Good fats and vitamins keep the brain young!

By James J. Gormley

“Get rid of all trans fats in your diet!” is the main takeaway message from a December 28 study on vitamins and the brain in the journal Neurology.

According to lead author Gene Bowman ND MPH, an assistant professor of neurology at the NIA-Layton Center for Aging & Alzheimer Research at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, the study, entitled “Nutrient biomarker patterns, cognitive function, and MRI measures of brain aging,” looked at the relationship between nutrient status, cognitive function and brain health in 104 elderly participants, 62 percent of whom were women.

Utilizing eight distinct nutrient biomarker patterns (NBPs) out of 30 that were originally developed, the authors were able to see, by using psychological and cognitive tests, blood tests and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) which participants had less brain shrinkage, or atrophy, and what these nutrient profiles suggest as to what dietary practices may be associated with better cognitive health as we age.

The nutrient biomarker pattern (NBP) was first tested and validated against food frequency questionnaire studies by Bowman and his colleagues in an earlier 2011 study which appeared in the journal, Alzheimer’s Disease & Related Disorders.

“What we’re doing is picking up on the plasma signatures of different nutrient combinations, which will help us come up with better nutritional and public health recommendations,” said Bowman, in a December 29 phone interview.

The results indicated that those who had the highest blood (plasma) levels of vitamins B, C, D and E and omega-3 fats (good fats) did the best on cognitive tests and had the healthiest brains; those who had the most bad fat, specifically trans fat, in their blood did the worst on cognitive tests and had the least healthy brains – meaning their brains showed some initial signs of volume loss, or shrinkage, an early warning for potential dementia or Alzheimer’s disease down the road.

According to Jeffrey Blumberg PhD, director of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, the results of “the Bowman study are consistent with several of the studies completed by Martha Clare Morris (and her colleague, Christy Tangney).

“They are also consistent with those showing a beneficial relationship of B vitamins (especially B12) and brain volume published a couple years ago (from a British group). Similarly, observational studies have shown an inverse correlation between folate [folic acid] intake/status and risk for age-related dementias. The Physicians Health Study found beta-carotene is associated with less cognitive decline in aging. And some (but not all) studies have found a benefit of vitamin E supplementation on cognitive performance and/or rate of decline in Alzheimer’s disease.”

It is known that trans fats, which are found in deep-fried foods and as partially hydrogenated oils found in packaged snack and other processed foods, are bad. This study, however, is “the first study to look at trans fats in the context of brain health and functioning,’ added Bowman.

This study, said Bowman, was funded by the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). A future study, one that is in the works, will look at the impact of diet on cognition in people over many years or even decades, which is called a longitudinal study.

“Is all that frozen pizza really worth it?,” asked Bowman, who suggests, on the positive side, that people should consider eating more “fish, beans, citrus fruits [and] dark green leafy vegetables.”

Gormley Files Take-Away: Is pizza bad? No, it can be pretty healthy, and frozen pizza at your local health-food store is probably very healthy! But the takeaway here is the very real science that shows that diets drenched in nasty, oxidized trans fats and saturated fats, and low in nutrients makes the brain atrophy, or shrink. Diets rich in omega-3 fats, B vitamins and antioxidants (and low in the bad stuff) keep the old neuroprocessor between our ears healthy and peppy!

Sphere: Related Content

IPA founder: EU probiotic approach is “dirty pool”

IPA founder: EU probiotic approach is “dirty pool” Sphere: Related Content

Inaccurate media coverage and misguided attempts at regulation? A year in consumer health advocac...

Inaccurate media coverage and misguided attempts at regulation? A year in consumer health advocac... Sphere: Related Content

Citizens for Health NDI guidance withdrawal petition signatures approach 15,000

Citizens for Health NDI guidance withdrawal petition signatures approach 15,000 Sphere: Related Content

You Did It!!!!!

You Did It!!!!! Sphere: Related Content

10,000 Americans Tell FDA: Withdraw the “NDI Draft Guidance”!!

10,000 Americans Tell FDA: Withdraw the “NDI Draft Guidance”!! Sphere: Related Content

10,000 Signatures in 10 Days; We Can Do It!

By James J. Gormley
With Citizens for Health supporters already having generated over 11,000 letters to Congress demanding that the FDA’s NDI Draft Guidance be withdrawn, the organization is now on a mission to collect 10,000 petitions in 10 days calling for Congress to withhold FDA appropriations until this unaccountable agency is held to account: by adjuring the FDA to withdraw the supplement-killing NDI Guidance and to cease and desist from reviewing and enforcing against dietary supplements and nutritional ingredients according to its willfully adversarial re-interpretation of the laws governing dietary supplements.

To help us in this effort, Australian truth rapper and activist Jody Lloyd, aka Trillion, has re-mastered CFH’s “10,000 Signatures” video to make our call-to-arms that much more impactful!
Please sign the petition today and send out the link (and video!) to all of your contacts, friends and family, work colleagues, in short, everyone in your personal universe who cares about their rights to high-quality, innovative dietary supplements!
Sphere: Related Content

Petition to Demand that the FDA Withdraws the NDI Draft Guidance!

