Sunday, June 30, 2024
This common drink increases the risk of serious heart condition, study finds
The commentary below is greatly over hyped. The "Results" section of the journal abstract below. We see that all the Hazard Ratios were quite low -- meaning weak effects -- with the results from sugar-sweetened and articially sweetened drinks being virually the same. As usual, income was not controlled for so all we are probably seeng here is that poor people (big drinkers of fizzy drinks) have worse health. Richer and wiser people drink orange juice. Rather amusing, really
During a median follow-up of 9.9 years, 9362 incident AF cases were documented. Compared with nonconsumers, individuals who consumed >2 L/wk of SSB or ASB had an increased risk of AF (HR, 1.10 [95% CI, 1.01–1.20] and HR, 1.20 [95% CI, 1.10–1.31]) in the multivariable-adjusted model. A negative association was observed between the consumption of ≤1 L/wk of PJ and the risk of AF (HR, 0.92 [95% CI, 0.87–0.97]). The highest HRs (95% CIs) of AF were observed for participants at high genetic risk who consumed >2 L/wk of ASB (HR, 3.51 [95% CI, 2.94–4.19]), and the lowest HR were observed for those at low genetic risk who consumed ≤1 L/wk of PJ (HR, 0.77 [95% CI, 0.65–0.92]). No significant interactions were observed between the consumption of SSB, ASB, or PJ and genetic predisposition to AF.
Whether you're looking to satisfy a craving with a crisp can of sugary goodness or offset it completely with the refreshing taste of your favourite diet soda, when it comes to selecting a beverage from a drinks menu, we’re spoilt for choice.
But are our ‘healthier’ drink choices really adding much value to our well-being in the long run? According to a new study, they could be having the opposite effect.
Published in the journal Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, the research follows the drinking habits of roughly 202,000 adults aged 37 to 73 in the United Kingdom, examining the results of a 24-hour diet questionnaire.
Specifically, the findings of the study suggest a strong correlation between adults drinking no to low-sugar beverages and their risk of developing atrial fibrillation.
Individuals who reported consuming more than two litres of artificially sweetened drinks in the 24-hour time period were found to have a 20 per cent higher chance of developing the condition (that’s roughly six standard cans).
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a serious cardiovascular disease defined by having a heartbeat that is too slow, too fast or irregular. Additionally, patients diagnosed with AF report symptoms such as lightheadedness, chest pain, extreme fatigue, and shortness of breath. Most notably, atrial fibrillation has been found to be the leading cause of stroke in the United States.
According to the Heart Foundation, atrial fibrillation is the most common recurring arrhythmia found in clinical practice, prevalent in two to four per cent of the population in developed nations such as Australia.
Additionally, the findings indicated that the individuals who reported consuming beverages with added sugars had an increased risk of the disease by up to ten per cent. On the flip side, consuming unsweetened juices, such as natural orange juice, was associated with a reduced risk of up to eight per cent.
“Our study’s findings cannot definitively conclude that one beverage poses more health risk than another due to the complexity of our diets and because some people may drink more than one type of beverage,” says lead study author Dr Ningjian Wang, a professor at the Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.
“However, based on these findings, we recommend that people reduce or even avoid artificially sweetened and sugar-sweetened beverages whenever possible,” Wang added in a statement discussing the study’s findings.
While the results are certainly worth discussing, this is the first study of its kind to examine the correlation between atrial fibrillation and both sugar-sweetened and no-to-low-calorie artificially sweetened beverages, indicating much further research is needed to fully understand the risks associated with each beverage.
So, if diet sodas and ‘no-sugar’ alternatives could be facilitating equally as much damage to our health, what’s the safest drink to turn to? Based on the study’s results, the safest hydration option is plain and simple H2O.
“Do not take it for granted that drinking low-sugar and low-calorie artificially sweetened beverages is healthy, it may pose potential health risks,” warns Wang.
***********************************************
Thursday, June 27, 2024
Taking daily vitamin supplements doesn't help you live longer, may shorten your life
A bit of a chicken and egg problem here. Once again we have to look at who took something and why. Rather obviously: people who were concerned with their healh -- sick people in an extreme. So pill-taking could be an index of poor health rather than poor health being caused by pill-taking.
What happens when generally healthy people take a small amount just as a precaution -- as I do? The amount taken and the reasons for it clearly need to be sorted out before we can draw useful conclusions
And it seems possible that supplements might contribute to well-being, even without a mortality reduction. Let me give an example: I am prone to leg cramps. If take magnesium tablets they go away. If I stop taking them the cramps come back. The pills are unlikely to make me live longer but they make my life better. That probably follows wherever there is a deficiency problem.
