Category: nutrition

Probiotics and Your Immune System

Seth Roberts10 Comments

At the Fancy Food Show, five or six booths sold probiotic foods, usually yogurt. At each booth I asked what they could tell me about the health effects of probiotics. Mostly the question seemed to annoy them — especially the employees hired for the event.

But at the Oixos booth — Oixos is a Greek yogurt made by Stonyfield Farm, an organic dairy in New Hampshire — Amy Plourde, a graphic designer at Stonyfield, told me that for a long time she was “always sick” with sinus infections, colds, and even mononucleosis. During that time, she ate yogurt once/week. When she started working at Stonyfield she began to eat yogurt once/day (6 oz. at breakfast) and her health got much better. Stonyfield yogurt has relatively high amounts of live bacteria. Their website has a list of scientific papers about yogurt and the immune system.

My take is that our immune systems need a steady stream of foreign pathogens (e.g., bacteria) and pieces of pathogens (e.g., bacterial cell walls) to stay “awake”. When your immune system is working properly you fight off all sorts of bacteria and viruses without noticing. When your immune system isn’t working properly it overreacts (allergies) and takes too long to react (infectious diseases). Weston Price found twelve communities eating traditional diets whose health was excellent. Their diets varied tremendously but one thing they had in common was daily consumption of fermented foods, including cheese, kefir, sauerkraut, and fermented fish. This supports Amy’s story right down to the dosage. If you don’t eat fermented foods, you might use hookworms, which excrete a steady stream of foreign substances into the blood. (Thanks, Tom.) Hookworms definitely reduce allergy symptoms; I don’t think anyone has asked if they reduce colds and other infections.

The hygiene hypothesis.

Folic Acid and Birth Defects

Seth Roberts1 Comment

The researchers who discovered that too little folic acid causes birth defects haven’t gotten a Nobel Prize (and probably never will) but they should, as this article explains:

After 3 decades of epidemiologic research reporting an association between neural tube defects and maternal use of folic acid, public health organizations developed recommendations and supported interventions to increase folic acid intake among women of reproductive age. In 1992, the US Public Health Service recommended that all women of childbearing age who are capable of becoming pregnant should consume 400 µg of folic acid daily.

. . . In 2005, after the National Campaign and mandatory fortification, approximately 33% of women reported taking a daily supplement of folic acid, only a modest increase from the 25% reported in 1995. However, median blood folate levels among women of childbearing age increased from 4.8 to 13.0 ng/mL between 1994 and 2000, with a more recent study reporting median blood folate levels at least 2 times the levels prior to fortification.

To evaluate the impact of this public health intervention, 4 study groups have conducted time trend analyses among the US population, and all have reported a decline of neural tube defects after the introduction of mandatory folic acid fortification. Specifically, these studies reported an 11%—20% reduction in occurrence of anencephaly and a 21%—34% reduction in occurrence of spina bifida when comparing pre- versus postfortification rates. Similarly, the occurrence of anencephaly and spina bifida was observed to reduce 38% and 53%, respectively, in Canada and 46% and 51%, respectively, in Chile following folic acid fortification.

Here is the first article on the subject. As the dean of a school of public health put it, this discovery by itself justifies all the money ever spent on schools of public health.

Careful with the Sushi

Seth Roberts5 Comments

I once lost about 12 pounds by eating lots of sushi. I didn’t think was a good long-term idea, however, because sushi was expensive and might have too much mercury. Now Jeremy Piven, best known as Ari in Entourage, has found that eating lots of sushi can indeed raise your mercury levels a significant amount. According to New York,

Dr. Carlon Coker went on record with Entertainment Tonight to confirm that Piven has six times the amount of mercury in his system that a healthy person should have, apparently a result of Piven’s insatiable appetite for sushi.

As a result he quit his role in David Mamet’s Speed the Plow. Mamet’s response:

I talked to Jeremy on the phone, and he told me that he discovered that he had a very high level of mercury. So my understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer.

What a jerk.

