Monday, September 29, 2014

Often we don't think of how our individual health impacts the environment, but a recent investigation found alarmingly high rates of not just pesticides, but pharmaceuticals in a river in which people swim and from which people fish. From high levels of caffeine to high levels of acetaminophen, and even high levels of the anti-convulsive carbamazepine were found in the water. Emerging contaminants not only effect the environment and wildlife, but also your food sources...and there are few standards to protect us.


A Rising Tide of Contaminants


Scientists are concerned by the increasing variety of contaminants in the environment. Traces of pesticides and caffeine were found in the Zumbro River, above, in Minnesota.Credit Brent Frazee/Kansas City Star, via MCT, via 


Deborah Swackhamer, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Minnesota, decided last year to investigate the chemistry of the nearby Zumbro River. She and her colleagues were not surprised to find traces of pesticides in the water. 

Neither were they shocked to find prescription drugs ranging from antibiotics to the anti–convulsive carbamazepine. Researchers realized more than 15 years ago that pharmaceuticals – excreted by users, dumped down drains – were slipping through wastewater treatment systems

But though she is a leading expert in so-called emerging contaminants, Dr. Swackhamer was both surprised and dismayed by the sheer range and variety of what she found. Caffeine drifted through the river water, testament to local consumption of everything from coffee to energy drinks. There were relatively high levels of acetaminophen, the over-the-counter painkiller. Acetaminophen causes liver damage in humans at high doses; no one knows what it does to fish.

“We don’t know what these background levels mean in terms of environmental or public health,” she said. “It’s definitely another thing that we’re going to be looking at.” 

Or, she might have said, one of many, many other things.

The number of chemicals contaminating our environment is growing at exponential rate, scientists say. A team of researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey tracks them in American waterways, sediments, landfills and municipal sewage sludge, which is often converted into agricultural fertilizer. They’ve found steroid hormones and the antibacterial agent triclosan in sewage; the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) in fish; and compounds from both birth control pills and detergents in the thin, slimy layer that forms over stones in streams. 

“We’re looking at an increasingly diverse array of organic and inorganic chemicals that may have ecosystem health effects,” said Edward Furlong, a research chemist with the U.S.G.S. office in Denver and one of the first scientists to track the spread of pharmaceutical compounds in the nation’s waterways. “Many of them are understudied and unrecognized.” 

In an essay last week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, titled “Re-Emergence of Emerging Contaminants,” editor-in-chief Jerald L. Schnoor called attention to both the startling growth of newly registered chemical compounds and our inadequate understanding of older ones. 

The American Chemical Society, the publisher of the journal, maintains the most comprehensive national database of commercially registered chemical compounds in the country. “The growth of the list is eye-popping, with approximately 15,000 new chemicals and biological sequences registered every day,” Dr. Schnoor wrote. 

Not all of those are currently in use, he emphasized, and the majority are unlikely to be dangerous. “But, for better or worse, our commerce is producing innovative, challenging new compounds,” he wrote.

Dr. Schnoor, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Iowa, also noted rising concern among researchers about the way older compounds are altered in the environment, sometimes taking new and more dangerous forms. 

Some research suggests that polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are broken down by plants into even more toxic metabolites. Equally troubling, scientists are finding that while PCBs are banned, they continue to seep into the environment in unexpected ways, such as from impurities in the caulk of old school buildings. 

PCBs have long been identified as hazardous, but not every contaminant is so risky, Dr. Schnoor emphasized.

“Out of the millions of chemical compounds that we know about, thousands have been tested and there are very few that show important health effects,” he said in an interview. 

But, he added, the development of new compounds and the increasing discovery of unexpected contaminants in the environment means that the nation desperately needs a better system for assessing and prioritizing chemical exposures. 

That includes revisiting the country’s antiquated chemical regulation and assessment regulations. The Toxic Substances Control Act went into effect in 1976, almost 40 years ago, and has not been updated since. 

The law does require the Environmental Protection Agency to maintain an inventory of registered industrial compounds that may be toxic, but it does not require advance safety testing of those materials. Of the some 84,000 compounds registered, only a fraction have ever been fully tested for health effects on humans. The data gap includes some materials, like creosote and coal tar derivatives, which are currently manufactured at rates topping a million pounds a year

Not surprisingly, Dr. Schnoor and other scientists want to see the act updated and transformed into a mechanism for science-based risk assessment of suspect compounds. Indeed, everyone from researchers to environmental groups to the American chemical industry agree that the law is frustratingly inadequate. 

