Vol. 186 February 1, 2018 Good News For Dieters, and Some Others Who Ingest

February 1, 2018

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Pizza, even bad pizza, makes you feel good.
A recent study of 10 men in Finland (there’s the Finns again!) found evidence of high level of natural painkillers in their brains after eating a pizza. Their opioid receptors literally lit right up after the pizza! Even more surprising, the pizza did not have to be good to show that opioid receptor activity. If the same nutritional value was ingested in a “nutritional goo” form, the brains had even more opioid-like activity. So, the pleasurable feeling after eating pizza has nothing to do with how good it was. Speculations abound about a “full stomach feeling” or a “return of energy” as being the cause of the source of release of this endogenous opioid-like substance. (Journal of Neuroscience, November 2017)

Coffee can be part of a healthy diet.
A mega-review of over 200 studies of coffee consumption revealed that coffee consumption was associated with more benefit than harm, at all levels of consumption. Coffee contains more than 1000 bioactive compounds, including antioxidants, so this review was timely. The largest risk reduction of adverse health outcomes was found in those people who drank 3 to 4 daily cups of coffee (caffeinated OR decaffeinated!).  Death rates from any cause,  death rates from heart disease, and death rates from associated cardiovascular diseases were 15-19% lower in coffee drinkers. High coffee consumers had a 18% lower risk for cancer while lower consumers still had a 13% lower risk compared to non-coffee drinkers. The only adverse effects of coffee consumption were found in women: some higher risks for pregnancy loss, more preterm births, more low birth weight infants, and more bone fractures. The editor of the journal, anticipating our excitement at this news, counselled that “clinicians should not recommend coffee consumption on the basis of this review.”  And, oh yeah . . . this mega-review only included studies of black coffee. If you add sugar, milk, or any other ingredient to your coffee . . . “never mind”. (BMJ 2017)

Fecal transplants now come in pill form.
Selected cases of intractable diarrhea caused by recurrent infection with C. difficile (a bacteria that overgrows in the intestine after multiple courses of antibiotics) have been treated successfully by “transplanting” other people’s normal feces (material that contains normal symbiotic bacteria) into the patient’s intestines by infusing liquid fecal material either through a nasogastric tube or a colonoscope. In a study of 116 participants with recurrent, intractable diarrhea 96% were cured by the administration of the fecal material in a pill form. That is good news, but I hope that I won’t ever have to take that pill. (JAMA, Nov. 2017)

Low-dose aspirin does not raise your risk for intracranial bleeding.
A whole lot of people take daily low-dose aspirin (83 mg. – a baby aspirin) in the belief that it will reduce their risk of a fatal heart attack. The evidence actually shows that the preventative effect of low-dose aspirin is true only if you are trying to prevent your second heart attack; i.e.. the data supports its preventive effect in those people who already have clinical heart disease. Much of the general population, including me, is taking low dose aspirin in hope that it will work similarly for them. The only problem is that aspirin is an anti-thrombotic agent (it makes platelets “slippery” so that platelets don’t clump to start a clot). Such an effect raises a concern about spontaneous bleeding, particularly in the brain. A study of 400,000 people over 5 years in an established U.K. database showed that the incidence of brain hemorrhage was not significantly higher in those on the low-dose aspirin compared to those who took none. Remember also that if you have been taking low-dose aspirin for some time and decide to stop, your risk of spontaneous adverse clotting events may increase over the next 6-12 months. (Neurology, Nov. 2017)

Pasta is back!. . .  sort of.
An Italian study (no conflict of interest there I’m sure)  of 23,000 Italians revealed that the pasta lover had lower BMIs, the gold standard for definition of overweight. The researchers tout that pasta is not “just empty carbs”, but contains protein (6.7 grams per cup) and, if whole wheat pasta, it has iron, folic acid, and several B vitamins. The Italian study results are similar to a U.S. study of about 1,800 middle-aged adults, but there are a couple of caveats to consider. Italians eat much less pasta than we do in a meal because they consider it a first course, not the whole meal. The participants in the Italian study consumed an average of 3 oz. (86 grams) of pasta each meal. The study researchers did not name the “ideal amount” of pasta to eat per meal, but did note that those Italians who ate more pasta than the average tended to be obese. As we have said before, losing weight usually comes down to (no pun intended) taking in fewer calories rather than picking different kinds of calories to eat.


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