British scientists at King's College, London appear to have found a new way to regulate hypertension which involves oxidation. Oxidation in the past has generally been regarded as harmful rather than good, but researchers now acknowledge that it is central to normal cell function.
Important for all tissues, the enzyme protein kinase G or PKG is particularly functional in the cardiovascular system where it plays a fundamental role along with nitric oxide in blood pressure regulation. What the researchers discovered was a way in which PKG can be regulated independently of nitric oxide which may open up new approaches to manage hypertension. Metabolic oxidants such as hydrogen peroxide can elicit bonding between two amino acids which activates PKG, which in turn, leads to lowering of blood pressure.
The research is published in the journal Science .
Active oxidant/anti-oxidant species are generated during normal metabolism. Fruits and vegetables have been shown to contain high levels of these compounds , which provide protection against harmful free radicals and have been suggested to lower the incidence and mortality rates of cancer and heart disease in addition to a number of other health benefits. Fruits and vegetables have repeatedly shown to be extraordinarily effective in reducing hypertension and have been considered critical in reducing the burden of cardiovascular disease .
Perhaps the latest research will clarify why.
This week, Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services (LACORS), a UK government body set up to provide advice and guidance to support local regulatory services, issued a report accusing British food manufacturers of "hoodwinking" consumers by manipulating serving sizes to minimize the amount of salt.
Are you kidding? Apparently LACORS feels the food industry is as obsessed with salt as it obviously is. Salt as the only nutrient of interest? What about the food industry's desire to showcase "good" nutrients? If a single chicken nugget is a smallish "serving" then the amount of protein is proportionately small. If serving sizes are wrong, don't blame salt; get regulators and FSA together and agree on proper standards. Don't obsess on salt.
Myopia reigns at LACORS.
LACORS ignored its basic mission: to promote sound health. It has embraced the Food Standards Agency's politically-correct salt-bashing campaign, ignoring entirely that campaign's flawed assumptions and utter lack of a health outcome metric. "Success" is salt reduction, argues FSA, simply assuming a health benefit. Studies in the US and Finland have put the lie to this easy assumption.
Contrast that to the Food Dudes program whose goal it is to increase fruit and vegetable consumption in the UK. They may have a miniscule budget and certainly lack the glitz and horsepower of the FSA, but Food Dudes understands the science: increasing intakes of fruit and vegetables will not only reduce cardiovascular diseases, but a great many other chronic diseases as well. It is a pity that they don't have the spotlight
LACORS is right on one point: the consumer IS being hoodwinked. But FSA and LACORS are doing the hoodwinking, not the food industry.
The August edition of IFT 's Food Technology , the most widely read journal in the food industry (monthly circulation of 35,000) just came out. The OpEd column, Perspectives, contains a hard-hitting look at those who pursue salt reduction instead of increased fruit and vegetable consumption as a means of controlling hypertension.
A Salty Red Herring describes how a diet high in fruit and vegetables leads to a much lower incidence of chronic disease and a decline in the majority of risk factors associated with cardiac disease and stroke. The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, high in fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products demonstrated that hypertension can easily be reduced, even in salt-sensitive people (Appel et al., 1997). However, with a diet high in fruits and vegetables, not only is hypertension dramatically reduced, but all other cardiovascular risk factors are reduced as well.
Despite the evidence of fruit and vegetables benefits, the article asks why do AMA, FSA, and CSPI continue to aggressively push salt reduction (partially reducing one cardiovascular risk factor in a small proportion of the population) and say so little about dramatically increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables (reducing the impact of all risk factors for the total population)? In other words, why do they insist on chasing the salted red herring when a much more meaningful and beneficial resolution to many diet-related health problems is so obvious?
With mounting concern about the potential for terrorists to target in-transit chlorine, we've blogged about the potential for on-site chlorination. Others are promoting a switch in disinfectants, suggesting replacing less costly chlorine with bleach or UV light, the Center for American Progress among them warned of "toxic trains and terrorists:"
Each year, thousands of tons of highly toxic chlorine gas travel by rail in the United States to drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities and other industries. These massive railcars traverse some 300,000 miles of freight railways, passing through almost all major American cities and towns. A rupture of one of these railcars could release a dense, lethal plume for miles downwind, potentially killing or injuring thousands of people.
