Recent Longevity News for the week ending 5/3/17

Risk of Breast Cancer With Long-term Use of Calcium Channel Blockers or Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors Among Older Women - Medscape, 4/26/17 - "Increasing duration of ACEi use was associated with reduced breast cancer risk: Compared with 1–<2 years of use, the adjusted hazard ratio was 0.76 (95% confidence interval: 0.63, 0.92) for 5–<6 years of use and 0.63 (95% confidence interval: 0.43, 0.93) for 9–<10 years of use. We conclude that among older women with hypertension, long-term CCB use does not increase breast cancer risk and long-term treatment with ACEis may confer protection against breast cancer"

The Best Thing to Eat Before a Workout? Maybe Nothing at All - NYT, 4/26/17 - "these efforts obviously have focused on sports performance. Far less has been known about how meal timing and exercise might affect general health ... The implication of these results is that to gain the greatest health benefits from exercise, it may be wise to skip eating first ... our ancestors would have had to expend a great deal of energy through physical activity in order to hunt and gather food. So, it would be perfectly normal for the exercise to come first, and the food to follow"

Cannabis use in adolescence linked to schizophrenia - Science Daily, 4/26/17 - "young people with a genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia -- those who have psychiatric disorders in their families -- should bear in mind that they're playing with fire if they smoke pot during adolescence ... Researchers exposed mouse models with a genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia -- the mutant DISC-1 gene -- to THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis. During a time period similar to that of human adolescence, the susceptible mice were found to be at a far higher risk for lasting brain defects associated with the onset of schizophrenia"

People think juice is good for them. They’re wrong - Washington Post, 4/26/17 - "The truth is that fruit juice, even if it is freshly pressed 100 percent juice, is little more than sugar water. Yet many Americans believe that juice is good for them. In one survey of parents of young children, 1 in 3 believed that juice was at least as healthy as fruit. We are inundated with the message that juice is healthy. Juice bars abound in gyms, spas and health food stores, while government programs supply large quantities of juice to low-income children and pregnant mothers. The commercial juice industry is happy to build on this idea, like POM Wonderful’s tagline “Drink to your health” or Juicy Juice’s containers extolling the (mostly added) 120 percent of recommended daily vitamin C in their products. While the Internet is busy laughing at news of the Juicero juicing machine that doesn’t actually need the $400 WiFi-enabled machine, what people should really be talking about is a much simpler fact — the product takes healthy fruits and vegetable and makes them much less healthy"

Abstracts from this week:

Gastrointestinal Microbiota and Cognitive Function in Adult Females - fasebj, Apr 2017 - "These results indicate that women with greater relative abundances of Bacteriodetes exhibited greater ability to maintain cognitive performance when faced with greater task demands. These findings are among the first to relate bacterial phylogenetic characteristics to executive function among adult humans. Further study is required to elucidate a causal relationship between dietary manipulation of microbiota composition and changes in selective aspects of cognitive performance" - [Nutra USA] - See probiotic products at Amazon.com.

Which blood pressure measurement, systolic or diastolic, better predicts future hypertension in normotensive young adults? - J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich). 2017 Apr 26 - "The impact of DBP on the risk of developing hypertension compared with optimal BP (SBP <120 mm Hg and DBP <80 mm Hg) was significantly greater than that of SBP in subjects younger than 50 years (hazard ratios, 17.5 for isolated diastolic high-normal vs 10.5 for isolated systolic high-normal [P<.001]; 8.0 for isolated diastolic normal vs 4.1 for isolated systolic normal [P<.001]). Among the subjects 50 years and older, the corresponding effects of DBP and SBP were similar. Regarding the risk of new-onset hypertension, high DBP is more important than SBP in younger adults (<50 years) with normal or high-normal BP"

Curcumin Reduces Muscle Damage and Soreness Following Muscle-Damaging Exercise - FASEB Journal, Apr 2017 - "The antioxidant curcumin is able to counteract the two leading causes of muscle damage, oxidative stress and inflammation, as it interacts with multiple inflammatory pathways ... randomly assigned to ingest 50 mg Curcuminoids (in the form of 250 mg CurcuWIN®), 200 mg Curcuminoids (in the form of 1,000 mg CurcuWIN®), or placebo (PLA) for eight weeks ... These data demonstrate curcuminoids reduce muscle damage and improve muscle soreness in healthy young subjects following a bout of muscle damaging exercise. Faster recovery allows for consistent training at competition intensity and might lead to enhanced adaptation rate and performance" - [Nutra USA] - See CurcuWIN® at Amazon.com.

Chronic supplementation with dietary proanthocyanidins protects from diet-induced intestinal alterations in obese rats - Mol Nutr Food Res. 2017 Feb 20 - "GSPE decreased the ROS levels and MPO activity, without substantial differences among the doses. The supplementation with moderate and high GSPE doses significantly decreased iNOS expression compared to the CAF group, and the same pattern was observed in the low-dose animals with respect to IL-1β expression. Moreover, the results show that GSPE significantly increases zonulin-1 expression with respect to the CAF animals ... This study provides evidence for the ameliorative effect of a proanthocyanidin extract on high-fat/high-carbohydrate diet-induced intestinal alterations, specifically reducing intestinal inflammation and oxidative stress and suggesting a protection against a barrier defect" - [Nutra USA] - See Best Naturals Grape Seed Extract 400 mg Veggie Capsule, 120 Count.

Efficacy and Safety of Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera (L.) Dunal) Root Extract in Improving Memory and Cognitive Functions - Journal of Dietary Supplements, Feb. 21, 2017 - "After eight weeks of study, the ashwagandha treatment group demonstrated significant improvements compared with the placebo group in both immediate and general memory ... The treatment group also demonstrated significantly greater improvement in executive function, sustained attention, and information-processing speed" - [Nutra USA] - See ashwagandha at Amazon.com. 

Health Focus (Glycemic Index/Glycemic Load):