Dan

The study, published online in the Journal of Women’s Health, challenges the widely-held belief that all types of alcohol consumption heighten the risk of developing breast cancer. Doctors long have determined that alcohol increases the body’s estrogen levels, fostering the growth of cancer cells.

But the Cedars-Sinai study found that chemicals in the skins and seeds of red grapes slightly lowered estrogen levels while elevating testosterone among premenopausal women who drank eight ounces of red wine nightly for about a month.

White wine lacked the same effect.

Researchers called their findings encouraging, saying women who occasionally drink alcohol might want to reassess their choices.

“If you were to have a glass of wine with dinner, you may want to consider a glass of red,” said Chrisandra Shufelt, MD, assistant director of the Women’s Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and one of the study’s co-authors. “Switching may shift your risk.”

Shufelt noted that breast cancer is the leading type of women’s cancer in the U.S., accounting for more than 230,000 new cases last year, or 30 percent of all female cancer diagnoses. An estimated 39,000 women died from the disease in 2011, according to the American Cancer Society.

In the Cedars-Sinai study, 36 women were randomized to drink either Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay daily for almost a month, then switched to the other type of wine. Blood was collected twice each month to measure hormone levels.

Researchers sought to determine whether red wine mimics the effects of aromatase inhibitors, which play a key role in managing estrogen levels. Aromatase inhibitors are currently used to treat breast cancer.

Investigators said the change in hormone patterns suggested that red wine may stem the growth of cancer cells, as has been shown in test tube studies.

Co-author Glenn D. Braunstein, MD, said the results do not mean that white wine increases the risk of breast cancer but that grapes used in those varieties may lack the same protective elements found in reds.

“There are chemicals in red grape skin and red grape seeds that are not found in white grapes that may decrease breast cancer risk,” said Braunstein, vice president for Clinical Innovation and the James R. Klinenberg, MD, Chair in Medicine.

The study will be published in the April print edition of the Journal of Women’s Health, but Braunstein noted that large-scale studies still are needed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of red wine to see if it specifically alters breast cancer risk. He cautioned that recent epidemiological data indicated that even moderate amounts of alcohol intake may generally increase the risk of breast cancer in women. Until larger studies are done, he said, he would not recommend that a non-drinker begin to drink red wine.

The research team also included C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, director of the Women’s Heart Center, director of the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center and the Women’s Guild Chair in Women’s Health, as well as researchers from the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Hartford Hospital in Connecticut.

ournal Reference:

Chrisandra Shufelt, C. Noel Bairey Merz, YuChing Yang, Joan Kirschner, Donna Polk, Frank Stanczyk, Maura Paul-Labrador, Glenn D. Braunstein. Red Versus White Wine as a Nutritional Aromatase Inhibitor in Premenopausal Women. Journal of Women’s Health, 2011; 111207083142004 DOI: 10.1089/jwh.2011.3001

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120106105925.htm

Vitamin B therapy was once widely used to lower homocysteine levels and too much of this amino acid in the bloodstream was linked to increased risk of stroke and heart attack. But several randomized trials found lowering homocysteine levels with B vitamins did not result in a cardiovascular benefit.

A study by Spence, a scientist with the Robarts Research Institute at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, found Vitamin B therapy actually increased cardiovascular risk in patients with diabetic nephropathy.

He says this commentary provides insights that overturn the widespread belief that homocysteine is dead. He says two key issues have been overlooked in the interpretation of several clinical trials: the key role of vitamin B12, and the newly recognized role of renal failure.

“It is now clear that the large trials showing no benefit of vitamin therapy obscured the benefit of vitamin therapy because they lumped together patients with renal failure and those with good renal function, says Spence, the author of How to Prevent Your Stroke. “The vitamins are harmful in renal failure, and beneficial in patients with good renal function, and they cancel each other out.”

The commentary also contends most of the trials did not use a high enough dose of vitamin B12.

Journal Reference:

J. D. Spence, M. J. Stampfer. Understanding the Complexity of Homocysteine Lowering With Vitamins: The Potential Role of Subgroup Analyses. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2011; 306 (23): 2610 DOI: 10.1001/jama.2011.1834

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111221140716.htm

Everyday activities such as eating and exercise can tear the plasma membrane and the new research shows that vitamin E is essential to repair. Without repair of muscle cells, for example, muscles eventually waste away and die in a process similar to what occurs in muscular dystrophy. Muscle weakness also is a common complaint in diabetes, another condition associated with inadequate plasma membrane repair.

