Corporate care is far from perfect, with evidence showing that children in care are still among the most vulnerable in society. Research for the Department for Education has also shown that children in care have a higher degree of physical and mental health needs than their not-in-care counterparts, and in comparison to children who are in other forms of care, such as foster care.

The study, published at The Journal of Children’s Services, found that the practice of Kundalini yoga in care homes, when both staff and children are involved, can lead to both individual and social benefits.

This new study was carried out under the belief of ‘creative practice as mutual recovery,’ and looked at the idea that shared creativity, collective experience and mutual benefit can promote resilience in mental health and well-being among communities that have been traditionally divided (e.g. children’s home staff and children).

The experts tested a 20-week Kundalini yoga program in three children’s homes situated in the East Midlands. The program was evaluated according to recruitment and retention rates, self-reporting questionnaires from the participants, and semi-structured interviews.

The findings show that yoga practice in children’s homes, especially when participation is high, has the potential to encourage togetherness and mutuality, improve health and psychological outcomes for children in care, as well as within the workforce.

All the participants reported that the study was personally meaningful and experienced both individual (i.e. feeling more relaxed) and social benefits (e.g. feeling more open and positive).

Individuals reported that the yoga sessions helped to show them beneficial exercises that they could use in various contexts, such as before going to bed, or during emotionally challenging times at work as well as at home.

The social benefits were also far-reaching with some participants reporting that they felt more positive, open to others and, as a consequence, had seen an improvement in their social lives and out of work.

Some staff and residents noticed that other people also interacted more positively with them.

Dr Elvira Perez, the lead author of this study, and a member of the Institute of Mental Health, said, “This could have potentially huge, wide-reaching benefits for children in care as well as for all the staff working in residential settings.”

According to the study, these findings have generated a number of valuable guiding principles and recommendations that might underpin the development of any future intervention for children in care and the staff working in these homes.

Reference:

1. Elvira Perez Vallejos, Mark John Ball, Poppy Brown, David Crepaz-Keay, Emily Haslam-Jones, Paul Crawford. Kundalini yoga as mutual recovery: a feasibility study including children in care and their carers. Journal of Children’s Services, Vol. 11 Iss: 4, pp.261 – 282

The post Yoga Has Social Benefits for Children appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine have found that a government-sponsored community activity program in Brazil is improving activity levels of women. The researchers believe the program could be scaled up and adapted to other communities around the world.

“To combat rising obesity rates, the Brazilian government created the Academia das Cidades program, or City Academies, to give residents free access to fitness facilities and instructors,” said Eduardo Simoes, M.D., chair of the MU Department of Health Management and Informatics and lead author of the study. “The program is aimed at adults, but has historically attracted middle-aged and older women who may not frequently exercise.”

The research team studied the effectiveness of this program, and found that City Academies do meet their goal of increasing physical activity rates for adult women in these communities.

A lack of physical activity has been associated with several health conditions, such as hypertension, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

Increased activity levels can help prevent these and other diseases, which can lead to better overall health. City Academies consist of free physical activity classes offered by trained physical educators every weekday morning and late afternoon in a community setting. The classes are held in renovated and beautified public spaces such as parks and plazas.

Participants are screened for hypertension and obesity, and are referred to local public health programs if needed. Additionally, participants are provided free dietary guidance.

The program, which began in 2002 in Recife, the capital of the Brazilian state Pernambuco, has expanded to 184 cities in that state. In 2011, the Brazilian Ministry of Health adopted a modified version of the program known as Health Academies, and has since expanded the program to thousands of cities nationwide.

Researchers interviewed household members sampled through a series of three random surveys, with each survey occurring one year after the previous one.

The researchers found that adult women’s rates of recommended leisure-time physical activity—at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity per week or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity per week—were significantly higher in these cities.

For women who lived in these cities for three or more years, their odds of reaching recommended levels of leisure-time physical activity increased by near 50 percent.

The odds of reaching recommended levels of leisure-time physical activity increased from 60 to 900 percent, depending on whether adult residents were former or current members of the program, and if the duration of their participation lasted for less than six months or for six or more months.

“With the program, we found a large increase in the population’s activity levels, especially for women,” Simoes said. “Worldwide and in Brazil, multiple surveys show that men are more active than women, education is directly related to leisure-time physical activity, and individuals of low socioeconomic status are less likely to engage in physical activity.”

