a hormonal control for sugar-craving?

RT | Still desperate for another candy bar or cocktail, but don’t know why? Never fear - US scientists have found a liver hormone that could curb our sugar and alcohol cravings, and help those suffering from diabetes or obesity.

Two independent research groups have found a hormone produced by the liver (fibroblast growth factor 21, or FGF21) that suppresses the desire to consume simple sugars, the studies published in Cell Metabolism suggest.

The hormone is produced if the level of carbohydrates is high, in which case it enters the bloodstream and sends a signal to the brain to curb the craving.

The findings are unprecedented, researchers say. Earlier, only appetite-controlling hormones were known.

"This is the first liver-derived hormone we know that regulates sugar intake specifically," said Matthew Potthoff, assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Iowa, and co-senior author of one of the papers.

probiotic properties of some cootchies beyond reproach...,(or making coconut cinnamon buns)

RT |  Feminist and blogger Zoe Stavri shocked the internet this week after she revealed she was making a loaf of sourdough bread using yeast from her vaginal thrush infection.

Stavri, who tweets under the moniker Another Angry Woman, posted on Saturday she had the common and easily treatable infection. She suggested she might use some of the yeast to make a sourdough starter culture.

Usually a sourdough starter is made using water and flour to harness wild yeast, and the starter culture will continue to grow naturally until a budding baker decides to turn it into bread.

However, her suggestion was not well-received by internet denizens, who quickly expressed their disgust at Stavri’s creation.

“I just threw out the entire loaf of sourdough bread I bought today bc I can’t eat it w/o thinking of that girl eating her yeast infection [sic],” one user tweeted.

Another tweeted: “You dirty dirty b*tch go lob yourself into the Atlantic please.”

Stavri posted on her blog that she had been surprised at the level of disgust she had triggered with her loaf.

“I’d expected perhaps the odd ‘eww’ and maybe even an ‘I wouldn’t eat that,’ but not this, the level of outright horror, as though I’d dismembered a litter of puppies and was posting selfies with a selfie-stick while doing it,” she wrote.

regular doses of acid have become the creativity enhancer of choice for some professionals

rollingstone |  Let's call him "Ken." Ken is 25, has a master's degree from Stanford and works for a tech startup in San Francisco, doing a little bit of everything: hardware and software design, sales and business development. Recently, he has discovered a new way to enhance his productivity and creativity, and it's not Five Hour Energy or meditation.

Ken is one of a growing number of professionals who enjoy taking "microdoses" of psychedelics – in his free time and, occasionally, at the office. "I had an epic time," he says at the end of one such day. "I was making a lot of sales, talking to a lot of people, finding solutions to their technical problems."

A microdose is about a tenth of the normal dose – around 10 micrograms of LSD, or 0.2-0.5 grams of mushrooms. The dose is subperceptual – enough, says Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, "to feel a little bit of energy lift, a little bit of insight, but not so much that you are tripping."

At a conference on psychedelic research in 2011, James Fadiman, author of The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, introduced microdosing to the popular discourse when he presented the results of survey data he had collected from self-reporting experimenters. Ever since, he says, the number of people describing their experiences – or asking for advice – has been on a steady rise.

the complicated causes and consequences of obesity

thescientist |  Talk about timing. As I write this editorial introduction to our special issue on obesity research, a food fight is going on in a hearing room at the US Congress. The point of contention is the scientific validity of studies informing 2015’s proposed Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released every   years since 1980. Fueling the harsh questioning of the latest guidelines is the doubling of the global incidence of obesity over the past 35 years. “In some ways, haven’t these guidelines somewhat failed? . . . They don’t seem like they are accomplishing their objective,” said Representative Glenn Thompson (R-PA) at the hearing.

One can hardly blame the skeptical questions of the pols. The stats are staggering. According to the World Health Organization, in 2014 more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight, 600 million of whom were obese. In 2013, 42 million children under the age of five were overweight or obese.

Who’s to blame? Sedentary, overindulgent people, food manufacturers, nutrition and obesity researchers focused on the wrong questions? Two opinions in this issue, by Rudy Leibel (here) and Joseph Proietto (here), put forth the idea that genes and lifestyle are both at fault, but are only part of a complicated story of metabolic and hormonal dysfunction, epigenetics, and environmental influences.

endocrine disruptors

resourceinsights |  Several years ago over lunch a medical researcher I know told me that industrial chemicals were disrupting the human endocrine system leading to widespread obesity and diabetes. He said his research had revealed an important cause--the decline in the production of testosterone in both men and women (yes, women produce a little testosterone) due to this disruption. When this deficiency was reversed, patients experienced significant improvement in both obesity and diabetes.

That's not all. He explained that most people believe that poor diet and little exercise are the central cause of obesity and diabetes. No doubt poor diet and exercise are important contributing factors. But when the body's signaling system fails to indicate when it has had enough to eat, it's hard for most people to recognize that they need to stop eating. How many of us know people who say that they are hungry all the time? A normal human being with a normal endocrine system should not feel "hungry all the time."

The link between what has become a sweeping twin epidemic and man-made chemicals is getting wider notice these days. But the link between endocrine disruption, obesity and diabetes is still absent from popular medical accounts such as those found on WebMD for obesity or on official sites such as that of the World Health Organization.

Endocrine disruption has also been linked to cancer, reproductive failure, neurological disorders and developmental problems in fetuses, problems that can lead to illness later in life. In fact, industrial chemicals known to disrupt endocrine function are found in humans and animals worldwide.

The subject of endocrine disruption first burst into the public mind with the publication of Our Stolen Future in 1996 by three scientific researchers. They sought to make the issue more accessible to the public in order to galvanize action.

