Using mice, scientists have revealed for the first time how stress hormones control fat and sugar levels over a 24-hour cycle. In addition, they have shown that a high calorie diet can alter the time-sensitivity of metabolic cycles.

The new study, led by researchers from Helmholtz Zentrum Mnchen and the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), also in Munich, Germany, helps to explain the rhythmic nature of stress hormones, whose levels surge before waking and feeding and ebb during sleep and fasting.

The findings also clarify how this hormonal cycle links to the daily routine that the liver follows in storing and releasing sugar and fat.

A recent Molecular Cell paper describes how the researchers made these discoveries by investigating glucocorticoid activity in the livers of mice.

Because the glucocorticoid receptor is also the target of anti-inflammatory synthetic steroids, the results suggest that glucocorticoid drugs could have different effects on people with and without obesity.

The adrenal glands release glucocorticoid hormones in the morning under the control of clock-related signals from the brain.

The biological clock that resides in every cell of the body helps to regulate the daily timing of hormone release. Sunlight and lifestyle factors help keep the biological clock in sync.

The glands also release the hormones in response to stress, which is why they are also called stress hormones.

The stress hormones reach their peak before waking, helping the body to prepare for the day's activities by getting energy from raised levels of fats and sugar.

However, disruption to biological clocks such as from working shifts or through jetlag can greatly upset metabolism and contribute to related disorders, such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, and fatty liver.

Glucocorticoid drugs and a condition called Cushing syndrome, both of which raise glucocorticoid levels, can have the same effect.

The new study aimed to understand the connection between the daily stress hormone surges, the biological clock, and metabolic cycles by focusing on glucocorticoid receptors.

Glucocorticoids regulate numerous molecular processes in functions ranging from metabolism and immunity to bone growth and cognition.

Nearly every cell of the body has receptors for these hormones. Without the matching receptor, the hormone cannot enter the cell and influence it.

For the new study, the team investigated the metabolic activity of glucocorticoids in the livers of mice by assessing the properties of their matching receptor.

They used a range of advanced techniques to map what happened to glucocorticoid receptors in mouse livers every 4 hours over a 24-hour cycle. They used two groups of mice: one group was on a normal diet, and the other group was fed a high fat diet.

The team also examined in detail what happened to the mice's 24-hour liver metabolism as a result of daily surges in glucocorticoid secretion.

The methods that they used allowed them to show that the effects of glucocorticoids were different when the animals fasted during sleep, and while they fed when they were awake and active.

The researchers found that the glucocorticoid receptor exerted these effects through time-sensitive binding with the genomes of the liver cells.

In addition, it appears that the receptor, and therefore the associated stress hormones, help regulate nearly all circadian genes.

"Highlighting the dominant role [the glucocorticoid receptor] plays in synchronizing circadian amplitudes," write the authors, "we find that the majority of oscillating genes are bound by and depend on [the glucocorticoid receptor]."

The researchers showed that the livers of mice that lacked the receptor did not control fat and sugar levels according to day and night.

The team suggests that the findings reveal how the liver controls levels of sugar and fat in the blood differently during the day compared with nighttime.

A further set of experiments also revealed that normal weight and obese mice responded differently to a glucocorticoid drug.

The team believes that the study is the first to show that diet can alter the effect of hormones and drugs on metabolic tissues.

The researchers suggest that their findings will help inform the emerging field of chronomedicine, which emphasizes the role of the biological clock in health and disease.

"We could describe a new link between lifestyle, hormones, and physiology at the molecular level, suggesting that obese people may respond differently to daily hormone secretion or to glucocorticoid drugs," says senior study author Nina Henriette Uhlenhaut, a professor at Helmholtz Zentrum Mnchen.

"Understanding how glucocorticoids control 24-hour cycles of gene activity in the liver and consequently blood levels of sugar and fat provides new insights into chronomedicine and the development of metabolic disease."

