I said a couple of days ago that Australian researchers have found the physiological link between stress and disease. Now, I admit I was a little underimpressed with yet another discovery by medical scientists of the blindingly obvious, but I shouldn’t distract from the value of this discovery. So here are some more details. The research is published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Volume 202, No. 11, December 5, 2005, pp1-13.
The Garvan Institute scientists have discovered how a hormone, known as neuropeptide Y (NPY), can prevent the immune system from functioning properly. The researchers are rather more excited than I am about its possibilities for paving the way for two new major opportunities for therapeutic intervention, but they can’t seem to help their misguided views.
"Most of us expect to come down with a cold or other illness when we are under pressure, but until now we have mostly had circumstantial evidence for a link between the brain and the immune system", says lead Garvan researcher Associate Professor Fabienne Mackay.
"During periods of stress, nerves release a lot of NPY and it gets into the bloodstream, where it directly impacts on the cells in the immune system that look out for and destroy pathogens (bacteria and viruses) in the body," Mackay explains.
This significant discovery came about through a collaboration between Mackay’s immunology group and scientists in the Neurobiology programme at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, Australia.
Associate Professor Herbert Herzog who heads the Neurobiology programme says, "Elite athletes are particularly prone to illness, possibly because of the extreme physical and emotional stressors associated with competition. But our research is relevant to everyone because there is no escaping stress – be it in the workplace or at home. Employment surveys show many workers feel there is more job-related stress today than even a couple of years ago." (See, Australian Bureau of Statistics, cat no. 6342.0, Nov 2003, page 4.)
Absenteeism, around 30% of which can be attributed to own ill health or physical disibility, costs well over $10 billion Australian dollars a year, so now more than ever employers should be thinking about how to reduce stress in the hope that their workforce will be healthier. (Based on an absence rate equating to 2% 2004 GDP, as detailed in http://www.racp.edu.au/afom/absenteeism.pdf)
Imagine the combined costs globally on just stress-related absenteeism and you will recognize the potential this line of reaserch may offer. There should be no trouble finding ongoing research and development funding!
The Garvan Institute study centres on two key events that enable our bodies to recognise foreign substances and control invaders. When we encounter a pathogen (bacteria and viruses), the immune ‘sentry’ cells that are on guard duty retain and interrogate the suspects. Their activation is made possible by NPY. These cells then return to the lymph nodes, which are found all over the body, with information about the foreign invaders. The lymph nodes are where decisions about defense are made.
In the case of bacteria and viruses, TH1 cells are part of the attack team that is sent out on the ‘search and destroy’ mission. But when their job is done they need to be turned ‘off’ and the immune system reset. The same hormone, NPY, that activates the sentry cells now prompts the TH1 cells to slow down and die.
Mackay adds that: "Under normal conditions, circulating immune cells produce small amounts of NPY, which enables the immune cells on sentry duty and the TH1 immune cells to operate – it’s a yin and yang kind of situation. But too much NPY means that the TH1 attack is prevented despite the foreign invaders being identified – and this is what happens during stress."
Understanding the connection between NPY and the immune system offers two new major "opportunities for therapeutic intervention", as they put it. This is where the Garvan Institute and I part company. Their approach involves designing new drugs to stimulate immune system defences in people exposed to high levels of stress.
Their second is to exploit this Th1 inhibitory mechanism to prevent immune responses getting out of control as in various inflammatory and autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, type I diabetes and lupus. Again, they think this is best done by designing new drugs for the purpose.
My approach is totally different. You see, I actually think people would be better off employing strategies like avoiding high stress situations, developing improved coping and stress management skills, learning healthful ways of removing the biochemistry of stress, such as vigorous physical exercise, eating a stress reducing diet rich in whole-food nutrients (and supplementing when necessary), and adding occasional herbal medicines for short periods when needed.
The fact is, the medical thinking that automatically wants to develop drugs to manipulate natural processes in the body is a real disease risk factor in society. All medical drugs cause some harm and many cause extensive morbidity and death. The wise way forward is to progressively reduce the use and abuse of medical drugs, not to make more.
