Good news! Coffee and wine may promote a healthy gut

The food you eat and the medicines you take can alter your gut bacteria in ways that either help or harm your digestive health, two new studies suggest.

Diversity is beneficial

Foods like fruits, vegetables, coffee, tea, wine, yogurt and buttermilk can increase the diversity of bacteria in a person’s intestines. And that diversity can help ward off illness, said Dr Jingyuan Fu, senior author of one of the studies.

“It is believed that higher diversity and richness [in gut bacteria] is beneficial,” explained Fu. She is an associate professor of genetics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Read: Gut bacteria suffer when hit with infection

On the other hand, foods containing loads of simple carbohydrates appear to reduce bacterial diversity in the gut, Fu and colleagues found. These include high-fat whole milk and sugar-sweetened soda.

In addition, medications can also play a part in the makeup of your gut bacteria. Antibiotics, the diabetes drug metformin and antacids can cut down on gut bacterial diversity, the researchers found. Smoking and heart attacks also can have a negative effect, the team said.

Each person’s intestines contain trillions of microorganisms, which doctors refer to as the “gut microbiome”, said Dr David Johnson. He is chief of gastroenterology at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia, and a past president of the American College of Gastroenterology.

A dramatic and prominent role

The gut microbiome plays an essential but little-understood role in human health, said Johnson, who was not involved with the new studies.

Read: Gut bacteria may be key to gastric bypass’ effects: study

“It’s the largest immune system in the body,” Johnson explained. “These bacteria have a very dramatic and prominent role in determining health and disease.”

To study the effect of lifestyle on the gut microbiome, Fu and her colleagues collected stool samples from more than 1,100 people living in the northern Netherlands.

The samples were used to analyse the DNA of the bacteria and other organisms that live in the gut. In addition to stools, the study collected information on the participants’ diets, medicine use and health.

In the second study, researchers with the Flemish Gut Flora Project performed a similar analysis on stool samples taken from 5,000 volunteers in Belgium.

Both studies concluded that diet has a profound effect on the diversity of gut bacteria, although, Fu said, the “underlying theories of these dietary factors remain largely unknown”.

Read: Gas and diet

Johnson added that medicines can have the same effect, and antibiotics actually can kill off some important strains of gut bacteria. “One dose of an antibiotic may disrupt your gut bacteria for a year,” he said.

Both sets of researchers emphasised that their studies only help explain a fraction of gut bacteria variation – roughly 18 percent for the Netherlands study, and about 7 percent for the Flemish study.

High fibre and low carbs

However, the findings from the two groups overlapped about 80 percent of the time, indicating that they are on the right track, the researchers said.

The Belgian researchers estimated that over 40,000 human samples will be needed to capture a complete picture of gut bacteria diversity.

Read: Gut bacteria affect health and obesity

Johnson noted that other research has shown that poor sleep, obesity, diabetes and the use of artificial sweeteners also can interfere with gut bacteria.

“The general rule is a balanced diet with high fibre and low carbs tends to drive a better gut health overall,” he said.

According to Fu, once researchers have a clearer understanding of the gut microbiome and its effects on health, doctors could be able to help prevent or heal illness by reading or influencing the bacteria within people’s bodies.

“The personalized microbiome may assist in personalised nutrition, personalised medicine, disease risk stratification and treatment decision-making,” she said.

Both studies were published in the journal Science.

Read more:

Symptoms of digestive disorders

Diagnosing digestive disorders

Preventing digestive disorders

Copyright © 2015 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Good news! Coffee and wine may promote a healthy gut

Health benefits of dates : Fruit said to promote heart, brain, digestive system

Date: December 26, 2015

Consumption of dates is normally associated with the holy month of Ramadhan, a Muslim season of fasting. But did you know that dates have the potential of promoting heart, brain and digestive health? Joy Kiruki spoke to a nutritionist and tells us why you need to have a serving of dates a day.

