Bad calories have variations too, with some being more harmful than others

Agencies

May 17, 2018

While it is no secret that there are good calories as well as bad calories, turns out, in the bad category, there are variations too.

According to the University of California, Davis, sugar-sweetened beverages play a unique role in chronic health problems.

Calories from any food have the potential to increase the risk of obesity and other cardiometabolic diseases. The disease risk increases even when the beverages are consumed within diets that do not result in weight gain.

Twenty-two researchers explored whether all calories are equal with regards to effects on cardiometabolic disease and obesity. The study provided an extensive review of the current science on diets that can lead to obesity, cardiovascular disease, and Type II diabetes.

"What's new is that this is an impressive group of scientists with vast experience in nutrition and metabolism agreeing with the conclusion that sugar-sweetened beverages increase cardiometabolic risk factors compared to ..

Another interesting point of consensus among researchers was the role of the sugar substitute aspartame.

The authors agreed that aspartame does not promote weight gain in adults. Stanhope said this might come as a surprise to most people.

"If you go on the internet and look up aspartame, the layperson would be convinced that aspartame is going to make them fat, but it's not," said Stanhope. "The long and short of it is that no human studies on noncaloric sweeteners show weight gain."

The authors also agreed that consumption of polyunsaturated (n-6) fats, such as those found in some vegetable oils, seeds and nuts, lowers disease risk when compared with equal amounts of saturated fats.

However, that conclusion comes with a caveat. Dairy foods such as cheese and yogurts, which can be high in saturated fats, have been associated with reduced cardiometabolic risk.

The paper reviewed the significant challenges involved in conducting and interpreting nutrition research.

"We have a long way to go to get precise answers on a lot of different nutrition issues," said Stanhope. "Nevertheless, we all agree that a healthy diet pattern consisting of minimally processed wh ..

The study appears in the journal Obesity Reviews.

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Stress may lead to surprising social benefits

Agencies

February 26,2020

Feb 26: While too much stress can be toxic to your health, a new study suggests that despite its negative side effects, it may also lead to a surprising social benefit.

The research, published in the journal Stress & Health, found that experiencing stress made people both more likely to give and receive emotional support from another person.

This was true on the day they experienced the stressor as well as the following day.

"Our findings suggest that just because we have a bad day, that doesn't mean it has to be completely unhealthy," said study researcher David Almeida from Penn State University in the US.

"If stress can actually connect us with other people, which I think is absolutely vital to the human experience, I think that's a benefit. Stress could potentially help people deal with negative situations by driving them to be with other people," Almeida added.

For the study, the researchers interviewed 1,622 participants every night for eight nights. They asked the participants about their stressors and whether they gave or received emotional support on that day.

Stressors included arguments, stressful events at work or school, and stressful events at home.

The researchers found that on average, participants were more than twice as likely to either give or receive emotional support on days they experienced a stressor.

Additionally, they were 26 per cent more likely to give or receive support the following day.

The researchers said that while this effect, on average, was found across the participants, it differed slightly between men and women.

"Women tended to engage in more giving and receiving emotional support than men," said study researcher Hye Won Chai.

"In our study, men were also more likely to engage in emotional support on days they were stressed, but to a lesser extent than women," Chai added.

The researchers said they were surprised that stress was linked to people not just receiving emotional support, but giving it, as well.

"We saw that someone experiencing a stressor today actually predicted them giving emotional support the next day," Almeida said.

"This made me think that it's actually possible that stress helps to drive you to other people and allows it to be ok to talk about problems -- your problems, my problems," Almeida added.

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Divorce of parents may impact academics of children

News Network

March 5,2020

Bergen, Mar 5: Divorce of parents may impact the academics of children negatively, suggests a new study.

According to the study, parental divorce is associated with a lower grade point average (GPA) among adolescents, with a stronger association seen in teens with more educated mothers.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Children and adolescents with divorced or separated parents are known to do less well in school than adolescents with nondivorced parents and to be less well-adjusted, on average, across a spectrum of physical and mental health outcomes.

In the new study, researchers used data from the youth@hordaland study, a population-based survey of adolescents aged 16-19 conducted in the spring of 2012 in Hordaland County, Norway.

19,439 adolescents were invited to participate and 10,257 agreed; of those, 9,166 are included in the current study.

Overall, adolescents with divorced parents had a 0.3 point lower GPA (standard error 0.022, p<0.01) than their peers.

Controlling for parental education reduced the effect by 0.06 points to 0.240 (SE 0.021, p<0.01). This heterogeneity was predominantly driven by maternal education levels, the researchers found.

After controlling for paternal education and income measures, divorce was associated with a 0.120 point decrease in GPA among adolescents whose mothers had a secondary school education level; a 0.175 point decrease when mothers had a Bachelor's level education; and a 0.209 point decrease when mothers had a Master's or PhD level education (all estimates relative to adolescents with a mother who had a basic level of education, such as ISCED 0-2).

Due to the cross-sectional structure of the study, researchers could not investigate specific changes between pre- and post-divorce family life, and future studies are needed to investigate potential mechanisms (such as reduced parental monitoring or school-involvement) which might drive this finding.

Nonetheless, this study provides new evidence that the negative association between divorce and teens' GPA is especially strong in families with more educated mothers.

"Among Norwegian adolescents, parental divorce was hardly associated with GPA among youth whose parents have low educational qualifications. In contrast, among adolescents with educated or highly educated mothers, divorce was significantly associated with lower GPA," said the authors.

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