Vitamin A Overdose

A heads up for those in the UK for tonight's episode of "Trust Me I'm A Doctor" (BBC Two at 20:00 BST on Thursday 17 October 2013), which has a piece on vitamin A toxicity as experienced by polar explorer Douglas Mawson:

• A month into their journey, one of the team, along with the tent, most of the provisions and six dogs plunged into a crevasse, never to be seen again. Mawson and the other surviving member, Xavier Mertz, started to return to base, surviving in part by eating the remaining dogs. After a few weeks Mertz developed stomach pains and diarrhoea. Then his skin started to peel off and his hair fell out. He died incontinent and delirious a few days later.
  
  Mawson suffered similar symptoms. With the kind of understatement typical of his generation of polar explorers he described the skin of the soles of his feet peeling off: "The sight of my feet gave me quite a shock, for the thickened skin of the soles had separated in each case as a complete layer... The new skin underneath was very much abraded and raw."
  
  It was the suffering of early explorers and sailors that motivated the first studies of vitamins and their deficiency diseases. At first sight Mawson's story seems to be another such tale - starvation combined with a lack of some vital nutrient. In fact, Mawson's description of his symptoms is an almost textbook description of vitamin A overdose - probably from eating dog liver. As little as 100g of husky liver could give a hungry explorer a fatal dose.  

Non-UK residents can see this program on the BBC iPlayer.

I've asked before where people who 'pill-pop' think we got our vitamins from in our ancestral past.  Pill-popping is a 'downstream' intervention which may or may not have the desired effect.  Better to tackle problems at their root and make the necessary lifestyle adaptions.

Pill popping may also be seen as reductionist to the extent that taking a vitamin pill ignores all and every other compound and bioactive ingredient in the food or foods from which humans may have historically sourced the said vitamin.   All this before we get to the question of the bioavailability of vitamins in pill form.

Unless directed by a doctor, the advice from here is save your money and eat real food!  What is real food?  You KNOW it when you see it.  It 'ain't difficult.

The Men Who Made Us Thin

Further to this post here is a post by Carl Henegan expanding on why he thinks Weight Watchers does not work

You can see the full program on the men who made us thin on the BBC. This follows on from a series last year called The Men Who Made Us Fat.

The Corporate Playbook, BDA and DUK

The BMJ has launched a stinging attack on the relationship between Diabetes UK and their corporate sponsors.  The British Dietetic Association also come in for criticism.

The game really is up for these organisations. Charities such as DUK and BDA have similarly been exposed for their lack of integrity.:

• Despite the American Heart Association’s statement and the supportive scientific evidence, the food industry continues to adopt strategies to deny sugar’s role as a major causative factor in what now represents the greatest threat to our health worldwide: diet related disease. It took 50 years from the first publication (in the BMJ) linking smoking to lung cancer before the introduction of any effective legislation because Big Tobacco successfully adopted a strategy of denial, planting doubt, confusing the public, and even buying the loyalty of scientists, all at the cost of millions of lives. The same “corporate playbook” has been adopted by Big Food.

It is good to see such high profile discussion of these issues.

Follow the money!

Denmark's Fat Tax 2

Denmark's Fat Tax has come unstuck according to a report in Nature,

• A world-leading ‘fat tax’ has been abolished in Denmark, with the country admitting the controversial attempt at engineering a healthier populace has failed. A planned tax on some high-sugar foods has also been abandoned, marking a setback for advocates of this method of encouraging health.

I had my doubts it would work but didn't think Adam Smith's invisible hand would deliver the knock out blow!

• ...the country’s tax on unhealthy, high-fat products had driven up prices and put jobs at risk.

Follow the money.

Prehistoric Autopsy

A great program on Homo Erectus from the BBC!

• At the Prehistoric Autopsy HQ in Glasgow, anatomist professor Alice Roberts and biologist Dr George McGavin continue their journey back into our evolutionary past.
  
  They are going back 1.5 million years to meet one of the earliest humans. Once again with the help of a team of international experts, this shows the recreation of one of our most successful prehistoric ancestors from the bones up. They walked the earth far longer than any other human species and were the first ancestors to look a lot like we do today. The species is Homo erectus and the individual being reconstructed is known as Nariokotome Boy.
  
  To make the reconstructions as accurate as possible, Alice and George have travelled the globe, gathering evidence from the world's leading scientists. In the lab at the Prehistoric Autopsy HQ, scientists put the latest theories to the test to see how similar or different we really are to our ancient ancestors, while experimental archeologists look for clues as to how they lived.
  