The Department of Homeland Security and numerous security experts have repeatedly warned that terrorists could use industrial chemicals as improvised weapons of mass destruction-and indeed, terrorists recently attacked and blew up several trucks carrying chlorine in Iraq. In this respect, railcars of chlorine gas represent a distinct national security vulnerability. Yet Congress and the Bush administration have not acted to eliminate unnecessary uses of chlorine gas railcars even where undeniably affordable and practical alternatives exist.
We think on-site chlorination needs a closer look . Water utilities know how to handle chlorine. It works and it's the least costly option. On-site chlorination removes the threat of some rocket attack on a railcar or tanker truck.
Mort Satin sent in this blog:
"Vitamins No Magic Bullet for Heart Health," "Study doubts antioxidant benefits for heart risk women," "Vitamins May Be No Match For Mother Nature," typical headlines resulting from a just published study in the Archives of Internal Medicine. I find it odd that there is such an uproar over the finding that individual nutritional elements, such as vitamins C and E or the antioxidant beta carotene in pill form do not contribute to health in the same way as when they are consumed as integral components of fruits and vegetables.
This study highlights a number of fundamental problems we encounter in modern nutrition-based medical research. We have come to rely very heavily on epidemiological studies, regarding them as functional rather than numerical relationships. Theories, policies and interventions are churned out of the health establishment based upon the tyranny of statistics rather than a knowledge of the underlying physiological mechanisms. That's how we end up with the swarm of "paradoxes," the French paradox, the Italian paradox, etc. Is it the wine, or perhaps the omega 3, 6, and 9 fatty acids? Should we focus on flax or concern ourselves with nutrient flux? Most importantly, can we isolate the one magic bullet that will rationalize the statistics we observed? With that one magic bullet, it would be child's play to promulgate a health policy and a simple intervention strategy. Unfortunately, life processes seldom revolve around single bullets.
Another primary problem is the lack of knowledge concerning the contradictions we observe between laboratory studies and clinical trials. As an example, most people believe that the majority of vitamin C is lost during processing because laboratory analysis indicates the ascorbic acid is gone. What has actually happened is that the ascorbic acid is converted into dehydroascorbic acid, which doesn't show up on the standard laboratory analysis. However, dehydroascorbic acid has virtually the same health benefits as ascorbic acid. The laboratory analysis says the vitamin C is gone, it has ceased to be, it is no more, however, our astute bodies tell us it's not - another example of the "in vitro, in vivo paradox."
The same paradox is evident in the countless dietary studies carried out, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Many of these studies begin with the notoriously inaccurate, self-professed food survey - the 24-hour recall ("I don't remember eating that Twinkie," said the adiposed adolescent). Once this questionable set of data on intakes is collected, it is usually put through clever computer programs such as the Minnesota Nutrition Data System software which converts these stated intakes into nutrients, based upon the ubiquitous, but inadequate USDA tables and other data on proprietary food preparations. The USDA tables disregard the issue of digestibility (or more correctly, indigestibility). These tables and the numerous computerized nutrient data programs that derive from them, assume that everything is fully digested - 100% bioavailability. This is, of course, wrong. The most digestible protein, egg albumin is only about 95% digestible, while celery can be down to 65-70% on a dry matter basis. This means that a significant portion of micronutrients may not be available.
We brush aside the impact of indigestibility of individual foods as well as the impacts of one food upon another. This is strange since we have long accepted the positive, synergistic effects of foods taken together, such as bread and milk, where the essential amino acids complement one another. Why deny the flip side of indigestibility? If you eat your eggs together with a few florets of broccoli, how much of the egg nutrients do you actually digest? Without knowing with precision which nutrients are absorbed in what amounts, data is churned out, often to several decimal places, for us to ruminate and develop theories upon. Garbage in, garbage out. On top of that, a lack of appreciation of the impact of micronutrients generated by gut microorganisms confounds our conclusions even further. So we end up observing what was taken in and observing the final outcome, but not knowing much about what actually happened in the process. Not a very sound basis upon which to promulgate health policies and interventions. It highlights the disconnect between what is observed in the laboratory (i.e. the USDA tables) and what actually happens in real life.
This unfortunate combination of poorly executed analysis, imprecise knowledge of physiological mechanisms and the unremitting drive to find a singular explanation to statistical relationships results in policies, advice and interventions that do not stand the test of time. We have seen this with hormone replacement therapy, salt reduction programs and we see it again with prescribed vitamin regimes. No wonder we see headlines such as, "Vitamins May Be No Match For Mother Nature."