“Our chemical safety net is more hole than net,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group. The Food and Drug Administration, for instance, doesn’t regulate the environmental spread of pharmaceuticals. And the toxic substances law ignores their presence in waterways. 

“Where does that leave us in terms of scientific understanding of what drugs to regulate?” Mr. Cook said.

Anne Womack Kolton, vice president for communications at the American Chemistry Council, an organization representing chemical manufacturers, agreed. “Think about the world 40 years ago,” she said. “It was a vastly different place. It’s common sense to revise the law and make it consistent with what we know about chemicals today.”

The two sides don’t agree on what standards for chemical testing are needed or what kind of protective restrictions should be put in place for chemicals deemed hazardous. And they are in deep disagreement about whether a revised federal law should preempt actions taken by tough-minded states like California. 

The council argues for federal standardization as the most efficient route; environmental groups believe that such an action would weaken public protection. Legislators have so far not been able to resolve those differences. This month yet another proposed update to the act stalled in a Senate committee

“Congress has not sent an environmental law to the president’s desk in 18 years,” Mr. Cook said. “And in the current environment, it’s very difficult to get something through.”

Still, Dr. Swackhamer, who recently stepped down as chair of the E.P.A.’s science advisory board, notes that despite the lack of legislation, scientists have been working toward better ways to assess the risks posed by the increasing numbers of chemicals in our lives. Some may help whittle the inventory of T.S.C.A. compounds down to a priority list that focuses on less than a thousand products

That’s still a daunting number of chemical unknowns. But given the tens of thousands of materials in the inventory, it’s a start.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

As in the classic case of the chicken and the egg, a new study demonstrates a correlation between drinking and exercise. So did those extra beers lead to more exercise, or did the exercise provide the excuse to knock down a few more pints?

Working out? Drink! Your gym days are also your booze days, study shows


September 23 at 4:08 PM
 
 
Do you work out hard and then party hard as well? Join the club.

People tend to exercise more than usual on the same days they drink more alcohol than usual, according to a new study published this month in Health Psychology and funded by the National Institute on Aging.

Researchers had 150 participants between 18 to 89 log their daily physical activity and alcohol consumption over a span of 21 days. The group did this at three different periods during the year.
Whereas previous studies had participants try to think back on their habits over a 30-day time span, or concluded that people who exercise more also drink more, this study zeroed in on individual, day-to-day behaviors. Participants were considered "low-risk" folks, who typically had a couple of drinks every few days.

"Something is happening on those days that's leading people to drink more," said David Conroy, the study's lead author and a professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

So what gives? Conroy said a number things could be at play. Perhaps people who like to work out also like to drink with the same people with whom they've exercised. Or maybe people are rewarding themselves for hitting the gym. Or maybe they've used up all the willpower they can muster to just get themselves to the gym, and they've got none left to refuse a drink later in the day.

Most of the alcohol consumption recorded by the study's participants came in the form of beer.
The "why" behind this exercise-drinking link will be the subject of future research, which could have an impact on how we go about encouraging exercise, Conroy said. "If we're going to promote physical activity,. . . we would be wise to think about whether there are any unintended consequences that could occur," he said.

The finding is unusual because healthy behaviors tend to cluster, and this is one of the few instances in which diametrically opposed behaviors (working out and drinking) are linked, Conroy said. For example, people who tend to exercise also tend to eat well and not smoke.

The link held for people whether they were younger or older adults. Researchers also attempted to adjust for the day of the week and the well-known "social weekend" effect which results in people drinking more Thursday through Sunday because their calendars allow for it. "It's not just that both are peaking at the same time," Conroy said -- but rather there is a link between the two behaviors.

Could it be that people are just trying to mitigate the calories they consumed from drinking the night before? Nope. Researchers found the link between exercising and drinking occurred on the same day, which they assume happened in that order. Given the effects of alcohol, "it seems unlikely that people would knock back a six-pack and then hop on a treadmill," Conroy said.
Elahe Izadi is a general assignment national reporter for The Washington Post. She can be reached at elahe.izadi@washpost.com and on Twitter @ElaheIzadi.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

So, you think you've been living alone all this time. Got the new condo, decorated it to suit your personal taste, and enjoy the alone time. Well, it turns out you're not living alone. In fact, you're living with five or more viruses everyday.

