SUGAR SWEETENED BEVERAGES SUPPRESS BODYS STRESS RESPONSE

Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages can suppress the hormone cortisol and stress responses in the brain, but diet beverages sweetened with aspartame do not have the same effect, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism

"This is the first evidence that high sugar -- but not aspartame -- consumption may relieve stress in humans," said one of the study's authors, Kevin D. Laugero, PhD, of the University of California, Davis, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. "The concern is psychological or emotional stress could trigger the habitual overconsumption of sugar and amplify sugar's detrimental health effects, including obesity."

About 35 percent of adults and nearly 17 percent of children nationwide are obese, according to the Society's Endocrine Facts & Figures report. Sugary drinks such as soda and juice have been linked to this problem. Half of the U.S. population consumes sugar-sweetened drinks on any given day, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The parallel-arm, double-masked diet intervention study examined the effects of consuming sugar- and aspartame-sweetened beverages on a group of 19 women between the ages of 18 and 40. The researchers assigned eight women to consume aspartame-sweetened beverages, and 11 to drink sugar-sweetened beverages. For a 12-day period, the women drank one of the assigned beverages at breakfast, lunch and dinner. The participants were instructed not to consumer other sugar-sweetened drinks, including fruit juice.

For 3.5 days prior to and after the study, the women consumed a standardized low-sugar diet and stayed at the UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center's Clinical Research Center.

Before and after the 12-day experimental period, the women underwent functional MRI screenings after performing math tests to gauge the brain's stress response. The participants also provided saliva samples to measure levels of cortisol -- a hormone made by the adrenal glands that is essential for the body's response to stress.

The researchers found women who drank sugar-sweetened beverages during the study had a diminished cortisol response to the math test, compared to women who were assigned to consume aspartame-sweetened beverages. In addition, the women who consumed sugar-sweetened beverages exhibited more activity in the hippocampus -- a part of the brain that is involved in memory and is sensitive to stress -- than the women who drank aspartame-sweetened beverages.

The hippocampus typically is less active when the body is under stress. When the study participants drank sugar-sweetened beverages, this response was inhibited. The findings offer new clues that help explain how sugar positively reinforces the temptation to eat comfort food when a person is stressed, Laugero said.

"The results suggest differences in dietary habits may explain why some people underreact to stressful situations and others overreact," he said. "Although it may be tempting to suppress feelings of stress, a normal reaction to stress is important to good health. Research has linked over- and under-reactivity in neural and endocrine stress systems to poor mental and physical health."

HEALTHY LIFE STYLE MAY BUFFER AGAINST STRESS RELATED CELL AGING

A new study from UC San Francisco is the first to show that while the impact of life's stressors accumulate overtime and accelerate cellular aging, these negative effects may be reduced by maintaining a healthy diet, exercising and sleeping well.

The study participants who exercised, slept well and ate well had less telomere shortening than the ones who didn't maintain healthy lifestyles, even when they had similar levels of stress," said lead author Eli Puterman, PhD, assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at UCSF. "It's very important that we promote healthy living, especially under circumstances of typical experiences of life stressors like death, caregiving and job loss."

The paper will be published in Molecular Psychiatry, a peer-reviewed science journal by Nature Publishing Group.

Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that affect how quickly cells age. They are combinations of DNA and proteins that protect the ends of chromosomes and help them remain stable. As they become shorter, and as their structural integrity weakens, the cells age and die quicker. Telomeres also get shorter with age.

In the study, researchers examined three healthy behaviors -physical activity, dietary intake and sleep quality -- over the course of one year in 239 post-menopausal, non-smoking women. The women provided blood samples at the beginning and end of the year for telomere measurement and reported on stressful events that occurred during those 12 months. In women who engaged in lower levels of healthy behaviors, there was a significantly greater decline in telomere length in their immune cells for every major life stressor that occurred during the year. Yet women who maintained active lifestyles, healthy diets, and good quality sleep appeared protected when exposed to stress -- accumulated life stressors did not appear to lead to greater shortening.

"This is the first study that supports the idea, at least observationally, that stressful events can accelerate immune cell aging in adults, even in the short period of one year. Exciting, though, is that these results further suggest that keeping active, and eating and sleeping well during periods of high stress are particularly important to attenuate the accelerated aging of our immune cells," said Puterman.

