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Based on the study results, the researchers suggest that even older couples in bad marriages could benefit from marriage counseling.From Science Daily:

Bad marriage, broken heart?

Older couples in a bad marriage -- particularly female spouses -- have a higher risk for heart disease than those in a good marriage, finds the first nationally representative study of its kind.

Liu analyzed five years of data from about 1,200 married men and women who participated the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project. Respondents were aged 57-85 at the beginning of the study...Liu set out to learn how marital quality is related to risk of heart disease over time, and whether this relationship varies by gender and/or age. Among her findings:

Negative martial quality (e.g., spouse criticizes, spouse is demanding) has a bigger effect on heart health than positive marital quality (e.g., spousal support). In other words, a bad marriage is more harmful to your heart health than a good marriage is beneficial.

The effect of marital quality on cardiovascular risk becomes much stronger at older ages. Over time, the stress from a bad marriage may stimulate more, and more intense, cardiovascular responses because of the declining immune function and increasing frailty that typically develop in old age, Liu said.

Marital quality has a bigger effect on women's heart health than it does on men's, possibly because women tend to internalize negative feelings and thus are more likely to feel depressed and develop cardiovascular problems, Liu said.

Heart disease leads to a decline in marital quality for women, but not for men. This is consistent with the longstanding observation that wives are more likely to provide support and care to sick husbands, while husbands are less likely to take care of sick wives.

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Bottom line: Try to avoid artificial sweeteners!

From Scientific American: Artificial Sweeteners May Have Despicable Impacts on Gut Microbes

I find it ironic that Thanksgiving coincides with American Diabetes Month. In honor of that irony, two recently published studies have suggested a possible link between what you eat, how it impacts the behavior of the microbes living in your gut, and type II diabetes.

Results from a study by researchers in Israel, published in the journal Nature in October, have suggested that consumption of artificial sweeteners—found in over 6,000 food products—can lead to changes in the gut microbiome, and have put forth an explanation for how this alteration might be associated with diseases such as type II diabetes.

Jotham Suez, a PhD candidate and lead author of the study explains, “We asked people who do not regularly consume artificial sweeteners to add them to their diet for one week, and saw that the majority of these subjects had poorer glycemic responses.” And like humans, mice that were given saccharin-spiked water also developed marked glucose intolerance compared to mice drinking sugar water, or water alone.

Their experiment revealed that mice did exhibit different microbiome profiles after consuming artificial sweeteners, just as with the human volunteers who had developed glucose intolerance. And importantly, the humans who did not show glucose intolerance after consuming artificial sweeteners also did not see changes in the community composition of their microbiome.

Consequently, this change in microbial community in mice also modified how the microbiota functioned as a group to regulate metabolism. Pathways that impact the transport of sugar in the body were found to have decreased function after saccharin treatment and, notably, there was an increased abundance of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which are implicated in lipid biosynthesis.

An investigation done by an independent group of researchers in Canada found similar results in a study published in October in the journal PLoS ONE. Although conducted using rats instead of mice, and with a different artificial sweetener (aspartame instead of saccharin) this study also found an increased risk of glucose intolerance. In addition, both studies showed that propionate—a SCFA highly involved in sugar production—is increased in animals consuming artificial sweeteners (although, unfortunately, propionate concentrations in humans weren’t assessed in the Nature study).

But the take home point is this: findings from two independent studies suggest that messing with the microbiome may have despicable consequences. Artificial sweeteners were originally intended to stave off the increasing obesity and metabolic disease epidemic, but instead they may have directly contributed to it.

In other words, consuming artificial sweeteners appears to throw metabolism out of whack by upsetting the critical balance of the biota in the gut—just as how chaos would surely ensue if you were to throw Gru’s minions out of whack.

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Great reasons to eat walnuts. Yes, this study was done in mice, but it (as supported by other research) should also apply to humans.From Medical Xpress:

'Tis the season to indulge in walnuts

Researchers at UC Davis and other institutions have found that diets rich in whole walnuts or walnut oil slowed prostate cancer growth in mice. In addition, both walnuts and walnut oil reduced cholesterol and increased insulin sensitivity. The walnut diet also reduced levels of the hormone IGF-1, which had been previously implicated in both prostate and breast cancer. The study was published online in the Journal of Medicinal Food. 

