The Inspiring Response to This Mom’s Brave Body Positivity Project

Photo: Instagram user @idaho_amy

In this age where bullying and negativity doesn’t just happen in person, but anonymously all over the Internet, body positivity and self-love have become two of the biggest concerns parents have regarding their children.

While most parents try to build up their kids’ confidence with love and encouragement, one mom in Boise, Idaho, took things a gigantic step further.

Amy Pence-Brown, who describes herself as a “nearly 40-year-old fat feminist mother,” took to Boise’s Capital City Public Market in nothing but a bikini, a blindfold, and a sign that asked people comment on her body.

 

According to USA Today, the sign read: “I’m standing for anyone who has struggled with a self-esteem issue like me, because all bodies are valuable. To support self-acceptance, draw a (heart) on my body.”

This was a premeditated project for which Pence-Brown asked for permission from the director of the farmer’s market ahead of time. And while she didn’t expect anyone to actually draw a heart on her, many did. And others went so far as to thank her for her courageous act and the message she’s trying to spread.

 

“Oh, Boise, you restored my faith in humanity,” Pence-Brown wrote on her blog. “You blew my mind with your kindness, you saw the beauty in my body and your own. You are ready for a body positive revolution, and I’m honored to stand by your side. Take my hand, if you need, and I’ll pull you up.”

This article originally appeared on Mimichatter.com.

MIMI Chatter is an endless stream of beauty content. We bring together the must-knows and the how-tos from your favorite sites, beauty influencers, our editors, and YOU.

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Constant Social Media Presence May Jeopardize Teens’ Mental Health

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Sept. 11, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Teens who feel a round-the-clock compulsion to participate on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter may pay a price in lost sleep. They may also face a higher risk for depression and anxiety, new research suggests.

British researchers surveyed nearly 470 teens to explore how 24/7 social media participation might affect their emotional health.

“Adolescence can be a period of increased vulnerability for the onset of depression and anxiety, and poor sleep quality may contribute to this,” said study co-author Heather Cleland Woods, a psychology administration teacher at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. “It is important that we understand how social media use relates to these.”

The findings are scheduled for presentation Friday in Manchester, England, at a British Psychological Society meeting. However, until the data and conclusions are published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, the research should be considered preliminary.

Approximately 90 percent of teens worldwide use social media, the researchers said in background notes. Facebook alone counts almost 1.5 billion users, and Twitter, more than 300 million. Evidence is increasingly revealing a link between social media use and well-being, particularly in the teen years, Woods and co-author Holly Scott, also from the University of Glasgow, said.

The 467 study participants were questioned about their social media habits, during the day and around bedtime. The teens also underwent mental health testing, and were asked how much pressure they felt to be available to respond to incoming social media communications, and how much anxiety they felt when they couldn’t do so — a state of mind known as “emotional investment.”

The result: The more teens engaged with social media and the more they were emotionally invested in site participation, the greater the risk for impaired sleep, poor self-esteem, depression and/or anxiety.

Jumping online at night was linked to a “significantly” higher risk for bad sleep quality, independent of other factors that might interfere with sleep, such as anxiety, depression or low self-esteem, the study found.

“While overall social media use impacts on sleep quality, those who log on at night appear to be particularly affected,” Woods said in a British Psychological Society news release. “This may be mostly true of individuals who are highly emotionally invested. This means we have to think about how our kids use social media, in relation to time for switching off.”

Scott Campbell, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, made the point that teenage engagement with social media “is not all bad.”

“There is another side to this story, and that is that kids are getting a lot of social support through social media,” said Campbell, who was not involved with the study.

Still, “research has also shown that there is definitely a causal path between social media use and lower well-being in general,” he added. “And that’s not just for teens. Teens may be more vulnerable to these negative effects, but this is a problem for people of all ages.”

However, Campbell said research has shown these negative effects tend to arise in specific circumstances, such as when people use social media passively — by compulsively browsing or lurking about, for example. “More active use, such as posting or communicating, hasn’t been linked to this issue of poorer well-being,” he said.

Also, this particular British study didn’t prove that unrestrained social media use causes mental ills, it merely shows a link.

The social media dynamic lends itself to the chicken-and-egg question, Campbell said.