And deficiencies might not always be obvious. It was, for instance, only a blood-test that revealed that I had a vitamin D deficiency. It can led to brittle bones, which is a horror. Did I have brittle bones? I don't know. And I don't want to find out. So I now take a supplement that has brought me up to par
They promise health benefits from boosting the immune system to strong bones.
But multivitamins do not help you live longer, a major study has found.
Regularly taking the supplements was found to have no effect on whether people lived longer, according to the research involving nearly 400,000 healthy adults.
In fact, using multivitamins daily was associated with a 4 per cent higher mortality risk, the analysis found.
The vitamins industry is estimated to be worth billions in the UK and US, taken by people in the hope of improving their health.
But the potential benefits and harms of supplementing diet with additional vitamins and minerals remains unclear, often hindered by study size and short follow-up times.
Led by researchers at the National Cancer Institute in the US, researchers followed participants with an average age of 61, who had no history of cancer or other chronic disease, for more than 20 years.
They looked at their multivitamin use from 1993 to 2001 and again between 1998 and 2004 with a follow up period of up to 27 years.
During this time, some 164,762 people died, with 49,836 deaths attributed to cancer, 35,060 to heart diseases, and 9,275 attributed to cerebrovascular diseases.
Researchers assessed for other factors such as education level, whether they were ever smokers, body-mass-index, marital status, alcohol and coffee intake.
They also looked for family history of cancer and factored this into the findings, according to the research published in JAMA.
Those who used multivitamins were also more likely to use individual supplements and have lower BMI and better diet quality.
But there were no longevity benefits found in those who took daily vitamins – in contrast, they were linked to a 4 per cent heightened risk of death.
It concludes: ‘The analysis showed that people who took daily multivitamins did not have a lower risk of death from any cause than people who took no multivitamins.
‘There were also no differences in mortality from cancer, heart disease, or cerebrovascular diseases.’
But the results do not necessarily mean that taking vitamins is a waste of time.
Research published earlier this year by Harvard University finding they can help slow the cognitive deterioration that occurs with age.
Other research has suggested they can help people to feel healthier, although it could be the placebo effect.
Duane Mellor, a registered dietitian and senior lecturer at Aston medical school, said: ‘It’s not surprising to see these do not significantly reduce the risk of mortality.
‘A vitamin and mineral supplement will not fix an unhealthy diet on its own, but it can help cover key nutrients if someone is struggling to get them from food.
‘An example of this might be vitamin D where adults in the UK are encouraged to take as a supplement in winter or vegans and vegetarians who might benefit from a supplement of vitamin B12.’
Writing in a linked commentary, Neal Barnard, Hana Kahleova and Roxanne Becker, of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Washington, said: ‘Refocusing nutrition interventions on food, rather than supplements, may provide the mortality benefits that multivitamins cannot deliver.
‘Vegetables, fruits, legumes and cereal grains are staples in areas of remarkable longevity, known as Blue Zones—Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; the island of Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California.’
They suggested that some vitamins in the supplements may have an impact on other drugs being taken, for example vitamin K may reduce the efficacy of the anticoagulant warfarin.
And the inclusion of iron in a supplement adds to that in foods, increasing the risk of iron overload, which is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and dementia, the commentary continued.
The experts also said similar concerns may apply to copper supplementation, and calcium and zinc may reduce the absorption of certain antibiotics
***************************************************
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
A plant-based diet is good for your health. But there’s one exception
The journal article is:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(24)00115-7/fulltext
It's yet another rubbishy diet study. They anaysed their data using extreme quartiles, which means that they threw away half of their data before testing it, which in turn usually means that there were NO correlations in the full dataset. And even then they got only marginal hazard ratios. For instance:"After adjustment for potential confounders, a 10% increase in the contribution of plant-sourced non-UPF in diet was associated with a 7% reduced risk of incident CVD (adjusted HR 0.93; 95% CI 0.91–0.95) and a 8% reduced risk of incident coronary heart disease (adjusted HR 0.92; 95% CI 0.90–0.94)"
Relationships as weak as that are often not replicable so the study is most safely seen as failing to show that diet has any certain effect on health at all. In plain speech, eat what you like. The best thing to do for your health is probably to have friends
Eating a plant-based diet is good for your health, but not if those plant foods are ultra-processed, a new study has found.
The findings show that all plant-based diets aren’t the same, and that plant foods can have very different effects on your health depending on what manufacturers do to them before they reach your plate.
