Older adults who don't have a history of cardiovascular problems don't benefit from taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, says a new study of seniors with high blood pressure and moderately high cholesterol.

Researchers from New York University School of Medicine studied the data from 2,867 older adults and found that they had the same risk of dying as seniors who didn't take statins, and also suffered the same amount of heart attacks and strokes. In fact, statins may have caused more harm than good since more deaths occurred in the group taking statins.

"This study doesn't surprise me at all," says Dr. David Brownstein, a board-certified physician and editor of the newsletter Dr. David Brownstein's Natural Way to Health. "In fact, it should be expected.

"When you know the mechanisms of how statins work in the body, how anyone could predict that they will prolong a person's life is beyond me, particularly in older people," Brownstein tells Newsmax Health.

"Seniors depend on adequate cholesterol for a host of reactions in the body, including proper brain function and proper hormonal production," he says.

"Some studies have shown that statins increase the risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, even if you take CoQ 10 to help cope with some of statins' side effects, because statins lower cholesterol.

"The highest concentration of cholesterol in the body is in the brain," Brownstein says. "The brain actually produces its own cholesterol, and it needs cholesterol to function properly.

"Since statins have been shown to fail in 97 to 99 percent of the people who take them, I can't imagine with those odds why anyone would consider taking this drug when they know the side effects are severe and many."

Still, statins continue to be prescribed and are one of the most commonly prescribed medicines in the world. "Big pharma has convinced doctors that statins are much more effective than they are by using questionable statistical methods," Brownstein says. "Unfortunately, most doctors don't understand how to read statistics and don't know how to read the studies.

"This isn't the first study to show that statins harm patients," Brownstein says and points to a 2015 study, published in Critical Care Medicine, which found that the lower a patient's cholesterol levels, the higher the risk of dying during the 30-day period following a heart attack.

"The increased risk the researchers found isn't nominal," he said. "Patients with low LDL (bad) cholesterol levels coupled with low triglyceride levels had an astounding 990 percent increased risk of dying!"

A 2016 study published in the British Medical Journal found that not only do high cholesterol levels not shorten the lifespan of senior citizens, they may live as long or longer than their peers with low levels.

The results, which came after analyzing more than 68,000 patients over the age of 60, questioned conventional medicine's belief that seniors with high cholesterol, especially high levels of low-density lipoprotein or LDL, are more at risk of dying from heart attack and stroke, and need statin drugs to lower their cholesterol levels.

The study suggested that high cholesterol may, in fact, be protective against diseases which are common in the elderly, including neurological disorders like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

"If your cholesterol is elevated, the first thing you need to do is to look at your diet," says Brownstein. "You should follow a healthy diet by eliminating refined foods and eating whole, organic foods. Your cholesterol levels will naturally drop to their optimal levels.

"But to chemically lower them with a drug that fails 97 to 99 percent of the time I don't understand it."

If you'd like a food or supplement to help you lower your cholesterol naturally, consider the following:

Red yeast rice. According to the University of Maryland, red yeast rice has the same chemical composition as the prescription drug lovastatin. A five-year, double-blind study of patients who had suffered a heart attack found that an extract of Chinese red yeast rice, Xuezhikang (XZK), reduced the risk of repeat heart attacks by 45 percent. The extract also decreased heart bypass surgery, cardiovascular mortality, and total mortality by a third.

Bergamot. Several studies have found that bergamot, an extract made from the bergamot fruit and used to give Earl Grey tea its distinctive flavor, lowers cholesterol safely and naturally. Several studies have shown it reduces LDL (low density or "bad") cholesterol and triglycerides, while raising levels of HDL (good) cholesterol.

Green tea. Green tea lowers bad cholesterol and raises good cholesterol. Several studies have found that green tea blocks the absorption of up to 89 percent of cholesterol from foods. Black tea has also been found to be protective.

Research carried out by the universities of Glasgow and Mauritius found that drinking three cups of tea daily reduced LDL cholesterol by more than 16 percent when compared with a control group who drank the same amount of hot water. Scientists believe the health benefits are due to antioxidants in the tea called polyphenols, which were boosted by 400 percent in the tea-drinking group.

Oatmeal. Numerous studies conducted over the past 50 years have shown that oatmeal reduces bad cholesterol. The Mayo Clinic recommends eating one-and-a-half cups of cooked oatmeal each day. Oatmeal contains soluble fiber, a cholesterol-lowering component of foods which is also found in beans, apples, and many other whole foods. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that oats lowered cholesterol levels almost as well as prescription cholesterol-lowering drugs.

2017 NewsmaxHealth. All rights reserved.

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Statin Drugs Don't Benefit Healthy Seniors - Newsmax

In 75 years, Camp Century could literally melt down.

Benjamin PowersJun. 12, 2017 12:57 PM

A logistical cargo carrier drops off supplies at Camp Century in Greenland in 1959.