“Teens who may be feeling lonely already and are looking for a little boost may then turn to social media, in which case they’re bringing their sense of low self-worth with them to the table,” he said. “That happens. It can definitely go in both directions. In the end, it’s a pretty complicated situation.”

More information

There’s more on social media and teens at Common Sense Media.

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Diet Sodas May Not Help You Lose Weight, Study Contends

FRIDAY, Sept. 11, 2015 (HealthDay News) — People who drink diet soda to cut back on calories may be undoing their own good intentions, a new study suggests.

Researchers report that those who opted for low-calorie soft drinks ended up eating more foods loaded with sugar, salt, fat and cholesterol.

However, the study did not prove that drinking diet sodas causes a person to eat more unhealthy foods.

“It may be that people who consume diet beverages feel justified in eating more, so they reach for a muffin or a bag of chips,” study author Ruopeng An, a kinesiology and community health professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in a university news release. “Or perhaps, in order to feel satisfied, they feel compelled to eat more of these high-calorie foods.”

It’s also possible that people who feel badly about eating unhealthy foods assuage their guilt by drinking diet beverages, An added.

“It may be one — or a mix — of these mechanisms,” he said. “We don’t know which way the compensation effect goes.”

The American Beverage Association (ABA) said the researchers didn’t prove their theories.

“This study, based on surveys of Americans and their diets, proved something that is well known: many people eat things that ‘are not required by the human body,’ ” William Dermody Jr., vice president of policy at the ABA, said in a statement.

“But from that unsurprising observation, the author leaps to the unproven and unsubstantiated claim that diet soda ‘may’ be why people choose to eat a range of other foods such as french fries or doughnuts rather than eat exclusively from the major food groups,” Dermody added.

Dermody said previous research has shown that diet sodas are an effective tool to help people lose weight and maintain weight loss.

In conducting the study, the researchers examined government data collected on the eating habits of more than 22,000 adults in the United States. The participants were asked to report everything they ate or drank on two different days.

Specifically, total calorie intake and the participants’ choice of beverages — including coffee, tea, sugar-free drinks, sugary beverages and alcohol — were analyzed. The researchers also considered consumption of discretionary foods, which are calorically dense but low in nutritional value, such as cookies, ice cream, fries, pastries and chocolate.

The study found that those who drink diet beverages may not actually be “saving” any calories because the foods they eat have more sugar, salt, fat and cholesterol.

More than 90 percent of those included in the study ate discretionary foods regularly, which amounted to about 482 calories per day, according to the study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

About 97 percent of the participants had at least one of the five types of beverages daily, the findings showed.

More than half of the participants drank coffee. The next most popular beverages were sugary drinks, which were consumed by 43 percent of those in the study. Tea was the beverage of choice for 26 percent of the participants, 22 percent drank alcohol and 21 percent chose diet beverages.

Drinking alcohol was associated with consuming an extra 384 calories daily, while sugary drinks led to the consumption of 226 more calories. Coffee was linked to an extra 108 calories per day, and diet beverages were tied to 69 additional calories. Tea was associated with an extra 64 calories, the study found.

Although coffee and diet beverage drinkers consumed fewer total calories daily than those who drank alcohol or sugary drinks, they got a larger percentage of their total calories from unhealthy foods, the researchers found.

The obese adults in the study who drank diet beverages also got more calories from discretionary foods than people who were a normal weight but drank sugary beverages. The study authors concluded that opting for diet drinks may not help people control their weight if they don’t eat healthy foods and consider portion sizes.

“If people simply substitute diet beverages for sugar-sweetened beverages, it may not have the intended effect because they may just eat those calories rather than drink them,” An said in the news release. “We’d recommend that people carefully document their caloric intake from both beverages and discretionary foods because both of these add calories — and possibly weight — to the body.”

More information

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more about diet soda and body weight.

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9 Coloring Books to Soothe Your Soul

Coloring’s not just for kids anymore. Since Johanna Basford’s Secret Garden was published in 2013, it’s sold more than 2 million copies—and jump-started the coloring craze among those past kindergarten.

