Posted on Diet, Weight Loss

Keto vs vegan: Study of popular diets finds over fourfold difference in carbon footprints

Keto and paleo diets were found to be the least sustainable -- and have the lowest diet quality scores -- of the six popular diets examined
Keto and paleo diets were found to be the least sustainable — and have the lowest diet quality scores — of the six popular diets examined

This may be tough to swallow for those on keto or paleo diets.

A new study from Tulane University which compared popular diets on both nutritional quality and environmental impact, found that the keto and paleo diets, as eaten by American adults, scored among the lowest on overall nutrition quality and were among the highest on carbon emissions.

The keto diet, which prioritizes high fat and low carbs, was estimated to generate almost 3 kg of carbon dioxide for every 1,000 calories consumed. The paleo diet, which eschews grains and beans in favour of meats, nuts and vegetables, received the next lowest diet quality score and also had a high carbon footprint, at 2.6 kg of carbon dioxide per 1,000 calories.

The study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, compiled diet quality scores using data from more than 16,000 adult diets collected by the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Individual diets were assigned point values based on the federal Healthy Eating Index and average scores were calculated for those eating each type of diet.

The study’s senior author Diego Rose, professor and nutrition program director at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said that while researchers have examined the nutritional impact of keto and paleo diets, this is the first study to measure the carbon footprints of each diet, as consumed by U.S. adults, and compare them to other common diets.

“We suspected the negative climate impacts because they’re meat-centric, but no one had really compared all these diets – as they are chosen by individuals, instead of prescribed by experts – to each other using a common framework,” Rose said.

On the other end of the spectrum, a vegan diet was found to be the least impactful on climate, generating 0.7 kg of carbon dioxide per 1,000 calories consumed, less than a quarter of the impact of the keto diet. The vegan diet was followed by vegetarian and pescatarian diets in increasing impact.

The pescatarian diet scored highest on nutritional quality of the diets analyzed, with vegetarian and vegan diets following behind.

The omnivore diet – the most common diet, represented by 86% of survey participants – sat squarely in the middle of the pack of both quality and sustainability. Based on the findings, if a third of those on omnivore diets began eating a vegetarian diet, on average for any given day, it would be equivalent to eliminating 340 million passenger vehicle miles.

Notably, however, when those on omnivorous diets opted for the plant-forward Mediterranean or fatty meat-limiting DASH diet versions, both carbon footprints and nutritional quality scores improved.

“Climate change is arguably one of the most pressing problems of our time, and a lot of people are interested in moving to a plant- based diet,” Rose said. “Based on our results, that would reduce your footprint and be generally healthy. Our research also shows there’s a way to improve your health and footprint without giving up meat entirely.”

A 2021 United Nations-backed study found that 34% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the food system. The major share of those emissions come from food production, with beef being responsible for 8-10 times more emissions than chicken production and over 20 times more emissions than nut and legume production.

While the environmental impacts of specific foods have been studied extensively, Rose said this study was important because “it considers how individuals select popular diets that are composed of a wide variety of foods.”

Going forward, Rose still has questions about how to encourage eating habits that are better for people and the planet.

“I think the next question is how would different policies affect outcomes and how could those move us toward healthier, more environmentally friendly diets?” Rose said.

Posted on Exercise

How many STEPS should I walk per day to stay HEALTHY?

How many STEPS should I walk per day to stay HEALTHY? - YouTube


How many steps should I walk per day to stay healthy? This video will summarize the major health benefits of daily walking and how many steps you need to maximize those effects. Benefits include improved mortality, decreased cardiovascular risk, improved cognition, better immune response, and more robust mental health.

Physical activity is crucial to living a healthy lifestyle. It improves our heart and lung function. It lowers our cholesterol and blood sugar. It increases metabolism to help us lose weight. It improves our sleep and mental health. And it helps us learn and concentrate. Daily step counts are an easy indirect measure of physical activity. Increased step counts have been shown to decrease mortality and decrease cardiovascular risk. More daily steps help with cognition especially with better attention, executive function, language, and memory. Increased daily walking helps boost our immune system and prevent dying from serious infections such as pneumonia. More step counts also improve mental health and decrease stress, anxiety, and depression.

