Healthy Life Newsletter, February 2020
‘Exciting’ Study Shows How Quitting Smoking Can ‘Magically’ Heal Damaged Lungs
Quitting smoking now may do more than just prevent further damage to your lungs — it could jumpstart the release of healthy cells that actually repair the linings of your airways.
That’s according to a new study published in Nature by the UK’s Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and University College London Hospital, which found that these healthy cells resemble those of people who have never smoked, even in the lungs of former long-term smokers.
People who have smoked heavily for 30, 40 or more years often say to me that it’s too late to stop smoking - the damage is already done,” joint senior author Dr. Peter Campbell, of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said in a press statement.
“What is so exciting about our study is that it shows that it’s never too late to quit - some of the people in our study had smoked more than 15,000 packs of cigarettes over their life, but within a few years of quitting many of the cells lining their airways showed no evidence of damage from tobacco.”
Read the rest of this article at ecowatch.com
Read the original study in Nature at nature.com
Why Exercise is Important by James Bogash, DC
If you can’t exercise this much, just hang it up now….
Gotta love us lazy humans. Just how little exercise, how little we have to exert and how infrequent do we have to exercise and still get a benefit?
Not that I advocate hanging out of the bottom of the bell curve, but in this study participants did short bursts on an exercise bike.
How long?
30 seconds each.
Just how many?
4-6 sets.
How many days per week?
For those of you who excel at math, this is 9 minutes per week.
9 measly minutes. The improvements were actually quite dramatic. The research is continuing to disprove the “50 minute aerobic” model of exercise and moving towards a short-burst type of style.
Read the original research article at sciencedirect.com
Can Your Vitamin D Level Affect Your Chances of Breast Cancer?
Breast, lung, and colorectal cancer account for 50% of all new cancer diagnoses in women and breast cancer accounts for 30% of these newly diagnosed cancer cases. It is also one of the most readily preventable cancers.
A paper published by GrassrootsHealth found an 80% lower incidence of breast cancer in women with vitamin D levels of at least 60 ng/ml compared to women with levels below 20 ng/ml. Average blood levels of vitamin D in the United States are approximately 24 ng/ml, well below the scientists’ recommended range of 40-60 ng/ml (100-150 nmol/L).
READ MORE AND SEE LINKS AT campaign.r20.constantcontact.com
Starting Them Off Wrong
Our children are consuming far too much sugar and they’re starting at an increasingly younger age. That’s a big problem because excess sugar, particularly if it doesn’t come from a natural, whole-food source such as fruit, can contribute to the same health issues it causes in adults: weight gain, diabetes, cavities and more.
How bad is it? A recent study examined added sugar consumption among U.S. infants and toddlers (ages 6-23 months), using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Findings, which were published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, revealed that during the study window (2011-2016), 84.4 percent of infants and toddlers consumed added sugars on any given day. Yogurt, baby food snacks / treats and sweet bakery products topped the list for infants, while fruit drinks, sugars / sweets and sweet bakery products led the way for toddlers.
Overall, toddlers were more likely to consume added sugars than infants, although the likelihood was high in both groups (98.3 percent of toddlers vs. 60.6 percent of infants). Average daily consumption of added sugars.
If you haven’t noticed, sources of added sugar are everywhere. That reality raises two important points: 1) The more you can teach children of any age to avoid added sugar, the better; and 2) If you don’t, they’ll be more likely to suffer the health consequences of living in a sugar-filled world. See the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines on sugar consumption for infants and young children, including ways to satisfy their sweet tooth without added sugar.
Balancing the Brain
Balance and brain health are two important health variables that can suffer dramatically as we age. Fortunately, research suggests improving one can benefit the other, particularly in terms of their interaction.
Researchers have found that senior patients who perform balance exercises improve brain neuroplasticity – essentially the brain’s ability to restructure itself – and reduce cortical overactivation, both of which can benefit overall balance.
In their study, a summary of which appears in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, researchers divided older adults (average age, 65 years) into three groups: one that performed classic balance exercises, another that performed virtual reality balance exercises, and a control group. The study lasted 12 weeks, and neuroimaging studies were conducted at the beginning and end of the 12-week training period.
In reviewing their findings, the researchers concluded: “With age, postural control may become more consciously controlled (cortically). Systematic [balance training] of moderate intensity may reverse age-related cortical over-activations and appear to be a factor mediating neuroplasticity in older adults.” They also found that classical balance exercises significantly increased serum BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), important because “aging or neurodegenerative diseases are associated with a decrease in BDNF expression.” [Italics added]
Getting older? As your doctor for help developing a balance / posture program. Good for your body, good for your brain!
How Could There Be Such a Disconnect Between the Science and Medical Practice?
By Michael Greger M.D.
“Most deaths in the United States are preventable and related to nutrition.” According to the most rigorous analysis of risk factors ever published, the Global Burden of Disease study, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, our diet is both the number-one cause of death and the number-one cause of disability in the United States, having bumped smoking tobacco down to number two. Smoking now kills about a half million Americans every year, whereas our diet kills thousands more.
If most death and disability is preventable and related to nutrition, then, certainly, nutrition is the number-one subject taught in medical school and the number-one topic your doctor talks with you about, right? How can there be such a disconnect between the science and the practice of medicine?
Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine you’re a smoker in the 1950s. The average per-capita cigarette consumption was about 4,000 cigarettes a year. Think about that. In the 1950s, the average American smoked half a pack a day…….
Eating the Standard American Diet today is like being a smoker in the 1950s. Just as smoking was rampant back then, think about what we’re feeding even hospital patients to this day.
We don’t have to wait until society catches up with the science. Sometimes it takes a whole generation for things to change in medicine. The old guard of smoking physicians and medical school professors die off, and a new generation takes its place—but how many people need to die in the interim?