Snake Oil? How much of our obsession with supplements is rooted in scientific evidence?

As we've discussed in class, supplements are a common go-to for health advocates. There is the obvious problem that the supplement industry undergoes no outside regulation, and we must question how "pure" and safe are these supplements. What are we putting into our bodies?
That aside, the issue of actual scientific support is more alarming to me. The fact that so many people support this industry without a backing of science is pretty shocking. However, when I think things like that, I only have to remember myself a few years ago, when I believed that if it was "natural" it couldn't do the body harm. This was a time when I also didn't understand that claims could be made without government regulation and that scientific testing of these products was actually necessary. It just seemed like "well, they made the claim, so it must be true. Why would they lie?" Now being completely enveloped in the fields of science and health, I understand the issues.
This website has a pretty interesting take on the various supplements out there and their efficacy. While it isn't a scientific article, I have to agree with a fair amount (thought not all) of what they posted based on my own extensive reading of bioactives on PubMed. I tend to enjoy visual interpretations of data/information, so if you feel the same, you'll probably enjoy this site as well. I also find it very helpful that you can gain access to the articles that the schematic is based on by clicking on the bubble. That way, you can determine if you agree or not, and it really acts as an interactive reference list. (As a side note, whoever made this website has a lot of other really interesting visuals for lots of other topics, in case you're interested).

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/

Notice that our friend tumeric is colored brown in order to show that it looks promising. I suspect that it is located below the "worth it" line because there is very little evidence in humans thus far. Additionally, you'll see prickly pear at the very bottom of the page in the range of "no evidence." The amount of data in support of supplements is pretty clearly inversely related to the amount of supplements out there, which I would have found surprising a few years ago, and I am not at all surprised about now.

Ratio Between Fast Food Restaurants to Grocery Stores

I guess Heidi beat me to this but I also was curious about the ratio of fast food restaurants to grocery stores so I decided to do a little experiment. After class on Monday, I decided to count the number of fast food restaurants, not including sit down restaurants, and the number of grocery stores between Speedway and Campbell and Speedway and Swan. I found that there were 18 fast food restaurants, 3 ice-cream parlors, and a shocking 2 grocery stores. Surprisingly enough, neither of the 2 grocery stores were one of the 3 major chains: Fry's, Safeway, or Albertson's. The two that I past were Whole Foods Market, which as much as I love what's inside that store, it is way to expensive for the average Joe. The other was Sunflower Market which I found exactly on the corner of Speedway and Swan. Sunflower Market was surrounded by: Pizza Hut, Whataburger, Jack in the Box, and Magpies Pizza. The first thing that came to my mind was the game Monopoly, this whole situation was just a bad game of Monopoly. Secondly, I thought that there should be a law that prohibits more than I fast food restaurant per block. I found this all to be incredibly disturbing after we had discussed that in actuality, shopping at the grocery store would be cheaper than fast food. I never really thought about it that deeply, until yesterday when I saw two shows on the food network: Sandra's Money Saving Meals, and Ten Dollar Dinners which both showed how a good hearty meal could cost just $2 per person. Even the dollar menu can't provide you with a whole meal for $2, perhaps just a hamburger and fries. Anyways, so I was curious if the media had noticed this problem at all so I searched obesity and fast food restaurants on google and came across this article: http://www.nber.org/aginghealth/2009no1/w14721.html . It's called Do Fast Food Restaurants Contribute to Obesity. I found the article to be interesting, but now I'm opening the floor and want to hear what you all think!

McDonald's Vs. Groceries?

Hey everyone!

I was looking up some more information in regards to the discussion we had on McDonald's, the grocery store, and being lazy ;) This article was interesting and shocking to me because it introduces a new issue we weren't even aware of (or I wasn't, at least). McDonald's has coupons for their already reduced items! Now the Big Mac lovers have no chance of escaping this horrible and misleading trap. (sarcastic undertone) Just thought it'd be interesting to take a peek!

http://hubpages.com/hub/Fast-Foods-Are-Becoming-Groceries

Hi everyone!

