What’s a health topic Jimmy Joy should write about?

Here at Jimmy Joy we enJoy (ha!) writing about interesting subjects. We focus on health and nutrition, ingredients, sustainability, and also like sharing random facts that we come across. You know that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but did you also know an apple can float because 25% of its volume is air? Bet you didn’t! However, since we’ve written about so much about many topics already, we need your help coming up with ideas on what to write about. So let us know - what’s a health topic Jimmy Joy should write about?

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Anti aging with special focus on skin quality/wrinkle prevention.

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GMO, and how its not a threat to your health, but a remedy for global warming :blush:

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Ah that sound pretty interesting I’ll pass it on, although we do have this article about How to live longer than 100 years that may interest you.

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Sound cool, and double points for you that it’s about health AND sustainability :sunglasses:

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Thanks, Im collecting the points!

GMO is pretty much to food what Nuclear is to power.
Historically, and to a certain extend still, the technology was used merely to make crops more resistant to glyfosate, which of course is inappropriate. More recent use to make crops more resillient to weather and pests, and at the same time a higher yield for each plant.

The reputation from earlier times, and fear of the word gene in foodstuffs, however, linger on. In fact, in Denmark, GMO-free is a seal of approval on food on par with animal welfare :man_shrugging:

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A somewhat related topic to anti aging: The effect of gluten on skin/cognition /metabolism/the endocrine system and the benefits of a gluten-free lifestyle.

That sounds interesting indeed. Can you provide some litterature? :blush:
What Ive read suggests otherwise (take this article from Harcard School of Public Health as an example: Gluten: A Benefit or Harm to the Body? | The Nutrition Source | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)

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After hearing about the ideas and research of David Perlmutter (“Grain Brain”) I’d like to learn more about the long term effects of carbohydrates and gluten on physical and cognitive deterioration with age. If you worked up the literature about that topic I am sure you definitely would bei convinced to introduce a gluten-free, low carb product.

Gluten is one thing - but there is some evidence that carbs in general are “bad” - causing telomere shortening, cell oxidation and even dementia in the long term.

I’ll give you the doi numbers of some interesting publications:
doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2017.09.011
doi: 10.1007/s00018-016-2432-6.
doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2018.10.070.
doi: 10.3390/ijms20163892
doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2010.10.006.
doi: 10.1111/nyas.12999

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Not sure if you already have such a post, but I‘d love to learn more about fibre & gut bacteria (since that‘s a topic not too many people know and werite about) :blush:
Or how different carbohydrates affect our body (how does it react to starch / fibre / sugar etc.)

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We have a guide to a healthy gut :smiley:

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Ah, thanks a lot for that link! :smiley::raised_hands:t3:

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Thanks for providing some background for your claim! :slight_smile:
I’ve run through the provided literature, and I find that it is almost solely about carbohydrates, and not gluten. Dont you agree?
Apart from that, it is safe to say, that none of these studies provides anywhere near enough basis to postulate that carbohydrates should be further restricted in a normal diet.
Notice as well, that all the provided articles are provided in smaller, open-access journals. This often attests to the importance of the findings, and most of the time, the authors even have to pay the journal to publicize, which innately comes with its own problems, but that’s a discussion for another time.

doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2017.09.011
This is in theory a relevant study, however, they investigate the effect of carbohydrates on all-cause mortality, but include diabetes patients? That seeḿs a bit nonsensical to me?

doi: 10.1007/s00018-016-2432-6.

Diets enriched in glucose, a major carbohydrate, are also associated with accelerated aging in several model organisms, including yeast and Caenorhabditis elegans ( C. elegans )

Sums it up pretty well - we’re talking ADDED sugar, and study “population” is yeast and worm. Hardly directly, if at all, appliciable to humans,

doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2018.10.070.
This study is, yet again, with an irrelevant population (mice), and actually shows that a low-protein high-carb diet not only increases lifespan, but also cognitive function.

doi: 10.3390/ijms20163892
This study focuses on a ketogenic diet as therapy for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and shows a POTENTIAL effect. A key point is that

AD patients have been demonstrated to possess defects in brain glucose metabolism, which may be caused by neurotoxic Aβs or disturbed lipid homeostasis

This means, that the POTENTIAL effect of a ketogenic diet relies on a specific pathofysiological trait of (AD) making it irrelevant to the general population, for which the study it self states the following possible side effects:

dehydration, hepatitis, pancreatitis, hypoglycemia, hyperuricemia, hypertransaminemia, hypomagnesemia, and hyponatremia

A lot of this confusion comes from the fact, that decreasing carbohydrate intake requires calories from another source, and increasing either protein- or fat intake is not without their own drawbacks!

doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2010.10.006.
Again, AD patients, 23 of them, with six weeks followup. In relation to a general recommendation it’s anecdotal at best.

doi: 10.1111/nyas.12999
Yet again, AD patients.