The new research, published on Monday in the journal, Lancet Regional Health-Europe, found eating plant-derived foods that are ultra-processed – such as meat substitutes, fruit drinks and pastries – increases the risk of heart attacks and stroke. But when plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and nuts are only minimally processed – meaning they are cleaned, cut or squeezed before packaging but served largely as they are found in nature – they have a protective effect against cardiovascular disease. The study treated freshly squeezed fruit juices as unprocessed.
Ultra-processed foods have faced intense scrutiny from health authorities in recent years. What’s unusual about the new study is that it zeroed in on the health effects of ultra-processed foods that begin as plants, comparing them with minimally processed plant foods. Given that plant-based foods are generally healthy in their natural state, the research suggests that there’s something uniquely damaging about ultra-processing that changes a food in a way that can harm a person’s health long term.
“The artificial and heightened flavours of these foods can lead people to become addicted to these flavours, making it difficult for them to appreciate the natural flavours of real foods such as fruits and vegetables,” says Fernanda Rauber, the lead author of the new study and a researcher at the Centre for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.
The new study analysed data on 118,000 adults who were followed for roughly a decade as part of the UK Biobank, a study that has been tracking the health and lifestyle habits of people throughout the United Kingdom. As part of the long-running study, the participants answered questions about their diets, habits and environments on different occasions and provided biological samples, and health and medical records. The findings included:
The more ultra-processed foods people consumed, the higher their likelihood of dying of heart disease.
Every 10 per cent increase in kilojoules from plant-derived ultra-processed foods was associated with a 5 per cent higher likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease and a 6 per cent higher risk of coronary heart disease in particular.
For every 10 per cent increase in the consumption of whole plant-based foods — those that were not ultra-processed — the participants had an 8 per cent reduction in their likelihood of developing coronary heart disease and a 20 per cent reduction in their risk of dying of it. They also had a 13 per cent lower risk of dying of any cardiovascular diseases.
Many of the foods studied were not foods people would typically consider a plant food. But the main ingredients in many junk foods come from plants, such as cane and beet sugars, wheat flour, corn, potatoes, fruit juices and vegetable oils.
***********************************************
Sunday, June 23, 2024
Major study reveals whether eating meat will help you live to 100
The big hole in this study stands out like canine testicles. All it probably does is to reaffirm the most persistent finding in epidemiology: The old, old finding that rich people live longer. Most Chinese live principally on rice and beans. Only the rich can afford a lot of meat, eggs, dairy products etc. So the diet was basically an indirect index of income, which was NOT directly controlled for in the study. So the study conclusions do not support meat eating or anything else. Sorry about that
Americans are often told to cut down on steak consumption to avoid heart disease and diabetes.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands are still turning to veganism in the hope that it will help them live healthier and better lives.
But now a growing number of studies seem to reach the same consensus. Despite the anti-meat scare stories, eating meat makes you more likely to live longer. Specifically, you might have a better chance of living to 100.
The most recent paper that spoke to this conclusion studied the diets of 5,200 people — including 1,500 centenarians — from across China.
It found that those eating a more diverse weekly diet, including meat, were 23 percent more likely to become centenarians than their peers who ate one that was more restrictive.
It adds to other recent evidence, including one 2022 Australian paper on meat consumption and life expectancy by country, that found life expectancy is higher in nations that, on average, consume more meat.
About 81 percent of Americans are meat eaters, with meat considered a great source of both muscle-building protein and a host of other essential nutrients.
These include vitamin B12, which is not found in plants and is used by the body to help extract energy from food and keep our blood cells healthy.
Experts say meat is also a rich source of iron, which helps red blood cells carry oxygen around the body.
The USDA dietary guidelines recommend two to three servings of meat every day, with daily portions equivalent to a small steak or one chicken breast.
In the 2022 Australian study, researchers compared the life expectancy in 170 nations to the amount of meat consumed in the diet according to surveys.
Lead researcher Dr Arthur Saniotis, said: 'While this is no surprise to many of us, it still needs to be pointed out.
'It highlights that meat has its own components contributing to our overall health beyond just the number of calories consumed, and that without meat in our diet, we may not thrive.' ....
In the Chinese study, published today in JAMA Network Open, scientists found those who ate the most diverse diets were more likely to live longer.
The study was based on data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey.
Participants were recruited in 1998 at the ages of 80 years or older and then surveyed every few years.
For the analysis, each centenarian in the database was matched to at least two people who had died before reaching centenarian status.
Participants were 94 years old on average, mostly women, and lived across almost all of China's provinces.