In addition to feeling like a kid again, there are mental health benefits that come with coloring in (or outside of) the lines. Studies have shown that art therapy, which includes activities like drawing or clay molding, may help with anxiety and stress associated with a cancer diagnosis, care-giving, and trauma. And thanks to its meditative qualities, coloring may help you relax and unwind from the stresses of your daily life by keeping you focused on the task at hand.

Ready to try it out for yourself? Pick up a set of colored pencils ($9, amazon.com) and get to work on one of these awesome adult coloring books.

RELATED: 13 Ways to Beat Stress in 15 Minutes or Less

For the dreamer

Get lost in Johanna Basford’s magical world with her follow-up coloring book to The Secret Garden. Filling in her intricate illustrations will offer you an escape from the real world and an outlet to unwind. Enchanted Forest ($10, amazon.com)

For the jetsetter

Before you set off on your next flight, grab a copy of this coloring book to entertain yourself during the journey. Even if you’re not currently heading to an exotic location, the images of beautiful international cities are bound to inspire your next itinerary, or at least keep you occupied when the overwhelming wanderlust kicks in. Fantastic Cities ($11, amazon.com)

For the yogi

Whether you’re already cool as a cucumber or still trying to find your inner zen, these meditative illustrations should help you color your way to chill. Color Me Calm ($12, amazon.com)

RELATED: 12 Yoga Poses For People Who Aren’t Flexible

For the music lover

Toss a Bon Iver vinyl onto your record player, grab some colored pencils, and dive into this musically inspired coloring book. Coloring outside the lines is encouraged. Indie Rock Coloring Book ($8, amazon.com)

For the pop culture obsessive

If you’re celebrity obsessed or just a fan of iconic ladies like Beyonce and Audrey Hepburn, express your admiration by coloring in the pages of this awesome book. As part of a larger series, artist Mel Elliott created this coloring book as a way to celebrate womanhood and appreciate women for their strengths—can’t argue with that goal! Color Me Girl Crush ($13, amazon.com)

For the feminist

Calling all women-empowerment warriors, this handmade coloring book is made for you! It features twenty-three pictures of amazing women, from Marie Curie to Michelle Obama. You could also grab an extra copy for your kids (girls or boys) if you want to teach them a thing or two about women’s history. Coloring Outside the Kitchen ($14, etsy.com)

For the urbanite

Embrace your inner metropolitan (or maybe just comedy lover) with this coloring book illustrated by the one and only Abbi Jacobsen, comedian and co-creator of the TV Show Broad City. This book takes you on a quirky journey through NYC, featuring some favorite sites like the High Line and Greenwich Village. If you’re more of a West Coast fan, good news, there’s also a San Francisco version! Color This Book New York City ($8, amazon.com)

RELATED: 17 Surprising Reasons You’re Stressed Out

For the ink-fiend

If you’re covered in art or maybe just obsessed with pinning tattoo pics on Pinterest, this coloring book is the way to go. Who knows, maybe you’ll even find inspiration for your next tat! The Tattoo Coloring Book ($13, amazon.com)

For the fantasy addict

For all of you George R.R. Martin fans, get excited– the official Game of Thrones coloring book will be available in October. Enough said. A Game of Thrones Coloring Book (A Song of Ice and Fire) ($12, amazon.com)

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Long Nursing Shifts Linked to Job Dissatisfaction

FRIDAY, Sept. 11, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Long work shifts for nurses may lead to job dissatisfaction and a risk of burnout, a new study finds.

Compared with shifts that were 8 hours or less, shifts that last 12 hours or more were linked with a 40 percent higher level of job discontentment and a 31 percent higher risk of planning to quit, the study found.

“Current literature tends to report that 12-hour shifts represent a way to retain nurses in hospital clinical practice because it is believed to be the preferred shift length and that nurses are more satisfied with their jobs: our results suggest the opposite,” study author Chiara Dall’Ora, from the University of Southampton, in the United Kingdom, and her colleagues wrote.

“Therefore, our findings pose substantial questions for managers, most notably because job satisfaction is a consistent and robust predictor of remaining in a job,” the study authors added in the report published online Sept. 10 in BMJ Open.

