From eNewsletter 12/30/2019
DID YOU KNOW that you need to get back to regular sleep habits if you are out of sync? It is especially crucial for adolescents.
A new study from JAMA Pediatrics has found that adolescent sleep timing preferences and patterns are risk factors for obesity and cardiometabolic health, and that the effects are greater in girls than in boys.
Beyond quantity and quality, timing is a vital component of sleep because it determines if the internal sleep/wake schedule is synchronized with the rhythms of daily activities.
Not surprisingly, night owls had higher waist circumference and greater abdominal fat deposition than morning persons.
Families should be at the forefront for encouraging better sleep habits, but schools can also play an important role by enacting polices that delay morning start times and by making it easier for students to devote time during the school day to academic or athletic activities that are spilling more and more into the late night.
TOP 2019 WELLNESS STORIES
Bonnie and Steve: We chose what we felt were the most important stories of all of our 2019 eNewsletters.
There is a disconnect in understanding the plant-based food movement. The disconnect lies in that the movement, as currently constructed, is a fraud. We can make it fairly simple for you. If you truly wanted to adhere to a vegan diet that would be considered healthy, only about two percent of the citizens in this country could follow it. Out of that two percent, only about five percent could follow it long-term and still be healthy. If you are one of those individuals, we tip our caps to you. For everyone else thinking they are following a healthy vegan diet by eating plant-based foods, you are not.
Cannabis use. At this time, we do not recommend using cannabis with the exception of older persons 75 or older. Men at this age with low testosterone should still speak with their physicians because certain phytochemicals in cannabis can suppress testosterone production. While the research in young people with autism and other neurological disorders looks promising, there are too many negatives to make a blanket recommendation. For all other age groups considering cannabis, prophylaxis should be based upon individual needs and should be discussed with a trusted health professional.
CBD use. We support the use of CBD, but with caveats. Trying to find a CBD product that met all of our criteria was truly an arduous task, because right now the CBD industry is the wild west. We feel comfortable with one topical brand we found. We are still in search of an oral CBD we can endorse. At this time, we are only recommending CBD for acute or chronic pain. Daily CBD use is not recommended unless you have a chronic condition. Otherwise, think of it as a pain reliever to take only as needed.
Our own study supports the idea that time-restricted feeding (TRF) has a beneficial impact on multiple health outcomes in men and less so in women except for one study. It would make sense to pinpoint the ideal number of fasting hours, which is likely to be 16 hours, based upon the majority of research to date. That said, TRF has exciting potential as a technique not just to treat weight issues, but numerous maladies affecting the world's population.
Researchers have finally linked optimism and prolonged life. A study in PNAS have found that individuals with greater optimism are more likely to live longer and to achieve "exceptional longevity," that is, living to age 85 or older.
Cleveland Clinic researchers found that functional medicine was associated with improvements in health-related quality of life. The results of the first-of-its-kind, two-year study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open. Functional medicine looks at the body as a whole and focuses on the root causes of disease rather than an isolated set of symptoms. It's based on the evidence that lifestyle factors - such as nutrition, sleep, exercise, stress levels, relationships and genetics - are major contributors to chronic disease. Where have you heard this before ;)
In order bring our planet in balance, as reported in Challenges, we must bring ourselves in balance. Each of us have our own unique ecology, and when we are ecologically balanced, it will, in turn, help the planet be balanced. The authors are imploring health professionals to practice "Clinical Ecology".
Keto diet is not right for you. The ketogenic eating style has been around for decades because of its success for epilepsy. It has also been mildly successful for insulin-dependent diabetics whose blood sugar is out of control. If you do not fall into these two camps, you may want to pass on this "diet du jour".
Researchers report in the Nature Communications an unexpected finding that the common yeast, Candida albicans, a type of fungus, can cross the blood-brain barrier and trigger an inflammatory response that results in the formation of granuloma-type structures and temporary mild memory impairments. Interestingly, the granulomas share features with plaques found in Alzheimer's disease, supporting future studies on the long-term neurological consequences of sustained C. albicans infection.
Children and adolescents whose mothers follow five healthy habits -- eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, keeping a healthy body weight, drinking alcohol in moderation, and not smoking -- are 75% less likely to become obese when compared with children of mothers who did not follow any such habits, according to a new study in The BMJ. This is immense.
5 STUDIES THAT CHALLENGED MEDICAL DOGMA
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