". . .phytochemicals stress our bodies in a way that leaves us stronger."  

". . . evidence has mounted to suggest that antioxidant vitamin supplements, long assumed to improve health, are ineffectual."

Illustration by John Hendrix

by Moises-Velasquez Manoff via Nautilus.

You probably try to exercise regularly and eat right. Perhaps you steer toward “superfoods,” fruits, nuts, and vegetables advertised as “antioxidant,” which combat the nasty effects of oxidation in our bodies. Maybe you take vitamins to protect against “free radicals,” destructive molecules that arise normally as our cells burn fuel for energy, but which may damage DNA and contribute to cancer, dementia, and the gradual meltdown we call aging.

Warding off the diseases of aging is certainly a worthwhile pursuit. But evidence has mounted to suggest that antioxidant vitamin supplements, long assumed to improve health, are ineffectual. Fruits and vegetables are indeed healthful but not necessarily because they shield you from oxidative stress. In fact, they may improve health for quite the opposite reason: They stress you.

That stress comes courtesy of trace amounts of naturally occurring pesticides and anti-grazing compounds. You already know these substances as the hot flavors in spices, the mouth-puckering tannins in wines, or the stink of Brussels sprouts. They are the antibacterials, antifungals, and grazing deterrents of the plant world. In the right amount, these slightly noxious substances, which help plants survive, may leave you stronger.

Eating food from plants that have struggled to survive toughens us up as well.

Parallel studies, meanwhile, have undercut decades-old assumptions about the dangers of free radicals. Rather than killing us, these volatile molecules, in the right amount, may improve our health. Our quest to neutralize them with antioxidant supplements may be doing more harm than good.

The idea that pro-oxidant molecules are always destructive is “oversimplified to the point of probably being wrong,” says Toren Finkel, chief of the center for molecular medicine at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. “Oxidants may be a primordial messenger of stress in our cells, and a little bit of stress, it turns out, may be good for us.”

Although far from settled, a wave of compelling science offers a remarkably holistic picture of health as a byproduct of interactions among people, plants, and the environment. Plants’ own struggle for survival— against pathogens and grazers, heat and drought—is conveyed to us, benefitting our health. This new understanding begins, in part, on a treadmill.

In the mid-20th century, as modern medicine seemed poised to vanquish the infectious diseases of yore, some scientists turned to the degenerative diseases associated with aging. Attention fell on a class of molecules called “reactive oxygen species,” or ROS. These volatile substances could damage DNA. Degenerative diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, often showed evidence of “oxidative stress,” suggesting that ROS spurred disease.

Oddly, our mitochondria, the energy factories of our cells, emitted ROS naturally. So degenerative disease seemed to stem in part from our own metabolic function: Your mitochondria “burned” fuel, emitted this toxic exhaust, and inadvertently set the limits on your existence. That was the working hypothesis, at any rate.

Experiments on rats and worms showed that reactive oxygen species, such as hydrogen peroxide, tear atoms from other molecules, destroying them in the process. That can be problematic when those molecules are DNA, our cellular instruction manual. We produce native antioxidants, such as the molecule glutathione, to counteract this pro-oxidant threat. They react with ROS, neutralizing the pro-oxidants before they can damage important cellular machinery.

When scientists blocked rodents’ ability to manufacture these protective molecules, lifespan declined. Observational studies, meanwhile, suggested that people who regularly ate vitamin-laden fruits and vegetables were healthier. So were people with higher levels of vitamins E and C in their blood.

Vitamins were strongly antioxidant in test tubes. So the ROS theory of aging and disease rose to prominence. You could slow aging, it followed, by neutralizing free radicals with antioxidant pills. A supplement industry now worth $23 billion yearly in the U.S. took root.

But if those ROS were so harmful, some scientists asked—and the basic design of our (eukaryote) cells was over 1 billion years old—why hadn’t evolution solved the ROS problem? At the same time, scientists began finding that exercise and calorie restriction increased lifespan in animals. Both elevated ROS. According to the ROS model of aging, animals that exercised and fasted should have died younger. But they lived longer.

For Michael Ristow, a researcher of energy and metabolism at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the inconsistencies became impossible to overlook. In worms, he found that neutralizing those allegedly toxic ROS reduced lifespan, so he designed a similar experiment in humans.