A few companies have voluntarily eliminated a known disruptor from the linings of food cans and in plastic bottles and containers. But the disruptor, bisphenol A, commonly referred to as BPA, while banned from baby bottles, continues to be used widely.

glyphosate tainted tampons and pads?

RT |  The vast majority ‒ 85 percent ‒ of tampons, cotton and sanitary products tested in a new Argentinian study contained glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, ruled a likely carcinogen by the World Health Organization. 

Meanwhile, 62 percent of the samples tested positive for AMPA, glyphosate's metabolite, according to the study, which was conducted by researchers at the Socio-Environmental Interaction Space (EMISA) of the University of La Plata in Argentina.

All of the raw and sterile cotton gauze analyzed in the study showed evidence of glyphosate, said Dr. Damian Marino, the study's head researcher.

In 2014, 96 percent of cotton produced in the United States was genetically modified, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Transnational agrochemical giant Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, of which glyphosate is the main ingredient, is sprayed over genetically modified crops ‒ which Monsanto also produces ‒ that are engineered to be resistant to the powerful chemical. Used the world over, glyphosate, which Monsanto first developed in 1974, is a broad-spectrum herbicide used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses known to compete with commercial crops. GMO seeds have caused use of glyphosate to increase immensely since the 1990s, according to US Geological Survey data.

In March, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an arm of the World Health Organization, classified glyphosate as a "probable carcinogen," as opposed to its previous designation, a "possible carcinogen."

understanding economic behavior through hygiene...,

MIT |  Graduate student Reshmaan Hussam has always seen economics as more than a collection of numbers: For her, it also entails history, health, and human behavior. Now, as a fifth-year PhD student in economics at MIT, she applies this outlook to understanding sanitation and hygiene behavior in the developing world, with an eye toward affecting policy and behavioral changes. 

Economics first piqued Hussam’s curiosity in high school, when a summer course exposed her to the experimental and behavioral aspects of the field; since then, she’s kept empathy at the forefront of her work in modeling human economic interactions. And after picking up Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” in college, she became acutely interested in how religion impacts economic choices.

Growing up with an uncle who managed a microfinance institution in Bangladesh — where Hussam still has family — gave her early exposure to this particular population’s financial needs and behaviors; as an undergraduate at MIT, she soon turned her research toward development economics. Working with Abhijit Banerjee, the Ford International Professor of Economics at MIT, and Nava Ashraf at Harvard Business School, Hussam embarked on a project to understand how religious sense informs microcredit savings decisions amongst the poor in Bangladesh.

But she quickly found the topic difficult to study: There were many other factors at play in this type of economic decision-making, not least of which was gender roles within a household. Hussam found that while microloans are often marketed to women, their husbands routinely handle the funds. Studying money-saving behavior was nearly impossible when it was unclear whose behavior was being studied — the borrower’s, or her husband’s.

“There is so much valuable work to be done in women’s financial and social empowerment, but how do we capture the right outcomes?” Hussam says. “Maybe there are more measurable, tangible, or direct ways to improve the well-being of these individuals.”

Health takes center stage

Among the many factors that affect economic decision-making is health. Hussam quickly realized that a key means to self-empowerment is empowerment in health and hygiene — where women, particularly mothers, often play a significant role.

“When you’re sick, that becomes your entire focus,” she says. “Repeated, preventable illnesses — with which the developing world is too familiar — have huge, long-term physical and cognitive consequences. Education, labor, and financial security suffer — all of which are channels to self-determination and empowerment.”

chronic inflammation leads to cancer

MIT |  Chronic inflammation caused by disease or exposure to dangerous chemicals has long been linked to cancer, but exactly how this process takes place has remained unclear.

Now, a precise mechanism by which chronic inflammation can lead to cancer has been uncovered by researchers at MIT — a development that could lead to improved targets for preventing future tumors.

In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers unveil how one of a battery of chemical warfare agents used by the immune system to fight off infection can itself create DNA mutations that lead to cancer.

As many as one in five cancers are believed to be caused or promoted by inflammation. These include mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer caused by inflammation following chronic exposure to asbestos, and colon cancer in people with a history of inflammatory bowel disease, says Bogdan Fedeles, a research associate in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT, and the paper’s lead author.

vitamin d and fish oil prevent crazy

PubMed | Abstract

Serotonin regulates a wide variety of brain functions and behaviors. Here, we synthesize previous findings that serotonin regulates executive function, sensory gating, and social behavior and that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and impulsive behavior all share in common defects in these functions. It has remained unclear why supplementation with omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D improve cognitive function and behavior in these brain disorders. Here, we propose mechanisms by which serotonin synthesis, release, and function in the brain are modulated by vitamin D and the 2 marine omega-3 fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Brain serotonin is synthesized from tryptophan by tryptophan hydroxylase 2, which is transcriptionally activated by vitamin D hormone. Inadequate levels of vitamin D (∼70% of the population) and omega-3 fatty acids are common, suggesting that brain serotonin synthesis is not optimal. We propose mechanisms by which EPA increases serotonin release from presynaptic neurons by reducing E2 series prostaglandins and DHA influences serotonin receptor action by increasing cell membrane fluidity in postsynaptic neurons. We propose a model whereby insufficient levels of vitamin D, EPA, or DHA, in combination with genetic factors and at key periods during development, would lead to dysfunctional serotonin activation and function and may be one underlying mechanism that contributes to neuropsychiatric disorders and depression. This model suggests that optimizing vitamin D and marine omega-3 fatty acid intake may help prevent and modulate the severity of brain dysfunction.

gmo grain drenched in glyphosate (roundup) is the real culprit?

thehealthyhomeeconomist |  Emails from folks with allergic or digestive issues to wheat in the United States experienced no symptoms whatsoever when they tried eating pasta on vacation in Italy.

Confused parents wondering why wheat consumption sometimes triggered autoimmune reactions in their children but not at other times.

