If you're like me, you probably sit around pondering such questions as "why are men's noses bigger than women's." You'll be glad to know that an article in Medical News Today explains why... and it has to do with energy production. The good news is that they are all smaller than they used to be.

From Medical News Today - 

Why men's noses are bigger than women's

Saturday 23 November 2013 - 12am PST
Written by Honor Whiteman 

It has long been hypothesized that compared with women, men naturally have bigger noses. Now, a new study from researchers at the University of Iowa confirms that this is true - stating than on average, men's noses are 10% larger than women's noses.
 
According to the investigators, who analyzed nose size in European populations, the size difference is a result of different body build between both sexes, alongside different energy demands.

They explain that in general, men have more lean muscle mass than women, which means they need more oxygen to encourage muscle growth and maintenance. They believe men have larger noses so they can inhale more oxygen, which is then transported to the blood before reaching the muscle.

To reach their findings, published in The American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the investigators analyzed the nose size and growth of 38 individuals of European descent who were a part of the Iowa Facial Growth Study. The participants were enrolled in the study from 3-years-old until their mid-20s.

Each participant had regular internal and external measurements of their nose taken throughout the study period.

 

Differences in nose size begins at puberty 

 

The results of the study revealed that from birth until puberty, girls and boys generally have the same nose size. But from age 11 is when the size differences begin to occur, with the researchers finding an average 10% increased size in male nose size, compared with females.

 

Investigators have found that on average, men's noses (pictured at bottom) are 10% bigger than women's noses (top), due to the need to inhale more oxygen to maintain their larger muscle mass.  Image credit: UI College of Dentistry

 

"Even if the body size is the same, males have larger noses, because more of the body is made up of that expensive tissue. And, it's at puberty that these differences really take off," explains Nathan Holton, assistant professor of the College of Dentistry at the University of Iowa and lead study author.

Holton told Medical News Today:

"This pattern mirrors what we see in energetically variables such as oxygen consumption, caloric intake and metabolic rates."

"Moreover, this pattern is different from what we see when look at overall facial size. For a given body size, males show a disproportionately larger face as early as 3 years of age, perhaps earlier.
This suggests that while there is an association between overall facial size and nasal size - which we know from our previous work - there is a component of nasal size that may be influenced by body mass and oxygen requirements."

Smaller noses than our ancestors

The investigators say their findings also explain why humans today have smaller noses than our ancestors, such as the Neanderthals.

They explain that distant relatives possessed more muscle mass and therefore required bigger noses in order to maintain that muscle. Because humans today have less muscle mass, there is no need for larger noses.
 
Holton adds that modern humans also have smaller rib cages and lungs than our ancestors, emphasizing the fact that we now do not require as much oxygen.

"So, in humans, the nose can become small, because our bodies have smaller oxygen requirements than we see in archaic humans. This all tells us physiologically how modern humans have changed from their ancestors," Holton adds.

Although the study was conducted using participants of European descent, Holton points out that the findings should apply to other populations because differences in the male and female physiology are apparent across cultures and races.

However, Holton told Medical News Today that the present study was designed as a first step toward better understand the developmental patterns of nasal and body size, and the team's next step is to work at establishing a direct link.

"This will include examining nasal size and variables, such as oxygen consumption, in study subjects so we can get a better handle on respiratory function and the size and shape of the nose," he adds.
 
Earlier this year, Medical News Today reported on a study suggesting that men with wide faces trigger selfishness in others.

Looking to lose weight? Didn't your Momma always say to eat your vegetables? A new study demonstrates the best way to lose weight is to eat plants, not meat.

Putting Breaking Medical News Into Practice

Meeting Coverage

Predominantly Plant Diets Help Patients Shed Pounds

Published: Nov 17, 2013 | Updated: Nov 18, 2013

By Kristina Fiore, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

 

 

ATLANTA -- Eating vegan or vegetarian may help obese patients lose more weight than dietary patterns that allow limited amounts of meat, researchers reported here.

In a randomized trial, patients assigned to a vegan diet or a vegetarian one shed significantly more pounds over 2 months than those who followed a typical omnivorous diet -- about 5% of body weight compared with a 2% loss, Brie Turner-McGrievy, PhD, MS, RD, of the University of South Carolina, and colleagues reported at Obesity Week.

After those 2 months, patients were allowed to add whatever foods they wanted back into their diets -- and still the vegan and vegetarian groups dropped more weight by 6 months than omnivores (about 8% and 6%, respectively, compared with 3%).