This study shows that these exercise programs help reduce those inequalities in physical activity. They may serve as a model for other communities and countries around the world to tackle the pandemic of physical inactivity.

Reference:

1. Simões, Eduardo J, Pedro C Hallal, Fernando V Siqueira, Chester Schmaltz, Danielle Menor, Deborah C Malta, Hebe Duarte, et al. “Effectiveness of a Scaled up Physical Activity Intervention in Brazil: A Natural Experiment.” Preventive Medicine. January 18, 2017.

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“For sedentary individuals, a key barrier to starting an exercise program is the preconceived notion that exercising is not enjoyable. Failing to find enjoyment from exercise can make it more difficult to stick to an exercise program over time,” explains Jennifer Heisz, the lead author of this study and an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster.

This is the first study to examine changes in the level of enjoyment and enthusiasm for high-intensity interval training (HIT) workouts versus moderate continuous training, over the first six weeks of an exercise program. And in the long run, the study found that HIT tends to be more enjoyable than moderate exercise.

At the beginning of the training, sedentary young adults in the HIT group reported similar levels of enjoyment to those in the moderate exercise group. However, as training progressed and the participants got stronger, enjoyment for the HIT group increased. Levels for the moderate group remained constant and lower.

These new findings are important because they suggest high-intensity workouts might help sedentary adults to stick to a workout routine, according to the research.

“The physical benefits of exercise are widely known, yet half of the adult population is not sufficiently active for good health,” she continues. “Enjoyment during these first weeks of adopting a new exercise program may be especially important for preventing dropouts.”

Reference:

1. Jennifer J. Heisz, Mary Grace M. Tejada, Emily M. Paolucci, Cameron Muir. Enjoyment for High-Intensity Interval Exercise Increases during the First Six Weeks of Training: Implications for Promoting Exercise Adherence in Sedentary Adults. PLOS ONE, 2016

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In a study in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers found that children who reported spending more time on screen devices and watching television, engaged in behaviors that can lead to obesity.

Dr. Erica L. Kenney and Dr. Steven L. Gortmaker from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health studied data from the 2013 and 2015 waves of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which included 24,800 adolescents in grades 9-12.

The survey gathered data on the following: hours spent on screen devices (including smartphones, tablets, computers, and video games) and watching television, hours of sleep on an average school night, number of sugar-sweetened beverages consumed in the previous seven days, and frequency of physical activity (at least 60 minutes per day) for the past seven days.

The researchers found that almost 20% of U.S. adolescents spent more than five hours a day on smartphones, tablets, computers, and video games compared with only 8% watching more than five hours a day of television.

Unsurprisingly, watching too much television continued to be associated with obesity and poor diet among adolescents. However, the researchers also found that adolescents who spent more than five hours a day on screen devices were twice as likely to drink a sugary drink each day and not get enough sleep or physical activity, and were about 43% more likely to have obesity compared with adolescents who did not spend time on these devices.

According to Dr. Kenney, “This study would suggest that limiting children’s and adolescent’s engagement with other screen devices may be as important for health as limiting television time.”

Although this study cannot conclude definitively that using screen devices is causing higher rates of obesity, the findings are cause for concern.

Until more research is done, clinicians may want to encourage families to set limits for both television and other screen devices.

Reference:

Kenney, Erica L., and Steven L. Gortmaker. “United States Adolescents’ Television, Computer, Videogame, Smartphone, and Tablet Use: Associations with Sugary Drinks, Sleep, Physical Activity, and Obesity.” The Journal of Pediatrics 0, no. 0 (December 14, 2016). doi:10.1016/j.jpeds.2016.11.015.

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Researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, bolster the science behind the use of controlled yogic breathing to help battle depression.

According to the research, more than half of the 41 million Americans who take antidepressants do not fully respond. Add-on therapies are often prescribed to enhance the effects of the drugs in these patients, but they typically offer limited additional benefits and come with side effects that can curb use, prolonging the depressive episode. What’s more, patients who don’t fully respond to antidepressants are especially at risk of relapse.

