Tag Archives: Alan Mozes

Teen angst—a portent for dementia?

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Researchers found the risk of dementia was notably lower among seniors who were calm, vigorous and mature as teens. (Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat)

By Alan Mozes, HealthDay


Could your personality as a teen forecast your risk for dementia a half-century later?


Very possibly, say researchers, who found that dementia risk is lower among seniors who were calm, mature and energetic high schoolers.


“Being calm and mature as teen were each associated with roughly a 10% reduction in adult dementia risk,” said study co-author Kelly Peters, principal researcher at the American Institutes for Research in Washington, D.C. “And vigor was associated with a 7% reduction.”


The finding has its origins in the 1960s, when more than 82,000 students in roughly 1,200 U.S. high schools took a personality test. More than 50 years later, their personality traits were compared to dementia diagnoses.


While Peters said there’s plenty of evidence that personality changes near the time of a dementia diagnosis, the lingering question has been whether personality or some aspects of it actually causes dementia.


“That’s the big question,” she said. “Is it only that personality can be affected by dementia? Is it just an expression of the disease?” By focusing on teens who didn’t later develop dementia, Peters said, “this study really starts to tease that out.”


At an average age of 16, the students were assessed for 10 traits: calmness, vigor, organization, self-confidence, maturity/responsibility, leadership, impulsivity, desire for social interaction, social sensitivity, and artistic and intellectual refinement.


By 2011-2013, when they were almost 70 years old, more than 2,500 had developed dementia.


Enter lead author Benjamin Chapman, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester in New York.


After stacking 50-year-old personality profiles up against current medical records, he and his team found that the risk of dementia was notably lower among seniors who were calm, vigorous and mature as teens.


Calmness was defined as being stress-free and not neurotic, vigor as being energetic and outgoing, and maturity as being responsible, reliable and conscientious.


Peters said the findings could guide policy thinkers to develop improved social support systems “to help kids build up protective qualities.”


But she highlighted some reservations.


For one thing, the team “only looked at traits that were protective,” she said.


And money seemed to matter: Calmness, vigor and maturity did not appear to protect against adult dementia among teens who grew up in relatively poor households.


Chapman’s study also tracked dementia only around age 70. That, said his Rochester colleague Dr. Anton Porsteinsson, means “there’s a lot more work to do.”


He was not involved in the study.


“The average age of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis is around the early 80s,” said Porsteinsson, director of the university’s Alzheimer’s Disease Care, Research and Education Program. “So it would be really good to repeat this in another 10 to 15 years, to see what’s happening when dementia risk is really at its peak.”


While the findings highlight a link between dementia and personality, he said that it’s hard to draw a direct correlation.


“If you’re calm and conscientious, do you make better health choices in your life? And if so, are specific personality traits directly decisive with respect to dementia? Or does your risk for dementia indirectly reflect those better decisions?” Porsteinsson said.


Heather Snyder is vice president of medical science relations at the Alzheimer’s Association.


“There are a wide variety of social, environmental and genetic factors that may contribute to our risk for dementia, and more research is needed to determine what those are and how they interact,” said Snyder.


But she said that “there is not enough evidence at this time to suggest that an intervention strategy for personality type in high school would be effective.”


Porsteinsson warned against using the study to conclude that there’s clearly a “good” personality and a “bad one.” It could be, he said, that impulsiveness and neuroticism, while bad for dementia, “bring a different skill set to the table” that has value.


“We don’t necessarily want all kids to be calm and composed at all times. We don’t want everyone to fit into the same mold,” Porsteinsson said.


“So we have to be very careful about how we interpret these findings until we really understand a lot more about what this is all really about,” he said.


The study was published recently in JAMA Psychiatry.


Reprinted with permission from Spectrum Health Beat.




A soda-stroke link?

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Research has uncovered an association between soda consumption and stroke risk, particularly among older women. (Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat)

By Alan Mozes, HealthDay


Older women, beware: New research warns that drinking a lot of diet sodas or artificially sweetened fruit juices may increase your risk for stroke.