Turner-McGrievy said the findings "point to a potential use of plant-based eating styles in the prevention and treatment of obesity and related chronic diseases," adding that these are eating patterns -- not "diets" in the traditional sense of the word -- and they don't involve calorie restriction.

That could make it easier for patients to stick to, potentially translating into better results, she said. They simply emphasize a low-fat, low glycemic-index eating pattern that ultimately leads to improved metabolic parameters.

But some experts cautioned that any diet that limits food choices could be diminishing caloric intake -- which could be responsible for the weight-loss effects.

Reducing "the number of food choices, you will reduce food intake," said Donna Ryan, MD, professor emeritus at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., adding that it's hard to tell whether it is "some quality of the diet versus the restriction in choices that is having the effect."

David Katz, MD, MPH, of Yale's Prevention Research Center, agreed.

"By restricting choices the most, the vegan diet undoubtedly cut calories the most," Katz told MedPage Today. "It's pretty straight-forward: [if you] apply rules, set limits, restrict choices, and impose some discipline where there was none, food intake goes down."

Even so, several other epidemiological studies have found benefits for vegan and vegetarian diets, including a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancers, and all-cause mortality.

But no trial has looked at the effects of specific eating patterns on weight loss -- so Turner-McGrievy and colleagues launched the New Dietary Interventions to Enhance the Treatments for Weight Loss (New DIETs) Study, focusing on five eating patterns.

They enrolled 63 overweight and obese patients, mean age 49, mean body mass index 35 kg/m², the majority of whom were white (79%) and female (73%).

All five groups were told to opt for low-fat, low-glycemic-index foods -- but they didn't have to restrict calories.

Omnivores could eat all meats, semivegetarians had to limit their red meat and poultry intake, pesco-vegetarians could have fish, vegetarians could eat eggs and dairy but no other animal products, and vegans had to forego all animal products, focusing instead on grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables.

During the first 2 months of the study, participants had to stick to those diets, but for the final 4 months, they could add back whatever foods they desired.

The vegan, vegetarian, pesco-vegetarian, and semivegetarian groups had weekly group meetings, while the omnivorous group had monthly meetings plus weekly newsletters and email correspondence. All groups were given diet information handouts and recipe books.

Overall, all groups lost weight at both 2 months and 6 months compared with baseline -- but vegans and vegetarians lost the most by 2 months (about 5% of body weight), which was significantly greater from the 2% lost by omnivores (P<0.05).

Pesco-vegetarians also shed significantly more pounds than omnivores at that time point, about 4% of body weight (P<0.05).

By 6 months, when patients were able to put desired foods back into their diets, the vegan and vegetarian groups had lost significantly more weight than the other three groups (8% and 6% versus 3% to 4%, P<0.05).

As for macronutrients, protein intake stayed the same across groups, but the vegan group had the greatest increase in carbohydrate intake and the biggest drop in total fat and saturated fat intake -- results that were closely mirrored by the vegetarian diet.

Vegans and vegetarians also had the greatest declines in cholesterol, Turner-McGrievy noted.
Although 90% of patients made it through the first 2-month phase of the trial and 80% the full 6 months, adherence wasn't great: 50% of patients faithfully stuck to each of their diets, with the exception being the vegetarian diet, which had about 80% adherence.

But Turner-McGrievy noted that the cheating was modest: "Our vegan group said they just wanted a little bit of parmesan cheese. The vegetarian group said they just wanted to add a little fish. The semivegetarians said they just wanted to add a little red meat."

"Everyone wanted to bump up just a little bit more," she said, noting, however, that weight loss patterns were still the same when focusing specifically on those who were nonadherent in those first two months.

That suggested to her that assigning a stricter diet to begin with could make patients more compliant with the tenets of these various plant-based diets.

"The thinking is that if you're a nonadherent semivegetarian, you'll move back over to being omnivorous," she said. "But if you're a nonadherent vegan, you may go back over to pesco-vegetarian."

Turner-McGrievy concluded that the results need to be confirmed in a larger trial for a longer period of time in a more diverse sample before any recommendations can be made.

Ryan also noted that the group should look further into the effects of their counseling programs, since the omnivores in this study had much less counseling than the other four groups: "How can you be sure it's an effect of the diet, and not the behavioral counseling?"

The researchers reported no conflicts of interest.

