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Sisällön tarjoaa humanOS Radio and Dan Pardi. humanOS Radio and Dan Pardi tai sen podcast-alustan kumppani lataa ja toimittaa kaiken podcast-sisällön, mukaan lukien jaksot, grafiikat ja podcast-kuvaukset. Jos uskot jonkun käyttävän tekijänoikeudella suojattua teostasi ilman lupaasi, voit seurata tässä https://fi.player.fm/legal kuvattua prosessia.
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#047 - Good Sleep Helps Reduce Oxidative Stress - Professor Mimi Shirasu-Hiza
Manage episode 218612486 series 1248550
Sisällön tarjoaa humanOS Radio and Dan Pardi. humanOS Radio and Dan Pardi tai sen podcast-alustan kumppani lataa ja toimittaa kaiken podcast-sisällön, mukaan lukien jaksot, grafiikat ja podcast-kuvaukset. Jos uskot jonkun käyttävän tekijänoikeudella suojattua teostasi ilman lupaasi, voit seurata tässä https://fi.player.fm/legal kuvattua prosessia.
Why do we need to sleep? Part of what makes sleep so fascinating, as a field of research, is that it is such an enigma. Sleep is a profoundly vulnerable state, leaving us at the mercy of predators and the environment, and unable to defend ourselves or our possessions. It's also largely unproductive. Yet we spend about a third of our life in slumber. Moreover, sleep also seems to be nearly universal in the animal kingdom. Indeed, we have yet to identify an animal that clearly does not sleep at all, or even one that can forego sleep without experiencing physiological consequences. All of this, taken together, unambiguously shows that sleep is extremely important. And this makes it all the more remarkable that the actual purpose of sleep remains elusive. One idea is that sleep may function as an antioxidant for the brain, protecting neural tissue from the ravages of oxidative stress. This hypothesis largely fell out of favor, but researchers have recently started to revisit this compelling notion. In this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan talks to Mimi Shirasu-Hiza. Mimi is an associate professor of Genetics and Development at Columbia University. Her lab uses circadian mutants of fruit flies to unveil the molecular mechanisms that underlie circadian-regulated physiology. Mimi and her colleagues hypothesized that fruit flies with various genetic mutations that reduce their sleep might share a common physiological defect due to that sleep loss, but independent of the specific mechanisms driving their reduced sleep. And if they could find such a defect, that might reveal the core function of sleep in animals (including us). Through an elegant series of experiments, Mimi and her team did indeed uncover a shared defect, which points to a possible purpose of sleep in fruit flies and perhaps in humans. Check out the interview to find out what they discovered and what it might mean for us!
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Manage episode 218612486 series 1248550
Sisällön tarjoaa humanOS Radio and Dan Pardi. humanOS Radio and Dan Pardi tai sen podcast-alustan kumppani lataa ja toimittaa kaiken podcast-sisällön, mukaan lukien jaksot, grafiikat ja podcast-kuvaukset. Jos uskot jonkun käyttävän tekijänoikeudella suojattua teostasi ilman lupaasi, voit seurata tässä https://fi.player.fm/legal kuvattua prosessia.
Why do we need to sleep? Part of what makes sleep so fascinating, as a field of research, is that it is such an enigma. Sleep is a profoundly vulnerable state, leaving us at the mercy of predators and the environment, and unable to defend ourselves or our possessions. It's also largely unproductive. Yet we spend about a third of our life in slumber. Moreover, sleep also seems to be nearly universal in the animal kingdom. Indeed, we have yet to identify an animal that clearly does not sleep at all, or even one that can forego sleep without experiencing physiological consequences. All of this, taken together, unambiguously shows that sleep is extremely important. And this makes it all the more remarkable that the actual purpose of sleep remains elusive. One idea is that sleep may function as an antioxidant for the brain, protecting neural tissue from the ravages of oxidative stress. This hypothesis largely fell out of favor, but researchers have recently started to revisit this compelling notion. In this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan talks to Mimi Shirasu-Hiza. Mimi is an associate professor of Genetics and Development at Columbia University. Her lab uses circadian mutants of fruit flies to unveil the molecular mechanisms that underlie circadian-regulated physiology. Mimi and her colleagues hypothesized that fruit flies with various genetic mutations that reduce their sleep might share a common physiological defect due to that sleep loss, but independent of the specific mechanisms driving their reduced sleep. And if they could find such a defect, that might reveal the core function of sleep in animals (including us). Through an elegant series of experiments, Mimi and her team did indeed uncover a shared defect, which points to a possible purpose of sleep in fruit flies and perhaps in humans. Check out the interview to find out what they discovered and what it might mean for us!
