Flares happen. We do everything we can to prevent them and to understand why they occur. But sometimes they just happen. This is true regardless of the inflammatory or autoimmune disease: lupus, arthritis, fibromyalgia, vasculitis and all the others. As frustrating as they can be, there are things you can do to maneuver your way through them with care and grace.
Science has made it clear that eating sugar leads to poor health. But sugar tastes good, is in seemingly everything, and is pretty cheap. On top of that, poor health is a future thing, making it hard to come up with a reason to put down the cookie or avoid grabbing the candy bar. Here are six less-scientific, but highly motivating reasons you don’t want to ruin your day by eating sugar.
Drinking less than the UK’s recommended limit of 14 units of alcohol per week still increases the risk of cardiovascular issues such as heart and cerebrovascular disease, according to new research published in the journal Clinical Nutrition.
Academics from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) examined hospitalisations related to cardiovascular events among more than 350,000 UK residents aged between 40 and 69 from data obtained from the UK Biobank study.
The sample included 333,259 people who drank alcohol. Participants had been asked about their overall weekly alcohol intake and their intake of specific types of alcohol including beer, wine and spirits. Those participants were followed up for a median of approximately seven years, capturing all incidences where patients had been hospitalised through cardiovascular events.
Anyone who had suffered a previous cardiovascular event was excluded from the analysis, as were former drinkers or those who had not completed information on alcohol intake.
The analysis found that, for those participants that drank less than 14 units of alcohol per week – the limit recommended by the UK’s Chief Medical Officers – each additional 1.5 pints of beer at 4% strength (alcohol by volume) is associated with a 23% increased risk of suffering a cardiovascular event.
The authors argue that biases in existing epidemiological evidence have resulted in the widespread acceptance of the “J-shaped curve” that wrongly suggests low to moderate alcohol consumption can be beneficial to cardiovascular health.
These biases include using non-drinkers as a reference group when many do not drink for reasons of existing poor health, pooling of all drink types when determining the alcohol intake of a study population, and embedding the lower risk observed of coronary artery disease among wine drinkers, potentially distorting the overall cardiovascular risk from the drink.
Lead author Dr Rudolph Schutte, course leader for the BSc Hons Medical Science programme and Associate Professor at ARU, said:
“The so-called J-shaped curve of the cardiovascular disease-alcohol consumption relationship suggesting health benefit from low to moderate alcohol consumption is the biggest myth since we were told smoking was good for us.
“Among drinkers of beer, cider and spirits in particular, even those consuming under 14 units a week had an increased risk of ending up in hospital through a cardiovascular event involving the heart or the blood vessels. While we hear much about wine drinkers having lower risk of coronary artery disease, our data shows their risk of other cardiovascular events is not reduced.
“Biases embedded in epidemiological evidence mask or underestimate the hazards associated with alcohol consumption. When these biases are accounted for, the adverse effects of even low-level alcohol consumption are revealed.
“Avoiding these biases in future research would mitigate current confusion and hopefully lead to a strengthening of the guidelines, seeing the current alcohol guidance reduced.”
An international team of researchers led by Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have discovered that a cell type in the central nervous system known as oligodendrocytes might have a different role in the development of multiple sclerosis (MS) than previously thought. The findings, published in the journal Neuron, could open for new therapeutical approaches to MS.
MS is driven by immune cells attacking oligodendrocytes and the myelin they produce, which is an insulating layer ensheathing nerve cells. These attacks disrupt information flow in the brain and spinal cord and causes nerve damage that triggers symptoms associated with MS such as tremors and loss of gait.
Understanding which mechanisms influence the risk of MS is central to finding effective therapies. Previous genetic studies have found regions in the human genome that contain mutations (single nucleotide polymorphisms) associated with increased risk of MS.Many of these regions are localized near genes that are active in immune cells.
Open configuration of the genome
In this study, the researchers show in mice and human brain samples that oligodendrocytes and their progenitors have an open configuration of the genome near immune genes and at MS-risk associated regions. This suggests that the MS risk mutations may have a role in the activation of nearby genes in oligodendrocytes and their progenitors, meaning they could play a more important part than previously thought in the development of MS.
“Our findings suggest that the risk for multiple sclerosis might manifest by misfunction not only of immune cells, but also of oligodendrocytes and their precursor cells,” says Gonçalo Castelo-Branco, professor at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institutet, who conducted the study with co-first authors Mandy Meijer, a PhD student, and Eneritz Agirre, a researcher. “These findings indicate that these cells can also be targeted for therapeutical approaches for MS, to prevent misfunction that might be caused by these mutations.”