Keystone Press Agency via ZUMA

This story was originally published by Fusionand is reproduced here as part of theClimate Deskcollaboration.

Over the last century, many glaciers have pulled back farther than humans have ever previously witnessed. While the retreat of glaciers, and changes in the cryosphere more generally (which includes ice sheets and permafrost), can be seen as purely symbolic representations of the unwavering march of climate change, they are shifting geography as they melt and thaw, leaving dangerous implications behind.

Camp Century is only one such instance. Built underneath the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet in 1959 by the the US Army Corps of Engineers as part of Project Iceworm, the project was designed to create a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites in Greenland. Intended to study the deployment and potential launch of ballistic missiles within the ice sheet, the base was eventually abandoned and decommissioned in 1967.

Before it shut down it was almost an entire underground city, with bars, theaters and other buildings, says Garry Clarke, a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Clarke conducted graduate work at the site in 1965, before it was decommissioned. Before I got there, the whole thing was powered by nuclear energy. Since the idea of shielding the missiles from detection wasnt working very well, some took to calling Camp Century the Atomic City.

While the bases nuclear generator was removed as part of the decommissioning, various kinds of waste remain at the base, including sewage, persistent organic pollutants, diesel fuel, and the radiological waste from the removed nuclear generator. At the time, it was expected all of this would be safely buried in the ice sheet, never to see the light of day.

A 2016 study found that climate change has altered the situation though. According to it, the rate of ice melt on the ice sheet could outpace the expected gains made from snowfall, releasing the the waste in the years after the 2090s. Addressing the released waste would be an expensive proposition for the US and Denmark, which originally gave the US permission to establish the base.

William Colgan, a glaciologist at York University in Toronto, Canada, and lead author of the study believes that a first step towards addressing this would be to conduct additional research on the ice sheet and what it contains, and hes currently in the process of returning to the ice sheet. As the study notes:

Climate change is likely to amplify political disputes associated with abandoned wastes in a variety of settings. In this context, the shifting fate of abandoned ice sheet military bases under climate change may provide a microcosm through which to examine the multinational and multigenerational challenges presented by climate change.

As the ice sheets of Greenland continue to slowly melt, other unforeseen results of changes to the cryosphere have more immediate consequences.

Earlier this year, melting on the Kaskawulsh glacier changed the distribution of water, and route, of two rivers in Canada. The Slims River, which originally emptied out into the Bering Sea, now empties out into the Bay of Alaska, thousands of miles from its original outlet, and the volume of water in it decreased sharply. Meanwhile the lake it fed, Kluane Lake, has seen its water level drop as well. In the opposite direction, the Alsek River, which flows through protected areas and is a popular white water rafting destination, has seen a massive surge of water. While the Slims and Alsek were originally similar sizes, the Alsek is now 60 to 70 times larger than the Slims, according to a 2017 study.

Over the last 100 years as the glacier has been receding, exacerbated by climate change, it has become less of an obstacle for water flowing in one direction or another, says Dan Shugar, Assistant Professor of Geoscience at the University of Washington Tacoma and the lead author of the study on the event. Last summer was the straw that broke the camels back.

This is the first observed case ever of river piracy, or the diversion of the headwaters of one stream into another. While the areas the rivers flow through didnt contain large population densities, it still has an impact of nearby communities.

Two first nation villages reside on the shores of Lake Kluane and depend on its fish as a substantive part of their traditional diet. Because of the changes in the lakes water level, as well as the sediment within it theyve already noticed changes to where they can access their fishing grounds, says Shugar:

And just recently a Yukon Member of the Legislative Assembly raised the issue of Kluane lake levels. Because theyve dropped so much, boat access to the lake is becoming imperiled. There are only two main boat accesses to the lake and one of them is no longer a feasible launching spot. So you are reducing the capacity for search and rescue if you cant access the lake quickly and someone is out there and in trouble. These are real impacts.

Humans have an investment in keeping things similar to how they are, because that allows for predictability. These sorts of geographical shifts have impacts beyond their immediate consequences. Glaciers and the rivers they distribute feed numerous reservoirs, contributing to water management and crop growth.

We dam rivers to make hydroelectric power, control floods, and hold summer glacial flows to sustain agriculture, says Clarke. The size and sources of these reservoirs is an important factor in buffering for the unpredictable. If you havent got much in the bank you cant stand long periods without water, he says. This is an issue not just on the level of a farmer who might access distributed water, but for the economy more generally. Things such as the collection and distribution of food and agriculture are centralized around assumptions that the grains will be grown at a certain location, at a certain time. River piracy can disrupt those assumptions, and the economic stability that goes with it.

Shugars next project illustrates perhaps an even more destructive example of the impact of retreating glaciers. As glaciers in valleys retreat, the valley walls are often incredibly steep because theyve been carved out by the previous push of the glacier.