In my own home, I’ve long pondered why my husband can eat the wheat I prepare at home, but he experiences negative digestive effects eating even a single roll in a restaurant.

There is clearly something going on with wheat that is not well known by the general public. It goes far and beyond organic versus nonorganic, gluten or hybridization because even conventional wheat triggers no symptoms for some who eat wheat in other parts of the world.

What indeed is going on with wheat?

For quite some time, I secretly harbored the notion that wheat in the United States must, in fact, be genetically modified.  GMO wheat secretly invading the North American food supply seemed the only thing that made sense and could account for the varied experiences I was hearing about.

I reasoned that it couldn’t be the gluten or wheat hybridization. Gluten and wheat hybrids have been consumed for thousands of years. It just didn’t make sense that this could be the reason for so many people suddenly having problems with wheat and gluten in general in the past 5-10 years.

Finally, the answer came over dinner a couple of months ago with a friend who was well versed in the wheat production process. I started researching the issue for myself, and was, quite frankly, horrified at what I discovered.

The good news is that the reason wheat has become so toxic in the United States is not because it is secretly GMO as I had feared (thank goodness!).

The bad news is that the problem lies with the manner in which wheat is grown and harvested by conventional wheat farmers.

You’re going to want to sit down for this one.  I’ve had some folks burst into tears in horror when I passed along this information before.

Common wheat harvest protocol in the United States is to drench the wheat fields with Roundup several days before the combine harvesters work through the fields as the practice allows for an earlier, easier and bigger harvest

only genetic weaklings whine about gluten...,

NYTimes |  In essence, humanity’s growing filth selected for genes that increase the risk of autoimmune disease, because those genes helped defend against deadly pathogens. Our own pestilence has shaped our genome.

The benefits of having these genes (survival) may have outweighed their costs (autoimmune disease). So it is with the sickle cell trait: Having one copy protects against cerebral malaria, another plague of settled living; having two leads to congenital anemia.

But there’s another possibility: Maybe these genes don’t always cause quite as much autoimmune disease.

Perhaps the best support for this idea comes from a place called Karelia. It’s bisected by the Finno-Russian border. Celiac-associated genes are similarly prevalent on both sides of the border; both populations eat similar amounts of wheat. But celiac disease is almost five times as common on the Finnish side compared with the Russian. The same holds for other immune-mediated diseases, including Type 1 diabetes, allergies and asthma. All occur more frequently in Finland than in Russia.

WHAT’S the difference? The Russian side is poorer; fecal-oral infections are more common. Russian Karelia, some Finns say, resembles Finland 50 years ago. Evidently, in that environment, these disease-associated genes don’t carry the same liability.

Are the gluten haters correct that modern wheat varietals contain more gluten than past cultivars, making them more toxic? Unlikely, according to recent analysis by Donald D. Kasarda, a scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture. He analyzed records of protein content in wheat harvests going back nearly a century. It hasn’t changed.

Do we eat more wheat these days? Wheat consumption has, in fact, increased since the 1970s, according to the U.S.D.A. But that followed an earlier decline. In the late 19th century, Americans consumed nearly twice as much wheat per capita as we do today.

We don’t really know the prevalence of celiac disease back then, of course. But analysis of serum stored since the mid-20th century suggests that the disease was roughly one-fourth as prevalent just 60 years ago. And at that point, Americans ate about as much wheat as we do now.

Overlooked in all this gluten-blaming is the following: Our default response to gluten, says Dr. Jabri, is to treat it as the harmless protein it is — to not respond.

So the real mystery of celiac disease is what breaks that tolerance, and whatever that agent is, why has it become more common in recent decades?

An important clue comes from the fact that other disorders of immune dysfunction have also increased. We’re more sensitive to pollens (hay fever), our own microbes (inflammatory bowel disease) and our own tissues (multiple sclerosis).

Perhaps the sugary, greasy Western diet — increasingly recognized as pro-inflammatory — is partly responsible. Maybe shifts in our intestinal microbial communities, driven by antibiotics and hygiene, have contributed. Whatever the eventual answer, just-so stories about what we evolved eating, and what that means, blind us to this bigger, and really much more worrisome, problem: The modern immune system appears to have gone on the fritz.

Maybe we should stop asking what’s wrong with wheat, and begin asking what’s wrong with us.

the body shows that ego IS the great filter...,

sciencedaily |  The human gut is home to thousands of bacterial species, most of which have never been described in science. This ecosystem is a complex living community: The microorganisms live side-by-side, compete for nutrients, overthrow one another or even benefit off each other.

It is the aim of Almut Heinken, research associate in Ines Thiele's workgroup, to understand these interactions more completely: "For my thesis, I worked with data from literature and modelled on the computer how certain bacterial species respond to one another when the living conditions in their environment change," the scientist says. "Such models are a common method for making better predictions about the interactions of bacteria. We developed the method further and applied it for the first time to gut bacteria. With eleven species, we were able to calculate how they behave pairwise in the presence of human small intestinal cells."

Almut Heinken discovered some surprising types of behaviour in these studies: "Bacteria that are otherwise very dominant and overthrow other species suddenly enter a symbiosis with those same species if, for example, the oxygen content in the environment drops. They emit substances that make it easier for otherwise outcompeted species to survive. And they, too, receive substances they wouldn't get enough of under the unfavourable living conditions." Heinken has calculated such symbiotic behaviour for the bacterial species Lactobacillus plantarum, for example.

This turnaround in metabolism is vital for the bacterial community to continue functioning within the different sections of the gut: For example, the oxygen content varies in different places along the small intestine. There is more oxygen on the walls than in the centre, and more at the start of the small intestine than at its end. "By the bacteria mutually supporting one another when they find themselves in a low-oxygen environment, the bacterial community remains functional as a whole -- and so the digestion as well," Almut Heinken explains. The nutrient supply and the presence of sloughed intestinal cells also undergo great spatial variance, and have an influence on the symbiotic behaviour of the bacteria.

