangest diets list. Here are five more bizarre food regimens real people have actually tried.
23 Diet Plans Reviewed: Do They Work?

Breatharianism: Eating Like a Plant

A 65-year-old British transplant living in Seattle, Wash. recently attempted to live for 100 days solely on air, tea, water, and sunlight. This spiritual practice, called "breatharianism," has reportedly killed five people since the 1990s.
The woman—appropriately named Naveena Shine—only made it 48 days before calling it quits and is slowly going back to solid foods.
Was it because she wanted to avoid a slow death by starvation? Nope. She says she decided to stop and go back to work because she couldn’t afford to pay her bills.

Symbiotic Algae Masks

Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta have found a way to give plants and humans a truly symbiotic relationship.
Their “Algae Opera” project debuted last year when an opera singer performed with their specially designed mask on. Her deep, gaping breaths fueled algae growth inside the mask's many plastic tubes.
The microscopic plants fed on the carbon dioxide she exhaled, and those in attendance were invited to drink the nutritious green sludge she produced.
While there have been no reported sightings of people wearing these masks in public, don't be too alarmed if you spot one.

Cotton Balls for Breakfast

One crash diet some professional models use to stay rail thin involves eating cotton balls dipped in orange juice. It helps fill their stomachs and prevents hunger but contains very few calories, Bria Murphy, daughter of comedian Eddie Murphy, told Good Morning America.
Cotton balls are not a food item, and being thin enough to show off your ribcage on the run way isn't a healthy aspiration.
7 Myths of Dieting

‘Soylent’ Is (for) People! 

Rob Rhinehart saw the need for innovation in the food system and set out to invent it.
Earlier this year, the 24-year-old software engineer raised $800,000 to mass-produce Soylent, a foodstuff that shares its name with Soylent Green, the infamous fictitious food rations made from the remains of people.
Soylent is a powdered mix of carbs, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals. Rhinehart says his powder can power a human indefinitely, but as with all things, only time will tell. He says he's eaten nothing but soylent for months with no ill health effects. 
Rhinehart claims Soylent could help people with severe food allergies, indigestion, and other food-related illnesses.

Cheese Only, Please

Some diets aren’t fueled by the desire for good looks. Some are based on fear. 
Dave Nunely ate 225 pounds of cheddar cheese a year, and not because he was on some man-versus-food adventure. He said it’s the only thing he’s liked to eat for his entire 29 years on the planet.
The though of a hot meal makes his stomach turn. He’s so picky, in fact, that his cheese must be grated. Nunely—who is from England, not Wisconsin—was the focus of a BBC program, Freaky Eaters.
The last word on Nunely was that he was eventually able to eat some chips and a form of oatmeal. Gouda for him.

Study: Resveratrol Could Worsen MS Disease Activity

MS patients won't see major health benefits from a daily glass of red wine. In fact, drinking it could make things worse.

Step away from the red wine.
Researchers at Louisiana State University (LSU) have made an unexpected discovery concerning resveratrol, a compound that occurs naturally in the skin of red grapes and peanuts. People living with multiple sclerosis (MS) often take resveratrol in supplement form because research has shown it has some antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
But, considering the results of this study, that could well change.
Ikuo Tsunoda, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor at LSU, and his team discovered that resveratrol actually worsens MS-like symptoms in animal models of the disease. This surprised researchers because they expected the compound to protect nerves. Instead, they found that it worsened nerve damage in mice and increased inflammation, while offering no neuroprotective benefits.
Learn More About Natural Treatments for MS

