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Tag Archives: reversed
The earth’s core may have reversed direction.
In the 1989 Stone Roses song “What the World is Waiting For,” Ian Brown sings,
“Stop the world
Stop the world
I’m getting off
… I’m getting off
… Can’t get enough
I’m getting off.”
Now, you may have felt a shift recently in the direction of the planet but thought it was a bump in the road or maybe a dizzy spell of social imbalance, given the chaotic news cycle of late.
The earth may have stopped spinning. Well, not the entire world, just the core. Mr. Brown may yet have his opportunity to get off – the planet.
As reported by Becky Ferreira at Vice News, “Earth’s inner core has recently stopped spinning, and may now be reversing the direction of its rotation, according to a surprising new study that probed the deepest reaches of our planet with seismic waves from earthquakes. The mind-boggling results suggest that Earth’s center pauses and reverses direction on a periodic cycle lasting about 60 to 70 years, a discovery that might solve longstanding mysteries about climate and geological phenomena that occur on a similar timeframe and that affect life on our planet.”
This is not an unprecedented phenomenon, though it sounds pretty scary to me – which might be a testament to disaster films.
“Yi Yang and Xiaodong Song, a pair of researchers at Peking University’s SinoProbe Lab at School of Earth and Space Sciences, have captured “surprising observations that indicate the inner core has nearly ceased its rotation in the recent decade and may be experiencing a turning-back in a multidecadal oscillation, with another turning point in the early 1970s,” according to a study published on Monday in Nature Geoscience.”
Another explanation could be that the earth is finally responding to Superman’s successful turning back of time to bring Lois Lane back to life in the 1978 film.
Earth’s inner core may have ‘paused’ its rotation and reversed, new study suggests
(NEXSTAR) – Deep in the center of the Earth is the inner core, which spans roughly 746 miles and is composed of primarily pure, solid iron, NASA explains. Though we’ve long believed – and research has shown – that the inner core rotates, a new study suggests it may have “paused” its spin and could even have reversed.
The liquid outer core that surrounds the inner core causes Earth’s magnetic field. According to NASA, as the molten iron and nickel in the outer core move, they create electrical currents that result in a magnetic field. The outer core also allows the inner core to spin on its own, Nature explains.
Though scientists can’t track the core directly, they can analyze seismic waves caused by earthquakes – and Cold War-era nuclear weapon tests – as they reach the core. That’s what study co-authors Yi Yang and Xiaodong Song, seismologists at Peking University in Beijing, did for their new research, which was published in the Nature Geoscience journal on Monday.
Based on their analysis of seismic waves caused by similar earthquakes dating back to the 1960s, Yang and Song said they found that the inner core’s rotation seems to have “paused” between 2009 and 2020 and could even be reversing “by a small amount.”
Sounds concerning, right? Don’t be alarmed – this likely isn’t the first time our inner core has come to a halt. Instead, they believe the change is “associated with a gradual turning-back of the inner core as part of an approximately seven-decade oscillation.”
According to Yang and Song, results from their study also suggest “another overturn or a slowdown of the rotation around the early 1970s.”
The seismologists said their findings – changes in how fast seismic waves traveled through the inner core – coincide “with changes in several other geophysical observations, especially the length of day and magnetic field,” which are both areas that are impacted by the inner core’s movement, research has shown.
While the changes are “valid,” what Yang and Song found may not be exactly what’s happening in the depths of our planet. John Vidale, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California that wasn’t involved in the study, noted “several competing ideas” about the Earth’s core to The Wall Street Journal.
This includes theories that the inner core reverses its rotation more frequently than the 70 years Yang and Song determined and that it stopped rotating in the early 2000s.
“No matter which model you like, there’s some data that disagrees with it,” Vidale told The New York Times.
Vidale recently co-authored a study that showed the inner core changed its spin between 1969 and 1974, and that it seems to oscillate “a couple of kilometers every six years.”
Aging can be reversed in mice. Are people next?
CNN
—
In Boston labs, old, blind mice have regained their eyesight, developed smarter, younger brains and built healthier muscle and kidney tissue. On the flip side, young mice have prematurely aged, with devastating results to nearly every tissue in their bodies.
The experiments show aging is a reversible process, capable of being driven “forwards and backwards at will,” said anti-aging expert David Sinclair, a professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and codirector of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research.
Our bodies hold a backup copy of our youth that can be triggered to regenerate, said Sinclair, the senior author of a new paper showcasing the work of his lab and international scientists.
The combined experiments, published for the first time Thursday in the journal Cell, challenge the scientific belief aging is the result of genetic mutations that undermine our DNA, creating a junkyard of damaged cellular tissue that can lead to deterioration, disease and death.
