SHR

There are many benefits to be gained from exercise and weight loss in the overweight-obese population, and both are commonly prescribed to achieve cardiometabolic health improvements. However, exercise for weight loss is an inefficient and unsustainable route for many individuals. Instead, exercise should be done for health while weight loss is achieved through dietary modifications. But which has a greater impact? The answer comes from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark who recently published additional data from the CUT-IT study where 64 overweight-obese out-patients (age 45-75 years) with coronary artery disease (CAD) were randomized to undergo 12 weeks of aerobic interval training (AIT) three times weekly or consume a low-energy diet (LED) for 8-10 weeks followed by 2-4 weeks of transition to a high-protein/low-glycemic index diet. The AIT protocol involved a 38 minute session beginning with a 10-minute moderate-intensity warm-up followed by high intensity interval training (85-90% of VO2peak, Borg scale 17–18) on...

There is a vast body of literature evaluating the health effects of fish oil and the quantity needed to benefit. Although therapeutic approaches can be taken, such as using high-doses of fish oil to battle fatty liver and reduce triglycerides, fish oil’s benefits generally come from balancing our body’s n-3/6 ratio. In this regard, many authoritative bodies have put out recommendations for EPA and DHA intake, either as a weekly or daily goal. To date, only two studies (here & here) have compared daily vs twice weekly supplementation of fish oil and found no difference when blood levels were used as a proxy for bioavailability. However, when referring to nutrients, bioavailability is used to describe how much of an orally administered nutrient is actually retained in the body after being digested and absorbed. According to Schuchardt and Hahn, LC n-3 FA can be detected in the blood in various forms. These include...

Over the last decade, there has been a considerable amount of literature dedicated to clarifying the role that fructose plays in health and disease. Unlike glucose, fructose is primarily metabolized within the liver and bypasses a critical rate-limiting step (phosphofructokinase) in the energy production pathway of glucose. Bypassing this step means that the metabolism of fructose is less controlled than the metabolism of glucose, and this is the main reason why fructose and glucose have different metabolic effects. It has been shown in healthy adults that fructose stimulates DNL (de novo lipogenesis; the creation of fatty acids) to a greater extent than glucose, and this is the main reason why fructose has been portrayed as particularly harmful. However, isotopic tracer studies in humans suggest that 50% of ingested fructose is converted into glucose, 25% into lactate, at least 15% into liver glycogen, and only 10% oxidized directly or converted to fatty...

Vegetarian? You might have an eating disorder. At least, that’s the takeaway from the latest work of Kelly Zuromski et al. published in Eating Behaviors that examined the prevalence of vegetarianism within three female samples with varying severity of eating disorder symptoms (i.e., nonclinical, subclinical, clinical). All participants came from locations in the southeastern U.S., and were included in the nonclinical group if they denied any lifetime eating pathology and were included in the subclinical group if they endorsed any eating pathology (i.e., fasting, binge eating, self-induced vomiting, laxative use, and excessive exercise) in the past month. The clinical group was women recruited from an eating disorder treatment center. Generally, the nonclinical group ate a wider variety of foods compared to the other groups. The prevalence of self-identified, lifetime vegetarianism was lowest in the nonclinical group (6.80%), and highest in the clinical group (34.80%), with the subclinical group falling in between (17.60%). Additionally,...

Adjectives are relative, and while I would not consider any obese person to be healthy in general, there is no doubt that some obese individuals are healthier than other obese individuals. This is no different from how some normal-weight people are going to be healthier than other normal-weight people. The divide between healthy and unhealthy is typically the criterion for metabolic syndrome, which requires that an individual possess three or more of the following: abdominal obesity, hypertension, low HDL-c, high triglycerides, and prediabetes. Taking medications to manage any of these conditions also counts. Regardless of weight, common sense tells us that someone without metabolic syndrome is going to be healthier in general than someone with metabolic syndrome, and meta-analyses support this for type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease and mortality. A question we might ask is why some people become metabolically unhealthy? Given the vast literature base supporting the health benefits of...

Statins are quickly becoming the front-line method for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) due to their outstanding ability to reduce LDL-cholesterol levels, and the most recent Cochrane Review indicates that statins are effective at reducing all-cause and CVD mortality. Of particular concern, however, was the fact that all trials were either fully or partially funded by pharmaceutical companies (five by Bristol Myers and Squibb, three by Pfizer, four by Astra-Zeneca, two by Merck and one by Bayer, one by Bayer and Merk, one by Pfizer, and the remaining by Sankyo Co Ltd). Moreover, the reporting of adverse events in these trials was generally poor, with failure to provide details of severity and type of adverse events or to report on health-related quality of life. There really is no doubt that statins are effective at doing what they were designed to do – lower LDL-cholesterol. However, statins don’t target LDL-c directly;...

There is a growing body of research suggesting resistant starches (RS) to improve glycemic control and insulin sensitivity, increase microbial diversity and digestive health, and aid in weight management. Ironically, the “unhealthy” white rice is one such source of RS, at least after it has cooked and cooled. This is because the cooking and cooling process leads to retrograded amylose and starch that is resistant to our digestive enzymes. However, the actual RS content of rice displays wide genetic diversity, with some data reporting ranges of 2 to 6.7 % dry weight. This begs the question of whether eating rice with more RS is worth the effort to seek it out, and our answer comes from the work of Alison Zenel and Maria Stewart at the University of Hawaii. They recruited 18 young and healthy men and women from their university to consume three different rice cultivars on three different occasions...

Nine weeks of dedicated for the elderly to see progress If you train long enough, your bound to build muscle eventually. Just how long was recently investigated by researchers from Brazil who recruited elderly men and women to undergo a 10-week resistance training (RT) program with workouts twice per week, no structured physical activity (control). Initially, the subjects warmed-up in a stationary bicycle for five minutes. Afterwards, subjects performed 4 sets x 10 repetitions with a 1-min rest interval between sets in a 45° leg press machine (G3-PL70 MATRIX, São Paulo, Brazil). In the first five weeks of training the exercise intensity was set at 70% 1-RM, based on the pre-test values; for the last five weeks, exercise intensity was increased to 80% of the re-tested 1-RM (assessed at the middle of the RT period). The range of motion at the knee joint during the leg-press was set to ~ 90°....

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...