Urban Dwellers Alert: Exhaust Fumes Cause Arterial Stiffness

Do you live in a big city or an area where you are sometimes forced to inhale car and truck exhaust? If so, you should strongly consider using a face mask, because exhaust causes arteries to lose their flexibility. Researchers writing in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology found that exposure to engine pollution resulted in arterial stiffness in a group of healthy volunteers.

Nicholas Mills from the University of Edinburgh and his colleagues investigated the cardiovascular damage that can be caused by inhaling diesel smoke in particular. “Acute exposure to diesel exhaust is associated with an immediate and transient increase in arterial stiffness. This may, in part, explain the increased risk for cardiovascular disease associated with air pollution exposure."

A group of 12 non-smoking young men were set up in this experiment to cycle on exercise bikes while breathing air that had either been filtered or contaminated with smoke from a diesel engine. Researchers found that when the subjects were exposed to the polluted air, the blood vessels in their wrists temporarily lost the ability to expand and contract. According to Mills, this can have serious consequences, “Stiff arteries can result in raised blood pressure and reduced blood flow in the heart. Arterial stiffness plays an important role in hypertension and is an independent predictor of mortality.”

There is, however, something that cyclists and pedestrians in smog shrouded cities can do to limit the vascular effects caused by diesel exhaust. It turns out that wearing a facemask reduces exposure to airborne pollution particles and leads to a reduction in blood pressure and improved heart rate during exercise in an urban environment.

With regards to which type of facemask to use, Dr. Jeremy Langrish from the University of Edinburgh said, “We tested a range of facemasks that differed widely in their efficiency as particle filters. In general, those masks designed to reduce occupational exposure to dusts in the workplace were more efficient than those marketed to cyclists and pedestrians.”

Dave

What is a Naturopathic Doctor?

I enjoyed this short video, an excerpt from an upcoming PBS special about the profession of Naturopathic doctors, and how they fit into today's healthcare picture.

It is worth watching if you've seen references to these doc's but never understood exactly what they do,

Naturopathic Doctors

Dave

Fermented Asian Food Shown to Have Possible Protective Effect in Alzheimer's

People in Asia have been eating fermented foods for more than 1,000 years. One vegan fermented food, renowned in Asia for its ability to protect against heart attacks, was recently shown to have a powerful ability in lab experiments to prevent formation of the clumps of tangled protein involved in Alzheimer’s disease. if this works as well in the human brain as scientists expect, it will be a great addition to the tables of anyone who is concerned about this terrible disease.

Of course, every culture has a different view of what tastes good, and as I have not yet had a chance to try this food, I'll have to report back to you on what this product tastes like. If you've eaten natto, please post a comment below advising us about the taste and consistency.

Scientists in Taiwan are reporting in the Feb. 11 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication from the American Chemical Society, that "natto", a food made from fermented soybeans, has a very powerful effect in the lab.

Rita P. Y. Chen and colleagues point out that this food is made from boiled soybeans, and that it contains an enzyme (nattokinase) with effects similar to the clot-busting drugs used in treating heart disease. Nattokinase is also sold a dietary supplement to improve the body’s circulatory system. This appears to be the first study on whether nattokinase also can dissolve amyloids, those tangled proteins involved in Alzheimer’s disease and several other health problems.

In the study, the nattokinase degraded several kinds of amyloid fibrils, suggesting its possible use in the treatment of amyloid-related diseases. And because natto has been ingested by humans for a long time, it is worth noting that the normal safety-testing concerns for new therapies may not have to be quite as rigorous.

Dave

Herbal Products "Standardization": Boon or a Bust?

Recently I wrote one of the large herbal extract producers and asked them to be more conscientious about the parallels they draw between their products and published research on other companies' products. I received a somewhat nasty reply from their Medical Director, and I think that it shows how the dietary supplement industry dumbs itself down in order to produce what they consider to be "standardized" products. The short version is that this doctor claims that everybody does it, and therefore it is OK by her.

Let's take one particular plant as a case in point, the beautiful little Arctic bush called Rhodiola rosea. This company produces a Rhodiola extract which is sold in a black tar-like liquid form inside a capsule. There are about fifty brands of Rhodiola on the market, and this company is probably in the top ten. Now, as a guy who has sampled every single one of them, I can tell you that I do NOT get that "Rhodiola feeling" when I take their capsules. So, when I saw that they were using another company's clinical trials to back up their claims, I investigated further.

I found that the company with all the clinical trial data standardizes their formula to the actual ingredients ratio in the plant. This differs -- significantly -- from the "standardization" that the firm I wrote uses, in which only one of the plant's biochemicals is identified, where it is labeled "Rosavins at 3%" on the bottle. Other companies use a 3% Rosavins/1% Salidrosides figure, which is similar. What makes this company unique is that they use the published literature of other companies to promote their benefits, when those other products are not "standardized" in the same way.

So, to use an analogy, if you were going to the store to buy a 12-Pack of Budweiser, you'd be pretty sure of what you are getting in the box. You'd be getting what God and man determined should be in a twelve pack of beer. On the other hand, how would you feel if you were to go out to buy an extract of a plant that had twelve phytochemicals in it, and yet when you brought it home and tried it, you got different results than you expected? Back to the beer analogy, when you looked inside, there were only one or two bottles of beer in that 12-pack!