Medical News Today - 

Healthy humans 'harbor an average of five viruses'

Last updated: 


It is well established that our bodies possess gut bacteria that is beneficial for health. Now, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis, MO, have found that our bodies are also home to an average of five viruses responsible for numerous illnesses, although it is unclear whether they have positive or negative implications for health.
HPV
Strains of HPV were found in around 75% of participants' skin samples and 50% of nose samples, while new strains of the virus were found in both skin and nose samples.
"Most everyone is familiar with the idea that a normal bacterial flora exists in the body," says study co-author Dr. Gregory Storch, a virologist and chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the university. "Lots of people have asked whether there is a viral counterpart, and we haven't had a clear answer. But now we know there is a normal viral flora, and it's rich and complex."
The findings, which form a part of the Human Microbiome Project funded by the National Institutes of Health, were recently published in the journal BMC Biology.
The research team, led by Kristine M. Wylie, PhD, an instructor of pediatrics at the university, collected 706 samples of bodily fluids from 102 healthy adults aged 18-40. The samples were taken from participants' nose, skin, mouth, vagina and stools.
All participants were closely screened to ensure they had no viral infections, and they were eliminated from the study if they had had been diagnosed with human papillomavirus (HPV) in the past 2 years, or had a form of active genital herpes in the last 2 months.
For each sample, the researchers used high-throughput DNA sequencing that enabled them to detect a wide range of viruses.

Seven families of viruses identified, including HPV and herpesvirus

Among 92% of participants, at least one virus was detected, with some participants harboring around 10-15 viruses. On average, each participant harbored five viruses. The researchers say they were surprised to find so many. "We only sampled up to five body sites in each person and would expect to see many more viruses if we had sampled the entire body," says Wylie.
From the samples, the team detected seven families of viruses. These included viruses responsible for non-sexually transmitted herpes - herpesvirus 6 and 7. These viruses were detected among 98% of participants who were sampled from the mouth.
Strains of HPV were found in around 75% of skin samples and 50% of nose samples, while new strains of the virus were found in both skin and nose samples. Around 38% of female participants had HPV strains in vagina samples, with many of these harboring strains associated with increased risk of cervical cancer, such as HPV 16 and HPV 18.
The researchers also identified adenoviruses - responsible for pneumonia and the common cold - in the majority of samples.
It is possible, the researchers note, that the viruses identified were lurking infections from years before. But Wylie says that dormant viruses usually reside in cells rather than bodily fluids, which is where the viruses were found in this study.
Commenting on their findings, the team says:
"This study is the first to use high-throughput DNA sequencing to describe the diversity of eukaryotic DNA viruses in a large cohort of individuals who were sampled at multiple body sites. This analysis demonstrates that there is a 'normal viral flora' in generally healthy, asymptomatic individuals."
They admit that it is unclear as to whether the viruses are beneficial or detrimental to health, but they hypothesize that the viruses may boost the immune system's response to harmful pathogens in some cases, while increasing the risk of infection in others.
"It's very important to know what viruses are present in a person without causing a problem and what viruses could be responsible for serious illnesses that need medical attention," says Dr. Storch. "While more research remains, we now have a much clearer picture of the communities of viruses that naturally exist in healthy people."
Medical News Today recently reported on a study claiming viruses can spread to 40-60% of a building and its occupants within 2-4 hours.

Friday, September 12, 2014

Why would we allow a class of corporations to slowly poison us leading to our ultimate health demise? Let's face it, most of us grew up drinking soda. We just didn't realize that the fructose corn syrup ingredient would be the thing that causes fatty liver. Not to mention that the left-over fatty-acids from the fructose breakdown enter the bloodstream to cause metabolic syndrome (increased girth, blood sugar, insulin resistance and diabetes). Perhaps its time the public start looking at these food additives the same way they look at tobacco and the health issues it causes.

Drink Soda? Take 12,000 Steps


Credit Getty Images
 

People who consume the sweetener fructose — which is most people nowadays — risk developing a variety of health problems. But the risk drops substantially if those people get up and move around, even if they don’t formally exercise, two new studies found. 

Most of us have heard that ingesting fructose, usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, is unhealthy, which few experts would dispute. High-fructose corn syrup is used to sweeten many processed foods and nearly all soft drinks.

The problem with the sweetener is that, unlike sucrose, the formal name for common table sugar, fructose is metabolized primarily in the liver. There, much of the fructose is transformed into fatty acids, some of which remain in the liver, marbling that organ and contributing to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. 