---

It's the weekend and you finally have some time to get to the gym or go for a run around the park. But before you do, consider what your body needs to have a good workout. According to a Washington Post article, you need to get your muscles in balance with one another.

Wellness:

Muscle imbalances can wreck your workout

 

Brian Taylor/for The Washington Post

 

By Gabriella Boston, Published: November 12 

You know about balancing everything from your checkbook to your work life. But how about your muscles? Yes, they can become just as imbalanced as your finances can if you’re not paying attention.

“In terms of muscle imbalances, there are certain things you see consistently,” says Robert Gillanders , an endurance athlete and physical therapist at Sports + Spinal Physical Therapy in downtown Washington. “Women tend to lack stability and are more likely to be hyper-flexible, while men tend to lack flexibility.”

These imbalances can cause pain in the neck and back, bulging discs, shoulder impingement syndrome and more, says Chris Estafanous, a physical therapist with Set Sports Physical Therapy, also in downtown Washington.

“It starts like little aches and pains and becomes chronic,” Estafanous says. “Because your brain begins to process an abnormal movement as normal movement, and because the body wants to prevent pain at any cost, it will start compensating.”

The culprits
 
Some imbalances come down to differences in sex and genetics. But our muscles are also affected by our lifestyle and the forms of physical activity and workouts we engage in.

“In my experience, people will do exercises they like, rather than exercises they need,” Gillanders says.
In other words, the hyper-flexible woman goes for yoga, and the already-tight-shouldered man goes for anterior (front) body strength training. Or think of the runners, both men and women, who do nothing except run — increasing calf and hamstring tightness and decreasing strength in the upper body and core.

The solution
 
Along with a physical therapy regimen, Estafanous and Gillanders teach their clients ways to improve habits in every part of their life, including workout routines and work environment.

“For example, pretty much everyone needs stronger glutes,” Estafanous says. “It’s the power center of the body.”

One exercise he often does with clients is the “clamshell,” in which you lie on your side with a resistance band looped above your knees, then open and close your knees. This strengthens the gluteus medius, which in turn prevents muscle imbalances in the leg that can create knee pain and injuries.

Another exercise is a glute squeeze. Lying facedown on the floor, place a pillow between your feet and squeeze the pillow while at the same time engaging your glutes. Hold for three seconds and repeat 30 times. It’s a small movement, but after 30 reps “your glutes will be on fire,” Estafanous says.

Another typical muscle imbalance is tight front-shoulder and chest area.

“I usually do a [one-arm] doorway stretch, and then a [two-arm] to stretch that area,” he says. He also incorporates poses such as one he calls “camel,” in which you rest your knees on the floor and elbows on a chair, stretching the front body while strengthening the back.

Carol Shuford, a National Academy of Sports Medicine-certified personal trainer in the District, says it is key to make sure the back body gets as much work as the front.

“For every push exercise, you should do a pull exercise,” says Shuford, who is also a longtime marathoner and triathlete.

In other words, if you spend time doing bench presses and biceps curls, you need to spend equal time doing rows and triceps extensions.

“Or you will look like a caveman,” she says.

To her endurance athletes she emphasizes the importance of strength training — which includes gluteal and core muscles along with adductors (inner thigh) and abductors (outer thigh).

Too often, she says, endurance athletes overemphasize hamstrings, hip flexors and quadriceps, creating an imbalance that includes weak adductors and abductors along with weak glutes.

“If you keep doing the same thing every day — like running every day — it’s almost the same as sitting at a desk 10 hours a day,” Shuford says. “You will get muscle imbalances and overuse injuries.”
Gillanders agrees.

“In the active community, if I ask, ‘What do you do besides biking or running?’ they look at me as if I am crazy,” he says.

But he tells athletes it’s important to move in more planes than one because muscles that create stability in the body are not necessarily part of the repetitive motion in running or biking.

“Stability muscles are all over the place,” Gillanders says — such as core and abuctors and adductors.
For women, all three experts agree that hyper-flexibility can be a liability rather than an asset if you’re not careful.

Going beyond a normal range of motion can destabilize joints, Gillanders says, especially without sufficient muscle bulk to protect them. “In some ways it’s better to be a little less flexible.”


Boston is a fitness trainer and freelance writer.

Ever think about how the neighborhood you live in effects your health? A story from the online "Good + You" community discusses how better urban design makes you healthier. So whether you have the walkability of San Diego or the outdoor living of Ramona, where you live or play may have an impact on how you feel.