Amazing new lymphatic system discovered - with no barrier to the brain

Neuroscience News | Implications profound for neurological diseases from autism to Alzheimer’s to multiple sclerosis.

In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist. That such vessels could have escaped detection when the lymphatic system has been so thoroughly mapped throughout the body is surprising on its own, but the true significance of the discovery lies in the effects it could have on the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease to multiple sclerosis.

“Instead of asking, ‘How do we study the immune response of the brain?’ ‘Why do multiple sclerosis patients have the immune attacks?’ now we can approach this mechanistically. Because the brain is like every other tissue connected to the peripheral immune system through meningeal lymphatic vessels,” said Jonathan Kipnis, PhD, professor in the UVA Department of Neuroscience and director of UVA’s Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG). “It changes entirely the way we perceive the neuro-immune interaction. We always perceived it before as something esoteric that can’t be studied. But now we can ask mechanistic questions.”

“We believe that for every neurological disease that has an immune component to it, these vessels may play a major role,” Kipnis said. “Hard to imagine that these vessels would not be involved in a [neurological] disease with an immune component.”

New Discovery in Human Body

Kevin Lee, PhD, chairman of the UVA Department of Neuroscience, described his reaction to the discovery by Kipnis’ lab: “The first time these guys showed me the basic result, I just said one sentence: ‘They’ll have to change the textbooks.’ There has never been a lymphatic system for the central nervous system, and it was very clear from that first singular observation – and they’ve done many studies since then to bolster the finding – that it will fundamentally change the way people look at the central nervous system’s relationship with the immune system.”

Even Kipnis was skeptical initially. “I really did not believe there are structures in the body that we are not aware of. I thought the body was mapped,” he said. “I thought that these discoveries ended somewhere around the middle of the last century. But apparently they have not.”

‘Very Well Hidden’

The discovery was made possible by the work of Antoine Louveau, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Kipnis’ lab. The vessels were detected after Louveau developed a method to mount a mouse’s meninges – the membranes covering the brain – on a single slide so that they could be examined as a whole. “It was fairly easy, actually,” he said. “There was one trick: We fixed the meninges within the skullcap, so that the tissue is secured in its physiological condition, and then we dissected it. If we had done it the other way around, it wouldn’t have worked.”

After noticing vessel-like patterns in the distribution of immune cells on his slides, he tested for lymphatic vessels and there they were. The impossible existed. The soft-spoken Louveau recalled the moment: “I called Jony [Kipnis] to the microscope and I said, ‘I think we have something.'”

the science of craving

moreintelligentlife |  A hush falls over the 7,500-seat auditorium reserved for lectures by eminent neuroscientists, as Dr Kent Berridge, of the University of Michigan, is called on stage to present his pioneering research into pleasure and desire. If anyone can reveal why so many of us can’t say no to the grande or the milkshake, despite knowing the consequences, it is Berridge.

For almost three decades, he has swum against the tide of established thinking, to map the brain mechanics of the reward system—the part of the brain that lights up on scans when people enjoy something, whether it’s cake, snogging, heroin or Facebook. It has been a long and winding journey, featuring cameos from Iggy Pop and the Dalai Lama, and a supporting cast of hedonistic lab rats.

THE REWARD SYSTEM exists to ensure we seek out what we need. If having sex, eating nutritious food or being smiled at brings us pleasure, we will strive to obtain more of these stimuli and go on to procreate, grow bigger and find strength in numbers. Only it’s not as simple in the modern world, where people can also watch porn, camp out in the street for the latest iPhone or binge on KitKats, and become addicted, indebted or overweight. As Aristotle once wrote: “It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.” Buddhists, meanwhile, have endeavoured for 2,500 years to overcome the suffering caused by our propensity for longing. Now, it seems, Berridge has found the neuro-anatomical basis for this facet of the human condition—that we are hardwired to be insatiable wanting machines.

If you had opened a textbook on brain rewards in the late 1980s, it would have told you that the dopamine and opioids that swished and flickered around the reward pathway were the blissful brain chemicals responsible for pleasure. The reward system was about pleasure and somehow learning what yields it, and little more. So when Berridge, a dedicated young scientist who was more David than Goliath, stumbled upon evidence in 1986 that dopamine did not produce pleasure, but in fact desire, he kept quiet. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, after rigorous research, that he felt bold enough to go public with his new thesis. The reward system, he then asserted, has two distinct elements: wanting and liking (or desire and pleasure). While dopamine makes us want, the liking part comes from opioids and also endocannabinoids (a version of marijuana produced in the brain), which paint a “gloss of pleasure”, as Berridge puts it, on good experiences. For years, his thesis was contested, and only now is it gaining mainstream acceptance. Meanwhile, Berridge has marched on, unearthing more and more detail about what makes us tick. His most telling discovery was that, whereas the dopamine/wanting system is vast and powerful, the pleasure circuit is anatomically tiny, has a far more fragile structure and is harder to trigger.

matchmaking is the killer-application for these microbiome fingerprints...,

TheScientist | People harbor distinctive sets of microbes, the genetic signatures of which can be used to identify individuals participating in the Human Microbiome Project, according to work published today (May 11) in PNAS. 

“Each of us personally has a specific set of bugs that are an extension of us, just the same way that our own genome is a part of what defines us,” said coauthor Curtis Huttenhower, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health.

The study suggests that microbiome sequencing may someday have utility in criminal investigations, for example, but it also raises questions about how microbiome sequence data should best be handled to protect the privacy of study participants.