Posted on Rheumatoid arthritis

Digital twin opens the way to effective treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis

Illustration of digital twins


A vision of how digital twins can be used to tailor drugs: (A) Patients with different immune diseases. (B) Computers construct (C) digital twins of each patient’s disease mechanisms. These interact in molecular programmes, controlled by (D) switch proteins, which are measured in blood or tissue to (E) find the dominant protein(s) at which to target therapy. Illustration: The research group. CREDIT Karolinska Institutet

Inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis have complex disease mechanisms that can differ from patient to patient with the same diagnosis. This means that currently available drugs have little effect on many patients. Using so-called digital twins, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now obtained a deeper understanding of the “off and on” proteins that control these diseases. The study, which is published in Cell Reports Medicine, can lead to more personalised drug therapies.

Many patients with inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, never feel fully healthy despite being on medication. It is a problem that causes significant suffering and expense. 

In an inflammatory disease, thousands of genes alter the way they interact in different organs and cell types. Moreover, the pathological process varies from one patient to another with the same diagnosis, and even within the same patient at different times.

It is exceedingly difficult to diagnose and treat such complex and varied changes. In a project that has been underway for five years, researchers from a constellation of institutions including Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have been trying to solve this problem and tailor drugs to individual patients by constructing and data-processing their digital twins, i.e. digital models of each patient’s unique disease mechanisms.

Now, the research group has found a possible solution: the changes can be organised in molecular programmes. These molecular programmes are regulated by a limited number of “off and on” switch proteins, of which some are known targets for drugs such as TNF inhibitors. But it is not a therapeutic option that helps everyone.

“Our analyses of patients who responded or didn’t respond to TNF therapy revealed different switch proteins in different individuals,” says the study’s corresponding author Mikael Benson, researcher at the Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology, Karolinska Institutet. “Another important discovery was that the proteins did not switch off the diseases but were more like dimmer switches that raised or lowered the disease programmes.”

Every physiological process can be described with mathematical equations. This advanced digital modelling technique can be adjusted to a patient’s unique circumstances by analysing the activity of each and every gene in thousands of individual cells from blood and tissue. Such a digital twin can be used to calculate the physiological outcome if a condition changes, such as the dosage of a drugs.

Digital twins have revealed to the researchers new opportunities for the effective treatment of serious diseases.

“The methods can be developed to tailor the right combination of drugs for “on” proteins for individual patients,” Dr Benson continues. “The programmes we describe will be made available to the research community so that more clinical studies can be done of patients with different immune diseases.”

In the current study, the researchers combined analyses of a mouse model of rheumatoid arthritis and digital twins of human patients with various inflammatory diseases.

“Even though only the joints were inflamed in mice, we found that thousands of genes changed their activity in different cell types in ten organs, including the skin, spleen, liver and lungs,” says Dr Benson. “As far as I’m aware, this is the first time science has obtained such a broad picture of how many organs are affected in rheumatoid arthritis. This is partly due to the difficulty of physically sampling so many different organs.” 

Posted on Diabetes, Diet

Plant-based low-carbohydrate diet linked with lower risk of premature death for people with type 2 diabetes

Plant-based low-carbohydrate diet linked with lower risk of premature death for people with type 2 diabetes
Plant-based low-carbohydrate diet linked with lower risk of premature death for people with type 2 diabetes
  • Adhering to a plant-based low-carbohydrate diet was associated with a reduction in overall cardiovascular and cancer mortality among people with type 2 diabetes
  • Researchers observed the most substantial health benefits among people who not only adhered to this diet but also had other healthy habits, such as exercising, not smoking, and consuming alcohol in moderate amounts

Following a low-carbohydrate diet comprised primarily of plant-based foods was significantly associated with a lower risk of premature death among people with type 2 diabetes, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It is the first prospective cohort study to examine the relationship between low-carbohydrate diet patterns and mortality among people with diagnosed type 2 diabetes.