Learn in Health, Science and Transportation

How Better Urban Design Makes Us Healthier, Happier, and Sexier

 

What happens when we redesign the human habitat to take walking out of daily life? Over 35 percent of Americans are now clinically obese. That's partly because of diet, but also because we've designed our cities for cars.

Cities have policies that sound good on paper, calling for mixed-use development and walkable neighborhoods, but they also have detailed technical design requirements that don't let that happen. Instead, we end up with typical sprawl: it's actually illegal to build anything else. In every city where I've worked, if everyone's favorite walkable neighborhood burned to the ground, the local rules wouldn't let us rebuild it.

What we do build is not only less economically successful, and more congested, and more polluted, it's also going to kill us. Sprawl leads to more traffic accidents, and shorter life expectancy.

Sprawl also makes us angrier; road rage is now a clinical condition. As social primates, we get an enormous amount of information from body language and eye contact. Walking down a packed sidewalk, pedestrians don't run into each other even though they're not signaling turns. We know through the slightest tilt of the shoulder or flick of the eye that someone's changing direction. If you do accidentally bump someone, a dip of the shoulder is enough of an apology. But all of the complexity of our social world is lost when you're in a car. There's no way to know if someone who cut you off is sorry or trying to mess with you.

When you get cut off, the brain releases an array of chemicals that make your muscles tense, make you less likely to think through the consequences of actions, and trigger the release of even more chemicals. It literally drives us crazy. It's ok if it happens once in a while, but if the amygdala is constantly firing off a toxic soup of chemicals, it creates permanent changes in the brain that make you mistrustful, angry, less able to handle complex reasoning, and more antisocial. If we have any hope of creating a more civil society, a thriving democracy, we can't have people trapped in their cars every day.

Walking and biking, on the other hand, not only make us fit, but they also both improve mental health. Oxytocin—the same chemical released during sex and breastfeeding, that reduces stress and increases trust and empathy—is released during outdoor exercise. (Indoor exercise, interestingly, doesn’t have the same effect).

When we know that driving makes us fat, sick, dumb, mistrustful, and more likely to die early—but walking makes us fitter, stronger, better able to handle complex reasoning, more loving, and more trustful, why are we in the transportation world spending all of our effort designing around the needs of the car and not walking or biking? When we know the effects of driving on climate change, how could there be any argument?

There are many things that need to change in urban planning and design, but one of the most basic is this: we need to define success differently. Right now, engineers make many decisions based on something called "level of service"—basically, how long cars are delayed at certain points. Our goals should be based on people, not cars. Right now, a busy commercial street would be judged a transportation failure even though it’s a social and economic success. We need to change the way we measure, so designers can make the right decisions.

Design can make it more delightful to walk than drive, so people don’t want to jump in their cars for errands. Design can make it safer to bike so everyone feels comfortable on the street, not just hardcore cyclists. Design can make public transit fast, reliable, dignified, and sociable. And design can make neighborhoods beautiful, so people are inspired to protect and maintain them. Design decisions might have created sprawl, but they can also rescue us from it.

Obesity seems to be at the root of so many problems from diabetes to heart disease. Now a new study reported in the N. Y. Times indicates that the leading cause of knee replacements in a younger population is....obesity. The good news is that knee replacement, like diabetes and heart disease, is preventable by shedding pounds...proving exercise and a nutritional diet go a long way in keeping us healthy.

 

Adding Pounds, Then New Knees

By LAURIE TARKAN

 

 

 

Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images

 

 

In his mid-forties, Charles Carroll, a letter carrier in Shrewsbury, Mass., started taking anti-inflammatory medicine for his achy knees. Despite his young age, osteoarthritis had begun to settle in.

Over the next decade, the pain became so bad that at times he had difficulty walking. Eventually he began skipping lunch because standing up afterward was too painful.

“My knees would snap like dry wood when I got up in the morning,” said Mr. Carroll, describing the sound of bone grating on bone.

So last year, at the age of 54, Mr. Carroll underwent his first knee replacement. He will receive his second replacement in December.

It is becoming a familiar story. While the number of annual knee replacements has doubled in the last decade, the number in people under age 65 has nearly tripled. Experts have puzzled over this surgical trend. Some attributed it to aging baby boomers trying too hard to maintain active, weekend-warrior lifestyles. Other researchers blamed it on aggressive marketing of the procedures.