Chocolate is Good For You (part 4)

Seth Roberts4 Comments

From the January 2008 Journal of Nutrition:

In a cross-sectional study, we examined the relation between intake of 3 common foodstuffs that contain flavonoids (chocolate, wine, and tea) and cognitive performance. 2031 participants (70—74 y, 55% women) recruited from the population-based Hordaland Health Study in Norway underwent cognitive testing. A cognitive test battery included the Kendrick Object Learning Test, Trail Making Test, part A (TMT-A), modified versions of the Digit Symbol Test, Block Design, Mini-Mental State Examination, and Controlled Oral Word Association Test. . . . Participants who consumed chocolate, wine, or tea had significantly better mean test scores and lower prevalence of poor cognitive performance than those who did not.

How Bad is LDL Cholesterol?

Seth Roberts17 Comments

We all know the term bogeyman — a fictional monster that empowers its inventor. According to Wikipedia, “parents often say that if their child is naughty, the bogeyman will get them, in an effort to make them behave.” I always think of the Falkland Islands. In 1982, by acting as if the Argentine invasion actually mattered, Margaret Thatcher got herself a big boost in popularity. In the 1960s, by acting as if Berkeley student protests were dangerous, Reagan got elected president. The day after 9/11, I said my big fear was overreaction. I doubt the persons behind the bombing understood how useful they were to those in power. Bush got a boost in popularity that lasted years.

When it comes to health, cholesterol is one of the biggest bogeymen. Hyperlipid begins a post about LDL cholesterol like this:

You would be forgiven for thinking that the apoB100 protein (which defines the LDL or VLDL particle) has been evolved over the past 4.5 billion years to cause cardiovascular disease and the less of it you have the longer you will live. Listening to a cardiologist that is (or a BBC reporter on the Today Program grovelling before a cardiologist). The lower the better. It’s impossible to have too low an LDL concentration. Statins in the drinking water. You know the patter.

The scientific paper on which his post is based concludes:

Apolipoprotein B at homeostatic levels in blood is an essential innate defense effector against invasive S. aureus infection.

Thanks to Dave Lull.

Self-Experimentation on Someone Else: Alzheimer’s Disease

Seth Roberts4 Comments

From the St. Petersburg Times:

After two weeks of taking coconut oil, Steve Newport’s results in an early onset Alzheimer’s test gradually improved says his wife, Dr. Mary Newport. Before treatment, Steve could barely remember how to draw a clock. Two weeks after adding coconut oil to his diet, his drawing improved. After 37 days, Steve’s drawing gained even more clarity. [The three drawings are shown in a photo.] The oil seemed to “lift the fog,” his wife says.

. . .

He began taking coconut oil every day, and by the fifth day, there was a tremendous improvement.

The wife took her husband’s treatment into her own hands, just as I tried to improve my sleep myself — it was self-experimentation in that sense.

This is related to my omega-3 research in that it is another example of a fat having highly beneficial brain effects.

Flaxseed Oil Used to Treat Cancer

Seth Roberts10 Comments

The Budwig protocol is the food treatment and cure for cancer and other major debilitating diseases created by Dr. Johanna Budwig. It was designed for use with extremely ill and wasted cancer patients who had been sent home by their doctors to die. These were patients so ill that many were unable to take any food at all in the beginning, and had to be initially treated with enemas. The protocol is so simple that it can be tailored to fit whatever situation is encountered, from use with someone at death’s door to use as a preventative and part of a healthy lifestyle.

There are only two essential foods in the protocol, flax oil and cottage cheese or some other sulphurated protein such as yogurt or kefir. The oil provides electron-rich fats, and the cottage cheese provides the sulphurated protein to bind with the oil and render it water soluble. In this state, the oil is able to carry immense amounts of oxygen straight into the cells. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygen rich environment.

From Natural News. Yeah, the explanation (“electron-rich fats”) is absurd, but the general empirical idea (the use of flaxseed oil and cottage cheese to cure cancer) is of course very important. It isn’t complicated why flaxseed oil might be highly beneficial: Our diets used to provide much more omega-3 than they now do; flaxseed oil, high in omega-3, reduces the deficiency. The idea that cottage cheese makes flaxseed oil more digestible is also very interesting.

Thanks to Peter Spero.