The importance of glyconutrients to health was outlined in a previous post. There I noted that the key roles played by glyconutrients made it clear that they must be obtainable from common dietary sources. So just what are these foods containing glyconutrients?
Well, the good news is that people who do actually eat a healthy natural diet are in good shape. If you eat a diet rich in unprocessed fruits and vegetables you’ll obtain many glyconutrients.
Fucose, xylose and mannose are three of the eight essential sugar compounds. Mushrooms and seeds contain fucose; rye, barley and yeast contain xylose; and mannose can be found in broccoli, cabbage and seeds. You do eat plenty of these don’t you?
Remember I said natural diet. Problems do arise when any of the foods mentioned above are highly processed. For instance, foods as diverse as grapes and onions deliver glucose, one of the eight glyconutrients. However, when glucose is processed into sucrose (table sugar), nutrients and fiber are completely stripped away, transforming it from good nutrition into something that can harm your health.
The reluctance of many people to consume whole foods is related to many health problems. The absence of unprocessed glyconutrients in the all-too-typical diet is also a concern. Glyconutrient deficiencies are associated with a large range of diseases.
Of the eight basic glyconutrients, most diets only deliver sufficient amounts of just two: glucose and galactose (a milk sugar). Trace amounts of the other six are picked up here and there, but modern agricultural methods, food processing and chemical contamination have all but erased them from our food supply.
In recent years, research has shown that supplementary glyconutrients may improve cellular communication, with a positive impact on a wide range of conditions; from skin aging and bacterial infection to debilitating illnesses like muscular dystrophy, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.
Just as daily multi-vitamin use has reached mainstream acceptance, proponents of glyconutrition believe that someday even conventional medicine will recognize the benefits of a daily glyconutrient supplement to help prevent many of the communication errors between cells that lead to depleted immune defenses, allergic reactions, and chronic diseases.
Some will urge you to rush out and buy glyconutrient supplements. If you have any health concerns or existing diseases this may be a good thing to do. However, I would strongly encourage you to eat a healthy, fresh, wholefoods diet and use a comprehensive supplement that provides total and balanced nutrition.
Work on a healthy lifestyle based on good quality nutrition that we know will do great things for your health and let’s get through the current hype about glyconutrient supplementation and see what the research shows before rushing into it at great and possibly unnecessary expense.
As a followup to yesterday’s post on glyconutrients here are some more details to think about. The MIT Technology Review called this field of nutrition one of the ten emerging technologies that will change the world, so it’s probably worth at least some consideration.
Glyconutrients impact our health in a couple of important ways. First, these sugars can prevent viruses and bacteria from adhering to cells by taking up all their receptor sites. When the viruses or bacteria are unable to bind to a cell, they are unable to make you sick, which is obviously a very welcome role.
The second impact involves a more complex role. Glyconutrients known as glycans form a sugar coat around every single cell in the body, as well as filling up the spaces in between cells. In this role they act more or less like an ‘information super highway’ for the body, regulating communication both within the cell and between cells.
With such a central role it is easy to understand why sugar chains play a vital role in nearly every physiological process, including immune system response, tissue regeneration and cell replication. It should be obvious that problems in these key areas have significant implications for health and disease.
One of the most important functions of glycans is the facilitation of brain function. For instance, serotonin and other neurotransmitters require glycan receptors in order to bind to the surface of nerve cells. Memory, stress response and other critical brain functions may therefore perform suboptimally without adequate assistance from glyconutrient sugar chains.
So where do we obtain these vital glyconutrients? If you think I’m about to say that you absolutely must buy product X or Y you’re wrong. Much of the attention and probable hype you will doubtless encounter about glyconutrients will be from people who want you to buy their product.
Quite clearly though, such essential nutrients must be provided fairly readily in most people’s diets or widespread and very serious problems would be clearly evident. We’ll take a look at just how we obtain them in a later post.
Keep an eye out for it. I’ll try to get it out soon.
Well the campaigns are in full swing, or at least I hope they are. Otherwise they may be just warming up and that means we have a lot more to come. What am I talking about? The big push on sugars, or more correctly, glyconutirents.