Nurses commonly work longer shifts in many European countries, including England, Ireland and Poland, the study authors pointed out. Long shifts are believed to promote greater efficiency among nurses as well as greater productivity. Longer shifts also enable nurses to maintain flexible schedules, with more days off from work, the researchers said.

Burnout and job satisfaction among nurses, however, remain key global concerns since they could affect safety and the quality of patient care, the investigators explained.

The study doesn’t prove that long hours cause burnout and job dissatisfaction among nurses, but the researchers said their findings challenge the idea that extended shifts improve productivity and schedule flexibility among nurses.

To look at the effects of longer shifts, researchers surveyed almost 32,000 registered nurses from nearly 500 hospitals in 12 European countries. The average age of the nurses was 38, and most were women.

Half of the study participants worked 8-hour or shorter shifts. Nearly one-third of the nurses worked shifts lasting 8 to 10 hours. Four percent worked up to 12 hours, and 14 percent worked 12 to 13 hours at a time, the study said. Only 1 percent of those polled worked shifts that lasted more than 13 hours, the study found.

About 25 percent of the nurses said they weren’t satisfied with their job. A similar percentage was also not happy with the flexibility of their work schedule. One-third of the nurses surveyed said they planned to leave their job, the findings showed.

Working overtime was linked to poor outcomes in all aspects of job satisfaction — regardless of how many extra hours they worked, the researchers said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on the health and safety risks associated with shift work and long hours.

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Money Doesn’t Buy ‘Tweeners’ Self-Esteem

FRIDAY, Sept. 11, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Children who struggle with low self-esteem sometimes believe that they can buy their way out of feeling bad by acquiring “cool” things and striving to look good, experts say.

But new research finds the opposite may be true, with materialistic behavior actually aggravating already-existing depressive tendencies.

“Consumer culture may be perceived as a coping mechanism by vulnerable children, but it is one that is detrimental to their well-being,” study author Matthew Easterbrook, a psychology professor at the University of Sussex in England, said in a university news release.

Easterbrook and his colleagues are scheduled to present their findings Friday at a meeting of the British Psychological Society in Manchester, England. Research presented at meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The findings are based on the behavior patterns among 1,000 British children aged 8 to 14. All of the kids were followed for three years.

The research team determined that a child who already has a low sense of well-being gravitates toward consumerist behavior.

But, in the end, a materialistic response to social problems appeared to backfire, with childhood friendships worsening rather than getting better, the findings showed.

That said, investigators did observe some differences in the way boys and girls handled their initial depressive symptoms. While boys reacted to a poor sense of well-being by increasing their spending, girls were more likely to develop a less obvious “internalized” distress concerning their overall appearance, the findings showed.

More information

There’s more on children and mental health at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.

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Could Eating Fish Help Ward Off Depression?

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Sept. 10, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Can eating a lot of fish boost your mood? Maybe, say Chinese researchers.

Overall, the researchers found that people who consumed the most fish lowered their risk of depression by 17 percent compared to those who ate the least.

“Studies we reviewed indicated that high fish consumption can reduce the incidence of depression, which may indicate a potential causal relationship between fish consumption and depression,” said lead researcher Fang Li, of the department of epidemiology and health statistics at the Medical College of Qingdao University in China.

But this association was only statistically significant for studies done in Europe, the researchers said. They didn’t find the same benefit when they looked at studies done in North America, Asia, Australia or South America. The researchers don’t know why the association was only significant for fish consumption in Europe.

The study was also only able to show an association between eating fish and the risk for depression, not that eating fish causes a lower risk for depression, Li said.

Still, Li thinks there may be reasons why fish may have an effect on depression.

“Fish is rich in multiple beneficial nutrients, including omega-3 fatty acids, high-quality protein, vitamins and minerals, which were associated with decreased risk of depression from our study,” Li said.

The researchers pointed out that it’s possible that the omega-3 fatty acids in fish may change the structure of brain membranes, or these acids may alter the way certain neurotransmitters work. Neurotransmitters are the brain’s chemical messengers, sending information from brain cell to brain cell. Some neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and serotonin, are thought to be involved in depression, the researchers said.

The report was published Sept. 10 online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

Depression affects 350 million people around the globe, according to background information in the study. The mood disorder is the leading cause of disability worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

Past research has suggested that dietary factors may play a role in depression, the researchers said.