Health benefits of dates : Fruit said to promote heart, brain, digestive system

Feds Asking Gay Men to Post Selfies From the Gym to Promote Obamacare

AP

BY: Elizabeth Harrington Follow @LizWFB
December 10, 2015 4:00 pm

The Department of Health and Human Services is partnering with an advocacy organization that is asking gay men to send selfies from the gym to promote Obamacare.

The agency announced Tuesday it was joining with several lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender groups to encourage the LGBT community to enroll.

“As part of LGBT Week of Action from Dec. 7 – 11, Out2Enroll and other organizations will hold enrollment activities and provide in-person assistance across the country,” the department said. “Additionally, partners will leverage social media campaigns to ask their members and affiliates to sign up for an affordable health plan for 2016 through the Health Insurance Marketplace.”

One social media campaign started by the agency’s main partner, “Out2Enroll,” is #HealthySelfie.

“We’ve showed [sic] you ours, now you show us yours,” the group’s Facebook post reads, featuring mostly images of men at the gym.

“Join The White House, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and our friends -Colby Melvin, R.J. Aguiar, Jack Mackenroth – in sharing a #HealthySelfie,” the caption read. “Show that we take #PrideInOurHealth! And #GetCovered #StayCovered so that you can#BeOutBeHealthy!”

Colby Melvin is a “Designer, Model, [and] Activist” who recently modeled for Cheap Undies. R.J. Aguiar is founder of “Not Adam and Steve,” an LGBT advocacy group. Jack Mackenroth is a spokesperson for an HIV education campaign and former contestant on the reality series Project Runway.

Mackenroth and Aguiar have posed for selfies for the campaign. Jason Carter, a member of RuPaul’s pit crew, a “group of scantily clad muscular men who appear on all seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race,” has also posed.

Sylvia Burwell, the Health and Human Services secretary, praised the partnership with Out2Enroll.

“This administration has made historic progress for the LGBT community, ensuring that people cannot be denied health coverage because of their gender identity, sexual orientation, or pre-existing conditions,” she said. “We are proud to continue that progress and work with our national partners to give more LGBT Americans and their families access to quality, affordable health coverage.”

Out2Enroll was created in 2013 and began partnering with the government to promote the law.

“During Open Enrollment, Out2Enroll will support in-person events across the country by participating in local LGBT Prides and town halls, providing LGBT-specific enrollment materials to partners, and hosting administration surrogates,” the agency said. “Out2Enroll will also continue to provide in-person and online training sessions on LGBT cultural competency and enrollment issues for assisters, including Navigators, Certified Application Counselors (CACs), and agents/brokers.”

“Health is an LGBT equality issue—we all deserve to be healthy and to get the help we need to protect ourselves and our families,” said Kellan Baker, steering committee member at Out2Enroll, who is a senior fellow at the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress. “Our community has seen historic changes this year, such as marriage equality and new nationwide nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people in health care.”

“By taking advantage of the financial help that’s available and getting covered by December 15th, we can all make sure that we’re able to celebrate these advances for years to come,” he said.

The government is partnering with other advocacy groups, including Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders, the National Center for Transgender Equality, and the Human Rights Campaign.

The #HealthySelfie campaign has yet to take off.

Feds Asking Gay Men to Post Selfies From the Gym to Promote Obamacare

Equal rights, including marriage, can promote better health for LGBT people

Veronica O’Keane

Published 26/04/2015 | 02:30

Veronica O’Keane

Professor Patricia Casey’s latest contribution to public debate on the topic of suicide is that young gay men who have suicidal ideation or who attempt to harm themselves will not necessarily go on to kill themselves. She has told us that we should not “conflate” the act of self-harm with the completed act of suicide. Her argument is that, although suicidal behaviour is disproportionately more common in LGBT individuals, that the completed acts of suicide may not be higher.

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The reality is that every individual who presents with either self-harm or suicidal ideation, regardless of their sexual orientation, is at a greatly increased risk of going on to die by suicide. One in a hundred individuals, whether gay or straight, who present to medical services with self-harm or suicidal ideation will go on to kill themselves in the following year. Presentation with self-harm is the single most important risk factor in the prediction of completed suicide. We have a national programme in suicide prevention that is focused, almost exclusively, on interventions for individuals who present to A&E departments, or to GP surgeries, with self-harm or suicidal ideation.