Prof. Nina Henriette Uhlenhaut

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Diet, body clock, hormones, and metabolism: What's the link? - Medical News Today

Diet plays an essential role in lowering blood pressure and a growing body of evidence recommends certain foods for their blood pressure-lowering properties.

One study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, makes a strong case for supplementing a diet low in saturated fats with walnuts to help lower blood pressure.

In a randomised, controlled trial, researchers examined the effects of replacing some of the saturated fats in participants' diets with walnuts.

Saturated fat is the kind of fat found in butter, lard, ghee, fatty meats and cheese. Eating a diet high in saturated fat is associated with raised levels of non-HDL (bad) cholesterol, a waxy substance found in your blood that is tied to cardiovascular complications, explains the British Heart Foundation.

They found that when participants ate whole walnuts daily in combination with lower overall amounts of saturated fat, they had lower central blood pressure.

READ MORE:High blood pressure: The surprising food that could lower your reading

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High blood pressure: Include this snack in your diet to lower your reading - Express

There are numerous diet types that one can easily try to follow nowadays, but none are having their time in the limelight as much as the vegan diet, which since the year 2008, have increasingly been followed by people all over the world.

Of course, such a massive growth in self-described vegans would have different motivations, although most have something to do with environmental worries, religious reasons and animal welfare, since the diet is plant-based and shuns meat and dairy out the door.

But what actually goes through our body if we follow this diet? What good would it bring if we stick to it? We all know that plant-based diets are healthy but can be lacking. So whats the deal with veganism? Heres what you need to know:

First Couple Weeks

After the first couple weeks of going vegan, people will notice an energy boost. This is due to the removal of processed foods in our diet, and eating fruit and other plant-based options in their place, which then helps improve our mineral and fiber levels as well as our vitamins. Going weeks without animal products would also lead to a more regular bowel movement.

After Three to Six Months

By this time, its important that you take supplements to make up for lack of certain vitamins, which can only be taken from animal products. However, lack of processed foods can help clear up your acne, and a few months of a well-balanced vegan diet will do wonders for your cardiovascular health, reducing risk of strokes, diabetes and heart diseases. With that in mind, its still important to take supplements since the lack of animal-based protein is not recommended.

A Year Onwards

After a year of a vegan diet, some of our vitamin stores would have completely emptied out, unless we take supplements. All in all, a well-balanced vegan diet can have significant health benefits, but only if we offset its deficiencies by varying what we eat from time to time. When done with the correct preparation, however, the vegan diet is incredibly healthy for us people.

The vegan diet mainly provides very low fat but is high in carbohydrates. Pixabay

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Vegan Diet: Heres Whats Happening To Your Body When You Follow This Diet - Medical Daily

Posted: Nov 11, 2019 / 04:47 PM MST / Updated: Nov 12, 2019 / 10:33 AM MST

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This article contains sponsored content.

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DUARTE, Calif., Nov. 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- New research demonstrates that an exclusive human milk diet (EHMD)1, including a 100% donor breastmilk-based fortifier, Prolact+ H2MF, manufactured by Prolacta Bioscience, saves health care dollars while significantly benefiting very low birth weight (VLBW) infants compared with a diet that includes cow milk-based fortifier. The findings were announced today by Prolacta, the worlds leading hospital provider of 100% donor breastmilk-based nutritional products.

In the United States, preterm infant fortifier historically came from cow milk, which is associated with severe complications and adverse outcomes, including feeding intolerance, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and neurodevelopmental problems.2

This study demonstrated that replacing a cows milk-based diet with an EHMD is cost-beneficial for hospitals treating extremely premature infants. Cost savings were shown to be $16,309 per infant, which was largely due to reductions in the risk of NEC and/or late onset sepsis. When wider societal costs are included, cost savings increase to $117,239 per infant.3 These dramatic cost benefits were seen despite the initial increased cost of 100% donor breastmilk-based fortifier compared with cows milk-based fortifier.