“With such a large portion of patients who do not fully respond to antidepressants, it’s important we find new avenues that work best for each person to beat their depression,” said Anup Sharma, MD, PhD, a Neuropsychiatrist and the lead author of this study. ”Here, we have a promising, lower-cost therapy that could potentially serve as an effective, non-drug approach for patients battling this disease.”

In a randomized, controlled pilot study, they found significant improvement in symptoms of depression and anxiety in medicated patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) who participated in the breathing technique compared to medicated patients who did not partake.

Researchers adopted the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) which is the most widely used clinician-administered depression assessment that scores mood, interest in activities, energy, suicidal thoughts, and feelings of guilt, among other symptoms.

After two months, the yoga group cut its mean HDRS score by several points, while the control group showed no improvements.

In the study, researchers enrolled 25 patients suffering from MDD who were depressed, despite more than eight weeks of antidepressant medication treatment. The medicated patients were randomized to either the breathing intervention group or the “waitlist” control group for eight weeks. (The waitlist group was offered the yoga intervention after the study).

During the first week, participants completed a six-session program, which featured Sudarshan Kriya yoga in addition to yoga postures, sitting meditation, and stress education. For weeks two through eight, participants attended weekly Sudarshan Kriya yoga follow-up sessions and completed a home practice version of the technique.

Patients in the Sudarshan Kriya yoga group showed a significantly greater improvement in HDRS scores compared to patients in the waitlist group. With a mean baseline HDRS score of 22.0 (indicating severe depression at the beginning of the study), the group that completed the breathing technique for the full two months improved scores by 10.27 points on average, compared to the waitlist group, which showed no improvements.

Patients in the yoga group also showed significant mean reductions in total scores of the self-reported Beck Depression (15.48 point improvement) and Beck Anxiety Inventories (5.19 point improvement), versus the waitlist control group.

“Sudarshan Kriya yoga gives people an active method to experience a deep meditative state that’s easy to learn and incorporate in diverse settings,” Sharma said.

The meditation technique, which is practiced in both a group setting and at home, includes a series of sequential, rhythm-specific breathing exercises that bring people into a deep, restful, and meditative state: slow and calm breaths alternated with fast and stimulating breaths.

In past studies, the practice has demonstrated a positive response in patients with milder forms of depression, depression due to alcohol dependence, and in patients with MDD; however, there are no clinical studies investigating its use for depression in an outpatient setting. Past studies also suggest that yoga and other controlled breathing techniques can potentially adjust the nervous system to reduce stress hormones.

Sharma also notes that well-designed studies that evaluate the benefits of yoga to treat depression are lacking, despite increased interest of millions of Americans who participate in some form of yoga every year.

Results of the pilot study suggest the feasibility and promise of Sudarshan Kriya as an add-on intervention for MDD patients who have not responded to antidepressants.

“The next step in this research is to conduct a larger study evaluating how this intervention impacts brain structure and function in patients who have major depression,” Sharma said.

Reference:

1. Anup Sharma, MD, PhD; Marna S. Barrett, PhD; Andrew J. Cucchiara, PhD; Nalaka S. Gooneratne, MD; and Michael E. Thase, MD “A Breathing-Based Meditation Intervention for Patients With Major Depressive Disorder Following Inadequate Response to Antidepressants: A Randomized Pilot Study“. J Clin Psychiatry 2016.

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The connections between resting heart rate, blood pressure, and psychiatric disorders were studied using register data from more than one million Swedish men. The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

Many mental health disorders have been found to be associated with abnormalities in heart function and blood pressure. Heart rate and blood pressure are regulated by the autonomic nervous system which controls the body’s basic functions.

There has previously been no comprehensive research on whether discrepancies in the function of the autonomic nervous system could precede the onset of psychiatric illnesses.

The research used heart rate and blood pressure measurements from conscripts for the Swedish army, linked with information from national patient registers.

The results indicate that men whose resting heart rate was higher than 82 beats per minute during their youth were 69% more likely to later be diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder than men whose resting heart rate was lower than 62 bpm. The risk for schizophrenia increased by 21% and for anxiety disorders, 18%.

The study considered several factors that could contribute to the connection, such as BMI, socioeconomic status, ethnic background, cognitive ability as well as physical fitness measured through an exercise test.

However, these factors did not fully account for the correlation between psychiatric disorders and heart rate or blood pressure.