“Without any special effort we consume vitamin E every day and we don’t even know what it does in our bodies,” said Dr. Paul McNeil, GHSU cell biologist and the study’s corresponding author. He now feels confident about at least one of its jobs.

Century-old animal studies linked vitamin E deficiency to muscle problems but how that happens remained a mystery until now, McNeil said. His understanding that a lack of membrane repair caused muscle wasting and death prompted McNeil to look at vitamin E.

Vitamin E appears to aid repair in several ways. As an antioxidant, it helps eliminate destructive byproducts from the body’s use of oxygen that impede repair. Because it’s lipid-soluble, vitamin E can actually insert itself into the membrane to prevent free radicals from attacking. It also can help keep phospholipids, a major membrane component, compliant so they can better repair after a tear.

For example, exercise causes the cell powerhouse, the mitochondria, to burn a lot more oxygen than normal. “As an unavoidable consequence you produce reactive oxygen species,” McNeil said. The physical force of exercise tears the membrane. Vitamin E enables adequate plasma membrane repair despite the oxidant challenge and keeps the situation in check.

When he mimicked what happens with exercise by using hydrogen peroxide to produce free radicals, he found that tears in skeletal muscle cells would not heal unless pretreated with vitamin E.

Next steps, which will be aided by two recent National Institutes of Health grants, include examining membrane repair in vitamin E-deficient animals.

McNeil also wants to further examine membrane repair failure in diabetes. Former GHSU graduate student Dr. Amber C. Howard showed in a recent paper in the journal Diabetes that cells taken from animal models of types 1 and 2 diabetes have faulty repair mechanisms. Howard found high glucose was a culprit by soaking cells in a high-glucose solution for eight to 12 weeks, during which time they developed a repair defect. It’s also well documented that reactive oxygen species levels are elevated in diabetes.

The Nature Communications paper showed that vitamin E treatment in an animal model of diabetes restored some membrane repair ability. Also, an analogue of the most biologically active form of vitamin E significantly reversed membrane repair deficits caused by high glucose and increased cell survival after tearing cells in culture.

Now McNeil wants to know if he can prevent the development of advanced glycation end products — a sugar that high glucose adds to proteins that his lab has shown can also impede membrane repair — in the animal models of diabetes. The researchers have a drug that at least in cultured animal cells, prevents repair defects from advanced glycation end products.

Howard, first author on the Nature Communications paper, is an instructor at Husson University in Bangor, Maine. McNeil is a faculty member in GHSU’s Medical College of Georgia and College of Graduate Studies.

Amber C. Howard, Anna K. McNeil, Paul L. McNeil. Promotion of plasma membrane repair by vitamin E. Nature Communications, 2011; 2: 597 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1594

ScienceDaily (Dec. 20, 2011) — A PhD project from LIFE — the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Copenhagen has shown that breastfed children follow a different growth pattern than non-breastfed children. Breastfeeding lowers the levels of the growth hormones IGF-I and insulin in the blood, which means that growth is slightly slower. This is believed to reduce the risk of overweight and diabetes later in life.
The PhD project is part of SKOT, a large-scale Danish study of small children, diet and wellbeing, which has followed and examined 330 healthy children at 9, 18 and 36 months.

The SKOT project is to increase our knowledge of what Danish children eat in the critical phase when they move from breastmilk or formula to solids. The transition is critical because the food intake during this period has a significant bearing on the child’s growth and risk of developing lifestyle diseases later in life.

PhD Anja Lykke Madsen has gathered the first results of the SKOT study in her PhD project:

“We can see that breastfeeding has a significant, measurable effect on the important growth regulators in the blood, IGF-I and insulin. The more times the child was breastfed, the lower the hormone levels. This suggests that the child has a slightly lower risk of becoming overweight later in childhood. At the same time, there was a correlation between how long the children were breastfed and their weight at 18 months,” says LIFE PhD Anja Lykke Madsen.

Mother’s milk for healthy growth

According to Professor Kim Fleischer Michaelsen from LIFE, head of the SKOT project, the study provides valuable knowledge about the factors affecting the early onset of obesity.

“It is well-known that children who are breastfed grow slightly more slowly than children who are given formula, and it looks as if this growth pattern is optimal because it reduces the risk of developing lifestyle diseases later in life. However, the new results from SKOT show that breastfeeding also affects levels of IGF-I and insulin at 9 months, i.e. at a time when the children are well into eating solids,” says Professor Kim Fleischer Michaelsen from LIFE. He continues:

“Looking at the children’s growth up to 18 months identified a number of interesting correlations which may improve our understanding of the mechanisms behind early-onset obesity. The longer the children were breastfed, the lower their weight at 18 months. It’s as simple as that.”