To measure dietary diversity, participants were quizzed on how often they ate nine food groups: cereal, vegetables, fruits, soybeans and its products, eggs, meat, fish, milk and dairy products and oil.
The results showed that those who ate all nine food groups at least weekly were more likely to live to 100.
The analysis also found that never smoking and exercising more made it more likely that someone would live to be a centenarian.
But that education, marital status and alcohol consumption in later life made little to no difference to how long someone lived.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13550999/does-eating-meat-improve-longevity-study.html
*********************************************Thursday, June 20, 2024
Most illnesses are a combination of symptoms. We should look at the symptoms one at a time
My heading above is a simplified version of the heading below. And I agree in principle with the propositon it expressees. And the conclusion they draw from their survey data supports that proposition.
But it doesn't! The correlations they report are abysmally low so the findings actually DISPROVE what they set out to show
And that happens all the time in medical research. I have documented it many times. What amazes me is that such crazy studies regularly get reported in top medical journals, as they did below. I am glad that I have lived to 80 so that I can continue to point such follies out -- as there is clearly an acute shorage of sanity about the matters concerned.
The sad thing is that Google has search-blocked me so that my critical comments will only ever become known to regular readers of this blog. A Google search of the subject will not disclose these comments. Criticism is essential to science but Google don't seem to care about that
UPDATE: Google appears to have lifted the search block on this blog. Things I write here will now appear in response to a searches for information on topics I have written about here. So my comments above should appear soon in searches
Polygenic Scores and Networks of Psychopathology Symptoms
Giulia G Piazza et al.
Abstract
Importance
Studies on polygenic risk for psychiatric traits commonly use a disorder-level approach to phenotyping, implicitly considering disorders as homogeneous constructs; however, symptom heterogeneity is ubiquitous, with many possible combinations of symptoms falling under the same disorder umbrella. Focusing on individual symptoms may shed light on the role of polygenic risk in psychopathology.
Objective
To determine whether polygenic scores are associated with all symptoms of psychiatric disorders or with a subset of indicators and whether polygenic scores are associated with comorbid phenotypes via specific sets of relevant symptoms.
Design, Setting, and Participants
Data from 2 population-based cohort studies were used in this cross-sectional study. Data from children in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) were included in the primary analysis, and data from children in the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) were included in confirmatory analyses. Data analysis was conducted from October 2021 to January 2024. Pregnant women based in the Southwest of England due to deliver in 1991 to 1992 were recruited in ALSPAC. Twins born in 1994 to 1996 were recruited in TEDS from population-based records. Participants with available genetic data and whose mothers completed the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire and the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire when children were 11 years of age were included.
Main Outcomes and Measures
Psychopathology relevant symptoms, such as hyperactivity, prosociality, depression, anxiety, and peer and conduct problems at age 11 years. Psychological networks were constructed including individual symptoms and polygenic scores for depression, anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), body mass index (BMI), and educational attainment in ALSPAC. Following a preregistered confirmatory analysis, network models were cross-validated in TEDS. Results Included were 5521 participants from ALSPAC (mean [SD] age, 11.8 [0.14] years; 2777 [50.3%] female) and 4625 participants from TEDS (mean [SD] age, 11.27 [0.69] years; 2460 [53.2%] female). Polygenic scores were preferentially associated with restricted subsets of core symptoms and indirectly associated with other, more distal symptoms of psychopathology (network edges ranged between r = −0.074 and r = 0.073). Psychiatric polygenic scores were associated with specific cross-disorder symptoms, and nonpsychiatric polygenic scores were associated with a variety of indicators across disorders, suggesting a potential contribution of nonpsychiatric traits to comorbidity. For example, the polygenic score for ADHD was associated with a core ADHD symptom, being easily distracted ( r = 0.07), and the polygenic score for BMI was associated with symptoms across disorders, including being bullied ( r = 0.053) and not thinking things out ( r = 0.041).
Conclusions and Relevance
Genetic associations observed at the disorder level may hide symptom-level heterogeneity. A symptom-level approach may enable a better understanding of the role of polygenic risk in shaping psychopathology and comorbidity.
June 2024 JAMA Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.1403
*****************************************************
Sunday, June 16, 2024
Is fake meat bad for you?
This is a funny one. Food freaks are suspicious of highly processed food, but overlook that fake meat is a highly processed food. There has been quite an upsurge in sales of fake meat in the last couple of years so it seems that lots of people think they are doing themslves some good by avoiding the dreaded red meat. So some journalists are having fun with that. They are condemning fake meat as unhealthy.