Researchers previously showed that they could differentiate between small groups of individuals who had touched computer keyboards or mice by matching their skin microbiota to the microbes left on the computer equipment. A team led by Jack Gilbert, a microbiologist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, recently showed that families leave their unique microbial signatures in the rooms of their houses. The new work is “interesting confirmation that we have unique microbial strain-level associations with our body,” said Gilbert, who was not involved in the research.

Huttenhower and his colleagues developed an algorithm to identify microbiome signatures based on both 16S ribosomal RNA sequences and whole metagenome shotgun sequencing. They assessed the abundance of microbial taxons and also of specific microbial genes and other stretches of DNA.

The researchers sought to identify the minimum set of microbiome features that would be necessary to uniquely identify a person, drawing from the field of data transmission. “The coding problem is actually very similar to what’s used to transmit information on the Internet or over a cellphone,” Huttenhower explained. “You want to represent [the information] using a code that’s short—so you don’t use up a bunch of bandwidth—but robust, so that small errors don’t change your message.”

kids prefer standing and moving to sitting? what a novel concept...

SAN RAFAEL (CBS SF) — A lot of people say we should stand up for education but, at Vallecito Elementary in San Rafael, they’re actually doing it.

“To me, this is the wave of the future,” says 4th grade teacher Maureen Zink.

In four of the school’s classrooms, chairs have been removed and students spend the day standing at their desks. Some parents, concerned about how sedentary kids have become, donated money for the new desks.

A lot of the kids thought the change was weird and it took a few weeks for legs to stop being sore.

But then something really weird started happening — the kids began to like it.

“You can get your bones stretched out and you don’t, like, want to get it stretched in together again,” 1st grader Marley Metzger explained.

To which 4th grader Lola Maggioncalta adds, “To me it’s really fun and it makes me more focused.”

just sit STILL!

The TUTTIE fidget

Science Direct | For decades, frustrated parents and teachers have barked at fidgety children with ADHD to "Sit still and concentrate!"

But new research conducted at UCF shows that if you want ADHD kids to learn, you have to let them squirm. The foot-tapping, leg-swinging and chair-scooting movements of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are actually vital to how they remember information and work out complex cognitive tasks, according to a study published in an early online release of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.

The findings show the longtime prevailing methods for helping children with ADHD may be misguided.

"The typical interventions target reducing hyperactivity. It's exactly the opposite of what we should be doing for a majority of children with ADHD," said one of the study's authors, Mark Rapport, head of the Children's Learning Clinic at the University of Central Florida. "The message isn't 'Let them run around the room,' but you need to be able to facilitate their movement so they can maintain the level of alertness necessary for cognitive activities."

The research has major implications for how parents and teachers should deal with ADHD kids, particularly with the increasing weight given to students' performance on standardized testing. The study suggests that a majority of students with ADHD could perform better on classroom work, tests and homework if they're sitting on activity balls or exercise bikes, for instance.

The study at the UCF clinic included 52 boys ages 8 to 12. Twenty-nine of the children had been diagnosed with ADHD and the other 23 had no clinical disorders and showed normal development.

americans' digestive tracts look like barren deserts compared with the lush, tropical rain forest found inside indigenous people

npr |  Looks like many of us don't have the right stomach for a paleodiet. Literally.

Two studies give us a glimpse into our ancestors' microbiome — you know, those trillions of bacteria that live in the human gut.

And the take-home message of the studies is clear: Western diets and modern-day hygiene have wiped a few dozen species right out of our digestive tracts. One missing microbe helps metabolize carbohydrates. Other bygone bacteria act as prebiotics. And another communicates with our immune system.

In other words, Americans' digestive tracts look like barren deserts compared with the lush, tropical rain forest found inside indigenous people.

"The concern is that we're losing keystone species," says microbiologist M. Gloria Dominguez-Bello, at the New York University School of Medicine. "That's a hypothesis, but we haven't proved it."

Dominguez-Bello and her colleagues are the first to characterize the gut bacteria of people completely isolated from modern medicine, food and culture.

sugar suppresses body's stress response

medpagetoday |  Drinking beverages sweetened with sugar suppressed cortisol and the brain's stress responses -- an effect that was lacking for drinks sweetened with aspartame, found a new study.

Researchers looked at how sweetened drinks affected 19 women and found that sucrose consumption was associated with reduced stress-induced cortisol (P=0.024), leading them to believe that the brain is taking cues from sugar consumption and altering the body's normal response to stress. They published their results on April 16 in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. 

"This is the first evidence that high sugar – but not aspartame – consumption may relieve stress in humans," said the corresponding author of the study, Kevin Laugero, PhD, at the department of nutrition at University of California Davis. "The concern is psychological or emotional stress could trigger the habitual overconsumption of sugar and amplify sugar's detrimental health effects, including obesity."

The sugar group also had significantly lower nausea (P=0.041), researchers found.

orthorexia nervosa...seduced by righteous eating..., GTFOH!

dailymail |  Orthorexia nervosa, the 'health food eating disorder', gets its name from the Greek word ortho, meaning straight, proper or correct.

This exaggerated focus on food can be seen today in some people who follow lifestyle movements such as 'raw', 'clean' and 'paleo'.

American doctor Steven Bratman coined the term 'orthorexia nervosa' in 1997 some time after his experience in a commune in upstate New York.

It was there he developed an unhealthy obsession with eating 'proper' food.

'All I could think about was food,' he said. 'But even when I became aware that my scrabbling in the dirt after raw vegetables and wild plants had become an obsession, I found it terribly difficult to free myself.

'I had been seduced by righteous eating.'

Bratman's description draws parallels with many modern dietary fads that promise superior health by restricting whole food groups without a medical reason or even a valid scientific explanation.

Raw food followers might meet regularly to 'align their bodies, minds and souls' by feasting on 'cleansing and immune-boosting' raw foods.