The study also showed that the longer the children slept, the smaller their waist circumference. Moreover, the children of mothers who gained lot of weight during pregnancy had a slightly thicker layer of subcutaneous fat than the children of mothers who put on less weight.

Need to study long-term effects

Kim Fleischer Michaelsen stresses the need to follow up and to continue to examine the children to establish the long-term effects, while also looking at correlations in other studies.

University of Copenhagen (2011, December 20). Breastfeeding promotes healthy growth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111220133907.htm

Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 25(12):3461-3471, December 2011.

doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e318217d48d

Trepanowski, JF, Farney, TM, McCarthy, CG, Schilling, BK, Craig, SA, and Bloomer, RJ. The effects of chronic betaine supplementation on exercise performance, skeletal muscle oxygen saturation, and associated biochemical parameters in resistance trained men. J Strength Cond Res 25(12): 3461–3471, 2011—We examined the effects of chronic betaine supplementation on exercise performance and associated parameters in resistance trained men. Men were randomly assigned in a double-blind manner using a crossover design to consume betaine (2.5 g of betaine mixed in 500 ml of Gatorade®) or a placebo (500 ml of Gatorade®) for 14 days, with a 21-day washout period. Before and after each treatment period, tests of lower- and upper-body muscular power and isometric force were conducted, including a test of upper-body muscular endurance (10 sets of bench press exercise to failure). Muscle tissue oxygen saturation (StO2) during the bench press protocol was measured via near infrared spectroscopy. Blood samples were collected before and after the exercise test protocol for analysis of lactate, nitrate/nitrite (NOx), and malondialdehyde (MDA). When analyzed using a repeated measures analysis of variance, no significant differences were noted between conditions for exercise performance variables (p > 0.05). However, an increase in total repetitions (p = 0.01) and total volume load (p = 0.02) in the 10-set bench press protocol was noted with betaine supplementation (paired t-tests), with values increasing approximately 6.5% from preintervention to postintervention. Although not of statistical significance (p = 0.14), postexercise blood lactate increased to a lesser extent with betaine supplementation (210%) compared with placebo administration (270%). NOx was lower postintervention as compared with preintervention (p = 0.06), and MDA was relatively unchanged. The decrease in StO2 during the bench press protocol was greater with betaine vs. placebo (p = 0.01), possibly suggesting enhanced muscle oxygen consumption. These findings indicate that betaine supplementation results in a moderate increase in total repetitions and volume load in the bench press exercise, without favorably impacting other performance measures.

Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 25(12):3456-3460, December 2011.

doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e3182163071

Abstract:

Spaccarotella, KJ and Andzel, WD. The effects of low fat chocolate milk on postexercise recovery in collegiate athletes. J Strength Cond Res 25(12): 3456–3460, 2011—Drinking chocolate milk between exercise sessions may improve recovery. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of low fat chocolate milk vs. a carbohydrate–electrolyte beverage (CE) on recovery between preseason practice sessions among 5 male and 8 female Division III soccer players. The study used a randomized crossover design: between morning and afternoon practices, athletes received either an amount of chocolate milk that provided 1 g carbohydrate per kilogram body weight or an equal volume of CE (mean volume of 615 ± 101 ml). After their afternoon practice, they completed a shuttle run to fatigue. Data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon paired rank-sign test (for shuttle run time) and the paired samples t-test (for dietary intake). No significant differences in run time were reported for the group. For the men only, there was a trend of increased time to fatigue with chocolate milk compared with the CE (exact p = 0.03). Low fat chocolate milk may therefore be as good as a CE at promoting recovery between training sessions during preseason.

ABSTRACT
Rahimi, R.