Real vegetarians won't be bothered. They mostly live on lightly processed legumes -- nutmeat and the like -- as a protein source. Fake meat would be a low priority for them
I have never had any time for fake meat. I had a very nice piece of thinly sliced Scotch fillet steak for dinner last night washed down by a good Australian Shiraz. The wine:
By EVANGELINE MANTZIORIS
So it's not surprising new research out this week including the health effects of ultra-processed, plant-based foods is going to attract global attention.
And the headlines can be scary if that research and the publicity surrounding it suggests eating these foods increases your risk of heart disease, stroke or dying early.
Here's how some media outlets interpreted the research. The Daily Mail ran with:
Vegan fake meats are linked to increase in heart deaths, study suggests: Experts say plant-based diets can boost health – but NOT if they are ultra-processed
The New York Post's headline was:
Vegan fake meats linked to heart disease, early death: study
But when we look at the study itself, it seems the media coverage has focused on a tiny aspect of the research, and is misleading.
So does eating supermarket plant-based burgers and other plant-based, ultra-processed foods really put you at greater risk of heart disease, stroke and premature death?
Here's what prompted the research and what the study actually found.
Remind me, what are ultra-processed foods?
Ultra-processed foods undergo processing and reformulation with additives to enhance flavour, shelf-life and appeal. These include everything from packet macaroni cheese and pork sausages, to supermarket pastries and plant-based mince.
There is now strong and extensive evidence showing ultra-processed foods are linked with an increased risk of many physical and mental chronic health conditions.
Although researchers question which foods should be counted as ultra-processed, or if all of them are linked to poorer health, the consensus is that, generally, we should be eating less of them.
We also know plant-based diets are popular. These are linked with a reduced risk of chronic health conditions such as heart disease and stroke, cancer and diabetes. And supermarkets are stocking more plant-based, ultra-processed food options.
How about the new study?
The study looked for any health differences between eating plant-based, ultra-processed foods compared to eating non-plant based, ultra-processed foods. The researchers focused on the risk of cardiovascular disease (such as heart disease and stroke) and deaths from it.
Plant-based, ultra-processed foods in this study included mass-produced packaged bread, pastries, buns, cakes, biscuits, cereals and meat alternatives (fake meats). Ultra-processed foods that were not plant-based included milk-based drinks and desserts, sausages, nuggets and other reconstituted meat products.
The researchers used data from the UK Biobank. This is a large biomedical database that contains de-identified genetic, lifestyle (diet and exercise) and health information and biological samples from half a million UK participants. This databank allows researchers to determine links between this data and a wide range of diseases, including heart disease and stroke.
They used data from nearly 127,000 people who provided details of their diet between 2009 and 2012. The researchers linked this to their hospital records and death records. On average, the researchers followed each participant's diet and health for nine years.
What did the study find?
With every 10% increase of total energy from plant-sourced, ultra-processed foods there was an associated 5% increased risk of cardiovascular disease (such as heart disease or stroke) and a 12% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
But for every 10% increase in plant-sourced, non-ultra-processed foods consumed there was an associated 7% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a 13% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
The researchers found no evidence for an association between all plant-sourced foods (whether or not they were ultra-processed) and either an increased or decreased risk of cardiovascular disease or dying from it.
This was an observational study, where people recalled their diet using questionnaires. When coupled with other data, this can only tell us if someone's diet is associated with a particular risk of a health outcome. So we cannot say that, in this case, the ultra-processed foods caused the heart disease and deaths from it.
Why has media coverage focused on fake meats?
Much of the media coverage has focused on the apparent health risks associated with eating fake meats, such as sausages, burgers, nuggets and even steaks.
These are considered ultra-processed foods. They are made by deconstructing whole plant foods such as pea, soy, wheat protein, nuts and mushrooms, and extracting the protein. They are then reformulated with additives to make the products look, taste and feel like traditional red and white meats.
However this was only one type of plant-based, ultra-processed food analysed in this study. This only accounted for an average 0.2% of the dietary energy intake of all the participants.
Compare this to bread, pastries, buns, cakes and biscuits, which are other types of plant-based, ultra-processed foods. These accounted for 20.7% of total energy intake in the study.
It's hard to say why the media focused on fake meat. But there is one clue in the media release issued to promote the research.
Although the media release did not mention the words "fake meat", an image of plant-based burgers, sausages and meat balls or rissoles featured prominently.
The introduction of the study itself also mentions plant-sourced, ultra-processed foods, such as sausages, nuggets and burgers.
So it's no wonder people can be confused.
Does this mean fake meats are fine?
Not necessarily. This study analyzed the total intake of plant-based, ultra-processed foods, which included fake meats, albeit a very small proportion of people's diets.