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×In this episode of the humanOS Radio podcast, we welcome Hannah Went, a visionary in the realm of longevity and disruptive health technologies. With a lifelong passion for breakthrough innovations that improve the human condition, Hannah's journey began at the University of Kentucky, where she earned her degree in Biology. Her early research internships in cell signaling and cell biology laid the groundwork for her career in integrative medicine. As the former Director of Research and Content at the International Peptide Society, Hannah recognized a unique opportunity for methylation-based age diagnostics. This insight led her to found TruDiagnostic in 2020, a cutting-edge company specializing in methylation array-based diagnostics for life extension and preventive healthcare. Today, TruDiagnostic serves functional medicine providers worldwide and boasts one of the largest private epigenetic health databases, with over 75,000 patients tested. Driven by a commitment to research, under Hannah’s leadership, TruDiagnostic has spearheaded over 30 clinical trials exploring the epigenetic methylation changes in longevity and health interventions. Additionally, she shares her wealth of knowledge through [Everything Epigenetics](https://everythingepigenetics.com/), offering valuable insights into how DNA regulation impacts health. Here, we explore the future of longevity, the power of epigenetics, and the transformative potential of innovative healthcare technologies.…
Taurine is often associated with energy drinks and pre-workout supplements, although ironically, it is not a stimulant and may have the opposite effect. While taurine is not considered an essential nutrient for adults, as our bodies can produce it from other amino acids, recent evidence suggests that it offers numerous health benefits. These include improved blood sugar regulation, reduced oxidative stress, and lower blood pressure. One intriguing aspect of taurine is its potential to vary in production between individuals. Furthermore, studies indicate that taurine levels may decline with age. This brings us to the focus of this week's episode of humanOS Radio. We are delighted to have Vijay Yadav, an Assistant Professor at Columbia University's Department of Genetics and Development, as our guest. He is the senior author of a fascinating new study published in Science, which explores the connection between taurine and the aging process. Yadav and his team conducted measurements of blood taurine concentrations in mice, monkeys, and humans at different ages. Their findings revealed a consistent decline in taurine levels associated with aging across all species. In fact, the reduction was significant, with elderly humans exhibiting an 80% decrease in taurine compared to younger individuals. The crucial question posed by the authors is whether these changes are mere correlations or if they play a causal role in the aging process. In other words, do declining taurine levels contribute to physiological aging and age-related diseases, or are they simply associated with them? If taurine reductions do indeed cause aging, restoring taurine levels to that of youth could potentially extend both lifespan and healthspan. This means not only living longer but also living better. To begin unraveling this question, Vijay and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments. To discover their findings and delve deeper into the relationship between taurine and aging, we invite you to listen to the interview on humanOS Radio.…
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul." But we now know that your eyes may also provide a remarkably accurate measure of the true age of your body. Indeed, perhaps more accurate than the number of years that you've been alive (i.e., your chronological age). How can this be? Well, it has been known for some time that the microvasculature of the retina can offer a window into the health of the circulatory system as a whole. Subtle changes in the retinal capillaries have been shown to provide the earliest signs of a vast array of diseases, even conditions that are not specific to the eye, long before symptoms emerge. Incredibly, a new study suggests that images of your eyes might soon be able to yield insight into how long you have left to live – in time for you to do something about it. On this episode of humanOS Radio, we welcome Pankaj Kapahi back to the show. Dr. Kapahi is a professor at the Buck Institute, an independent biomedical research institute that is devoted to research on aging. His lab has been exploring how nutrient status influences health and disease, and particularly how nutrients affect age-related changes in tissues and disease processes. In our previous interviews with Pankaj, we have discussed his work examining how advanced glycation end products (also known as AGEs) drive the aging process. To that end, Pankaj has developed a novel formulation that combats the endogenous formation of AGEs in the body, known as GLYLO, which you can now purchase for yourself. But how can we gauge the effectiveness of these sorts of interventions in humans? To that end, Dr Kapahi has turned his attention to techniques for measuring biological age (as opposed to chronological age). Very recently, Pankaj and his colleagues have developed a retinal aging clocking, which they have dubbed "eyeAge." They found that eyeAge could predict changes in aging at a granularity of less than a year – a much shorter timescale than existing clocks. Retinal imaging is inexpensive and non-invasive, and widely accessible (if you've ever had a standard eye exam where they dilated your pupils, you have already experienced this diagnostic tool yourself). It's not hard to imagine a future in which annual retinal scans could be used to tell you your current biological age, as well as the rate at which your tissues are aging. With this information, you could figure out whether your current lifestyle approach or medical interventions are working, and make changes as needed. And on a population level, we could use accumulated longitudinal data from retinal scans to identify new avenues for combating physiological aging. To learn more, check out the interview!…