Now figures from a new national database of knee replacement patients strongly suggest that obesity is the most likely reason for these surgeries in younger patients. For Mr. Carroll, who was six feet three inches and 284 pounds before his procedure, obesity was likely a factor in his knee problems.

Experts generally agree that obesity increases the risk of osteoarthritis, the leading cause of knee replacement surgery. Yet most of the data in support of this association has come from Medicare, which largely covers older patients.

“Unfortunately, it’s not surprising that people getting knee replacement are overweight,” said Dr. Patricia D. Franklin, principal investigator of the new database and director of clinical outcomes research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “But we were surprised that the younger population wasn’t healthier and that they didn’t have the profile of healthy active adults.”

The new database, called Function and Outcomes Research for Comparative Effectiveness in Total Joint Replacement (FORCE-TJR), collects data on total joint replacement surgeries from more than 125 orthopedic surgeons in 22 states.

A recent analysis of the data found that younger patients were more likely to be obese than older patients. In the first 9,000 patients whose outcomes were tracked in FORCE-TJR, 55 percent of patients under age 65 were obese compared with 43 percent of those 65 and older. About 11 percent of younger patients were in the morbidly obese category, with a body mass index, or B.M.I., greater than 40, compared with 5 percent in the older group.

“The average B.M.I. in those patients under 65 is 33, which makes them obese, and that means that half of them are even heavier than that,” said Dr. Franklin, who presented the findings at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in San Diego in October.

Experts had wondered whether younger patients were opting for surgery prematurely to preserve an active lifestyle. “Many people assume that younger patients have less pain and better function than older patients, that they’re doing it earlier in their disease process,” said Dr. David Ayers, a co-author of the study and chair of orthopedic surgery at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

The data also showed that younger patients had the same levels of disability from their knee pain before the surgery as did older patients. Younger patients were equally likely to have other serious medical conditions such as diabetes and pulmonary disease as their older counterparts, and were more likely to smoke.

“It’s not a fit weekend warrior who has had a sports injury,” said Dr. Ayers. “These younger patients have significant pain and very severe functional limitations at the time of their total knee replacement surgery. They’re heavier and they’re sicker.”

The number of total knee replacements more than doubled in the past decade, from 313,618 in 2001 to 644,243 in 2011, according to national data. In patients between the ages of 45 and 64, the number jumped to about 274,000 from 102,000 in that decade. Younger people now make up 43 percent of all knee replacement patients, about an 11 percent increase in the last 10 years.

Prior research has found a strong association between obesity and osteoarthritis. Excess weight puts stress on joints, causing them to break down, and some research suggests that inflammation associated with obesity adds to the damage. Weight loss reduces knee pain in patients with osteoarthritis.

“I do believe patients are getting more osteoarthritis because of the obesity, and getting more severe arthritis at a younger age, and needing the surgery sooner,” said Dr. M. Elaine Husni, director of the arthritis and musculoskeletal center at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Husni was not involved with the study.

“Obesity has a tremendous impact on total joint replacement, and it’s something that every orthopedist is facing now,” said Dr. Michael Parks, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

Often patients with obesity have medical problems that raise the risk of complications during surgery, such as diabetes, pulmonary artery disease and poor circulation. Knee replacements are often more complicated in heavier individuals, requiring special larger implants and tools. Some studies have also reported lower implant survival time in obese patients.

The new analysis found that at six months post-surgery, those who were severely obese had similar if not greater improvement in pain and function after knee replacement therapy as those who were not. But because the implants last about 20 years, many younger patients may need surgery again in the future.

Obesity “is a modifiable risk factor for knee surgery,” said Dr. Husni. “We can change this.”

Many patients ask me if I think they have an allergy to gluten or other food source. In reality, there are a lot more allergies to things found in any given normal household. Knowing about them and eliminating your exposure is a good start. Here are a few of those allergens listed from an article in the Washington Post.

Health & Science

To prevent allergic reactions, you might try washing bed pillows and microwaving fruit

 

BIGSTOCK - Microscopic dust mites that gather in pillows cause allergies in many people.

 

By Robin Wilson, Published: November 4

 

The fall allergy season is in full swing and will be with us until early frost chills the air. Ragweed allergy, or hay fever, brings symptoms that include sneezing; stuffy or runny nose; itchy eyes, nose and throat; and trouble sleeping. There is a lot of conventional wisdom about allergies and how to handle them, and not all of it is right.