He had 39 male volunteers exercise regularly over several weeks; half took vitamin supplements before working out. The results, published in 2009, continue to reverberate throughout the field of exercise physiology, and beyond. Volunteers who took large doses of vitamins C and E before training failed to benefit from the workout. Their muscles didn’t become stronger; insulin sensitivity, a measure of metabolic health, didn’t improve; and increases in native antioxidants, such as glutathione, didn’t occur.

Exercise accelerates the burning of fuel by your cells. If you peer into muscles after a jog, you’ll see a relative excess of those supposedly dangerous ROS—exhaust spewed from our cellular furnaces, the mitochondria. If you examine the same muscle some time after a run, however, you’ll find those ROS gone. In their place you’ll see an abundance of native antioxidants. That’s because, post-exercise, the muscle cells respond to the oxidative stress by boosting production of native antioxidants. Those antioxidants, amped up to protect against the oxidant threat of yesterday’s exercise, now also protect against other ambient oxidant dangers.

Contrary to the ROS dogma, Ristow realized, the signal of stress conveyed by the ROS during exercise was essential to this call-and-response between mitochondria and the cells that housed them. To improve health, he figured, perhaps we shouldn’t neutralize ROS so much as increase them in a way that mimicked what happened in exercise. That would boost native antioxidants, improve insulin sensitivity, and increase overall resilience.

Ristow called this idea “mitohormesis.” The term “hormesis” came from toxicology (“mito” was for mitochondrion). It describes the observation that some exposures generally considered toxic can, in minute amounts, paradoxically improve health. For instance, minuscule quantities of X-ray radiation, a known carcinogen, increases the lifespan of various insects.

Hormesis may be most easily grasped when considering exercise. Lift too much weight or run too long, and you’ll likely tear muscle and damage tendons. But lift the right amount and run a few times a week, and your bones and muscles strengthen. The intermittent torque and strain increases bone mineralization and density. Stronger bones may better tolerate future shocks that might otherwise cause fractures.

In his experiment, Ristow saw that vitamin supplements interrupted this sequence of stress followed by fortification, probably because they neutralized the ROS signal before it could be “heard” elsewhere in the cell. By interfering in the adaptive response, vitamins prevented the strengthening that would have otherwise followed the stress of physical exertion. Antioxidant supplementation paradoxically left you weaker.

Vitamins are necessary for health. And supplements can help those who are deficient in vitamins. Insufficient vitamin C, for instance, causes scurvy, which results from defective collagen, a protein in connective tissue.

Among other functions, vitamin C aids collagen synthesis.  But the primary role of vitamins in our body, according to Ristow and others, may not be antioxidant. And the antioxidant content of fruits and veggies does not, he thinks, explain their benefits to our health. So what does?

Mark Mattson, Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging, has studied how plant chemicals, or phytochemicals, affect our cells (in test tubes) for years. The assumption in the field has long been that, like vitamins, phytochemicals are directly antioxidant. But Mattson and others think they work indirectly. Much like exercise, he’s found, phytochemicals stress our bodies in a way that leaves us stronger.

Plants, Mattson explains, live a stationary life. They cannot respond to pathogens, parasites, and grazers as we might—by moving. To manage the many threats posed by mobile life, as well as heat, drought, and other environmental stresses, they’ve evolved a remarkable number of defensive chemicals.

Health doesn’t result solely from the instructions your genome contains, but your relationship with the world.

We’re familiar with many components of their arsenal. The nicotine that we so prize in tobacco slows grazing insects. Beans contain lectins, which defend against insects. Garlic’s umami-like flavor comes from allicin, a powerful antifungal. These “antifeedants” have evolved in part to dissuade would-be grazers, like us.

Mattson and his colleagues say these plant “biopesticides” work on us like hormetic stressors. Our bodies recognize them as slightly toxic, and we respond with an ancient detoxification process aimed at breaking them down and flushing them out.

Consider fresh broccoli sprouts. Like other cruciferous vegetables, they contain an antifeedant called sulforaphane. Because sulforaphane is a mild oxidant, we should, according to old ideas about the dangers of oxidants, avoid its consumption. Yet studies have shown that eating vegetables with sulforaphane reduces oxidative stress.

When sulforaphane enters your blood stream, it triggers release in your cells of a protein called Nrf2. This protein, called by some the “master regulator” of aging, then activates over 200 genes. They include genes that produce antioxidants, enzymes to metabolize toxins, proteins to flush out heavy metals, and factors that enhance tumor suppression, among other important health-promoting functions.

