An analysis of cancer statistics from 1973 to 2004 by the National Cancer Institute found that the rate of new melanoma cases in women from 15 to 39 years of age had increased by 50%, but the rate for men of the same age had remained unchanged.

Melanoma is a type of skin cancer characterized by black skin tumors.  Melanoma usually starts from excessive exposure to the sun or from the frequent use of tanning salons.  Some sun exposure is necessary for the production of Vitamin D in the skin, but sun exposure that causes sunburn damages the skin.  Skin specialists recommend using sun block lotions to prevent sunburn and avoiding being outdoors in the middle of the day when the sun’s rays are strongest.

Melanoma lesions are usually black with irregular shape.  Any unusual or bleeding moles should be checked by a dermatologist.

Calorie Restriction (CR) is recognized as a scientifically proven dietary intervention to prolong life span. Many people have looked at the graphs in the book by Walford showing increases of 30% in the longevity of mice, and they have decided that they too would like to live to an age of 104 instead of just 80. They learn about Calorie Restriction with Optimum Nutrition (CRON) and they start starving themselves in a controlled way to get rid of the extra fat and keep their glucose levels down.

Unfortunately, many of the promoters of Calorie Restriction diets frequently do not emphasize the stunting effects of the lower calorie diets. Mice started on 40% CR at 9 weeks, when they are weaned, may increase their life span by about 30%, but the lower level of nutrients basically halts the growth of the mice so that at maturity they only reach half of the weight of the control mice[1]. The graphic above illustrates the corresponding relative weights of humans at different levels of caloric restriction assuming that the relationship of weight and CR is linear. If a control human weighed 150 pounds, the 40% CR human would weigh 75 pounds. Using human growth charts, we can estimate that the human control would be approximately 69 inches high, and the 40% CR human would be 57 inches tall.

The more aggressive human calorie restriction practitioners (CRONies) have found that the lower calorie diets decrease their bone structure, causing signs of osteoporosis. Unlike the mice which are started at a young age and can adjust their growth to the level of available nutrients, severe calorie restriction started in adulthood requires the body to decrease in size. Clearly, if the cell metabolism cannot adjust to the lower calorie levels, something in the body must shrink. Studies have shown that the basal metabolic rate can decrease by approximately 16% for metabolically active tissues. Higher degrees of calorie restriction started in adulthood have the potential of causing severe structural damage, and a longer life is not guaranteed.

[1] Mattson, et al. “Intermittent fasting dissociates beneficial effects of dietary restriction on glucose metabolism and neuronal resistance to injury from calorie intake“, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 2003 May 13; 100(10):6216-6220.

Arturo commented:

I feel compelled to make a comment on the graphic. Assuming that one started CR after having grown to one’s full height, say at age 22, wouldn’t the height remain the same? Therefore the growth that CR would stunt would be in the horizontal (X and Y) directions, rather than the vertical (Z) direction in Cartesian coordinates? This would mean that the figures, if they were of adults, would be the same height, but their width smaller?

Arturo is right. The illustrations above are of perfectly proportioned silhouettes which would be produced as a result of normal development.

The decrease of an adult body frame through undernourishment would first be evident in the reduction of muscle tissue because bones are more resistant to modification due to their mineral content. The first stage (acute undernutrition) might produce gaunt bodies like those of the WW II concentration camps or Keys’ Minnesota experiment (right). The second stage (chronic undernutrition) would cause decreased bone mass with related clinical conditions like osteoporosis and its consequences such as kyphosis. The result of severe long-term CR started in adulthood is likely to be a crooked gaunt body, rather than the well proportioned bodies illustrated above.

Learn more about Calorie Restriction

Aubrey de Grey

For thousands of years, preachers have been promising us eternal life, in heaven or hell, depending on what we believe. Now, Aubrey de Grey, a British biomedical gerontologist, thinks that we can achieve eternal life right here on Earth by rejuvenating the human body. The idea of immortality seems preposterous given that, thus far, no multicellular organisms have been found to live forever.

Aubrey de Grey cannot be easily dismissed. His ideas about Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) are based on sound scientific principles and modern discoveries in genetics. De Gray would like to identify all the components that cause human tissue to age and design remedies for each of them to forestall disease and eventually push back death.

Immortal life may be nothing more than a pipe dream, but there are enough serious scientists studying the process of aging that in a few decades there may be significant advances in the science of life extension. The Methuselah Foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes interest in scientific anti-aging research. The foundation awards prizes to researchers who break records in the extension of the lifespan of experimental animals.