Such foods are never heated above 44˚C, so 'all the living enzymes in the food remain intact'. No gluten, dairy or 'sugar' is allowed.

microbes produce gut serotonin

sciencedaily |  lthough serotonin is well known as a brain neurotransmitter, it is estimated that 90 percent of the body's serotonin is made in the digestive tract. In fact, altered levels of this peripheral serotonin have been linked to diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis. New research at Caltech, published in the April 9 issue of the journal Cell, shows that certain bacteria in the gut are important for the production of peripheral serotonin. 

"More and more studies are showing that mice or other model organisms with changes in their gut microbes exhibit altered behaviors," explains Elaine Hsiao, research assistant professor of biology and biological engineering and senior author of the study. "We are interested in how microbes communicate with the nervous system. To start, we explored the idea that normal gut microbes could influence levels of neurotransmitters in their hosts."

Peripheral serotonin is produced in the digestive tract by enterochromaffin (EC) cells and also by particular types of immune cells and neurons. Hsiao and her colleagues first wanted to know if gut microbes have any effect on serotonin production in the gut and, if so, in which types of cells. They began by measuring peripheral serotonin levels in mice with normal populations of gut bacteria and also in germ-free mice that lack these resident microbes.

The researchers found that the EC cells from germ-free mice produced approximately 60 percent less serotonin than did their peers with conventional bacterial colonies. When these germ-free mice were recolonized with normal gut microbes, the serotonin levels went back up--showing that the deficit in serotonin can be reversed.

Mr. Brain's Pork Faggots

barelyedible |  With Christmas and the New Year done, I thought it was time to get back in the saddle and try some more shite food. For lunch today I finally tried Mr Brain’s Pork Faggots after multiple requests. Loyal readers will know that offal based meat products hold no fear for me and I was quite looking forward to sampling Mr Brain’s variety of this traditional dish. According to good ol’ Wikipedia, “A faggot is traditionally made from pig’s heart, liver and fatty belly meat or bacon minced together, with herbs added for flavouring and sometimes bread crumbs”. These ones are a little tamer, as they have left out the heart, much to my disappointment.

After getting the foil container out of the packet, my first reaction was ‘I’m not going to light the oven’. Thankfully you can Microwave them. I do not own such a thing a Microwave dish, so I put the huge meaty icicle into a microwavable dish and gave it its first 4 minute nuking. As you can see from the bottom right ‘midway’ picture, things were not looking good, however, they did smell quite appetising. The aroma took me straight back to my childhood, so after stirring and putting the faggots back into the Microwave for a final 3 minutes and 1 minute cool down, I decided to phone my mother to see if I had been fed them as a child. She denied all knowledge but said I could have had them at my Grandparents. More than likely. Enough with the nostalgia, it was time to eat.

It says on the packaging “You asked for it! Now with more sauce”, thinking this must be pretty good, I tried the sauce/gravy first. I wasn’t disappointed. I will go as far and say it was the tastiest sauce I’ve eaten so for in this voyage of culinary discovery. The faggots themselves are like a soft meatball and have a slightly haggis like smell (which I love). They have a distinct liver and sage taste, with a hint mace and pepper. Not bad at all. By now our Bengal cat was whining at my feet expectantly. I shouted out to my partner “these are lovely!” to which she replied “well they smell f**king disgusting”. I looked down at the cat with a smug look on my face and said, “you’re not getting any of these, son” and polished off the lot. 

Ingredients West Country Sauce 62%: Water, Lard, Wheat Flour, Modified Maze Starch, Tomato Puree, Salt, Colour (E150c), Yeast Extract, Onion Flavour, Sugar, Herb & Spice extract. 

 Pork Faggots 38%: Water, Rusks, Rehydrated Pork Rinds, Pork Liver (15%), Pork (4%), Pork Fat, Wheat Flour, Salt, Sage, Spice Extract.

who authorized you sheeple to ditch cheap GMO grain causing you a slew of chronic debilitating inflammatory symptoms?

WaPo |  Gluten, one of the most popular proteins on this planet, is also increasingly one of the most hated. Here in the United States, the gluten-free movement, which has been driven not only by an actual need among celiacs to avoid the food but also a widespread belief that letting bread, beer, pasta, and all other foods with gluten go means living healthier for almost anyone, is so pervasive that it might as well be a fact of American life. Some 20 million in this country claim that eating it causes them distress, according to The New Yorker. Another 100 million people, meanwhile, say that they are actively working to eliminate gluten from their diets. And yet, amid the rise of the villainization of gluten, is a growing sense that something about the movement seems a bit off.

The New Yorker's Michael Specter's recent deep dive into the fad brought to surface a number of legitimate gripes, including the lack of scientific evidence supporting the belief that going gluten-free is better for one's health.

"How could gluten, present in a staple food that has sustained humanity for thousands of years, have suddenly become so threatening?" Specter asks.

Wheat, which contains gluten, is one of the cheapest foods known to man. It's also one of the most essential: it currently provides an estimated one-fifth of the calories people around the globe consume. Going gluten-free might make one feel better, but it's a luxury not everyone can afford.

there is no scientific case for homeopathy: the debate is over

guardian |  Homeopathy has been with me all my life. As a boy, I was treated by homeopaths; my first post as a junior doctor was in a homeopathic hospital, later I researched homeopathy and published more than 100 papers on the subject, and finally I summarised the entire experience in a memoir entitled A Scientist in Wonderland.

In 1993, when I became professor of complementary medicine at Exeter, I was more than happy to give homeopathy the benefit of the doubt. I would have loved to show that it is effective beyond placebo, not least because anyone doing that would almost automatically deserve a Nobel prize. He or she would have to show that a sizeable chunk of our understanding of the laws of nature is quite simply wrong. Homeopathy is based on the belief that “like cures like” and that the dilution of a medicine – homeopaths call the process “potentiation” – renders it not weaker but stronger. As both of these assumptions fly in the face of science, critical thinkers have always insisted that few things could be more implausible than homeopathy.