Davis and colleagues have been investigating the impact of walnuts on health for some time. A previous study found that walnuts reduced prostate tumor size in mice; however, there were questions about which parts of the nuts generated these benefits. 

In the current study, researchers used a mixture of fats with virtually the same fatty acid content as walnuts as their control diet. The mice were fed whole walnuts, walnut oil or the walnut-like fat for 18 weeks. The results replicated those from the previous study. While the walnuts and walnut oil reduced cholesterol and slowed prostate cancer growth, in contrast, the walnut-like fat did not have these effects, confirming that other nut components caused the improvements - not the omega-3s.

While the study does not pinpoint which combination of compounds in walnuts slows cancer growth, it did rule out fiber, zinc, magnesium and selenium. In addition, the research demonstrated that walnuts modulate several mechanisms associated with cancer growth.

"The energy effects from decreasing IGF-1 seem to muck up the works so the cancer can't grow as fast as it normally would," Davis said. "Also, reducing cholesterol means cancer cells may not get enough of it to allow these cells to grow quickly." In addition, the research showed increases in both adiponectin and the tumor suppressor PSP94, as well as reduced levels of COX-2, all markers for reduced prostate cancer risk.

Although results in mice don't always translate to humans, Davis said his results suggest the benefits of incorporating walnuts into a healthy diet. Other research, such as the PREDIMED human study, which assessed the Mediterranean diet, also found that eating walnuts reduced cancer mortality.

Still, Davis recommends caution in diet modification. "In our study the mice were eating the equivalent of 2.6 ounces of walnuts," he said. "You need to realize that 2.6 ounces of walnuts is about 482 calories. That's not insignificant, but it's better than eating a serving of supersized fries, which has 610 calories. In addition to the cancer benefit, we think you also get cardiovascular benefits that other walnut research has demonstrated.

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Are probiotic bacteria the reason?

From Medical Xpress: Does a yogurt a day keep diabetes away?

A high intake of yogurt has been found to be associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to research published in open access journal BMC Medicine. This highlights the importance of having yogurt as part of a healthy diet.

Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition that occurs when the body doesn't produce enough insulin, or the body's cells develop resistance to insulin. There is an increased risk of developing it if a relative has the condition or if an individual has an unhealthy lifestyle. 

Researchers from Harvard School of Public Health pooled the results of three prospective cohort studies that followed the medical history and lifestyle habits of health professionals. These studies were the Health Professionals' Follow-up Study (HFPS), which included 51,529 US male dentists, pharmacists, vets, osteopathic physicians and podiatrists, aged from 40 to 75 years; Nurses' Health Study (NHS), which began in 1976, and followed 121,700 female US nurses aged from 30 to 55 years; and Nurses' Health Study II (NHS II), which followed 116,671 female US nurses aged from 25 to 42 years beginning in the year 1989.

Within the three cohorts 15,156 cases of type 2 diabetes were identified during the follow-up period. The researchers found that the total dairy consumption had no association with the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. They then looked at consumption of individual dairy products, such as skimmed milk, cheese, whole milk and yogurt. When adjusting for chronic disease risk factors such as age and BMI as well as dietary factors, it was found that high consumption of yogurt was associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The authors then conducted a meta-analysis, incorporating their results and other published studies, up to March 2013, that investigated the association between dairy products and type 2 diabetes. This found that consumption of one 28g serving of yogurt per day was associated with an 18 per cent lower risk of type 2 diabetes.

Previous research has suggested calcium, magnesium, or specific fatty acids present in dairy products may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes. It has been shown that probiotic bacteria found in yogurt improves fat profiles and antioxidant status in people with type 2 diabetes and the researchers suggest this could have a risk-lowering effect in developing the condition. 

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Amazing persistence of the restroom microbial community.From NPR news:

What Microbes Lurked In The Last Public Restroom You Used?

