Menopause, chemicals and other tidbits

Published 2.13.2017
I haven't finished writing up all the notes I took while listening the vegan diabetes summit, otherwise known as the Mastering Diabetes Online Summit. However, I traveled this weekend, beginning on Friday, then my return got delayed by weather and thus have seen my planned publishing schedule get shredded. I will finish the diabetes summit, because the days remaining to be summarized offered some of the most interesting presentations— at least in my view. Now that the summit is past, and my schedule shredded, it may be that I will space the commentaries out a bit. As I was already doing that, I doubt anyone would notice even if I didn't announce it.

In any event, having finally arrived home, for today, here are links to recent news or items relating to diet or health.

  • Apparently chemicals in fast food wrappers can get into the food they contact. An obvious solution is to not buy food prepackaged in wrappers… but that’s not likely to be an easy sell.

    Of 407 fast-food packaging samples tested, 33% had detectable levels of fluorine, a marker for a class of highly fluorinated chemicals known as PFASs (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), reported Laurel Schaider, PhD, of the Silent Spring Institute in Newton, Mass., and colleagues.

    “Silent Spring”? This makes me think that there’s an agenda behind these findings. However,

    Previous research has linked PFASs with cancer, thyroid disease, immunotoxicity, low birth weight, and decreased fertility. These chemicals are used in food packaging because of their water- and grease-resistant properties, and research has shown they can leach into food, the authors wrote in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

    Facts are facts. Don’t buy the stuff and avoid the issue. It isn’t as hard as most people think.

  • Early onset of menarche means early menopause. Certainly that’s how it worked for me.

    Overall, compared with women who had their first menstrual period at 13 years, those with "early menarche" were linked with a 80% increased risk of premature menopause (RRR 1.80, 95% CI 1.53-2.12) and a 31% higher risk of early menopause (RRR 1.32, 95% CI 1.19-1.44), the authors wrote in Human Reproduction.


  • If you are normal weight but with an unhealthy metabolic phenotype, colon cancer risk is higher post menopause.

    Postmenopausal women of normal weight (BMI 18.5-24.9) considered metabolically unhealthy had an over twofold higher risk for developing colorectal cancer versus metabolically healthy women (HR 1.49; 95% CI, 1.02-2.18), according to Xiaoyun Liang, MD, PhD, of Beijing Normal University in China, and colleagues.

    To be at risk, at least two of the followinjg must be true: Triglyceride level greater than 150 mg/dl; HDL less than 50 mg/dl (or if you take drugs to get your level higher than that); Blood pressure greater than 130/85 mmHg or are on blood pressure drugs; Fasting blood glucose greater than 110 mg/dl or you're on diabetes drugs.

  • People can’t process facts. For all the haranguing online in the “alternate” medicine world about how doctors don’t explain enough to patients, it turns out that when they try, most people don’t understand what they are saying. That being said, sunscreen efficacy isn’t straight forward. And that’s before you get to the issue of whether its use affects Vitamin D production in the skin.

    While a doubled SPF halves the percent transmission of erythema-inducing radiation (EIR) -- at least, when sunscreens are applied as directed -- that mathematical connection was lost when physicians were tasked with comparing sunscreens of differing strengths that were presented as SPF, percent EIR transmitted, and percent EIR absorbed, researchers reported in JAMA Dermatology found.

    Doctors need to pick a SPF and give the patient a number to use.

  • The news that vaping isn’t healthy should surprise no one. Nicotine was the addictive substance in cigarettes, it wasn’t the only dangerous one. Vaping companies, in my view, missed an opportunity because they believed that they had to produce the same “Smoke” that cigarettes have. It’s the chemicals (some of which are nasty) that is used to give the illusion of “smoke.” that cause the problems. How long before second hand vaping “Smoke” becomes and issue. And it didn’t need to be that way. Vapers could have just sucked in their needed drug hit and not spewed anything out in to the air. Ah, but then they’d be outed as drugs addicts, not “smokers.”

  • The Super Bowl is now second only to Thanksgiving in terms of calories ingested. Because most of the foods ingested are going to be high in fat, the exercise equivalents are eye popping. Not that that fact will convince anyone to forgo the party. And sure, there are ways, just as on Thanksgiving, to minimize the “damage.” That won’t convince many fans either. It’s one day, live a little. Note: I did not be watch the game, as I kept to my pledge to avoid all things NFL related. I did, however, enjoy the food.



  • Avoid long term use of PPI (Protein pump inhibitors) if at all possible.

    The studies reported in 2016 grew out of earlier hints that such chronic use could affect the brain and kidneys. One 2013 study in PLOS ONE, for instance, found that proton-pump inhibitors can enhance the production of beta-amyloid proteins, a hallmark of Alzheimer's. Three years later the JAMA Neurology study, which included 74,000 Germans older than 75, found that regular PPI users had a 44 percent higher risk of dementia than those not taking PPIs.

    There are also kidney concerns.

    Similarly, worries about kidneys emerged from evidence that people with sudden renal damage were more likely to be taking PPIs. In one 2013 study in BMC Nephrology, for example, patients with a diagnosis of kidney disease were found to be twice as likely as the general population to have been prescribed a PPI. The 2016 study of PPIs and kidney disease, which followed 10,482 participants from the 1990s through 2011, showed that those who took the drug suffered a 20 to 50 percent higher risk of chronic kidney disease than those who did not. And anyone who took a double dose of PPIs every day had a much higher risk than study subjects who took a single dose.

    This is why seminars like the vegan diabetes summit get views. The bottom line is that it si becoming clear that PPIs are not only active in the stomach (really, who’d a thunk?), and they do not understand how the drugs react with other systems. Going to go out on a limb here (remember I am no medical professional) that 90% of the need for PPIs is lifestyle related. In other words, the result of self-inflicted metabolic wounds.
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