Theyre much steeper than if there had just been a river there. So when it melts away, the valley walls are less supported because there is no glacier there, and they sometimes collapse catastrophically, says Shugar. This results in a gigantic landslide, thelikes of which occurred in Alaska last July when a miles-long landslide next to the Lamplugh Glacier, in Glacier Bay National Park, resulted in seismic tremors that registered at 5.5, according to the New York Times.

These landslides might come down and block a river for example, which could then burst out causing a big flood, or where they might come down into a lake or a fjord, essentially causing a gigantic tsunami, says Shugar.

According to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, just such an event happened in October of 2015, when a mountainside near Tyndall Glacier fell into Icy Bay in Alaska, resulting in a tsunami. The wave that reached trees that were more than 500 feet up on a hillside adjacent to the bay.

This melting will only continue. According to a recent study from the US Geological Survey and Portland State University, Montanas Glacier National Parks glaciers have shrunk by an average of about 39 percent since 1966, with some shrinking by as much as 82 percent.

Currently about 10 percent of the land on Earth is covered with glacial iceincluding glaciers, ice caps, and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarcticastretching over 5.8 million square miles and storing about 75 percent of the worlds fresh water. Were melting of land ice to continue until it was all gone, sea level would rise some 230 feet, drowning the coastal cities of the world. And as the cryosphere continues to warm and change, it will only exponentially increase the pace of climate change, by releasing more CO2 and methane in the atmosphere, decreasing the reflective surfaces on the Earth, and increasing the surface area of the ocean.

The glaciers are telling us something, says Clarke. We need to listen if we care about our future.

Mother Jones is a nonprofit, and stories like this are made possible by readers like you. Donate or subscribe to help fund independent journalism.

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An Abandoned US Nuclear Base in Greenland Could Start Leaking Toxic Waste Because of Global Warming - Mother Jones

L

OS ANGELES He knows he sounds like a snake-oil salesman.

Its not every day, after all, that a tenured professor at a prestigious university starts peddling a mail-order diet to melt away belly fat, rejuvenate worn-out cells, prevent diseases ranging from diabetes to cancer and, for good measure, turn back the clock on aging.

But biochemist Valter Longo is convinced that science is on his side.

Longo has spent decades studying aging in yeast cells and lab mice. He now believes hes developed a diet that may boost longevity by mimicking the effect of periodic fasting. So hes packed precise quantities of kale chips, quinoa soup, hibiscus tea, and other custom concoctions into boxes that go for $300 a pop.

Longos ProLon diet (it stands for pro-longevity, he says, and not Professor Longo) reflects a growing interest in episodic fasting, which has been touted by celebrities such as Jimmy Kimmel and Benedict Cumberbatch and in best-selling books like The Alternate-Day Diet. His approach stands out because he insists he can use certain combinations of nutrients to trick the body into thinking its fasting without actually being on apunishing, water-only diet.

Kale crackers and hibiscus tea: My five days on a fasting diet

Intrigued, STAT reviewed dozens of scientific studies and talked to a half-dozen aging and nutrition experts about fasting in general and ProLon in particular. We visited Longos lab at the University of Southern Californias Longevity Institute, where slender black and whiterodents pass their days in clear plastic boxes labeled DO NOT FEED. We even tried Longos diet for one long and rather hungry week.

Our conclusion? Fasting does appear to boost health certainly in mice, and preliminary evidence suggests itmight do so in humans as well, at least in the short term. Its not yet clear whether thats because abstaining from food prompts cellular changes that promote longevity, as some scientists believe or because it simply puts a brake on the abundant and ceaseless stream of calories we consume to the detriment of our health. Either way, it can be a powerful force.

Were not meant to eat three meals a day and snacks, said Mark Mattson, a pioneer in studying the effects of intermittent fasting on the brain who runs the neuroscience lab at the National Institute on Aging.

Does good food count as health care? New research aims to find out

Mice and rats on fasting regimes are slimmer, live longer, and stay smarter and physically stronger as they age. They resist tumors, inflammatory diseases, and the neurodegeneration that characterizes diseases like Parkinsons and Alzheimers. They handily fight off infection and can even sprout new neurons. They dont end up with diabetes, autoimmune disease, high cholesterol or fatty livers.

Longo, who runs labs at both USC and at at the IFOM cancer institute in Milan, believes he knows why. Fasting, he and others argue, gives cells a break to rest, renew, rebuild themselves and, essentially, take out the trash as the body shifts from storing fat to burning it. They cant do that when the body is constantly ingesting food, stockpiling excess calories and pushing cells and organs to exhaustion.

The animal data is very striking, Mattson said. These arent trivial effects on health.

Of course, many exciting findings that hold true for lab mice dont translate to more complex human biology. Small, short-term studies in humans do show that periodic fasting reduces weight, abdominal fat, cholesterol, and blood glucose, as well as proteins like C-reactive protein and IGF-1 that are linked to inflammatory diseases and cancer.

But its not clear how long these effects last or whether they translate into any lasting clinical advantage such as fewer heart attacks or longer lifespan.