In theory, after encountering this humble antifeedant in your dinner, your body ends up better prepared for encounters with toxins, pro-oxidants from both outside and within your body, immune insults, and other challenges that might otherwise cause harm. By “massaging” your genome just so, sulforaphane may increase your resistance to disease.

In a study on Type 2 diabetics, broccoli-sprout powder lowered triglyceride levels. High triglycerides, a lipid, are associated with an increased risk of heart disease and stroke. Lowering abnormally elevated triglycerides may lessen the risk of these disorders. In another intervention, consuming broccoli sprout powder reduced oxidative stress in volunteers’ upper airways, likely by increasing production of native antioxidants. In theory, that might ameliorate asthmatics’ symptoms.

Elevated free radicals and oxidative stress are routinely observed in diseases like cancer and dementia. And in these instances, they probably contribute to degeneration. But they may not be the root cause of disease. According to Mattson, the primary dysfunction may have occurred earlier with, say, a creeping inability to produce native antioxidants when needed, and a lack of cellular conditioning generally.

Mattson calls this the “couch potato” problem. Absent regular hormetic stresses, including exercise and stimulation by plant antifeedants, “cells become complacent,” he says. “Their intrinsic defenses are down-regulated.” Metabolism works less efficiently. Insulin resistance sets in. We become less able to manage pro-oxidant threats. Nothing works as well as it could. And this mounting dysfunction increases the risk for a degenerative disease.

Implicit in the research is a new indictment of the Western diet. Not only do highly refined foods present tremendous caloric excess, they lack these salutary signals from the plant world—“signals that challenge,” Mattson says. Those signals might otherwise condition our cells in a way that prevents disease.

Another variant of the hormetic idea holds that our ability to receive signals from plants isn’t reactive and defensive but, in fact, proactive. We’re not protecting ourselves from biopesticides so much as sensing plants’ stress levels in our food.

Harvard scientist David Sinclair and his colleague Konrad Howitz call this xenohormesis: benefitting from the stress of others. Many phytonutrients trigger the same few cellular responses linked to longevity in eukaryotic organisms, from yeasts to humans. Years of research on Nrf2 in rodents suggest that activating this protein increases expression of hundreds of health-promoting genes, including those involved in detoxification, antioxidant production, control of inflammation, and tumor suppression.

In the dance between animals and plants, there’s true mutualism. “We’re in this together, the plants and us.”

Sinclair studies another class of native proteins, called sirtuins, associated with health. They’re triggered by exercise and also, Sinclair contends, a molecule called resveratrol, found in grape skins and other plants. “It’s too coincidental that time and time again these molecules come out of nature that have the surprising multifactorial benefit of tweaking the body just the right way,” Sinclair says.

They’re not all antifeedants, he argues. Plants churn these substances out when stressed, prompting further adaptations to the particular threat, be it drought, infestation by grazing insects, or excessive ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

For grazers, these stress compounds in plants may convey important information about environmental conditions. So grazers’ ability to “perceive” these signals, Sinclair argues, likely proved advantageous over evolutionary time. It allowed them to prepare for adversity. A grape vine stressed by fungi churns out resveratrol to fight off the infection. You drink wine made from those grapes, “sense” the harsh environmental conditions in the elevated tannins and other stress compounds, gird your own defenses, and, in theory, become more resistant to degenerative disease.

One implication is that modern agriculture, which often prevents plant stress with pesticides and ample watering, produces fruits and vegetables with weak xenohormetic signals. “I buy stressed plants,” Sinclair says. “Organic is a good start. I choose plants with lots of color because they are producing these molecules.” Some argue that xenohormesis may explain, at least in part, why the Mediterranean diet is apparently so healthful. It contains plants such as olives, olive oil, and various nuts that come from hot, dry, stressful environments. Eating food from plants that have struggled to survive toughens us up as well.

Philip Hooper, an endocrinologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, points out that plant-animal relationships are often symbiotic, and communication goes both ways. One example of direct plant-to-animal, biochemical manipulation comes from the coffee bush. Flowering plants compete with one another for the attention of pollinators, such as bees. Coffee bushes seem to gain advantage in this “marketplace” by using caffeine. The drug excites pollinators’ neurons, etching the memory of the plant’s location more deeply in their brains. Some think that biochemical tweaking increases the probability that the pollinator, which faces a panoply of flower choices, will return to that particular coffee bush.

In the dance between animals and plants, says Hooper, “I think there’s true mutualism. We’re in this together, the plants and us.”

