Don’t Try Losing Weight By Just Eating More Fruits And Vegetables

Research shows adding more fruits and vegetables to your diet will not help as such.

 

If you think eating more fruits and veggies helps you have a lean and fit body, you might have to re-think. Of course generally, everyone recommends consuming more fruits and vegetables (F/Vs) as a good compensation to weight loss regime because they are low in calories, high in volume and high in critically important nutrients. They fill you up, without loading you up with fat and calories. So if someone says that is not going to help, would you believe it? Certainly not! Especially when you are planning to shed weight, the common belief of people is that F/Vs are good for you. But a recent finding in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows zero or null effect of fruits or vegetables on weight loss.

A team of investigators performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of more than 1200 participants in seven randomized controlled trials that mainly focused on increasing fruit and vegetable intake to check its effects on weight loss. Their results show that increased F/Vs consumption per se does not reduce body weight. F/Vs are a good source of various micronutrients (including antioxidants) and dietary fiber and help fight deadly diseases like cancer, diabetes etc. Although the current study indicates that increased intake of F/Vs may be a sign of healthier people having minimum health risk, there is no empirical evidence that increasing a person’s intake of F/Vs will have a discernible effect on body weight. People must also combine other methods to reduce intake of other energy sources and not only depend on F/Vs intake as a sole solution to weight loss problem.

This study will help people who are hell-bent on losing weight by following a diet rich in F/Vs. Definitely a multimodal research of a healthy lifestyle is required to understand the factors which may help in losing weight apart from enhanced dietary intake of F/Vs.

 

References:
Kaiser KA, Brown AW, Bohan Brown MM, Shikany JM, Mattes RD, & Allison DB (2014). Increased fruit and vegetable intake has no discernible effect on weight loss: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The American journal of clinical nutrition PMID: 24965308

Bacteria May Give You A Heart Attack!

Bacterial biofilms associated with plaque may cause artery blockage.

It hit me like a heart attack

When you finally left me girl…

Enrique Iglesias might have had a heart attack because of his beloved, in reality the culprit are bacteria. The most common cause of heart attack is Atherosclerosis, a condition where excess deposition of plaque inside arteries occurs. Emerging research published online in mBio®, the online open access journal of  American Society for Microbiology, indicates that stress, fear or over exertion may trigger these bacteria to cause a heart attack in vulnerable people. Hormones released during such events cause bacterial biofilm to disperse and rupture the plaque deposits into the bloodstream. This causes clogging of artery and restriction of blood flow and hence death.

Atherosclerosis is the major underlying cause of restriction of blood flow in the arteries, leading to its obstruction, heart failure, stroke and heart attack in humans. Arteries are blood vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood in our heart and other parts of our body. The main constituents which make up plaque are fat, cholesterol, calcium, and other substances found in the blood. Over time, plaque keeps depositing and ultimately narrows the arteries. The result is such that it limits the flow of oxygen-rich blood to organs in our body leading to nausea and finally death.

Bacterial biofilms are polysaccharides or sugars produced for their own survival from harsh conditions. During stress, fear or over-exertion certain hormones are released in our body which provide a signal that causes dispersion of bacteria from these biofilms or scaffold. These signals or enzymes not only break their own scaffold but also surrounding tissues that prevent the arterial plaque deposit from rupturing into the bloodstream.

In this study, scientists injected norepinephrine, a hormone generally released during stress, fear or over exertion situations, to Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms under laboratory conditions. This bacterium is most commonly found to be associated with carotid arteries. Upon addition of this hormone, an in vitro spike in hormone concentration induced biofilm dispersion. Because these bacterial biofilms are bound to arterial plaques, biofilms dispersion could cause sudden release of nearby plaque thus triggering a heart attack.

This study is the first to report ever that biofilm bacteria are bound within a carotid arterial plaque deposit. Therefore, this results paves the way to future research for considering bacterial biofilms as a part in pathology for atherosclerosis.

Reference:

Lanter, B., Sauer, K., & Davies, D. (2014). Bacteria Present in Carotid Arterial Plaques Are Found as Biofilm Deposits Which May Contribute to Enhanced Risk of Plaque Rupture mBio, 5 (3) DOI: 10.1128/mBio.01206-14