By James J. Gormley

Let's call on Congress to demand that the FDA summarily withdraws the NDI Draft Guidance and goes on the record stating that the agency will not, now or ever, review, consider, surveil or engage in enforcement activities according to the re-interpretation of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) evident in its Guidance document but, instead, will honor the law that the American people gave to the FDA (via Congress) to uphold via regulation according to both the spirit, letter, and plain and intended meaning of DSHEA.

That's why we created a petition to The United States House of Representatives, The United States Senate and President Barack Obama, which says:

"I hereby join with Citizens for Health (CFH) and its over 100,000 citizen supporters in calling on Congress to withhold funding appropriations for the FDA until the agency summarily withdraws its NDI Draft Guidance and goes on the record stating that the agency will not, now or ever, review, consider, surveil or engage in enforcement activities according to the re-interpretation of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) evident in the NDI Draft Guidance, but, instead, will honor the law that the American people gave to that agency to uphold via regulation according to both the spirit and letter of DSHEA."

Will you sign this petition? Please click here.

Thanks!
Sphere: Related Content

A Defining Moment for the Dietary Supplement Industry

By James J. Gormley

The Federal Register states that the New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) Draft Guidance, “when finalized, will represent the Agency’s current thinking on NDIs and dietary supplements that contain NDIs.”

Although this same notice observes that the Guidance is not binding, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) new dietary supplements’ director and erstwhile industry representative, Daniel Fabricant, PhD, made it clear that the FDA believes that the guidance contains “no surprises” (It, in fact, contains many) and merely provides “clarity” (Yes and no: it makes it clear that the FDA is willfully re-interpreting DSHEA is several key areas but is fuzzy on specifics).

And while Dr. Fabricant and his new employer may persist in believing that the Guidance contains no rabbits pulled out of a proverbial hat, a chief architect and co-author of DSHEA, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), is alarmed by the Guidance.

Recently, at least one industry opinion leader has suggested that playing nice with the FDA on the Guidance would be the way out of the NDI quagmire since the FDA supposedly has such a stellar track record of working collaboratively with industry.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Every major victory won by the natural products industry has been always bloody, sometimes ugly and never cordial.

War seldom is.

In 1966, the FDA announced plans that it was going to ban nutrient potencies over the RDAs by reclassifying them as drugs, along with labeling restrictions that would have forbidden the inclusion of any useful information about supplements.

When this, the health-food industry’s, first defining conflict was waged in the late 1960s and 1970s, the battle cry that the great, and recently departed, Max Huberman rallied the industry and consumers around was, “No surrender! No retreat!”

The battle cry was not “Let’s play nice,” of that I can assure you.

In the early 1990s, when the industry and consumers were fed up with FDA raids on health-food stores and efforts by the agency to use food additive provisions of existing law to go after supplements and companies for which the agency bore a deep-seated animus, a dramatic response was needed, and aggressive, coordinated grassroots action was with what consumers and the industry fought back: black, funereal fabric was used to cover dietary supplements in health food stores, a major public service announcement was aired and millions of Americans demanded the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA).

And we won.

Offering an olive branch to the FDA at the time would have led to the destruction or gutting of the dietary supplements industry before many of us were even a part of it.

So for our industry to offer concessions on the Guidance while the battle has just begun is diametrically opposed to what the greatest debaters have known since the time of Cicero: being unattached to the outcome.Master negotiator Herb Cohen said this often: “I care, I really do … but not that much.”

Modern-day Cicero, Jeff Schneider explains this to mean that whichever party has the greater need to get the deal done is the party that is at a competitive disadvantage. He says that the moment we start making concessions prematurely is the moment we lose our leverage.

“It is unwise to assume that the person [or Agency] you are negotiating with maintains the same commitment to Win-Win outcomes that you have,” writes Schneider. He advises negotiators to “establish your line in the sand. […] You must vow not to cross the established line in the sand for any reason.”

Do those industry experts and pundits applauding accomodationist approaches to the NDI Draft Guidance know that the FDA is not our industry’s friend, and that the agency bears an institutional resentment (some might say hatred) against our marketplace and its products and has shown this since the 1960s with raids, illegal wiretaps, improper seizures and a boatload of adversarial rulings and decisions?

Do those self-appointed savants know that the legal duty of any agency is to solely regulate and enforce according to the law given to it by the American people through Congress, and agencies do not have the power to devise policy and are not allowed to issue regulations or enforce one millimeter outside of the express letter of the law?

They should.

When any agency, in this case the FDA, violates the law by re-interpreting the plain and intended letter and meaning of it, in this case DSHEA, it must be called on it.

We must not stand for side-door efforts to cripple or maim our industry, and we have no obligation to give one inch on this, especially when dealing with an out-of-control agency that is, through stated intent, itself violating the law with which it was entrusted by the American people to uphold.

For those who have not yet taken action on the issue, there are only about 20 days left to so, given the current deadline of December 2nd. Please write to Congress here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/750/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8252) and to FDA Dockets here (https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=833), and circulate these links via all of your lists.

Let no one in our industry fall victim to the romance of “having a seat at the table” as a representative of the regulated industry.

Because that plate in front of them might well be empty. Sphere: Related Content