In a study that tracked nearly 82,000 postmenopausal women, those who drank two or more diet drinks per day saw their overall stroke risk rise by 23 percent, compared with those who consumed diet drinks less than once a week.


Blocked arteries were often the main culprit, with heavy diet drink consumption linked to a 31 percent greater risk for an ischemic stroke, which is triggered by a clot, the study findings showed.


Study author Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani acknowledged that an “association does not imply causation.” But she stressed that the findings held up even after taking into account the nutritional value of each participant’s overall diet.


So, “we can’t assume these diet drinks are harmless, particularly when consumed at high levels,” Mossavar-Rahmani said.


“The take-home message is that these findings give us pause,” she added. “We need to do more research on why we are seeing these associations. What are the scientific mechanisms? Is there something about the artificial sweeteners, for example, that affect the bacteria in the gut and lead to health issues?”


Mossavar-Rahmani is an associate professor in the department of epidemiology and population health’s division of health promotion and nutrition research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York City.


The study authors pointed out that the American Heart Association has recently underscored the lack of sufficient research into the cardiovascular impact of diet sodas. Until more work is done, the AHA says the jury remains out on whether artificially sweetened beverages do or do not hasten heart disease.


Women in the latest study were between 50 and 79 when they first enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative trial between 1993 and 1998.


Investigators tracked the general health of all the enrollees for an average of nearly 12 years. During that time—at the three-year mark—all the women were asked to indicate how frequently they consumed diet sodas and diet fruit drinks over a three-month period.


The researchers did not take note of which brands of artificially sweetened drinks the women drank and so did not know which artificial sweeteners were being consumed.


That said, nearly two-thirds of the women consumed diet sodas or drinks very infrequently, meaning less than once a week or never. Only about 5 percent were found to be “heavy” consumers of artificially sweetened drinks.


After taking into consideration a variety of stroke risk factors—including blood pressure status, smoking history and age—the study team concluded that heavy consumption of diet drinks did appear to be tied to cardiovascular risks in a number of ways.


For example, those women who drank two or more diet beverages a day saw their overall risk for developing heart disease increase by 29 percent. They were also 16 percent more likely to die prematurely from any cause.


Certain groups fared even worse: Among obese women and black women with no history of heart disease or diabetes, a diet drink habit pushed clot-driven stroke risk up by roughly twofold and fourfold, respectively, the researchers reported.


Whether or not the findings would apply to either men or younger women remains unclear, the study authors noted.


The findings were published online recently in the journal Stroke.


Lona Sandon is program director of the department of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.


She agreed that more research is needed to further explore a possible diet drink-heart disease connection. But for now Sandon offered simple advice: diet or regular, sodas offer no nutritional value other than calories.


“If they replace other drinks, such as milk and 100 percent fruit or vegetable drinks, then these women miss out on valuable nutrition for protecting the heart and vascular system,” Sandon warned.


“The nutrition you are missing because you are drinking artificially sweetened beverages instead may be the real problem,” she said.


A group representing the artificial sweetener industry offered another caveat about the findings — that many women who drink diet drinks are already struggling with weight issues.


“It is likely study subjects were already at a greater health risk and chose low-calorie sweetened beverages to manage their calorie and sugar intake as these products are proven safe and beneficial for those managing their weight and blood glucose levels,” said Robert Rankin, president of the Calorie Control Council.


“The contribution of reverse causality, meaning that individuals already at a greater risk of stroke and cardiovascular events chose low-calorie sweetened beverages, is very likely the cause of the associations presented by these researchers,” the council added in a statement.


Reprinted with permission from Spectrum Health Beat.

Coffee—a gallstone buster?

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There’s no definitive proof coffee drinking lowers the risk of gallstones, but there is an association that merits further study. (Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat)

By Alan Mozes, HealthDay


To the many ways in which coffee seems to confer unexpected health benefits, add a lowered risk of painful gallstones.


