B Vitamins Beat Depression
This month’s (August) American Journal of Clinical Nutrition presents a longitudinal study supporting the use of B vitamins in the management of mental health.
In Nutritional Therapy practice when we are faced with patients who seem to be struggling with depression and are finding recovery hard as well as trying to prevent recurrence after resolving their current symptoms we often think – B Vitamins
But what is the evidence for this apparently normal recommendation – is there anything of substance that supports the therapeutic use of these water soluble vitamins.
To date most studies have been conducted using a cross sectional approach[1],[2] (a class of research methods that involve observation of some subset of a population of items all at the same time, in which, groups can be compared at different ages with respect of independent variables) rather than the preferred prospective style investigations (an analytic study designed to determine the relationship between a condition and a characteristic shared by some members of a group). A prospective study may involve many variables or only two; it may seek to demonstrate a relationship that is an association or one that is causal. Prospective studies produce a direct measure of risk called the relative risk.
Read the rest of this page »
Enjoyed this article?
If Genes Are Protected By Nutrients – How Much Should We Eat?
Prof Bruce Ames has developed the concept of Triage consumption, where micronutrient needs and availability may not always be in synchronicity and has recommended that a larger overall consumption of micronutrients on a daily basis be considered a judicious way to limit DNA damage associated with aging and disease.
I have proposed that the expensive urine criticism is perhaps one of the most damaging of slights, and that Victor Herberts slur on the use of increased exogenous nutrients via supplementation has created more damage to human health than it has saved. A paper out in the American Journal of Nutrition, May 2010 has added some further clarity to this discussion.[1]
Read the rest of this page »
Enjoyed this article?
Leaky Gut & Food Reactivity – What’s the Mechanism?
Michael Ash looks at leaky gut with a contemporary approach to investigation, relevance and restoration. It is quite clear that in order to extract nutrients and other sentinel information carrying agents the barrier that divides the contents of the gastric lumen from the host must be permeable. The question that has interested clinicians for many years is – when is it too permeable and what does that mean in terms of health and illness.
A paper in the March edition of Mucosal Immunology explores this concept in some detail and delivers some much needed information and potential direction in terms of dietary management and risk.[1]
Read the rest of this page »
Enjoyed this article?
Resveratrol Adds Another Benefit
Ulcerative colitis is a nonspecific inflammatory disorder characterised by oxidative and nitrosative stress, leucocyte infiltration and upregulation of inflammatory mediators. Resveratrol is a polyphenolic compound found in grapes and wine, with multiple pharmacological actions, mainly anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antitumour and immunomodulatory activities.
Inflammatory bowel disease is a recognised as a chronic pathology by uncontrolled inflammation of the intestinal mucosa which can affect part of the gastrointestinal tract, with causes including genetic factors, immune deregulation, barrier dysfunction, and a loss of immune tolerance toward the enteric flora.
Read the rest of this page »
Enjoyed this article?
Multivitamins & Breast Cancer – Is It Too Little Rather Than Too Much?
Multivitamins have recently been flagged in a March 2010 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article to raise the risk of developing breast cancer amongst a group of Swedish Women.[1] Naturally this paper sounds both alarming and contradictory and merits deeper investigation. Particularly as it is directly opposed by a paper out just 3 month previously in the Public Health Nutrition Journal when a group of nearly 3,000 women with breast cancer were compared to a similar number of controls in relation to the potential risk for breast cancer and multivitamins.[2] This study concluded:
The current study found no association between multivitamin supplement use and breast cancer risk in women.
Read the rest of this page »
Enjoyed this article?
Lifestyle Changes Better Than Drugs for Diabetes Prevention
A series of papers out in the New England Journal of medicine on March the 14th 2010 have failed to add any substantive weight to the use of medication in the prevention of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. [1],[2],[3]
The continued expansion of the western global waistline and incidence of diabetes has provided fertile opportunity for a wide range of clinical trials designed to uncover strategies for incidence of diabetes reduction.[4] There is no surprise in the discovery that making significant changes to people’s lifestyles, eating less and being more active, the primary causes of weight gain, also have a consistent reduction in type II diabetes risk. The real success has also been in the associated benefits in reduction of related cardiovascular disease risk[5] and raising of mood.[6]
Read the rest of this page »
Enjoyed this article?
Antioxidants Improve End Stage Cancer Survival
There remains controversy in the medical fields about the value of antioxidants, or risk of antioxidants in patients with cancer. In the Journal of International Medical research a pilot trial followed 41 patients over a 9 year period who had been diagnosed with end stage cancer. During this time they were given a mix of antioxidants including; Coenzyme Q10, vitamin C, selenium, folic acid and betacarotene.
The treatments were well tolerated and produced a > 40% increase in survival time with 76% of the patients surviving far longer than predicted. Whilst the study accounted for all participants and the disease course was well illustrated in all of the patients, there is a lack of retrospective design, matched controls and no blinding.
Read the rest of this page »
Enjoyed this article?
How Can We Cure NO/ONOO− Cycle Diseases? A Review
Approaches to Curing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Fibromyalgia, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Gulf War Syndrome and Possibly Many Others by Martin L. Pall, PhD
From the Townsend Letter
February / March 2010
Abstract
The NO/ONOO− cycle is a biochemical vicious cycle that is thought to cause such diseases as chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME), multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), fibromyalgia (FM), and possibly a large number of other chronic inflammatory diseases. The chemistry/biochemistry of the cycle predicts that the primary mechanism is local such the depending on where it is localized in the body, it may cause a variety of different diseases. Previous studies have shown that agents that lower such cycle elements as oxidative stress, nitric oxide, inflammatory responses, mitochondrial dysfunction, tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4) depletion and NMDA activity produce clinical improvements in CFS/ME and FM patients, consistent with the predictions of the cycle mechanism. Multiagent protocols lowering several aspects of the cycle appear to be the most promising approaches to therapy. These include an entirely over-the-counter nutritional support protocol developed by the author in conjunction with the Allergy Research Group. However, such
Read the rest of this page »
Enjoyed this article?
Expensive Urine or Effective Triage?
Victor Herbert, the outspoken Harvard nutrition scientist, was quoted by the United States well read Time magazine in a famous 1992 cover story about nutrition as saying that vitamins just gave one “expensive urine.”
This one liner has acted as a simple rebuke to the consumption of additional nutrients as food supplements – or at least the water soluble ones. It is repeated by the medical community wedded to the model that food will supply all we require, and by the skeptics who seek an easy one liner to dismiss thousands of research papers that contradict this simplistic and invalid statement.
Read the rest of this page »
Enjoyed this article?
Chronic Fatigue Responds to Antioxidants
Many researchers have investigated effective treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), but Martin Pall, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences at Washington State University, and author of Explaining “Unexplained Illnesses”, is the first to suggest a plausible underlying cause and therapeutic method of treatment. Pall, who came down with a severe case of CFS in 1997 and fully recovered in 18 months, has dedicated the rest of his career to understanding and treating these illnesses.
Pall has discovered that abnormal levels of nitric oxide (NO), high levels of peroxynitrite (ONOO-) and superoxide activate the disabling and widely varying symptoms that characterise this entire group of unexplained illness. The fundamental approach: reducing NO-related free radical activity.
Read the rest of this page »