Here are some common misconceptions, along with tips for preventing allergic reactions:

● Fruit is not always your friend. Many favorite fruits — apples, bananas, peaches, plums, etc. — can cause symptoms similar to grass or tree pollen reactions. If you are sensitive, cook the fruit in the microwave for 10 seconds to deactivate the proteins, and do not eat the skin.

● Cleaner is not always better. “Cleanliness is next to godliness” has a nice ring to it. However, a little exposure to dirt and germs is actually a good thing during childhood, because it strengthens the immune system. When cleaning, always use products labeled nontoxic, and remove excess books, magazines and other clutter from the sleeping area to reduce dust buildup.

● Vintage pillow equals heavy allergy symptoms. If your pillow is older than three years and has not been washed during that time, it weighs more now than when you bought it. It’s loaded with dust mites that are next to your face while you sleep. The microscopic mites cause allergies in many people.

Use hypoallergenic pillows over down pillows, and use a zippered pillow protector that you wash weekly for a double barrier. For a down-alternative pillow, use a commercial washer (or a front-loading home machine) and warm water, and dry it on a low setting with two tennis balls to refluff. Dry-clean down pillows.

● There’s no such thing as a hypoallergenic dog. Poodles, labradoodles and Yorkshire terriers are all considered hypoallergenic because they don’t shed hair, but there’s no scientific proof that these breeds produce lower amounts of Can f 1, the most common dog allergen. Minimize contact with pets, never allow them on the bed and always wash your hands thoroughly with soap and hot water after playing with an animal. Also, wash and groom the pet to remove excess hair. And vacuum regularly.

● Always use a nylon shower-curtain liner. Allergy sufferers are told to shower often to remove pollen and pet dander from their bodies. But the phthalate chemicals in vinyl shower curtains emit chemical odors with humidity and heat, and also attract mold and mildew. For those with allergic sensitivities, these smells can cause airways to constrict and even provoke an asthma attack. Replace your vinyl liner with a nylon liner, which can be washed and is less prone to mold buildup.

● Mold is not just a bathroom tile issue. Mold is a huge trigger for allergies and asthma, and it’s more prevalent than you might realize. Watch for mold in the dishwasher and refrigerator pan, on your air-conditioning system and on any wood, paper or cotton materials that sit in water for too long.

● Freeze stuffed toys. Your child’s favorite stuffed animals can harbor dust mites that may trigger allergies and asthma. To prevent buildup of mites, freeze all stuffed toys for 24 hours in a zip-lock bag at least once a month. Some stuffed animals can be washed in a machine. (Of course, that can leave the toys misshapen, which can be very upsetting to the child.)

● Watch the ingredients. We’re told to lather up with lotions and sunscreen, but be careful and watch the ingredients. To reduce the chance of contact dermatitis, insist that such products are parabens-free and hypoallergenic, or made for sensitive skin.

● Tear out the carpet. Tile and hardwood floors are a much better choice, but carpeting must be vacuumed or cleaned regularly. Shake out and vacuum area rugs regularly, and use a vacuum with a HEPA filter.

● Keep the outside world from coming in. Always take off your shoes when going indoors and keep all outdoor tools and toys in a garage or shed. If you don’t, you will be dragging dirt and pollen into your living area and provoking allergies and asthma.

By following these simple strategies, it is possible for many people to eliminate the wheezes and sneezes and enjoy a better quality of life.


Wilson is an “ambassador” to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

So, you think you take herbal supplements as a benefit to your health? But what if those supplements turn out to be sham pills not really made of the herb you think you're buying? A NY Times article sites a Canadian study that demonstrated 12 different companies have done exactly that with 44 different supplements.

Science

Herbal Supplements Are Often Not What They Seem

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

Published: November 3, 2013 193 Comments

Americans spend an estimated $5 billion a year on unproven herbal supplements that promise everything from fighting off colds to curbing hot flashes and boosting memory. But now there is a new reason for supplement buyers to beware: DNA tests show that many pills labeled as healing herbs are little more than powdered rice and weeds. 

Using a test called DNA barcoding, a kind of genetic fingerprinting that has also been used to help uncover labeling fraud in the commercial seafood industry, Canadian researchers tested 44 bottles of popular supplements sold by 12 companies. They found that many were not what they claimed to be, and that pills labeled as popular herbs were often diluted — or replaced entirely — by cheap fillers like soybean, wheat and rice. 

