Carb-Restricted Diet Battles Fatty Liver Disease

by Gurumantra | Mar 19, 2018 | Diet, Obesity

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The metabolism of dangerous hepatic lipids was “strongly linked” to rapid increases in B vitamins and the bacteria that produce folic acid.

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“We found that the diet, independently of weight-loss, induced rapid and dramatic reductions of liver fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors, and revealed hitherto unknown underlying molecular mechanisms.”

Study Shows How A Carb-restricted Diet Battles Fatty Liver Disease

KTH The Royal Institute of Technology

New details about how a carbohydrate-restricted diet improves metabolism were revealed in a study published today, which could lead to improved treatments for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

A research team in Sweden examined the effects of reduced carbohydrate consumption – without an accompanying reduction in calorie intake – by putting 10 subjects with obesity and high liver fat on a two-week diet. The study, which involved KTH Royal Institute of Technology’s SciLifeLab research center, combined clinical and big data analysis to determine the subsequent changes in metabolism and gut bacteria.

By doing so, they identified why the subjects showed “rapid and dramatic” reductions of liver fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors, along with marked decreases in synthesis of hepatic fat. Published today in Cell Metabolism, the work was authored by researchers from KTH, University of Gothenburg and other international collaborators.

Adil Mardinoglu, a systems biology researcher at KTH, says that the subjects were restricted to an isocaloric, low-carbohydrate diet with increased protein content. The researchers found that the metabolism of dangerous hepatic lipids was “strongly linked” to rapid increases in B vitamins and the bacteria that produce folic acid.

This benefit was coupled by a reduction in the expression of genes that are involved in fatty acid synthesis, and an increase in the expression of genes involved in folate-mediated one-carbon metabolism and fatty acid oxidation.

“A carbohydrate-restricted dietary intervention such as the one we used can be an efficient treatment strategy for a severe health problem, as medical science continues the development of new drugs,” Mardinoglu says.

The study relied upon a combination of systems medicine and advanced clinical studies, with close interaction between experts in systems medicine, basic scientists, nutritionists and clinicians. Combining forces enabled the team to apply a “multi-omics” approach, which means integrating multiple data sets from the body’s omes (genome, proteome, transcriptome, etc.) to identify biomarkers.

“We’ve moved from an era where scientists could work individually and command – in one laboratory – everything they needed, to a world that’s much more interactive,” Mardinoglu says.

Lead author Jan Boren, a professor at University of Gothenburg, says: “We found that the diet, independently of weight-loss, induced rapid and dramatic reductions of liver fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors, and revealed hitherto unknown underlying molecular mechanisms.

“It’s important, however, to clarify that diets are complicated and that one type of diet does not fit everyone. For example, subjects with hypercholesterolemia should be careful.”

Liver fat is the earliest abnormality in the pathogenesis of both NAFLD and alcoholic fatty liver disease (AFLD) due to metabolic risk factors associated with insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome in the presence or absence of alcohol consumption.

Therefore, the strategies the research team identified could be used also for the treatment of AFLD patients, Boren says.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2018.01.005

Half Of Americans Sweet On Sodas

by Gurumantra | Aug 22, 2017 | Diet, Obesity, Public Health Policy

Sweeteners are hard to escape. It’s also hard to escape the health consequences of becoming overly reliant on a substance that apparently, not enough of us are yet aware is killing us slowly.

Half Of Americans Sweet On The Perils Of Sugar

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recent statistics show half of Americans drink a soda or sugary beverage each day. We have gulped our way to a new milestone in that they include both adults and kids. So much for leading by example.

The American Diabetes Association’s Scientific Sessions suggest that drinking diet soda may be doing more harm than good.

Epidemiologists from the School of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio reported data showing that diet soft drink consumption is associated with increased waist circumference.

Diet soda users as a group experienced 70% greater increase in waist circumference compared with non-users. These results suggest aspartame exposure might potentially directly contribute to increased blood glucose levels. This in turn contributes to the associations observed between diet soda consumption and diabetes in humans.

With a majority of the population being obese, diabetic and increasingly unhealthy, it’s not so funny anymore to pitch junk to children so blatantly. First it was Joe Camel getting side lined, now Burger King says they are removing the King Mascot from the Throne.

Not to worry, researchers are working on an i–phone app to use with a tattoo that monitors glucose and sodium levels. Watch for more techno-bio feedback tools to learn appropriate healthy behaviors.

Researchers at Northeastern University are working on nano sensors tattooed under the skin. The sensors change shade, red for sodium and yellow for glucose. Not ready for humans just yet, but as they say, awareness is the first step to enlightenment. Measuring for it keeps us headed in the right direction. Hopefully we’ll get the message by the time it becomes a life and death matter,

Look at the labels of any packaged or processed food product. Sweeteners are hard to escape. It’s also hard to escape the health consequences of becoming overly reliant on a substance that apparently, not enough of us are yet aware of we all know is killing us slowly.Maybe the perils of sugar will become obvious to all of us. How about we stop subsidizing GMO corn processed high fructose corn syrup.