The rest of the fatty acids migrate into the bloodstream, causing metabolic havoc. Past animal and human studies have linked the intake of even moderate amounts of fructose with dangerous gyrations in blood sugar levels, escalating insulin resistance, Type 2 diabetes, added fat around the middle, obesity, poor cholesterol profiles and other metabolic disruptions.

But Amy Bidwell, then a researcher at Syracuse University, noticed that few of these studies had examined interactions between physical activity and fructose. That was a critical omission, she thought, because movement and exercise change how the body utilizes fuels, including fructose. 

Dr. Bidwell sought out healthy, college-aged men and women who would agree to drink soda in the pursuit of science. They were easy to find. She gathered 22.

The volunteers showed up at the university’s physiology lab for a series of baseline tests. The researchers assessed how their bodies responded to a fructose-rich meal, recording their blood sugar and insulin levels, and other measures of general and metabolic health, including cholesterol profiles and blood markers of bodily inflammation. The students also completed questionnaires about their normal diets and activity levels and subsequently wore an activity monitor for a week to gauge how much they generally moved. 

Then half of the volunteers spent two weeks moving about half as much as they had before. The other 11 volunteers began moving around about twice as much as before, for a daily total of at least 12,000 steps a day, or about six miles. 

After a rest period of a week, the groups switched, so that every volunteer had moved a lot and a little. 

Throughout, they also consumed two fructose-rich servings of a lemon-lime soda, designed to provide 75 grams of fructose a day, which is about what an average American typically consumes. The sodas contained about 250 calories each, and the volunteers were asked to reduce their nonfructose calories by the same amount, to avoid weight gain. 

After each two-week session, the volunteers returned to the lab for a repeat of the metabolic and health tests. 

Their results diverged widely, depending on how much they’d moved. As one of two new studies based on the research, published in May in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, reports, after two weeks of fructose loading and relative inactivity, these young, healthy volunteers displayed a notable shift in their cholesterol and health profiles. There was a significant increase in their blood concentrations of dangerous very-low-density lipoproteins, and a soaring 116-percent increase in markers of bodily inflammation. 

The second study, published this month in The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, focused on blood-sugar responses to fructose and activity, and found equally striking changes among the young people when they didn’t move much. Two weeks of extra fructose left them with clear signs of incipient insulin resistance, which is typically the first step toward Type 2 diabetes. 

But in both studies, walking at least 12,000 steps a day effectively wiped out all of the disagreeable changes wrought by the extra fructose. When the young people moved more, their cholesterol and blood sugar levels remained normal, even though they were consuming plenty of fructose every day.

The lesson from these studies is not that we should blithely down huge amounts of fructose and assume that a long walk will undo all harmful effects, said Dr. Bidwell, who is now an assistant professor of exercise science at the State University of New York in Oswego. “I don’t want people to consider these results as a license to eat badly,” she added.

But the data suggests that “if you are going to regularly consume fructose,” she said, “be sure to get up and move around.” 

The study did not examine how activity ameliorates some of the worst impacts of fructose, but it’s likely, Dr. Bidwell said, that the “additional muscular contractions” involved in standing and taking 12,000 steps a day produce a cascade of physiological effects that alter how the body uses fructose. 

Interestingly, the young people in the study did not increase the lengths of their normal workouts to achieve the requisite step totals, and most did not formally exercise at all, Dr. Bidwell said. They parked their cars further away from stores; took stairs instead of elevators; strolled the campus; and generally “sat less, moved more,” she said. “That’s a formula for good health, in any case,” she added, “but it appears to be key,” if you’re determined to have that soda.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Two primary causes of diabetes - obesity and inactivity. Sadly, many people are clueless that they are a diabetic, or are what is considered prediabetic. Can you stop being prediabetic? Sure can. Can you reverse being a diabetic? Possibly, and at least you can bring your lab levels to the normal range and do so without drugs. Can you die from complications of diabetes? Sure can...particularly if you do nothing but sit around and gain weight without a clue as to whether or not you're a diabetic.

Averting Diabetes Before It Takes Hold


Credit Scott Bakal

After a routine test of her blood sugar eight years ago, Randi Sue Baker, a seriously overweight 64-year-old, learned that Type 2 diabetes was bearing down.

With that test result, she joined the 79 million Americans over the age of 20 who have prediabetes. Up to 70 percent of them will go on to develop diabetes, but 90 percent don’t even know they are at risk. In fact, as many as 28 percent of adults with full-blown diabetes don’t know they have it, according to Edward W. Gregg, a senior epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ms. Baker, who lives in Brooklyn, considers herself lucky to have been forewarned. She realized that while she was still relatively healthy, she could make a concerted effort to stay that way.