To look at the possible connection between eating fish and depression, Li and colleagues reviewed 26 studies published between 2001 and 2014. The studies included more than 150,000 people. Ten of the studies were done in Europe.

This process, called a meta-analysis, attempts to find consistent patterns across multiple studies.

In addition to an overall benefit from fish in curbing depression, Li’s team found a difference between men and women. Specifically, the researchers found a slightly stronger association between eating a lot of fish and lowered depression risk in men by 20 percent. Among women, reduction in risk was 16 percent, the researchers said.

Simon Rego, director of psychology training at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, said it’s “impossible to draw any definitive conclusions about direct cause and effect” due to the study’s design.

But, he added, “While the exact way fish may prevent depression is unknown, it’s promising to learn that depression may be preventable for some people by making simple modifications to their lifestyle, such as by eating more fish.”

Rego said it’s especially important to look for novel treatments because depression can have a significant impact on people’s lives, and many people don’t respond fully to first-line depression treatments.

Future research needs to look into whether the effects of fish on depression vary by the type of fish eaten. In addition, this review didn’t look at whether or not fish oil supplements could have the same effect.

More information

For more information on depression, visit the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.

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California Right-to-Die Measure Could Soon Become Law

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Sept. 10, 2015 (HealthDay News) — California, the nation’s most populous state, is poised to approve “right-to-die” legislation that would allow terminally ill patients to legally end their lives.

The California Assembly approved a bill on a 43-34 vote Wednesday that would let doctors prescribe life-ending medications to patients expected to die within six months.

That bill now moves to the state Senate, which must approve it by Friday. Gov. Jerry Brown has not yet indicated whether or not he will sign the bill into law.

Supporters believe that California’s approval could add momentum to the adoption of right-to-die laws across the country.

Opponents of the bill include religious groups such as the Catholic Church and advocates for the disabled.

California would become the fifth state in which people are allowed to legally end their lives. Oregon, Vermont and Washington already have passed laws allowing the practice, and Montana’s courts have authorized it.

“I think lawmakers will be more comfortable voting for aid-in-dying, knowing that a big jurisdiction like California has already done so,” said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices, a national organization that supports the practice. “It’s hard for lawmakers sometimes to think about being the pioneers in a social change movement. It will be easier for them to feel that they are one more state coming along in the assimilation of a new medical practice.”

The California legislation is modeled after the Death With Dignity law passed by Oregon voters in 1994, which made that state the first in the nation to allow some terminally ill patients to choose the time of their own death.

The effort to pass the legislation in California was prompted, in part, by the death last year of Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old California woman diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Maynard moved to Oregon so she could end her own life when the time was right, and became a prominent activist in the “death with dignity” movement through online videos and well-read news articles about her choice.

Under the Oregon law and the California bill, two physicians must see the patient, review the prognosis and agree that the person has an illness that will be fatal in six months, Coombs Lee said.

The doctors also must attest that the patient has no mental illness or mood disorder that impairs judgment, and that the person is not being coerced or forced into the decision, she said. The person must receive counseling about hospice and palliative care, and be told that they are under no obligation to either fill the prescription for the life-ending drugs or to take them.

“The control resides with the patient, from beginning to end,” Coombs Lee said.

The California legislation places additional safeguards on the Oregon model, including a statement that the patient must sign within 48 hours of their self-inflicted death indicating that they are still of sound mind and remain capable of taking the medication on their own, Coombs Lee said.

However, opponents believe the Oregon law is flawed and allows abuses that will also occur in California.

Marilyn Golden, a senior policy analyst with the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said that assisted suicide laws could potentially let insurance companies coerce vulnerable people into a cheap and quick death.

“If insurers deny or even delay a person’s life-sustaining treatment, they are being steered toward hastening their death,” she said. “Do we really think insurers will do the right thing or the cheapest thing?”

Golden also questioned whether the safeguards cited by Coombs Lee are truly effective, noting that people who are depressed or being pressured to take their own lives can “doctor shop” until they find a physician willing to sign off on their lethal prescription.

“It’s common knowledge in Oregon that if your doctor says no, you can call Compassion & Choices to find a doctor who says yes,” Golden said.

