BIO E® World

We are teeming with microscopic life. Scientists recently reported on the billions of bacteria and fungi that grow inside us, finding a lot of diversity from person to person — and from spot to spot on the human body. Those findings were in 242 young adults (ages 18 to 40) in exceptionally good health. Even gum disease was grounds for exclusion, as we noted in a news article at the time. But what about older people? It's known that their bacterial populations are less stable than those of younger people and that the gut flora of one elderly individual can differ greatly from that of another. It's also known that the populations of bacteria growing inside them are less diverse than what’s seen in younger people. These changes are believed linked to events that take place as we grow older, such as a lengthening of the time it takes food to pass through our guts, reduced saliva production and others. Now a new paper published in Nature offers a more detailed look at the gut flor...

New research suggests that the use of  vitamin C supplements may help stave off gout in men. A report in the  Archives of Internal Medicine  indicates that  vitamin C intake of at least 1500 milligrams per day reduces the odds of gout by 45 percent compared with an intake of less than 250 milligrams per day. Prior research has shown an inverse link between vitamin C and uric acid levels in the blood, but whether higher concentrations of the vitamin reduces the risk of gout was unclear, according to lead author  Dr. Hyon K. Choi,  from the  University of British Columbia,  Vancouver, Canada, and associates. The findings come from a study of 46,994 men who were followed from 1986 to 2006 as part of the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. None of the subjects had a history of gout when the study began. Vitamin C intake was assessed with validated questionnaires every 4 years and gout was determined using American College of Rheumatology criteri...

(Time.com)   The more TV kids watch in early life, the thicker they get around the waistline and the weaker their muscle strength, a new study finds. It's no secret that watching TV is linked with some unhealthy outcomes in kids — previous studies have found that children who watch more television are more likely to eat junk food, have trouble sleeping and become obese — but the new study, published in BioMed Central's open access journal International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, establishes a link between screen time and specific measures of physical fitness. "We already knew that there is an association between preschool television exposure and the body fat of fourth grade children, but this is the first study to describe more precisely what that association represents," said senior author Dr. Linda Pagani, a researcher at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center, in a statement. The researchers looke...

Beauty products are supposed to make you, well, beautiful, not sick. But you better be careful with certain nail polishes, hair sprays, soaps, and fragrances. These products can contain chemicals called phthalates, which may increase a woman’s risk of diabetes, according to a new study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives . We know that unhealthy diets and lack of exercise can boost your chances of developing type 2 diabetes, but now recent studies have found a correlation between high levels of phthalates and diabetes. The chemicals may hurt your endocrine system by interrupting normal hormone processes necessary for regulating blood sugar. In this particular study, researchers analyzed urine samples of 2,350 women who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. After analyzing the amount of phthalates in the samples, they found that women with the highest levels of phthalates were nearly twice as likely to develop diabetes a...