The invisible world of the bathroom isn't pretty — unless you're a microbe. After scanning the microbial zoo of four public restrooms recently, a team of researchers found a diverse swarm of characters that persisted for months despite regular cleaning of the facilities. The goal of the study, published in the December issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, was to better understand how communities of bacteria and viruses can shift in these very public places across a couple of months.

To get their down-and-dirty readings, the researchers selected four bathrooms at San Diego State University... They checked two women's restrooms and two men's restrooms (a high-traffic and a low-traffic bathroom for each gender). The bathrooms were thoroughly cleaned at the study's start with bleach solution, which killed any existing germ communities.Then, during the following hours, days, weeks and months of human use, the researchers periodically swabbed soap dispensers, floors and toilet seats in all four restrooms for microbe samples. 

Within one hour of sterilization, the bathrooms were completely recolonized with microbes — just as plants rapidly arrive and populate a newly emerged island. Fecal bacteria dominated, including on toilet seats and on soap dispensers — about 45 percent of the bacteria there were of fecal origin.

In all, the scientists found genetic traces of more than 77,000 distinct types of bacteria and viruses. (At least some of those species were likely dead or dormant, the scientists add; genetic testing detects them all, whatever their status.)

Patterns of regrowth and succession, as some species waned and others replaced them, were surprisingly similar from bathroom to bathroom; within just five hours the population mix in each room stabilized.

When the team tried growing cultures from different surfaces in each room, they found one set of live bacteria in overwhelming abundance: Staphylococcus. Staph's persistence in these studies points to its power as a potential pathogen, Gilbert says. Various versions are common on human skin and inside the nose and other orifices; they generally cause no problems, or trigger only minor skin infections. But staph infections can be serious, or even kill, if the bacteria get into bloodstream, joints, bones, lungs or heart. 

Gilbert notes that none of the live Staph strains detected in the San Diego bathrooms showed signs of being antibiotic resistant. They were instead relatively harmless "skin bugs that happened to have lost their skin," he says. The team did find genes from MRSA hiding on the floor, as well as traces of some troublemaker viruses, including HPV and herpes virus.

Interestingly, although restrooms that were left open for use for up to two months were cleaned regularly with soap and water, the communities of microbes found there remained relatively unchanged for the full eight weeks of the study.

No need to be scared or grossed out by that finding, Gilbert says..."All human environments contain pathogens — your bedroom, the phone you're talking on, even the bugs inside of you could turn pathogenic at any time," Gilbert tells Shots. "But we desperately need them in our lives." Having a healthy community of good — or even just neutral — microbes can crowd out the bad ones. As we've learned from using broad-spectrum antibiotics in the human body, "sterilization is not necessarily good," he says. "Bacteria come back right away, and they might come back perturbed."

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Jogging? Now retirees planning to relax and putter around instead have to jog for health? From Science Daily:

Jogging keeps you young: Seniors who run regularly can walk as efficiently as 20-somethings

A new study by researchers at Humboldt State University and the University of Colorado, Boulder is shedding light on an unexpected benefit of jogging in older adults. The study looked at adults over the age of 65 -- some of whom walk for exercise and some who run for exercise. The researchers found that those who run at least 30 minutes, three times a week were less likely to experience age-related physical decline in walking efficiency than those who simply walked.

In fact, the older runners were 7-10 percent more efficient at walking than those who didn't jog. "What we found is that older adults who regularly participate in high aerobic activities -- running in particular -- have what we call a lower metabolic cost of walking than older, sedentary adults. In fact, their metabolic cost of walking is similar to young adults in their 20s," said Justus Ortega, a Kinesiology Professor at Humboldt State and director of HSU's Biomechanics Lab.

Metabolic cost is the amount of energy needed to move and naturally increases as we age. High metabolic cost contributes to making walking more difficult and tiring. Decline in walking ability is a key predictor of morbidity in older adults.

In the study, researchers looked at self-reported older joggers over the age of 65 -- those who ran at least 30 minutes a day, three times a week -- and self-reported walkers, those who walked three times a week for 30 minutes. Participants were asked to walk on a treadmill at three speeds (1.6, 2.8 and 3.9 miles per hour) as researchers measured their oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production. Overall, older joggers were 7-10 percent more efficient at walking than older adults who just walked for exercise. Their metabolic cost was similar to young people in their 20s.