  All the research has been fed to a team of model makers who have spent months painstakingly reconstructing his skeleton, muscles, skin and hair.
  
  The team reveal the latest research that suggests Homo erectus were good hunters, were skilled at making stone tools and could probably control fire. They also look at evidence that suggests some individuals were helping those who couldn't help themselves. It may be the oldest evidence we have for something we think of as a human trait - compassion.
  
  And in the end the carefully reconstructed Narikotome Boy will finally be revealed as we come face to face with another of our prehistoric ancestors.

 There was a great analysis of a 1.5 myo burnt bone which it was determined, was burnt in temperatures of at least 350C.  Grassland fires only reach 300C so it suggests that the bone was subject to burning in a controlled environment - cooking!

Bad Science: Negative Data

If you read my post on Bad Pharma you will be aware of Ben Goldacre.  Goldacre looks like the result of an experimental high-energy collision in the Large Hadron Collider between Ron Weasly and Brian May, but make no mistake - he is a sharp cookie.  Here he gives a talk about the quality of drug trials and how they often fall short of the scientific standards you'd expect (a theme that underlies the thrust of his book 'Bad Pharma').

• When a new drug gets tested, the results of the trials should be published for the rest of the medical world -- except much of the time, negative or inconclusive findings go unreported, leaving doctors and researchers in the dark. In this impassioned talk, Ben Goldacre explains why these unreported instances of negative data are especially misleading and dangerous.

Too Fat to Fight

Copyright WIRED magazine

Both US and China's military leaders are facing up to potential problems with recruiting battle-fit recruits  Wired reports,

• The state-controlled China Daily reported Wednesday that China’s National People’s Congress is loosening the standards for overweight recruits in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). China’s wanna-be soldiers can now super-size that order of szechuan beef without fear of discrimination as long they don’t tip the scales further than 25 percent of the  normal weight requirements — a 5 percent uptick from last year.

 Reports suggest that 25% of Chinese are overweight or obese.  The US ex-military are launching an initiative to address this problem,

• At the intersection of fat-shaming and war-mongering comes a bizarre public health campaign: an effort by retired generals and admirals to ban sugary sodas and snacks from public schools. The kids today, say the former brass, are too fat to fight for their country.

 There is even talk of transplanting brown fat to obese soldiers in a bid to tackle this problem

Taubes on Bloggingheadz TV

A good (video) discussion with Gary Taubes.

On Digestion

BBC Radio 4's Inside Health has a good bit, concerning digestion (starting at around the 25 minute mark). It features Dr Anton Emmanuel, a consultant neuro-gastroenterologist who makes the following points:

• Digestion Speed - it can take 8-36 hours to digest food, depending on factors like your emotions, food type and 'personal makeup'!
• Peristalsis (the mechanism that drives food through the gut) - "The wavelike muscular contractions of the alimentary canal or other tubular structures by which contents are forced onward toward the opening". The muscle and nerves in our guts coordinate stomach, small intestine, colon, all the way to tail end (anus).  The brain can influence peristalsis (up-regulate or down-regulate transit time), via the autonomic nervous system (involuntary nervous system).
• Most nutrients are absorbed in just 15ft of small bowel in a transit time of about two 2 hours.
• The bulk of transit time is in the colon where water is rung out of the food (saliva, gastric acid, small bowel juices and consumed liquids).
• Of particular note, fast transit times don't interfere with nutritional absorption!

Interesting.

Spice Yourself Thin

Experiments in rodents show that the colder it is, the more energy they burn off as their body seeks to maintain body temperature.  There is intriguing evidence that spicy foods activate nerve receptors that trigger the same brain response as being cold does as reported by New Scientist,

• Experiments in rodents have shown that the colder it is, the more energy they burn off in this way to produce heat.
  
  As babies, we also use this system to produce heat. But there is increasing evidence that many adults retain enough active brown fat, or adipose tissue, to do it too. [Investigator Andy Whittle at the University of Cambridge], reckons this process is controlled by the brain, which orders the extra burning of fat in brown adipose tissue when it gets cold.
  
  Recent research has revealed that spicy food - such as cinnamon or capsaicin in chilli peppers - can activate nerve receptors in the skin, gut and mouth, triggering the same brain response as being cold does.
  