1 #090 - The Effects of Glylo on Weight Loss, Blood Sugar, and Longevity - Professor Pankaj Kapahi 34:34
In our previous interview with Dr. Kapahi, we discussed his work examining how advanced glycation end products (also known as AGEs) drive the aging process. Since we last spoke, Pankaj has been hard at work trying to identify compounds that can rein in the deleterious impact of AGEs, primarily by lowering levels of methylglyoxal. Methylglyoxal is formed as a side product of the breakdown of sugars, and is involved with the formation of AGEs, so it is a logical molecular target here. In his screening process of over 800 compounds, he managed to find five compounds which, when combined, had synergistic protective effects against methylglyoxal toxicity. This powerful combo now makes up the product GLYLO, and preliminary testing of GLYLO in rodent models revealed, sure enough, that the combo reduced glycolytic byproducts, improved insulin sensitivity, extended lifespan by 30-40% when administered late in life, and reduced caloric intake, and promoted weight loss. Importantly, this effect was shown to be independent of peripheral hormones like leptin and ghrelin. In fact, injecting ghrelin into mice treated with GLYLO did not result in increased energy intake - suggesting that GLYLO was changing how the hypothalamus responded to ghrelin. In other words, reducing methylglyoxal, through GLYLO, appeared to be lowering their body fat set point.…
On this episode of humanOS Radio, I speak with Lynda Frassetto. Lynda is a Professor Emeritus of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology at UCSF. During her research career, she and her colleagues investigated regulation of acid-base balance in both healthy and older people, as well as dietary influences on acid-base balance. In particular, she has explored how the ratios of potassium to sodium, as well as base to chloride, differ in the modern diet versus the ancestral diet, and how these changes may be linked to greater risk of chronic disease as we get older. Anthropological evidence suggests that ancient hominids consumed far less sodium and far more potassium, and specifically more potassium alkali salts (primarily from wild plants). The reduction in potential base in the modern diet increases the net systemic acid load, and this in turn may take a physiological toll in myriad ways. Chronic acid load appears to play a role in osteoporosis, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and even age-related decline in growth hormone secretion. Naturally, lots of questions emerge from this idea. Which nutritional components determine whether a diet is net acid-producing? And what can we do about it on an individual basis? Should we take potassium supplements to rectify the imbalance? Could restoring a healthy sodium to potassium ratio be a hidden anti-aging tool? To learn about how you can live a more alkaline life, check out the interview!…
On this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan speaks with Paul Spagnuolo. Dr. Spagnuolo has a PhD in Applied Health Sciences from the University of Waterloo, and is currently a Professor at the Department of Food Science at the University of Guelph in Ontario Canada. His lab has been focused on identifying and developing nutraceuticals as novel therapeutic agents, and figuring out the molecular and cellular mechanisms through which these food-derived bioactive compounds influence cell biology. To that end, the Spagnuolo lab has created a unique, in-house nutraceutical library that is conducive for high-throughput screening. This is useful because it allows the lab to efficiently search for compounds with potent and selective toxicity against cancer cells. When screening this natural health product library for potential therapeutics, they discovered avocatin B, a mixture of polyhydroxylated fatty alcohols that is found exclusively in avocados. Avocatin B is a potent inhibitor of fatty acid oxidation (FAO), which makes it a promising candidate as a drug to block or delay some of the cellular processes that lead to insulin resistance and diabetes. In theory, reducing FAO in skeletal muscle and in pancreatic beta cells would force cells to burn glucose instead of fatty acids. This boost in glucose oxidation would be expected to lower blood sugar levels and restore insulin sensitivity. But of course, the only way to know whether it actually works is to put it to the test. Paul and his team wanted to explore whether this avocado compound could indeed help with metabolic syndrome. To that end, they recently performed a series of experiments testing avocatin B in rodent models of obesity and insulin resistance, as well as a randomized controlled clinical trial in humans. To learn what they found, check out the interview!…
