November generally makes us think of changing seasons and time with loved ones.  How fitting than that November is also National Alzheimer’s Month, a time for us to celebrate and pay tribute to those in our lives effected by Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Alzheimer’s disease is a tragic neurological condition that affects many of our family members, friends, parents and grandparents. An estimated five million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease. For every individual with Alzheimer’s, an entire community works to support them in their daily lives.

Alzheimer’s disease is marked by loss of memory, speech, judgment, sense of direction and other brain functions. While currently no cure exists, three risk factors play an important role in your susceptibility.

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More than 40 percent of all breast cancer cases could be prevented through basic lifestyle changes, a sweeping new report shows.

Although many women have long feared they are destined to develop breast cancer – one of the leading causes of death among American women – getting exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, limiting alcohol consumption and breastfeeding their children can protect many women from this common disease, the analysis determined.

The potential benefit is staggering. In all, more than 70,000 U.S. breast cancer cases could be avoided every year, determined researchers at the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund, which published the report.

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Celiac disease, a serious digestive condition, is common in more ways than one – in how often it occurs, and how often it goes undiagnosed. The prevalence of the disease has increased significantly in the United States during the last 50 years, researchers at the Mayo Clinic recently determined.

“Some studies have suggested that for every person who has been diagnosed with celiac disease, there are likely 30 more who have it but are not diagnosed,” said Mayo gastroenterologist Dr. Joseph Murray in a written release. “And given the nearly quadrupled mortality risk for silent celiac disease we have shown in our study, getting more patients and health professionals to consider the possibility of celiac disease is important.”

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Many physicians recommend the Navigenics genetic testing services to their patients as a way to help build a more personalized plan for disease prevention and better health. But doctors themselves also tell us how genetic insights improve their own lives. William, director of oncology at a leading diagnostic center, recently wrote to us about his own genetic discovery.

“My analysis was mostly reassuring, but showed two areas of increased risk,” he said. “One was for prostate cancer, which was not a surprise since my father died of prostate cancer. The second was celiac disease, which was a surprise. Although in retrospect, I had some subtle signs and symptoms which could be attributed to celiac disease: Poor digestion of fatty foods, low serum cholesterol, a mysterious skin rash, and recurrent aphthous ulcers,” or canker sores.

He followed up on his Navigenics results by getting two diagnostic tests for celiac disease—a blood test that looks for celiac-related factors and an upper endoscopy, which allowed his doctor to see inside his digestive tract and look for the tissue damage caused by celiac disease.

Both tests were positive, and showed that he already had a moderate to severe form of the disease.
From there, William knew that he could use his genetic test results to take action.

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What’s a secret to possibly preventing heart disease, diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease?

There are many effective strategies for reducing your risk, ranging from getting regular exercise and watching your diet to avoiding cigarettes and controlling your cholesterol.

But another measure has been emerging as a prevention powerhouse, one that is rarely discussed – and still frequently overlooked – by many health-conscious individuals.

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Is an ounce of prevention really worth a pound of cure? Or how about an extra year of life?

Cardiovascular experts believe so, calculating that if everyone with a risk factor for heart attack or stroke – 78 percent of the American adult population! – got serious about prevention, it would boost the average life expectancy by 1.3 years.

Researchers determined that if everyone took “to heart” the known preventive strategies for cardiovascular problems and made positive lifestyle changes, the incidence of heart attacks would decrease by 63 percent, while stroke would drop by 31 percent.

That is no small benefit. But unfortunately, it requires no small feat.

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The health community was energized in recent years when research hinted that basic vitamins might ward off prostate cancer. Prevention in a bottle? What could be better than that?

Well, lots of things, actually.

As it turns out, recent studies are finding that dietary supplements such as vitamin E and selenium won’t stave off the common cancer. One study of 300,000 men even found those who took more than seven multivitamins a week were more likely to develop an aggressive prostate cancer – and had twice the risk of dying from the disease.

Other recent research echoes these findings. A much anticipated large-scale federal trial of selenium and vitamin E supplements found they do not prevent prostate cancer, and could potentially be harmful. Researchers noted that men over age 50 who were taking vitamin E were slightly more likely to develop prostate cancer. And those who took selenium had higher rates of type 2 diabetes.

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“All natural sweetener.”

“Zero calories.”

Artificial sweeteners have been billed as the perfect alternative to sugar – a way for weight-conscious adults to have their cake and eat it, too. Yet more and more, a modicum of restraint is certainly advised when reaching for those packets of aspartame or sucralose.