Speaking yesterday in San Francisco, Sen. Hillary Clinton took a shot at the Bush Administration for allegedly abusing science. Lisa Neff of the Associated Press reported:
Clinton argued that the executive branch has put ideology over evidence at the expense of the nation's health and economic viability. "Scientists have been muzzled. Information has been taken off government-sponsored Web sites. The leaders of our country have dismissed scientific research and advancements," Clinton said. "They have denied the factual basis of so much that we take for granted."
While the rhetoric may be politically-correct pablum, this is the first we've seen of a presidential candidate seeking to elevate the visibility of the issue.
We extend our support and best wishes to those who would improve the quality of science, but note that those who've been attacking the Administration for manipulating science have recorded themselves steadily against the President's several iniatives to establish objective data quality standards as part of the federal regulatory review process.
Perhaps Sen. Clinton is trying to "triangulate" on the issue in the manner of her husband -- who, after all, signed into law the Data Quality Act, toothless though that's proved to be.
Will reducing population salt intakes save the thousands of lives promised by public health agencies in the U.S. and the U.K.? The only country to achieve a significant reduction in salt intake is Finland and researchers Karppanen and Mervaala published the outcomes in the journal, Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases . Not only did they claim that the significant reduction in salt consumption led to a dramatic decrease in cardiovascular disease, but they went further and attributed the 4.5 year increase in longevity to it as well.
Since this was the first medical study to actually look at a broad-based national salt reduction with health outcomes over a 30 year period, I thought it would be worth comparing with other countries.
This comparison appears in our latest edition of the Salt and Health Newsletter . The Global Cardiovascular Infobase , makes possible a clear comparison of patterns of ischaemic heart disease (IHD) in all countries. As it turns out Finland, the only country to significantly reduce salt consumption, experienced the weakest reduction in Ischemic heart disease over the last 30 years. In fact, Canada, a country where no salt reduction took place, started at the same point as Finland, but ended up with double the heart disease reduction. That certainly doesn't say much about the positive impact of salt reduction, quite the contrary.
To check out the situation with life expectancy, I accessed the International Data Base of the US Census Bureau . Here again Finland, the only country to severely cut its salt intake, ended up with a rather small increase in logevity compared to the other countries.
Based on this Finnish study, we can say with confidence that despite an almost 50% reduction in the consumption of salt in Finland, there are no health benefits attributable to this intervention.
Information Today reported that on July 19, the US House of Representatives approved measures directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide free public access to agency-funded research findings within 12 months of their publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Of course, agency-funded research is taxpayer-funded research, so you would think that NIH would be happy to accommodate this idea. Not quite.
When first asked to do this on a voluntary basis, less than 5% of the eligible research was made available. Why is there this reluctance to make the results of publicly-funded medical research more widely available?
Most of the resistance comes from the scientific publishing companies, who would like to maintain their full rights over published materials for as long a period as possible, so that they can maximize the return on their investment into these publications, which includes the peer-review and editing infrastructures. Those opposed to this measure, such as Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers , and a coalition of academic and society publishers from within the DC Principles Coalition of scientific publishers, wrote a letter to members expressing strong concern with the language in the appropriations bill .
My sense is that scientists, who are constantly on top of the latest developments, will not wait 12 months to see the results of ongoing research, they will continue to buy the journals as they always have. It is highly unlikely that this development will negatively affect the current system of peer review and quality editing.
There are several benefits to having this information openly available 12 months after publication as highlighted in an open letter to Congress by a group of 26 Nobel Prize winners. Greater availability will also allow scientists in developing countries, scientists in other disciplines, industry researchers and interested lay people, most of whom could not ordinarily afford to subscribe to these journals, free access to the information. This is a very large constituency that should never be overlooked when considering the opportunity to advance medical science.
The Journal of the National Cancer Institute has just published "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Evidence-Based Review for Qualified Health Claims: Tomatoes, Lycopene, and Cancer" . FDA's Claudine J. Kavanaugh and colleagues found no credible evidence that lycopene, either in food or in a dietary supplement, was associated with reduced risk of cancer.
The articled prompted commentary from Sandra Szwarc at Junkfoodscience:
We've often reviewed the inferior evidence surrounding fruits and vegetables and their abilities to prevent major chronic diseases, including the 2004 comprehensive examination of the scientific literature done for the Produce for Better Health Foundation campaign, 5-A-Day, under the National Cancer Institute. That year, a study led by Walter Willet, M.D., DrPH, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, MA, was also published. It had followed 71,910 women and 37,725 men for 15 years and found no relationship between fruits and vegetables and cancer, or any statistically significant associations with major chronic disease or cardiovascular disease.