On this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan speaks with Brad Dieter. Brad has a PhD in Exercise Physiology from the University of Idaho, and did further training in biomedical research examining how metabolism and inflammation regulate molecular mechanisms of disease. He is a scientist, a coach, an entrepreneur, a writer, and a speaker, so he wears a lot of different hats. Brad has been leading research behind transdermal delivery of carnosine. Carnosine is a buffer of acidosis in skeletal muscle, and exercise trials have shown that higher levels of carnosine in muscle can help delay the onset of fatigue during exercise associated with acidosis and enable athletes to work longer at a high intensity. But oral supplemental methods of boosting carnosine - such as beta-alanine - can be cumbersome and time-consuming. You have to take relatively large, divided doses every day for up to 4-6 weeks before you see a benefit. To that end, he helped with the research and development of LactiGo, the first effective topical carnosine product for humans. LactiGo is a fast-acting gel which delivers carnosine to skeletal muscle through the skin, and tests of this product are pretty persuasive. In one double-blind pilot study, elite soccer players were able to cross the finish line up to 5.9 feet sooner when running the 40 yard dash. And this was just after a single application of the product! To learn more about how carnosine works, and about LactiGo, check out the interview!…
Within our gut resides a vast ecosystem that guides countless facets of health and performance. Emerging research shows that your gut microbiota may impact many different and seemingly unrelated aspects of health and bodily function, including appetite and body weight regulation, lifespan, mood, cognition, and even athletic performance. We also know that the gut plays a role in the immune system. In fact, it is thought that over 70% of the body’s immune cells reside in the gut. Throughout life, gut microbes shape and regulate the immune system, and the immune system in turn guides the composition of the flora in the gut. We think gut microbes work a lot of their magic by generating crucial metabolites, and these metabolites can help modulate the immune system response to invading viruses. For example, one remarkable study from a couple years ago found feeding mice a high-fiber diet increased their probability of survival when the rodents were infected with influenza, and it appeared to be due to increased production of SCFAs. So, does this mean that eating lots of fiber can help protect us from getting sick? What other components of the diet might modulate the immune system? And how does aging figure into this puzzle - could maintaining a healthy gut microbiome help protect older adults, who are generally at greater risk of infection? On this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan speaks with Lucy Mailing. Lucy has a Phd in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Illinois. Her research focused on the effects of diet and exercise on the gut microbiome and gut barrier function in states of health and disease. She recently wrote a broad overview on what we know - and what we don’t know - about the role of the gut in the immune system, as well as some ideas of what we can do to support the gut-immune axis. This is, obviously, a very important and painfully relevant topic, so we knew we had to have her on to discuss it. To learn more about how gut health affects resistance to infections, check out the interview!…
In this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan speaks with Jennifer Goldschmied. Jennifer has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Michigan, and is currently faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research explores how altering aspects of sleep can produce changes in mood and emotional regulation, particularly in those with major depression. Jennifer’s work has led her to investigate a long-recognized but poorly understood clinical paradox: Certain individuals actually experience mood improvement in response to sleep loss. You read that right - total sleep deprivation has been shown to have antidepressant effects. Remarkably, an estimated 40-60% of people with major depression may experience significant improvements in symptoms. Of course, these benefits dissipate once the patient’s sleep is restored, which is probably why interest in this as a therapy has lagged. But Jennifer and her colleagues are starting to figure out why precisely sleep deprivation seems to improve mood, and which individuals might stand to benefit from sleep manipulation. You can imagine that gaining insight into this strange phenomenon may eventually lead to new treatments for depression and other mental disorders. To learn more about her fascinating research, and what is on the horizon for this work, check out the interview!…
