Healthy Life Newsletter, February 2017

The following 3 summaries from The Nutrition Reporter by Jack Challem (January 2017 edition)

Reducing Sugars and Refined Carbs Prevents Cardiovascular Disease

Several new studies have found that eating a lot of sugary foods can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, fatty liver and inflammation. Other recent research has shown that eating three low-carb meals in a row can significantly improve blood sugar and insulin levels–in effect reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and other health problems triggered by sugars and other refined carbs.

Researchers at Lund University, Sweden analyzed health data from 26,190 men and women over 17 years. They focused on the the consumption of sucrose, the most common added sugar used in Sweden. That reported that people who consumed 15 percent or more of their carbohydrate calories from sucrose were 37 percent more likely to have serious or fatal heart problems compared with those who consumed less than 5 percent as sucrose. A similar study at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and Shanhai Jiaotong University in China obtained date from 64,328 Chinese women over 12 years. Women eating the highest glycemic load in their foods had a 27 percent greater risk of stroke.

Another study at Nottingham University in the U.K. place eight young healthy men on either a high- or low-glycemic diet for seven days, and a month later on the alternate diet. Just one week on the high-glycemic (foods high in sugar and refined grains) diet significantly raised lelvels of liver fat and liver storage of sugar. And a study at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, gave 32 healthy postmenopausal women consecutive meals of either 30 or 60 percent carbohydrate. After three lower-carb meals in one day, evening insulin levels dropped 39 percent and insulin resistances by 37 percent. Finally Finnish researchers analyzing a database of 26,554 people shoed that high levels of insulin were associated with a greater risk of heart disease.

Vitamin D Helps Children with Autism

A collaboration between doctors in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Britain has found the supplemental vitamin D can significantly reduce symptoms of autism in children. This is one of the more recent studies showing that vitamin D affects the brain. Researchers gave vitamin D supplements or placebos to 85 boys and 24 girls ages three to 10 years, who were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The dose was 136 IU per pound of body weight, or 3400 IU/day for a 25-pound child, up to a maximum of 5000 IU/day. Four different tests were used to evaluate the child’s symptoms. Some of the more striking improvements were in irritability, hyper activity, social withdrawal, sociability, social awareness and social communication.

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2016: doi 10.1111/jcpp.12652

Read this article on-line

Exercise as a Treatment for Depression

by Michael Greger, M.D.

We’ve known for decades that even a single bout of exercise can elevate our mood, but could it be enough to be used as a treatment for major depression?

We’ve known that physical activity has been associated with decreased symptoms of depression. For example, if you look at a cross-section of 8,000 people across the country, those that exercised regularly were less likely to have a major depression diagnosis. That’s just a snapshot in time, though. In that study, the researcher openly acknowledges this may be a case of reverse causation. Maybe exercise didn’t cut down on depression, maybe depression cut down on exercise. The reason depression may be associated with low physical activity is that people may feel too lousy to get out of bed. What we’ve needed was an interventional study where you take people who are already depressed and randomize them into an exercise intervention.

That is what researchers from Duke University Medical Center did. They randomized men and women over age 50 with major depression to two groups: one who did an aerobic exercise program for four months and another that took an antidepressant drug called Zoloft. In my video Exercise vs. Drugs for Depression you can see a graph of their changes. Before exercise, their Hamilton Depression scores were up around 18 (anything over seven is considered depressed). Within four months, the drug group came down to normal, which are exactly what the drugs are supposed to do. What about the exercise-only group, though? Exercise had the same powerful effect.

The researchers concluded that an exercise training program may be considered an alternative to antidepressants for treatment of depression in older persons, given that they’ve shown that a group program of aerobic exercise is a feasible and effective treatment for depression, at least for older people.

Not so fast, though.

A “group program?” They had the exercise group folks come in three times a week for a group class. Maybe the only reason the exercise group got better is because they were forced to get out of bed and interact with people—maybe it was the social stimulation and had nothing to do with the actual exercise? Before you could definitively say that exercise can work as well as drugs, what we would need to see is the same study, but with an additional group who exercised alone with no extra social interaction. And those same Duke researchers did just that.

They created the largest exercise trial of patients with major depression conducted to date, and not just including older folks, but other adults as well with three different treatment groups this time: a home exercise group in addition to the supervised group exercise and the drug group as before.

And they all worked about just as well in terms of forcing the depression into remission. So we can say with confidence that exercise is comparable to antidepressant medication in the treatment of patients with major depressive disorder.

Putting all the best studies together, researchers indicate that exercise at least has a moderate antidepressant effect, and at best, exercise has a large effect on reductions in depression symptoms and could be categorized as a very useful and powerful intervention. Unfortunately, while studies support the use of exercise as a treatment for depression, exercise is rarely prescribed as a treatment for this common and debilitating problem.

Read this article on-line with links and references

Standing vs. Sitting: Which Is Best?

