Newsletter #95: How Exercise Helps Rein in Appetite, and How Urolithin A Protects the Brain 🧠
Hello Friends!
Welcome to the newest edition of the humanOS newsletter! Below is our own content and a roundup of the various studies and media that captured our attention this week. 🤓
This Week’s Research Highlights
📈 Adult obesity rates have continued to rise.
Researchers at the CDC examined data from NHANES to determine the prevalence of obesity and severe obesity among adults. They found that the age-adjusted prevalence of obesity was 42.4% in adults in 2017 to 2018, with no significant differences by gender or age. The age-adjusted prevalence of severe obesity was 9.2% in adults. The prevalence of both obesity and severe obesity increased from 1999-2000 to 2017-2018.
🏃♀️ Physical activity may help regulate appetite and curb overeating.
Researchers collected data from 130 participants using brief surveys that were delivered to participants' smartphones multiple times a day to measure overeating, combined with hip-worn activity trackers to measure exercise. They found that when participants did not engage in exercise, the risk of overeating in the following hours was 12%. Whereas when participants engaged in 60 minutes of exercise, the risk of overeating was cut by more than half, to 5%. For every additional 10 minutes of exercise a participant engaged in, the likelihood of overeating decreased by one percent in the hours following exercise. It’s a relatively small difference but I think most of us would take it! To learn more about how exercise may influence appetite regulation and energy intake (both short and long-term), check out this podcast.
🌘 Young children who go to bed late may be at higher risk of becoming overweight as they grow up.
Researchers followed 107 young children who were part of an obesity prevention project. Between the ages of 2 and 6, their sleep habits were recorded for one week each year, with the help of an Actigraph (a wrist device that monitors activity). Young children who routinely went to sleep after 9pm were shown to gain more body fat between the ages of 2 and 6. The link was independent of total sleep duration and remained after adjusting for activity patterns, screen time, and parents' education.
🧴 Infants living in homes where household cleaning products are frequently used may be more likely to develop asthma.
Researchers examined data from 2022 children participating in the CHILD Cohort Study. Specifically, they summed the daily, weekly, and monthly exposure to 26 types of household cleaners in the homes of these children, and used multivariable logistic regression models to assess whether use of these products was associated with recurrent wheeze, atopy, or asthma diagnosis. Infants living in homes where these household cleaners were used were found to be more likely to develop asthma by the age of three. Implicated products included air fresheners, plug-in deodorizers, dusting sprays, and antimicrobial hand sanitizers.
Podcasts We Loved This Week
- Simon Marshall: How to Get Motivated. Via Nourish Balance Thrive.
- Lyle McDonald: Pseudo-Science Training Versus Real Science Methods. Via The Mind Muscle Project.
- Anurag Singh: Pomegranates, Muscle Mass, and Healthy Aging. Via the LLAMA (Live Long and Master Aging) Podcast.
Products We Are Enjoying
Electric kettle.
If you are an avid tea drinker, this is an absolute must-have. It’s inexpensive, easy to use, and is the safest and the most convenient way to quickly boil water. I keep it plugged in close to my workstation so I can make mate, green tea, etc. at a moment’s notice. Particularly useful this time of year. 🌨️
New humanOS Features
To see the updates, you can follow the links above, or you can find them yourself under the Question Mark Icon on the top nav of the humanOS Dashboard.
New humanOS Content
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.
Recently, Julie and her colleagues received a grant from the NIH to examine a natural bioactive known as urolithin A. Urolithin A is 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 enormous 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, which makes it an enticing therapeutic compound for addressing neurodegenerative diseases. 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 contributes 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 the 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. Additionally, if you are interested in better understanding the underlying mechanisms of urolithin, you should also refer to our past interview with Davide D’Amico of Amazentis, and also check out their upcoming product.
