diet tagged posts

A study comparing the impact of diet versus drugs on the inner workings of our cells has found nutrition has a much stronger impact.

The pre-clinical study by the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre suggests the makeup of our diet could be more powerful than drugs in keeping conditions like diabetes, stroke and heart disease at bay.

Conducted in mice, the research showed nutrition (including overall calories and macronutrient balance) had a greater impact on ageing and metabolic health than three drugs commonly used to treat diabetes and slow down ageing.

The findings are published in Cell Metabolism.

The research builds on the team’s pioneering work in mice and humans demonstrating the protective role of diet and specific combinations of proteins, fats and carbo...

American Gut Project, based at UC San Diego School of Medicine, is the world’s largest crowdsourced, citizen science project. Credit: UC San Diego Health

How factors such as diet, antibiotics and mental health status can influence the microbial and molecular makeup of your gut. Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and collaborators have published the first major results from the American Gut Project, a crowdsourced, global citizen science effort. The project, described May 15 in mSystems, is the largest published study to date of the human microbiome – the unique microbial communities that inhabit our bodies.

This publication provides the largest public reference database of the human gut microbiome, which may help drive many future microbiome studies...

With Oral Cancer, Early Detection Is Key

A new Cancer Research UK analysis reveals that rates of mouth (oral) cancer have jumped by 68% in the UK over the last 20 years. The figures – released during Mouth Cancer Action Month – reveal the cancer is on the rise for men and women, young and old, climbing from 8 to 13 cases per 100,000 people over the last two decades. For men under 50, the rate has jumped by 67% in the last 20 years – going up from around 340 cases to around 640 cases each year.

For men 50+ years, rates have increased by 59% climbing from around 2,100 cases to around 4,400 cases annually. Oral cancer is more common in men, but there have been similar increases women...

Highlights • Gut microbes show a dichotomy in ecological strategy for access to nitrogen • Beneficial microbes are overrepresented in the endogenous N source guild • Diets that reduce availability of dietary N to microbes promote healthy aging • Diet impact on host-microbiome interaction can be simplified for modeling

Scientists are one step closer to understanding the link between different diet strategies and gut health, with new research presenting the first general principles for how diet impacts the microbiota. Researchers from the University of Sydney have found that the availability of intestinal nitrogen to microbes in the gut plays a key role in regulating interactions between gut microbes and their host animal.

“This research really lays the groundwork for future modellin...