In recent years, shorter telomeres have become associated with a broad range of aging-related diseases, including stroke, vascular dementia, cardiovascular disease, obesity, osteoporosis diabetes, and many forms of cancer.

Research on telomeres, and the enzyme that makes them, telomerase, was pioneered by three Americans, including UCSF molecular biologist and co-author Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD. Blackburn co-discovered the telomerase enzyme in 1985. The scientists received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for their work.

"These new results are exciting yet observational at this point. They do provide the impetus to move forward with interventions to modify lifestyle in those experiencing a lot of stress, to test whether telomere attrition can truly be slowed," said Blackburn.

Co-authors include senior author Elissa Epel, PhD, department of psychiatry, Jue Lin, PhD, department of biochemistry and biophysics, both of UCSF and Jeffrey Krauss, MD, division of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Stanford University. Lin, Epel and Blackburn are the co-founders of Telome Health Inc., a diagnostic company measuring telomere biology.

The study was supported by the Baumann Foundation and the Barney & Barbro Foundation. Puterman is supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Stress And Pregnancy

20 Minute Pregnancy Non Stress Test Monitoring Polyhydramnios

The American Psychological Association APA is a scientific and professional organization that represents psychologists in the United States. APA educates the public .Content provided on this site is for entertainment or informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical or health, safety, legal or financial advice..View the latest health news and explore articles on fitness,t, nutrition, parenting, relationships, medicine, diseases and healthy living at CNN Health..Whether you're looking to lose weight or just want a way to get rid of that nasty cold, eHow has all the answers you're looking for..SparkPeople.com is the largest onlinet and healthy living community with over 12 million registered members. Create a free account today to get the tools, support .Medical news and health news headlines posted throughout the day, every day.TODAY Parents is the premiere destination for parenting news, advice community. Find the latest parenting trends and tips for your kids and family on TODAY.com..Health resources and personalized health tools. Information and news on depression, digestive health, diabetes, breast cancer, cardiovascular health, and much more..Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD Definition. PTSD is a disorder that develops in some people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or dangerous event..Do you really need to eat twice as much food dirung your pregnancy? Of course not! In fact, maintaining a healthy, balancedt is of utmost importance .

20 Minute Pregnancy Non Stress Test Monitoring Polyhydramnios

What Do Gingivitis Gums Look Like

Medical news and health news headlines posted throughout the day, every day.TODAY Parents is the premiere destination for parenting news, advice community. Find the latest parenting trends and tips for your kids and family on TODAY.com.. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD Definition. PTSD is a disorder that develops in some people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or .Whether you're looking to lose weight or just want a way to get rid of that nasty cold, eHow has all the answers you're looking for..SparkPeople.com is the largest onlinet and healthy living community with over 12 million registered members. Create a free account today to get the tools, support . Do you really need to eat twice as much food dirung your pregnancy? Of course not! In fact, maintaining a healthy, balancedt is of utmost importance .The American Psychological Association APA is a scientific and professional organization that represents psychologists in the United States. APA educates the .Content provided on this site is for entertainment or informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical or health, safety, legal or financial advice..View the latest health news and explore articles on fitness,t, nutrition, parenting, relationships, medicine, diseases and healthy living at CNN Health..Health resources and personalized health tools. Information and news on depression, digestive health, diabetes, breast cancer, cardiovascular health, and much more..

ER Stress Causes Neuropathic Pain

Today's post from sciencedaily.com (see link below) has an optimistic title and an even more optimistic introduction but in the end we're still a long way from putting the findings here into practise. Scientists have found that the biological process called endoplasmic reticulum stress, or ER stress, is a significant cause of nerve pain and the conclusion is that finding drugs to block this stress from happening will provide a breakthrough in the treatment of neuropathy. So what is endoplasmic reticulum stress? Well, it's a highly complex process at cellular level which maintains cellular health. When it's disturbed, all sorts of things can go wrong, including nerve pain. I know, that's not an explanation by anyone's standards but you try Googling it and making sense of your findings! You really have to be a molecular scientist to understand how it works, so in the meantime, we have to trust in this article and believe that what they've found is important and maybe revolutionary for people suffering from neuropathic pain. If anyone can provide a simple explanation regarding ER stress, that everyone will understand, please let us know.
 