Creatine supplementation decreases oxidative DNA
damage and lipid peroxidation induced by a single bout of
resistance exercise. J Strength Cond Res 25(12): 3448–3455,
2011—Creatine (Cr), or methyl guanidine–acetic acid, can be
either ingested from exogenous sources, such as fish or meat,
or produced endogenously by the body, primarily in the liver. It is
used as an ergogenic aid to improve muscle mass, strength,
and endurance. Heretofore, Cr’s positive therapeutic benefits
in various oxidative stress-associated diseases have been
reported in the literature and, recently, Cr has also been shown
to exert direct antioxidant effects. Therefore, the purpose of
this study was to investigate the effects of an acute bout of
resistance exercise (RE) on oxidative stress response and
oxidative DNA damage in male athletes and whether supplementation
with Cr could negate any observed differences.
Twenty-seven resistance-trained men were randomly divided
into a Cr supplementation group (the Cr group [21.6 6 3.6
years], taking 4 3 5 g Cr monohydrate per day) or a placebo
(PL) supplementation group (the PL group [21.2 6 3.2 years],
taking 4 3 5 g maltodextrin per day). A double-blind research
design was employed for a 7-day supplementation period.
Before and after the seventh day of supplementation, the
subjects performed an RE protocol (7 sets of 4 exercises using
60–90 1 repetition maximum) in the flat pyramid loading
pattern. Blood and urine samples taken before, immediately,
and 24-hour postexercise were analyzed for plasma malondialdehyde
(MDA) and urinary 8-hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine (8-
OHdG) excretion. Before the supplementation period, a significant
increase in the urinary 8-OHdG excretion and plasma
MDA levels was observed after RE. The Cr supplementation induces a significant increase in athletics performance, and it
attenuated the changes observed in the urinary 8-OHdG
excretion and plasma MDA. These results indicate that Cr
supplementation reduced oxidative DNA damage and lipid
peroxidation induced by a single bout of RE.

Address correspondence to R. Rahimi, rahman.rahimi@yahoo.com.
25(12)/3448–3455
Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research
2011 National Strength and Conditioning Association

The researchers selected thirty botanical compounds that are of possible concern for human health because they are able to damage the genetic material and/or are carcinogenic. The majority of these compounds were found to belong to the group of the alkenylbenzenes or the group of pyrrolizidine alkaloids. For these botanical ingredients regulatory authorities are aware of the possible risk for human health and consequently the use of pyrrolizidine alkaloid-containing botanicals in food and plant-based food supplements is prohibited in most EU Member States for precautionary health protection reasons. The use of the alkenylbenzenes estragole, methyleugenol, safrole or β-asarone as flavouring agents in food is also banned within the EU. However, restrictions have not (yet) been made with regard to the presence of alkenylbenzenes in plant-based food supplements.

The analysis of several plant-based food supplements containing as main ingredient basil, fennel, nutmeg, sassafras, cinnamon or calamus or their essential oils revealed that some of these products contain relatively high levels of alkenylbenzenes. The researchers concluded that the use of such plant-based food supplements raises a concern for human health and might be of high priority for risk management actions to be taken.

The research team passes the remark that there are also plant-based food supplements in which the levels of the alkenylbenzenes were so low that they are of no concern. Furthermore, they underline that the results obtained in studies in which liver cancer was observed in experimental animals, are based on experiments in which high concentrations of the pure alkenylbenzenes were given to animals instead of administering the plant-based food supplements as such in combination with normal feed. The results obtained in those studies may present an overestimation of the effects compared to those of the alkenylbenzenes in the presence of other ingredients that can be found in the plant-based food supplements or in the normal food. Due to the presence of such a botanical or food pattern, the toxicity of the alkenylbenzenes might be reduced, diminishing the possible risk for human health. Future studies will place special focus on this subject. However, for the time being it is concluded that some — although not all — plant-based food supplements containing the alkenylbenzenes estragole, methyleugenol, safrole or β-asarone might raise a concern for human health and that this indicates a need for better regulation and quality control of plant-based food supplements containing these alkenylbenzenes.

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Wageningen University and Research Centre.

Journal Reference:

Suzanne J.P.L. van den Berg, Patrizia Restani, Marelle G. Boersma, Luc Delmulle, Ivonne M.C.M. Rietjens. Levels of Genotoxic and Carcinogenic Compounds in Plant Food Supplements and Associated Risk Assessment. Food and Nutrition Sciences, Vol. 2, No. 9, 2011, pp. 989-1010

Mayur said: “There is already plenty of research that shows that caffeine and carbohydrate improve endurance, but this study shows that there is also a positive effect on skill and performance.

“We carried out three different soccer-specific match simulations of 90 minutes each — two 45 minute sessions — that tested agility, dribbling, heading and kicking accuracy. The test was designed to mimic a football game where the participants had to carry out multiple repeated sprints, dribble the ball around cones and shoot accurately.

“We found that the combination of carbohydrate and caffeine allowed players to sustain higher work intensity for the sprints, as well as improving shooting accuracy and dribbling during simulated soccer activity.

“These findings suggest that, for athletes competing in team sports where endurance and skill are important factors, ingesting a carbohydrate and caffeine drink, as opposed to just a carbohydrate drink, may significantly enhance performance. Our findings suggest that soccer players should choose a carbohydrate caffeine drink over a carbohydrate drink to consume before kick off and at half-time.”

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Sheffield Hallam University.