Previous studies that examined the economic impact of an EHMD were limited to the first few years of life, said lead author Grace Hampson of the Office of Health Economics, Kings College London. We looked to provide a more complete economic evaluation of the impact of an EHMD in the United States by including immediate costs of treatment as well as a broader range of subsequent clinical events and longer-term costs. The analyses show that an EHMD would lead to a significant reduction in cost for U.S.-based health care payers while improving health outcomes for premature infants.

The article, titled An Economic Analysis of Human Milk Supplementation for Very Low Birth Weight Babies in the USA, was published in the journal BMC Pediatrics. The authors conducted an economic analysis of premature infants fed an EHMD with Prolactas donor breastmilk-based fortifier, Prolact+ H2MF, and compared it with those fed a diet containing a cow milk-based fortifier.

An economic model, based on a cost-consequence economic analysis evaluation, was used to consider the clinical effects of an EHMD as well as the costs to the health care payer, including hospital stay, follow-up from treatment and future costs, using a hypothetical population of 1,000 VLBW babies. The study suggests that an EHMD would lower treatment costs and prevent many expensive, adverse clinical outcomes such as NEC.

Its well known that extremely preterm infants are expensive to treat, said Scott Elster, president and CEO of Prolacta Bioscience. Now we have a more thorough understanding of the long-term economic benefit and cost savings afforded by an EHMD. This is welcome news to the clinicians who treat these vulnerable infants, the families who will care for them when they leave the NICU, and the communities and health systems that support them throughout their lifetime.

http://www.prolacta.com

About Prolacta BioscienceProlacta Bioscience Inc. is a privately held life sciences company dedicated to Advancing the Science of Human Milk. Prolacta is the worlds leading hospital provider of 100% human milk-based nutritional products that are changing the standard of care for extremely premature infants. In addition, the company is exploring the therapeutic potential of human milk across a wide spectrum of human diseases, including applications for infants requiring surgery for congenital cardiac and gastrointestinal disorders. Operating the worlds first pharmaceutical-grade human milk processing facilities, Prolacta leads the industry with the highest quality and safety standards for the screening and testing of donor milk. Prolacta is a global company with headquarters in Duarte, California, and can be found online at http://www.prolacta.com, on Twitter @prolacta, on Instagram @prolacta_bioscience, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/prolacta and LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/prolacta-bioscience/.

Media Contact: Loren Kosmont Lkosmont@prolacta.com310-721-9444

1 An exclusive human milk diet (EHMD) is achieved when 100% of the protein, fat and carbohydrates in an infants diet are derived from human milk. This diet includes a donor breastmilk-based human milk fortifier.

2 Abrams SA, Schanler RJ, Lee ML, Rechtman DJ. Greater mortality and morbidity in extremely preterm infants fed a diet containing cow milk protein products. Breastfeed Med. 2014;9(6):281-285. doi:10.1089/bfm.2014.0024.

3 Hampson G, Roberts SLE, Lucas A and Parkins. An economic analysis of human milk supplementation for very low birth weight babies in the USA. BMC Pediatrics (2019) 19:337 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-019-1691-4.

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Study Reveals an Exclusive Human Milk Diet With Prolact+ H2MF, Prolacta's 100% Breastmilk-Based Fortifier, Substantially Reduces Costs Due to...

spukkato/Getty Images A healthy diet, more exercise, more sleep, and better stress management are often the keys to weight loss. But what if youre doing all that and not seeing a difference? Unfortunately, theres no magical weight loss pill that will help you keep pounds off forever, but there may be one out there to give your body the jumpstart it needs.

After appropriate nutrition and physical activity, drug therapy to promote weight loss in patients who are overweight or obese can often improve a patients metabolic healthas proven by controlled, randomized, clinical trials, says Harold Bays, M.D., F.O.M.A., F.T.O.S., F.A.C.C., F.A.C.E., F.N.L.A., medical director and president of Louisville Metabolic and Atherosclerosis Research Center and chief science officer for the Obesity Medical Association. What is perhaps most exciting is the number of investigational anti-obesity agents in development. The prescription medications mentioned below are all FDA-approved, but they can come with side effects and arent right for everyone so youll want to discuss your unique situation with a physician who specializes in weight loss to figure out the best weight loss plan for you.