Key mechanism that causes neuropathic pain found 
Date:July 7, 2015 Source:University of California - Davis

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have identified a key mechanism in neuropathic pain. The discovery could eventually benefit millions of patients with chronic pain from trauma, diabetes, shingles, multiple sclerosis or other conditions that cause nerve damage.

A biological process called endoplasmic reticulum stress, or ER stress, is the significant driver of neuropathic pain, said lead researchers Bora Inceoglu of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Ahmed Bettaieb, Department of Nutrition. The work is published July 6 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This is a fundamental discovery that opens new ways to control chronic pain," said co-author Bruce Hammock, distinguished professor at the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.

"We can now specifically search for agents to control ER stress and its downstream pathways," Hammock said. "This search is already underway in a number of laboratories working on cancer and other diseases."

Working with Professor Fawaz Haj of the UC Davis nutrition department, Bettaieb found that key molecular signatures associated with diabetes and diabetic pain were linked to ER stress. Neuropathic pain is a common consequence of both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, affecting up to 70 percent of patients.

Inceoglu, working in Hammock's laboratory, showed that neuropathic pain could be initiated by compounds that cause ER stress and reversed by agents that block it.

The researchers had previously shown that a class of natural bioactive lipids has powerful analgesic effects in the body. These analgesic lipids are broken down in the body by an enzyme, soluble epoxide hydrolase. The team was able to show that blocking soluble epoxide hydrolase blocks ER stress and associated neuropathic pain.

The work sheds new light onto at least one biological process that mediates neuropathic pain, Inceoglu said. With this knowledge, researchers can now test ER-stress blocking drugs in the clinic, and carry out fundamental research on how different types of pain grouped under the name "neuropathic" differ from each other and respond to new drugs.

The study provides convincing evidence for a novel concept as to what causes neuropathic pain said John Imig, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, who was not involved in the study. The work provides new opportunities for drugs or drug combinations to treat chronic pain, he said.

Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Davis. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:
Bora Inceoglu, Ahmed Bettaieb, Carlos A. Trindade da Silva, Kin Sing Stephen Lee, Fawaz G. Haj, Bruce D. Hammock. Endoplasmic reticulum stress in the peripheral nervous system is a significant driver of neuropathic pain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015; 201510137 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1510137112

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150707093353.htm

HUGS HELP PROTECT AGAINST STRESS INFECTION

Instead of an apple, could a hug-a-day keep the doctor away? According to new research from Carnegie Mellon University, that may not be that far-fetched of an idea.

Led by Sheldon Cohen, the Robert E. Doherty University Professor of Psychology in CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the researchers tested whether hugs act as a form of social support, protecting stressed people from getting sick. Published in Psychological Science, they found that greater social support and more frequent hugs protected people from the increased susceptibility to infection associated with being stressed and resulted in less severe illness symptoms.

Cohen and his team chose to study hugging as an example of social support because hugs are typically a marker of having a more intimate and close relationship with another person.

"We know that people experiencing ongoing conflicts with others are less able to fight off cold viruses. We also know that people who report having social support are partly protected from the effects of stress on psychological states, such as depression and anxiety," said Cohen. "We tested whether perceptions of social support are equally effective in protecting us from stress-induced susceptibility to infection and also whether receiving hugs might partially account for those feelings of support and themselves protect a person against infection."

In 404 healthy adults, perceived support was assessed by a questionnaire, and frequencies of interpersonal conflicts and receiving hugs were derived from telephone interviews conducted on 14 consecutive evenings. Then, the participants were intentionally exposed to a common cold virus and monitored in quarantine to assess infection and signs of illness.

The results showed that perceived social support reduced the risk of infection associated with experiencing conflicts. Hugs were responsible for one-third of the protective effect of social support. Among infected participants, greater perceived social support and more frequent hugs both resulted in less severe illness symptoms whether or not they experienced conflicts.

"This suggests that being hugged by a trusted person may act as an effective means of conveying support and that increasing the frequency of hugs might be an effective means of reducing the deleterious effects of stress," Cohen said. "The apparent protective effect of hugs may be attributable to the physical contact itself or to hugging being a behavioral indicator of support and intimacy."

Cohen added, "Either way, those who receive more hugs are somewhat more protected from infection."