From this study alone we cannot tell if there would be a different outcome if someone ate large amounts of fake meats.
In fact, a recent review of fake meats found there was not enough evidence to determine their impact on health.
We also need more recent data to reflect current eating patterns of fake meats. This study used dietary data collected from 2009 to 2012, and fake meats have become more popular since.
What if I really like fake meat?
We have known for a while that ultra-processed foods can harm our health. This study tells us that regardless if an ultra-processed food is plant-based or not, it may still be harmful.
We know fake meat can contain large amounts of saturated fats (from coconut or palm oil), salt and sugar.
So like other ultra-processed foods, they should be eaten infrequently. The Australian Dietary Guidelines currently recommends people should only consume foods like this sometimes and in small amounts.
Are some fake meats healthier than others?
Check the labels and nutrition information panels. Look for those lowest in fat and salt. Burgers and sausages that are a "pressed cake" of minced ingredients such as nuts, beans and vegetables will be preferable to reformulated products that look identical to meat.
You can also eat whole plant-based protein foods such as legumes. These include beans, lentils, chickpeas and soy beans. As well as being high in protein and fibre, they also provide essential nutrients such as iron and zinc. Using spices and mushrooms alongside these in your recipes can replicate some of the umami taste associated with meat.
********************************************
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Scientists raise alarm over common sunscreen ingredient being found in frozen pizzas and candies
Another scare about a "possible" harm. The link to the main article is here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38367662/
There are HUGE barriers to using this study a a basis for policy:* How were the respondents selected? Were they a representative sample of any specifiable popuation? If not, no generlizations can be made from them. That may seem a harsh stricture but in my extensive reseach I always used representative samples. You can do it if you try. If you don't do it you are just playing games
* Once again only high and low scorers were used in the analysis. What happened to the middling scorers? Would including them have made the overall corelations insignificant? It often does.
* I have not been able to see details of the confounders that they alowed for but I doubt that they allowed for the big confounder: income
* They had NO clinical evidence of health problems. The differences they found may or may not lead to illness. Many ingested substances lead to physiological changes without ill effects. We call them drugs
* Since it is ubiquitous, if it did lead to illness of any kind we would surely by now have heard a raft of complaints about it. We have not. If people have ingested it a trillion times without harm, what more do we need to call it harmless?
Scientists have raised concerns of the effects of a common ingredient of sunscreen being used in foods including frozen pizzas, bakery products, and children’s candies.
Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) is a synthetically produced substance that is not classed as hazardous and is used in a vast range of industrial and consumer goods.
It is found in products including sunscreen, sunscreen, cosmetics, paint, plastics, paper, and wallpaper due to its non-flammable and insoluble properties. It also absorbs UV light, though cannot penetrate through the skin.
TiO2 is also regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a type of food coloring and used in a variety of FDA regulated foods, including cottage cheese, salad dressing, and brightly colored sweets such as Skittles – so long as the quantity does not exceed 1 percent by weight of food.
In foods that contain TiO2, it will appear on the ingredients label as either “artificial color” or “colored with titanium dioxide”, though it is not required to be listed, according to the FDA.
Though it is currently approved by the FDA in the US, the substance is currently under reviewed following a 2023 petition by environmental groups, which are seeking to have it banned from foods.
In February, California lawmakers advanced a bill to bar foods with titanium dioxide from being served in public schools. The substance was banned by the European Union in 2022.
Chief among the concerns is that TiO2 contains nanoparticles which – due to their miniscule size – can get inside cells and cause harm to internal organs.
An article in npj Science and Food cited studies done in animals that found that consumption of titanium dioxide nanoparticles led to damage to the liver, immune and reproductive systems, as well as DNA.
Other research found that as well as such damage, the particles can inhibit the spread of beneficial gut bacteria.
A study of 35 healthy adults, published in February, found that those with higher levels of TiO2 in their stool also had higher levels of certain gut inflammation. They also had indications of more gut permeability or how “leaky or separated the cells are,” said Dr Kelsey Mangano, lead scientist of the study.
The concern is that chronic increased gut inflammation and permeability could increase the risk of health issues including colon cancer, nutrient deficiencies and the low-grade inflammation, Dr Mangano said.
Despite this, organizations including the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA) have opposed a “knee-jerk” ban on the substance, stating that it would have “far-reaching consequences”.
A statement released by the CHPA in August 2023, in response to the FDA announcement of a review of the use of TiO2 described a ban as “unjustified”.