  Whittle's colleague Maarten Soeters cites findings from Japan published this year showing that men with active brown adipose tissue burn more energy than normal when given capsules of capsinoid compounds, similar to capsaicin (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.111.018606).
  
  Now, Whittle is hoping to see if a mixture of ingredients like capsaicin can trick the brain into thinking it is cold, and coax brown adipose tissue into burning just a little more fat than normal, helping people to lose weight over years. He is keeping the exact ingredients secret for now.

I don't generally do spice (not since my vegetarian days), but it might be time to break out Dave's Insanity Sauce one again!

Government and YOUR Diet

Another interesting  bit from The Food Program.  All the usual suspects are here - 'nutritionism', saturated fat (and Denmark's Fat Tax), sugary drinks and so forth, all against the back drop of (bwa ha ha), voluntary codes of conduct implemented in the UK:

• Can Health Secretary Andrew Lansley change Britain's bad eating habits? Sheila Dillon hears how the debate is shaping up on the "responsibility deals" aimed at changing our diet.
  With over 60 per cent of the British population now overweight or obese everyone agrees that change is needed in how we eat and what we eat. One part of the government's strategy involve so called responsibility deals, agreements with the food industry based around a series of pledges.
  A growing number of food manufacturers and retailers have signed up, pledging to reduce calories, remove salt and harmful trans-fats from food. But will it deliver a big enough change in the nation's diet?
  Sheila Dillon finds out how the Danish government has recently opted to place a tax on nutrients like saturated fat and sugar, meanwhile in New York City, mayor Michael Bloomberg has placed a ban on ingredients like trans-fats and is now placing restrictions on the size of soft drink portions.
  So, to tax, ban or adopt voluntary agreements on food? Sheila hears how the three different ideas are being developed.

 
Good listening. 

 

Just Eat Real Food....

...and you will likely eat at a calorific level commensurate with the evolved physiological trait of human daily energy expenditure!

• Western lifestyles differ markedly from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, and these differences in diet and activity level are often implicated in the global obesity pandemic. However, few physiological data for hunter-gatherer populations are available to test these models of obesity. In this study, we used the doubly-labeled water method to measure total daily energy expenditure (kCal/day) in Hadza hunter-gatherers to test whether foragers expend more energy each day than their Western counterparts. As expected, physical activity level, PAL, was greater among Hadza foragers than among Westerners. Nonetheless, average daily energy expenditure of traditional Hadza foragers was no different than that of Westerners after controlling for body size. The metabolic cost of walking (kcal kg−1 m−1) and resting (kcal kg−1 s−1) were also similar among Hadza and Western groups. The similarity in metabolic rates across a broad range of cultures challenges current models of obesity suggesting that Western lifestyles lead to decreased energy expenditure. We hypothesize that human daily energy expenditure may be an evolved physiological trait largely independent of cultural differences.

From 'Hunter-Gatherer Energetics and Human Obesity'.

UPDATE:  This finding above is similar in conclusion to the following study:

• TEE adjusted for weight and age or PAL did not differ significantly between developing and industrialized countries, which calls into question the role of energy expenditure in the cause of obesity at the population level.

Energy expenditure in adults living in developing compared with industrialized countries: a meta-analysis of doubly labeled water studies.

The Truth About Looking Younger

The Beeb's prolific output of 'The Truth About....' themed programs shows no sign of abating!  The latest installment is called 'The Truth About Looking Younger':

• Plastic surgeon Dr Rozina Ali leaves the operating theatre behind for the frontiers of skin science and asks if it is possible to make your skin look younger without surgery.
  
  She discovers the latest research about how the foods we eat can protect our skin from damage, and how a chemical found in a squid's eye is at the forefront of a new sun protection cream.
  
  She also finds out how sugar in our blood can make us look older, and explores an exciting new science called glycobiology which promises a breakthrough in making us look younger.

This one interests me because of its apparent emphasis on food quality and aging.

BBC2 Horizon: Mon 23 Jul 2012 @21:00hrs.  Should be available on iPlayer.

Truth About Sports Products

We've had  The Truth About Exercise and The Truth About Fat.  Well, tonight we had The Truth About Sports Products:

• As many of us try to get fitter in this Olympic summer, Panorama investigates the sports products that promise to boost your performance. Are those pricey trainers worth the money? Can sports drinks really help you work out for longer? Are protein shakes any more effective at honing the physique than ordinary food?
  