The market for dietary supplements to enhance sports performance has exploded in recent years. In fact, you may have tried some of these supplements yourself to improve your workouts. Many common supplements, like caffeine, have been studied in the context of immediate performance enhancement, and are used with that goal in mind. But the effect of chronic supplementation, particularly in endurance training, is not as well understood. Furthermore, it is not as clear how performance-enhancing supplements might influence the adaptive response to exercise training. Training-induced adaptations are the product of repeated stimuli from exercise sessions, as well as accumulated changes in gene expression, which gradually result in adaptive changes like greater muscle mass as well as more efficient muscle contractions. Dietary intake of certain substances can, in theory, affect training adaptations in a couple different ways. They can achieve this by simply increasing the exercise stimulus from a single training bout - basically just enabling an athlete to train longer or harder, or reducing perceived exertion. But they may also be able to affect gains in endurance by altering cellular responses to exercise-induced stress. For instance, supplements like buffering agents and antioxidants may modify the cellular signaling response to training by affecting acid-base balance, reactive oxygen species signaling, or redox status. Importantly, these changes in cell signaling may not be universally beneficial from the standpoint of adaptation. This raises a number of interesting questions. How significant is the impact of these supplements from a practical standpoint? And how do we separate acute effects on training duration and intensity from chronic effects on training adaptations? Is it possible that a supplement could simultaneously make it easier for an athlete to exercise hard, but also have effects on cellular signaling that actually have a long-term negative impact on the adaptive response to training? On this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan welcomes Jeff Rothschild to the show. Jeff is a Registered Dietitian with a Master’s in Nutrition Science, and is a Board-Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics (CSSD). He has worked with an impressive array of athletes - his clients include multiple Olympians, State Champions, collegiate All-Americans, and professional tennis players, as well as recreational athletes and folks who are trying to complete their first triathlon. Jeff recently wrote a fascinating review exploring the impact of dietary supplements on adaptations to endurance training. He came on the show to discuss his findings, and what they might mean for athletes and generally active people who want to maximize the time and effort that they dedicate to their training. To learn more about how various nutritional supplements might affect your training - both short and long term - check out the interview!…
When you hear the word superfood, what do you think of? Probably kale. Goji berries. Green tea. Turmeric. Countless others. But what about mushrooms? Mushrooms have historically not held a prominent place among the list of superfoods. But if you take a closer look, I think you’ll find that the humble mushroom actually has a lot going for it. A single cup of whole white mushrooms - like the kind you usually see at grocery stores - contains just 21 calories, but around 16% of the recommended daily value of selenium and 33% of the daily value of vitamin D. They are relatively high in potassium and low in sodium, and they are a decent source of essential amino acids given their caloric density. But of course, the most compelling benefits of mushrooms do not show up on a nutrition label. Edible mushrooms are rich in polyphenols, and the antioxidants glutathione and ergothioneine. Mushrooms are also an excellent source of a class of polysaccharide called glucans. Glucans can also regulate the immune system, and this is where mushrooms really shine. For instance, children who were given a supplement with beta-glucan from mushrooms showed significantly higher levels of natural killer cells than those given placebo, and were also significantly less likely to develop a respiratory infection. Mushrooms have been underappreciated. Which is why Dan was pleased to welcome Jeff Chilton to the show. Jeff is sort of a trailblazer in the area of medicinal mushrooms. He recognized the unique value of mushrooms to human health long before most people. Jeff studied ethnomycology - historical uses and sociological impact of fungi - at the University of Washington in the late 1960s, then went on to work on a commercial mushroom farm in 1973. Over the following decade, he became the production manager, responsible for the cultivation of over 2 million pounds of agaricus mushrooms per year. He was also involved in the research and development of shiitake, oyster, and enoki mushrooms, which ultimately resulted in the earliest sales of fresh shiitake mushrooms in the US in 1978. Fast-forward to 1989: Jeff founded Nammex, a business that introduced medicinal mushrooms to the US nutritional supplement industry. Nammex extracts are now used by many supplement companies, and are noted for their high quality based on analysis of the active compounds. Given his background, it is hard to think of a more qualified person to speak to about the mushroom industry, and the health-promoting power of mushrooms. Check out the interview to learn more!…