Consumer advocates and scientists say the research provides more evidence that the herbal supplement industry is riddled with questionable practices. Industry representatives argue that any problems are not widespread. 

For the study, the researchers selected popular medicinal herbs, and then randomly bought different brands of those products from stores and outlets in Canada and the United States. To avoid singling out any company, they did not disclose any product names.

Among their findings were bottles of echinacea supplements, used by millions of Americans to prevent and treat colds, that contained ground up bitter weed, Parthenium hysterophorus, an invasive plant found in India and Australia that has been linked to rashes, nausea and flatulence. 

Two bottles labeled as St. John’s wort, which studies have shown may treat mild depression, contained none of the medicinal herb. Instead, the pills in one bottle were made of nothing but rice, and another bottle contained only Alexandrian senna, an Egyptian yellow shrub that is a powerful laxative. Gingko biloba supplements, promoted as memory enhancers, were mixed with fillers and black walnut, a potentially deadly hazard for people with nut allergies. 

Of 44 herbal supplements tested, one-third showed outright substitution, meaning there was no trace of the plant advertised on the bottle — only another plant in its place. 

Many were adulterated with ingredients not listed on the label, like rice, soybean and wheat, which are used as fillers. 

In some cases, these fillers were the only plant detected in the bottle — a health concern for people with allergies or those seeking gluten-free products, said the study’s lead author, Steven G. Newmaster, a biology professor and botanical director of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario at the University of Guelph. 

The findings, published in the journal BMC Medicine, follow a number of smaller studies conducted in recent years that have suggested a sizable percentage of herbal products are not what they purport to be. But because the latest findings are backed by DNA testing, they offer perhaps the most credible evidence to date of adulteration, contamination and mislabeling in the medicinal supplement industry, a rapidly growing area of alternative medicine that includes an estimated 29,000 herbal products and substances sold throughout North America. 

“This suggests that the problems are widespread and that quality control for many companies, whether through ignorance, incompetence or dishonesty, is unacceptable,” said David Schardt, a senior nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group. “Given these results, it’s hard to recommend any herbal supplements to consumers.” 

Representatives of the supplement industry said that while mislabeling of supplements was a legitimate concern, they did not believe it reached the extent suggested by the new research. 

Stefan Gafner, the chief science officer at the American Botanical Council, a nonprofit group that promotes the use of herbal supplements, said the study was flawed, in part because the bar-coding technology it used could not always identify herbs that have been purified and highly processed. 

“Over all, I would agree that quality control is an issue in the herbal industry,” Dr. Gafner said. “But I think that what’s represented here is overblown. I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks according to this study.” 

The Food and Drug Administration has used bar-coding technology to warn and in some cases prosecute sellers of seafood found to be “misbranded.” The DNA technique has also been used in studies of herbal teas, which showed that a significant percentage contain herbs and ingredients that are not listed on their labels. 

But policing the supplement industry is a special challenge. The F.D.A. requires that companies test the products they sell to make sure that they are safe. But the system essentially operates on the honor code. Unlike prescription drugs, supplements are generally considered safe until proved otherwise. 

Under a 1994 federal law, they can be sold and marketed with little regulatory oversight, and they are pulled from shelves generally only after complaints of serious injury. The F.D.A. audits a small number of companies, but even industry representatives say more oversight is needed. 

“The regulations are very appropriate and rigorous,” said Duffy MacKay of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a supplement industry trade group. “But we need a strong regulator enforcing the full force of the law. F.D.A. resources are limited, and therefore enforcement has not historically been as rigorous as it could be.” 

An F.D.A. spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

DNA bar coding was developed about a decade ago at the University of Guelph. Instead of sequencing entire genomes, scientists realized that they could examine genes from a standardized region of every genome to identify species of plants and animals. These short sequences can be quickly analyzed — much like the bar codes on the items at a supermarket — and compared with others in an electronic database. An electronic reference library at Guelph called the International Barcode of Life Project, contains over 2.6 million bar code records for almost 200,000 species of plants and animals. 

The testing technique is not foolproof. It can identify the substances in a supplement, but it cannot determine their potency. And because the technology relies on the detection of DNA, it may not be able to identify concentrated chemical extracts that do not contain genetic material, or products in which the material has been destroyed by heat and processing. 