These are troubling concerns that have kept legislators in other states from acting on assisted suicide legislation, she said.

“No one pays attention to the fact that 12 other states this year have rejected the Oregon model,” Golden said. “As the legislators became aware of these problems, they chose not to move forward.”

Coombs Lee believes many other states will come around, encouraged by Maynard’s story and the example set by California.

“It takes a long time for lawmakers to educate themselves, and to start to feel comfortable voting yes,” Coombs Lee said. “It’s very unlikely a bill would pass a legislature the first time. California has been considering this in one way or another since 1991, when the first ballot initiative occurred.”

More information

For more on Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, visit the Oregon Health Authority.

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Gut Bugs May Affect Body Fat, ‘Good’ Cholesterol Levels

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Sept. 10, 2015 (HealthDay News) — The size of your waistline may depend to some degree on the specific bacteria dwelling within your gut, new research suggests.

The study, of nearly 900 Dutch adults, found that certain gut bacteria might help determine not only body fat levels, but also blood concentrations of HDL cholesterol and triglycerides.

HDL is the “good” cholesterol that helps maintain a healthy heart; triglycerides are another type of blood fat that, in excess, can contribute to heart disease.

This is the first study to offer “solid evidence” that gut bacteria are linked to cholesterol and triglyceride levels, said lead researcher Jingyuan Fu.

But it does not prove that the bacteria directly alter people’s blood fats, stressed Fu, an associate professor of genetics at University Medical Center Groningen, in the Netherlands.

So it’s too early to recommend probiotic supplements for heart disease prevention, experts said. However, the findings add to growing evidence that the intestinal microbiome plays an important role in human health.

The term “microbiome” refers to the trillions of bacteria and other microbes that naturally dwell in the gut.

As recent research has revealed, those bugs do much more than support good digestion: They aid in everything from immune function, to metabolizing drugs to producing vitamins, anti-inflammatory compounds and even chemicals that relay messages among brain cells.

Studies have also suggested that when the microbiome lacks diversity, that may contribute to health conditions such as obesity, asthma and type 1 diabetes.

This latest study “contributes important information to our understanding of the gut microbiome and health risks, in particular cardiovascular disease,” said Dr. Lea Chen, a gastroenterologist and microbiome researcher at NYU Langone Medical Center, in New York City.

The findings, published online Sept. 10 in the journal Circulation Research, are based on 893 adults ranging in age from 18 to 80. Fu’s team analyzed fecal samples to get a snapshot of each person’s intestinal microbiome.

Overall, the researchers found 34 types of bacteria that were associated with people’s triglycerides and HDL levels, and with body mass index (BMI) — a measure of weight in relation to height.

The investigators estimated that the gut microbiome explained 4 percent to 6 percent of the variance in BMI, triglycerides and HDL across the study group.

That’s a “modest” impact, Chen pointed out. Plus, it’s not clear that the microbiome is the cause at all.

“The identified gut bacteria could be driving changes in BMI or cholesterol, or they could merely be the byproduct of these factors,” said Chen, who was not involved in the study.

A few of the bacteria highlighted in the study are known to be involved in metabolizing bile acids that affect cholesterol levels. But Chen and Fu both said much more research is needed to understand how different gut bacteria function in relation to cholesterol and other risk factors for heart disease.

“At the current stage, this field is still in its infancy,” Fu said.

Researchers do not yet know how to define a “healthy” microbiome. But studies have suggested that modern living may be decreasing the diversity of the typical American’s gut microbiome — and that lack of diversity may be related to higher disease risks.

What makes a microbiome less diverse? Experts suspect that C-sections and lack of breast-feeding are two factors: C-sections deprive newborns of beneficial bacteria from the birth canal, while breast milk feeds gut bacteria.

Diets filled with processed foods are also thought to be at fault.

What’s key, Fu said, is that the gut microbiome can be changed through diet — unlike age, genes and certain other heart disease risk factors. But it’s not clear exactly what changes might support a healthy heart.

For now, Chen suggested that people stick with proven ways — which include eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, fiber-rich grains and other “whole” foods.

More information

The American Society for Microbiology has an overview of the human microbiome.