By Paul Hooper, DC, MPH, MS

One of the new trends in office design is the standing desk. The goal of these standing desks is to get people to sit less. Some authors have gone so far as to equate sitting to smoking (Buckley, et al., 2015).

While I don’t think I would go quite that far, it would appear that such activities have a negative overall effect on our health.

Research presented at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Occupational Conference (Duncan, Kazi and Haslam, 2015) stated that, in a typical working week, people spend four hours and 41 minutes per day sitting at their desks. (And that doesn’t count the time they spend seated in their cars, while eating, and watching television.) Whatever the final numbers are, it is fair to say that we spend a lot of time sitting. Would standing more be beneficial to our health? Let’s take a look…

Standing: Pros & Cons

One of the alternatives to sitting all day is standing while at work. Some of the advantages of standing are:

Reduced risk of obesity

Reduced risk of cancer

Lower long-term mortality risk

Reduced risk of cardiovascular disease

Reduced risk of type 2 diabetes and other metabolic problems

It takes more energy (calories) to stand than it does to sit. Livestrong states that standing uses 20-50 more calories per hour than sitting, depending upon your size. That equates to 8-20 pounds during the course of a year (www.livestrong.com, 2014).

Given that Americans tend to be larger today than in years past, standing makes some sense, particularly if you’re trying to lose weight.

Unfortunately, standing isn’t a panacea. Prolonged standing also comes with a health risk. It can lead to:

Back pain

Leg pain

Varicose veins

Cardiovascular problems

Anyone who spends the work day standing in place (e.g., grocer checkers) can tell you about the problems they encounter as a result of prolonged standing.

The Best of Both Worlds?

Alternating between standing and sitting is probably a healthier alternative. It has been suggested that workers should stand for two hours each work day and gradually increase to four hours (Biswas, et al., 2015). That’s half the day standing and half sitting.

Stability Balls

One relatively new and somewhat revolutionary trend has been the use of the gym ball (aka, stability ball) as a chair. Using a stability ball as an office chair strengthens the core muscles, similar to the use of a backless chair or stool. The freedom of movement that comes from using a stability ball may also decrease any confined or constrained body postures that frequently occur at workstations.

Livestrong (www.livestrong.com, 2015) states that the stability ball is a piece of exercise equipment that is used for strength training and to improve balance and stability. The website indicates that replacing the traditional office chair with a stability ball has become increasingly popular because of the potential for improved health, posture and strength. Some of the potential benefits of sitting on a ball include:

It encourages “active” sitting.

It improves the endurance of sitting and postural muscles.

It improves sensory perception.

It acts as a stimulus for the regulation of posture.

It allows an alternate loading and unloading of the intervertebral disks.

It improves blood circulation.

It improves the effectiveness of all the organ systems.

The following tips are offered in order to use a stability ball as an office chair;

Use the correct size and make sure that it is fully inflated. Properly fitted, the thighs should be parallel to the floor and the knees should be at 90 degrees.

Perform normal workday activities while on the ball.

Stay on the ball as long as is comfortable, then return to the normal chair. Begin with 20-30 minutes, then increase the time gradually.

Use a stability base to keep the ball stable.

The bottom line: When sitting on a stability ball, you can’t sit still. The ball forces the body to constantly adjust to the forces of gravity. Sitting on such a labile surface is a constant challenge to the musculoskeletal system and can actually be quite fatiguing, if you’re not used to it. Consequently, it is suggested that yo shouldn’t throw your normal chairs out.

I have used a stability ball as an office chair and like it more than the standing desk. However, I am of the opinion that the stability ball shouldn’t be a total replacement to the traditional office chair. Instead, it should be used in conjunction with the chair.

Movement Is Key

Rather than just sitting or standing, it would seem that movement is the key to a long and healthy life. One author looked at individuals in Okinawa, Japan (Buettner, 2014). He found that they tend to sit on the floor, rather than in chairs. They apparently go from sitting to standing approximately 30 times each day (constantly moving). Buettner discusses the advantages of going from a sitting to a standing position.

As an aside, some of the healthiest and oldest individuals come from Okinawa. Perhaps there is a connection.

A survey performed a number of years ago (Belloc and Breslow, 1972) attempted to identify common denominators in healthy octogenarians. One of the factors identified was regular physical activity (30-45 minutes every day of the week). There were no marathon runners or extreme athletes. They just kept moving, similar to the individuals in Okinawa.

Closing Thoughts

The standing desk is a reasonable alternative to sitting at work. One alternative is to use a treadmill as a desk. This encourages movement and activity during the workday.

However, standing rather than sitting should not be considered an ideal alternative. Instead, it would appear that changing positions is the critical link. Some time spent sitting and some spent standing is probably best.

In addition, the use of a stability ball seems to be a reasonable alternative to sitting on a traditional office chair. While the stability ball is a positive modification, one of the advantages is the limited amount of time an individual can spend on it. It almost forces a change of position.

Finally, it would appear that movement is the key to reducing problems. Rather than sit or stand for long periods, time spent moving from sitting to standing (and back again) is advantageous.