Our discussion Monday had me thinking… what’s the deal with curcumin? Yeah, sure, we read an article raving about the wonders of the compound, but I was still not convinced of curcumin’s lofty guarantees. And so began my search for peer-reviewed evidence. 

Before this semester, I thought curcumin’s health benefits were scraping the bare bottom of the legitimacy jar. So I was completely awed when I had to click and scroll through hundreds of curcumin-related PubMed search results. There is no shortage of science reviews and basic articles about the topic, so I encourage you all to look through PubMed if our class article on curcumin left you as perplexed as it left me.

The point is, though, that I found the Holy Grail of class-relevant curcumin articles. Look at the title!
“Active spice-derived components can inhibit inflammatory responses of adipose tissue in obesity by suppressing inflammatory actions of macrophages and release of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 from adipocytes.” (Woo et al.)

This article links two articles we read in class: Byron Richards’ article about curcumin AND the review about macrophage tissue infiltration written by Bourlier & Bouloumie. Because we all know a little bit about both subjects through Monday’s discussion, I figured I would show you guys this article so that you can weld your knowledge together and place a final verdict on the curcumin mystery.

As we all know, macrophages migration into adipose tissue is an underlying cause of inflammation in obese individuals. These macrophages release proinflammatory mediators into the body and chronic inflammation ensues. Woo’s experiment treated adipose tissue from obese rats with curcumin (among other spice-derived compounds) and measured the extent of macrophage infiltration and activation.

Woo’s study showed that curcumin limits the release of MCP-1 (monocyte chemoattractant protein-1). This inhibitory effect could be responsible for their observation that macrophage migration was thwarted upon treatment with the compound. If you remember from Monday, Bourlier & Bouloumie’s article suggested that macrophage migration into adipose tissue plays a huge role in obesity-induced inflammation. Woo’s article shows that curcumin has the potential to reduce these effects. Production of TNF-a and nitric oxide (pro-inflammatory mediators) was significantly impaired after curcumin treatment as well.

 Unfortunately, a huge limitation to this study is that it was not performed on humans. A huge gap of knowledge still obviously exists on the subject of curcumin and inflammation, but won’t you all sleep better tonight knowing that maybe eating that gallon of delicious Indian curry last week wasn’t an act of gluttony, but potential inflammation mediation instead?

 

References:

Woo HM, Kang JH, Kawada T, Yoo H, Sung MK, Yu R. "Active spice-derived components can inhibit inflammatory responses of adipose tissue in obesity by suppressing inflammatory actions of macrophages and release of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 from adipocytes." Life Sci. 2007 Feb 13;80(10):926-31. Epub 2006 Nov 23.

Bourlier V, Bouloumie A. "Role of macrophage tissue infiltration in obesity and insulin resistance. Diabetes." Metab (2009), doi:10.1016/j.diabet.2009.05.001

Richards, Byron. "Curcumin: Linking Leptin, Obesity, Joint Problems, and Inflammation." News and Views. Wellness Resources, 24 May 2010. Web. 8 Feb 2011. <http://www.wellnessresources.com/main/printable/curcumin_linking_lept>. 

Fast Food Diet, Sedentary Lifestyle and Insulin Resistance

Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) are chronic diseases, meaning they develop over a long-period of time. There is an abundance of literature on type 2 diabetics having a history of being overweight or obese, prior to their diagnosis hence, it is wise for health providers to prescribe a lifestyle modification (in terms of diet, physical activity and stress management) that is geared towards disease prevention on a long-term duration. However, we learned during the Obesity/Diabetes class discussion that fat cells (also called adipocytes) behave like immune cells, capable of responding to short-term exposure to very high amounts of glucose from high carbohydrate diets, and excessive fatty acids from high fat diets. As long-term lifestyle modification starts from baby steps, I think it is interesting to know what happens to your body, specifically, the insulin response, when a person is subject to an acute (short-term) exposure to high carbohydrate and high fat diet via fast food.