While xenohormesis is a compelling idea, it remains unproven. Barry Halliwell, a biochemist at the National University of Singapore, and an expert on antioxidants, has seen the dietary fads, from vitamins to fiber, come and go. He says the hormetic and xenohormetic ideas are plausible, but not certain. Various studies suggest that people who consume a lot of fruits and vegetables have healthier lifestyles generally. Those people probably go easy on the junk food, which alone may improve health.

Even within the hormetic idea, Halliwell sees the attempts to bore down on the individual chemicals as problematic. “That’s worked very well in pharmacology, but it hasn’t worked at all well in nutrition,” he says. He doesn’t think any single phytonutrient will explain the apparent health-promoting benefits of fruits and veggies. “Variety seems to be good,” he says. That critique speaks to a larger problem: It’s often unclear how lab research on simple organisms or cell cultures will translate, if at all, into recommendations or therapies for genetically complex, free-living humans.

What works in genetically uniform organisms, or cells, living in highly controlled environments, does not necessarily work in people. Human studies on resveratrol in particular have yielded contradictory results. Proper dosage may be one problem, and interaction between the isolates used and particular gene variants in test subjects another. Interventions usually test one molecule, but fresh fruits and vegetables present numerous compounds at once. We may benefit most from these simultaneous exposures.

The science on the intestinal microbiota promises to further complicate the picture; our native microbes ferment phytonutrients, perhaps supplying some of the benefit of their consumption. All of which highlights the truism that Nature is hard to get in a pill.

These caveats aside, research into xenohormesis reminds us that we are not at the complete mercy of our genetic inheritance. Genes matter, but health depends in large part on having the right genes expressed at the right time—and in the right amount. If our genome is a piano, and our genes are the keys, health is the song we play on the piano. The science on hormesis, the stresses that may keep us strong, provides hints about what kind of song we should play. Keep the body conditioned with regular exercise. Keep your cells’ stress-response pathways intermittently engaged with minimally processed, plant-based food.

These recommendations end up sounding rather grandmotherly—if your grandmother was a spartan, no-nonsense peasant who lived off the land. But the underlying thrust contradicts assumptions about the need to protect oneself from hardship. Certain kinds of difficulty, it turns out, may be required for health. That’s because health doesn’t result solely from the instructions your genome contains, but from your relationship with the wider world. Resilience isn’t completely inherent to your body; it’s cultivated by outside stimuli. And some of those stimuli just happen to be mildly noxious, slightly stressful chemicals in plants.

Moises Velasquez-Manoff is a science writer and author of An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases. He lives in California.

Chlorophyll or Aloe Vera?

"Chlorophyll . . . increas[es] the overall oxygenation of cells to enhance respiration."

A friend of mine made the point the other day that what made aloe vera juice effective in treating stomach conditions is the chlorophyll.  It's also what gives aloe vera juice that green hue.  I personally have tried aloe vera juice for digestive situation and it has made me feel better.  But then I thought if the reason people go after and buy aloe vera is because of the chlorophyll and not anything else in particular, then why not just buy chlorophyll?  

I'd also read from Healthwyze that chlorophyll is a powerful healing component, explaining that the "Linus Pauling Institute discovered that chlorophyll speeds the healing of wounds when applied topically."  So my thought was that if chlorophyll speeds the healing of external wounds, perhaps the way that Vitamin E capsules do on wounds, that it surely must be a powerful healer of internal wounds.  Healthwyze does expalin that "Chlorophyll provides mental clarity and physical energy by increasing the rate of oxygen absorption into cells. This is also an important component for the prevention of cancer, as oxygen deprivation is a primary cause of cancer."  So as a healing agent, chlorophyll is really your choice over aloe vera.  And The Linus Pauling Institute does point out the benefits of chlorophyll:

1.  Used orally as an internal deodorant.

2.  Topically in the treatment of slow-healing wounds for more than 50 yeas without any serious side effects.

3.  Chlorophyll supplementation may decrease oxidative damage induced by chemical carcinogens and radiation.  (Yes, I have heard doctors recommend chlorophyll for radiation damage or weakness.)

4.  A recent study showed that human colon cancer cells undergo cell cycle arrest after treatment with chlorophyllin.

5.  During the late '40s and '50s, a series of largely uncontrolled studies in patients with slow-healing wounds, such as vascular ulcers and pressure (decubitus) ulcers, reported that the application of topical chlorophyllin promomted healing more effectively than other commonly used treatments.