“We strongly urge the Food and Drug Administration to deny the petition to repeal [a section of its regulations], which permits the use of TiO2 in food and dietary supplements,” the statement read.
“While consumer safety is of paramount importance, a knee-jerk ban on TiO2 in food and dietary supplements would be unjustified. Based on extensive scientific research and regulatory evaluations, TiO2 is deemed safe for use as a food additive when consumed within established regulatory limits.
“Furthermore, its regulatory approval, manufacturing oversight, and industry best practices ensure the responsible use of this ingredient. Continued adherence to these safety measures and ongoing research will contribute to maintaining the safety and integrity of TiO2 as an essential food additive.”
*************************************************
Monday, June 03, 2024
Harvard scientists find new incredible benefit of following Mediterranean diet
Incredible is the word. This study has so many holes in it that I found it hard to know where to start pointing them out.
So I'll start with the big picture: Japan has the longest lived national population by far. So shouldn't we all be living on a diet of rice and fish with a side-salad of sea-weed? That may suggest that a Mediterranean diet is NOT optimal. Another permissible inference is that both diet and geography do not matter as influences on lifespan
OK: On to the study below. The journal article is here:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2819335
I think the most obvious point is that the hazard ratios were tiny, indicating extrememly marginal effects. And very weak effects tend to be unreplicable -- nothing to be relied on for policy purposes.And as a study based on self-reports it is very questionable. Pychologists have known since the '30s that self reports often misrepresent behaviour: Mainly because respondents tend to "fake good" on questionnaires.
And it's alarming that no allowance for confounders was reported. Income is the big confounder. Poor people regularly have worse healh. So was it poor people who did less well on the qauestionnaire. Were the less long-lived people in the study simply poorer? We don't know.
And possible psychological confounders are ignored too. Was it more stable personalities or higher IQ people who stuck more to the diet? Was it their characteristics that extended life? We don't know. High IQ people do in general tend to live longer
So there was a tiny tendency for the diet regulars to live longer but was it really the diet that mattered? What if the regulars lived longer because they were also smarter, richer, more emotionally stable etc? Was the diet simply a marker for something else? Was the real cause of the longer life something other than the diet? We do not know and the researchers appear to have done nothing to find out.
They did put a lot of work into their study so it is quite sad that the safest conclusion we can draw from their work is that we do not know if diet matters
The Mediterranean diet has been found to reduce the risk of death by all causes by nearly a quarter in women.
A study of more than 25,000 healthy middle-aged American females with an average age of 55 found that following a diet rich in fish, legumes, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains was linked with a 23 percent lower risk of dying by the end of the 25-year study.
Every woman was quizzed on their adherence to the diet annually, and thos who stuck closely to it over that 25-year period enjoyed a 16 percent lowered risk of death from all causes.
The Mediterranean diet, which has been crowned the best diet for seven years in a row, has been shown to reduce inflammation in the body, improve the body's regulation in insulin, and manage weight, all of which protect against heart disease, dementia, and diabetes.
The diet is common in Greece, Italy, and Spain, countries that border the Mediterranean Sea.
The latest study from Harvard University is among the largest, with 25,315 women involved and perhaps the longest-running, with the women being followed for more than two decades.
At the start of the study, women filled out health questionnaires about their dietary habits, their health, their height and weight to calculate BMI.
They also had their blood pressure assessed.
Participants filled out health questionnaires every six months during the first year and annually thereafter.
Researchers assigned scores for adherence to the diet on a scale from zero to nine, with a higher score indicating that the woman stuck to the diet closely.
The scoring was based on the intake of nine dietary components, including a high intake of vegetables (except potatoes), fruits, nuts, whole grains, fish, and monosaturated fats.
If a woman ate less red and processed meats, she got points. If their alcohol consumption fell between five to 15 grams per day, they got an additional point.
Then, the participants were broken into three categories based on their scores, with low adherence scores ranging from zero to three, intermediate adherence scores being a four or five, and high adherence scores falling between six and nine.
Over about 25 years, researchers counted 3,879 deaths, including 935 from heart disease and 1,531 from cancer.
Women with high adherence scores of six or higher were 23 percent less likely to die from all causes, while those with a score of four or five had a 16 percent lower risk.
The researchers said: ‘Our results suggest that a proportion of the lower risk of mortality may be accounted for by several cardiometabolic risk factors, in particular, biomarkers related to metabolism, inflammation, TRL pathways, insulin resistance, and BMI.
They added: ‘Most of the potential benefit of adherence to the Mediterranean diet and mortality remains unexplained, and future studies should examine other pathways that could potentially mediate the Mediterranean diet–associated lower mortality as well as examine cause-specific mortality.’