Researchers aren't yet sure what makes joggers more efficient than walkers but they believe it may have something to do with the mitochondria found in cells. Evidence suggests that people who exercise vigorously have healthier mitochondria in their muscles.

 And a related concern: what about my knees? From  Science Daily:

Running does not lead to knee osteoarthritis, may protect people from developing disease, experts say

Running as a habitual exercise at any stage in life not only does not increase a person’s risk of developing knee osteoarthritis and may even help protect a person from developing the painful disease, according to new research findings."This {research} does not address the question of whether or not running is harmful to people who have pre-existing knee OA," said Dr. Lo. "However, in people who do not have knee OA, there is no reason to restrict participation in habitual running at any time in life from the perspective that it does not appear to be harmful to the knee joint."

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Big question: will vitamin D supplementation prevent cognitive decline? And what should be a daily supplement dose for adults? An earlier post cited a Medscape article suggesting that taking 1000 IU of vitamin D3 daily would be a good daily level of supplementation. From Medscape:

Vitamin D Deficiency Predicts Cognitive Decline

A new study supports a link between low levels of vitamin D and increased risk for cognitive decline, prompting calls for clinical trials to test whether vitamin D supplementation may delay or prevent dementia. In a group of cognitively intact older adults, serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) levels below 75 nmol/L at the outset predicted cognitive decline over roughly the next 4 years, independent of other factors.

For this analysis, the researchers looked at data on 1927 community-dwelling elderly individuals (mean age, 73.9 years) participating in the Italian population-based cohort study, Progetto Veneto Anziani (Pro.V.A.).

Dr Toffanello and colleagues say studies are needed to evaluate whether vitamin D supplementation might help to delay the cognitive decline, especially in patients who already have cognitive impairment.

David J. Llewellyn, PhD, from the University of Exeter Medical School in the United Kingdom, who has studied vitamin D and cognitive function but wasn't involved in this study, agrees. He told Medscape Medical News that this new study "effectively replicates" a 2010 study by his group showing a link between low vitamin D levels and an increased risk for cognitive decline. He said the Pro.V.A . study results are also consistent with a study his group published just this year inNeurology. That study suggested older patients with vitamin D levels below 50 nmol/L have about a 122% increased risk for dementia compared with those with higher levels.

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Amazing how long the bacteria persisted in the air. From Science Daily:

Hand dryers can spread bacteria in public toilets, research finds

Modern hand dryers are much worse than paper towels when it comes to spreading germs, according to new research. Scientists from the University of Leeds have found that high-powered 'jet-air' and warm air hand dryers can spread bacteria in public toilets. Airborne germ counts were 27 times higher around jet air dryers in comparison with the air around paper towel dispensers.

The study shows that both jet and warm air hand dryers spread bacteria into the air and onto users and those nearby.

The research team, led by Professor Mark Wilcox of the School of Medicine, contaminated hands with a harmless type of bacteria called Lactobacillus, which is not normally found in public bathrooms. This was done to mimic hands that have been poorly washed.

Subsequent detection of the Lactobacillus in the air proved that it must have come from the hands during drying. The experts collected air samples around the hand dryers and also at distances of one and two metres away. Air bacterial counts close to jet air dryers were found to be 4.5 times higher than around warm air dryers and 27 times higher compared with the air when using paper towels. Next to the dryers, bacteria persisted in the air well beyond the 15 second hand-drying time, with approximately half (48%) of the Lactobacilli collected more than five minutes after drying ended. Lactobacilli were still detected in the air 15 minutes after hand drying.

Professor Wilcox said: "Next time you dry your hands in a public toilet using an electric hand dryer, you may be spreading bacteria without knowing it. You may also be splattered with 'bugs' from other people's hands.

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Exciting research in a new area - our trillions of viruses or virome. From the new research it looks like some of the viruses are beneficial to us and help keep us healthy. It's time to stop thinking of all viruses (and bacteria) as bad, but instead that some viruses are necessary for good health. From Science Daily:

Natural Gut Viruses Join Bacterial Cousins in Maintaining Health and Fighting Infections

Microbiologists at NYU Langone Medical Center say they have what may be the first strong evidence that the natural presence of viruses in the gut -- or what they call the 'virome' -- plays a health-maintenance and infection-fighting role similar to that of the intestinal bacteria that dwell there and make up the "microbiome."