So some experts say there just isnt enough clinical data to prove the diet does everything Longo claims. These are only animal studies. There isnt a big body of evidence in humans, said Kristen Gradney, a dietician in Louisiana and a spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. It could work, but I cant confidently say that it will.

Were not meant to eat three meals a day and snacks.

Mark Mattson, National Institute on Aging

Yet even some scientists who fully understand the limitations of the data are sold.

Satchidananda Panda, a researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., compared mice that were allowed to eat whenever they wanted to mice that only had access to food during a 10- to 12-hour period each day. The differences were profound. The mice that fasted intermittently had no gray fur and werent lethargic, even as they neared 2years of age, the average mouse life span.

The results were so striking, Panda and his family haveadopted the practice. He also undertakes a water-only fast for a week each year.

Once you see these animals, Panda said, its hard not follow.

Mattson, too, eats all of his roughly 1,800 calories per day in a six-hour window in the late afternoon and early evening. He hasnt eaten breakfast in 40 years.

As for Longo, he uses his own diet every few months especially to lose weight after returning from stays in Italy. Otherwise, he often eats just two meals a day and is passionate about natural, healthy, and plant-based food.

As one of his senior researchers, Sebastian Brandhorst, put it: Valter always gives us crap when theres junk food in the lab.

Valter Longo was born to study aging.

Italian by birth, he spent summers in his familys ancestral home, a town called Molochio in southern Italy thats home to an unusually high percentage of centenarians. His father is 91. Exactly why the villagers live so long is a question thats always simmered in the back of Longos head.

Now 49, Longo originally came to the U.S. to be a rock star. He enrolled at the University of North Texas, which has an acclaimed jazz guitar program. But he soured on the program when he was forced to run a marching band and turned instead to biochemistry as a way to study aging.

Food fight erupts as top nutritionists gather to define healthy eating

He moved on to UCLA to pursue a Ph.D. with Dr. Roy Walford, who had become something of a celebrity scientist while pushing the idea that severely restricting caloric intake would extend life.

While he calls Walford a pioneer, Longo soon grew disenchanted with the extreme regimen he espoused. First, it was brutal to maintain. Then, there was what it did physically to Walford, who had been among a Biosphere 2 crew that restricted food intake dramatically during their stay in the experimental habitat. When they exited Biosphere, they looked liked hell, Longo said. Walford looked like a skeleton.

Walford, a colorful character known for walking across Africa and paying for med school by gaming roulette tables in Reno, Nev., had hoped to live to 120. But he died in 2004 at age 79 of ALS, a disease a number of researchers assert was exacerbated by, or even caused by, his severe diet.

At UCLA, Longo was growing frustrated with Walfords attempts to study longevity in humans, and even mice, without having adequate tools to drill down into the genetic mechanisms underlying aging.So Longo turned back to biochemistry.

He transferred to a genetics lab focused on yeast, figuring that would let him study the mechanisms of aging in the simplest of organisms.

If someone said, What are you working on? we would say oxidative chemistry. You couldnt say aging. That was viewed as a joke.

Valter Longo, University of Southern California

Few people took his early results seriously. Studying aging was still considered flaky. And many scientists at the time were deeply skeptical that you could learn much about human biology by studying simple yeast.

If someone said, What are you working on? we would say oxidative chemistry, Longo said. You couldnt say aging. That was viewed as a joke.

Convinced his work was important, Longo kept his head down and kept going. I didnt pay attention to what people were saying, he said. In just a year, Longo was able to work out a genetic pathway to describe aging in yeast and show that food proteins and sugars could speed aging. It was 1994.

I was so excited, I thought people were going to say, This is the discovery of the century, he recalled. Of course, it was sent back rejected.

He rewrote the paper and resubmitted. No luck. He couldnt get any of the work published without taking out every last reference to aging. The discovery he thought most important the aging pathway he published only in his UCLA thesis. We would get insults from reviewers. The yeast world was the worst. They thought it was crazy science, he said.

As years passed, other groups started publishing work detailing, as Longo had, specific aging pathways, first in worms and eventually in flies. The frustrating thing is, Longo said, we had all of these things figured out and no one was listening.

Frank Madeo, a yeast researcher at the University of Graz in Vienna, had seen Longo being dismissed at conference after academic conference. Now, he said, the work is finally being embraced. Valter for sure is a fighter. He doesnt care what others think, Madeo said. He did something that at first was considered weird and he was attacked. Now, its the basis of work in so many labs.

The turning point, Longo said, came when an editor at Science recognized that his rejected paper was part of the new paradigm to understand the genetics of aging. The paper was published in 2001, seven years after hed first submitted it. It has since been cited hundreds of times.

Once he had the aging pathway worked out, Longo went on to look more deeply at what restricting calories did to yeast cells. He found withholding food completely reprogrammed the yeast cells lived longer and were resistant to threat after threat. You could throw in any toxin you could think of and it wouldnt die, he said.