I practise in Tallaght Hospital and in the HSE community clinics in the Tallaght area. We have set up a dedicated suicide-prevention service, called Ceangail, operating between 5pm and 9am, in recognition of the fact that most individuals who present with suicidal thoughts or behaviours do so outside of working hours. We are now in the final stages of implementing a specialist self-harm assessment programme in GP practices in Tallaght, led by my community mental health team and Professor Tom O’Dowd (Professor of General Practice, TCD and a GP in Tallaght).

The question that one has to ask is how might a relative risk, between gay and straight men, of progression from suicidal behaviour to completed suicide, be relevant to clinical practice? Why would it matter if the risk of completed suicide were less for gay, than for straight, men? Would it change medical practice?

Rates of suicide are 18/100,000 for men and 4/100,000 for women (http://nsrf.ie/statistics/suicide/). Do we treat a suicide attempt by a young women less seriously than that of a young man because, statistically, the chances of a woman dying by suicide are so reduced, compared to men? Individuals are treated, not statistics. Statistics inform medical practice, they do not dictate it. Doctors, whether practising in psychiatry, in A&E departments or in GP surgeries, treat a presentation with suicidal ideation or behaviours as being serious, regardless of gender or sexual orientation issues, because some of these patients will go on to die by suicide.

What is established beyond doubt and in all layers of our society is the very high rates of mental ill-health experienced by LGBT people. This is all indisputable. Neither is it disputed that this ill-health is caused by the discrimination experienced by LGBT persons. This can be directly experienced as a rejection of one’s identity and oneself, bullying or in being denied human rights available to heterosexuals. A more malignant process can occur when the social discrimination experienced by LGBT individuals is internalised and this self-stigma can give rise to feelings of depression and self-loathing. Social isolation inevitably follows, and individuals can spiral into a paranoid and profoundly unhappy mental state.

I remember trying to “treat” a man about 25 years ago, when I was in training, who was so tortured by being gay that he wanted me to chemically castrate him: to neutralise his male hormones with anti-androgen medication. I have often thought about his tortured life since then, and of how futile and unnecessary his suffering was.

Many doctors in Ireland have become advocates for equal rights for LGBT people, including the right to marry, because of the health problems associated with repressed or stigmatised sexual orientation. The Irish Medical Organisation, the largest medical organisation in the country, is in support of a ‘Yes’ vote in the marriage-equality referendum. A new organisation, Doctors for Marriage Equality, composed of doctors from all medical specialties, of all ages and sexual orientation, is gaining momentum on a daily basis as May 22 approaches (https://www.facebook.com/doctorsformarriageequalityireland). The support for LGBT rights globally within the medical community was reflected in an editorial this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, recently voted the most influential medical journal in the world by doctors. The editorial, titled “In support of same-sex marriage”, states, “Same-sex marriage should be accepted both as a matter of justice and as a measure that promotes health”.

Former president Mary McAleese was correct when she spoke out about this, and also correct about the link between being of homosexual orientation, having mental health problems and suicidal behaviours. She was also correct about the link between suicidal behaviours and completed suicide.

Does it really help make us a better or more healthy society to calculate whether gay men are over-represented in our suicide statistics? Is it not enough to know that the mental health of our LGBT citizens is suffering because of social discrimination? Psychiatry and medicine are frequently involved in issues related to ill-health, such as poverty, income inequality and discrimination, because these issues affect peoples’ health. Medics can only treat the ailment, but the power to alleviate this ill-health lies with all the citizens of our country. Choosing to vote ‘Yes’ is a vote that will lead to a healthier society for us all.

Veronica O’Keane, Professor in Psychiatry, TCD and Tallaght Psychiatry Services

Sunday Independent

Follow @Independent_ie

Equal rights, including marriage, can promote better health for LGBT people