Diet and Acne (continued)

Seth Roberts5 Comments

I’ve blogged several times about environmental causes of acne, especially diet. Cynthia Graber, a science journalist, wrote a whole article about diet and acne, a link that dermatologists deny much more strongly than the evidence warranted. Why do they act so sure? I asked Graber. Because, low on the medical totem pole, they want to appear more scientific, she said. Genetics and drugs — that’s science. Diet — that isn’t science.

Here is more data on the subject, from two widely-different sources. The first is a comment on Dennis Mangan’s blog:

I had some acne when I was a teen. I was considered a very “pretty” teenager, but was painfully shy whenever my face “broke out”. I remember going to a dermatologist who put me on a sulfur cream and antibiotics for it. He emphasized over and over that diet “had absolutely nothing” to do with it, and that I should eat whatever I wanted and that “only by eating huge amounts of fish” could I actually aggravate it.

I still had some breakouts even until my twenties every so often. Because I was basically bodybuilding as a “hobby”, I switched to diet colas and started eating a great deal of tuna and canned chicken around this time. Guess what? The acne completely went away at about 21 and didn’t come back until about 26. At 26 I had some hard bumps under my chin like boils. The dermatologist said they were folliculitis and told me to make sure my razors were dry and my sink was super clean. But I noted that I had drifted back to a fast food diet and was drinking regular colas again–and kind of power-lifting a couple of days a week but not hitting it hard.

I got back into it at the gym, and wanted a six-pack again. I went back to diet cola and started dieting again. The result? The acne completely went away. This time I made a connection.

I have sworn up and down to some of my friends that I think our diets might lead to acne when we’re teens. One of my pals, Myron, took his kids (both teens) off cokes and instant soups and started cooking for them and making them drink orange juice and apple juice and tea. Their faces completely cleared up (they were 14 and 16) in about two months. No trips to the doctor, no anti-bacterial soaps, nothing. Just diet. They have had lovely clear skin ever since.

I have another friend at work whose teenage daughter “got off” colas and he started cooking for her (single parent). Her face cleared up. He mentioned it. She was a pretty girl but used to break out fairly badly. According to him, she’s on top of the world now that her skin is cleared up and is confident (and she should be because she really is a cutie).

I read a little bit about the study doctors cite about acne and diet. They fed a big chocolate bar to one group and fed another a CANDY bar that didn’t contain chocolate to another group. Since both groups had acne at the same levels, they declared that diet had nothing to do with acne. WHAT HOGWASH!!!!! If they were both drinking sodas, both eating tons of refined white flour, white pasta, and both eating a big candy bar (so what if one was toffee and one was chocolate) every day, they still were eating a “western diet”.

Anyway, I’ve read about the severe uptick in acne in newly “Westernized” populations. I’ve read about the rate of prostate difficulties of Asian-Americans versus rural Asians. Diets do INDEED affect much more about ourselves than we’d like to admit. I can guarantee you, because I’ve seen it on my own face and have friends who I trust who have seen it on the faces of their children, that diet does indeed influence acne and that high glycemic index foods and colas and sugars certainly worsen it at the least.

The thing that REALLY got me thinking this was a few years ago, I saw a couple of very Indian-looking Mexican teenagers. They didn’t look like they had a drop of European blood in them. They had BAD acne on their cheeks. Hell, I thought those people never broke out, yet there they were at a convenience store buying two colas and potato chips–looking like Oxy poster-children.

The second source is Arbor Clinical Nutrition Updates, an excellent Australian publication aimed at nutrition professionals. The latest update, which I cannot link to, is about acne and diet. From its conclusions:

For many years the conventional wisdom dispensed by physicians on the relationship between diet and acne vulgaris has been that there is none. In a recent study, the fact that nearly a half of a group of final year medical students believed that diet was an important factor in acne was held to be an unfortunate misconception “likely to perpetuate misinformation in the community.”

The “expert view” from doctors is in stark contrast to what their patients think. Many studies have shown that the average person is under the distinct impression that diet can indeed affect acne, particularly fatty foods and chocolate.