While it’s true that sugar alternatives are much sweeter than table sugar, requiring smaller amounts to achieve the same level of sweetness, they won’t necessarily help you lose weight and keep it off. Simply taking the sugar out of a slab of chocolate cake doesn’t miraculously transform it into a low-calorie, high-nutrient food. At the end of the day, it’s still a slab of chocolate cake, with calories from flour, shortening, eggs, and other ingredients like nuts. So if you eat too much of it, your body will be the worse off from the encounter, regardless of which sweetener is used.

In fact, a growing body of evidence suggests that, when compared with sugar, no-calorie sweeteners may actually make it harder for people to control their body weight.

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I call it the “nickel and dime” approach to losing weight. 

As anyone who has ever looked under their couch cushions for loose coins knows, small change can add up. And when it comes to losing weight, small changes can also make a big difference. In fact slow and steady is the best way to sustain weight loss.

Thing is, many dieters unsuccessfully attempt a major makeover of their eating habits, giving up all pleasurable foods or starving themselves to reduce their calorie intake – and their waistline. Those strategies, however, are generally not ones people are able to stick with for a long time. So more often than not, the diet ends and the weight slowly (or not so slowly) comes back on, and the health benefits gained from weight loss slip away.

My “radical” suggestion is to consider something not at all radical: Making small, simple changes for life. Not only are they the easiest to attempt, they are also often the most successful.

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You might expect to read the “Eight Secrets to Weight Loss!” in a popular women’s magazine. But in a top medical journal? And based on a long-term scientific study of thousands of people who lost weight and kept it off for more than a year?

Both a scientific journal and a health conference held earlier this year highlighted the key characteristics of successful weight loss in the National Weight Control Registry, an ongoing study of more than 5,000 successful dieters. Brown University researcher Suzanne Phelan, who is involved in the study, noted that the people who lost at least 30 pounds – and kept them off for more than a year – tended to share certain success strategies. Anyone with some unwanted pounds to shed, she said, would be wise to learn from the “successful losers” in the research project.

“There is a general perception that almost no one succeeds in long-term maintenance of weight loss,” Phelan and a colleague wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. “However, research has shown that [roughly] 20 percent of overweight individuals are successful at long-term weight loss when defined as losing at least 10 percent of initial body weight and maintaining the loss for at least one” year.

So how do they do it?

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“Feel the burn!” Jane Fonda used to exclaim to her aerobics disciples. “No pain, no gain.”

These were popular exercise mantras, embraced by many American fitness buffs. Yet these days, you won’t hear many health experts repeating them.

Exercise, obviously, is a good thing. But even if you aren’t a triathlete in training, you still have options.

Intense, painful exercise dragging on for hours at a time isn’t necessarily “better” than a more temperate approach.  In fact, engaging in just 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day has been associated with many significant health benefits, even when the 30 minutes are divided into several shorter workouts.

Given that many people are more likely to squeeze in exercise when it seems easier or less painful, “intermittent” exercise may be the best option for some folks.

What exactly is intermittent exercise?

Fitness experts have used the term somewhat loosely to describe several types of physical activity, namely interval workouts and short, separated bouts of exercise. The premise behind both is simple: Follow a brief period of exercise with a varying level or amount of rest.  And many researchers are beginning to sing its praises.

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Going up?

If you regularly take the elevator instead of the stairs, your weight – and blood pressure and lipid levels– may be going up, too.

Sure, elevators and escalators may seem more convenient and time-efficient, especially when you’re cradling your laptop or a load of groceries in your hands. But health experts have long advised folks to make simple changes to sneak more exercise into their daily routine. And scientific research is beginning to suggest that there’s benefit in taking the stairs.

In fact, one British scientist who has studied the public’s use of stairs – or lack thereof—said the benefits might be far greater than you think.

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Are you at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease? It appears your nose may know.

In a growing body of research, an inability to identify common scents has been associated with the development of mild cognitive impairment – a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease. Older adults who have difficulty identifying odors such as lemon or cinnamon are more likely to have problems with thinking, learning and memory, according to one such study by Chicago researchers.

That may sound a bit far-fetched. But scientists know that protein deposits called tangles begin to appear in a region of the brain responsible for smell before symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease manifest themselves. An inability to identify some scents has been linked to other neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, and scientists are still attempting to understand why this is.

The findings are raising hopes that doctors may one day be able to administer a sort of “scratch ‘n sniff” test to gauge olfactory abilities as part of determining a person’s risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

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You have heard of the elderly. But how about the “wellderly”? The moniker is now being used to describe healthy seniors over the age of 80 who have been fortunate enough to live long – without any chronic diseases or the assistance of long-term medication.

What’s their secret? Scientists would like to know, too. In southern California, a group of researchers has launched the “Wellderly Study” to analyze the genes of some 1,000 healthy octogenarians, nonagenarians and centenarians. The researchers hope that by exploring the DNA of this long-lived group, they will have a better understanding of the genetics behind longevity and lifelong health.