Most foot problems are caused by ergonomically bad shoe designs. The incidence of bunions (hallux valgus), bunionettes and hammer toe are four to five times more common in women than in men. The stylish and fashionable high-heeled women’s shoes with narrow toe boxes cause increased plantar pressure and toe crowding which over time distort the bones of the foot. Although only 9 percent of 30- to 60-year-olds have bunions, approximately 16 percent of people over the age 60 have them.

High-heel shoes, and ill-fitting shoes hamper mobility and increase the risk of falls. Bad insole designs can increase the pressure on the nerves of the foot and make it uncomfortable to walk. Podiatrists perform over 400,000 surgical operations per year to correct foot problems that could have been avoided by wearing comfortable, properly-fitted shoes.

Bad shoe designs are so prevalent that there is a large market for shoe inserts such as gel insoles that make it more comfortable to walk by distributing the weight of the body over a larger area of the foot.

Sweets are not for diabetics

A man recently diagnosed as having Impaired Glucose Tolerance (a precursor to Type II Diabetes) was trying to learn how he could improve his health. He read Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution: The Complete Guide to Achieving Normal Blood Sugars and commented that he found terribly depressing the types of food that one is restricted to.

Dr. Bernstein’s diet is basically a low-carbohydrate diet which is not too different from the Atkins diet. The diet allows you to eat meat, eggs, some dairy, and non-starchy leafy vegetables such as lettuce. Carbohydrates must be limited to less than 40 grams per day. Dr. Bernstein is a diabetic himself, and he developed the diet after being frustrated by the worsening of his condition using the dietary guidelines of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) which recommends diets with a greater proportion of carbohydrates.

One slice of cake with frosting can have 500 calories. Most of these calories come from refined sugars and white flour which cause an overload of blood glucose and stimulate the pancreas to produce extra insulin. Habitual indulgences in sweets result in obesity that can eventually lead to diabetes. If you are a diabetic, you can have your cake, but you cannot eat it.

Polycarbonate Plastics

Polycarbonate plastics made from Bisphenol A are clear and very though. Polycarbonate plastics are used for impact resistant glasses, but they are also used in a variety of household products like baby formula bottles, CDs and DVDs, plastic forks, dental sealants, housings for electronics, and resin liners for canned food.

Recently, a report from the National Toxicology Program, an office of the National Institutes of Health, indicated that residual amounts of Bisphenol A in polycarbonate plastics that come in contact with food may pose a health hazard.[1] Bisphenol A, or BPA, has become so common in the United States that it has been detected in the urine of 93 percent of the population over 6 years of age.

Bisphenol A can activate estrogen receptors, leading to physiological effects similar to the body’s own estrogens. In essence, Bisphenol A acts like a feminizing hormone. Bisphenol A has been linked in laboratory animals to breast cancer, prostate cancer, and early puberty in females.

Do you remember the now banned insecticide DDT? One of the reasons why it was banned was because it had estrogen-like effects that caused birds to lay eggs with thin shells. The eggs would break before they could hatch. Birds, like the bald eagle, which ate fish contaminated with high quantities of DDT came to the brink of extinction. There have been some studies that concluded that DDT was wrongly blamed for the decline of the eagles because eggshells had been thinning long before DDT was introduced. However, the hormone-mimicking effects of DDT have been substantiated, and it is interesting to note the structural similarity of DDT and Bisphenol A.

DDT and Bisphenol A

You can minimize the quantities of Bisphenol A that you consume by not storing food or drinks in polycarbonate plastic containers. Also, do not heat food in plastic containers, as this may release some of the chemicals from the plastic into the food.

The National Toxicology Program is accepting comments to its draft report.[2] The public comment period closes on May 23, 2008.

1. The National Toxicology Program (NTP) Draft Brief On Bisphenol A (BPA)
2. Questions and Answers about the Draft National Toxicology Program Brief on Bisphenol A

Regardless of what a food package says, I always look at the nutrition label and the list of ingredients. I got into this habit trying to avoid products with hydrogenated fats. It is necessary to read the labels to avoid foods with hydrogenated fats and saturated fats that increase cholesterol levels.

In 2006, the FDA required listing the trans fats from hydrogenated oils in nutrition labels because of health concerns. Manufacturers reacted by reducing the trans fats to less than 0.5 grams per serving so that the numbers could be rounded to zero, or by replacing the hydrogenated fats with saturated fats that don’t turn rancid, such as palm kernel oil or coconut oil. In some cases, the manufacturers just reduced the serving size without changing the composition of the product to mathematically reduce the amount of trans fat per serving and round to zero.

The problem is that even some “healthy” products can have misleading labels. The Dannon yogurt illustrated here claims to be “All Natural” but contains “high fructose corn syrup”.

There are no natural sources of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This syrup is made from corn starch by a complex chemical process. Also, the words “No Artificial Anything” are just a trademark and not a nutritional statement. The trademark is quite misleading because the words imply that a product bearing the trademark is 100% natural.