After tracking nearly 105,000 Danes for an average of eight years, researchers found that those who downed more than six cups per day of the world’s most popular beverage saw their gallstone risk drop by 23%.


“High coffee intake is associated with a lower risk of gallstone disease,” said study author Dr. A. Tybjaerg-Hansen. She’s chief physician of Rigshospitalet’s department of clinical biochemistry at Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.


That’s good news for Danes, 6% of whom drink six or more cups of coffee every day, she said.


But what about the average Dane, who knocks back just two cups a day? Or the average American or Brit who consumes between one to two cups daily? The study has good news for them, too. It turns out that even small amounts of coffee appeared to lower gallstone risk.


Compared to those who abstained from coffee, participants who drank just one cup of Joe a day saw the risk of gallstones dip by about 3%. Meanwhile, those who consumed three to six cups per day saw their risk lide by 17%.


The findings were published recently in the Journal of Internal Medicine.


Gallstones are hard pebble-like pieces that can accumulate in the gallbladder, where they can sometimes block bile ducts. When that extremely painful condition develops, surgery to remove them is often the treatment of choice.


So what is it about coffee that seems to diminish risk? Tybjaerg-Hansen said that, for now, “we can only speculate on that.”


But she noted that because caffeine is excreted via the bile, it’s possible that it reduces the amount of cholesterol found in the bile. That could reduce gallstone risk, given that “the development of gallstones depends on a balance largely between cholesterol and bile acids,” Tybjaerg-Hansen explained.


Coffee also stimulates the muscle contractions that move contents though the gastrointestinal tract.


As to whether it’s the caffeine content that serves as coffee’s silver bullet, Tybjaerg-Hansen said, “yes, that is a possibility.” That raises the prospect that tea or chocolate might also lower gallstone risk.


But whatever’s behind coffee’s power, she believes that the team’s subsequent genetic analyses indicate that it’s coffee itself—rather than lifestyle factors common to coffee drinkers—that is at play.


Another expert is not so sure.


Dr. Anthony Bleyer is a professor of nephrology at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. He was not involved in the Danish study and was not previously aware of any link between coffee and gallstone risk.


“(But) it seems every week there is a new story about how coffee may or may not be associated with some benefit,” he cautioned. “Information on coffee is collected in many big databases. It is easy to do a comparison with just about any factor: osteoporosis, weight gain, weight loss, sleep, ulcers, cancer, mortality. You get the picture.”


And Bleyer acknowledged that many people will find studies like this interesting, given that coffee drinking is such a common habit.


“But from a scientific standpoint, I am not a big fan,” he added.


“For one thing, consuming six cups of coffee is quite a lot,” he said, “and the (high level of) caffeine could have big effects on sleep, gastric reflux and on arrhythmias.”


But most importantly, said Bleyer, the things that drive people to drink a lot of coffee in the first place “may also cause other changes in diet.” And it could very well be those dietary changes, rather than coffee itself, that end up affecting gallstone risk.


His bottom line: don’t place too much stock in the power of coffee to reduce gallstone risk.


For now, he said, “these studies show only an association, that is not causative.”


Reprinted with permission from Spectrum Health Beat.




Drink up, kiddos

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Kids should drink water every day and it should be the first option parents offer when kids are thirsty. (Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat)

By Alan Mozes, HealthDay


On any given day, 1 in 5 American youngsters don’t drink any water at all, a new survey shows.


And those who don’t end up consuming almost twice as many calories from sugar-sweetened beverages.


That, investigators warn, translates into an extra 100 calories per day, which over time can raise the risk for becoming overweight or obese.


“Drinking water is the healthiest beverage to drink,” said study author Asher Rosinger, director of the Water, Health and Nutrition Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University. “Water is an essential nutrient that is critical to proper physiological and cognitive functioning.”


By contrast, sugary drinks “are problematic because they have been linked to many negative health conditions, such as weight gain, dental caries (cavities), and type 2 diabetes,” said Rosinger. He noted that current guidelines recommend limiting daily intake of added sugars to less than 10% of all calories consumed.