Liraglutide

This drug is actually an injection, not a pill. However, patients using liraglutide (Saxenda) may lose 5-10% of their bodyweight. Its also available in a lower dose (Victoza) to treat type 2 diabetes.

Lorcaserin

Lorcaserin (Belviq) acts on the serotonin receptors in your brain to trick you into feeling fuller than you normally would after eating smaller servings. The medication can help patients lose 5-10% of their bodyweight.

Naltrexone-bupropion

A mix of these two drugs (available as Contrave) may curb hunger and help you feel full. Traditionally, naltrexone is used to treat drug addictions and bupropion is used for depression and smoking cessation. Patients taking a naltrexone-bupropion prescription may shed 5-10% of their bodyweight.

Orlistat

Available in a higher dose as a prescription (Xenical) as well as over-the-counter in a lower dose (Alli), orlistat is a lipase inhibitor that helps reduce the amount of fat your body absorbs from food. Some people lose about 5% of their bodyweight while taking orlistat.

Phentermine

Phentermine is a stimulant that helps suppress your appetite and could lead to a drop of about 5% of your bodyweight. However, its only approved for short-term use (up to 12 weeks). Phentermine is also part of a combination drug called Qsymia that contains topiramate (which is used to treat migraines and seizures). That formulation can help some patients lose 5-10% of their bodyweight.

Most supplements that tout weight-loss benefits dont have enough robust research on humans to support their claims. The FDA also considers supplements (which can be formulations of nutrients like vitamins, minerals, or amino acids, or ingredients derived from herbs or botanicals) more like foods than drugs so theres no regulation. That means its up to individual manufacturers to make sure their products live up to the claims on their labels.

If youre interested in taking a supplement to boost your weight loss efforts, make sure you talk to your doctor first, especially because some can interact with medications you may already be taking. Below, weve compiled a list of popular ones.

Caffeine

We all love coffee because of the way it energizes us. The same way coffee stimulates our central nervous system, caffeine as a supplement can also kick our fat oxidation process into gear. Studies are mixed, but it may have a small effect on bodyweight and help prevent weight gain in the long run. Youll just want to be on the lookout for nervousness, vomiting, and a rapid heart rate.

Chitosan

Derived from the exoskeletons of crustaceans and arthropods, chitosan is a starch that binds fat in the digestive tract. Some small, poor-quality clinical trials show minimal effect on bodyweight, and side effects can include indigestion, bloating, and constipation.

Conjugated linoleic acid

Some clinical trials show that conjugated linoleic acid may work on a number of bodily processes including lipolysis, lipogenesis, and apoptosis to cause small reductions in bodyweight and body fat, but results are mixed. Unfortunately, it can cause quite a few digestive issues and throw off your glucose homeostasis.

Forskolin

Extracted from a plant in the mint family, forskolin is said to reduce a persons appetite. The problem is that it hasnt been studied very much on humans so its hard to say if it actually works. Side effects may also include indigestion, hypotension, blurred vision, pale skin, and fatigue.

Garcinia Cambogia

This is an extract from a tropical fruit that contains hydroxycitric acid. While some research has found it might promote small amounts of weight loss in the short term, side effects can include nausea as well as liver toxicity in rare cases.

Glucomannan

Glucomannan is an ingredient extracted from the roots of the elephant yam. Older studies suggest that taking glucomannan with meals may help keep you fuller longer to help you lose weight. However, more recent research shows that it doesnt really help with weight loss. Not only that, it can leave you with bloating, gas, and soft stools.

Green coffee bean extract

This extract may work by preventing the accumulation of fat and regulating the metabolism of glucose. Some research points to small amounts of weight loss, but few high-quality clinical trials have been completed. Headaches and urinary tract infections have been reported as side effects.

Green tea extract

Theres not enough research to say green tea definitely helps you lose weight, but some studies say it may help by boosting calorie burn and fat oxidation and lowering fat absorption. The bad news is it theres the potential for unpleasant side effects like constipation, nausea, high blood pressure, and liver damage.

