Newsletter #87: Apples, Citrus Flavonoids, and New Year’s Resolutions 🎊
Hello Friends!
Welcome to the New Year edition of the humanOS newsletter! 🎉🥂 We are looking forward to a healthy and productive 2020 with all of you. Below is our work, plus the assorted studies and media that captured our attention this week. 🤓
This Week’s Research Highlights
🍎 Eating whole apples may improve blood lipids and vascular health.
Forty healthy but mildly hypercholesterolemic adults were randomly assigned to either consume two apples per day or a sugar- and energy-matched apple control beverage for eight weeks, followed by a four week washout period, and then switching to the opposite condition for another eight week period. Whole apple consumption decreased serum LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, and intercellular cell adhesion molecule-1 (proinflammatory proteins which are thought to play a role in the adhesion of leukocytes to endothelial cells during the early stages of atherosclerosis), compared with the control drink. The response to endothelium-dependent microvascular vasodilation was also greater after the apples, suggesting improved vascular function. It is likely that fiber and polyphenols - particularly proanthocyanidins - are responsible for the observed benefits.
🍊 Hesperidin - a flavonoid found in citrus fruits - may ameliorate abnormalities associated with metabolic syndrome.
Researchers recruited 49 patients with metabolic syndrome and randomly assigned them to receive either 500 mg of hesperidin or placebo twice daily for 12 weeks. Compared to the placebo group, supplementation with the flavonoid resulted in decreased fasting glucose (-13.32 mg/dL), triglycerides (-49.09 mg/dL), blood pressure (-2.68 mmHg) and TNF-α (-4.44 pg/mL). Based on the within-group analysis, hesperidin was shown to produce a significant decrease in serum levels of glucose, insulin, triglyceride, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, TNF-α, and hs-CRP.
🥗 Vegetarian diet, and especially vegan diet, was found to be associated with lower fasting insulin levels and higher insulin sensitivity than matched omnivores - independent of BMI.
Researchers recruited 279 vegetarians (73 vegans, 206 lacto-ovo-vegetarians) and 279 age- and sex-matched omnivores. Fasting blood glucose and fasting insulin concentrations were measured, and β-cell function (HOMA-β) and insulin resistance index (HOMA-IR) were used to evaluate insulin sensitivity. Multiple-linear regression was used to determine the association between vegetarian diet patterns and insulin sensitivity after adjusting for confounders including BMI, visceral fat area, physical activity, sedentary time, income, alcohol consumption, and daily dietary intakes of macronutrients. Compared to omnivores, both vegan diet and lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet were negatively associated with insulin resistance after adjusting for BMI. Vegan diet remained negatively associated with fasting insulin and insulin resistance after adjusting for all confounders.
🍽️ Intermittent fasting may have a distinct beneficial effect on the gut microbiota.
Nine participants were followed during Ramadan, consisting of 17 hours of fasting per day during a 29 day period. Stool samples were collected and analyzed at baseline, then at the end of Ramadan. After 29 days of intermittent fasting, the subjects showed significantly increased abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila and Bacteroides fragilis, two groups of microbes which are both associated with reduced body mass and improved metabolic health. Serum fasting glucose and total cholesterol levels were also significantly reduced in all subjects, despite no statistically significant change in BMI.
Podcasts We Loved This Week
- Ray Cronise & Julieanna Hever: Winter Is Here - Metabolic Winter Hypothesis. Via Science and Saucery.
- Kevin Bass: Nutrition Myths That Can Cause Weight Gain & Affect Your Health. Via The Legendary Life Podcast with Ted Ryce.
The humanOS Bookshelf
Atomic Habits by James Clear.
This time of year, many of us are evaluating the past patterns of our lives and resolving to start anew. But our efforts are usually pretty short-lived, because we fail to develop an effective system to assess our current habits, reinforce good habits, and abolish bad habits. In this book, James draws upon a wide array of evidence from psychology, biology, and cognitive neuroscience to construct a guide to doing just that.
So what do we mean by habits? James defines habits as behaviors that are repeated enough times to be nearly automatic, and not demanding cognitive effort or willpower. Like brushing your teeth, or heading to the gym at 5:00pm every day, or making a green smoothie every day for breakfast. These automatic processes, which are mostly mundane things that we take for granted, are actually foundational to all of our goals.
The problem, of course, is that we generally don’t see the immediate payoff for any of these behaviors. You don’t drop twenty pounds just switching from regular to diet soda in a single day. It is only after you’ve committed to these behaviors for a while - after your efforts have compounded, as James puts it - that we start to see the difference.
If you wanna learn more, check out our past interview with James Clear (one of my favorites), and definitely give the book a shot if you would like to jump-start those New Year’s resolutions.
humanOS Catalog Feature of the Week
Want to watch this course with us this week? First lesson is just 56 seconds. If you are not yet a Pro user of humanOS, no sweat, this initial module is available for everyone, so go ahead and give it a shot!