As published last month in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research, investigators were able to show that the polyphenols in high quality cocoa can neutralize toxins in the large intestines (by combating oxidative stress) and thereby prevent inflammation and conversion to cancerous cell types.  Read the summary link below…

Cocoa Could Prevent Intestinal Pathologies Such As Colon Cancer.

The following is an article from Scientific American.  There has been exciting pre-clinical research (on mice) going on in Boston regarding the chemical link between exercise and improved health outcomes.  Just what this chemical link is has eluded researchers for years.  Forturnately (for research purposes and now, I suppose for commercial purposes) the protein discovered in the mice is identical to that in humans.  The hormone they discovered at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute they named irisin after the Greek goddess, Iris, the messeger; because this hormone is found on the cell membranes of muscles cells following prolonged exercise but has effects in many other parts of the body. Its main impact seems to be an increase in the production of brown fat from white fat. Brown fat has increased metabolic activity (it’s what keeps babies warm in fluctuating temperatures).  A quote from the abstract of the original research paper, “ Irisin is induced with exercise in mice and humans, and mildly increased irisin levels in the blood cause an increase in energy expenditure in mice with no changes in movement or food intake. This results in improvements in obesity and glucose homeostasis. Irisin could be therapeutic for human metabolic disease and other disorders that are improved with exercise.”

Bostrom P, Wu J, Jedrychowski M, et al. A PGC-alpha-dependent myokine that drives brown-fat-like development of white fat an thermogenesis. Nature 2012 Jan 11. doi:10.1038/nature10777.[Epub ahead of print]

These studies of course are in their infancy. But with hopes of a commercial product there is greater incentive. While you should not wait for exercise to come in a pill – for those who are physically unable to exercise, it may give them hope for improved health.

- Kathleen Hickey, MD

Hormones aren’t just for sex—they help control everything from the times when we feel hungry to the timing of our heart beats. Dozens have been described, but there is now a new one on the scene. It might help explain some of the health benefits of exercise and point the way to preventing obesity and diabetes. The find was described online Wednesday in Nature (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group).

Exercise has myriad benefits for the body and brain, but many of the triggers for these improvements have so far been somewhat of a mystery.

“There has been a feeling in the field that exercise ‘talks to’ various tissues in the body,” Bruce Spiegelman, a cell biologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and co-author of the new study, said in a prepared statement. “But the question has been, how?”

Speigelman and his colleagues found that exercise—in both mice and humans—starts a cascade of signaling changes, including the production of a never-before-described hormone. They dubbed the new hormone irisin, as a nod to the Greek messenger goddess Iris for its ability to send information to surrounding body tissue.

And the messages irisin carries are not trivial—they seem to effect positive changes in the body. An increase in irisin helps turn white fat into the more beneficial and metabolically active brown fat, which burns more calories. It also seems to make the body more sensitive to glucose, an important capability for keeping diabetes at bay.

In the study, the researchers discovered that exercise increases the body’s production of a metabolism-regulating protein, which in turn stimulates expression of a protein that can produce the new hormone, found to reside in the outer membranes of muscle cells.

The effects of exercise on the hormone’s production seem to be long-lived. Even after 12 hours of rest, mice that had been on a three-week jogging regimen had 65 percent more irisin in their blood than unexercised mice. And people who had gotten 10 weeks of endurance exercise training had double the amount of irisin in their blood than those who had not.

But could this hormone, the scientists wondered, mimic some of the effects of exercise—without subjects having to hit the treadmill? To find out, they injected a batch of obese, pre-diabetic mice that had been fed a high-fat diet with just about as much of an irisin boost as they would get from a workout. After 10 days of injections, the irisin-boosted mice had shed a little weight and become more sensitive to glucose—all without exercise. And a later dissection showed that the hormone spike didn’t seem to have any negative biological effects.

“It is likely that irisin is responsible for at least some of the beneficial effects of exercise on the browning of adipose tissues and increase in energy expenditure,” Speigelman and his colleagues noted in their paper. This find might help explain some of the “afterburn” of extra calories after vigorous activity.

Even if the hormone proves safe for humans to take as a supplement, it won’t replace all the benefits of going to the gym. But it might help people fight obesity and remain more sensitive to glucose, thus fighting off diabetes.

“It’s exciting to find a natural substance connected to exercise that has such clear therapeutic potential,” Pontus Bostrom, a postdoctoral researcher at Dana Farber and co-author on the new paper, said in a prepared statement. The researchers are now also investigating possible effects of the exercise-based hormone on other diseases, including neurodegenerative conditions, and have licensed the finding to Ember Therapeutics (a company co-founded by Spiegelman) for drug development.

About the Author: Katherine Harmon is an associate editor for Scientific American covering health, medicine and life sciences. Follow on Twitter @katherineharmon.

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The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Hitting The Streets: Health System Offers More Than Words In Fight Against Obesity, Indiana University Health.

     Great news for changing your body composition!

Cut Down on “Carbs” to Reduce Body Fat, Study Authors Say.

Study identifies dose threshold for omega-3’s heart benefits.

Optimal nutrition can help fight fatigue and other ailments.  Read on…….

Remedies: What to Eat to Look and Feel Younger – Prevention.com.

Do you agree with this study?  I think many are just frustrated with the conflicting advice that they get……..

Obese Americans Are In Denial About Their Own Health And Doing Little To Change Their Destiny.

There are still limits to healthful indulging!

Find out which foods, generally considered “healthy”, actually contain large amounts of this form of sugar. 

The Fight Over High-Fructose Corn Syrup.