Can excercise change your DNA?
It turns out that you're not just what you eat -- you're also "what one does," according to Juleen Zierath, professor of clinical integrative physiology in the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.
Zierath and colleagues recently learned that healthy, but inactive adults experienced an instantaneous change to their muscle cells' genetic material whenever they engaged in only a few moments of exercise on the stationary bicycle.
Specifically, types of thigh muscle in the study participants had fewer markers of methyl-group chemicals after exercise compared to what they did before it. Those methyl groups, consequently, are used to moderate genetic expression. The alterations were seen specially in areas which affect genes to blame for energy metabolism -- by comparison, areas which are unrelated to metabolism had steady levels of methyl group chemicals. Furthermore, the harder the brief workout, the greater demethylized the metabolism-related regions became.
The genetic changes that occur from exercise are happening within the epigenome, which is to blame for the expression of genes. Basically we inherit our genetic code from the parents, environmental factors such as lifestyle play a substantial role in whether a gene is "turned on" to ensure that its function can be expressed. As HuffPost blogger Dr. Frank Lipman recently explained:
The epigenome modifications in response to signals. Signals come from inside the cell, from neighboring cells or from the outside world.
It can be through the epigenome that environmental factors like diet, stress and prenatal nutrition can make an imprint on genes that pass derived from one of generation to the next. Bottom line: While everyone inherits our very own unique, hardwired, unchangeable version in the genetic code, epigenetic factors for example lifestyle and diet can radically change what our genes do.
Within the specific case of exercise, researchers theorized that muscle contractions could be what's stimulating the demethylization. They performed another experiment by which they exposed rodent muscle cells straight away to caffeine, that causes a chemical reaction that mimics muscle contraction. They found out that the cells had similar demethylation as the live, human study participants' muscle cells. Does that mean a cup of coffee brings the same metabolic change? Odds are slim. “One would have to consume a caffeine same in principle as about 50 cups daily, almost near to a lethal dose”, Zierath told Nature. “Exercising is far easier to me.”
The research was published inside the March issue of Cell Metabolism.
Is meat similar to tobacco?
For many years, tobacco companies were able to maintain a strong pro-tobacco façade. Smoking focuses mental performance. It's good in your case (doctors smoke!). It's good for weight loss. It's sexy. It's cool. The tobacco industry spent big bucks to keep these ideas inside mind from the public as long as it could.
As well as many years as soon as the lethal effects were universally known and undeniable, some of our nation's smartest and quite a few successful businessmen continued to imagine, because it is at their interest to think, that "nicotine isn't addictive." (Watch the seven best tobacco executives of 1994 make that statement, under oath, to Congress -- not really two decades ago.)
I used to be reminded of how far tobacco has fallen reading the New York Times magazine interview with possibly the most successful screenplay writer in history, Joe Eszterhas, who may have lost 80 percent of his larynx to tobacco, and contains apologized for his glamorization of smoking in such films as Basic Instinct.
When I think about the effect of animal products on human health, I'm reminded of methods quickly we've done a national about face on tobacco, i look forward to your day when the Times magazine includes a similar apology from somebody that promoted animal products -- for the reason that evidence is at and it is maintaining growth: Animal products kill much more Americans than tobacco does.
The West's three biggest killers -- heart problems, cancer, and stroke -- are connected to excessive animal product consumption, and vegetarians have much lower risks of all three. Vegetarians in addition have a fraction from the obesity and diabetes rates with the general population -- needless to say, both diseases are near epidemic levels and they are only getting worse.
But much more important than the vegetarian community's general statistics are what can be done with the right vegetarian diet: For some years now, doctors happen to be not just preventing, but even reversing, cardiovascular disease using a low-fat vegetarian diet.
You heard that right -- the disease that kills almost as many Americans as the rest combined could be not just prevented, but reversed, with a low fat plant-based diet, as documented by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn in Prevent and Reverse Cardiovascular disease.
There's a link from animal product consumption to our country's No. 2 killer, too: In accordance with the American Institute for Cancer Research, about the maximum amount of cancer may be prevented by dieting and exercise as is due to smoking -- and you also know what's causing all of that cancer? It isn't whole grains, legumes, fruits, or vegetables. Dr. T. Colin Campbell has documented the link between cancer and animal products.
There are many money in the meat industry, just like there's a lot of cash in big tobacco. For quite some time, the tobacco establishment pointed to elderly smokers like George Burns and millions of others as proof that their very-natural product could not be harmful. Even long-distance runners and members of the military may be found using tobacco at the end of an extended run or intense drill.
Similarly, today the meat industry points that the there are a great deal of old meat-eaters, conveniently ignoring our sky-high heart disease and cancer rates, and also our ballooning rates of obesity and diabetes, that are connected to their products.