The average follow-up period was 32 years.

The study also shows that low resting heart rate was linked to an increased risk of substance abuse and convictions for violent crimes.

“These results are interesting, because they provide new information on the role of the autonomic nervous system in psychiatric disorders,” explains Antti Latvala, the University of Helsinki postdoctoral researcher who led the project.

A table of the findings of the research shows correlation between blood pressure and psychological disorder diagnoses. Click image to enlarge.

Latvala points out that the mechanisms underlying this connection still require a great deal of further study.

“Our observations indicate that differences in physiological responses, such as stress reactions, are linked to the risk of mental disorders. It is also known that psychiatric illnesses are associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease. Our results open new opportunities for studying this connection as well,” Latvala says.

Reference:

1. Latvala, Antti, Ralf Kuja-Halkola, Christian Rück, Brian M. D’Onofrio, Tomas Jernberg, Catarina Almqvist, David Mataix-Cols, Henrik Larsson, and Paul Lichtenstein. “Association of Resting Heart Rate and Blood Pressure in Late Adolescence With Subsequent Mental Disorders: A Longitudinal Population Study of More Than 1 Million Men in Sweden.” JAMA Psychiatry 73, no. 12 (December 1, 2016): 1268–75.

The post High Blood Pressure Linked to Mental Health and Criminal Tendencies appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Consumption of sugar has long been condemned due to its high food energy, however, the alternatives that are “calorie-free” natural and artificial sweeteners, have also been a major source of concern, raising questions about their affects on our appetite, overall energy intake, and health.

A new study published in Springer Nature’s International Journal of Obesity has tried to address some of these concerns, and the results are stunning, but somewhat predictable at the same time.

The effect of four different drinks were put to test. One contained sugar (sucrose), another the artificial non-nutritive sweetener aspartame, and the two others were the natural NNS made from either the plants Stevia (Rebaudioside A) and monk fruit (Mogroside V); which are the only two natural non-nutritive sweeteners (NNS) approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, along with six other NNS (including aspartame).

In this short term study, thirty healthy male study participants randomly consumed one of the four sweetened drinks on each of the different days of the investigation.

On each test day, participants ate a standardized breakfast, and by mid-morning received one test beverage to tide them over until lunch. An hour later they were provided with a lunchtime meal and asked to eat until comfortably full.

Participant’s blood glucose and insulin concentrations were measured closely, while they also kept a food diary of what they ate for the rest of the day.

According to the study, there was no difference in the total daily energy intake across all four treatments, meaning that overall participants consumed the same amount of energy (calories) during the course of a day. They either reduced meal intake after the sucrose-sweetened drink or ate significantly more at lunchtime and the rest of the day to compensate for the three calorie-free drink options.

The lead author of this study, Siew Ling Tey of the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR), describes the findings as “surprising.”

Until now the mainstream concern about the use of non-nutritive sweeteners has been that they could increase our appetite, which may then lead to overeating to make up for the energy saved by not choosing sugar.

The current study found that although participants felt slightly hungrier and looked forward more to eating something again when they drank non-nutritive sweetened beverages, they did not overindulge. They did however eat more following the NNS drinks than when they consumed the sugar sweetened drink.

“it doesn’t really matter whether such drinks contain sugar, Stevia, monk fruit, or aspartame. In the end, things even out in how the body reacts to these four options in terms of overall energy intake and the levels of glucose and insulin in the blood,” Tey says.

However, a recent comprehensive meta-analysis of longer term studies has demonstrated that when non-nutritive sweeteners are consumed over time there is a sustained reduction in overall energy intake and it reduces body weight.

“The energy ‘saved’ from replacing sugar with non-nutritive sweetener was fully compensated for at subsequent meals in the current study, hence no difference in total daily energy intake was found between the four treatments,” explains Tey. “It appears that the source of non-nutritive sweeteners, whether artificial or natural, does not differ in its effects on energy intake, postprandial glucose, and insulin.”

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“Organisms construct their DNA using building blocks they get from food,” said the co-author of the study Dr. Steven Kelly. “Our hypothesis was that the composition of this food could alter an organism’s DNA. For example, could a vegetarian panda have predictable genetic differences from a meat-eating polar bear?”

