Amazing Buzz 4u: Medical

An apple a day may do more than keep the doctor away — it can lower levels of bad cholesterol and improve levels of good cholesterol without causing weight gain in women, according to a new study.Women who ate 75 grams of dried apples every day for six months had a 23 percent decrease in bad LDL cholesterol, said study researcher Bahram H. Arjmandi, professor and chair of the department of nutrition at the Florida State University.Their levels of good HDL cholesterol, also increased by about 4 percent, according to the study.

To see the effects apples had on women’s health, Arjmandi and his colleagues randomly assigned 160 women ages 45 to 65 to one of two groups. One group ate 75 grams (roughly 2.64 ounces, or about a one-third of a cup) of dried apples every day for a year, and the other group ate another dried fruit for a year. Their blood samples were taken after three months, six months and then at the end of the study period.
At the end of the year-long period, the women who ate the apples had lower levels of bad cholesterol, lipid hydroperoxide (the product of toxic free radicals, which cause cell damage and death in the body) and C-reactive protein, an indicator of inflammation in the body, than when they started the study, researchers said.

Researchers also found that the extra 240 calories per day consumed from the dried apple did not lead to weight gain in the women — in fact, they lost an average of 3.3 pounds over the year, the study said.
Even though the people in the study ate dried apples, the effect would likely be the same if they ate fresh apples, too, said Keri Gans, a dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, who was not involved with the study.
Though it’s hard to make an exact comparison, one cup of fresh apples would be about equivalent to a quarter cup of dried apples, Gans said. Their cholesterol-lowering benefits likely come from their high fiber content, which past research has shown can lower bad cholesterol levels, she said.

The study was presented today (April 12) at the meeting Experimental Biology 2011. The study was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture.

A mother’s stress during pregnancy and breast-feeding may prompt changes in her infant’s genes that increase the child’s risk of obesity later in life, according to a new study in mice. When mice in the study were put under stress – a low protein diet – during pregnancy, their offspring grew faster after weaning than did the offspring of non-stressed mice. After two months, the offspring of stressed mice developed belly fat and prediabetes, a condition characterized by abnormally high blood sugar levels. The researchers think the mother’s stress causes changes in the way neuropeptide Y, a brain neurotransmitter, behaves. Neuropeptide Y stimulates appetite and can induce the formation and growth of fat cells. Stress may cause modifications of the offspring’s genes that increase the activity of neuropeptide Y, and in turn, increase the number of fat cells in the body.

The number of fat cells a person has before they reach their teen years is a major determinant of his or her risk for obesity, said study researcher Ruijun Han, of the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology. “So intervention during pregnancy and childhood might be an efficient way to prevent adult obesity,” Han said.
However, more work needs to be done to see if stress produces the same effects in humans. In addition, the findings have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The study will be presented this week at the Experimental Biology 2011 meeting in Washington, D.C.

While the mother mice in the study were only exposed to nutritional stress, people who experience malnutrition are also subjected to social stress, said study researcher Zofia Zukowska, professor of physiology at Georgetown University in Washington D.C.
“In humans, low protein diet or malnutrition is often associated with a very hard lifestyle,” Zukowska said. “So it’s a combination of nutritional and psychological stress,” she said.
Previous studies of people who experienced famine, such as survivors of the Dutch feminine during World War II, have found that children of malnourished pregnant women are at increased risk for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, Zukowska said.

The researchers plan to conduct future studies comparing the impact of psychological stress and nutritional stress during pregnancy, Zukowska said.

People who travel extensively for business are at a higher risk for a variety of health
Problems, including obesity and high cholesterol.
That’s the finding of two researchers at Columbia University who found that the more often a person travels for work, the less healthy they are likely to be.
The research was conducted by comparing the health data of more than 13,000 employees from a corporate wellness program. Close to 80 percent of the employees traveled at least one night per month. Nearly 1 percent were extensive travelers — spending as many as 20 nights a month on the road.

The researchers found that employees who did not travel at all were actually a less healthy group as compared to light travelers who travelled between one and six nights a month. Researchers think this may reflect the fact that those workers were already unhealthy and therefore, did not travel as much for work.
Otherwise, rates of “less-than-good” health increased along with nights of travel. Extensive travelers were 260 percent more likely to rate their health as either fair or poor, compared to light travelers.
Other health risk factors showed similar patterns: obesity was 33 percent more likely in nontravelers and 92 percent more likely for extensive travelers. The same two groups were also more likely to have high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.

Although business travel is often equated with long airline flights, relatively short business trips in personal cars are much more common. Several factors could contribute to health risks in frequent business travelers — for example, poor sleep, fattening foods and long periods of inactivity, the researchers said.

The study’s authors, Catherine Richards and Andrew Rundle of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, suggest some steps that companies can take to help employees stay healthy while they’re on the road — for example, offering stress management classes, selecting hotels with gym facilities and making healthier food choices using meal reimbursements.
The research appears in the April Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

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