Healthy Lifestyle – 2013: exposing myths

Results-2013: healthy lifestyle

Kirill Stasevich, CompulentaSumming up the biomedical results of the year, we talked about things that are very far from everyday life.

All this is an important and advanced science, but who of us encounters stem cells or organs grown in vitro every day? AIDS and cancer, on the other hand, also do not relate to our everyday experience – that is, until you come across them at close range, you are unlikely to remember them. Of course, we have to think about old age and immunity more often, but both are rather abstract things, and usually we first acquire some special diseases, and only then we think about what happens to immune cells there.

Meanwhile, many people at least once in their lives thought sadly about the extra pounds or wondered if it was possible to somehow improve their diet in order to feel more cheerful and energetic: suddenly you just need to run in the morning for this? Or maybe you need to swallow vitamins? Isn't it harmful that I'm so heavy on coffee?.. In general, as you may have guessed, today we have the second part of the biomedical results – however, not from the field of high science and sophisticated biotechnologies, but representing the problems of healthy and harmful food, a little extra weight, the harm of smoking, etc., which are closer to us.

It cannot be said that these issues are not too serious: the same overweight very often goes "in one package" with diabetes and cardiovascular ailments, and these are only the most obvious and most well-known troubles, and not so long ago obesity was also associated with Alzheimer's disease. At the same time, it should be noted that everything concerning a "healthy lifestyle" is shrouded in such a cloud of myths (which scientists have recently launched a fairly active attack on) that it is difficult to take seriously various recommendations from this area.

About the benefits and uselessness of food additives For example, even people far from biochemistry know about oxidative stress and antioxidants.

Oxidative stress is an unavoidable evil associated with the peculiarities of cellular respiration, that is, with the process of obtaining energy from nutrients. Oxygen radicals formed at the same time (although cellular respiration is not their only source) damage biomolecules, including DNA, the cell begins to feel bad, and from here to diseases and aging are at hand. Antioxidants, on the other hand, are such special compounds that eliminate oxidative stress, and their property has been known for a long time, and we have been living with antioxidant preparations for many years, which are recommended to everyone.

And who would have thought that the usefulness of antioxidants has long been in great doubt in the scientific world! This year began with an article by James Watson, in which he blamed antioxidants for interfering with the treatment of cancer. Anticancer drugs try to suppress the development of the tumor, plunging it into oxidative stress, and antioxidants, of course, interfere with this. When other specialists were contacted for comments, it turned out that scientists have not had antioxidant illusions for a long time.

And another example: the antioxidant resveratrol contained in red wine weakens the positive effect that the heart and blood vessels could have from physical exertion (the ambiguity of its action is further aggravated by the fact that resveratrol is often discussed in connection with sirtuin, the famous "protein of eternal youth"). Antioxidants do not help to get pregnant at all, and in general, as researchers from the hospital at the University of Copenhagen have shown (Denmark), some of them may arrange for you to die prematurely. As already mentioned, the doubtfulness of the benefits of antioxidants has long been no secret, and this can be found at least from a simple analysis of the entire array of works on this topic. However, it just so happens that much attention is paid to those data (albeit unconfirmed) that speak of the undoubted benefits of antioxidants.

A similar reassessment of values occurs with respect to multivitamins. It is believed that a modern person, eating hastily or in fast food, lacks many important vitamins, and therefore the shortage needs to be corrected with multivitamin supplements. But in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine at the end of the year, several articles were published at once, in which quite serious doubts are expressed about the usefulness of multivitamin drugs: according to scientists, they do not help either the heart or the brain (well, at least they do not shorten life). As for the fear of vitamin deficiency, experts say that residents of developed countries have a more serious problem – excessive consumption of fats and easily digestible carbohydrates.

Another group of useful substances that turned out to be not so useful are polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), known as omega-3 and omega-6. It is believed that they help "from everything": they protect against problems with the cardiovascular system, reduce the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes, promote brain function and nerve growth, and even help with depression. Generally speaking, our body cannot synthesize PUFA itself, but at the same time we need them, and therefore we have to get them from food: from nuts, vegetable oils, fish, etc.

However, scientists have some doubts about whether there is a benefit from increased doses of PUFA. The ambiguities did not appear yesterday, and we wrote about them last year. In 2013, suspicions about polyunsaturated fatty acids only intensified: researchers from the National Institutes of Health and North Carolina University (both USA) concluded that omega-acids not only do not prevent cardiovascular diseases, but even increase their risk. However, as for PUFA, it would be better to limit ourselves to the phrase that their role in the body is not entirely clear: for example, other scientists claim that these fats help to lose excess weight.

But maybe the whole point is that all these useful things need to be eaten not in pills, but in foods (food), where they are balanced and interact with other substances? Maybe they are useful only in a dietary complex? There is obviously some truth in this, but do not overestimate the importance of diet. Its effectiveness may be due to genetics: for example, it is able to help only against some one bad variant of the gene, as in the case of the Mediterranean diet and heart disease. But the main thing is not even that: some believe that all diets are the same – and in order for them to work, you need to change the whole lifestyle, and not just eat what is recommended at such and such hours. If you have enough willpower for a comprehensive approach, if you find time for exercise and normal sleep, any diet, whether low-carb, low-fat or some other, will help you. If you don't have enough for this, don't blame me.

