Category — Health research

I am writing from Scandinavia where coffee consumption is the highest in the world: Four-plus cups a day compared to U.S.’s measly 1.5 cups (although undoubtedly higher in Portland and Seattle, #2 and #1, respectively, for the most java consumed per capita in our country). Let’s just say I am doing my part to maintain the Scandinavian average by enthusiastically partaking in the national pastime of Sweden, the fika, or coffee-and-bun break.

This activity can be enjoyed many – too many — times a day. Yesterday, I fika-ed at 10, 2:15 and 4:30, resisting the kanelbulle, the cardamom/ cinnamon buns that are the bun part of “coffee-and-bun break,” two out of three times. So not bad. But, with my coffee consumption suddenly way up, I became particularly interested in finding good news about coffee and health. I am happy to report that I found it.

It’s important to note that coffee has had a bad rap for a long time. When I was a kid, the word was that drinking coffee would stunt your growth. Then news came from scientific studies that coffee drinking was associated with heart disease, cancer and shorter life spans. It turns out that those dire stats were an artifact of the coffee-drinking lifestyle not coffee itself. Coffee drinkers – at least when these studies were being conducted years ago – tended to smoke more cigarettes, exercise less often and eat a less healthy diet than non-coffee drinkers. The early studies didn’t separate the beverage from the lifestyle.

Today, the news is much different. And far better. As Frank Hu, MD, MPH, PhD, nutrition and epidemiology professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, says, “There is certainly much more good news than bad news, in terms of coffee and health.”

First, the lack of bad news: Drinking up to six cups a day of coffee is not associated with increased risk of death from any cause, or death from cancer or cardiovascular disease.

Now, the actual good news: It may be that coffee drinkers have a somewhat lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease than those who rarely drink coffee, according to the latest research. Other research suggests that coffee consumption may protect against type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, liver cancer and liver cirrhosis. For women, coffee may mean a lower risk of stroke.

Coffee also appears to improve cognitive function and decrease the risk of depression. It has been linked to lower risk of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. A 2009 study from Finland and Sweden showed that, out of 1,400 people followed for about 20 years, those who reported drinking 3-5 cups of coffee daily were 65% less likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, compared with nondrinkers or occasional coffee drinkers.

Okay then. Time for another fika. Now if only I could find good health news about pastry consumption.

I want to start transfusions today! Hook me up to a pint of that sweet, fresh blood, the good stuff, the primo plasma extracted from bursting-with-life 20-somethings. Because, as we now know, courtesy of The New York Times and The Washington Post and NPR, young blood transfused into old bodies can make those bodies – and minds — young again.

If you’re a mouse.

Believe me, I wanted to rejoice when I read earlier this week about a trio of new studies reporting that the blood of young mice reversed some significant signs of aging in older mice. Researchers in two of the studies (both the result of collaborations at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute) found dramatic improvements in the muscles and the circulatory systems of older mice that either shared a blood supply with young mice or were injected with a protein found abundantly in the blood of their younger lab-mates. The young-blood mice navigated mazes faster and ran longer on treadmills than their saline-injected peers.

The third study (also using mice), published in the estimable journal, Nature, concluded that “exposure of an aged animal to young blood can counteract and reverse pre-existing effects of brain aging at the molecular, structural, functional and cognitive level.” (Italics mine.) Researchers at Stanford and UCSF found structural changes in the hippocampus section of brains of the revitalized-by-blood mice that translated into – take a breath here — the “reversal of cognitive impairments.” The hippocampus plays a major role in the consolidation of both short- and long-term memory and is one of the first regions of the brain to suffer damage from Alzheimer’s. This finding could be the biggest – as in HUGE, amazing, millions-of-lives-altering — breakthrough in a century research on Alzheimer’s.

Or not.

This is not the platform to discuss the ethical issue of testing on animals. Here I’d just like to say that animal models are far from perfect. Or, to put it bluntly: What works in mice often does not work in humans. In a comprehensive comparison between the genes of mice and humans, scientists from institutions across America, Sweden and the UK found that there are more genetic differences between the two species than had been previously thought. In cancer research, according to the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, “The power of these models to predict clinical efficacy is a matter of dispute.”  Research on immunology using mice has also proven to be less-than-translatable.