For the Wellderly project, Scripps scientists will compare the DNA from healthy seniors with DNA taken from seniors who died from common diseases such as cancer, heart attack and stroke before they made it to 80. This second group has been dubbed the “Illderly.”

Many of the wellderly, the scientists note in the journal Nature, do have genes that should have made them susceptible to diseases – yet they’ve still managed to stay healthy.

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As a physician with many years in private practice, I’ve always valued tools that helped me care for my patients on an ongoing basis. Everyone’s health is prone to vary over time, so there is definite benefit to new science that highlights change.

That’s why a key aspect of the Navigenics genetic health service – ongoing updates – is so important. When Navigenics analyzes a person’s DNA, the findings don’t stop with that first genetic report. As new genetic research findings pass our rigorous scientific scrutiny, we bring our members additional information about their current conditions and new ones.

This process means that our members’ DNA results stay current with the latest and best genetic science.

This week, we’ve started providing our members their personal genetic insights into two additional conditions:

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With high gas prices already pinching you in the pocketbook, you might be cringing a bit when you see the cost of organic foods these days. A gallon of organic milk: $6.99. Small container of organic blueberries: $4.99. A single sweet potato: $1.69.

What price health?

But don’t let the dollar amounts deter you. When you eat organic foods, especially fruits and vegetables, you aren’t just doing a good turn for the environment. You are doing your body good, and possibly lowering your risk for health problems in the future, including conditions covered in the Navigenics genetic health service.

Many consumers have long wondered whether organics live up to their hype. More nutritious? Better for the waistline? Less toxic? I’ve looked at the science, and the answers are a resounding yes, yes and yes.

Here’s why.

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It might sound a bit absurd, totally contrary to everything you’ve ever been taught about proper nutrition. But, fruit may be a bad apple, at least in relatively large amounts.

Heresy, you say? Hardly.

The key word here is excess. Nutritional guidelines state that we all need several servings of fresh produce each day. But as with anything in life, there really can be too much of a good thing.

And in this case, the good or bad thing (depending on how you want to look at it) is fructose, the natural sugar that makes fruit sweet. Increasingly, scientific evidence shows that too much of it, whether consumed in large amounts of fruit or added to foods as a sweetener, can make us fat.

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For anyone needing to lose weight (and who doesn’t these days?) comes welcome new research showing there is life – and weight loss—beyond the low-fat diet.

The popular Mediterranean diet is a safe and effective alternative to the low-fat plan often recommended by physicians, Israeli researchers determined in a two-year-long study published in July in the New England Journal of Medicine.

While people who stick with almost any diet lose weight, those on the Mediterranean diet lost a significant amount – almost 10 pounds, compared to about six pounds for those on a low-fat diet. And the Mediterranean diet, in particular, was praised by the scientists because it is high in fruits, vegetables and fiber, all of which are beneficial for health.  Previous research has shown it is good for the heart, and may even reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

What is a Mediterranean diet?

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Last month, I blogged about a concept getting more attention in weight and health – the size of your waist may be even more important than the number on the scale.  Now, two recent developments further highlight that point. 

In that last post, I talked about a powerful study from the Mayo Clinic on a phenomenon called “normal-weight obesity.” That research indicated that more than half of American adults not considered overweight by regular standards such as Body Mass Index actually had high body-fat percentages, especially in their midsection. Those with wider waists also had higher rates of heart and metabolic risk factors.

Recent news illustrates that more findings support that idea. After looking at the health records of more than 20,000 people, researchers at Ohio State University spotted similar problems.

People included in the study who were not considered formally overweight but had a “marginally increased” waist circumference were much more likely to have high blood pressure than those with slim midsections. The scientists determined that adults with “normal” weights but a wide waist have an increased risk of cardiovascular problems. 

In other words, Americans need to get a handle on their love handles.

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I recently had the opportunity to hear the CEO of the American Cancer Society, John Seffrin, Ph.D, speak at the Aspen Ideas Festival. In listening to Dr. Seffrin, I heard him convey many of the same beliefs that we have here at Navigenics – primarily the benefits of early diagnosis and prevention.

There were two key data points which Dr. Seffrin mentioned: (1) many cancers are “curable” if found in Stage 1, and (2) that nearly 60-70% of all cancers are preventable. He also noted that prevention, through behavior change and early detection, is our best known “cure” today.

This is exactly the idea behind what we are doing at Navigenics – by helping you identify your genetic risk for a disease, before you start showing symptoms, you can catch it early, treat it early, or perhaps prevent the disease from occurring altogether. 

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