Recent Longevity News for the week ending 5/11/16

I made a web page of hiking trails in Southern California.  See: http://qualitycounts.com/trails/.  I got a couple 'likes' for it and I don't know how people even found the page so maybe I have something.  I used alltrails.com to make the GPS files (.gpx) of the trails then imported them into Google Maps.  I use a hiking GPS but I think you can use a smart phone and navigate just by clicking on the Google Maps version.  I've got two views on hiking.  It sure seems like the people at the pool appear to be in much better shape but hiking uses muscles that you don't normally use which I believe is why you're sore the next day.  The reason I made the webpage is that I searched the Internet for the .gpx files or hikes I wanted to try.  The few sites that had them were actual .gpx recordings.  Who wants to track a pervious track including each place they went to the bathroom?  Seems like it's impossible to find the information I put on that page.  Even the group hikes I've been on seem to break up between the slower and faster hikers.  Seems like it'd be prudent for the ones bringing up the rear to have that as a backup navigation.

Long-term Testosterone May Decrease Cardiovascular Risk - Medscape, 5/10/16 - "Long-term testosterone replacement therapy is associated with a decreased — not increased — risk for cardiovascular disease in men ... involved 10,311 men 66 years and older newly treated with testosterone replacement therapy and 28,029 untreated control subjects ... At a median follow-up of 5 years, overall mortality was lower in patients treated with testosterone replacement therapy than in control subjects (hazard ratio, 0.88) ... There was no increase in prostate cancer risk with short-term exposure, and the risk decreased with increasing exposure; with long-term exposure, prostate cancer decreased by 40%"

Greek? Nonfat? Fruit-flavored? A dietitian dishes on yogurt - NYT, 5/3/16 - "A key recommendation in the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans is to choose low-fat or fat-free because dairy fat is mostly saturated, the type linked with increased cholesterol and risk of heart disease. Also, full-fat dairy has more calories than nonfat, so it seems logical that forgoing the fat would be a better choice for keeping weight in check ... But this view has been challenged recently with a few well-publicized studies that surprisingly link the fat in dairy with a lower risk of obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Researchers surmise that full-fat dairy might offer some as-yet-unknown health benefit. It also might help with weight management because the fat in it makes it more satisfying, helping keep your appetite in check ... It’s worth repeating that there’s no need to worry about the sugars that are inherent in dairy products. They’re naturally “packaged” with so many important nutrients that it would be misguided to avoid them. It’s the sweeteners added to these foods that are best kept to a minimum"

Common supplement boosts kidney cancer therapy - Science Daily, 5/2/16 - "docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), a fatty acid commonly found in fish and fish oil supplements, reduces renal cell carcinoma invasiveness, growth rate, and blood vessel growth when combined with the anti-cancer therapy regorafenib ... Though the results are encouraging, Weiss cautions that these benefits are quite narrow, relying on the synergistic interaction between regorafenib and DHA. In other words, there's no proof that taking fish oil supplements or eating fish like salmon would have any impact against kidney cancer on their own" - See docosahexaenoic acid at Amazon.com.

Abstracts from this week:

Beneficial effects of Bifidobacterium lactis on lipid profile and cytokines in patients with metabolic syndrome: A randomized trial. Effects of probiotics on metabolic syndrome - Nutrition. 2016 Jun;32(6):716-9 - "Daily ingestion of 80 mL fermented milk with 2.72 × 10(10) colony-forming units of B. lactis HN019 showed significant reduction in body mass index (P = 0.017), total cholesterol (P = 0.009), and low-density lipoprotein (P = 0.008) compared with baseline and control group values. Furthermore, a significant decrease in tumor necrosis factor-α (P = 0.033) and interleukin-6 (P = 0.044) proinflammatory cytokines was observed" - [Nutra USA] - Note: Bifidobacterium lactis is one of the bacterial in the Garden of Life Primal Defense ULTRA I take.

TSH enhancement of FT4 to FT3 conversion is age dependent - Eur J Endocrinol. 2016 May 5 - "This may reflect a decrease in Thyroxine (T4) to Triiodothyronine (T3) conversion with age, which may be part of the ageing process" - See T3 at International Anti-aging Systems.

Effect of probiotics on body weight and body-mass index: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized, controlled trials - Int J Food Sci Nutr. 2016 May 5 - "Probiotic consumption significantly reduced body weight by 0.59 kg (95% CI, 0.30-0.87) and BMI by 0.49 kg/m2 (95% CI, 0.24-0.74). A greater reduction in BMI was found with multiple species of probiotics. Subgroup analysis of trials with intervention duration ≥8 weeks found a more significant reduction in BMI. Limiting analysis to trials with a baseline BMI ≥25 kg/m2 showed a greater reduction in BMI" - See probiotic products at Amazon.com.

Multivitamin Use and the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease in Men - J Nutr. 2016 Apr 27 - "mean follow-up of 12.2 y ... In multivariable-adjusted analyses, no significant associations were observed among baseline multivitamin users compared with nonusers for the risk of major CVD events (HR: 0.94; 95% CI: 0.84, 1.05), whereas a self-reported duration of ≥20 y at baseline was associated with lower risk (HR: 0.56; 95% CI: 0.35, 0.90; P-trend = 0.05). Baseline multivitamin use was also significantly inversely associated with the risk of cardiac revascularization (HR: 0.86; 95% CI: 0.75, 0.98)" - [Nutra USA] - Note:  My problem with studies like this is that a lot of multiple vitamins I see people take are junk that I wouldn't take if it were given to me for free.

Pioglitazone (Actos) and bladder cancer: legal system triumphs over the evidence - J Diabetes Complications. 2016 Apr 11 - "In preclinical studies, pioglitazone was associated with bladder cancer in male rats (but not in female rats, mice dogs or monkeys). Because of this association, the Federal Drug Administration requested a large 10year epidemiological study to evaluate whether there was an association between bladder cancer and exposure to pioglitazone in patients ... Of the 23 epidemiological studies that have been published to date, 18 showed no association between bladder cancer and pioglitazone (5 with a combination of rosiglitazone and pioglitazone). Of the five that did show a significant association with pioglitazone, three could not be confirmed in the same population and in one of them there were significantly more risk factors for bladder cancer in the patients exposed to pioglitazone. In the fourth one, a significant association became non-significant when patients >79years were included. In the fifth one, detection bias was a major flaw. Currently, >11,000 legal cases have been filed, many of which claim emotional distress due to the fear of bladder cancer. To limit their legal costs, the pharmaceutical company has established a 2.4 billion dollar settlement pool. So much for evidence-based medicine" 

Health Focus (Memory Loss):