But plausibility is not everything. In Exeter, we conducted trials, surveys and reviews of homeopathy in the faint hope that we might discover something important. What we did find was sobering:

• Our trials failed to show that homeopathy is more than a placebo.

• Our reviews demonstrated that the most reliable of the 230 or so trials of homeopathy ever published are also not positive.

• Studies with animals confirmed the results obtained on humans.

• Surveys and case reports suggested that homeopathy can be dangerous.

• The claims made by homeopaths to cure conditions like cancer, asthma or even Ebola were bogus.

• The promotion of homeopathy is not ethical.

why you should think about your 3 squares habit

motherjones |  Historian Abigail Carroll, author of the book Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal, explained to me that the the thrice-daily eating schedule goes back at least as far as the Middle Ages in Europe. When European settlers got to America, they also imported their meal habits: a light meal—maybe cold mush and radishes—in the morning, a heavier, cooked one midday, and a third meal similar to the first one later in the day. They observed that the eating schedule of the native tribes was less rigid—the volume and timing of their eating varied with the seasons. 

Sometimes, when food was scarce, they fasted. The Europeans took this as "evidence that natives were uncivilized," Carroll explained to me in an email. "Civilized people ate properly and boundaried their eating, thus differentiating themselves from the animal kingdom, where grazing is the norm." (So fascinated were Europeans with tribes' eating patterns, notes Carroll, that they actually watched Native Americans eat "as a form of entertainment.")

The three daily meals that the settlers brought evolved with Americans' lifestyles. As people became more prosperous, they added meat to breakfast and dinner. After the Industrial Revolution, when people began to work away from home, the midday meal became a more casual affair, and the cooked meal shifted to the end of the day, when workers came home. The one thing that did not change was the overall amount of food that people ate—despite the fact that they had largely abandoned the active lifestyles of the farm in favor of sedentary ones in cities and suburbs. "People were still eating these giant country breakfasts," says Carroll. Soon, doctors reported that more of their patients were suffering from indigestion.

In an effort to rein in caloric intake, nutritionists began advising people to eat a lighter breakfast—and marketers pounced on the opportunity. In 1897, brothers Will Keith Kellogg and John Harvey Kellogg introduced corn flakes as healthy alternative to heavy breakfasts. (The pair had an ulterior motive: They wanted to spread the gospel of the vegetarian diet because it was part of their Seventh Day Adventist faith.)

Corn flakes took off, and in the years that followed, breakfast became known as a meal for health food. Fruit-grower associations seized the opportunity to market juices, which, the ad campaigns announced, were chock full of a newly discovered thing called vitamins. The makers of breakfast foods warned of the dangers of skipping "the most important meal of the day."

That line of reasoning persists today—check out Kellogg's modern-day treatise on the health benefits of breakfast. But there's just one problem: Science shows that when it comes to maintaining your metabolism—the bodily system that helps us turn food into energy and, when out of whack, can lead to diabetes and other disorders—it doesn't make a whit of difference whether you eat breakfast or not.

yo-yoni: sour, tangy, and tingly on the tongue...,

motherboard.vice |  The idea first came up while a friend and I were discussing the vagina's probiotic properties. "Why is there a whole cookbook of cum-based recipes and not a SINGLE THING on Google about culturing jazz juice?" she wrote in a message to me and a few of our friends.

So, as the disapproving ghost of Julia Child looked on, she grabbed a spoon, a pan, and a candy thermometer, and set out to create yogurt from her vagina—the ultimate in locally-sourced cuisine.

Cecilia Westbrook is a friend of mine, and an MD/PhD student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. We had joked before about making yogurt from vaginal secretions—predictable jokes about the dietary benefit of eating pussy, about naming the product ‘Queeffer’—but then a Google search was performed and: nothing. Not even in medical literature. Curiosity piqued, Westbrook began to research in earnest. What choice did she have but to try it herself?

Every vagina is home to hundreds of different types of bacteria and organisms. These organisms—collectively known as the vaginal community—produce lactic acid, hydrogen peroxide, and other substances that keep the vagina healthy. The dominant bacteria is called lactobacillus, which also happens to be what people sometimes use to culture milk, cheese, and yogurt.

But Westbrook didn’t make her yogurt just for the sake of some amazing jokes. And she certainly didn’t make it because she was hungry. She knew enough about the chemistry of the vagina to think that eating a batch of yogurt made from her ladyjuices would be good for her. Seriously.

Her first batch of yogurt tasted sour, tangy, and almost tingly on the tongue. She compared it to Indian yogurt, and ate it with some blueberries.

disgusting deuterostem incubator of stench and contagion...,

NYTimes |  Have you ever been on the subway and seen something that you did not quite recognize, something mysteriously unidentifiable?

Well, there is a good chance scientists do not know what it is either.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College released a study on Thursday that mapped DNA found in New York’s subway system — a crowded, largely subterranean behemoth that carries 5.5 million riders on an average weekday, and is filled with hundreds of species of bacteria (mostly harmless), the occasional spot of bubonic plague, and a universe of enigmas. Almost half of the DNA found on the system’s surfaces did not match any known organism and just 0.2 percent matched the human genome.

“People don’t look at a subway pole and think, ‘It’s teeming with life,’ ” said Dr. Christopher E. Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medical College and the lead author of the study. “After this study, they may. But I want them to think of it the same way you’d look at a rain forest, and be almost in awe and wonder, effectively, that there are all these species present — and that you’ve been healthy all along.”