He continued, “To test this hypothesis, we picked simple groups of parasites to use as a model system. These parasites share a common ancestor but have evolved to infect different hosts and eat very different foods.”

According to the research, different levels of nitrogen in a parasite’s diet contributed to changes in its DNA. Specifically, parasites with low-nitrogen, high-sugar diets had DNA sequences that used less nitrogen than parasites with nitrogen-rich, high-protein diets.

The study involved groups of eukaryotic parasites (Kinetoplastida) and bacterial parasites (Mollicutes) that infect different plant or animal hosts.

The results, based on novel mathematical models developed by the researchers, reveal a previously hidden relationship between cellular metabolism and evolution. They provide new insights into how DNA sequences can be influenced by adaptation to different diets.

Furthermore, the team found it is possible to predict the diets of related organisms by analyzing the DNA sequence of their genes.

Study co-author Emily Seward, a doctoral candidate in Oxford’s Department of Plant Sciences, said, “It has been unclear why very closely related organisms can look so different in their genetic makeup. By bringing together two fundamental aspects of biology, metabolism and genetics, we have advanced our understanding of this area.”

Although, Seward admits that there could be many other factors causing the differences in genetic make up, she believes that this study explains a very high percentage of these differences and provides evidence that “we really are what we eat.”

Researchers are now looking at more complex organisms to confirm these findings.

Reference:

1.Emily A. Seward, Steven Kelly. Dietary nitrogen alters codon bias and genome composition in parasitic microorganisms. Genome Biology, 2016.

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But this ability of heart muscle to regenerate is quickly lost in the following weeks as the animal ages and cardiomyocytes are bathed in the oxygen-rich environment of the beating heart, causing damage to the cells.

“The adult human heart is not capable of any meaningful repair following a heart attack, which is why heart attacks have such a devastating impact,” said Dr. Hesham Sadek, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine.

Normal, healthy heart muscle is well supplied with oxygen-rich blood. However, cardiologists have been able to regenerate heart muscle by placing mice in an extremely low-oxygen environment.

Researchers with the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine gradually lowered the oxygen in the air breathed by mice until it was at 7% — about the concentration of oxygen at the top of Mt. Everest.

After two weeks in the low-oxygen environment, the heart muscle cells, called cardiomyocytes, were dividing and growing; which is incredible because, under normal circumstances, cardiomyocytes do not divide in adult mammals.

“Though counterintuitive, we’ve shown that severely lowering oxygen exposure can sidestep damage to cells caused by oxygen and turn cell division back on, leading to heart regrowth,” said Dr. Sadek.

In this study, researchers lowered the oxygen level from the normal 21% to 7% over a period of weeks, then monitored the mass and function of the heart. They demonstrated that reduction in oxygen leads to both an increase in cardiomyocytes and improved heart function.

The researchers had tried a 10% oxygen environment, but there was no heart regrowth in the 10% To avoid oxygen damage to cells, oxygen levels needed to be very lowent oxygen environment; a situation referred to as hypoxia.

“This work shows that hypoxia equivalent to the summit of Mt. Everest can actually reverse heart disease, and that is extraordinary,” said Dr. Benjamin Levine, Professor of Internal Medicine.

According to Dr. Sadek, in theory, creating a low-oxygen environment could lead to repair not only of heart muscle, but of other organs as well. Although exposure to this level of hypoxia can result in complications, it can be tolerated in human when performed in a controlled setting.

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Among patients receiving gastric bypass surgery in Singapore, ceramide levels – waxy lipid molecules found in cell membranes – predicted who had diabetes better than obesity did. Although all of the patients were obese, those who did not have type 2 diabetes showed less ceramide in their adipose tissue than those who were diagnosed with the condition.

That led to a new study^[1] by scientists at the University of Utah College of Health, which concludes that accumulation of these ceramides, a toxic class of fat metabolites, may make people more prone to type 2 diabetes.

Up until now, scientists didn’t know how ceramides were damaging the body; however, the researchers found that a buildup of ceramides prevents the normal function of fat (adipose) tissue in mice.

“Ceramides impact the way the body handles nutrients,” says the study’s senior author Scott Summers, Ph.D. “They impair the way the body responds to insulin, and also how it burns calories.”