“Kids should drink water every day and it should be the first option (parents) go to when their kids are thirsty,” Rosinger said.


In the study, data was collected from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys between 2011 and 2012 and between 2015 and 2016.


About 8,400 children, aged 2 to 19, reported whether they drank water each day—although amounts were not quantified—and how much of sugar-sweetened beverages they routinely consumed.


The latter included all non-diet sodas, sweetened fruit juices, sports drinks, energy drinks, and/or presweetened tea and coffee drinks. Zero-calorie diet sodas and drinks, 100% fruit juices and unsweetened coffee and teas were excluded.


Among the 1 in 5 who didn’t drink any water daily, sugared-drink calories totaled 200, on average, compared with 100 calories a day among water drinkers.


Sugared-drink habits varied somewhat by race, however. For example, white non-water drinkers were found to consume more additional calories from sugared drinks than Hispanic non-water drinkers (123 extra calories per day versus 61 extra calories per day).


Regardless, are such relatively low amounts of excess calories really a big deal? Yes, say investigators, who point out that taking in an extra 3,500 calories means packing on an extra pound.


That breaks down to just a little more than a month of 100 extra calories per day.


Rosinger did note that sugary drink consumption among American children has dropped over the last 15 years.


But he added that “there are still pockets and sub-populations that have high consumption levels. (So) it’s critical to identify which kids are particularly at risk for high sugar-sweetened beverage intake, since this can lead to these negative health effects.”


On that front, Rosinger noted that water insecurity due to contamination “is a growing problem in the U.S., so we need to keep that in mind as important context, especially when it comes to parents who may be giving their kids soda or juice because they distrust the water. Therefore, it’s critical to ensure that everyone has access to safe, clean water.”

The findings were published recently in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.


Lona Sandon is program director in the department of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. She said the findings “confirm what I have seen in practice: If someone is not drinking water, they are drinking something else, likely soft drinks or other sugary drinks.” She was not involved with the study.


Sandon’s advice to parents? “Provide water and low-fat plain milk at the table. Keep flavored milk only for special occasions. Avoid purchasing soft drinks or other fruit juice-type drinks that are laden with added sugar.


“Try no-calorie, flavored seltzer water instead. Make a no-soft drink or other sugary drinks rule in the household. Save them for special occasions. Keep 100% fruit juice to 1 cup per day. Keep sports drinks for sports, not with meals, and only if the child will be exercising for more than an hour.”


And dump the energy drinks, Sandon concluded.


“Kids do not need them.”


Reprinted with permission from Spectrum Health Beat.


Study: E-cig vapors laden with toxic metals

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Think vaping is a safe alternative to tobacco cigarettes? Not likely. New research suggests e-cigarette vapor contains heavy metals. (Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat)

By Alan Mozes, HealthDay


If you think that “vaping” is a safe alternative to smoking, research suggests you might be inadvertently inhaling unsafe levels of toxic metals.


Scientists say the tiny metal coils that heat the liquid nitrogen in e-cigarettes may contaminate the resulting vapor with lead, chromium, manganese and nickel. The finding raises the possibility that e-cigarettes are not harmless to users.


“We analyzed 15 metals in e-liquid from the refill dispenser—before the liquid meets the heating element—in the vapor, and in the remaining e-liquid in the tank after vaping,” explained study author Pablo Olmedo. He’s an assistant scientist with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health’s department of environmental health and engineering, in Baltimore.


“We found that the metal concentrations were generally higher in the tank and aerosol compared to the refill dispenser,” said Olmedo. That suggests that the heating coil is the smoking gun, he added.


But study co-author Ana Maria Rule pointed out that their team also found “the presence of some metals in some of the liquids even before they are in contact with the coil.”


That could mean that “in addition to the metal coil, other factors could play a role in e-cigarette metal exposure, such as the voltage used to heat the coil,” said Rule, also an assistant scientist at Hopkins.


