This week’s health briefs include a look at tiny food swaps believed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular and other health problems, a thought-provoking study of what happens when children don’t grow up in a nurturing environment, and a new finding about dementia.
Food swaps: meat and plants
Choosing plant-based foods over animal-based foods (especially red and processed meat) can reduce “all” risks as well as cardiometabolic risks such as heart attack, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. – causes death.
This is according to a large review of 37 studies recently published in the journal BMC Medicine, which also calls for further research to strengthen existing evidence and further examine the potential impact of meat and dairy substitutes.
“The findings highlight the potential health advantages of adding more plant-based foods to the diet,” says Sabrina Schlesinger, first author of the study and head of the systematic review research group at the German Diabetes Center in Düsseldorf. he told CNN.
“Our findings suggest that switching from animal-based (e.g., red and processed meat, eggs, dairy, poultry, butter) to plant-based (e.g., nuts, legumes, whole grains, olive oil) foods is beneficially associated with cardiometabolic metabolism.” health and all-cause mortality,” the researchers wrote.
The study found that there was a 27% reduction in the overall incidence of heart disease when replacing 1.8 ounces of processed meat each day with the same amount of nuts. This also reduced the incidence of Type 2 diabetes by 22%.
Researchers also found a 23% decrease in the overall incidence of heart disease when a small portion of processed meat was replaced with the same amount of legumes.
Processed meat is meat that has been preserved by smoking, salting or adding chemical preservatives, according to the MD Anderson Cancer Center. The list includes pastrami, hot dogs and deli meats, among others.
The review found that substituting olive oil for butter and nuts for eggs reduced the risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but substituting other dairy products, fish, seafood or meat with sauce had no clear association with reduced incidence of heart disease. ”
They said the evidence had different strengths, from very low to moderate, for different diseases and also for different substitutes. For example, replacing red meat with nuts or whole grains for diabetes had moderate evidence, while replacing legumes with legumes had low evidence.
They also noted that “there are different mechanisms that could explain the observed relationships.” First, people who choose plant-based foods are likely to follow a more health-conscious lifestyle in general. However, all of the included studies adjusted for important lifestyle confounders such as total energy intake, physical activity, alcohol intake, and smoking, and the associations persisted. However, continued confusion cannot be ruled out.”
Nutritional deficiency accelerates biological aging
Using epigenetic aging tools and data from older adults, researchers say deprivation of a nurturing childhood environment is linked to “accelerated biological aging” as we get older.
The study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. It included DNA samples and interviews with 842 adults ages 55 to 94; Measures of adversity such as physical, emotional, or sexual abuse or threat of abuse and lack of appropriate physical or emotional stimulation or nutrition were examined.
“While previous research has shown an association between early life adversities and epigenetic age increases among children, this study is one of the first on this topic,” lead researcher Lauren Schmitz, a professor at the university’s LA Follette School of Public Affairs, said in a news release. “Relate older adults’ biological age to such early life experiences. This may provide important insight into how childhood experiences may contribute to our risk of death.”
“While previous research has shown a relationship between early life adversities and epigenetic age increases in children, this study is among the first to link the biological age of older adults to such early life experiences,” Schmitz said in the statement. “This may be an important insight into how childhood experiences may contribute to our risk of death.”
The team suggested that epigenetic ageing is accelerated by deprivation but not threat because the effects of deprivation occur later in life, while threats “may diminish over time” as people move away from such childhood trauma over time.
ADHD and Alzheimer’s
Adults diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adulthood were almost three times more likely to later develop dementia, according to a national birth cohort study of 109,318 adults in Israel published in Jama Network Open. They were followed for 17.2 years to see whether they developed neurocognitive difficulty. This relationship is important, the researchers said.
Study participants were between 51 and 70 years old in 2003, when the study began and follow-up took place between December 2022 and August 2023. By then, 730 participants had been diagnosed with adult ADHD and 7,726 had been diagnosed with dementia, the study reported. Including 96 of those with ADHD.
The researchers concluded that “policymakers, caregivers, patients, and clinicians may wish to reliably monitor ADHD in old age.”