Their study was published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Few diets are loved by doctors as much as the Mediterranean diet. In addition to reducing one’s risk of heart disease, obesity, and dementia, it has a protective effect against stroke and can extend one’s life.
A 2016 study in the journal Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition & Metabolic Care reported that people who followed the diet lived about four and half years longer than those who didn’t.
It is meant to be as enjoyable as it is straightforward. It prescribes loading up on veggies and fruits, cutting back on red meat, and incorporating fats, especially extra virgin olive oil, nuts, peanuts, olives, and avocados.
The diet also recommends exercise, the first dietary pyramid to do so. The prescription is based on the lifestyles of people in Mediterranean-bordering countries, specifically Sardinia, Italy, and Ikaria, Greece.
Both are considered Blue Zones – areas of the world where people consistently reach 100 years old. People in Blue Zones plant gardens, go on walks with fellow members of their community, dance with friends, and perform manual labor that anchors them to their surroundings.
****************************************************
Sunday, June 02, 2024
Ultra-processed foods do NOT cause obesity, says US government's top diet advisors in bombshell review of current evidence: 'Studies have been biased'
At last! Some sanity and honesty! I have been pointing out the inconclusiveness of existing food & health studies for many years. I give a new example immediately following the report below
Ultra-processed foods — demonized for years for their supposed effect on our waistlines — do not actually make people fat, according to a bombshell report.
The US government's top dietitians found 'limited' evidence these foods cause people to gain weight faster than any other food, after reviewing more than a dozen studies dating back to the 1990s.
The report has not been released in full and only segments have been uploaded online.
But the snippets suggest there is nothing intrinsic about processed food that causes obesity and that the amount of calories one eats is the most important factor for weight gain.
People have been hearing a lot about the health risks of ultra processed foods recently, which might make this report surprising, Carolyn Williams, a registered dietitian who was not involved in the review told DailyMail.com.
The report comes from the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), whose findings inform nutrition labels and public health recommendations for food.
'What they're saying is not that there is no relationship between ultra processed foods and larger body size or greater body fat,' Dr Williams told DailyMail.com.
'They're saying, right now, we don't have enough conclusive research to come out and say, avoid all ultra processed foods.'
This report comes from a group of 20 nutrition experts from across the country that are elected by the Department of Health and Human Services and the US Department of Agriculture to draft new national nutrition recommendations. T
The current group has gathered to make recommendations about what Americans should eat from 2025 to 2030, this report will likely inform their new guidelines.
They recommend that more research needs to be conducted before they are able to make rules about ultra processed foods.
The report has yet to be made live online, but two slides were shared in a screenshot from Kevin D Hall, a nutrition scientist at the National Institutes of Health, in an X post.
In their report, the DGCA said they had 'serious concerns' about bias in the studies that have linked ultra processed foods to weight gain.
This is chiefly because the definition of ultra processed food isn't an exact science, which means that the studies may be subject to 'misclassification bias'.
This means that studies that use variables that are hard to categorize may lead researchers to draw inaccurate conclusions.
There is a system for classifying ultra processed foods, called NOVA, that was developed by Brazilian scientists who first started looking into the topic in the 1990's. But there's a lot of 'room for interpretation' in these guidelines, Dr Williams said.
Generally if a food has ingredients you wouldn't use in home cooking - additives and stabilizers with long names, for example - then it's probably an ultra processed item.
This system doesn't classify foods based on the nutritional content within them.
For example, mountain dew is ultra processed, which has next to zero nutritional benefit, but so are many brands of multigrain bread, which contain fiber, vitamins and even some protein.
This, nutritionists like Dr Williams said, brings the validity of ultra processed foods as a label into question.
Another issue that the DGAC seems to have is that many of the studies they felt were robust enough to include in their review have taken place in other countries and only one study has been performed in a lab.
Without laboratory studies of a topic, it's difficult for scientists to conclude that ultra processed foods are definitely causing health problems.
Some commentators are striking back at the report, saying it doesn't address many of the other concerns people have about processed foods.....
It's understandable that people would read this portion of the DGAC's report and react angrily, Dr Williams said. It doesn't seem in line with what most people have been hearing recently, but it represents how science works, she said.
In her opinion, and many other dietitians, these foods likely have contributed to some of the public health problems we've been seeing in the US. But science is a slow process, and the body of research isn't 'definitively' there yet, she said.
The report merely highlights that ultra processed foods need to be investigated further.
She added: 'This is really what you want. You don't want your federal committee jumping to conclusions.'
************************************************
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