In this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan welcomes Dr. Jamie Zeitzer back to the show. Jamie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, as well as at the VA Aging Clinical Research Center at Stanford. In our previous interview, we discussed his research on light and timing of biological rhythms. He and his colleagues determined that brief, intermittent flashes of light have a much bigger impact on clock timing than continuous light exposure. This has interesting implications for shift workers, as well as for people who travel across multiple time zones and are subject to jet lag. In theory, you could expose yourself to brief flashes of light while you are asleep and effectively trick your brain into adjusting to a new time zone. Pretty cool. But could it also be useful for social jet lag - meaning a chronic misalignment between the biological clock and the time when one is forced to be awake and active? In particular, could it be effective for teenagers who have to get up to go to school at a time when their body is driving them to sleep? To answer that question, Jamie and colleagues conducted a two-phase, randomized controlled clinical trial testing how exposure to brief flashes of light affected sleep onset and total sleep duration in high school students. Here’s what they did: The researchers recruited groups of teenagers who had expressed difficulty going to bed and waking up early. In phase 1 of the trial, 72 participants were randomly assigned to two groups. One group received 4 weeks of light therapy, delivered from a device in the teens’ bedrooms (3-millisecond light flashes every 20 seconds during the final 3 hours of sleep). The other group was administered 4 weeks of sham light therapy (three bright flashes of light per hour, which isn’t enough to affect the body clock) as a placebo. This protocol was largely ineffective - neither sleep timing nor duration were significantly altered in the experimental group. Zeitzer and his team switched things up a bit for the next phase. In phase 2, the subjects received a slightly different light therapy (3-millisecond light flash every 20 seconds during the final 2 hours of sleep). But in addition, the researchers had the adolescents attend four cognitive-behavioral therapy sessions to try to motivate them to go to bed earlier. Happily, this combination of interventions actually worked! The light therapy plus CBT moved sleep onset 50 minutes earlier, and increased nightly sleep time by an average of 43 minutes. Very impressive. To learn more about the study and what it means, check out the interview!…
In this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan speaks with Julie Andersen. Julie has a Ph.D in neurobiological chemistry from UCLA, and subsequently did her post-doctoral fellowship in the department of neurology at Harvard. Presently, she is a professor and researcher at the Buck Institute, an independent biomedical research institute that is dedicated to investigating aging and age-related disease. Her lab is working on identifying novel therapeutics to delay or prevent the age-related molecular processes that drive neurodegenerative diseases. For example, she and other researchers at the Buck have been investigating compounds that could clear out senescent cells, which have been linked to age-related functional decline, as we have discussed previously on several shows. Recently, Julie and her colleagues received a grant from the NIH to examine a natural bioactive known as urolithin A. Urolithin A does not come directly from the diet - it is actually a metabolite that results from the biotransformation of ellagitannins and ellagic acid via the gut microbiota. These phenolic compounds are found abundantly in edible plants, most notably in pomegranate, walnuts, berries, tea, and fruit juices (as well as certain types of wine). In animal models of aging, urolithin A has shown great promise. Older mice that were given the compound exhibited a 42% improvement in endurance while running, compared to control rodents of the same age. And nematodes that were exposed to urolithin A experienced a 45% boost in lifespan. And the first clinical trials in elderly human subjects suggest that the compound is safe and effective for reversing age-related muscle decline. So what makes urolithin A so powerful? It appears to enhance autophagy, the natural mechanism through which cells effectively cleanse themselves by removing dysfunctional proteins and cellular components. This property makes it an enticing therapeutic compound for addressing neurodegenerative disease. One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease is the accumulation of irreparably misfolded proteins in the brain. It is thought that deregulation of the autophagy pathway with age leads to reduced clearance of these broken proteins, which in turn leads to the formation of toxic aggregates that are typically found in deceased patients. Unfortunately, the capacity to generate urolithin A also appears to decline with age. To that end, Julie and her team plan to try to rejuvenate the gut microbiota of older mice using targeted probiotics, which should enhance production of urolithin A. They will then track neuropathology, memory loss, and mortality in a rodent model of Alzheimer’s disease, and compare outcomes in mice treated with urolithin A and controls. To learn more about this fascinating research, check out the interview!…
