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By the year 2050, the number of people in the world over 80 years old will reach 370 million. About 50 percent of adults currently 85 and older have Alzheimer’s disease. The statistics are sobering and warn of a growing and serious epidemic. A high prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease, which is a debilitating and costly disease, can severely impact the population. With this perspective, the American Society for Nutrition hosted a symposium on the nutritional prevention of cognitive decline on Wednesday at Experimental Biology in San Diego. At the event, speakers presented a comprehensive overview of epidemiological, animal, and clinical trials regarding the role of B vitamins, omega-3s, vitamin D, and caffeinated beverages such as coffee and tea in the prevention and treatment of cognitive impairment. Martha Morris, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Tufts University, discussed the relationship of folic acid, B12, and homocysteine to age-related cognitive decline, dementia, and Alzheimer’s dise

Workplace programs are an effective and worthwhile way for employers to help improve the health of their employees and reduce medical costs, scientists said Tuesday at Experimental Biology 2012 in San Diego at a session organized by the American Society for Nutrition.  The medical expenses for employees who are obese are estimated at about 42 percent higher than for those with a healthy weight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet for the approximately 60 percent of Americans who are employed, it may be the workplace itself that is at the root of weight gain in the first place. Shirley Beresford, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology of University of Washington, expressed optimism that workplace obesity programs could help reduce obesity based on a history of research. She explained that programs offered a way for employers to partner in intervention; however, she noted that the enthusiasm of employees for behavioral change may fall short. The trouble with the wo

There is little question that nutrition provides the foundation of health and wellbeing and that research into better nutrition is central to enabling a population live healthier, more productive, and longer lives. With this perspective in mind, the American Society for Nutrition assembled a working group of leading nutrition thought leaders to identify a list of nutritional research areas that required greater or further analysis and prioritization. In a symposium entitled "The Future of Nutrition Research" on Tuesday at Experimental Biology 2012 (#EB2012), these thought leaders outlined what was generally agreed as the six areas of nutrition research that deserved attention. The areas of the research comprised of the following: Understand variability in responses to diet and food—a broad area that includes research in epigenetics, proteomics, and metabolomics. Understand the nutritional impact on healthy growth, development, and reproduction The role of nutrition in health

Lindsay Allen Efforts to curb or eliminate vitamin and mineral deficiencies globally have existed for almost a century, although there are now still as many questions if not more than ever before about what the next steps should be. There are seldom solutions that are simple to guide public policy internationally and there remain large challenges when it comes to making informed recommendations.  Lindsay Allen, Ph.D., R.D, who is the 2012-2013 recipient of the E. V. McCollum International Lectureship in Nutrition, discussed a new way forward to improve the health of infants, children, and pregnant women internationally on April 22 at the McCollum Lecture organized by the American Society for Nutrition at Experimental Biology 2012 in San Diego. She currently serves as the Center Director of the USDA, ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center.  She discussed the challenges faced in global research and policy on micronutrient deficiencies as well as new methodologies on the horizon to i

The scientific community lashed out against "sugar is toxic" sensationalism on Sunday, April 22, identifying it as a distraction from more meaningful areas of research and debate on the causes of obesity and disease. In a highly attended debate at Experimental Biology 2012 in San Diego sponsored by the Corn Refiners Association, scientists expressed clear frustration about the repeated assaults on sugar both in recent news reports and in the scientific literature. "You don't often see this at a meeting," said John White, Ph.D., of White Technical Research, to me after the event, referring to what he said was "the groundswell of researchers pushing back" against inflammatory remarks and overstatements. The symposium organized by the American Society for Nutrition showcased both sides of the controversy surrounding the metabolic effects and health implications of sugar—fructose, sucrose, and high-fructose corn syrup—using latest available and emerging sc

One of the biggest problems with modern diets rich in industrial foods is that they promote unnatural hunger patterns. For example, hunger can be caused by hypoglycemic dips, coupled with force-storage of fat in adipocytes, after meals rich in refined carbohydrates. This is a double-edged post-meal pattern that is induced by, among other things, abnormally elevated insulin levels. The resulting hunger is a rather unnatural type of hunger. By the way, I often read here and there, mostly in blogs, that “insulin suppresses hunger”. I frankly don’t know where this idea comes from. What actually happens is that insulin is co-secreted with a number of other hormones. One of those, like insulin also secreted by the beta-cells in the pancreas, is amylin – a powerful appetite suppressor. Amylin deficiency leads to hunger even after a large carbohydrate-rich meal, when insulin levels are elevated. Abnormally high insulin levels – like those after a “healthy” breakfast of carbohydrate-rich cere

What is wrong with "eat less, move more"? Most of us are familiar with this mantra as weight-loss advice. However, a new consensus statement from the American Society for Nutrition ( ASN ) and the International Life Sciences Institute ( ILSI ) contends that this energy-in-energy-out framework isn't really so simple. The problem lies in that consuming fewer calories and burning more through physical activity doesn’t always translate well to weight management. That is not to say that the framework of energy balance—negative energy balance for weight loss; positive energy balance for weight—is wrong. At some level, it’s right; however, several factors come into the equation. During a Saturday morning session of Experimental Biology ( #EB2012 ) in San Diego, Calif., researchers discussed the topic of this complexity and promoting a new paradigm on energy balance. Energy balance is not just about addition of diet and exercise; each affects the other, so that changing one chang