In a series of experiments in mice that took two years to complete, the NYU Langone team found that infection with the common murine norovirus, or MNV, helped mice repair intestinal tissue damaged by inflammation and helped restore the gut's immune defenses after its microbiome had been wiped out by antibiotic therapy. In a report on their work to be published in the journal Nature online Nov. 19, researchers say they also found that MNV bolstered the immune system in fighting off tissue damage.

"Our research offers compelling data about the mutually supportive relationship between viruses and bacteria in the mouse gut and lays the groundwork for further research on precisely how the virome supports the immune system, which likely applies to humans, as well," says senior study investigator Ken Cadwell, PhD, an assistant professor at NYU Langone.

"We have known for a long time that people get infected all the time with viruses and bacteria, and they don't get sick," says Cadwell. "Now we have scientific evidence that not every viral infection is bad, but may actually be beneficial to health, just as we know that many bacterial infections are good for maintaining health."

According to Cadwell, until now, scientists have had mostly trace genetic evidence of a virome's existence, but none to confirm its normal presence in the gut or to clarify whether it plays a harmful, neutral, or helpful role.

What the NY Times had to say about this new area of research:

Viruses as a Cure

When we talk about viruses, usually we focus on the suffering caused by Ebola, influenza, and the like. But our bodies are home to trillions of viruses, and new research hints that some of them may actually be keeping us healthy.

“Viruses have gotten a bad rap,” said Ken Cadwell, an immunologist at New York University School of Medicine. “They don’t always cause disease.” Dr. Cadwell stumbled by accident onto the first clues about the healing power of viruses. At the time, he was studying the microbiome, the community of 100 trillion microbes living in our bodies. Scientists have long known that the microbiome is important to our health.

Kristine Wylie, a research instructor of pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine who was not involved in the research, speculated that in real life, certain viruses might be important partners with the microbiome. “It isn’t hard to imagine that the viral exposures we get as children are important to our development,” she said.

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Two studies that talk about a healthy diet and health benefits.From Science Daily:

Home cooking a main ingredient in healthier diet, study shows

People who frequently cook meals at home eat healthier and consume fewer calories than those who cook less, according to new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research."When people cook most of their meals at home, they consume fewer carbohydrates, less sugar and less fat than those who cook less or not at all -- even if they are not trying to lose weight," says Julia A. Wolfson, MPP, a CLF-Lerner Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and lead author of the study.The findings also suggest that those who frequently cooked at home -- six-to-seven nights a week -- also consumed fewer calories on the occasions when they ate out.

Wolfson and co-author Sara N. Bleich, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School, analyzed data from the 2007-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from more than 9,000 participants aged 20 and older... The researchers found that 8 percent of adults cooked dinner once or less a week and this group consumed, on an average day, 2,301 total calories, 84 grams of fat and 135 grams of sugar. Forty-eight percent of participants cooked dinner six to seven times a week and they consumed 2,164 calories, 81 grams of fat and 119 grams of sugar on an average day.

The research found blacks are more likely to live in households where cooking occurs less frequently than whites; and individuals who work more than 35 hours a week outside the home also cook less often.

From Medical Xpress:

Healthy diets are good for the kidneys

A healthy diet may help protect the kidneys, according to two studies that will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2014 November 11¬-16 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA. Dietary modifications may be a low-cost, simple intervention to reduce the burden of chronic kidney disease (CKD). 

A higher-quality diet, as measured using 3 different scoring systems for dietary qualities known to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, was associated with a 16% to 23% reduced risk of needing dialysis or dying from kidney problems. Higher-quality diets included those high in fruits, vegetables, and unsaturated fats. The researchers also found that high sodium intake (average of 4.7g g/day) was linked with an increased risk of needing dialysis or dying from kidney problems, but no benefit was seen for low sodium intake (average 2.0 g/day) compared with moderate intake. In contrast, high potassium intake was associated with a reduced future risk.