Fasting is at the foundation of the bodys ability to protect, repair, and rejuvenate itself, he said. We started to wonder: What can we use it for?

Records found in dusty basement undermine decades of dietary advice

So he started experimenting with limiting rodents intake of the proteins and sugars that hed seen activate the aging pathways. (His lab cooks up a diet by hand for the animals; its also the inspiration for the the five-day diet he sells for humans.) His team has found that the diet shows promise in restoring pancreatic cells that keep diabetes in check, boosting immune cells, and helping prevent the deterioration of myelin, which plays a role in multiple sclerosis.

San Diego computational biologist Karmel Allison, who blogs at the diabetes lifestyle site ASweetLife, took a deep dive into Longos paper on pancreatic cells and found the data unconvincing. She thinks the improvements in mice could have simply come from their weight loss, not from any cellular change brought on by fasting.

Other scientists agree thats a key question for further study, in both mice and people. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this May startled some diet researchers by showing alternative day fasting was no better at decreasing cardiovascular health risk factors than normal dieting and was harder to maintain. (Longo maintains that the popular alternate day and 5:2 diets, where people eat up to 800 calories on their so-called fasting days, are not true fasting, just calorie reduction, and therefore dont cause the metabolic shifts and cellular improvements of his diet. He thinks at least three days of fasting are needed, though other researchers disagree.)

In humans, is intermittent fasting only effective for weight loss because were restricting calories? In my mind, thats the big question, said Grant Tinsley, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Texas Tech University who studies sports nutrition. Is this just about eating fewer calories or are there unique cellular changes?

In humans, is intermittent fasting only effective for weight loss because were restricting calories? In my mind, thats the big question.

Grant Tinsley, Texas Tech University

Tinsley himself practices intermittent fasting: He restricts himself to eating during a six- to nine-hour period each day or does a 24-hour fast once a week. He likes the idea of Longos diet. Yet hed still like more data. There really are no side-by-side comparisons of different fasting programs in humans, he said.

He knows firsthand, though, how hard it would be to conduct such a study. For one thing, its hard to get corporate funding for a study involving abstaining from food. For another, human beings are prone to cheat on diets. Obviously its not ethical to keep people in cages for a year and feed them what you want, he said.

Longo can, however, do that with mice. And he and his lab are excited about new studies showing that fasting seems to strengthen normal cells in rodents while making cancer cells more vulnerable. Longo thinks this means fasting may increase the potency of chemotherapy while reducing its side effects.

And, indeed, small clinical trials in humans have shown patients report less fatigue and fewer gastrointestinal symptoms while fasting during chemotherapy treatments. Longo now has clinical trials underway at several cancer centers worldwide to see if his diet improves outcomes as well.

Longo came up with the idea for the fasting mimicking diet about 10years ago. He was trying to test the effect of a water-only diet for cancer patients. But most patients refused to fast and oncologists were worried about their already thin patients participating.

So Longo decided to devise a diet with minimal calories that would provide the nutrition the patients needed, but also confer the benefits of fasting. His lab worked out the precise amounts and types of calories, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats by testing various diets on mice.

The cancer fasting diet amounts to just 200 to 500 calories a day for four days. The ProLon diet allows 1,100 calories the first day and 800 for the next four. (Longo recommends doing the diet under a doctors supervision and notes that its not appropriate for people with certain health conditions, such as diabetes.)

His diet is low in protein and fat; he gets furious when he sees doctors advocating the opposite, a trendy practice he believes speeds aging.

He gets really fired up when nutritionists call fasting a fad. Fasting is as old as it gets, he said, noting that our hunter-gatherer ancestors likely went long stretches between meals. If 70 percent of America is obese or overweight, you would think theyd have figured out their [more traditional] interventions dont work.

He said, I need to have something thats going to have almost no calories but still have taste.

Ambra DiTonno, cafe owner

To devise fasting diets that people would actually want to eat, Longo turned to Ambra Ditonno, a longtime friend who runs a popular Italian cafe in Hollywood.

The two worked together after hours in Ditonnos panini shop concocting extremely low-calorie soups some just 30 to 45 calories per serving out of pumpkin, beets, tomatoes, and broth. He said, I need to have something thats going to have almost no calories but still have taste. It was really hard, Ditonno said.

Its not typical work for a scientist, but was typical for the hands-on Longo, whos not married, has no children, and is used to working long hours (though hes prone to pulling out his guitar when asked, and also does a lot of bike riding).

He doesnt have any other interests. Hes married to his job, Ditonno said. And, she added, he had a natural flair for the work: Hes Italian, so he has some idea of cooking.

Theyd then freeze individual portions of the soups for delivery to cancer patients. (The soups are now manufactured in a facility and freeze-dried so they can be easily shipped and stored.) The diets include additional ingredients algal oil supplements, specific proteins, trendy additions like flax seed, inulin, glycerol, and cider vinegar that Longo believes act to improve health or trick the body into thinking it is fasting.