A careful look into this question reveals something rather fascinating — that although medical textbooks used to strongly support the idea of “acne diets”, in the last 50 years this has completely reversed. Yet experts’ current confidence that there is nothing to the diet-acne story is itself based on almost no evidence.

The update describes two studies. One found that a low-glycemic-index diet reduced acne. The other found that, in teenage boys, greater milk consumption was associated with slightly more acne.

More Maybe Graber was too kind. Confidence that diet had nothing to do with acne allowed dermatologists to prescribe dangerous and expensive drugs. I wish I could be sure no payola was involved, but — given a horrifying story in today’s NY Times about several psychiatrists’ total and dishonest disregard of conflict-of-interest rules — I can’t. From the article:

From 2000 through 2006, Dr. [Charles] Nemeroff [of Emory University] earned more than $960,000 from GlaxoSmithKline but listed earnings of less than $35,000 for the period on his university disclosure forms, according to Congressional documents. Sarah Alspach, a GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman, stated in an e-mail message that “Dr. Nemeroff is a recognized world leader in the field of psychiatry.”

What does that say about psychiatry?

Shannon Brownlee on the subject. A blog on the subject. A letter from Senator Charles Grassley to James Wagner, the president of Emory, describing Nemeroff’s behavior and asking for more information.

A Little-Known Problem with Vegetarianism

Seth Roberts9 Comments

If you look up vegetarianism in Wikipedia, you’ll find references to several health “concerns”. You won’t find anything about trouble at high altitudes. However, a friend of mine went on a high-altitude camping trip and found himself feeling terrible, with symptoms of altitude sickness. He later learned, when everyone reconvened, that two others in the group of 30 had had similar troubles. All three were vegetarians. They’d done fine on hikes at lower altitudes. None of the other 27 were vegetarians. The correlation makes sense because vegetarians are often much lower in iron — a component of hemoglobin, which transports oxygen — than non-vegetarians.

The interesting question for me is: What can we do with such data? It’s obviously useful, but where does it go? Not in a scientific paper, obviously. In a letter to the editor? Of what journal?

Food versus Nutrients

Seth Roberts4 Comments

A few years ago, I learned that persons who apply to the Chez Panisse Foundation for funding are warned by staffers not to use the word nutrition in their applications — Alice Waters hates that word. A more nuanced version of this attitude was expressed in Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. Supposedly we should eat food (= choose our food using food names and categories) rather than nutrients (= choose our food according to nutrient content). Here is Marian Nestle, the prolific and influential NYU professor, on the subject:

Q: How do nutritionists feel about Michael Pollan’s idea in “In Defense of Food” that we should be eating food, not nutrients?

A: I can’t speak for all nutritionists, but my guess is that we are all jealous of how well he writes. But look around you. Except for people in hospitals who are fed intravenously, I don’t know anyone who eats nutrients. Everybody I know eats food.

When I give lectures in Australia or India, as I did last year, I see people eating food – all kinds of food. In Australia, I went to a Chinese restaurant one night and sampled kung pao kangaroo. In India, I ate dosas every chance I got. I never gave the nutrient content of those foods a single thought.

“Everybody I know” indeed. Our understanding of vitamins comes from nutrition research that, contra Waters, Pollan and Nestle, focused on nutrients rather than food. This research has been enormously beneficial, mainly among the poor and institutionalized. From a review article about Vitamin A:

By 1992, most large-scale mortality prevention trials and at least 3 measles treatment trials [in poor countries] were completed. A meeting convened at the Rockefeller retreat in Bellagio reached consensus that vitamin A deficiency increased overall mortality, particularly from measles; improving vitamin A status would reduce overall mortality; and treating children already ill with measles with high-dose vitamin A was an effective means of reducing their risk of complications and death. This “Bellagio Brief,”published widely, helped draw attention to the importance of vitamin A. . . . National programs of varying effectiveness have been launched in over 70 countries and vitamin A “coverage” is now one of the core health indicators published annually in the State of the World’s Children. By UNICEF’s estimate, over one-half a billion vitamin A capsules are distributed every year, preventing 350,000 childhood deaths annually. . . . The World Bank lists vitamin A supplementation as one of the most cost-effective of all medical interventions.

This isn’t esoteric knowledge.