March 2014 Newsletter
E Douglas Kihn, OMD, LAc
Contents
1. Myth: The answer to obesity is more vegetables
2. Added sugar in the diet is associated with increased risk of heart disease
3. The cyborg era has started
4. Vitamin supplementation can inhibit aerobic fitness training
1. Myth: The answer to obesity is more vegetables
The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity has been promoting the building of grocery
stores in poor neighborhoods, what they call the $400 million Healthy Food Financing Initiative,
believing that limited access to vegetables is the cause of American obesity.
Now a study published in the February issue of Health Affairs has provided the first US-based
evidence that building new food retail stores is no answer. After studying around 650 residents
over a period of four years, researchers found that exposure to the new supermarket had no
significant impact on reducing obesity or increasing daily fruit and vegetable intake.
Americans overeat sweet, salty, and fatty foods because these foods are cheap and people are
miserable. The eating of these foods triggers the release of feel-good chemicals like
endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine. People are self-medicating.
The obesity problem will only be resolved when misery is resolved, especially the economic
misery that started for so many Americans at the same time that the obesity epidemic started
– in the late 70s. That’s when wages began to stagnate, while work load increased.
2. Added sugar in the diet is associated with increased risk of heart disease
In February 2014, the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine reported
that the consumption of added sugar in the diet was associated with increased risk for death
from cardiovascular disease. This result was independent of other factors such as amount of
body fat or daily calories consumed.
In Chinese medicine, we know that excess sweet creates a situation we call “damp.” This damp
can clog up the works in many areas, such as excessive blood cholesterol or excessive fluid
volume in the blood, both of which can put too much pressure on the heart. Excess damp from
excessive sugar has been known to cause many other problems such as brain fog, lung phlegm,
skin eczema, and rotted teeth.
I eat sugar but I limit my intake, and I douse my tea and coffee with stevia, a sweet substitute
that is derived from the stevia plant and that has no ill effects.
3. The cyborg era has started
In a study published in the February 5, 2014 edition of Science Translational Medicine, Dennis
Aabo Sørensen from Denmark became the first amputee in the world to feel -- in real-time -with a sensory-enhanced prosthetic hand that was surgically wired to nerves in his upper arm nine years after an accident caused the loss of his left hand, Silvestro Micera and his team at
EPFL (Switzerland) and SSSA (Italy) developed the revolutionary sensory feedback that
allowed Sørensen to feel again while handling objects.
The bionic hand doesn’t look very pretty just yet. This is only a prototype. In a decade, bionic
limbs that look and feel just like the real thing will commonly replace missing limbs.
In a February study published in American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters, they report
development of a coating that makes nano-electronics much more stable in conditions mimicking
those in the human body. The advance could also aid in the development of very small implanted
medical devices for monitoring health and disease – electronic robots the size of molecules
whizzing around in your body, programmed by you through the internet to carry out
reconnaissance missions in your body.
For the first time, a team of chemists and engineers in February at Penn State University have
placed tiny synthetic motors inside live human cells, propelled them with ultrasonic waves and
steered them magnetically. It's not exactly "Fantastic Voyage," but it's close. The nano-motors,
which are rocket-shaped metal particles, move around inside the cells, spinning and battering
against the cell membrane. They will eventually be used to diagnose and treat problems inside
the body’s cells, even changing genetic structures to resist disease or achieve optimal
performance.
The future ain’t what it used to be.
4. Vitamin supplementation can inhibit aerobic fitness training
Vitamin C and E supplements may blunt the improvement of muscular endurance -- by disrupting
cellular adaptions in exercised muscles, says a new study published on 3 February, 2014 in The
Journal of Physiology.
In the 11-week trial, 54 young, healthy men and women were randomly allocated to receive
either 1000mg vitamin C and 235mg vitamin E, consistent with amounts found in shop
supplements, or a placebo. Neither the subjects nor the investigators knew which participant
received the vitamins or placebos.
The participants completed an endurance training program, consisting of three to four sessions
per week, of primarily running. Fitness tests, blood samples and muscle biopsies were taken
before and after the intervention.
While the supplements did not affect maximal oxygen uptake or the results of a 20 meter
shuttle test, the results showed that markers for the production of new muscle mitochondria -the power supply for cells -- increased only in the group without supplements.