But Dr. Newmaster emphasized that only powders and pills were used in the new research, not extracts. In addition, the DNA testing nearly always detected some plant material in the samples —just not always the plant or herb named on the label. 

Some of the adulteration problems may be inadvertent. Cross-contamination can occur in fields where different plants are grown side by side and picked at the same time, or in factories where the herbs are packaged. Dr. Gafner of the American Botanical Council said that rice, starch and other compounds were sometimes added during processing to keep powdered herbs from clumping, just as kernels of rice are added to salt shakers. 

But that does not explain many of the DNA results. For instance, the study found that one product advertised as black cohosh — a North American plant and popular remedy for hot flashes and other menopause symptoms — actually contained a related Asian plant, Actaea asiatica, that can be toxic to humans. 

Those findings mirror a similar study of black cohosh supplements conducted at Stony Brook University medical center last year. Dr. David A. Baker, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive medicine, bought 36 black cohosh supplements from online and chain stores. Bar coding tests showed that a quarter of them were not black cohosh, but instead contained an ornamental plant from China. 

Dr. Baker called the state of supplement regulation “the Wild West,” and said most consumers had no idea how few safeguards were in place. “If you had a child who was sick and 3 out of 10 penicillin pills were fake, everybody would be up in arms,” Dr. Baker said. “But it’s O.K. to buy a supplement where 3 out of 10 pills are fake. I don’t understand it. Why does this industry get away with that?”

So, you think you're the age you are because of when you were born. But what about your fitness age? Is the shape you're in older than your chronological age? Well it appears Norwegian researchers have figured out a low-tech way to determine your fitness age....fortunately something you can reverse.

Fitness October 31, 2013, 12:01 am

 

What’s Your ‘Fitness Age’?

 

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

 

 

 

Illustration by Ben Wiseman

This article appears in the Nov. 3, 2013 issue of The New York Times Magazine. 

Trying to quantify your aerobic fitness is a daunting task. It usually requires access to an exercise-physiology lab. But researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim have developed a remarkably low-tech means of precisely assessing aerobic fitness and estimating your “fitness age,” or how well your body functions physically, relative to how well it should work, given your age.

The researchers evaluated almost 5,000 Norwegians between the ages of 20 and 90, using mobile labs. They took about a dozen measurements, including height, body mass index, resting heart rate, HDL and total cholesterol levels. Each person also filled out a lengthy lifestyle questionnaire. Finally, each volunteer ran to the point of exhaustion on a treadmill to pinpoint his or her peak oxygen intake (VO2 max), or how well the body delivers oxygen to its cells. VO2 max has been shown in large-scale studies to closely correlate with significantly augmented life spans, even among the elderly or overweight. In other words, VO2 max can indicate fitness age.

In order to figure out how to estimate VO2 max without a treadmill, the scientists combed through the results to determine which of the data points were most useful. You might expect that the most taxing physical tests would yield the most reliable results. Instead, the researchers found that putting just five measurements — waist circumference; resting heart rate; frequency and intensity of exercise; age; and sex — into an algorithm allowed them to predict a person’s VO2 max with noteworthy accuracy, according to their study, published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

The researchers used the data set to tabulate the typical, desirable VO2 max for a healthy person at every age from 20 to 90, creating specific parameters for fitness age. The concept is simple enough, explains Ulrik Wisloff, the director of the K. G. Jebsen Center of Exercise in Medicine at the Norwegian University and the senior author of the study. “A 70-year-old man or woman who has the peak oxygen uptake of a 20-year-old has a fitness age of 20,” he says. He has seen just this combination during his research.

The researchers have used all of this data to create an online calculator that allows people to determine their VO2 max without going to a lab. You’ll need your waist measurement and your resting heart rate. To determine it, sit quietly for 10 minutes and check your pulse; count for 30 seconds, double the number and you have your resting heart rate. Plug these numbers, along with your age, sex and frequency and intensity of exercise, into the calculator, and you’ll learn your fitness age.

The results can be sobering. A 50-year-old man, for instance, who exercises moderately a few times a week, sports a 36-inch waist and a resting heart rate of 75 — not atypical values for healthy middle-aged men — will have a fitness age of 59. Thankfully, unwanted fitness years, unlike the chronological kind, can be erased, Dr. Wisloff says. Exercise more frequently or more intensely. Then replug your numbers and exult as your “age” declines. A youthful fitness age, Dr. Wisloff says, “is the single best predictor of current and future health.”