Perhaps the biggest cautionary Of Mice and (Wo)man tale is resveratrol. You remember… the anti-aging “miracle”? Back in the early 2000s Harvard biologist David Sinclair used red wine-derived resveratrol to turn old mice into young mice. Resveratrol reversed heart disease and liver disease. It lowered cholesterol and blood pressure. It increased the elasticity of arteries. It significantly increased lifespan.

In mice.

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline bought Sinclair’s little start-up company for $720 million and started clinical trials. More than ten years later, the literature on resveratrol (in humans) remains contradictory and confusing. (GlaxoKlineSmith halted clinical trails in 2011.)

I hope – fervently – that these latest trio of mouse studies have meaning for us humans. But really, I lied: I am not ready to start transfusions today.

Given that life is hazardous to your health, and that we all have a 100 percent chance of dying (yes, I’m sorry, it’s true!), it may come as no surprise that an everyday, normal, seemingly innocuous activity is turning out to be super-bad for us.

Yep. I’m taking about sitting.

We now sit for more than half of our waking hours – many of us for significantly more than that. I’m here to tell you (and by “here” I mean sitting at my favorite coffee hang-out with my laptop) that a growing body of research shows that people who spend many hours of the day glued to a seat die at an earlier age than those who sit less—even if those sitters exercise. (Back to that last bomb in a moment…)

A recent meta-analysis of the results of 18 studies (including close to 800,000 participants) found that those who spent the most time sitting increased their risks of diabetes (112%), cardiovascular diseases (147%), death from cardiovascular causes (90%) and death from all causes (49%) compared to those who sat fewer hours. In a 12-year study of more than 17,000 Canadians, researchers found that the more time people spent sitting, the earlier they died—regardless of age, body weight, or how much they exercised. As if that’s not enough, the American Institute for Cancer Research now links prolonged sitting with increased risk of both breast and colon cancers

Sitting apparently suppresses the production of an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase, which is essential for turning bad cholesterol into good. It also damps down the expression of a key gene that helps prevent blood clotting and inflammation. Sitting can also lead to insulin resistance and trouble metabolizing sugar.

But, wait…what about those of us who exercise every day, who follow – exceed! – the guidelines for physical activity. Surely this dire research does not pertain to us (and by “us,” I mean me.)

Sorry.

A consistent body of emerging research suggests that committed gym- and trail-friendly exercisers who otherwise sit most the day may face the same health risks as their completely inactive counterparts. It’s a bit like smoking, explained one of the Canadian researchers involved in several of these studies. “Smoking is bad for you even if you get lots of exercise. So is sitting too much.”

And guess what? Outside of regularly scheduled exercise sessions, it turns out that active people sit just as much as their couch-potato peers. In fact, regular exercisers may make less of an effort to stay active outside their designated workout time. (One study found that exercisers are about 30% less active on designated exercise days than on non-exercise days.) Yikes.

What to do? Uh…sit less.

How about standing (as I am now doing, with my laptop on the kitchen counter) instead of sitting when you go online? Standing desks (not to mention treadmill desks) are all the rage now. This not-terribly-attractive furniture may have started out as a fad. Consider it a health and fitness product. Maybe even necessity. How about converting some TV-watching couch potato time into stand and stretch time? Suppose, when you have to sit, you take a 2-3 minute active break every hour?

Join me.

The true age of your heart – the biological age, not the birth date age – means a lot when it comes to living a vibrant, energetic youthful life for as long as you can.   Last week I wrote about blood pressure as a biomarker of age.  The week before, I wrote about resting heart rate.  Both of these markers are related to the strength, health and resilience of your heart.

 What ages the heart?  I bet you guess. 

 Smoking. 
Obesity – especially extra padding around the middle. 
A heart-unhealthy diet (junk, fried anything, meat and more meat).
Inactivity.
High blood pressure. 
Low “good” cholesterol.
Unmanaged stress.

