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Friday, November 30, 2012
Diabetes Risk: Caffeine or No Caffeine?
It turns out that an observational study was published early online 2 weeks ago in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in which the authors concluded that sugar-sweetened beverages were associated with higher risk of diabetes while coffee, regardless of caffeine content, was associated w/lower risk of diabetes. To arrive at their conclusions, the authors followed 74,749 women from the Nurses' Healthy Study & 39,059 men from the Professionals Follow-Up Study for over two decades. Beverage consumption was divided into caffeine vs caffeine-free as well as sub-groupings of sugar-sweetened vs artificially sweetened beverages, basically a 2x2 analysis performed separately for both men & women.
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
Is Fish Really Brain Food?
Well, when you get down to it, the two things that have been proven to improve our health is better nutrition and regular physical activity. Yet, despite this vocal anti-medicine minority, the vast majority are still looking for a quick fix. That's why it was so serendipitous that I stumbled upon those two B vitamin studies looking at their effect against diabetic neuropathy and association w/decline in physical function.
For those of you interested in improving your cognitive function in just over a month by replicating this study, the participants took 5 capsules of fish oil daily which contained a total of 1,500mg EPA & 1050mg DHA along w/450mg unspecified omega 3 fatty acids. Realize that your average 1g dose of fish oily is not nearly as concentrated and contains just 180mg EPA + 120mg DHA, so you'd need 8+ capsules to get an equivalent amount of EPA & DHA. Think about that when you purchase your next bottle of fish oil!
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Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Quick Fix for Physical Function in Elderly?
Specifically the authors evaluated 796 participants (avg 65yo) in the Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study. After taking into account just about everything, high homocysteine & low folate were linked to decrease in physical and functional ability, as measured by Performance Oriented Mobility Assessment and self-reports of instrumental activities of daily living.
However, we need to assess the link between homocysteine, folate & physical/functional decline since all the conclusions drawn suggest a decline but no proof as to which caused the other, eg did an increase homocysteine & folate decrease cause the decline in function or did the decline in physical function cause the increase in homocysteine & decrease in folate? As an observational study, this can only suggest hypotheses for us to research but is clearly no proof of cause & effect. Something to mull over . . .
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Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Quick Fix for Diabetic Neuropathy?
But let's take a step back and look again, specifically at diabetic neuropathy, that incredibly painful & debilitating complication of poorly controlled diabetes due to high sugars' damaging effect on our nerves, giving us this numb yet tingly pain, sometime associated w/ice cold sensation, other times burning hot, still others described as electrical shock-like pain.
The authors arrived at their conclusion by comparing 814 patients w/diabetic neuropathy prescribed L-methylfolate combination vs 814 matched controls not prescribed L-methylfolate combination therapy. Before you jump out of your chair and call your family doc or ask your local pharmacist about this medical food, know that the manufacturer sponsored the study and one of the authors worked for a research team that has a relationship with the funder. None of this should disqualify the study, but it obviously affects your interpretation if you're especially cautious & cynical like me. In the meantime, as we await an NIH sponsored randomized controlled trial, I think the benefit of avoiding a hospital stay overrides the risk of any potential side effect from these vitamins.
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