Overeating can result in excessive production of fatty acids. The fatty acids can be stored in the body as triglycerides or burned for energy. However in some people, they can turn into ceramides. “It’s like a tipping point,” Summers said.

At that point, when ceramides accrue, the adipose tissue stops working appropriately, and fat spills out into the vasculature or heart and does damage to other peripheral tissues.

The three-year project found that adding excess ceramides to human fat cells, or mice, caused them to become unresponsive to insulin and develop impairments in their ability to burn calories. The mice were also more susceptible to diabetes as well as fatty liver disease.

Conversely, they also found that mice with fewer ceramides in their adipose tissue were protected from insulin resistance, a first sign of diabetes. Using genetic engineering, researchers had deleted the gene that converts saturated fats into ceramides.

The findings indicate that high ceramides levels may increase diabetes risk, but low levels could protect against the disease.

“That suggests some skinny people will get diabetes or fatty liver disease if something such as genetics triggers ceramide accumulation,” said Bhagirath Chaurasia, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Utah and the lead author of the study.

As a result of the new research, the scientists are now searching for genetic mutations that lead to people’s predisposition to accumulating ceramides, developing obesity, and type 2 diabetes.

Summers notes that some Asian countries have a higher diabetes rate than the United States even though the obesity rate is relatively low. “Some people are just not made to deal with dietary fat,” says Summers. “It’s not just how much you eat, because some people can eat a lot and they just store all the fat effectively and remain healthy.”

Adipose tissue exists as three types and white adipose tissue is considered the “bad” kind, because it predominately stores fat. Brown adipose tissue burns fat to generate heat, and beige adipose tissue is a variety of white fat that can change to brown when the body needs to produce heat or create energy.

Based on their research, the scientists propose that as ceramides build up, the tissue loses the characteristics of brown fat, effectively becoming more white. This sets off a sequence of events that can lead to disease.

Summers previously published research in 2007 proving that the inhibition of ceramide synthesis in rodents prevented the development of fatty liver disease and diabetes. He is now working to develop drugs to target that issue.

“By blocking ceramide production, we might be able to prevent the development of type 2 diabetes or other metabolic conditions, at least in some people,” Chaurasia said.

Knowing how problematic ceramide accumulation is inside adipose tissue will help researchers focus on that specific problem.

Reference

1. Chaurasia, Bhagirath, Vincent Andre Kaddai, Graeme Iain Lancaster, Darren C. Henstridge, Sandhya Sriram, Dwight Lark Anolin Galam, Venkatesh Gopalan, et al. “Adipocyte Ceramides Regulate Subcutaneous Adipose Browning, Inflammation, and Metabolism.” Cell Metabolism 0, no. 0 (November 3, 2016).

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In an article published by Cell,¹ an international team of researchers show the impact of fiber deprivation on the guts of specially raised mice.

The mice were born and raised with no gut microbes of their own then received a transplant of 14 bacteria that normally grow in the human gut. Scientists recorded the full genetic signature of each one, making it possible to track their activity over time.

The findings have implications for understanding not only the role of fiber in a normal diet, but also the potential of using fiber to counter the effects of digestive tract disorders.

“The lesson we’re learning from studying the interaction of fiber, gut microbes, and the intestinal barrier system is that if you don’t feed them, they can eat you,” says Eric Martens, Ph.D., an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Using the university’s special gnotobiotic, or germ-free, mouse facility, and advanced genetic techniques that allowed the researchers to determine which bacteria were present and active under different conditions. It allowed them to study the impact of diets with different fiber content and those with no fiber.

The researchers also infected some of the mice with a bacterial strain that does to mice what certain strains of E.coli can do to humans — cause gut infections that lead to irritation, inflammation, diarrhea, and more.

The result: the mucus layer stayed thick, and the infection didn’t take full hold in mice that received a diet that was about 15 percent fiber from minimally processed grains and plants. But when the researchers substituted a diet with no fiber in it, even for a few days, some of the microbes in the mice’ guts began to munch on the mucus.

The researchers also tried a diet that was rich in prebiotic fiber — purified forms of soluble fiber similar to what some processed foods and supplements currently contain. This diet resulted in the same erosion of the mucus layer as observed with the lack of fiber.