“It’s not junk, it’s not damage that causes us to get old,” said Sinclair, who described the work last year at Life Itself, a health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN.
“We believe it’s a loss of information — a loss in the cell’s ability to read its original DNA so it forgets how to function — in much the same way an old computer may develop corrupted software. I call it the information theory of aging.”
Jae-Hyun Yang, a genetics research fellow in the Sinclair Lab who coauthored the paper, said he expects the findings “will transform the way we view the process of aging and the way we approach the treatment of diseases associated with aging.”
While DNA can be viewed as the body’s hardware, the epigenome is the software. Epigenes are proteins and chemicals that sit like freckles on each gene, waiting to tell the gene “what to do, where to do it, and when to do it,” according to the National Human Genome Research Institute.
The epigenome literally turns genes on and off. That process can be triggered by pollution, environmental toxins and human behaviors such as smoking, eating an inflammatory diet or suffering a chronic lack of sleep. And just like a computer, the cellular process becomes corrupted as more DNA is broken or damaged, Sinclair said.
“The cell panics, and proteins that normally would control the genes get distracted by having to go and repair the DNA,” he explained. “Then they don’t all find their way back to where they started, so over time it’s like a Ping-Pong match, where the balls end up all over the floor.”
In other words, the cellular pieces lose their way home, much like a person with Alzheimer’s.
“The astonishing finding is that there’s a backup copy of the software in the body that you can reset,” Sinclair said. “We’re showing why that software gets corrupted and how we can reboot the system by tapping into a reset switch that restores the cell’s ability to read the genome correctly again, as if it was young.”
It doesn’t matter if the body is 50 or 75, healthy or wracked with disease, Sinclair said. Once that process has been triggered, “the body will then remember how to regenerate and will be young again, even if you’re already old and have an illness. Now, what that software is, we don’t know yet. At this point, we just know that we can flip the switch.”
The hunt for the switch began when Sinclair was a graduate student, part of a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that discovered the existence of genes to control aging in yeast. That gene exists in all creatures, so there should be a way to do the same in people, he surmised.
To test the theory, he began trying to fast-forward aging in mice without causing mutations or cancer.
“We started making that mouse when I was 39 years old. I’m now 53, and we’ve been studying that mouse ever since,” he said. “If the theory of information aging was wrong, then we would get either a dead mouse, a normal mouse, an aging mouse or a mouse that had cancer. We got aging.”
With the help of other scientists, Sinclair and his Harvard team have been able to age tissues in the brain, eyes, muscle, skin and kidneys of mice.
To do this, Sinclair’s team developed ICE, short for inducible changes to the epigenome. Instead of altering the coding sections of the mice’s DNA that can trigger mutations, ICE alters the way DNA is folded. The temporary, fast-healing cuts made by ICE mimic the daily damage from chemicals, sunlight and the like that contribute to aging.
ICE mice at one year looked and acted twice their age.
Now it was time to reverse the process. Sinclair Lab geneticist Yuancheng Lu created a mixture of three of four “Yamanaka factors,” human adult skin cells that have been reprogrammed to behave like embryonic or pluripotent stem cells, capable of developing into any cell in the body.
The cocktail was injected into damaged retinal ganglion cells at the back of the eyes of blind mice and switched on by feeding mice antibiotics.
“The antibiotic is just a tool. It could be any chemical really, just a way to be sure the three genes are switched on,” Sinclair told CNN previously. “Normally they are only on in very young, developing embryos and then turn off as we age.”
The mice regained most of their eyesight.
Next, the team tackled brain, muscle and kidney cells, and restored those to much younger levels, according to the study.
“One of our breakthroughs was to realize that if you use this particular set of three pluripotent stem cells, the mice don’t go back to age zero, which would cause cancer or worse,” Sinclair said. “Instead, the cells go back to between 50% and 75% of the original age, and they stop and don’t get any younger, which is lucky. How the cells know to do that, we don’t yet understand.”
Today, Sinclair’s team is trying to find a way to deliver the genetic switch evenly to each cell, thus rejuvenating the entire mouse at once.
“Delivery is a technical hurdle, but other groups seem to have done well,” Sinclair said, pointing to two unpublished studies that appear to have overcome the problem.
“One uses the same system we developed to treat very old mice, the equivalent of an 80-year-old human. And they still got the mice to live longer, which is remarkable. So they’ve kind of beaten us to the punch in that experiment,” he said.
“But that says to me the rejuvenation is not just affecting a few organs, it’s able to rejuvenate the whole mouse because they’re living longer,” he added. “The results are a gift and confirmation of what our paper is saying.”