But, time and again, the media makes little more than a whisper when studies are published questioning claims surrounding the "emerging" science of functional foods and supplements. For instance, how many heard about the May study in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention on lycopene and prostate cancer? Researchers based at the National Cancer Institute and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center had examined 692 cases of prostate cancer diagnosed among 28,000 men enrolled in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial, an ongoing, randomized National Cancer Institute trial to evaluate cancer screening methods and to investigate early markers of cancer. They found no association between serum lycopene and total prostate cancers or aggressive prostate cancers.
No doubt it was a coincidence, but the recently-approved House ag appropriations bill contained language (Section 746) prohibiting FDA from authorizing qualified health claims for conventional foods. Including tomatoes.
USA Today turned 25 this week and ran a series of articles about changes in the world in the past quarter century. In their list of "25 Top Medical Events " was no mention of salt at all, not even recognition that during that time frame there's been a 50% increase in the number of infants born protected against the scourge of mental retardation. This achievement is due almost entirely to the massively successful global campaign to iodize salt.
One of the 25 was of some interest, however. Ranked 16th was the odyssey of hormone replacment therapy. USA Today says:
Hormones begone
Hormone therapy was once thought to be a fountain of youth for postmenopausal women, but a landmark study in 2002 found that estrogen plus progestin raises the risk of breast cancer, heart attacks, stroke and blood clots. Women stopped taking the hormones in droves, and today, they're prescribed only for relief of hot flashes and other symptoms.
As tragic as is the HRT story, it's important lesson is to teach us to demand high quality science on health outcomes before we launch a major population health recommendation. Before the government began to advise all Americans to reduce dietary salt, it should have looked at the health outcomes studied. Had it done so, we could have avoided the expensive delays -- and potential risks -- of having the "salt hypothesis" blow up in its face as HRT already has. Too bad.
The pernicious impact of advocates' use of junk science is to undermine public confidence in all science, argues an articulate letter in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. William Heller of Greenwood, Indiana, quotes an earlier WSJ op ed piece by Richard Grinker on claims that vaccinations cause autism. Grinker opines: "The antivaccine movement may be evidence that public confidence in science is eroding. . . ." Heller continues:
Proponents of the view that vaccines cause autism provide anecdotal trial "evidence" while the other side cites scientific study after scientific study that shows no such connection. A Gresham's Law effect of junk science and opinion debasing real science seems in evidence. The same factors are at work in the climate change debate. There are reams of scientific data that debunk the carbon dioxide theory of global warming, but the only data that seem to get media play is the junk science of the global warming alarmists.
Useful perspective. Bad science driving out good.
Two terms don't always mean what we believe they do: "research " and "evidence-based." Take the research just published in the Journal of Epidemiology Community Health entitled: "Evidence-based Public Health Policy and Practice: Could targeted food taxes improve health?"
That's the question posted by Junkfoodscience author Sandy Szwarc who attributes the authors' "yes" answer to creation of a mathematical computer model which, necessarily, includes countless "arbitrary decisions and assumptions" and, unnecessarily, introduces a false sense of certainty about relationships where none may, in fact, exist. The phrase springs to mind: figures don't lie, but liars can figure. In the case of this study, she observes:
For their model, the authors in this study attempted to predict the number of lives saved by assuming that lowering salt and saturated fats in the diet (assuming low-fat diets work by lowering blood cholesterol levels) would reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease and strokes. For example, they estimated that every 3 gram/day reduction in salt intake would lower incidence of heart disease by 9-10% and strokes by 12-14%. Their estimated health benefits for low-fat diets were based on the assumption that every 1 mg/dl reduction in low-density lipoprotein ("bad cholesterol") would reduce heart disease by 1%.
Without the need to go any further, it'a already clear these assumptions contradict and exceed the actual clinical evidence on the ability of "heart healthy" low-salt diets and low-fat diets to prevent deaths from cardiovascular disease and strokes. In fact, as we've examined , even the latest Cochrane review of 39 clinical trials conducted in multiple countries over the course of three decades on the ability of "heart healthy" dietary interventions (reducing saturated fats and salt) and lifestyle interventions found: "Contrary to expectations, these lifestyle changes had little or no impact on the risk of heart attack or death..."