A study by Danielsson et al. (2009) investigated the effects of overeating in fat cells of lean humans. The young adult subjects (average age was 27.3 years old) were fed a high calorie fast food diet twice a day for four weeks, with restricted physical activity of 5,000 steps a day. The intervention resulted in body weight gain of 10%, and an increase in body fat of 19%. Although the subjects remained of normal BMI (of normal weight for height) at the end of the study (baseline = 22.4, end of study =24.3), they exhibited moderate insulin resistance and reduction in insulin sensitivity.

In a separate study of young men and women (average age 26 years old), a treatment group was assigned to a four week fast food diet (twice a day)plus a sedentary lifestyle of not more than 5,000 steps per day (Astrand et al., 2010). The treatment group significantly gained weight after the intervention, and similar to the Danielsson study, showed increased insulin resistance and reduced insulin sensitivity. The insulin antagonist leptin and the acute inflammation marker C-reactive protein were elevated after four weeks in the treatment group.

Although both studies had small sample sizes (less than 20 subjects in each group) they provide direct application of what we learned in class – that overnutrition can metabolically stress the body which can lead to insulin resistance.

Realistically, it may be difficult to eliminate fast food meals completely from one’s diet. However, it is important to know how the body responds to an energy-dense diet on a relatively short-term duration, so that the next time one sees a glass of a 2,000-Calorie milkshake, one can make an informed decision as to how much should be consumed or whether it is smart to drink it at all, taking into consideration your usual diet and physical activity levels.

References:

Danielsson A, Fagerholm S, Ost A, Franck N, Kjolhede P, Nystrom FH, Stralfors P. Short-term overeating induces insulin resistance in fat cells in lean human subjects. Mol Med 2009;15:228-234.

Astrand O, Carlsson M, Nilsson I, Lindstrom T, Borga M, Nystrom FH. Weight gain by hyperalimentation elevates C-reactive protein levels but does not affect circulating levels of adiponectin or resistin in healthy subjects. Eur J Endocrinol 2010;163:879-885.

Mary Jo Cantoria

TLRs

Before I forget, I did not get a chance to mention in class today that I thought it was interesting that TLRs can recognize and differentiate specific types of lipids. We know that TLRs recognize the LPSs found on bacterial membranes, but it is interesting that TLRs can scout out similar fatty acids from adipose tissue (secretion of fatty acids in droplet form?). AND they can differentiate between saturated and unsaturated fats. AND they can elicit different immune responses upon independent recognition.

This innate response/reaction from TLRs seems (to me) to be what could be happening when lean mice become overweight after they are exposed directly (dermatological/topical) to the waste products of obese rats.

Thoughts before bed....I am proud to say I am a nerd.
Jennifer

Obesity is so interesting...'cause it's scary!

Hello!

I hope in class we are able to discuss not only the physiological aspect of obesity, but also the sociological and psychological aspects. I read this article in The Atlantic (at the Dr.'s office). And it had a great commentary about a research article in Obesity. The commentary stated in large print: “it will take less than 30 years for all black women to become overweight or obese.”AHHH! So that means that If I have a baby today, in 30 years it will be overweight or obese! (That won't happen to MY kid, but this is the overall trend in America).

I know that we talked about how bogus articles scare people into becoming borderline hypochondriacs, but some people need to be tricked into getting healthy. Is this statement too bold? This information was developed from data that just so happened to be tested scientifically...but if it wasn't, it would have still empowered me! What do yall think?

Another point I wanted to make was that disease prevention (vs treatment) strategies have become vital to clinicians and medical researchers. It is far too easy to simply call for implementation of a more nutritious diet and exercise in a person’s life; therefore, looking deeply into the reasons people eat the way they do could provide better ways to intervene and combat epidemic obesity. I am sure there are immuno-neuro-endocrine linkages that many researchers have not even thought about. Or have they...? That is what I meant by social and psychological aspects of obesity.

See ya!
Jennifer