Unlike traditional smoking, vaping works by heating liquids that contain nicotine. The liquid passes through a heating coil, producing a vapor that proponents claim is free of much of the carcinogens associated with burning tobacco leaves.


Given that a recent U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse survey found that one in six high schoolers has vaped in the past month, the finding could have broad public health implications, the researchers said.


In the Hopkins study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, investigators recruited 56 vapers in the Baltimore area to see whether the heating process introduces toxins into what is inhaled.


The researchers used the vapers’ own e-cigarette devices when examining the chemical content of e-liquid, vapor and residue.


Tested chemicals included: aluminum, antimony, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, lead, manganese, nickel, titanium, tungsten, uranium and zinc. Prior research has linked prolonged inhalation of such metals to lung, liver, heart and brain damage.


Chronic exposure may also depress immune system function and raise the risk for certain types of cancer, the researchers said.


The team found that e-liquid exposed to heating coils produced a vapor containing significant amounts of chromium, lead, manganese, nickel and zinc.


Highly toxic arsenic was also found in both the e-liquid and the heated vapor among a subset of 10 vapers, though how that metal got into the unheated e-liquid remains unclear.


The team also noted that toxic metal levels seemed to be higher among vapers who changed their heating coils more often, suggesting that new coils may produce more toxins than older ones.


Regardless, Rule said, vapers should know that “as far as we know, all current electronic cigarettes use a metallic coil to generate the vapor, so not vaping is the only way to avoid or mitigate this (toxic) exposure.”


As for whether vaping is safer than smoking or worse, Rule said the team “did not set out to compare e-cigarettes to cigarettes.”


But Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine with the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control, Research and Education, said it’s important to understand that e-cigs “have an entirely different toxicological profile” than cigarettes.


“So the risk profile is going to be different,” Glantz said. “The assumption has been that at least e-cigarettes aren’t worse. But this suggests they have something in them that isn’t even in standard cigarettes that’s worth being worried about.”


That worry was echoed by Patricia Folan, director of the Center for Tobacco Control at Northwell Health in Great Neck, New York.


“Considering the list of metals, toxic materials and lung-damaging materials found in e-cigarettes, these products are not a healthy product for teen consumption,” she said.


“I guess the question is, do we really want to promote and advertise these products and take a chance on damaging the health of our youth, without knowing their health effects and without regulation?” Folan asked.


Reprinted with permission from Spectrum Health Beat.



Wakeful nights, woeful days

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Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat

By Alan Mozes, HealthDay


If you were up all night and you ache all over the next morning, your lack of sound slumber might be to blame.


New research found that sleep loss delivered a double whammy to the brain that all but guaranteed greater levels of body pain.


“Activity in the somatosensory cortex, previously associated with the location and intensity of pain, was enhanced following sleep loss,” explained study author Adam Krause.


And “in two regions called the striatum and the insula, sleep deprivation decreased the activity associated with pain (relief),” he added. These regions control the release of dopamine, often called the “feel-good” hormone.


Krause is a Ph.D. candidate with the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley.


During the study, 25 healthy, young participants got the normal eight hours of sleep one night. A week or so later, the same group underwent a night of no sleep whatsoever.


After each session, all the volunteers underwent “thermal pain sensitivity” tests, followed by MRI scans to monitor brain activity while their legs were exposed to uncomfortable levels of heat.


After a full night of sleep, most participants reported feeling heat discomfort at about 111 degrees Fahrenheit.


But after a night of no sleep, that pain threshold dropped to 107 degrees F.


Brain scans pinpointed the neurological basis for the uptick in pain sensitivity following sleep loss.


The research team then surveyed 60 adults (average age 38) over a 48-hour survey period. All had reported experiencing pain during the survey period, and all were asked to keep sleep diaries and report mood and anxiety levels, as well as rank pain intensity when experienced.


“We found that reductions from one night to the next in the quality of the sleep, rather than just the quantity—total hours asleep—predicted worse pain the following day,” Krause noted.