Deep dive into diets shows just how much processed food Americans eat

After cooking so many fasting soups, Ditonno tried the diet herself last year. She lost weight, got rid of the extra tummy fat shed carried since having a child and eased several digestive issues. The benefits have persisted long after that initial fasting period. Like many who work with Longo and have tried the diet, shes become a convert. I believe in it like 1,000 percent, Ditonno said.

The idea of a professor marketing his own longevity diet has raised eyebrows. Its a tricky spot to be in, said Allison Dostal, a registered dietitian and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She was part of a watchdog team that wrote a scathing review of a press release touting one of Longos studies that was put out by USC, which also stands to profit if the diet is a financial success. Its not something Ive generally seen.

The cost of ProLon has also raised questions, especially since theres no proof this particular combination of foods works better than any other ultra-low-calorie diet or episodic fast.

The diets OK, Mattson said. Im just thinking about the people who cant afford it. A lot of obese people are of low socioeconomic status. Thats the target population that could really benefit most.

Longo created a company, L-Nutra, to market the diet, and retains majority ownership. He intends to funnel any personal profits into a nonprofit to fund research. For now, not much money is rolling in, though he says about 5,000 people have used ProLon some paying customers, some research subjects. He hopes to one day receive FDA approval to market the diet as a tool to help prevent diabetes, but thats well in the future.

Panda, the Salk Institute researcher, calls Longos approach a smart business move.

The general public wants something encapsulated, they want a prescription, he said. Valters done a very smart thing. Hes encapsulated fasting.

Usha Lee McFarling can be reached at usha.mcfarling@statnews.com Follow Usha Lee on Twitter @ushamcfarling

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He wants to sell you a $300 'fasting diet' to prolong your life. It might not be as crazy as it sounds - STAT

Of all the problems that people face today, depression proves one of the hardest to pinpoint. People often suffer in secret, not wanting to burden others or admit that they need professional help. Those same people continue with their normal routines and, many times, unhealthy eating habits. Now, health professionals are actually linking diet and depression and have found success in using diet to treat the disorder.

Globally, millions of people suffer from depression, an estimated300 millionto be exact. In fact, major depression constitutes one of the mostcommonmental health disorders in the United States, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. These suffering people need options, and a simple change in diet could motivate many to finally take action.

For decades, people have correlated healthy eating with feeling better, including in the area of mental health. However, many people who do not eat well also have outside stress factors, such as a busy schedule or low income. Health professionals can easily attribute any depression in these groups to these outside factors strained by a poor diet.

THE SECRET TO AGING SLOWLY?

Diet and Depression: A Study

However, onestudyset out to evaluate the direct link between diet and depression. The researchers found some interesting results. Several researchers and Australian institutions worked together to conduct a study around the topic at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia. They carried out the study over a 12-week period and observed 67patientswith moderate to severe depression.

For their control group, the patients received social support rather than switching their eating habits to a healthy, well-balanced diet. The other patients then received a series of seven one-hour dietary counseling sessions where they were advised to eat a diet high in fruits, vegetables, and lean meats. The researchers used diet guidelines from both the Australian and Greek governments, forming a modified Mediterranean diet.

After the trial period, the researchers found that over 30 percent of the patients had gone into remission with their depression. Only 8 percent of the control group actually experienced this same improvement.

WALKING CORPSE SYNDROME: THE WALKING DEAD MADE REAL

According to one proponent of the diet for depression idea, Dr. Drew Ramsey, the participants that showed the most remarkable results had improved their diet the most. This trial has greatly encouraged the research on this important topic, helping researchers understand and better help patients suffering from depression.

How Diet Influences Depression

Most people in America today do not associate their diet and depression together. However, because food does influence energy levels and mood, the link only makes sense.

One troublingstudyfound that nearly 60 percent of Americans eat ultra-processed foods, the kind whose ingredient list runs long and includes unfamiliar names. What troubled researchers the most about this study is the fact that 90 percent of added sugars come from these processed foods.

Since Americans are eating a lot of processed meals, theyre also taking in an excessive amount of added sugar. For people with depression, thisdietfilled with added sugar does little to help them.

CATCH OF THE DAY: THE BEST AND WORST FOOD FOR YOUR DIET

It might give a short energy burst, but it will eventually cause energy to sink, bringing any happy moods down with it. In addition, the empty calories will leave the body devoid of essential nutrients that might help to boost a persons mood.

Many people also love caffeine, drinking multiple cups each day. Again, they consume the usual excess sugar and empty calories. However, the caffeine can also disrupt sleep and cause anxiety or nervous tremors.

In addition, people with depression may have a tendency to turn to alcohol. Unfortunately, alcohol depresses the central nervous system. This vital system processes information through the senses and controls emotion. Depressing this system will directly influence a persons mood for the worse, especially those dealing with depression.

A Healthy Diet

Rather than turning to an unhealthy diet, people with depression should focus on getting in plenty of fruits and vegetables. Then, they should add in lean meats, including red meat high in iron. To round out their improved diet, they should also drink plenty of water, forgoing caffeinated and sugary beverages.