Baked Salmon with Wild Rice

One of the greatest challenges in today’s world is to maintain your weight steady as you age. There is so much food in our modern society that people are dying of obesity instead of hunger like several centuries ago. The famines of today are caused mostly by war, rather than the unavailability of food. In case you did not know, Americans are now the fattest people in the world, and Mexico has become the second fattest nation in the world due to the rising popularity of soft drinks and fast-food restaurants.[1]

The obesity epidemic has been a boon to diet industy firms like Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, and Weight Watchers. These firms assume that you don’t know how to eat properly (otherwise you would not be so fat), so they are going to measure the food for you to keep you from overeating. It seems to me that it is not right to abdicate the responsibility of taking care of your own body. We are not children any more. We can be disciplined. We can learn how to take care of ourselves, and we should take care of our own bodies.

It does not take much effort to cook nutritious foods. Two days ago, I baked a delicious salmon fillet. While the fish baked, I steamed some broccoli and carrots. I also boiled some wild rice. In less than half an hour, supper was ready.

[1] Mexico now the 2nd fattest country, after U.S.

Sagittal Abdominal Diameter

Here is another reason to get rid of that pot belly. It turns out that belly fat, the “apple” body shape, increases the risk of dementia. Dr. Rachel Whitmer, an epidemiologist working for Kaiser Permanente, has found strong association between obesity in middle age and future risk of Alzheimer disease, dementia, and cognitive impairment. Obese people with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or higher had a 74% increased risk of dementia.[1]

Although BMI has been used as a measure of corpulence, BMI reflects only the ratio of body weight to the square of the height, so it does not take into consideration the distribution of the weight. It is well known that bodybuilders with massive chest muscles and small waists have BMIs over 30 which is the range for obesity. Similarly, persons with skinny legs and a fat abdomens have BMIs in the normal range. Increasingly, BMI is being displaced or supplemented by other measures that more accurately reflect the degree of abdominal adiposity, such as the Waist-to-Height ratio and the Sagittal Abdominal Diameter.

The Sagittal Abdominal Diameter, normally measured with a caliper, is the distance from the back to the upper abdomen midway between the top of the pelvis and the bottom of the ribs. This is basically the distance between the belly button and the back, as illustrated above. The Sagittal Abdominal Diameter closely correlates with the amount of belly fat and has become a good predictor of risk of sudden death from cardiovascular disease[2] and of insulin resistance[3].

[1] Whitmer RA, et al., Obesity in middle age and future risk of dementia: a 27 year longitudinal population based study, BMJ (British Medical Journal) 2005 Jun 11;330(7504):1360. Epub 2005 Apr 29. PMID: 15863436

[2] J.P. Empana, et al., Sagittal Abdominal Diameter and Risk of Sudden Death in Asymptomatic Middle-Aged Men. The Paris Prospective Study I, Circulation, 2004;110:2781-2785.

[3] Ulf Risérus, et al., Sagittal Abdominal Diameter Is a Strong Anthropometric Marker of Insulin Resistance and Hyperproinsulinemia in Obese Men, Diabetes Care, 27:2041-2046, 2004.

Forsythia in Bloom

March is the month when the Northern Hemisphere starts to come out of hibernation. The trees are starting to show some buds, crocuses and daffodils are in full bloom, and forsythias are showing their yellow splendor. March is also the time when the basketball season ends with a frenzy of championship games. Sports fans go crazy as the indoor game season ends and baseball and other outdoor sports start a new season.

Easter is celebrated with eggs to symbolize new life and resurrection. The date for Easter is based the cycle of the moon. Easter is the first Sunday after the first Full Moon which occurs after the vernal equinox; it falls between late March and late April each year. This year, Easter falls on the 23rd of March. Since spring usually starts around the 21st of March, this is about as early as Easter can happen. The U.S. Naval observatory has an explanation of how the date of Easter may be different in some parts of the world as a consequence of the International Date Line conventions.

On the topic of Spring Training, one of my neighbors is training for a marathon. Not too long ago, his cholesterol was 204. He improved his diet and started to use grape seed oil, an oil high in polyunsaturated fatty acids, in his salad dressings. His cholesterol level is now 140. It is good to see that dietary interventions can make a big difference in the biomarkers for health. Every time that I see one of those TV commercials where an actor says “I exercise and watch my diet, but it is not enough.” and concludes that he still needs some statin to lower his cholesterol, I keep thinking: “NO! NO! NO! You cannot just WATCH your diet, you have to eat foods with the right fatty acid balance, you have to eat less, and you have to exercise.” It is actually very simple. Diet is a major factor.