Vitamins K2 & D, Berries and Green Tea

by Gurumantra | May 8, 2016 | Health

The annual multidisciplinary scientific meeting Experimental Biology wrapped up last week in San Diego. We scoured through the abstracts published in the FASEB journal and selected the studies that are worth a share to the dietary supplements world.

Green tea, strawberries, Vitamin D3 and Vitamin K2 all have new studies showing effectiveness for populations most at risk.

Sleep Your Way Out Of Metabolic Disorders

by Gurumantra | Apr 8, 2014 | Diabetes, Obesity, Sleep

Health care professionals should prescribe better sleep to prevent and treat metabolic disorders

Evidence increasingly suggests that insufficient or disturbed sleep is associated with metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes and obesity, and addressing poor quality sleep should be a target for the prevention – and even treatment – of these disorders, say the authors [1] of a Review, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal.

“Metabolic health, in addition to genetic predisposition, is largely dependent on behavioural factors such as dietary habits and physical activity. In the past few years, sleep loss as a disorder characterising the 24-hour lifestyle of modern societies has increasingly been shown to represent an additional behavioural factor adversely affecting metabolic health,” write the authors.

Addressing some types of sleep disturbance – such as sleep apnoea – may have a directly beneficial effect on patients’ metabolic health, say the authors. But a far more common problem is people simply not getting enough sleep, particularly due to the increased use of devices such as tablets and portable gaming devices.

Furthermore, disruption of the body’s natural sleeping and waking cycle (circadian desynchrony) often experienced by shift workers and others who work outside daylight hours, also appears to have a clear association with poor metabolic health, accompanied by increased rates of chronic illness and early mortality.

Although a number of epidemiological studies point to a clear association between poor quality sleep and metabolic disorders, until recently, the reason for this association was not clear. However, experimental studies are starting to provide evidence that there is a direct causal link between loss of sleep and the body’s ability to metabolise glucose, control food intake, and maintain its energy balance.

According to the study authors, “These findings open up new strategies for targeted interventions aimed at the present epidemic of the metabolic syndrome and related diseases. Ongoing and future studies will show whether interventions to improve sleep duration and quality can prevent or even reverse adverse metabolic traits. Meanwhile, on the basis of existing evidence, health care professionals can be safely recommended to motivate their patients to enjoy sufficient sleep at the right time of day.”

[1] The authors of the Review are Dr. Sebastian Schmid, University of Lübeck, Germany; Dr Manfred Hallschmid, University of Tübingen, Germany; and Professor Bernd Schultes, eSwiss Medical and Surgical Centre, St Gallen, Switzerland.

Full bibliographic informationThe metabolic burden of sleep loss – Sebastian M Schmid, Manfred Hallschmid, Bernd Schultes – Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol 2014, Published Online, March 25, 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2213-8587(14)70012-9

Breakfast Frequency Reduces Development of Metabolic Risk

by Gurumantra | Oct 6, 2013 | Heart Disease, Obesity

Couple Eating Breakfast Eating breakfast has its health benefits. The frequency of breakfasts consumed was the main factor studied. Interestingly, the quality of the breakfast food choices consumed did not make an impact on the results.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE The relation of breakfast intake frequency to metabolic health is not well studied. The aim of this study was to examine breakfast intake frequency with incidence of metabolic conditions.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We performed an analysis of 3,598 participants from the community-based Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study who were free of diabetes in the year 7 examination when breakfast and dietary habits were assessed (1992–1993) and participated in at least one of the five subsequent follow-up examinations over 18 years.

RESULTS Relative to those with infrequent breakfast consumption (0–3 days/week), participants who reported eating breakfast daily gained 1.9 kg less weight over 18 years (P = 0.001). In a Cox regression analysis, there was a stepwise decrease in risk across conditions in frequent breakfast consumers (4–6 days/week) and daily consumers.

The results for incidence of abdominal obesity, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and hypertension remained significant after adjustment for baseline measures of adiposity (waist circumference or BMI) in daily breakfast consumers. Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% CIs for daily breakfast consumption were as follows:

abdominal obesity HR 0.78 (95% CI 0.66–0.91),

obesity 0.80 (0.67–0.96),

metabolic syndrome 0.82 (0.69–0.98), and

hypertension 0.84 (0.72–0.99).

For type 2 diabetes, the corresponding estimate was 0.81 (0.63–1.05), with a significant stepwise inverse association in black men and white men and women but no association in black women. There was no evidence of differential results for high versus low overall dietary quality.

CONCLUSIONS Daily breakfast intake is strongly associated with reduced risk of a spectrum of metabolic conditions.

Footnotes

This article contains Supplementary Data online at http://care.diabetesjournals.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.2337/dc13-0316/-/DC1.

+ Author Affiliations

¹Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
²Department of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, Illinois
³New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.

Corresponding author: Andrew Odegaard, odeg0025@umn.edu.

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