For the last several years she has kept track of her caloric intake, the kinds and amounts of the carbohydrates she eats, and the overall healthfulness of her diet. She exercises five days a week, walking for 30 minutes and then swimming for an hour at the local Y. She is down 50 pounds from her top weight.

Ms. Baker also daily monitors her blood sugar, or glucose, level and takes a drug called metformin to help keep it within a normal range. Periodically, her doctor checks her blood level of hemoglobin A1C, another indicator of diabetes, to be sure it hasn’t risen.

Could Ms. Baker do more? If she were willing to undergo bariatric surgery, perhaps. The operation has risks but has been shown to “cure” diabetes in about a third of patients.

But what Ms. Baker already is doing to keep diabetes at bay is far more than most people who are likely to develop it do.

Diabetes is now an out-of-control epidemic responsible for a devastating toll in health, lives and medical care costs. In 2012 the condition accounted for $245 billion in health care expenses, about one in five health care dollars.

Among its serious complications are heart disease, stroke, kidney damage, nerve damage, eye disease (which can lead to blindness), foot damage (which can lead to amputations) and hearing loss.

Diabetes is the No. 1 cause of blindness, kidney failure and amputations, Dr. Elizabeth Seaquist, an endocrinologist and diabetes expert at the University of Minnesota, said in an interview. The condition even has been linked to dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.

The two primary causes of Type 2 diabetes — obesity and inactivity — have thus far resisted countless efforts to reverse or prevent them. National data from 2000 to 2011 show that about 40 percent of adults face a lifetime risk of developing diabetes, an increase of up to 20 percent since the late 1980s, Dr. Gregg and his colleagues recently reported.

If this tsunami continues to roll forward, experts predict that by 2050 the number of adults with diabetes will reach one in three.

The risk of developing diabetes rises with age. Currently about one in four Americans ages 65 and older has diabetes, and the number will grow as the population ages.

In theory, it is possible to avert the impending health crisis. Because complications typically take 20 years to become apparent, identifying people at risk of diabetes early and taking corrective action could delay onset of the disease and its devastating consequences, perhaps for the rest of their lives.

The American Diabetes Association has created a simple seven-question test to help people assess their risk; a paper copy can be found at www.diabetes.org. Important factors include a family history of the disease, prior gestational diabetes, being overweight or obese, physical inactivity and older age.

A dozen years ago in its journal, Diabetes Care, the association noted “growing evidence that at glucose levels above normal but below the threshold diagnostic for diabetes, there is a substantially increased risk of cardiovascular disease and death.”

A person with prediabetes has a blood glucose level higher than normal but not yet in the range of diabetes. While not everyone with the condition will progress to full-blown diabetes, over time, prediabetes can cause much the same underlying damage to body tissues and organs.

The trouble starts even before glucose levels begin rising, when the body becomes resistant to the effects of insulin, the pancreatic hormone that regulates how much glucose circulates freely in blood.
Insulin’s main job is to move glucose from the blood into cells to be used for energy or stored for future needs. Insulin resistance, the portend of prediabetes, prompts the beta cells of the pancreas to produce more and more of this hormone to keep blood glucose levels normal.

Gradually, pancreatic cells wear out, setting the stage for rising blood glucose, prediabetes and diabetes.

The risk of developing diabetes is highest among African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans, but no ethnic or racial group is spared.

While excess weight is the leading risk factor, even people of normal weight can develop the disease if they carry too much fat in their abdomen. So-called central obesity may explain why the Japanese and others of Asian descent often develop diabetes at weights well below the range of obesity, Dr. Seaquist said.

She called prediabetes “a wake-up call” and emphasized that “modest weight loss can help. You don’t have to lose 100 pounds to prevent diabetes.” A loss of 7 percent to 10 percent of body weight can be effective.

Nor do you have to become an exercise fanatic. “Moderate activity, 30 minutes a day five or more days a week, is helpful and can even be broken up into 10-minute segments,” Dr. Seaquist said. “More is better, but it’s a place to start.”

She also offered advice for Americans in general: “Probably we all should consider ourselves at risk. We eat too much, more than we need, and that’s not healthy even if we don’t get diabetes.”

“We should be avoiding drinks that are high in calories,” she added. “They make it too hard to regulate food intake. Drinking water is safest all around — it’s natural and organic.”