The World Health Federation estimates that at least 80 percent of premature deaths (the ultimate ager, right?) from heart disease and stroke could be avoided if the  main risk factors – smoking,, unhealthy diet and physical inactivity – were controlled.  Yes, 80 percent.  And, of course, that same trifecta of badness is implicated in many other diseases of “aging” and chronic conditions that make life far less pleasant than it could or should be. 

Suppose your parents had/ have heart problems or heart disease.  Does that doom you to a rapidly aging heart, a heart that is biologically older than your chronological age?  No.  There is strong and compelling evidence that people with a family history of heart problems can still have a lower “heart age” if they practice a healthy lifestyle. 

This is good news for me.  My father had (and died from) coronary artery disease.  He never had a heart attack.  And he didn’t die young. (He was in his 80s – unlike his father who died of a heart attack at 50.)  But the last few years of his life were not good.  He was weak, increasingly debilitated and then bedridden.  His lifespan exceeded his healthspan.  That’s not what I want for my future.

So I am doing everything I can to keep my heart (and the rest of me) youthful.  And, really, this is not “work.”  It is committing to – and deeply, deeply enjoying – an active, healthy lifestyle. 

Want to take a test to see how old your heart is?  Sure you do.  Here it is.

When I took the test, I was informed that most women my age have hearts that are 6 years older than their chronological age.  My heart?  It was 17 years younger.

Back in November, just before I left home for my shift at The Dining Room, an amazing restaurant-style facility that feeds 300+ homeless and hungry people every day, I posted a little essay on the health benefits of volunteering. The findings I wrote about – lower blood pressure, less depression, less incidence of heart disease – came from a round-up of recent research.

Now, as I rush to post this before I once again leave for my shift (which, I never get tired of saying, is the best, happiest, most soul-satisfying four hours I spend every week) I have more good news. It’s not exactly about health and the act of volunteering. It’s about the health and people who experience “high levels of well-being” (happiness) because they have found a deep sense of purpose and meaning in life. That category certainly includes those who volunteer, but you might get paid to do meaningful work. Or you might have reached satori.

Here’s the scoop from a recent UCLA study: Being happy affects your genes. Yes, definable, testable genetic effects. This is big.

Now it gets interesting. Researchers found that different types of happiness have surprising different effects on the human genome.

People who have high levels of what is called eudaimonic well-being — the kind of happiness that comes from having a deep sense of purpose— showed very favorable gene-expression profiles in their immune cells. They had low levels of inflammatory gene expression and strong expression of antiviral and antibody genes. You may remember from a past post how chronic, systemic inflammation is implicated in a host of so-called diseases of aging.

People who have relatively high levels of what’s called hedonic well-being (as in hedonist) – the kind of happiness that comes from self-gratification – show just the opposite. Their genes had adverse profiles involving high inflammation and low antiviral and antibody expression.

Researchers found that the meaningful lifers and the hedonists seemed (and said they were) equally happy. But the body, the wise, wise body, was able to distinguish between how they got so happy. That’s me talking. Here’s what the researchers said: “Their genomes were responding very differently even though their emotional states were similarly positive.”

I am beyond flabbergasted by this finding. It makes me very happy. But not as happy as I’m going to be when I get to the Dining Room, put on an apron and start serving.

It’s winter. The sun is setting at 4:30.  Not that those of us who live in the Northwest would know when the sun sets.  Or rises.  It’s all Fifty Shades of Gray here.  Slate gray dawn, flannel gray morning, feather gray noon, battleship gray afternoon.  You get the idea:  No sun.  No sun means, even for those of us crazy Northwesterners who spend day”light” time outdoors in the soggy winter, very little vitamin D.

Fast primer on vitamin D:  It’s the one vitamin we mammals can actually make.  Our skin synthesizes it (from cholesterol!) when we are “adequately” exposed to sunlight.  You’ll remember from high school science class that D is “good for the bones” and that “deficiencies are rare.”  But “deficiency” in the vitamin world is most often defined as the level at which you would see harm – in the case of deficient D that would be developing rickets.  Your vitamin D level could be quite low (significantly below optimum or counterclockwise/ anti-aging levels) without being “deficient.