Furthermore, researchers saw that the mix of bacteria changed depending on what the mice were being fed, even day by day. Some species of bacteria in the transplanted microbiome were more common (meaning they had reproduced more) in low-fiber conditions, others in high-fiber conditions.

And the four bacteria strains that flourished most in low-fiber and no-fiber conditions were the only ones that make enzymes that are capable of breaking down the long molecules called glycoproteins which make up the mucus layer.

In addition to looking at the of bacteria based on genetic information, the researchers could see which fiber-digesting enzymes the bacteria were making. They detected more than 1,600 different enzymes capable of degrading carbohydrates — similar to the complexity in the normal human gut.

Just like the mix of bacteria, the mix of enzymes changed depending on what the mice were being fed, with even occasional fiber deprivation leading to more production of mucus-degrading enzymes.

Images of the mucus layer, and the “goblet” cells of the colon wall that produce the mucus constantly, showed the layer was thinner the less fiber the mice received.

While mucus is constantly being produced and degraded in a normal gut, the change in bacteria activity under the lowest-fiber conditions meant that the pace of eating was faster than the pace of production—almost like an overzealous harvesting of trees outpacing the planting of new ones.

When the researchers infected the mice with Citrobacter rodentium (the E. coli-like bacteria) they observed that these dangerous bacteria flourished more in the guts of mice fed a fiber-free diet. Many of those mice began to show signs of illness and lost weight.

When the scientists looked at samples of their gut tissue, they saw not only a much thinner or even patchy mucus later, they also saw inflammation across a wide area. Mice that had received a fiber-rich diet before being infected also had some inflammation but across a much smaller area.

Going forward, Martens and Desai intend to look at the impact of different prebiotic fiber mixes, and of diets with more intermittent natural fiber content over a longer period. They also want to look for biomarkers that could tell them about the status of the mucus layer in human guts, such as the abundance of mucus-digesting bacteria strains, and the effect of low fiber on chronic disease such as inflammatory bowel disease.

The lack of fiber impacts gut bacteria that play an important role in preserving health. (Source: University of Michigan)

“While this work was in mice, the take-home message from this work for humans amplifies everything that doctors and nutritionists have been telling us for decades: Eat a lot of fiber from diverse natural sources,” says Professor Martens. “Your diet directly influences your microbiota, and from there it may influence the status of your gut’s mucus layer and tendency toward disease. But it’s an open question of whether we can cure our cultural lack of fiber with something more purified and easy to ingest than a lot of broccoli.”

Reference:

1. University of Michigan Health System. “High-fiber diet keeps gut microbes from eating the colon’s lining, protects against infection, animal study shows.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 November 2016.

The post Digestive Health: Starved Microbes Can Feed Off Your Gut appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Entomophagy, the consumption of insects, has recently seen a surge of interest as an alternative sustainable source of protein. A recent research study conducted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization¹ examined the amount of nutrients (particularly protein and iron) absorbed by the human body from consuming bugs such as grasshoppers, crickets, and other insects.

Insects might not sound appetizing to many Westerners, but they’ve always been a part of the traditional diets in other regions of the world, and what this study reveals may be the very future of our main food source that can possibly replace meats.

According to the research, about 1,900 insect species have been documented as a food source globally. It is estimated that insect-eating is practiced regularly by at least two billion people worldwide.

The researchers analyzed grasshoppers, crickets, mealworms, and buffalo worms for their mineral contents, and estimated the likely amount of each nutrient absorbed by digestion of these insects using a lab model of human digestion.

Commonly consumed insect species could be excellent sources of bioavailable iron

The insects had varying levels of iron, calcium, copper, magnesium, manganese, and zinc. Crickets, for example, had higher levels of iron than the other insects did. Iron is a particularly important nutrient that is often missing in non-meat diets, causing iron-deficiency anemia. Minerals including calcium, copper, and zinc from grasshoppers, crickets, and mealworms are more readily available for absorption in comparison to sirloin beef.

The evidence supports that insect made food could very effectively and safely help meet the nutritional needs of the world’s growing population, and there are already many products such as cricket protein bars, and tortillas being sold on the market. It is reasonable to conclude that insect farming could be simple, low cost, and very profitable in the near future.

Reference:

1. American Chemical Society. “The buzz about edible bugs: Can they replace beef?” ScienceDaily, 26 October 2016.

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