What’s next? Billions of dollars are being poured into anti-aging, funding all sorts of methods to turn back the clock.
In his lab, Sinclair said his team has reset the cells in mice multiple times, showing that aging can be reversed more than once, and he is currently testing the genetic reset in primates. But decades could pass before any anti-aging clinical trials in humans begin, get analyzed and, if safe and successful, scaled to the mass needed for federal approval.
But just as damaging factors can disrupt the epigenome, healthy behaviors can repair it, Sinclair said.
“We know this is probably true because people who have lived a healthy lifestyle have less biological age than those who have done the opposite,” he said.
His top tips? Focus on plants for food, eat less often, get sufficient sleep, lose your breath for 10 minutes three times a week by exercising to maintain your muscle mass, don’t sweat the small stuff and have a good social group.
“The message is every day counts,” Sinclair said. “How you live your life even when you’re in your teens and 20s really matters, even decades later, because every day your clock is ticking.”
Israeli gives birth after menopause reversed with transplant of 20-year frozen ovary
A remarkable 20 years after freezing her ovary, an Israeli woman defrosted part of it, reversed her menopause, got pregnant without IVF, and has now given birth to a healthy baby girl.
She has named her new daughter Eshkar, a word from the Bible that means gift.
The 46-year-old woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Tzvia, froze her ovary when she had cancer in her mid-20s.
At that time, the idea of transplanting a healthy ovary back into a woman after she recovered from cancer was just theoretical. In 2016, a woman in Dubai became the first to give birth to a baby after having her ovary retransplanted, and since then there have been hundreds more pregnancies worldwide — though none came after an ovary was frozen for two whole decades.
“She conceived spontaneously at age 45, and she now has a baby girl thanks to pieces of her ovary that were in liquid nitrogen for two decades,” her gynecologist, Prof. Ariel Revel, told The Times of Israel.
“I visited her home after the birth and cried tears of joy, thinking about the fact that hopes in a lab all those years ago actually resulted in a baby,” Revel added.
Prof. Ariel Revel (courtesy of Prof. Ariel Revel)
“Not only is this a world record, but it also raises the possibility that in the future woman could routinely conceive much older by freezing ovaries in their 20s. What is more, it suggests that this could provide a way to actually prevent menopause.”
Revel, a leading specialist in gynecology and obstetrics, met Tzvia soon after her cancer diagnosis. “She was told that she needed aggressive chemotherapy which could harm her ovaries,” he recalled.
“She came from a religious [Jewish] background and having children was important for her. I had just received permission [from ethics boards] to remove and freeze an ovary, and we removed her right ovary before her bone marrow transplant.”
Ten years later, Tzvia asked to unfreeze part of the ovary and receive it as a transplant. She quickly conceived using IVF — as is the norm after ovarian transplants — and the baby from that pregnancy is now nine years old.
“After the birth, for a few years she didn’t come to see me,” Revel said. “Then, she and her husband wanted another baby. The pieces of ovary we transplanted were no longer working — she had passed menopause. But I had other slivers of her ovary in liquid nitrogen, so I removed some, and performed surgery.”
The transplant, which he performed at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center, was covered by Israel’s basket of publicly funded health treatments.
Revel said that it “reversed her menopause,” explaining: “When production of estrogen ceases, symptoms of menopause set in, but if healthy ovaries are returned, it restarts the woman’s period, makes her fertile again and triggers the production of estrogen.” The doctor predicted that Tzvia now won’t enter menopause for several years — for as long as the newly transplanted ovary pieces remain active.
After that transplant, Tzvia once again started IVF. Two cycles yielded no pregnancy, but as she was readying for a third cycle, funding rules stopped her in her tracks.
Prof. Ariel Revel with a patient (courtesy of Prof. Ariel Revel)
While Israel’s public health system is generous in funding multiple IVF cycles, it stops at age 45 — and Tzvia had just turned 45. “We started trying to convince authorities to fund more cycles for her, arguing in a letter that her ovary is actually younger than 45 so she should be allowed,” Revel recalled. “Then, when we were waiting for a response, she called me and said she missed her period. I told her to run and get a pregnancy test — and she was pregnant.”
“She cried tears of happiness — and so did I.”
Revel believes that the discovery that ovaries can be transplanted after such long stints frozen could prompt a rethink on guidelines. Today, ovary freezing and transplant is generally limited to women facing serious illness. But he believes it could be seen as a legitimate way for healthy women to extend their childbearing years.
Revel added that fertility aside, providing older women with their own “young” ovaries that were frozen could prevent or significantly delay menopause.
“This could actually prevent menopause, which is a major medical issue in women’s health, as it prompts all sorts of medical challenges,” he said. “This is theoretical as today you can’t remove and preserve an ovary from people unless there is a medical reason. But it could become very real.”
