Recent Longevity News for the week ending 12/21/16

Gelatin supplements: Good for your joints? - Science Daily, 12/20/16 - "enrolled eight health young men in a trial of a gelatin supplement enhanced with vitamin C. The volunteers drank the supplement and had blood taken, and after one hour performed a short (five minute) bout of high-impact exercise (skipping) ... The researchers tested the blood for amino acids that could build up the collagen protein that composes tendons, ligaments, and bones. They also tested blood samples for their effect on Baar's lab-grown ligaments at UC Davis ... The gelatin supplement increased blood levels of amino acids and markers linked to collagen synthesis, and improved the mechanics of the engineered lab-grown ligaments" - See gelatin supplements at Amazon.com.

Frequent sauna bathing protects men against dementia - Science Daily, 12/16/16 - "the study participants were divided into three groups: those taking a sauna once a week, those taking a sauna 2-3 times a week, and those taking a sauna 4-7 times a week ... The more frequently saunas were taken, the lower was the risk of dementia. Among those taking a sauna 4-7 times a week, the risk of any form of dementia was 66% lower and the risk of Alzheimer's disease 65% lower than among those taking a sauna just once a week ... Previous results from the KIHD study have shown that frequent sauna bathing also significantly reduces the risk of sudden cardiac death, the risk of death due to coronary artery disease and other cardiac events, as well as overall mortality" - See JNH Lifestyle saunas at Amazon.com.

Community Acquired Pneumonia Incidence Before and After Proton Pump Inhibitor Prescription - Medscape, 12/16/16 - "The adjusted Cox regression showed a risk of community acquired pneumonia 1.67 (95% confidence interval 1.55 to 1.79) times higher for patients exposed to PPI than for controls"

Could Gum Disease Cause Rheumatoid Arthritis? - NBC, 12/14/16 - "First off, they found a distinct pattern of damage called hypercitrullination in the gums of patients with periodontal disease — the same pattern of damage seen in many rheumatoid arthritis patients ... "We found that in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, almost half of the patients have evidence of infection by the bacteria," Andrade said. That compared to just 11 percent of people without rheumatoid arthritis"

Runners' brains may be more connected, research shows - Science Daily, 12/14/16 - "The runners, overall, showed greater functional connectivity -- or connections between distinct brain regions -- within several areas of the brain, including the frontal cortex, which is important for cognitive functions such as planning, decision-making and the ability to switch attention between tasks ... The areas of the brain where we saw more connectivity in runners are also the areas that are impacted as we age, so it really raises the question of whether being active as a young adult could be potentially beneficial and perhaps afford some resilience against the effects of aging and disease"

Abstracts from this week:

Serum potassium is a predictor of incident diabetes in African Americans with normal aldosterone: the Jackson Heart Study - Am J Clin Nutr. 2016 Dec 14 - "in those with normal aldosterone (<9 ng/dL, n = 1163), participants in the highest 2 potassium quartiles had significantly lower odds of incident diabetes than did those in the lowest potassium quartile [OR (95% CI): 0.61 (0.39, 0.97) and 0.54 (0.33, 0.90), respectively]" - See potassium citrate at Amazon.com.

Effect of vitamin D supplementation as adjunctive therapy to methylphenidate on ADHD symptoms: A randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled trial - Nutr Neurosci. 2016 Dec 7:1-8 - "Vitamin D supplementation as adjunctive therapy to methylphenidate improved ADHD evening symptoms" - See vitamin D at Amazon.com.

Tea Consumption Reduces the Incidence of Neurocognitive Disorders: Findings from the Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study - J Nutr Health Aging. 2016;20(10):1002-100 - "neurocognitive disorders (NCD) ... apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype ... Tea intake was associated with lower risk of incident NCD, independent of other risk factors. Reduced NCD risk was observed for both green tea (OR=0.43) and black/oolong tea (OR=0.53) and appeared to be influenced by the changing of tea consumption habit at follow-up. Using consistent non-tea consumers as the reference, only consistent tea consumers had reduced risk of NCD (OR=0.39). Stratified analyses indicated that tea consumption was associated with reduced risk of NCD among females (OR=0.32) and APOE ε4 carriers (OR=0.14) but not males and non APOE ε4 carriers" - See green tea extract at Amazon.com.

Evaluation of arterial stiffness and cardiac function in patients with vascular erectile dysfunction: acute effects of phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor tadalafil - Int J Impot Res. 2016 Dec 8 - "Treatment with tadalafil reduced pulse pressure (P=0.0179), systolic blood pressure (P=0.001) and diastolic blood pressure (P=0.054) and increased aortic distensibility (P=0.001) and aortic strain (P=0.003) in the ED group. Tadalafil administration also increased large artery and small artery elasticity indices that were reduced in the ED group at baseline (P=0.02 and 0.003, respectively)" 

Health Focus (Omega-3):