Do you think it is right for a company to highlight the clinical trials of another when the two products are not identical? There's nothing wrong with making comparisons when the published literature describes a product with a similar standardization. But when X product does not in any way resemble product Y, it's just not right to promote X as having the capabilities of Y.

Industry standardization, if done like this one, is like "standardizing" our education in the USA so that every child comes out with a 3rd grade education. Who needs it!

Dave

Just Returned from the Healthy Products "Expo West" Trade Show

My partner and I have just returned from the Expo West meeting in Anaheim, one of the most amazing trade shows that I've ever attended. It was a jam-packed three days filled with new experiences in healthy supplements and just about every kind of food and drink that you can possibly imagine.

Imagine an area the size of four or five football fields filled with exhibitors showing off their wares from every supplement company in the world, and in the same space, all the healthy "organic" food products that you'd find in a Whole Foods Market or similar. It was quite an experience.

One thing that I noticed is that most companies sell "me too" products, to the point where one can get totally burned out on a category. For example, there were more liquid supplements at this event than I've ever seen before, and I have the feeling that the "superfruit" phenomenon has reached its peak. How many $30 bottles of fancy berry juice can companies really market successfully? I'd say that we've reached the top of the market for these liquid supplements (especially those marketed by multi-level marketing companies).

There were fewer new energy drinks in the small can developed first by Red Bull; my guess is that we are at the top of the market there as well. Many new energy products were being introduced in either fizzy tablets or in single serving powder pouches that you rip open and throw into a bottle of water. I counted over 70 varieties of those single serve packs that I hadn't seen before.

There were far fewer food and energy bars at this meeting than in previous years, even though my bag of swag from this show beats anything I've ever hauled home after a meeting. Two excellent products that we came back with were the Lifeway Kefir bars (probiotic enhanced bars-- they taste better than a Hershey's and are actually healthy) and Glenny's Brown Rice Marshmallow Snack Bar, which I personally can't get enough of. The single most impressive item was a small fruit jelly called "Berry Bites," from Artemis International, which offers a full serving's worth of Fruit and Vegetables antioxidants in three tiny (and oh, so delicious) berry flavored gummy bites.

I'll let you know of more WHAM's that I uncover from Expo West.

Dave

Second Hand Smoke and Alcohol

According to researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, there is a lot more danger involved in exposure to alcohol and second-hand smoke than originally thought. In fact, the combination significantly raises the risk of liver disease.

This finding, which adds to a stack of mounting evidence, shows that tobacco smoke and alcohol are worse as a combination, beyond their individual exposure risks. Dr. Shannon Bailey, an associate professor in the UAB Department of Environmental Health Sciences, was a co-lead author on this study, published in the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine.

“This new data is a significant finding considering the combined effect of alcohol and cigarette smoke exposures, and the implications for public health,” Bailey said. While the study was done in mice, it mimics the problem experienced by those who sit in smoky bars and consume alcohol.

This report described results with mice who were exposed to smoky air in a laboratory enclosure and then fed a liquid diet containing alcohol. These animals had 110 percent more liver fibrosis proteins than mice who breathed filtered air. Additionally, the twice-exposed mice had 65 percent more liver fibrosis proteins than mice who breathed smoky air but did not drink ethanol. (Fibrosis is scar-like tissue in the liver that can lead to cirrhosis).

Second-hand smoke kills 53,000 nonsmoking Americans every year and is a known cause of lung cancer, heart disease, low birth weight and chronic lung ailments, according to the American Cancer Society. Excessive alcohol consumption is ranked as the third-leading cause of preventable death in the United States, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new study highlights the need to further probe negative biological impacts from multiple risky behaviors. It appears that our bad habits are -- when they gang up on us -- far more deadly than when we experience them one at a time.

Dave

Link Found Between Vitamin D Deficiency and MS

Canadians are getting very worried about the high levels of multiple sclerosis (MS) in their country. With an estimated 55,000 to 75,000 people affected by the disease, Canada has one of the highest MS rates in the world. More than 2.5 million people worldwide are thought to suffer from the condition.

Sheryl Ubelacker, reporter for The Canadian Press, writes on February 5th of this year about a study by a team of Canadian and British researchers that suggests that too little of the "sunlight vitamin" in a mother during pregnancy and a child's early years may boost the risk of that child developing MS later in life. This is just one more piece of evidence of how critically important that Vitamin D is for human health.

The researchers in Ubelacker's story found that vitamin D activates proteins that lock onto a segment of DNA next to a certain gene (called DRB1-1501) which has been implicated in the development of MS. These proteins regulate what the gene does, in effect switching it on. If there is a lack of vitamin D in the body, the gene may not function properly.

"We have known for a long time that genes and environment determine MS risk," said Dr. George Ebers, a neurologist at Oxford University in England. "Here we show that the main environmental risk candidate - vitamin D - and the main gene region are directly linked and interact."

MS, a degenerative neurological condition that causes the destruction of the myelin sheath that protects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, is most common in people living in northern regions with low annual average sunlight levels.

Dave