According to the research, diet and depression do go hand in hand. Those suffering from depression should eliminate processed foods as much as possible. Instead, they should replace them with a plant-rich diet alongside lean, quality meats. With a few simple changes in lifestyle, these patients can improve their mental health and return to normal activities with renewed energy and joy.

This article first appeared on AskDrManny.com.

Dr. Manny Alvarez serves as Fox News Channel's senior managing health editor. He also serves as chairman of the department of obstetrics/gynecology and reproductive science at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. Click here for more information on Dr. Manny's work with Hackensack University Medical Center. Visit AskDrManny.com for more.

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Is your diet making you depressed? - Fox News

Only in an era of abundance could an industrya particular mindset, reallychurn out innumerable fad diets promising to be the silver bullet that will finally (finally!) offer perfect health, weight loss, and inner radiance.

At the moment the top sellers in diet and nutrition on Amazon promise you total health and food freedom, warn against hidden dangers in healthy foods, guarantee fast metabolism, and declare a revolutionary diet that, among other things, helps you combat cancer. Thats a tall order for something that, for most of human history, was so scarce and difficult to procure that securing enough to eat was itself considered a blessing.

This is not your ancestors diet. Yet it appears that we can turn to our forebears for an important piece of nutritive advice: fasting. In one of the most in-depth pieces Ive come across on this topic, it seems intermittent fasting is helping many deal with metabolic and immune functions.

Lest you think this a sales pitchIve found the silver bullet!lets start at the conclusion. University of Illinois nutrition professor Krista Varady studies alternate-day fasting for a living. She readily offers up the fact that intermittent fastingtaking varied breaks from eating, either on a daily schedule or on alternate daysis probably another nutritional fad.

She has observed that every decade or so fads switch and rearrange. To declare fasting to be an end-all is ambitious; human psychology is generally not designed for the long-term. Novelty usurps integrity and discipline. That said, Varady concludes of fasting,

I still think that it can really help people out, and I think people who are able to stick to it really reap a lot of metabolic benefits.

The article opens with a 1973 case of a man who survived for 382 days ingesting only vitamin supplements, yeast, and noncaloric fluids, in what has to be a hero to the Soylent movement. A.B., as he's known, dropped 276 pounds. More importantly he gained back only fifteen over the next five yearsone criticism of most diets is that the weight returns.

This is an extreme example, enough to garner a place in the Guinness Book of Records. What A.B. was doing, however, is an old trick once performed, albeit not so extremely, out of necessity. It wasnt until widespread advancements in agriculture at about 10,000 BChumans had been growing and harvesting for tens of thousands of years priorallowed our ancestors to settle down and treat themselves to relatively consistent nutrition. Our dietary habits changed dramatically.

The synopsis: our ancestors were accustomed to intermittent fasting. They might not have liked it, but their organs adapted, just as ours adapt to an overabundance of sugar- and carb-heavy foods by failing to work properly. Neuroscientist Mark Mattson relates our odd food rhythms to another cycle weve completely restructured. Thanks to electric lights our circadian rhythm is thrown off, which affects when and how we eat. He states,

When there was darkness in the evening, of course people didnt have much to do. . . . The light enables us to stay awake later in the night. And now we have plenty of food, so we tend to eat.

I practice intermittent fasting at various cycles. I found the 16:8 cyclefast for sixteen hours, eat all of my days food during eight hourschallenging, as I teach (fitness and yoga classes) in the mornings and evenings and often work out before my first class. Interestingly, research, on mice at least, is showing that changing the feeding windows from 16:8, 15:9, or 12:12 didnt make that much of a difference. That said, a fifteen-hour feeding window didnt seem to have much benefit at all.

What are the benefits? Besides a metabolic boost and weight loss, here is what the science says:

For a deep dive into the studies read the full article on The Scientist. Of all the fads to take root in recent memory, this technique appears consistently reliable. Forget about your blood type. In fact, forget about all food for prolonged periods during the day. Then enjoy the window youve chosen to eat within.

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Derek's next book,Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health, will be published on 7/17 by Carrel/Skyhorse Publishing. He is based in Los Angeles. Stay in touch onFacebookandTwitter.

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Is Fasting the Key to a Healthy Diet? - Big Think

Which diet is the healthiest? This is a question we can debate for hours and still not come to an agreement.

So instead of focusing on whether a Paleo or aplant-based diet is better, why dont we look into why certain diets work. After all, there are folks who have had success with both diets.

Here are 5 things all successful diet plans have in common.

Theres a lot of evidence showing that veggies promote weight loss and lower risk of diseases. In fact, all popular diets (low-carb, paleo, vegan, and Mediterranean) encourage you to eat lots of veggies and fiber.

Fiber helps control hunger and regulates blood sugar levels. If you want to increase fiber intake, eat plant-based foods in every meal. And start snacking on fruits instead of junk food.