Mimicking MS in Mice

In an interview with Healthline, Tsunoda said the idea for this study came about after he found that some mutant mice with increased levels of the protein SIRT1 appeared to be protected from nerve damage. These mutant mice recovered completely from an MS-like disease while other mice did not.
Hoping to reproduce this protection in other mice with MS-like disease, they turned to resveratrol, which has been reported to increase SIRT1 levels.
“We hypothesized that if we treat [mice with MS-like disease] with resveratrol, it should protect against axonal damage, and could be used for MS patients in the future,” said Tsunoda. His team was disappointed to learn that SIRT1 was not only ineffective, but actually worsened disease activity.
Researchers often use disease “models” in mice to mimic human conditions like MS. “Currently, we cannot tell whether individual MS cases [in humans] are caused by autoimmunity, viral infections, or something else (for example, chemical damage),” said Tsunoda.
So, they worked with the closest examples they could find: mice infected with a virus that destroys myelin, the protective covering surrounding nerve cells in the brain.
Researchers used two mouse viruses that cause different types of nerve damage—one destroys myelin first, and the other first attacks the axons inside nerves. Tsunoda explained, “The protection of axons is important to stop disease progression, since regeneration of axons in the central nervous system is very difficult.”
The main goal of this study was to find a way to protect the axons, since MS brain lesions that destroy axons can lead to permanent disability.
Multiple Sclerosis Research: Learn What the Future Holds

How Might Resveratrol Cause Inflammation?

At the start of the study, all the mice exhibited MS-like symptoms, including paralysis of their hind legs and tails. Some of the mice were given a “control diet,” while others were fed a diet that included resveratrol. After five weeks, mice fed the control diet showed either complete recovery or mild paralysis, but all the mice fed resveratrol had severe and lasting disease activity without remission.
And resveratrol did not kill either of the mouse viruses the researchers used, though Tsunoda did note in a press release that some studies by other scientists have shown that resveratrol has “antiviral effects on some viruses related to MS, such as herpes simplex virus and Epstein-Barr virus.”
To help explain their findings, the researchers suggest that resveratrol, which dilates blood vessels, might allow inflammatory cells to travel through vessel walls and into the central nervous system. This migration could play a key role in the development of MS.

Put Down that (Second) Bottle

Although taking resveratrol supplements should be discouraged, said Tsunoda, “To achieve the dose used in many resveratrol studies in animals (including our study), one has to drink more than one bottle of red wine daily.”
While resveratrol can be found in certain foods, Tsunoda stresses there is no need to remove them from your diet. “I would recommend eating a variety of foods, including red grapes and peanuts, for health rather than avoiding them,” he said

Common Food Allergies

If you're allergic to some types of food, chances are they fall on this list of common food allergies. Learn more about common food allergies. 

When the body's immune system reacts abnormally to something a person eats or drinks, it's known as a food allergy.
Food allergies may affect as many as 220 to 520 million people worldwide, with the majority of those sufferers being children. It is estimated that more than 12 million Americans have diagnosed food allergies.

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A food allergy may affect the skin, the gastrointestinal tract, or the respiratory or cardiovascular systems. Many types of foods can be allergens, but certain foods are much more likely than others to trigger an allergic reaction.
In fact, a mere eight foods are responsible for 90 percent of food allergies in North America: cow's milk, eggs, peanuts, fish, shellfish, tree nuts (such as cashews or walnuts), wheat, and soy.

Symptoms of Food Allergies

Symptoms of food allergies may range from mild to severe and they may come on suddenly or develop over several hours.
Because a person's immune system may react to a very small amount of the allergen, food allergies are particularly dangerous and potentially life threatening—especially if breathing is affected. Because of this, people with asthma are at an increased risk for a fatal allergic reaction to food.
Mild symptoms related to a food allergy may include:

• sneezing
• stuffy or runny nose
• itchy, watery eyes
• swelling
• rash
• stomach cramps
• diarrhea

Severe symptoms of an allergic reaction to food are:

• difficulty breathing, including wheezing
• swelling of the lips, tongue or throat
• hives (an itchy, blotchy and raised rash
• dizziness or faintness
• nausea or vomiting

Von Willebrand Disease

What Is Von Willebrand Disease?

Von Willebrand disease is a bleeding disorder caused by a deficiency of von Willebrand
 factor (VWF).

