Nutrition Issues with Vegan Children

 

A study by researchers the the University of Helsinki in Finland and published in EMBO Molecular Medicine concluded that vegan diets do not provide very young children (the median age of study participants was 3 1/2 years) with enough of certain key vitamins and nutrients. 

Vegan diets often include supplementation with vitamins D and B-12 as well as certain minerals like iodine that can be challenging to get enough of from solely plant-based foods. Supplementing usually resolves the issue. But the study found that even with supplementation children on strict vegan diets had significantly lower vitamin D levels than did children eating a more traditional omnivore diet.
the vegan children also had lower levels of vitamin A.

On the positive side, vegan children had higher levels of folate (folate - aka vitamin B-9 - is important in red blood cell formation and for healthy cell growth and function) and lower levels of LDL cholesterol.

The study calls for larger studies before early-life vegan diet can be recommended as a healthy and fully nourishing diet for young children, despite its many health-promoting effects in adults and suggests that the metabolic effects of vegan diet in adults cannot be generally extrapolated to children.

This is a preliminary result and not a call to avoid a vegan diet for young children. But caution should be exercised to ensure that they receive a supplement regimen that compensates for the observed deficiencies. Also, the study results apply only to young children and not to older children or adults.

Is 10,000 Daily Steps Fact or Fiction?

 

Does walking 10,000 steps per day elude you no matter how much you try to do it? Well, relax. 

There is no scientific evidence supporting 10,000 daily steps as a standard. In fact, this often-cited guideline originated as an ad campaign for a Japanese-made podometer. In 1965, Japanese company Yamasa Toki introduced their new step-counter, which they called Manpo-Kei. This translated into “10,000 steps meter” and they marketed their device with the slogan, “Let’s walk 10,000 steps a day.” Japanese walking clubs were fairly popular at that time and the idea of a 10,000-step target seems to have caught on because the slogan was catchy and people tend to like nice round numbers. The rest, as they say, is history.

Of course this is not to suggest that being sedentary is ok. It's just not. But what does the science suggest as a target for how much walking you should do to enjoy significant health benefits from it?

A recent study by University of Massachuestts Amherst physical activity epidemiologist Amanda Paluch and published in JAMA Network Open has the answer. She recently determined that walking at least 7,000 steps a day reduced middle-aged people’s risk of premature death from all causes by 50% to 70% — compared to that of other middle-aged people who took fewer daily steps. “You see this gradual risk reduction in mortality as you get more steps,” Paluch said. “There were substantial health benefits between 7,000 and 10,000 steps, but we didn’t see an additional benefit from going beyond 10,000 steps.”

If even 7,000 steps seems more than you can achieve, do what you can. Any walking will benefit your health. No kidding.

 

How Long Have You Got Left?

 

 

 

As 2021 moves toward its conclusion, most of us are not thinking about how we all are doing the same thing. We know when 2021 will end. Our own conclusion is unknown to us. But if you are curious about how much more time you have, there are a number of life expectancy calculators online that would be happy to ballpark it for you. 

Some, like the free calculator available on the Social Security Administration web site, are overly simplistic but quick to use. Others will analyze the personal information that you provide on your family, health and lifestyle and provide an eerily specific result.... sometimes right down to the day you can expect to...err, conclude.

If you want a quick (less than 5 minutes) and reasonably good estimation, try the unfortunately named Death Clock. With just a few quick questions it will let you know when to call the undertaker. (March 22, 2043 for me.)

If you want a much more accurate forecast, and don't mind spending a bit more time answering questions (about 15 minutes), the Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator is for you. Unlike many of the other calculators, this one will give you personalized feedback on your answers, customized lifestyle change suggestions and specific things you could review with your healthcare provider.

For the ultimate in life expectancy forecasting, try the Actuaries Longevity Illustrator. Developed jointly by the US American Academy of Actuaries and the UK Society of Actuaries, it will evaluate your answers against the databases used by insurers to set life insurance premiums. Since there is money involved, you can expect it to be as accurate as something this inherently inaccurate can be.

Besides morbid curiosity, what would be the point of doing this?

For me, I find knowing my "use before date" to be personally motivating. It is much harder for me to justify wasting even one day when I know that I have only 7,747 of them left. Yeah it sounds like a lot of days, but once one is gone, its gone for good.

It may also motivate you to make changes that can add more days to your clock. As Ebeneezer Scrooge said to the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come when faced with his own gravestone, "Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change."

Happy New Year.

Exerci$e Pay$ Off

 

How would you like to have an extra $1,350 every year to spend on anything you liked? 

An analysis from the National institutes of Health published in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine concluded that older adults who were active and exercised through adolescence and adulthood spent that much less on healthcare every year than those who had not maintained an exercise habit. 

The study examined various levels of participation in physical activity throughout adulthood and how activity affected Medicare claims. Among the findings: Exercisers with a moderate level of activity had health care costs $1,200 a year lower after age 65 compared with adults who were consistently inactive from adolescence into middle age (moderate exercise involved walking or otherwise being in motion for a few hours most weeks). The health costs of those with a high level of activity were $1,350 lower per year.