Here are tips for eating more vegetables.

Sugar is one of the worst foods you can put in your mouth. It has lots of calories but no nutrients.

Now, its easy to reduce intake of table sugar but added sugar is much harder to avoid. It is in all sorts of processed foods including tomato sauces, salad dressings and cereals.

First, find out if the foods you consume regularly contain added sugar. Then substitute them with healthier alternatives. For instance, you could substitute diet soda with fresh lemon juice. Reading labels can also help avoid added sugar. But keep in mind that companies use all sorts of tricks to hide sugar.

Refined grains can make it harder for you to drop pounds. They are low in nutrients and high in calories. They also trigger blood sugar spikes, which consequently increase appetite.

Highly consumed refined grains include bread, rice, pasta and cereal. Try to avoid these foods or opt for less processed alternatives like whole-wheat bread, brown rice, whole-wheat pasta and oatmeal.

You cant lose weight if you eat too many calories. Just consume enough calories to help fuel your body but not too much that youll end up gaining weight.

Dont obsess over every single calorie, but you can have a rough estimate of your total calorie intake. Learn how to control portions without counting calories.

Trans fats wont just make you gain weight, they can make you sick. Research has linked them to inflammation and heart disease.

Common foods rich in trans fats include baked foods, biscuits, microwave popcorn, crackers, margarine, and cream-filled candy. Avoid these foods completely since they have no health benefits.

Which other principles of successful diet plans do you know?

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Things All Successful Diet Plans Have In Common - Care2.com

On the point ofoptimal nutrition, differences between the sexes are explained by the range of varying metabolic rates, reproductive functions and body structures.

Despite the fact that men and women have95.5 per cent identical DNAaccording to Harvard Medical School, on average men need a higher calorific intake with the NHS recommending 2,500 calories a day for men and 2,000 for women.

As we are finding out more I think it will help us to draw up dietary recommendations tailored to the needs of men and women,"Helen Bond, a dietician and spokesman for the British Dietetic Association toldThe Daily Mail.

So what are some of the helpful pointers to make sure youre getting the right nutrients you need?

Firstly, high levels of refined grains such as pasta ought to be avoided by women. Harvard Medical School recommend that carbohydrates should make up 45-65 per cent of the calorie intake for both men and women. However, a 12 year study by Harvard School of Public Health suggested a link between low moods and womens diets withhighlevels of refined grainssuch as white pasta.

The study found that women whose diets were high in refined grains were approximately a third more likely to suffer from depression.Nitu Bajekal, a consultant gynaecologist at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust told The Daily Mail the suggested link could be explained by blood sugars effect on levels of oestrogen that can also impact mood.

This area is not fully understood, but its sensible to eat vegetables with your pasta, because the fibre dampens the glucose response, she added.

By contrast, womens lower calcium levels would be benefit from enjoying more cheese. Women need more calcium in order to avoid osteoporosis in the bonesdue to the fact that they have a lower bone density than men on average andlose bone mass more rapidly. The menopause means a loss of oestrogen which also aids strong and healthy bones.

Women and men should have 700 mg of calcium per day in their diets, according to the NHS. Oregon State Universitys Linus Pauling Institute advises post-menopausal women to increase their daily calcium intake to 1,200 mg to counter the lack of oestrogen. Before the menopause, women also need to top up on iron levels because this is lost with each menstrual periodaccording to Harvard Medical School.

Men on the other hand, will be glad to hear they could benefit from eating more chocolate.

A study by Aberdeen University in 2012 found that while dark chocolate betters blood quality for both sexes, for men the effect is even stronger. After eating chocolate with a minimum of 70 per cent cocoa, the functioning of platelets was improved. These cells clot blood and their improved functioning is linked to reducing the risks of strokes.

Men can also benefit from enjoying more zinc-rich shellfish such as mussels. The NHS recommends 9.5 mg of zinc per day for men and 7 mg for women as the mineralcontributes to the healthy production of sperm, while also aidingimmune systems and cell function.

Zinc is easy to get from protein-rich foods such as seeds, nuts, shellfish and oysters, Ms Bond added.

Alcohol consumption is another point of difference with higher recommended amounts for men. Harvard Medical School suggest that for both genders, lower levelsappear to reduce the risk of heart attacks. But, even low amountsalso raise the risk of breast cancer, meaning that women could benefit from consuming half as much as the daily one to two drinks recommended for men.

According to Harvard Medical School, the dietary advice based on differences between genders is also largely based on average body size. While the average male muscle mass stands at 30 to 40 per cent more than for women, it is useful to remember that this is not universally the case, meaning the recommendationsdo not fit all.

A balanced diet, rich in vital minerals and vitamins is key for bothmen and womenbut advice on thefine points of nutritional differenceisworth adhering to if youre keen to keep a healthy and active lifestyle.

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As we are finding out more I think it will help us to draw up dietary recommendations tailored to the needs of men ... - The Independent