  With exclusive access to the findings from a unique study by the British Medical Journal and Oxford University, reporter Shelley Jofre tests the science behind the bold advertising claims made by some of sport's biggest brands.

Follow the Money

Money pushes out other norms of behaviour, most recently evidenced by the phone hacking scandal in the British Media.  Money can't buy you love, but it does give you power (and if it doesn't give you power it is a surrogate for power).  Bankers, Pharma and Politicians have all fallen victim to this behavioural modification and as the Catholic Church has illustrated with such clarity, nothing will corrupt as much as a desire to protect power.

As the major pillars of our civilisation crumble around us, it should come as no surprise to find that the fitness industry is similarly devoid of integrity.  The Guardian today ran with the following story, 'Research pours cold water on alleged benefits of sports products':

• "There is a striking lack of evidence to support the vast majority of sports-related products that make claims related to enhanced performance or recovery, including drinks, supplements and footwear," conclude researchers led by Dr Carl Heneghan of Oxford's centre for evidence-based medicine.
  ...
  Makers of sports drinks have succeeded in persuading people that they need to drink them, rather than water, and forged links with leading sports bodies in a bid to gain the public's trust and normalise their use, according to a joint BMJ-BBC investigation.
  
  Phrases such as "stay ahead of thirst", promotion of the "science of hydration" and advising sports enthusiasts to consume sports drinks before starting to exercise have helped create a global industry that forecasters Mintel estimated will be worth $1.6bn by 2016, they say.

The best line goes to Dr Colin Cable, the pharmaceutical science information officer at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society,

• "However, for the vast majority of sporting participants, it is questionable whether any form of supplementation will be necessary, as a healthy balanced diet will provide their body's requirements for protein, carbohydrate, vitamins and minerals,"

I hate to be a cynic, but where there are big profits to be made, wherever people have power, where there is a lack of transparency or where people don't have any skin in the game, don't expect individuals to escape such behaviours.

Bankers vs Big Pharma

Dr Briffa put up an excellent post about some of the recent illegal activites of Big Pharma here.  Illegal activites that affect peoples' health but for which no one has been brought to account. 

'This is Money' ran with the theme and made an interesting observation:

• There has been much talk of late about the moral turpitude of bankers living in a bubble of their own. Many of the same complaints could be made about parts of the drugs industry, where executives claim that because they are in an international market place their pay has to be set at stratospheric levels.
  
  Yet little of the opprobrium that has attached to the bankers, and kept them out of the honours system since the 2008 crash, has been directed towards the pill factories’ top executives.
  
  ...
  
  The GSK and Roche cases show that UK drug companies have been less than prudent in seeking to make as much profit as possible in the shortest timeframe. 

Read more at This is Money.

Myths About Your 5-A-Day

Dispatches (Channel 4). Available to watch now on 4OD.  A hit-and-miss program (the suffer from saturatedfatophobia) on a nutrition-basis, but one that does a good and job of showing how profit push out other norms of behaviour.  In this instance, putting various Food and Drink associations in charge of the DOHs '5-a-day' program has lead to baked beans, fruit bread and chocolate cookies qualifying as one of your '5-a-day':

• Dispatches reveals how the crucial five-a-day message has been hijacked by the food industry and manufacturers use their own five-a-day labels on certain processed foods with high sugar, fat or salt content.One ready-meal bearing a 'one of your five-a-day' logo contained almost 8 grams of salt - more than is recommended for the entire day.And we uncover how the government is failing to curb the problem, leading to increased consumer confusion as to exactly what counts as part of our five-a-day under the original intentions of the scheme.When the campaign was first launched in 2002, the Department of Health specified that fresh produce as well as frozen, tinned, juiced and dried fruit and veg all constituted part of our five-a-day. But these were only guidelines.
  
  It also created an official logo which can only be displayed on foods that don't contain added salt, sugar or fat, but the food industry saw the advantages of promoting its products with a five-a-day message and started to create their own labels with no such restrictions.
  
  Simon Capewell, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, University of Liverpool, says: 'The own brand fruit and veg logos that the different companies have made up are unregulated, they're unrestricted, it's complete open season out there.'

We've got to the stage where 'fractional' values apply - such that a manufacturer may claim that their product is 'half of one of your 5-a-day'. 

Use of 'half' in this case is ironic because that also happens to be the combined IQ of those who thought up this policy.

Baise Moi!

A Matter of Taste?