Here’s why I’m writing about vitamin D today:  A new study from the International Food Information Council identifies wide disparities between what people (1,000 U.S. adults) think they are getting, vitamin-wise, and what they are really getting.  So 68 percent think they are getting sufficient vitamin D…but actually, only 32 percent are meeting the recommended intake.  (The disparity is most stunning with fiber, by the way, with 2/3 thinking they get enough of it, but actually less than 5 percent meeting the recommendation.)  Most people in the northern hemisphere – not just the Northwest – cannot count on producing enough “sunshine vitamin,” as D is commonly called, by themselves. And getting enough from food is harder than you might think.  A glass of fortified milk , one of the best sources, provides less than a tenth of  what you need.

But that’s not the main reason I’ve chosen to write about D today.  The main reason is the new research that shows a link between adequate amounts of D in the blood and our body’s ability to maintain healthy blood glucose levels.  Stay with me here.  High blood glucose levels have long been linked to increased risk of diabetes.  Now there’s research linking elevated blood glucose levels to increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s.  It looks like vitamin D may be much more important in healthy aging and counterclockwise strategies than we originally thought.

Of course you don’t want to forget the well established vitamin D/ bone connection. (Osteoporosis is not a good thing).  Without enough vitamin D, our bodies can’t make use of the calcium we consume – no matter how much calcium-rich foods we eat or how many supplement pills we pop.

So, on these sunless days, take a moment to re-think your vitamin D intake.

What’s enough?  Good question.  RDA for mid-lifers is 600-700 IU (international units), but most experts think this is way too low. More is better.  Maybe a lot more.  The Tolerable Upper Intake Level for vitamin D, the level beyond which there might be safety concerns, is 4000 IU.  I take 2000 IU a day, even on those rare and wonderful winter days when the sun appears in the skies above western Oregon.

We are learning a lot about aging and anti-aging, about illness and health from animals.  As in lab animals (mostly mice and rats) used in experiments.  They are said to be experimental “subjects,” but really they aren’t subjects — they are objects. We use them as objects of human scientific inquiry. We use them because it is dangerous, impractical, expensive or unethical (generally all four) to use humans.

This post is not about the ethics of using animals in medical research (a conversation I am deeply interested in).  Rather it’s about this animals-as-subjects-animals-as-objects idea. Suppose we actually thought of animals as the initiators of (subjects) and not recipients of (objects) our scientific inquiry.  Suppose we considered what they could teach us, just by who they are and how they live, rather than (or in addition to) teaching us by serving as low-cost “models” or stand-ins for humans.

Take the naked mole rat.

Please.

So here’s the deal about these extraordinarily unattractive little mammals: They can live for 30 years — 10 times longer than their rodent cousins — and they show remarkable resistance to tumors.  Why?  What are they doing right that we aren’t?  Turns out (say researchers at the University of Rochester and at Oregon State University) that mole rats have astonishingly efficient cellular “factories” that carry out a degree of cellular surveillance unknown in humans.  Deep in the mole rats’ RNA are mechanisms for finding and repairing and recycling damaged proteins before they can do harm.  Harm as in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and cancer.  Harm as in the accumulation of small errors that lead to cell death.  And, well, death death.   These hairless burrowing rodents with disturbingly large front teeth have something to teach us.

Or consider the honeybee.  Young honeybees are as busy as…well, you know, in the hive, caring for the queen.  But as they age (their life expectancy is six weeks), they are replaced by younger bees who take over the work.  These now aged bees who no longer perform useful hive-work begin exhibiting “age-associated learning deficits,” according the Arizona State University researchers who studied them.  If you read the “Thinking Young” chapter in my book, Counterclockwise, you’re probably making the same connections I made when I read this study:  Members of a society who no longer have a useful place in that society internalize this and begin to think, act and actually be biologically old.