Hoodia gordonii

This succulent from Africa is said to reduce appetite, but theres very little published research on humans and it can trigger higher blood pressure and a faster pulse.

Irvingia gabonensis

Irvingia gabonensis comes from the seed of an African mango tree. Its purported to interfere with adipogenesis and help reduce leptin, a hormone associated with obesity, but few clinical trials have been done. It can also cause gas, headache, and sleep disturbances.

Raspberry ketones

As you probably suspect, raspberry ketones come from raspberries. Some studies point to various raspberry components as helpful weight-loss aids, but there is very limited research specific to how raspberry ketones work on the human body, and some of it is funded by the National Processed Raspberry Council. While theres potential for success, a lot is unknown.

Steer clear of any supplements containing these ingredients, which can pose serious health risks:

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When youre on a diet like keto, its easy to spend a lot of time obsessing about the things you cant have, like OG-style ice cream and bagels. But nuts are kind of in a grey zone.

Some nuts are heavy on carbs, which makes them not so great for keto; others pack plenty of fat with fewer carbs, making them a good choice. Nuts contain healthy fats and a little bit of protein, so when trying to hit your macros, they can make a good addition to the [keto] diet, says Scott Keatley, R.D., of Keatley Medical Nutrition Therapy.

Unfortunately, the right nuts dont come with a keto-friendly label. Thats why we consulted nutrition experts to get the rundown on the best (and worst) nuts for people on the keto diet. Here are the ones you should stock up onand which you should definitely avoid.

Take a pass on these C-shaped nuts when youre on the keto diet. Just 60 cashews are equal to the daily carb limit of 20 grams per day on keto, says Beth Warren, R.D., founder of Beth Warren Nutrition and author of Secrets of a Kosher Girl. Even if you have a fraction of that, youre still investing a hefty amount of your allotted daily carbs in a few nuts. Cashews are heavier on the carbs and lighter on the fats, which isnt so great for the keto diet, Keatley points out.

Warren recommends skipping pistachios, too. One cup of these little green nuts contains 33.4 grams of carbs, which is way over your daily carb limit.

Vesna Jovanovic / EyeEmGetty Images

Womp womp. These nuts may be everywhere, but their carb to fat ratio isnt ideal for keto, Keatley says. One cup of almonds also puts you at about 31 grams of carbs, so .

You dont need to totally avoid pine nuts when youre on the keto diet, but you should eat them sparingly. One ounce of pine nuts contains four grams of carbs and one gram of sugar. They can be enjoyed moderately, Warren says.

Nakhorn Yuangkratoke / EyeEm

You can have a decent amount of peanuts without torpedoing your ketosis, Keatley says. You can expect to have about six grams of carbs when you eat 33 peanuts. Again, moderation is key here, says Warren.

Oh heywalnuts are good for your heart and your ketosis. You can expect to have four grams of carbs when you eat a little less than cup of walnuts. Thats not perfect, but Warren says you can get a lot more out of your nut when you crush them up and use them to add crunch to a dish.

Roasted hazelnuts make for a nice little holiday treat on the keto diet. One ounce (which is about 12 hazelnuts) contains about 6.5 grams of carbs.

Macadamia nuts have some of the fewest carbs in the nut category, making them a solid choice for keto fans, Warren says. Having cup of these nuts is about four grams of carbs.

These hearty nuts have a fat to carb ratio thats right for keto dieters, Keatley says. Plan on having cup of themits less than four grams of carbs.

If youre looking for a nut to stock up on, this is it. Pecans, like Brazil nuts, pack the most fat with the fewest carbs, Keatley says. One ounce (which is about 19 halves) is less than four grams of carbs.

If you want to have a little bit of a nut thats not ideal for keto here and there, dont stress ityou wont automatically lose keto cred. But, if you want to do your best to be on your keto A-game, you know what to do.

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The Best Nuts On Keto Diet - The Best And Worst Nuts For Keto - Delish