You'll want to read the whole blog, but, in summary, she notes the various assumptions about several variables including food consumption, then returns to the salt example:
Most disturbingly absent from their computer model was consideration of any potential harmful effects of compelling "heart healthy" diets. (emphasis in original)
Salt reduction, for example, doesn't appear entirely benign, according to growing medical research. The European Society of Cardiology Guidelines for the Management of Arterial Hypertension, for instance, reported recent research showing low-salt diets can have negative effects: activating the rennin (sic)-angiotensin system and the sympathetic nervous system, increasing insulin resistance and hypodehydration (especially with the elderly). This, they concluded, could lead to increased risks for cardiovascular disease. Similarly, people who might benefit from salt in their diets wouldn't be helped, but weren't included in their computer model, either. Salt also improves the flavor of many nutritious foods, helping to prevent nutritional deficiencies especially among vulnerable populations, such as children and elderly.
We've blogged before ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ) on the disturbing gap between true "evidence-based" health policy-making as defined by the Cochrane Collaboration and the damaging abuse of the term by authors or editors trying to fabricate news from the end product of computer models whose results reflect the programmer's biases more than the data of the study itself. We've seen this abuse in the Intersalt Study, the DASH-Sodium Study and in an alarming number of national dietary guidelines which seize the mantle of being "evidence-based" while ignoring the discipline inherent in proper application of that term.
It won't help sweltering Washington, DC nor even likely boost sales of deicing salt in Argentina, but that country's national weather service yesterday reported the first major snow in Buenos Aires since June 22, 1918, according to the Manchester Guardian (credit: their photo above). What would Al Gore say?
Meanwhile, in the face of politically-correct "conventional wisdom" on "climate change," former VP Gore was challenged to a bet on the future of climate change. Reports today's Wall Street Journal:
J. Scott Armstrong, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and expert on long range forecasting, has offered to bet Al Gore $10,000 that he can do a better job of predicting the future of climate change than the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose forecasts of rising temperatures are cited in virtually every media account. Mr. Armstrong and a colleague, Kesten Green of New Zealand's Monash University, examined the IPCC's work for last month's 27th Annual International Symposium on Forecasting and found it essentially valueless according to established principles of forecasting. "Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder," concluded the two.
So what's Prof. Armstrong's own climate prediction? No change at all. "The methodology was so poor that I thought a bet based on complete ignorance of the climate could do better," says Mr. Armstrong. "We call it 'the naïve model.' Things won't change."
Professor Armstrong is the author of Long-Range Forecasting -- the most frequently cited book on forecasting methods -- and Principles of Forecasting, which was voted a "favorite book" by researchers and practitioners associated with the International Institute of Forecasters. If Mr. Gore accepts his challenge, Prof. Armstrong has proposed that each man put $10,000 into a charitable trust at a reputable brokerage house. The winner would then choose a charity to receive the total amount.
So far, no response from Mr. Gore. Perhaps he read about Buenos Aires.
American poet Kate Greenstreet has been described as "quirky" and "genuinely interested in furthering the cause of words." Whatever. We applaud her source material. One reviewer explained the poet's technique in her book case sensitive which contains extensive notes of her sources which, surprising to us, include "the Salt Institute's website, and loads of other stuff."
The book has five sections including one on science, about which Publishers Weekly says of Greenstreet's poem "Salt:"
[SALT]" treats its titular mineral's properties (e.g., "[on icy streets makes winter travel safe]") as jumping-off points for questions about human nature: "Can you shut the eye with something in it and continue?
Yes, salt's historic thread in culture continues today .
A wave of salt-inspired culture is forming. The Big Apple is already home to sculptress Bettina Werner , self-styled "Salt Queen ." Now, before Labor Day, an off-Broadway -- actually 145 6th Avenue (between Spring and Broome) -- ballet choreographed by Vicky Virgin and directed by Umit Celebi exploring "salt in its myriad forms." It's on our calendar ; is it on yours? Here's the playbill:
Salt becomes a metaphor for desire in Vicky Virgin's new dance theater piece, Salt Lake, a New Ballet in 3 Acts . Story ballet converges with performance art providing the framework for the emergence of Fleur de Sel, an odd character with an irrational craving for salt. Three salt nymphs join her as she negotiates that dangerous landscape of passion: the desire, bliss and despair. Elements include video on a screen of falling salt and a Shakespeare sonnet. Salt in its myriad forms are fully explored. In the end, you will be left with nothing less than pure unadulterated thirst.