“While avoiding refined and highly-processed carbohydrates has been widely recommended to lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, our study provides the first empirical evidence on how low-carb diets can help manage the progression of existing diabetes,” said lead author Yang Hu, research associate in the Department of Nutrition.

The researchers analyzed 34 years of health data from 7,224 women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study and 2,877 men participating in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, all of whom developed type 2 diabetes after those studies began. The participants completed questionnaires on lifestyle and medical history every other year, allowing the researchers to assess the compositions of their diets and score them according to intake of animal proteins and fats, vegetable proteins and fats, high-quality carbohydrates, and low-quality carbohydrates.

The findings showed a 24% reduction in all-cause mortality among those adhering to a low-carbohydrate dietary pattern. The health benefits were stronger for low-carbohydrate diets emphasising plant-based foods and high-quality carbohydrates, such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Those diets were also associated with lower cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality. Low-carbohydrate diets emphasising animal products and low-quality carbohydrates, such as potatoes, added sugars, and refined grains, were not significantly associated with lower mortality.

The researchers observed the strongest health benefits among people adhering to other healthy habits, such as not smoking, regularly exercising, and drinking alcohol in moderation, alongside a plant-based low-carbohydrate diet.

“This study, once again, underscores the importance of diet quality when choosing among various diets for diabetes control and management,” said Qi Sun, senior author and associate professor in the Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology.

Posted on Diabetes, Pain Management

Spinal cord stimulation may help diabetic neuropathy.

Spinal cord stimulation may help diabetic neuropathy
Spinal cord stimulation may help diabetic neuropathy


People with painful diabetic neuropathy may be able to get relief from high-frequency spinal cord stimulation, according to a preliminary study released today, February 28, 2023, that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 75th Annual Meeting being held in person in Boston and live online from April 22-27, 2023.

Diabetic neuropathy is nerve damage due to diabetes and can lead to pain and numbness, most often in the hands and feet. About 25% of the 37 million Americans with diabetes have painful diabetic neuropathy.

“Diabetic neuropathy often results in poor quality of life, depression, anxiety and impaired sleep, and the available medications can be ineffective for many people or have side effects that people can’t tolerate,” said study author Erika Petersen, MD, of the University of Arkansas in Little Rock. “These results are exciting because there is an urgent need for more effective therapies.”

The study involved 216 people who had painful diabetic neuropathy symptoms for at least one year that were not responding to medications. Half of the people received spinal cord stimulation plus regular medical treatment for six months. Half received only regular medical treatment. After six months, people had the option to switch to the other treatment. People were followed for a total of two years.

Spinal cord stimulation involves a device that is implanted under the skin. The device delivers electrical stimulation to the spinal cord to cut off pain signals to the brain.

After six months, the people who received stimulation reported 76% decrease in their average pain amount, while the people who did not receive stimulation had a 2% increase in their average amount of pain. In tests of their motor function, sensation and reflexes, improvements were seen in 62% of those receiving stimulation compared to 3% of those receiving medication only.

A total of 93% of those receiving medication only and eligible to cross over chose to receive the stimulation after six months, while none of those receiving the stimulation wanted to receive medication only.

After two years, people reported 80% improvement in their average pain amount, and 66% continued to have improvement in motor function, sensation and reflexes.

None of the participants had their devices removed because they were not effective. Eight people had infections related to the device. Three of those cleared up and five people, or 3%, had their devices removed due to infection, which Petersen said is within the range reported for people receiving spinal cord stimulation for other conditions.

Petersen also noted that the high-frequency stimulation appears to provide greater pain relief than low-frequency stimulation. High-frequency stimulation also does not create the “pins and needles” sensation that comes with low-frequency stimulation.

“This study demonstrates that high-frequency stimulation provides long-term pain relief with acceptable safety,” Petersen said. “The improvements in motor function, sensation and reflexes suggest that this therapy could have disease-modifying potential.”

Petersen said, “Confirmation of results through studies in larger groups of people could further strengthen our understanding of this spinal cord stimulation therapy for the treatment of painful diabetic neuropathy.”