by Sara Gottfried, MD and Christopher Moulton, PhD We’ve been told that cognitive function in healthy individuals naturally declines with age. Or does it? Recent case series have brought this central tenet of the aging brain into question and suggest the hypothesis that cognitive decline may be more mutable than once believed. Dale Bredesen, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and collaborators have advanced a systems-based approach to address the factors that put the brain at…

by Whitney Crouch, RDN, CLT According to the CDC, of the 154 million prescriptions written for antibiotics each year, at least 30% are unnecessary, and the remaining 70% need to be prescribed more specifically for the infection type, including drug selection, dose, and duration.1 The goal of the CDC is to reduce the number of unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions by 50% by the year 2020.1 The discovery of antibiotics has, no doubt, saved millions of lives, but there are two sides…

by Melissa Blake, BSc, ND The use of probiotics has grown substantially over the last several years. Propelled by development in sequencing methods and analytical techniques, there has been a significant increase in knowledge and understanding about the importance of a healthy microbiome.1 The currently accepted definition of a probiotic states they are “live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host”.2 Is this relatively broad definition sufficient for clinicians to guide treatment? Can…

by Bianca Garilli, ND, USMC Veteran Military ranks are full of healthy men and women participating in regular physical fitness routines comprised of cardiovascular fitness, strength training, and flexibility exercises all designed to keep the warfighter in tip top condition, ready to deploy and engage at a moment’s notice. In fact, due to the sharp focus on exercise and weight standards of the US Armed Forces, active duty troops are much healthier than their civilian counterparts. For example, rates of…

by Bianca Garilli, ND Exposures to environmental and chemical hazards while serving in the Gulf War (GW) is well documented and may have contributed to potential health risks in these active duty military personnel. Some of these toxic exposures include:1-2 Vaccinations (including anthrax and botulinum toxoid) Pyridostigmine bromide, used as a pre-treatment drug to protect against nerve agent soman Mefloquine, taken to prevent and treat malaria Oil well fires Burn pits Pesticides used to repel or kill pests such as…

by Bianca Garilli, ND Dementia has become one of the major causes of disability and dependency in older people and is considered a worldwide public health priority.1 According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 50 million people globally suffer from this cognitive decline syndrome, with nearly 10 million new cases occurring annually.1 Although common in today’s society, dementia is not a guarantee, nor a normal part of the aging process. It typically affects older adults leading to symptoms associated with…

In this presentation made at The New York Academy of Sciences, Frank Hu, MD, PhD, Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, provides an edifying overview of the relationship between nutrition and metabolic diseases. Dr. Hu delves deep into systems epidemiology, which integrates a wide range of information from genetic predisposition, epigenetics, genetic expression and other factors into population-based epidemiological studies. According to Dr. Hu, systems epidemiology exists at the intersection of human observational…

by Bianca Garilli, ND and Ashley Jordan Ferira, PhD, RDN Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is no longer a Western world phenomena, but rather a global epidemic, with research revealing an association between higher T2D rates and a country’s wealth or economic growth.1 As a clear example, in a publication titled “Prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the Arab world: impact of GDP and energy consumption”, it was observed that the higher a country’s gross domestic product (GDP), the higher the…

by Bianca Garilli, ND Globally, 39% of adults aged ≥18 years were classified as overweight and 13% obese in 2016, totaling a jaw-dropping 1.9 billion adults overall.1 With obesity rates soaring, tripling worldwide since 1975, most of the Earth’s population now lives in countries where overweight and obesity cause more morbidity and mortality than being underweight.1 Keeping pace with these gains in adiposity is the behemoth weight loss and weight management market, which consists of fitness centers, slimming centers, consulting…

by Bianca Garilli, ND Telomeres are the DNA-protein caps found at both ends of eukaryotic chromosomes. They serve to protect the chromosome from degradation, unnecessary recombination, deleterious repairs at the chromosome ends, and interchromosomal fusion.1-3 In summary, they function to preserve the stability of the genome.1-3 The length of the cell’s telomeres shorten with every cell division and, upon reaching a critical length, trigger the cell to either undergo the process of apoptosis (programmed cell death) or senescence (cells stop…