But bees?  Yeah, bees.  Guess what happened when the researchers removed the younger, active, useful bees from the hive?  The older, aged, “useless” bees were re-invigorated. They took on, with fervor, the nursing responsibilities they had fulfilled earlier in life – and they lived longer than they otherwise would have.  There is, it turns out, much to learn from the biochemistry of the bee brain, as well as the dynamics of the hive.

You’ll note that both of these examples involve human interference and manipulation, and the sacrifice of animals.  So they are not PETA-friendly.  I wanted to highlight them because I was struck, when I read this exciting anti-aging research, that the studies begin from a position of interest and respect for the animal, an animals-as-subjects point of view.

Every Wednesday, for a few hours, I volunteer at a local charity that provides hot meals for those in need.  I make coffee, pour milk and juice, serve desserts, bus tables, scrape plates, do kitchen prep.  When I arrive for my shift, I’m preoccupied with some stressful something – a kid with a cough that won’t go away, a deadline, a chore that needs doing, a work “situation.”  Then, magically, gloriously, four hours later, I feel great.  Great with a capital G:  Buoyant, cheerful, calm and centered but full of energy, brimming with energy.  I want to say “joyful,” but I know how over-the-top that sounds. I’ll say it anyway:  joyful.

 When people find out I do this volunteer work, they say:  How good of you to do this, how selfless of you to donate your time.  And when I reply that the work seems almost entirely selfish because I get so much more than I give, they think I’m playing humble (not generally a problem for me) or being a Pollyanna (not ever a problem for me).  No.  I am being utterly truthful.  My stint at Food for Lane County is, invariably, the best part of my week.  Yes, that’s right:  the BEST.  When I leave I feel deep-down, soul-satisfyingly healthy – emotionally, spiritually, psychologically and PHYSICALLY healthy.

That volunteering makes people feel useful and boosts their self-esteem is old (but still good) news.  Now there is scientific proof to back me up about the physical benefits I seem to derive:  It turns out that volunteering is good for your health.  It turns out that volunteering is a powerful anti-aging strategy.  Several recent studies have found evidence that those who volunteer live longer than their non-philanthropic counterparts. A 2013 study in the journal Psychology and Aging found that 50+ adults who volunteers about 4 hours a week (like I do) were 40 percent less likely to develop high blood pressure 4 years later.

Other studies are finding fewer health complaints, higher functional ability, less depression and anxiety, and less incidence of heart disease among volunteers than among matched sets of non-volunteers.  The booklet, “The Health Benefits of Volunteering: A Review of Recent Research,” is full of such happy news.  The research reviewed in the booklet focus on mid-life and older people – with health benefits increasing the older one gets – but I also found a study in which high school kids saw a drop in their cholesterol levels after volunteering with younger children once a week for 2 months.  So you are never too old – or too young – to volunteer.

It’s noon now, and my volunteer shift begins in 45 minutes.  I feel healthier (mind, body, soul) already.

Do you know your biomarkers?

Biomarkers can help you figure out how old you are inside and – for those of us looking to actively intervene in the aging process (that means you and me) — they can track counterclockwise movement.  Biomarkers are objective measurements of the health — and age – of our bodies. I’m betting you know, or can guess, the most common ones:  blood pressure, resting heart rate, good-bad cholesterol ratio.  Add to that resting metabolic rate, lean body mass, percentage body fat, strength, flexibility, aerobic capacity, bone density and glucose tolerance, and you’ve got a pretty good snapshot of your body’s health and age.  I write about this quite a lot in my book, which you should read…because the number of wonderful books you read each year is also a biomarker.  The more you read, the younger you are. Scientifically speaking.

Suppose one of your biomarkers is out of whack.  And by out of whack I mean the number is indicating that you are biologically older your chronological years.  Let’s take cholesterol because we seem to be obsessed with cholesterol numbers.  (Please read this post about confusing and borderline useless cholesterol numbers.)  So, you’ve got “high cholesterol” – either as a total number or because of elevated bad cholesterol (LDL) or because of a lousy HDL-LDL ratio.  (Again, read this post.)  And your doctor, like 94.1 million other doctors, prescribes a cholesterol-lowering statin.  The 94.1 million number is actually the number of prescriptions written last year (a generic statin being the second most prescribed drug in the US), not the number of doctors, but you get the idea.  The default for high cholesterol, which we’re actually not measuring in the most meaningful ways (did I mention that you’ll want to read this post?), is taking a powerful drug that plays with body chemistry.