Sarah C. Corriher at Healthwyze adds that "Chlorophyll provides a long-lasting boost of energy by somehow increasing the overall oxygenation of cells to enhance respiration."

From Yahoo Answers, a contributor wrote "Aloe Vera Juice is used to maintain and restore balance of stomach acids. Aloe Vera has shown for maintaining and promoting the right balance of stomach acids."  He goes on: 

In fact, aloe Vera’s tissue regeneration activities again build tissue of the small and large intestine, colon and stomach tissue. Researchers have found that aloe Vera easily stimulate the fibroblasts for making new tissue. When Fibroblasts are stimulated, make proteoglycans, collagen and other elements for producing new tissue. 

Aloe polysaccharides are used to improve the property of immune cells, and it is very effective to eliminate waste and build up toxic and other properties. 

Okay, that creating new tissue point is quite amazing.  

Aloe Vera enhances absorption of nutrients and digestive functioning. 

Aloe Vera Juice is useful to treat digestive system conditions like acid indigestion, candida, colitis and irritable bowel syndrome.

Chlorophyll, the green “blood” of plant life is made by plants through a chemical process called photosynthesis. And amazingly, it essentially has the same effects in the body as iron, so it builds our own blood naturally. Catabolic and anabolic at the same time, liquid chlorophyll is a powerful detoxifier and tonic. It cleanses the blood and builds red blood cells while doing it. 

Because liquid chlorophyll’s composition contains calcium, it is highly useful for people as well as animals with arthritis, bone diseases, and hip dysplasia. Chlorophyll heals chronic conditions both internally and externally, and stops the growth and development of toxic bacteria. Chlorophyll removes toxins from the bones, blood tissues, and intestines. And because chlorophyll helps to thicken and strengthen the walls of the cells, it is also a nutritional aid for the immune system. 

Liquid chlorophyll counteracts toxins, the result is that the body heal faster. It also works in purifying the liver, eliminates old toxic material, and deodorizes the bowels and the entire body. In the colon, liquid chlorophyll helps keep the colon healthy by destroying disease causing bacteria. It works well in eliminating body odors, abscesses, and other skin sores in people as well as animals. In fact it’s a great help for any digestive problems, constipation, or diarrhea. 

Indeed, liquid chlorophyll is non-toxic, safe and soothing to body tissues, so it’s considered very safe for people of all ages. It is actually a whole food, instead of medication. Liquid chlorophyll is available in herbal shops, and of course, eating lots of deep green vegetables is the perfect way to get this great wonder tonic into your system.    

So, which is it: Chlorophyll or Aloe Vera?  It depends on what you're trying to treat, but I really like the wound-healing and cellular respiration capability of Chlorophyll.  Aloe Vera sounds like it balances stomach acids.  By the way, both have chlorophyll, it's just that chlorophyll liquid is highly concentrated.  Don't forget, the chlorophyll is a great deodorant as well.  Get the chlorophyll.  It seems like it would remedy more situations.

Coffee Is Rich in Polyphenols But Spikes Insulin

Coffee is a stimulant whose breakdown products spike insulin. But coffee has a dark color and that means it is rich in polyphenols or anti-oxidants. Remember, any color in any that occurs naturally is rich in polyphenols. Blueberries, cherries, raspberries, all rich in polyphenols.  Unsweetened chocolate--rich in polyphenols.  Coffee is rich in polyphenols but its breakdown products do spike insulin.  So you need to make the call whether it is worth it.  I like it, so, yes, to me, it is worth it.

Decaffeinated coffee is soaked in methelyne chloride.  The same stuff is used to soak your laundry at the laundromat when they dry clean it.  This pulls out the caffeine.  Then they try to drive off all of the methelyne chloride and then add the flavors back.  What!  That doesn't make sense. This method may be the cheapest method to extract the caffeine.  There are more expensive, time-consuming methods that uses hot water to extract caffeine.  Caffeine is more water-soluble than the polyphenols are. 

He says that most people don't do well with coffee--caffeinated or de-caffeinated.  Hmm. 

He recommends teas, particularly green tea.  He cites the green color in green tea as possessing a lot of polyphenols.  But all teas have color. I haven't come across a single tea in my life that doesn't have color.  Unless you're talking about plain hot water; if so, that's not tea.  He explains that black tea (there's your colors) are fermented green teas. Didn't know that. He says that black teas, like Lipton teas and others, have only 1/10 the amount of polyphenols that green has.  Again, not heard that before. It's why green tea tastes more bitter than black tea.  Interesting.  So the bitterness of a food also indicates a higher concentration of polyphenols? Apparently so if you're comparing chocolates.