Fat or not fat? Diets are recommended for a variety of reasons, but in most cases, proper nutrition is remembered in connection with overweight and obesity.

But is it possible to somehow cope with weight, suppress its accumulation through some kind of "miracle substance", without exhausting exercises and complex diets? The search for such an "obesity pill" is being intensively conducted, and anything can get into candidates here, from coffee to viagra.

However, experts still do not fully understand how obesity occurs and how it is associated with metabolic and cardiovascular troubles. In this sense, epigenetic and neurohormonal studies are very popular, which sometimes reduce the metabolic and psychological causes of obesity to the same protein, which in this case may turn out to be, for example, an epigenetic regulator of the hunger hormone. Such work often helps to understand the meaning of the rule "do not eat after six" and why it is generally better not to eat a lot in the evening: the point here, as it turned out, is the daily changes in the sensitivity of cells to insulin and fluctuations in the level of the "hunger hormone" ghrelin.

As for the connection between overweight and heart disease, there was also revisionist work: it is enough to recall a study from which it follows that overweight people do not die at all more often than people with a normal constitution. He was followed by another work, the authors of which claim that being overweight does not increase, but reduces the likelihood of death from heart problems. Scientists are still arguing about the reasons for these strange results, but many are sinning on a purely methodological problem – the ambiguity of the criteria for overweight.

But what if obesity is it? As for how to lose weight quickly, there are two popular approaches among scientists: one is based on brown fat, the second is based on intestinal microflora. Both have achieved significant results this year. Firstly, researchers from the Swiss Higher Technical School of Zurich have shown that the cells of white fat that accumulate it are able to turn into brown fat cells that burn it under normal conditions. Secondly, it was possible to show how changes in the intestinal microflora can burn excess weight; moreover, a specific bacterium was even identified that alone helps the body lose weight and get rid of the symptoms of diabetes.

Vascular-cardiac affairs In connection with obesity, we have repeatedly mentioned the heart, and, I must say, the scientific year was full of surprises concerning our main muscle.

First, it turned out that red meat harms the heart: L-carnitine, which is contained in such meat, contributes to the formation of cholesterol deposits on the walls of blood vessels. This is due to special bacteria in the intestine, and it's time to remember once again that there are very few products that would be harmful or useful in themselves: potential harm and benefit should be correlated with a variety of physiological, biochemical and other conditions - for example, with the profile of bacteria living in your digestive system.

Another strange result was obtained by specialists of the Columbia University Medical Center (USA). After studying the relationship between stress and the state of the heart, they came to the conclusion that strong negative emotions are not so dangerous for the heart. Most likely, we overestimate the relationship between them because of not too adequate statistical research on this topic. And scientists from Aarhus University (Denmark) have tried to rehabilitate alcohol: according to them, alcohol can protect you from blood vessel thrombosis, but only if you are a man and if your weekly dose does not exceed 250 ml. It is worth starting to drink more (in any equivalent – even in beer, even in wine), and the vessels will again be under threat.

But at the Medical Center at the University of Texas (USA), they found a curious, but rather unpleasant connection between sugar and a "bad heart". It turns out that the product of glucose metabolism called glucose-6-phosphate provokes cellular stress in the heart muscle, which causes problems with contractile proteins in the cells and the heart stops pumping blood normally. And here, by the way, we are no longer talking about the fact that the vessels clogged and the heart became ill: it talks about the direct threat posed to the "motor" by ordinary table sugar and starch.

Fizkult-hello! If you are afraid for your heart, it is not necessary to help him with a bunch of medications: first you can get enough sleep and exercise.

Some researchers believe that regular physical education strengthens the heart no less, if not more effectively than medications. In general, there is unanimity in scientific circles about physical exercises, and there is no question of any revisionism here yet – true, except for the reports of anthropologists from the University of California at Santa Barbara (USA) about native Indians of South America who lead a moderately mobile lifestyle and do not suffer from obesity or problems with a heart.

And so – physical education supports our intelligence, and treats insomnia, and even, according to rumors, lengthens telomeres. The dispute is only about how and on what schedule to do it: according to some reports, the benefits of sports exercises do not depend on their schedule, and short-term, but increased loads successfully replace several hours of regular exercise.

Here, by contrast, we should have switched from physical education to smoking and drinking, but bad habits are bad habits, and over the past year they have not changed their nature at all and, say, have not turned into miraculous medicines (and it would be, between us, not bad)... The only thing we can remember about alcohol is that scientists could not decide in any way whether it makes us unhappy, on the contrary, whether it saves us from depression, or has nothing to do with our mood at all.

Smoking? In 2013, science finally began to find out whether e-cigarettes are effective enough to use them to quit smoking regular cigarettes. And so, as soon as e-cigarettes were recognized to be sufficiently effective in this sense, a study arrived in which it was almost possible to confirm the link between nicotine and atherosclerosis. This means that both electronic cigarettes and nicotine patches cannot be considered safe, even if they reduce the likelihood of cancer, being spared, unlike conventional cigarettes, from carcinogenic resins.

In general, antioxidants are antioxidants, multivitamins are multivitamins, and it's better to quit smoking – and if you didn't succeed in the outgoing year, try to do it next.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru27.12.2013