You’re ready for the “oops” now, right?

Oops.  New research out of University of Bristol’s School of Physiology and Pharmacology (U.K.) suggests that one commonly prescribed statin may cause cognitive impairment.  It was a rat study – but rat studies led zillions of people to buy resveratrol…so why not pay some attention to what happened to these rodents?  What happened is that rats treated with the statin showed “significantly impaired performance in simple learning and memory tasks.”  The study was undertaken to follow up on mounting anecdotal reports from non-rodents about memory problems while on statins.

And so, the drug that helps improve one biomarker of aging (cholesterol) potentially screws up another (healthy brain function).  This drug is the medical establishment’s go-to treatment.  The class of drugs that one in four Americans is taking.  The drug that half of men in the U.S., ages to 65 to 74, and 39% of women, ages 75 and older, are taking.  Oh wait…isn’t that the demographic for, um, cognitive impairment?

Maybe a statin is your only choice for truly out of control cholesterol that is resistant to any lifestyle change.  But I wonder how many of the recipients of those 94.1 million prescription tried lifestyle changes?  Here’s some solid advice from the folks at Harvard Med School about cholesterol-lowering foods.

Let food be your medicine, wrote Hippocrates.  Scientifically speaking.

Remember when “inflammation” meant a swollen ankle or angry redness around a cut that wasn’t sufficiently cleaned? That’s what’s called acute inflammation, a short-lived reaction to an injury or infection.  Yes, it hurts, but in the wide world of health and anti-aging, it’s not even on the map. Then there’s chronic inflammation – “chronic” never means anything good — a not-so-short-lived reaction that engages the immune system in a bigger way to fight a particularly strong infection or disease. Not pleasant.  Needs attention.  But still not registering a 10 on the age-o-meter.

Allow me to introduce systemic inflammation, a dangerous, disease-promoting, immune system-sapping, age-fast-forwarding inflammation in the lining of blood vessels, the liver, the joints, the gut.  It can be symptomless…until it isn’t. Heart disease, cancer Alzheimer’s, diabetes, macular degeneration, obesity and a number of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis are being linked to systemic inflammation in the medical literature.

Systemic inflammation can age you from the inside out.

So what do you do?

First: Get yourself checked out to see if you suffer from systemic inflammation. (You probably don’t know.) The next time you go in for a cholesterol screening, ask for the “C-reactive protein” test on the blood panel. C-reactive protein (CRP) is a substance produced by the liver that increases in the presence of inflammation in the body. Elevated levels have no outward, noticeable symptoms, but they often indicate that trouble is brewing.  A sedentary lifestyle, too much stress, exposure to environmental toxins such as secondhand tobacco smoke and a crappy American diet (a lot of refined, processed foods) can all contribute to an elevated CRP.  Here’s what the number means.

Second:  Do not surf the net looking for miracle treatments and cures.  What you’ll find is trendy diets and high-priced supplements. (Surprise, surprise!)

Third: Take sensible steps to boost your health while decreasing the inflammation.  That means getting quality sleep, integrating physical activity into your life…every day of your life, and taking a hard look at your diet.  An “anti-inflammatory diet” includes complex carbs (Slash sugar! Junk the junk food!), foods rich in omega-3s (see last week’s post for more good news about omega-3s), and foods rich in fiber.  In other words, eat the foods you already know you should be eating.  And eat curry.  The curcuminoids in curcumin (the active ingredient in tumeric, a main component of curry,) have proven anti-inflammatory properties.  I love curry.  But not every day.  I’ve just recently added a curcumin supplement.

Fourth: Re-test to see what you’ve been able to accomplish.

Your CRP level is a good indicator of general health and vitality. Keeping systemic inflammation at bay is one of the smarter anti-aging strategies you can adopt.