To knock out the bitter taste of green tea, he recommneds adding lemon or sugar.  He points out that tea has about half the caffeine as coffee. One cup of green tea will contain about 600 ORAC units. The higher the units, the greater concentration of polyphenols.  Dr. Mercola explains what polyphenols are and why they're important:  

Polyphenols are phytochemicals, meaning compounds found abundantly in natural plant food sources that have antioxidant properties. There are over 8,000 identified polyphenols found in foods such as tea, wine, chocolates, fruits, vegetables, and extra virgin olive oil, just to name a few.

Polyphenols play an important role in maintaining your health and wellness.  Antioxidants as a group help protect the cells in your body from free radical damage, thereby controlling the rate at which you age.

If your body does not get adequate protection, free radicals can become rampant, causing your cells to perform poorly. This can lead to tissue degradation and put you at risk of diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease, for example.

Healthwise, seems that coffee is best when fully caffeinated and enjoyed with a meal to minimize the spike in inuslin.  So enjoy a cup today.  

$600 for an MRI.  Where?  Where?

from Mark J. Perry @ American Enterprise Institute

He writes: 

Antidote to Obamacare? Competitive Market-Based Medicine. In June of 2013, I posted on CD about the $600 all-inclusive flat-rate for any MRI scan at the Milwaukee-based Smart Choice MRI. At the time, I mentioned that the $600 price hadn’t changed in at least six years, and it’s now more than two year[s] later and the price is still $600 for the cost of the scan and the cost to have your scan read by expert radiologists at the Cleveland Clinic. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting today that Smart Choice MRI has raised $6.5 million from investors [my emphasis] and is set to open four imaging centers in the Chicago market and will be the company’s first expansion outside Wisconsin. The price? Still $600, compared to comparable MRI exams performed at hospitals using the exact same technology at an average cost of up to $3,000. Need an appointment? Any of the six Milwaukee locations can schedule your MRI as early as this Thursday!

SOFT DRINK CONSUMPTION WILL AGE YOU AS FAST AS SMOKING

"Daily consumption of . . . half-liter of soda is linked with 4.6 years of additional biological aging . . . comparable to . . . smoking.”

Soft Drink Consumption Will Age You As Fast As Smoking - 10 Reasons To Avoid Them 
from HelathySustainableLiving

I am reviewing this article here in the midst of a Coronavirus pandemic, March 23, 2020.  And upon review, I think maybe I shouldn't have posted it at all.  One, I don't like the calls for government intervention into any market, and particularly not into the individual choices that people make as to what they want to put into their own bodies, and, yes, that goes for drugs too.  That's nobody's business but the person alone.  Though their family can advise, if someone wants to put junk into their bodies, who's to say who can stop them?  

From the start, the article calls for government intervention, 

The message to stop smoking issued by public health officials has been nothing less than paramount, repetitive and consistent in the last several decades. What about soft drinks? Daily consumption of just a half-liter of soda is linked with 4.6 years of additional biological aging, effects comparable to that of smoking, finds a new study.

Drinking Soda Ages You

The study found that drinking soft drinks is associated with cell aging, suggesting sugar-sweetened soda consumption might promote disease independently from its role in obesity.

The study revealed that telomeres--the protective units of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes in cells--were shorter in the white blood cells of survey participants who reported drinking more soda. The findings were reported in the American Journal of Public Health.

The length of telomeres within white blood cells--where it can most easily be measured--has previously been associated with human lifespan. Short telomeres also have been associated with the development of chronic diseases of aging, including heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer.

Telomeres, the protective units of DNA
that cap the ends of chromosomes in cells, 
were shorter in the white blood 
cells of people who reported drinking
more soda. 

"Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened sodas might influence disease development, not only by straining the body's metabolic control of sugars, but also through accelerated cellular aging of tissues," said senior study author Elissa Epel, professor of psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

“This is the first demonstration that soda is associated with telomere shortness,” Epel said. “This finding held regardless of age, race, income and education level. Telomere shortening starts long before disease onset. Further, although we only studied adults here, it is possible that soda consumption is associated with telomere shortening in children, as well.”