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First Evidence That Alzheimer’s Proteins May Have Passed From Person to Person

 

Photo: Getty Images

In a breakthrough experiment described Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers in London report for the first time evidence that patients may have acquired the Alzheimer’s protein, amyloid, from a medical treatment.

John Collinge, a neurologist at University College London, and his colleagues studied the brains of eight people who had died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a condition caused by a protein that acts like a virus. Instead of being inert like other proteins, these misfolded proteins, called prions, can grow and break off and seed new growths as if they were reproducing. CJD can be caused by genetic mutations, by exposure to contaminated foods (as with so-called mad cow disease) or even, in rare cases, from accidental exposures during medical procedures, such as surgery or other invasive treatments.

In eight autopsy cases studied by Collinge and his team, those prions came from the latter.

There was evidence that children treated with human growth hormone before 1985—when it was made from hormone collected from cadavers—might have been exposed to prions and therefore at higher risk of CJD. Because prions have a long incubation period, even 30 to 40 years after the practice of using human cadaveric hormones was stopped, patients who received those treatments continue to show signs of CJD. As part of their autopsy analysis, Collinge also looked for other abnormal brain patterns and was surprised by what he found.

“What we found, very much to our surprise, was that of the eight patients, four had quite significant, some severe, deposition of amyloid protein, the Alzheimer’s protein,” he said in a teleconference discussing the results. These patients had damage to the blood vessels in their brain typical of Alzheimer’s. Only one patient, he said, did not have any signs of amyloid.

The results are noteworthy but they don’t mean that Alzheimer’s is contagious, Collinge said. Nor do they suggest that all patients with Alzheimer’s will develop CJD, or vice versa.

In fact, given the small number of brains studied and the preliminary nature of the results, it’s hard to say exactly what the connection between prions and Alzheimer’s disease may be. What the results do suggest is a need to re-think Alzheimer’s and how it may develop. It’s possible that in addition to being caused by genes and environmental exposures, Alzheimer’s may also, in rare cases, be triggered by exposure to amyloid protein “seeds” that may be passed from one source to another.

It’s known, for example, that taking brain tissue from a mouse with Alzheimer’s disease and injecting it into healthy mice will cause the latter to develop the neurodegenerative disease. And it’s known that CJD can be transmitted by certain exposures to infected material, including, according to some reports, surgical instruments. The amyloid protein’s precursor, a-beta amyloid, is also known to “stick avidly to metal surfaces,” says Collinge. German researchers showed previously that mice implanted with a metal wire blanketed with a-beta seeds developed amyloid plaques in their brains.

In the case of the eight patients in the study, Collinge said that it’s likely they acquired a-beta amyloid seeds from the hormone harvested from the deceased elderly who donated their organs for that purpose. “The growth hormone preparations with which people were treated as children in addition to being contaminated with CJD, probably also was contaminated with a-beta seeds,” he said.

Interestingly, most of the people showing the amyloid deposits in their brains did not also have the other hallmark sign of Alzheimer’s, the fibrous tangles of the tau protein. None had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s either. But they all died at relatively young ages, between 36 and 51 years. So they may have died before the later stages of Alzheimer’s could set in.

“What I’m arguing is that we need to consider that in addition to sporadic Alzheimer’s that comes with age, and inherited or familial Alzheimer’s caused by genes, there could also be an acquired form of Alzheimer’s. It’s what I’m hypothesizing here. We certainly haven’t proven it, but it’s important that those interested in exploring the question in Alzheimer’s disease should develop the tools that we have applied in prion disease.”

For one, he said, it’s critical to understand exactly what the a-beta protein seeds are — what they look like, where they form in the body and how they might be detected in something like the blood. Collinge admitted that more research needs to be done to fully understand how important a pathway the amyloid seeds might be in contributing to Alzheimer’s, but that the latest results highlight “the growing paradigm shift in understanding that neurodegenerative disease [like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s] may be all about accumulation of [prion] seeds.”

For now, the findings only apply to those who may have received injections of growth hormone prior to 1985, before the treatment switched to entirely synthetic sources. But it raises the need for a host of new studies that may help us better understand Alzheimer’s, and other degenerative brain diseases, and some of the more unexpected ways they might develop.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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