Bill Clinton went on what he was told would have been a healthy diet after his emergency quadruple-bypass in 2004, yet he didn't lose fat or feel better, and he required follow-up surgery this year. After that surgery, he was brought to the work of Dr. Esselystyn and Dr. Campbell, and that he went vegan -- which allowed him to get rid of 24 pounds in a year and feel good than ever, as they discusses with Wolf Blitzer on CNN.
Eszterhas wrote in their tobacco mea culpa, "My hands are bloody; so are Hollywood's. My cancer has caused me to attempt to cleanse mine. I do not wish my fate upon anyone in Hollywood, however beg that Hollywood stop imposing it upon millions of others."
He could equally as easily are already writing about animal foods, and that's why I was delighted to see Mark Bittman's recent The big apple Times column through which he noted that meat consumption is down over 10 percent since 2007. It appears that more and more people are getting more popualr to the possible risks with animal foods.
Largely, that's due to the work of Doctors Esslestyn and Campbell, so I've recently been delighted with the success in the film Forks Over Knives, an entertaining documentary that chronicles the prosperity of their work. Ellen and Oprah have both plugged the film, but perhaps even more importantly, Dr. Sanjay Gupta called Forks Over Knives "a great film," and Dr. Mehmet Oz thought to his fans, "I loved it and that i need every body to see it."
It may be awhile before eating a chicken wing is seen, as it needs to be, as the heath same in principle as smoking a cigarette -- the meat companies are still stronger than tobacco has have you ever been, and most in the medical establishment isn't yet as nutrition-focused as progressive scientists and doctors like T. Colin Campbell and Dean Ornish.
How can vegetables affect your skin tone
Eat produce, change your skin?
That's the finding of the small, new study done in Scotland that suggests fruit and vegetable consumption changes the redness and yellowness of people's skin. And the ones hue changes, they claim, are linked to increased attractiveness.
In the experiment, researchers checked out 35 students between the ages of 18 and 25, just about one of whom were white. At several points over about six weeks, those students answered questions regarding their fruit and vegetable intake, while researchers recorded their skin-color.
In line with the results, undergrads who ate more fruits and vegetables experienced a rise in skin redness and yellowness -- changes they chalk up to carotenoids, or highly pigmented compounds seen in many fruit and veggies.
"Our study suggests that an increase in fruit and vegetables consumption of around three portions, sustained more than a six-week period, is sufficient to convey perceptible improvements inside apparent healthiness and appeal of facial skin," said Ross Whitehead, a researcher at the University of St. Andrews' school of psychology.
Indeed, in the second arm of the same study, Whitehead with his fantastic colleagues showed 24 undergrads images of four individuals -- all white -- and asked them questions on their skin hue, and perceived healthiness and attractiveness. The final results were published in the journal PLoS One on Wednesday.
Dr. Carolyn Jacob, a spokesperson for that American Academy of Dermatology, expressed some skepticism about the notion that red or yellow skin tones are definitively linked with perceived attractiveness. But, she said that the connection between carotenoids and skin does exist.
"If you feed a baby too many mashed yams or carrots, they are able to end up getting a yellowish tint for their skin temporarily," she said.
"I"m a big believer in that you are what you eat," Jacob added, proclaiming that while there is no solid timeline, she'd counsel patients changing their diet program in order to improve overall skin health to expect changes within 2-3 months.
Based on the National Institute of Health's Office of Health supplements, there are several hundred identified carotenoids, including provitamin A and lycopene. Red and orange fruits and vegetables, such as red sweet peppers, tomatoes and mangoes are often first often considered as containing carotenoids, but others do, too.
"Carotenoids can be found in a wide range of fruit and veggies, even those that don't outwardly seem red or yellow," Whitehead said. "Green vegetables, as an example, are particularly high in carotenoids, but the chlorophyll of these foods masks the appearance of [them]."
(The recommendations vary in accordance with age and sex, the U.S. Department of Agriculture generally recommends that females eat between 1-1/2 to 2 cups of fruit per day and between 2 and 2-1/2 glasses of vegetables; men should generally eat between 2-cups of fruit and 2-1/2 to three cups of veggies.)
In accordance with Whitehead and his co-authors, the newest findings could possibly have public health benefits, as they provide one more reason why people should eat enough fruit and veggies -- one they promise is readily apparent.
"Everybody wants a pill or a quick way and I've always declared that if you want to have beautiful healthy skin, you will need to eat the right foods and you have to have the right lifestyle," said Dr. Doris Day, and a spokesperson for that American Academy of Dermatology and author of "Forget the Facelift."
The good thing?
"You don't have to be perfect each day," Day said. "Skin is very forgiving."