Carotenoids are thought to protect against Alzheimer's disease because of their antioxidant properties and their accumulation in the brain. However, a new study from Tufts University is putting the theory into question. More than a century has passed since the German physician Dr. Alois Alzheimer first presented evidence on the case of Auguste Deter, who at only 51 suffered from severe memory loss and other psychological changes. At autopsy, Dr. Alzheimer found his patient had severe shrinkage and abnormal deposits of the nerve cells. "That was in 1906," said nutritionist Annie Roe, a USDA researcher at Tufts University, who presented her laboratory's findings on April 21 at Experimental Biology 2012 in San Diego. "There's still disparity among scientists as to the etiology of this rapidly growing disease as we now know as Alzheimer's disease." Currently, in the United States there are 5.3 million people with Alzheimer's disease. Unless new metho

Thanks to the Human Genome Project, we humans now know that we are all really very much the same at the level of our DNA. Our genomes are 99.9 percent identical, leaving really only 0.1 percent responsible for giving each of us what we would consider our differences or unique qualities. It's within this 0.1 percent that may also explain why some of us may be more likely to be overweight, obese, or susceptible to a disease such as type 2 diabetes. One of the most promising developments in nutrition research are the insights provided by studies on how dietary components interact with genes. The knowledge gleaned could one day be used for reducing risk of disease and staying healthier, longer. This area of research is nutritional genomics, or nutrigenomics for short. Eventually understanding more about nutrigenomics could lead to our ability to better personalize our diet plans and make better food choices based on our genetic code. Interestingly, however, new research suggests that i

Sci-comm thrives on social media.  "Writing is thinking on paper" is one of the many beautiful phrases by William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well . Only, if Zinsser had put those words down more than three decades later, he might have added that writing is also thinking on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. As I prepare to head off to San Diego for Experimental Biology ( #EB2012 )—where I’ll be  blogging  about The American Society for Nutrition's meeting—I’ve been thinking a good deal about Zinsser’s phrase and about Mary Canady's ( @comprendia ) call  for those attending #EB2012Tweetup  to share their new media science communications success stories. My own story begins with me simply blogging and tweeting as a way to think  and as a way to remember what it was that I thought .  I learned early on that I was never very good at thinking about new information clearly or remembering my thoughts later—unless I wrote my thoughts down. So, I originally began to wr

Biochemistry-based arguments can be very misleading. Yet, biochemistry can be extremely useful in the elucidation of diet and lifestyle effects that are suggested by well-designed studies of humans. If you start with a biochemistry-based argument though, and ignore actual studies of humans, you can easily convince someone that glycogen-depleting exercise (e.g., weight training) is unhealthy, because many health markers change for the worse after that type of exercise. But it is the damage caused by glycogen-depleting exercise that leads to health improvements, via short- and long-term compensatory adaptations ( ). Biochemistry is very helpful in terms of providing “pieces for the puzzle”, but biochemical reductionism is a problem. Analogous to biochemical reductionism, and perhaps one example of it, is hormonal reductionism – trying to argue that all diet and lifestyle effects are mediated by a single hormone. A less extreme position, but still myopic, is to argue that all diet and lif

I wrote most of this post a while ago, and then forgot about it. The recent blogosphere storm of comments regarding cold-induced thermogenesis caught me by surprise ( ), and provided a motivation to get this post out. Contrary to popular perception, I guess, cold-induced thermogenesis is an extensively researched topic. Some reasonably well cited references are linked here. Let us backtrack a bit. When people say that they want to lose weight, usually what they really want is to lose is body fat. However, they frequently do things that make them lose what they do not want – muscle glycogen, water, and even some muscle protein. Physical activity in general depletes muscle glycogen; even aerobic physical activity. Walking, for example, depletes muscle glycogen; but slowly, and proportionally to how fast one walks. Weight training and sprints deplete muscle glycogen much faster. Whatever depletes muscle glycogen also lowers the amount of water stored in myocytes (muscle cells), effective

Sugar is toxic? Not this hummingbird's opinion. Whenever someone asks me whether or not sugar or high-fructose corn syrup is "toxic," I remind them that every few days I make up a simple solution of four parts boiled water and one part plain white table sugar. This I use to fill the hummingbird feeders in my yard here in Arizona and the little guys never complain about it. In fact, they lap up the sweet nectar -- as much as they can get with their long tongues -- to fuel their high metabolism. Then, they fly off (or get chased off) to their perches and I make a note that most will return within 30 to 45 minutes for more. Research shows their little bodies will have oxidized all the ingested sucrose by that time (1). How can hummingbird fuel be evil? It's just not, as Dr. David Katz pointed out  a year ago  in a rebuttal to Dr. Lustig's viral YouTube video and Gary Taubes's article in the New York Times Magazine . Another excellent rebuttal was " The bitt

As we have seen in an earlier post on the China Study data ( ), which explored relationships hinted at by Denise Minger’s previous and highly perceptive analysis ( ), one can use a multivariate analysis tool like WarpPLS ( ) to explore relationships based on data reported by others. This is true even when the dataset available is fairly small. So I entered the data reported in the most recent (published online in March 2012) study looking at the relationship between red meat consumption and mortality into WarpPLS to do some exploratory analyses. I discussed the study in my previous post; it was conducted by Pan et al. (Frank B. Hu is the senior author) and published in the prestigious Archives of Internal Medicine ( ). The data I used is from Table 1 of the article; it reports figures on several variables along 5 quintiles, based on separate analyses of two samples, called “Health Professionals” and “Nurses Health” samples. The Health Professionals sample comprised males; the Nurses H