On the surface, sleep looks like a colossal waste of time. Think about it. We spend about a third of our lives lying down with our eyes closed...basically doing nothing! It’s easy to see why high-achieving people throughout history - like Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin - aspired to get by with less of it. Even today, people who are trying to maximize productivity are prone to shortchanging sleep so they can get more done. Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, for instance, reported he was only getting four to six hours of sleep per night in 2011. I’m sure you can think of plenty of others who have made similar compromises. For most of us, though, this is not likely to be a winning long-term strategy. For one thing, we know now that sleep loss increases our risk of chronic disease, including diabetes, atherosclerosis, obesity, and more. Inadequate sleep duration and poor sleep quality are linked to most of the great maladies that plague the modern industrialized world. But even beyond that insidious physical toll, research is now revealing that sleep loss also has a negative impact on our cognitive abilities. We need sleep for focus and attention, for staying alert, for learning and remembering things, and for a host of executive functions that are required to be at our best at work and in other endeavors. So, you might gain an extra hour or two if you cut out some sleep, but your ability to perform mentally during that time may be compromised, and you may actually get less done in the long run. Or the quality of your work may suffer. You might think this doesn’t apply to you. But bear in mind that the cognitive impact of partial sleep loss can be quite subtle, and difficult to recognize in ourselves. This, of course, is why we need controlled studies to elucidate these effects. In this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan speaks with Jeff Gish. Jeff has a Ph.D in Management from the University of Oregon, and is presently a professor of entrepreneurship at UCF. His research focuses on the behavior of entrepreneurs, including the processes through which entrepreneurs decide to found new ventures and make business decisions. Recently, he has begun to explore how these processes are influenced by day-to-day variations in biological dynamics - including sleep. He and his colleagues recently performed a series of elegantly designed studies which investigated how sleep, or the lack thereof, might affect two functions that are fundamental to the role of an entrepreneur: the capacity to generate new business ideas, and the ability to assess the viability of business ideas being presented to them. These studies overall suggest that sleep plays a vital role in the cognitive processes behind successful entrepreneurship, and losing sleep makes it harder to recognize how a new technology or service might align with a market. To learn more about the study and what he found, check out the interview!…
1 #079 - Is Fruit Fattening? - Dr. Stephan Guyenet 1:02:24
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1:02:24For much of our history as a species, the threat of chronic food shortage and malnutrition has loomed over us. Fortunately, due to global economies and remarkable advances in technology and agriculture, most of us living today in industrialized countries will probably never need to worry about starvation. But ironically, we now must battle the consequences of excessive abundance of readily accessible food. All over the world, modern societies are confronting the challenge of obesity and diseases emanating from obesity. An analysis of trends in adult body mass published in the Lancet puts the progression of this public health crisis into useful historical perspective: It revealed that the number of obese individuals has risen from 105 million in 1975 all the way to 641 million as of 2016. Over the past 40 years, we have gone from a world in which prevalence of underweight was more than double that of obesity, to a world in which people with obesity outnumber those who are underweight. There has been vigorous debate on what aspects of our food supply are responsible for this relatively rapid shift in collective body composition. Recently, sugar has come under particularly fierce scrutiny, and understandably so. We do know that overconsumption of simple sugars can contribute to obesity and related diseases. So what about fruit? Most types of fruit are naturally high in simple sugars, and we have essentially unlimited access to fruit year-round, even in the dead of winter. Could sweet fruit be a hidden contributor to the obesity epidemic? And that brings me to our guest. On this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan welcomes a familiar face back to the show - Stephan Guyenet. Stephan spent 12 years at the University of Washington researching the neuroscience underlying body fat regulation. There is perhaps nobody else, at least in our view, who has done more in recent years to help the general public understand the evidence related to energy regulation and weight control. This is why he is uniquely qualified to address the question of whether fruit actually does make you fat. Last year, Stephan decided to answer the question of whether fruit was fattening in the most rigorous manner possible. Specifically, he wanted to look at the impact of whole, fresh fruit (as opposed to fruit juice, or other processed forms of fruit) on energy intake and adiposity. To that end, he conducted a systematic review of randomized controlled trials and prospective cohort studies, and that is what we have brought him on to discuss. To learn about what he found, and what it means, check out the interview!…
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