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David Parlmutter’s contributions to the “understanding” and “knowledge” of the harmful effects of gluten have been widely criticised, and denoted by several researchers and academic papers (1,2,3, see link below). As @Cheeserider have mentioned, most studies which investigate the harmful effects of carbohydrates/or the protective effects of the aforementioned, have been conducted on patients with already onset of Alzheimer’s dementia and/or with populations either not human or with very limited sizes. In addition, when conducting studies which investigates the effect of a dietary lifestyle and the development of disease, you can always expect reporting bias, which in worst case can make the results in the studies unreliable at best. The only way to conduct a dietary study and its effects on the development of disease, is to have a random controlled study, in which people are randomised to either a gluten free-diet or a gluten-containing diet, with a study time of a life-time, and in which all peoples other health choices and activities are decided by the investigators. Also, the subjects also need to be similar, in order to reduce the risk of genes playing a role in the outcome. In order to conduct such a study, you first have to, for a start, ignore the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (4)

In addition, one can always find associations (not causations) between dietary- and lifestyles and the development of disease. Some associations are strong (such as excessive intake of sugar combined with a sedentary lifestyle and the risk of developing non-insulin dependent diabetes). Associations are not the same as causations, and one can not just simply point on one specific dietary compound ( e.g. in our case the protein gluten) and say that it is the cause of all kinds of disease. You will always find an association between gluten and health problems, as the majority of the human kind actually do develop some kind of disease in their life, and the majority also eat gluten. There will also be an association between water intake and the development of a range of diseases, as well as the risk of dying prematurely. That does not mean that gluten, or water, actually cause the disease or death.

Yet, people think that gluten, which humans have eaten and digested for at least the last 10,000 years, is harmful for people who are not allergic to it. There are people with true allergy (coeliac disease) which can not eat it, as it causes a inflammatory response in the small intestine which, if the inflammation is prolonged, in worst case can cause cancer in the duodenum. Just as a the prolonged inflammation of the colon among patients with Crohn’s disease also have an increase risk of developing cancer in that said body part. This is not the case among people who can digest and metabolise gluten. Furthermore, gluten is not the magic compound that needs to be eliminated to our diet in order to avoid the effects of being alive(5):

According to Grain Brain , much chronic disease originates in the widespread ingestion of carbohydrates, and these foodstuff, rather than cholesterol or saturated fats, are the premier contributor to an unhealthy individual. Numerous recent studies, however, have provided high-level evidence to the contrary. A recent systematic review found several prospective cohort studies that demonstrated a relationship between consumption of saturated and trans fats and cognitive decline (5). A prospective study of a large heterogeneous population reported that a high-fat diet increases risk of specific breast cancer subtypes (5). A meta-analysis of 16 prospective cohort studies found that “higher consumption of fruit and vegetables [ all containing carbohydrates ] is associated with a lower risk of mortality from all causes, particularly from cardiovascular mortality” (5). Likewise, a multisite randomized controlled trial found that a low-fat, plant-based nutrition program reduced cardiovascular risk factors (5). Evidence-based findings such as these have led international panels to issue guidelines that recommend minimizing intake of saturated fats and trans fats and including whole grains as a primary staple of the diet (5)

The gluten-free diet industry is a billion-dollar industry, which is mainly based on the principle of eliminating one compound of our diet, which will cure/prevent your from developing disease which are purely coded into our genes (autism spectrum disease) to cardiac disease (to mention a few of the known risk factors: genes, smoking, hypercholesterolaemia, sex, age). It is a wonderful thought, that the solution to a healthy life and body is very simple, but it is not. Furthermore, we cannot ignore the placebo- and nocebo-effect in diet (6).

David T. Nash (Gluten sensitivity: new epidemic or new myth? - PMC) summarises my rant pretty well:

The declaration that a single, simple “cure” can successfully treat numerous diverse diseases and symptoms is reminiscent of the oratory of the “snake oil” merchants of generations ago. These doctor-showmen plied their craft centuries ago in the sparsely populated areas of the American frontier and were known for their elixirs or “miracle cures” (which often included alcoholic admixtures of various nostrums). Of course, this was long before the development of placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trials, which have become the mainstay of proof of efficacy and safety in our modern era of health care.

@marba: Please define this anti-ageing effect. Me personally, I can not see how we can avoid the effect of time on our body parts. Still, I know that the best way of avoiding increase rate of wrinkling and malignant melanomas is to cover as much of our body parts as possible from sun, preferably with UV-blocking, long sleeved shirts and pants, and stay away from tobacco and other harmful drugs.

Links to references, as JJ limits me to only two links per post (what’s up with that?!)

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