Dr. Mason said the inspiration for the study struck about four years ago when he was dropping off his daughter at day care. He watched her explore her new surroundings by happily popping objects into her mouth. As is the custom among tiny children, friendships were made on the floor, by passing back and forth toys that made their way from one mouth to the next.

“I couldn’t help thinking, ‘How much is being transferred, and on which kinds of things?’ ” Dr. Mason said. So he considered a place where adults can get a little too close to each other, the subway.

Thus was the project, called PathoMap, born. Over the past 17 months, a team mainly composed of medical students, graduate students and volunteers fanned out across the city, using nylon swabs to collect DNA, in triplicate, from surfaces that included wooden benches, stairway handrails, seats, doors, poles and turnstiles.

eating is so passé, or, resistance is futile

Marine Biological Laboratory | How a brilliant-green sea slug manages to live for months at a time “feeding” on sunlight, like a plant, is clarified in a recent study published in The Biological Bulletin.

The authors present the first direct evidence that the emerald green sea slug’s chromosomes have some genes that come from the algae it eats.

These genes help sustain photosynthetic processes inside the slug that provide it with all the food it needs.

Importantly, this is one of the only known examples of functional gene transfer from one multicellular species to another, which is the goal of gene therapy to correct genetically based diseases in humans.

“Is a sea slug a good [biological model] for a human therapy? Probably not. But figuring out the mechanism of this naturally occurring gene transfer could be extremely instructive for future medical applications,” says study co-author Sidney K. Pierce, an emeritus professor at University of South Florida and at University of Maryland, College Park.

The team used an advanced imaging technique to confirm that a gene from the alga V. litorea is present on the E. chlorotica slug’s chromosome. This gene makes an enzyme that is critical to the function of photosynthetic “machines” called chloroplasts, which are typically found in plants and algae.

methuselah

FASEB Journal | Telomere extension has been proposed as a means to improve cell culture and tissue engineering and to treat disease. However, telomere extension by nonviral, nonintegrating methods remains inefficient. Here we report that delivery of modified mRNA encoding TERT to human fibroblasts and myoblasts increases telomerase activity transiently (24–48 h) and rapidly extends telomeres, after which telomeres resume shortening.

molecular neurogenetics on literal viruses of the mind...,

lunduniversity |  Researchers have long been aware that endogenous retroviruses constitute around five per cent of our DNA. For many years, they were considered junk DNA of no real use, a side-effect of our evolutionary journey.

In the current study, Johan Jakobsson and his colleagues show that retroviruses seem to play a central role in the basic functions of the brain, more specifically in the regulation of which genes are to be expressed, and when. The findings indicate that, over the course of evolution, the viruses took an increasingly firm hold on the steering wheel in our cellular machinery. The reason the viruses are activated specifically in the brain is probably due to the fact that tumours cannot form in nerve cells, unlike in other tissues.

“We have been able to observe that these viruses are activated specifically in the brain cells and have an important regulatory role. We believe that the role of retroviruses can contribute to explaining why brain cells in particular are so dynamic and multifaceted in their function. It may also be the case that the viruses’ more or less complex functions in various species can help us to understand why we are so different”, says Johan Jakobsson, head of the research team for molecular neurogenetics at Lund University.

The article, based on studies of neural stem cells, shows that these cells use a particular molecular mechanism to control the activation processes of the retroviruses. The findings provide us with a complex insight into the innermost workings of the most basal functions of the nerve cells. At the same time, the results open up potential for new research paths concerning brain diseases linked to genetic factors.

“I believe that this can lead to new, exciting studies on the diseases of the brain. Currently, when we look for genetic factors linked to various diseases, we usually look for the genes we are familiar with, which make up a mere two per cent of the genome. Now we are opening up the possibility of looking at a much larger part of the genetic material which was previously considered unimportant. The image of the brain becomes more complex, but the area in which to search for errors linked to diseases with a genetic component, such as neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric illness and brain tumours, also increases”.

Publication:
TRIM28 represses transcription of endogenous retroviruses in neural progenitor cells

"science" just now catching up with DIY dietary symptom-control...,

theatlantic |  Doctors aren’t entirely sure what triggers rheumatoid arthritis, a disease in which the body turns on itself to attack the joints, but an emerging body of research is focusing on a potential culprit: the bacteria that live in our intestines.

Several recent studies have found intriguing links between gut microbes, rheumatoid arthritis, and other diseases in which the body’s immune system goes awry and attacks its own tissue.

A study published in 2013 by Jose Scher, a rheumatologist at New York University, found that people with rheumatoid arthritis were much more likely to have a bug called Prevotella copri in their intestines than people that did not have the disease. In another study published in October, Scher found that patients with psoriatic arthritis, another kind of autoimmune joint disease, had significantly lower levels of other types of intestinal bacteria.

This work is part of a growing effort by researchers around the world to understand how the microbiome—the mass of microbes that live in the gastrointestinal tract—affects our overall health. The gut contains up to a thousand different bacteria species, which together weigh between one and three pounds. This mass contains trillions of cells, more than the number of cells that make up our own bodies. Over the past several years, scientists have compiled a growing collection of evidence that many of these bugs may have a major effect on our well-being, with some triggering chronic, non-infectious ailments such as rheumatoid arthritis, and others protecting against such diseases.

“It’s become more and more clear that these microbes can affect the immune system, even in diseases that are not in the gut,” says Veena Taneja, an immunologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who has found clear differences in the bacterial populations of mice bred to be genetically prone to rheumatoid arthritis. In those more susceptible to the disease, a species of bacteria from the Clostridium family dominates. In mice without arthritis, other strains flourish, and the Clostridium strains are scarce.

“This is frontier stuff,” says Scher, the director of the NYU’s Microbiome Center for Rheumatology and Autoimmunity. “This is a shift in paradigm. By including the microbiome, we’ve added a new player to the game.”