To understand this disease, you need to understand a little bit about how blood clotting works. Platelets are circulating blood cells that have the job of clumping together and plugging broken blood vessels to stop bleeding. VWF is responsible for helping platelets clump (clot) together. If VWF is low or absent in your body, the platelets cannot clump properly. This leads to prolonged bleeding.
Von Willebrand disease is fairly rare. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the disease affects (at most) 1 percent of the general population (CDC, 2011).

How Congress Is Endangering the Health of the Nation

Food inspections, medical research, and disease tracking are considered “non-essential” as the U.S. government shutdown continues.

It’s Oct. 4, 2013, and the U.S. has been without a fully funded government for four days.
With the government in hibernation, major parts of the federal system deemed non-essential are closed, putting thousands of federal employees on furlough until elected officials pass a budget. This includes food inspectors, disease monitoring agents, and the scientists staffing clinical trials of children's cancer treatments.

The largest cuts affect NASA; the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Labor, Commerce, and Education; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and the Smithsonian. They are experiencing staff losses of more than 80 percent.

This is all happening just as Americans are beginning to enroll in the new healthcare exchanges made possible by the Affordable Care Act and just before the annual flu season, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will not be able to track and monitor during the shutdown.

Dude, Where’s My Government?

The partial government shutdown is the result of hard bargaining tactics used by Republican lawmakers in an attempt to de-fund the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, the largest healthcare initiative in the nation’s history. It was passed into law in 2009 and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. 
A recent poll by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute shows that roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose the use of a government shutdown, regardless of their personal beliefs about Obamacare. The nation is split equally about the implementation of the law, in particular the requirement that all U.S. citizens obtain health insurance.
“Americans are certainly not in love with Obamacare, but they reject decisively the claim by Congressional Republicans that it is so bad that it's worth closing down the government to stop it,” Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the institute, said in a statement.
The same poll found that voters trust Pres. Barack Obama more than the Republicans in Congress to handle healthcare, 47 percent to 38 percent.
Senate to Scientists: Pay No Attention to the Men Behind the Curtain

The National Institutes of Health: 73 Percent Shutdown

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the medical research arm of the government and the largest biomedical research funding institute on the planet. There, scientists research diseases to create better treatments and possibly cures.
Through their 27 institutes and centers, such as the National Cancer Institute, NIH researchers study both physical and mental illnesses, and also provide large amounts of research funding to other organizations. The shutdown means the NIH has had to halt recruiting for drug trials, though those currently enrolled in studies are still receiving treatments.
The Washington Post reported that of the 200 patients that the NIH recruits per week for new experimental therapies, an average of 30 of them are children, 10 of whom have cancer.
One NIH study published prior to the shutdown found that 14 percent of infants share their bed with a parent or other child. It highlighted how many parents are still putting their youngest children at risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS.

Health and Human Services: 52 Percent Shutdown

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) lost half of its budget and staff the day after open enrollment for insurance exchanges under Obamacare began.
The HHS runs the federal health insurance exchanges, and also includes the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the CDC.
Besides researching and preventing the spread of deadly viruses and bacteria, the CDC is responsible for overseeing the 30 or so critical foodborne illnesses that can occur at anytime, and responding before they create an outbreak. The eight people responsible for that are included in the furlough, NPR reported.
Calling the shutdown “truly reckless,” Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) said: “If an outbreak does occur during this government shutdown, it's likely it's going to go on longer and affect more people.”
Just as the U.S. is about enter the flu season, the CDC says it won’t be able to support the seasonal influenza program, including supplying vaccinations and tracking its severity. Last year's flu season was one of the most intense on record, causing 164 pediatric deaths.

Food and Drug Administration: 45 Percent Shutdown

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “will be unable to support the majority of its food safety, nutrition, and cosmetics activities,” during the shutdown, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement.
The shutdown means that the FDA won’t be inspecting and monitoring imports from countries with lax food safety standards.
And while our food isn’t as safe as it should be, the members of Congress are still being paid their full wages and have unfettered access to government-funded health programs.