"Would you believe that sugar might help your body fight viruses and bacteria?" That’s a question I encountered in a newsletter I subscribe to. And yes, what followed was a "advertorial" enlightening readers about the the virtues of sugars.
It went on: "Sugar gets a bad rap. And with good reason. Refined sugar intake causes all sorts of problems, not the least of which is impairment to the immune system." So what was coming was the all important distinction that everyone must now be taught, between sugars as simple carbohydrates, which are ‘bad’ and sugars as glyconutrients, which of course, are ‘good’.
So it went on: "But natural sugar compounds – called glyconutrients – are something else entirely. Eight essential sugar compounds function individually as building blocks to assemble a nearly infinite variety of complex molecules known as glycans or sugar chains."
Well, I’m not yet convinced. This will be a tricky sell if you ask me. For many people this will be just too confusing. First we had good fats (HDL) and bad fats (LDL) and now we have to have more goodies and badies. It’s getting to be a spagetti western!
My concern is that we are not so much witnessing a brilliant breakthrough in nutritional health science but a brilliant marketing campaign to introduce another line of products. My scepticism is sparked in part by the timely arrival on the scene of a new multilevel marketing (MLM) company delivering these new ‘glyconutrients’ to save us all.
Naturally, in the new era of MLM there will be ample reference to scientific studies and truckloads of MDs will be paraded to extoll the virtues of the products, the scientists and the company. Well, that’s fair enough I suppose, since most MDs are just sales representatives anyway.
I’ll follow this up tomorrow with some more details. I shall try to keep an open mind (yes, honest 😉 but I will need to look into this pretty carefully myself before I support the increased use of sugars. I suggest you not rush into this too quickly.
Do men receive better medical treatment than women? A recent Canadian study demonstrates that women may need to be more assertive when it comes to management of their heart disease.
The new study from Canada’s McMaster University suggests that women do not receive the same attention from doctors as men, at least when heart disease is the problem. Sonia S. Anand, M.D., and her McMaster team analyzed data from a large trial that followed the progress of more than 12,000 men and women who had been treated for acute coronary syndromes (ACS). This set of heart conditions includes heart attack and angina (chest pain caused by reduced oxygen to the heart).
Status of each patient was assessed at the time they were discharged from the hospital, and again one month later. Further assessments occurred at three-month intervals for nine months.
Results showed that even though women were more likely than men to develop a recurrence of angina and to be rehospitalized for chest pains, men underwent significantly more invasive procedures, including angiography, angioplasty and coronary artery bypass grafts.
In a press release issued by McMaster University, Dr. Anand noted that, overall, 15 percent fewer women underwent angiography and 20 percent fewer high-risk women than high-risk men were given the test. Dr. Anand offered this comment about the probable outcome for women: "It may be that because they received fewer procedures and therefore interventions, they still have ongoing coronary disease."
Unfortunately Dr Anand suffers from the distorted perception and poor logical thinking syndrome known to result directly from medical education. In reality, the women were probably considerably better off than the men since less medical intervention is better than more, except perhaps in emergency situations. Furthermore, Dr Anand grossly overstates the benefits derived by the treated males if she considers that they thereafter do not "still have ongoing coronary disease". Of course they do, the medical tests and treatments certainly didn’t cure that.
However, the insight gained into the specifics of heart disease treatment should be noted by all women and their doctors. Of course it’s not enough to be aware of the problem. As Dr. Anand observes: "Women who develop acute coronary syndromes can ask their physicians if they are candidates for such procedures, as opposed to staying silent and leaving it up to the doctor to decide."
Unfortunately I can’t agree. It is certainly appropriate for all individuals, male or female, to be assertive enough to ensure that effective attention is paid to their illness by the health and medical professionals they consult.
However, people would be far wiser to engage in education and lifestyle changes sufficient to avoid illnesses in the first place. As we’ve all heard before, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If illness is already a problem, as it was for the women studied, then minimizing medical intervention is desirable.
To everyone I say, do yourself an enormous favor and consult a naturopathic doctor. The less you fall prey to the orthodox medical profession and their ineffective and dangerous treatment systems the better.