“The optimistic takeaway here is that better sleep can help manage and lower pain. (It’s) a natural analgesic that we can all pick up in repeat prescription each night, if we choose,” he said.


“It is our hope that this research especially encourages health care systems to bring sleep closer to the center of treatment. If we can improve sleep conditions in the setting in which patients are most often in pain—the hospital ward—perhaps we can reduce the dosage of narcotic drugs and clear hospital beds sooner,” Krause suggested.


The findings were published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience.


Monika Haack is an associate professor of neurology with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Human Sleep & Inflammatory Systems Laboratory in Boston. She expressed little surprise at the findings.


“There is very strong evidence to date—and the current study supports this again—that short or disturbed sleep, either in clinical (settings) or in the general population, increases our experience of next-day pain,” Haack said.


“And a number of studies, including the current study, have shown that sleep is a stronger predictor of pain than pain is a predictor of how we sleep,” she added.


“I think the most important and novel finding of the study is that the authors found a biological basis, neuronal brain structures, that correspond to the pain sensitivity increase observed after sleep loss. Only if we understand the biology and mechanisms underlying this relationship will we be able to develop target- or mechanism-specific strategies to prevent pain-processing changes associated with short or disturbed sleep,” Haack concluded.


Reprinted with permission from Spectrum Health Beat.

There’s bacteria in that vape

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Electronic cigarette products play host to bacterial toxins and fungi that have unknown effects on the growing number of people who use these items. (Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat)

By Alan Mozes, HealthDay


You might need to worry about inhaling more than just nicotine when you vape: New research warns that many electronic cigarettes appear to be contaminated with fungi and bacteria.


The finding stems from a close look at the contents of 75 popular vaping products.


About half of the e-cigarettes examined were of the single-use cartridge variety, while the other half were refillable products. Both contained liquid laced with nicotine, along with other chemicals. Once a user takes a puff, a battery-powered heating device vaporizes the liquid, turning it into inhalable vapor.


But nicotine was not all that was found in the vapor of many products.


Study author Dr. David Christiani said 23% of the electronic cigarette products they examined contained bacterial toxins, while 81% tested positive for a substance called glucan, which is found on the cellular structures of most fungi.


“The contamination took place in electronic cigarette liquid and in the cartridges,” Christiani said, although the cartridge e-cigarettes contained more than three times more glucan than the refillable liquid e-cigarettes.


Christiani, director of the environmental and occupational medicine and epidemiology program at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, characterized the findings as “surprising.” But when asked if the identified contaminants actually pose a danger to vapors, he suggested the jury is still out on that question.


Potentially, “they are toxic,” Christiani said.


That means that, over time, exposure to high amounts of such contaminants can prompt the onset of progressive lung illnesses such as emphysema, chronic bronchitis and asthma.


But as a practical matter, Christiani noted that the contaminant levels his team found in e-cigarettes was actually “considerably lower” than levels “that have been shown to cause lung disease” in workplace environments where manufacturing chemicals abound.


What’s more, such contaminants are also found in standard cigarettes, where levels “are (also) generally higher than what we measured here,” he added.


The bottom line: “At this time, we do not have scientific evidence that the levels we see in these electronic cigarette products raise health concerns,” Christiani concluded.


Still, he cautioned that “we do not know what the risk is with long-term usage, with increasing cumulative dose and with the interaction between these contaminants and other potentially toxic agents we and others have found in electronic cigarette products, such as flavorants or industrial solvents.”


Christiani’s team noted that the popularity of e-cigarettes has exploded in just a few years, particularly among young users. For example, the authors pointed out that while just 220,000 high school students vaped in 2011, last year that figure hit more than 3 million.


And though many experts take the position that vaping is probably a safer option than smoking standard cigarettes, as its use has grown, so has public health scrutiny.


As to what might cause contamination, the study team said it could happen at any point during the production process. But they also pointed a finger at the cotton fiber wicks found in e-cigarette cartridges, given that such fibers are known to host both bacteria and fungi.


