February 2024
February 2024If a Rose is a Rose, Is a Calorie a Calorie?
Much has been written about the differences between certain foods and how they impact weight. Ever since the concept of “glycemic index” hit the airwaves, calculating the impact of carbs on how quickly our blood sugar levels rise, many have argued that certain foods, and therefore certain calories, are better or worse for you. One of the impetuses for high protein diets and/or higher fat diets is that these calories tend to mitigate the steep rise in blood glucose levels compared to carbs. In other words, some calories are somehow better than others. Really?
Put simply, a calorie is a measure of the energy a food provides. A 1000 calories of bread, any bread, is the same, from the standpoint of energy availability, as a 1000 calories of beef or butter. That sounds extreme but, when various diets are compared, the research finds that no single diet “significantly outperforms any other diet in the long term.” That’s because the effects of a particular category of foods are small relative to the total amount of calories any of those foods yield.
There are food absorption issues like ‘hard-to-digest carbs’ such as fibers vs simple, highly processed carbs; particle size where more processing makes easier and faster absorption possible; your microbiome which dictates how you process certain foods.
And there is how our bodies use the foods we eat: macronutrient content (fat’s calories are more readily digested than carbs and, proteins); metabolic boosters (like hot spices); and hormonal effects (like insulin response, satiety, etc.)
At the end of the day, though, “In studies where people were locked in metabolic wards, if the calories were lower, they lost weight at a predictable rate, regardless of the composition of the diet,” according to Marion Nestle, a nutrition researcher.
Washington Post Aug. 23, 2023
How to Breathe Your Way into Fitness
An article written by, of all people, a group of Colorado researchers titled “Time-Efficient, High-Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training [IMST] Increases Exercise Tolerance in Midlife and Older Adults” raises the specter of improving fitness while doing very little exercise. Using a hand-held device that has an adjustable valve that restricts inhalation, they prescribed two subject groups to do 30 breaths/day of either 55%-75% of maximal inspiratory resistance or 15% of maximal inspiratory resistance for 6 weeks, 6 days a week. They then tested for improvements in a variety of fitness parameters in adults ages 50-79.
The tests included a graded treadmill walk/run to exhaustion, handgrip and leg press strength, DEXA trunk fat and muscle mass, and some functional movement patterns.
At the end of the study, cardiorespiratory fitness was unchanged but exercise tolerance (total time on the treadmill test), peak ventilatory efficiency, and sub-maximal exercise economy increased in the IMST group but not the sham training group.
Thorax lean/muscle mass increased while trunk fat mass actually decreased in the IMST group. However, muscle strength, muscle power, dexterity, and mobility were unchanged in either group.
The authors conclude “that high-resistance IMST is an effective, time-efficient lifestyle intervention for improving exercise tolerance in healthy midlife and older adults.”
Med Sci Sports Exercise Feb. 2024
Tid Bits
UPF – ultra processed foods – have been identified as dangerous for your heart, your gut, and now your brain. A study in JAMA Network Open (Sept. 2023) assessed the dietary habits and mental health status of more than 21,000 women who were part of the Nurses’ Health Study II. None of them had reported having depression at the start of the study but those who ate the most UPF (>9 servings/day) were 50% more likely to develop depression. Harvard Women’s Health Watch Jan. 2024
Intuitively, it makes sense that those with chronic ankle instability (CAI) would be more apt to fall and have fear of falling. A recent study compared the self-reported history of falls and confidence about falling between adults with and without CAI. The data showed that the CAI group had 186 falls vs 34 in the non-CAI group. All injury categories – sprains, fractures, etc. – were more prevalent in the CAI group. They were also “more [32%] likely to report high concern about falling” and 26% more likely to report moderate concern than the controls. “Exercise management” aimed at strength and balance was called for. LER Oct/Nov 2023
As reported from the European Association for the Study of Diabetes conference in Sweden (Medscape Medical News, Sept. 2022), the findings from a review of 13 meta-analyses found that “low-fat dairy consumption may minimize the risk of developing type 2 diabetes [T2D] while red meat raises that risk.” Recognizing that most other studies have targeted appropriate carbs and fats but not proteins, this study looked at the variety of plant and animal protein sources as correlates of T2D. Even Mediterranean diets, while mostly plant-based, include animal proteins while limiting red meat. The presenters hypothesized that red meat and saturated fats are pro-inflammatory; dairy, however, tends to have a negative association with T2D since whey has a “well-known beneficial effect on the rise”of blood glucose levels after meals.