Already a senior and did not devote much attention to exercise in your past? Even late starters benefited, the analysis showed. Waiting until middle age to increase activity still led to cost reductions of $824 per year.

So get off the couch, stop making excuses and get moving. How do you plan to spend the money you save?

 

New Hope for an Alzheimer's Cure?

 

Alzheimer's Disease is the 6th leading cause of death in the United States. One in 3 seniors dies with Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia, more than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. More than 6 million Americans suffer with Alzheimer's and that number is expected to double over the next decade. Treating and caring for dementia patients costs $355B annually in the US, and by 2050 is expected to cost more than $1T per year.

This does not even consider the emotional cost. Alzheimer’s is a disease that affects everybody it touches—husbands, wives, children and grandchildren—they all bear witness to their loved one’s slow demise. 

After the ongoing Aduhelm fiasco  we are all understandably skeptical of any news of treatments or cures. But the financial, emotional and social costs of the disease are so enormous that we can not help but remain hopeful. Perhaps our hope has been rewarded, or soon will be.

Scientists at the University of California at Riverside (not a drug company) tried to study Alzheimer’s disease from a different perspective and the results may have led them to the cause of the disease. The researchers  recently published results from a study that looked at a protein called tau. By studying the different forms tau proteins take, researchers discovered the difference between people who developed dementia and those who didn’t.

The tau protein was critical for researchers because they wanted to understand what the protein could reveal about the mechanism behind plaques and tangles, two critical indicators doctors look for when diagnosing people with Alzheimer’s. By analyzing donated brain samples, researchers found that those with brain buildup, like plaques and tangles, but had no dementia had a normal form of tau. However, those who had a “different-handed” form of tau and developed plaques or tangles did have dementia.

You can read more about the study here.

Most proteins only survive for less than 48 hours in the body, and if they hang around too long, certain amino acids can convert into the other-handed isomer. So that means a left-handed isomer could inadvertently convert into a right-handed isomer, which can lead to serious problems.

However, the human body has a solution through a process called autophagy, which clears spent or defective proteins from cells. Unfortunately, as people age autophagy slows down, especially in people over the age of 65. It’s not clear exactly why.

There are drugs currently being tested to improve the process of autophagy, and some existing ones that are approved for cardiovascular disease and other conditions could speed up the approval process. Ryan Julian, a chemistry professor at UC-Riverside involved in the research, says that “if a slowdown in autophagy is the underlying cause, things that increase it should have the beneficial, opposite effect.”

Could this be the key to unlocking a cure? It is too soon to know but this latest advance seems especially promising.

 

An Alternative to Single Use Plastic?

 

 

Humans buy about 1,000,000 plastic bottles per minute in total. Americans purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year, averaging about 13 bottles per month for every person in the U.S. It is estimated that 4 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide annually. Only 1% of plastic bags are returned for recycling. Single-use plastics frequently do not make it to a landfill or recycling. A full 32% of the 78 million tons of plastic packaging produced annually is left to flow into our oceans; the equivalent of pouring one garbage truck of plastic into the ocean every minute. Even when single-use plastics make it to landfills they aren’t harmless. Landfill liners can leak harmful pollutants into the watershed and plastics on the tops of landfills can be carried away by the wind.

What if there was a practical alternative to plastic packaging that was from a sustainable source and was fully compostable? 

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK have created a plant-based, sustainable, scalable material that could replace single-use plastics in many consumer products. The researchers created a polymer film by mimicking the properties of spider silk, one of the strongest materials in nature. The new material is as strong as many common plastics in use today and could replace plastic in many common household products. Even better, the new material is home compostable and can safely degrade in most natural environments.

The results were published in 2020 in the journal Nature Communications. While not ready for large scale commercial use just yet it will be commercialized by Xampla, a University of Cambridge spin-out company developing replacements for single-use plastic and microplastics. The company will introduce a range of single-use sachets and capsules later this year, which can replace the plastic used in everyday products like dishwasher tablets and laundry detergent capsules. You can read more of the details here.

With any luck, we may have a practical alternative to single use plastics for the first time.

How Much Walking is Enough?

 

Pretty much everyone agrees that walking is good exercise. Its free. It doesn't require any specialized equipment or training. And you can keep doing it no matter how old you are. If you haven't been exercising then walking is a great way to start back into it. And, lets be honest, your dog will totally support you.

But how much walking do you need to do and at what pace to really benefit from it?

Well unlike many other things, more is definitely better. But here is some good news if you don't have the time (or ambition) to devote an hour or two to walking every day. 

According to Michael Weinrauch, MD, a New Jersey-based cardiologist, the bottom line is that even the smallest neighborhood loop can have an immense impact on your health and well-being. "The take home point here is that even 15 minutes a day of walking, without stopping, provides benefit with regards to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality," he says.

Read the entire article here. Then lace up your shoes and go for a walk. Your heart will thank you.