SHR

Vitamin B12 (also called cobalamin) deficiency affects roughly 6% of adults aged 70+ years and is a concern frequently attributable to gastric atrophy that leads to malabsorption. B12 is found primarily in animal products bound to the protein and must be freed by the digestive action of our stomach acid and enzymes. Once freed from the protein, B12 is immediately bound to an R protein within the gastric juice that protects it from bacterial use. Upon entering the small intestine, the B12 is released from the R protein and binds to intrinsic factor (IF) that was synthesized within the stomach but escapes digestion. This B12-IF complex travels through the small intestine to interact with receptors that allow for the absorption of B12. Gastric atrophy affects the early steps of this process by limiting protein digestion and/or the production of IF. Full-blown B12 deficiency leads to numerous neurologic and cognitive disturbances as...

Dairy fat is a complicated topic because it is typically around 70% saturated fat but shows very inconsistent effects on blood lipids and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. However, if we narrow things down farther from dairy fat and focus on the foods which contain it, there is a lot of evidence from randomized controlled trials that diets high in saturated fat derived largely from butter fat increases LDL-c, whereas cheese intake results in lower LDL-c compared with butter of equal fat content. However, every trial showing these effects has used very high amounts of butter. For instance, one study replaced 13% of the subject’s caloric intake with butter, which corresponded to an average of 50 grams (almost one-half of a stick) of butter per day. In order to evaluate the effects of moderate butter consumption on CVD risk factors, Engel and Tholstrup from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark recruited 47 healthy...

Every day for years I have made my best effort to consume vinegar with every meal. Whether this is apple cider vinegar mixed in carbonated water or a touch of white vinegar on steamed greens or rice, I always try and find a way to have my vinegar. If you asked me why, I would say that it helps reduce post-prandial glycemia (the blood glucose response following a meal). In fact, it was the first guest-post article I had written for Adel Moussa over at SuppVersity. Since then I have never really given vinegar a second thought, until a newly published study popped into my inbox that once again brought vinegar to my attention. Only this time, I want to do it more justice than I had in the short article I wrote for Adel. So, what is vinegar? Vinegar is a liquid consisting mainly of water and acetic acid, which...

If there is one thing that research into eating behaviors has told us, it is that we are some gullible humans. Seriously, our perceptions about eating are influenced by numerous things in the environment such as the colors, ambiance, and food presentation. It’s not entirely our fault though, as most of the environmental effects are incredibly subtle and appeal to our subconscious. Who considers the size of a plate or presence of a food label when eating? Yet they have power. Interestingly, many of the ways through which the environment acts depends upon us. Drinking coffee from a white mug, for example, does not cause the coffee to taste bitterer because of some variable the white mug imparts onto the coffee but rather because the white color contrasts the coffee color and influenced the perceived “brownness” of the coffee that implies a stronger brew. Similarly, perceiving a food to be “healthy”...

Diet quality matters In the lead article of the latest issue of Nutrition Reviews, Karina Fischer et al. from the University of Bonn, Germany set out to systematically review the results of observational and controlled intervention studies evaluating the relations between qualitative aspects of diet and measures of visceral (VAT) and subcutaneous (SAAT) adipose tissue in healthy adults or adolescents. Overall, 20 observational and 23 intervention studies were reviewed, and it was determined that a 7-22% change in VAT and 2-14% change in SAAT could be expected with controlled changes in the qualitative aspects of an individual’s diet. However, SAAT may be mainly affected by the energy component associated with a particular qualitative aspect of diet. You can’t blame genetics for a beer-belly Tyler Bosch et al. had previously published research of twins indicating that the sex-specific thresholds for body fat at which visceral fat (VAT) begins to accumulate rapidly were...

Energy restriction and weight loss lead to several fundamental changes in physiology that make weight regain easy and continued dieting more difficult. A lot of it comes down to the p-ratio of the dieting individuals, but one hormone that is central to the puzzle is leptin. That is because leptin levels decline both during dieting and after there is a return to caloric maintenance regardless of the weight-loss protocol. The suppression post-dieting is one aspect that makes maintaining a lower body weight so difficult. Interestingly, administration of exogenous leptin during this time has been shown to reverse the reduction in energy expenditure, the reduction in neuromuscular adaptations, and the increased food-reward cues. This begs the question, to what extent does leptin influences these changes? The answer comes from the work of Stefan Camps at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He and his colleagues recruited 82 obese but otherwise healthy middle-aged men and...

Exercise throughout the day is healthy for children!... We need research to tell us this? I would be flabbergasted (awesome word) to find someone who thinks exercise throughout the day isn’t healthy, but at least now we have research documenting it. Nineteen 13-14 year old boys and girls visited the laboratory on four difference occasions where they completed in a randomized order: (1) two, 1 minute intervals at 90% VO2max, separated by 75 seconds of rest (HIIE); (2) ~ 6 min of cycling at 90% GET (MIE); or (3) remained seated and watched TV (control; CON). The exercise bouts were repeated four times, each separated by two hours, and on two occasions the adolescents consumed a milkshake providing 19 kcal/kg bodyweight (75% FAT, 25% CHO, 5% PRO). The exercise protocols had absolutely no effect on post-prandial levels of triglycerides, suggesting that neither high- nor medium-intensity exercise can save a kid from a fat bomb. However,...

It was recently reported by an updated Cochrane Review that reducing saturated fat intake lowered the risk of having a heart attack without affecting the risk of dying from one. These effects were most pronounced when the saturated fat (SFA) was replaced by linoleic acid (PUFA), but there was surprisingly no observable benefit of replacement with monounsaturated fats (MUFA). However, the trials included in this meta-analysis were primarily interventions where only dietary advice was given to the participants who were then followed for some time, and the majority of participants were those who were at a high-risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and/or already had a heart attack. Thankfully, researchers from the University of Reading, UK recently published findings from the DIVAS study that should help shed some light on the issue of fat quality and CVD. The DIVAS study was a 16-week 195-person intervention in which the participants were randomized to...

Are siblings to blame for body composition? This is a question that pondered in the minds of researchers from Brazil, who used data from a birth cohort in 1993 to evaluate the how the number of siblings in a family was related to body composition. Ultimately, 5249 mothers agreed to participate, and their children were assessed at ages 4, 6, 9, 11, 13 and 18 years with the Bod Pod. After adjustment for possible confounding variables, there was a significant association between the number of siblings and fat mass in both boys and girls, while only in girls was muscle mass was associated with sibling number. Boys who had more siblings were less fat and had a lower BMI, while girls with more siblings had less fat and more muscle. What are the “healthy” and “unhealthy” microbes? The human gut is home to trillions of microbes that outnumber the cells in...

In a previous article I wrote about one of the first clinical trials to evaluate the effect of DHA supplementation on indexes of fatty liver in adolescents. Needless to say, the results were quite impressive. But what if you don’t catch non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) quickly enough? Over time, oxidative stress, lipotoxicity, insulin resistance, and central inflammatory signaling pathways drive a transformation from NAFLD to the more serious condition called non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH; literally “fatty inflammation”). At this point, would fish oils still help? If we trust the results of a recent double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial from Brazil, the answer is no! But there’s a catch. Fifty adult men and women with diagnosed NASH supplemented with three pills per day for six months before being readmitted for another liver biopsy to gauge any changes in liver health. What nobody knew (double-blind), was whether the pills supplied a mineral oil...