The authors compared telomere length and sugar-sweetened soda consumption for each participant at a single time point, and that an association does not necessarily demonstrate causation. Epel is co-leading a new study in which participants will be tracked for weeks in real-time to look for effects of sugar-sweetened soda consumption on aspects of cellular aging. Telomere shortening has previously been associated with oxidative damage to tissue, to inflammation, and to insulin resistance.

Based on the way telomere length shortens on average with chronological age, the UCSF researchers calculated that daily consumption of a 20-ounce soda was associated with 4.6 years of additional biological aging. This effect on telomere length is comparable to the effect of smoking, or to the effect of regular exercise in the opposite, anti-aging direction, according to UCSF postdoctoral fellow Cindy Leung, ScD, from the UCSF Center for Health and Community and the lead author of the newly published study.

The average sugar-sweetened soda consumption for all survey participants was 12 ounces. About 21 percent in this nationally representative sample reported drinking at least 20 ounces of sugar-sweetened soda a day.

“It is critical to understand both dietary factors that may shorten telomeres, as well as dietary factors that may lengthen telomeres,” Leung said. “Here it appeared that the only beverage consumption that had a measurable negative association with telomere length was consumption of sugared soda.”

The finding adds a new consideration to the list of links that have tied sugary beverages to obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, and that has driven legislators and activists in several U.S. jurisdictions to champion ballot initiatives that would tax sugar-sweetened beverage purchases with the goal of discouraging consumption and improving public health.

The UCSF researchers measured telomeres after obtaining stored DNA from 5,309 participants, ages 20 to 65, with no history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease, who had participated in the nation’s largest ongoing health survey, called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, during the years 1999 through 2002. They found that the amount of sugar-sweetened soda a person consumed was associated with telomere length, as measured in the laboratory of Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, professor of biochemistry at UCSF and a winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her telomere-related discoveries.

A 15-year study found those who drank 300ml of a fizzy drink a day--slightly less than a standard can--were 40 percent more likely to develop prostate cancer than men who avoid the drinks.

Consider the hard facts about soft drinks: soda consumption could lead to various health problems, and scientists are adding to the list seemingly every day. Here are 10 reasons to put down the cola and quit adding to the billions of gallons of soda consumed in the United States annually:

1) Dehydration.
Because caffeine is a diuretic, it leads to an increase in urine volume. So, when you drink a caffeinated soda to quench your thirst, you will actually become thirstier.

2) High calories.
A can of regular cola contains over 150 calories. Not only are these calories devoid of any nutritional value, but they also deplete your body of vital nutrients.

3) Caffeine addiction.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University say when people don't get their usual dose of caffeine from soda, they can suffer a range of withdrawal symptoms including headache, fatigue, muscle pain and inability to concentrate.

4) Acid.
The amount of acid in soda is enough to wear away at the enamel of your teeth, making them more susceptible to decay. In tests done on the acidity levels of soda, certain ones were found to have PH levels as low as 2.5. To put that into perspective, consider that battery acid has a pH of 1 and pure water has a pH of 7.

5) Money.
A person who drinks just 2 cans of soda a day will pay $206 over the course of a year to keep the habit going. If there is more than one soda drinker in the household, that yearly total could quickly double or even triple.

6) Weight gain. Researchers at the University of Texas say artificial sweeteners can interfere with the body's natural ability to regulate calorie intake. This could mean that people who consume artificially sweetened items are more likely to overindulge.

7) Artificial sweeteners.
Many people opt for diet sodas to cut out the calories, but some research shows the sweeteners may cause additional harm, such as cancer.

8) Mineral depletion.
Colas contain phosphoric acid and caffeine, which drain calcium from the bones. Also, because caffeine increases urine volume, more minerals end up leaving the body before having a chance to be properly absorbed.

9) Diabetes. Some scientists believe that the unceasing demands a soda habit places on the pancreas may ultimately leave it unable to keep up with the body's need for insulin -- which could eventually lead to diabetes. The daily consumption of soda does contribute to other problems, such as obesity -- a leading cause of diabetes.

10) A replacement for healthier drinks. In the 1950's, children drank healthier beverages and more water. Today that statistic has flipped and children are drinking more unhealthy beverages and less water.

Sources:
aphapublications.org
ucsf.edu

April McCarthy is a community journalist playing an active role reporting and analyzing world events to advance our health and eco-friendly initiatives.Soft Drink Consumption Will Age You As Fast As Smoking - 10 Reasons To Avoid Them