Regardless of whether such contaminants ultimately pose a significant risk, “vaping is potentially harmful to your health, and (it’s best) not to do it,” Christiani said. “More study is needed to determine whether vaping can be made safer by removal of all contaminants and adulterants.”


The study was published online recently in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.


Victoria Stevens is scientific director of epidemiology research with the American Cancer Society. She agreed that “a more complete understanding of what’s in e-cig products and what their users are exposed to would help define some of the potential risk of vaping.”


Stevens pointed out, for example, that the bacterial and fungal property that the study team found in e-cigarettes “are common contaminants and are found in things like household dust.”


So she suggested that until more research clarifies exactly how much exposure vapers face—in terms of both what is found in vaping devices and what users actually inhale—”it is unclear whether this contamination is a cause for concern.”


Reprinted with permission from Spectrum Health Beat.



What’s your calorie-burning clock?

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Did you know that irregularity in our schedules of eating and sleeping may make us more likely to gain weight? (Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat)

By Alan Mozes, HealthDay

 

When it comes to weight gain, what you eat clearly matters.

 

But a small, preliminary study now suggests that when you eat also matters, with people burning off more calories at the end of the day than they do at the beginning.

 

The finding is based on a three-week study that monitored metabolism changes throughout the day among seven men and women. All food intake was carefully controlled, and all participants refrained from calorie-burning activities.

 

“We found that when people are at rest, the amount of energy that they burn varies with the time of day,” explained study author Jeanne Duffy.

 

In fact, “we burn 10 percent more calories in the late afternoon (and) early evening compared with the early morning hours, even when we are doing the exact same thing,” she added.

 

Duffy, a neuroscientist in the division of sleep and circadian disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said it remains unclear why this is so.

 

“We don’t have an answer to that from our study,” she noted. “It could be that it is a way for our body to conserve energy, by requiring less at some times of day.”

 

In the study, Duffy and her team enlisted seven healthy men and women between the ages of 38 and 69. None struggled with insomnia or suffered from any chronic medical condition. No one smoked, drank excessive amounts of coffee, or regularly took any prescribed or over-the-counter medication.

 

All were asked to live in a room that was stripped of all indications of time of day. That meant no clocks, no internet, no phone and no windows.

 

For three weeks, participants were assigned bedtimes and wake times, and every day those times were shifted to start four hours later. The result was as if each had circled the entire planet once a week.

 

Diets were controlled and calorie-burning exercise was not permitted, allowing researchers to analyze metabolism patterns free from the influence of eating, sleeping and activity habits.

 

In the end, the researchers determined that calorie burning at rest was at its lowest in the morning and at its highest in the afternoon and evening.

 

Whether the same calorie-burning patterns would hold true if exercise was thrown into the mix remains an open question, Duffy added.

 

“But the practical implications of our findings are that any irregularity in our schedules of eating and sleeping may make us more likely to gain weight,” she said. “This may help explain why shift workers are likely to gain weight.”

 

As to how this finding might figure into any strategy to prevent weight gain, “keeping a very regular schedule of sleep and wake, as well as eating, is a ‘best practice,’” Duffy advised.

 

“Regularity means going to bed and waking, as well as eating meals, at nearly the same time every day,” she stressed. “That ensures our internal rhythms are primed to respond optimally to the food we eat.”

 

But Lona Sandon, program director of the department of clinical nutrition in the School of Health Professions at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, suggested that the findings are unlikely to help those looking to get their weight under control. She was not involved with the study.

 

“At this time, I do not think there is much of anything particularly practical or useful that we do not already tell people,” Sandon said. “For example, we already tell people to get more of their calories earlier in the day rather than later and aim for more and better sleep.

 

“(And) exercise is good any time of day,” Sandon added, “and you will burn more calories with intentional exercise than what you get with a slight boost in metabolic rate due to natural circadian rhythms.

 

“(So) I am not going to hold my breath for [this] as an effective weight management strategy,” she said.

 

The study was published in the journal Current Biology.

 

Reprinted with permission from Spectrum Health Beat.