 James Mitchell Crow writes in Nature that,

• 'What is strongly associated with obesity is not the consumption of carbo-hydrates or sweets — it is the consumption of fat'. 

And taste it seems, is a burgeoning area of obesity research:

• What does chocolate ice-cream taste like? A simple enough question, you might think: sweet and creamy, with a slightly bitter cocoa kick. Delve a bit deeper, though, and the exercise becomes impossibly subjective, because what you taste when you eat ice-cream is not the same as the next person's experience. Your tongue and your taste buds are unique, and a sweet taste that seems strong to you might be almost undetectable to someone else. 
  Perhaps more importantly, individuals also vary greatly in how pleasurable and satiating they find ice-cream, or any number of other foods. Could someone's taste perceptions and preferences be a major influence on their weight? 
  The emergence of obesity as the world's largest preventable health disorder gives urgency to this question. Although the drivers of obesity are far more complex than simply a sweet tooth, study after study suggests that shifting taste preferences are a big part of the puzzle. The latest findings are forcing us to fundamentally re-examine our understanding of taste perception itself.

One of the latest ideas is that we can become desensitised to sweet tastes.  There is some evidence emerging that in a fashion, we can also taste 'fat',

• "We still cannot claim that fat is a basic taste, but within the limitations that we do know, the relationship between taste perception and obesity is strongest with fat."

It is suggested that the obese are inclined to towards sweet and typically fat foods - but the underlying desire is for 'fat'.

Butter anyone?  Also, ever wondered why if you charge up on food, you don't go longer until your next refuelling point?  That seems to be how I operate - but then I eat a realfood (paleo) diet.

Of course some still blame 'sloth and gluttony'.  You read it here first fat people.

Inflammation and Gut Flora

New Scientist had an interesting piece called 'Milk fats clue to inflammatory bowel disease'.  Various gut flora can thrive on particular diets - and in terms of our own health, not all gut flora is created equal,

• Concentrated milk fats, a common ingredient of processed foods and confectionary, trigger blooms of otherwise rare gut bacteria in mice that may contribute to inflammatory gut diseases.

This comes hot on the heels of the Human Microbiome Project which seeks to map out the trillions of bactiera which inhabit the human body,

• "Knowing which microbes live in various ecological niches in healthy people allows us to better investigate what goes awry in diseases thought to have a microbial link, like Crohn's disease and obesity," says George Weinstock, associate director of the Genome Institute at Washington University in St Louis and one of the Human Microbiome Project's principal investigators.
  
  They found that microbial cells outnumber native human cells by 10 to one, and collectively have 8 million genes compared to just 22,000 in humans. Of the 10,000 species identified, the most diverse range lived on the skin. Bacteria that colonise the teeth are different from those in saliva, and the vagina hosts the simplest range of bugs. 

 Looks like you are what you eat, you are what your body does with what you eat, you are what your bacteria is and you are what bacteria does with what you eat. 

Trying to figure out first cause with the obese never looked so complicated.

The Men Who Made Us Fat

Heads up for people in the UK, "The Men Who Made Us Fat":

• "Around the world, obesity levels are rising. More people are now overweight than undernourished; two thirds of British adults are overweight and one in four of us is classified as obese. In the first of this three-part series, Jacques Peretti traces those responsible for revolutionising our eating habits, to find out how decisions made in America 40 years ago influence the way we eat now.
  
  Peretti travels to America to investigate the story of High Fructose Corn Syrup. The sweetener was championed in the US in the 1970s by Richard Nixon’s Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz to make use of the excess corn grown by farmers. Cheaper and sweeter than sugar, it soon found its way into almost all processed foods and soft drinks. HFCS is not only sweeter than sugar, it also interferes with Leptin, the hormone that controls appetite, so once you start eating or drinking it, you don’t know when to stop.
  
  British nutritionist John Yudkin was one of the first to raise the dangers of sugar but his findings were discredited in America at the time. Meanwhile, a US Congress report blamed fat, not sugar, for the disturbing rise in cardio-vascular disease and the food industry responded with ranges of ‘low fat’, ‘heart healthy’ products in which the fat was removed – but the substitute was yet more sugar. Meanwhile, in 1970s Britain, food manufacturers used advertising campaigns to promote the idea of snacking between meals.
  
  Outside the home, fast food chains offered clean, bright premises with tempting burgers cooked and served with a very un-British zeal and efficiency. Twenty years after the arrival of McDonalds, the number of fast food outlets in Britain had quadrupled"