Israel’s relentless creative spirit
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Your support, through The Times of Israel Community, helps us to continue providing surprising, impressive stories like mine to readers around the world. Will you join our Community today?
Thank you,
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Food Allergies Can Be Reversed by Targeting the Microbiome
Summary: Researchers developed polymeric micelles of butyrate, a bacterial compound made by healthy a microbiome, that is effective against peanut allergies in mice.
Source: American Chemical Society
Although many people with dietary allergies experience mild symptoms when exposed to triggering foods, some face potentially fatal consequences. A bacterial compound called butyrate that’s made by healthy microbiomes has shown promise against allergic reactions in lab tests, but it’s nasty to take orally.
Today, scientists describe a more palatable way to deliver this compound and report that their “polymeric micelles” are effective against peanut allergies in mice. The treatment could someday counteract many types of food allergies and inflammatory diseases.
The researchers will present their results at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Fall 2022 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in-person Aug. 21–25, with on-demand access available Aug. 26-Sept. 9. The meeting features nearly 11,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.
Some of the bacteria in the gut microbiome produce metabolites, such as butyrate, that foster the growth of beneficial bacteria and maintain the lining of the gut. If a person’s microbiome is unhealthy and lacks these butyrate-producing bacteria, fragments of partially digested food can leak out of the gut and produce an immune reaction that results in an allergic response.
One way to treat those with allergies would be to provide the missing bugs to them orally or with a fecal transplant, but that hasn’t worked well in the clinic, according to Jeffrey Hubbell, Ph.D., one of the project’s principal investigators (PIs).
“So we thought, why don’t we just deliver the metabolites — like butyrate — that a healthy microbiome produces?”
“But butyrate has a very bad smell, like dog poop and rancid butter, and it also tastes bad, so people wouldn’t want to swallow it,” says Shijie Cao, Ph.D., who is presenting the results at the meeting for the team, which is at the University of Chicago. And even if people could choke it down, butyrate would be digested before reaching its destination in the lower gut.
To overcome these challenges, the researchers, including co-PI Cathryn Nagler, Ph.D., and Ruyi Wang, Ph.D., designed a new delivery system. They polymerized butanoyloxyethyl methacrylamide — which has a butyrate group as a side chain — with methacrylic acid or hydroxypropyl methacrylamide.
The resulting polymers self-assembled into aggregates, or polymeric micelles, that tucked the butyrate side chains in their core, thus cloaking the compound’s foul smell and taste.
The researchers administered these micelles to the digestive systems of mice lacking either healthy gut bacteria or a properly functioning gut lining. After digestive juices released the butyrate in the lower gut, the inert polymers were eliminated in the feces.
The treatment restored the gut’s protective barrier and microbiome, in part by increasing production of peptides that kill off harmful bacteria, which made room for butyrate-producing bacteria.
Most importantly, dosing allergic mice with the micelles prevented a life-threatening anaphylactic response when they were exposed to peanuts.
See also
“This type of therapy is not antigen specific,” Cao notes. “So theoretically, it can be broadly applied to any food allergies through the modulation of gut health.”
Next up are trials in larger animals, followed by clinical trials. If those trials succeed and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the oral treatment, the micelles could be marketed in small packets; consumers would tear open a packet and stir the contents into a glass of water or juice. In other work with the micelles, the team is analyzing data on treating inflammatory bowel diseases with the oral therapy.
The team is also investigating administration via injection. The researchers have shown that this method allows the micelles and their butyrate cargo to accumulate in lymph nodes, which are part of the immune system.
They found that this approach is effective in treating peanut allergies in mice, but it could also be used to suppress immune activation locally — rather than throughout the body. For example, injections could be helpful in patients who have had an organ transplant or who have a localized autoimmune and inflammatory condition, such as rheumatoid arthritis.
Funding: The researchers acknowledge support and funding from their start-up company, ClostraBio, and the University of Chicago.
About this microbiome and food allergy research news
Author: Katie Cottingham
Source: American Chemical Society
Contact: Katie Cottingham – American Chemical Society
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: The findings will be presented at ACS Fall 2022
Doctor reversed heart disease. Now he looks at Alzheimer’s
“I think our unique contribution has been to use these very high-tech, expensive, state-of-the-art scientific measures to prove how powerful these very low-tech and low-cost interventions can be,” said Ornish, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
“What’s good for your heart is good for your brain and vice versa,” Ornish said. “Prior studies have shown moderate changes in lifestyle can slow the rate of progression of dementia and Alzheimer’s. So, my hypothesis is that more intense lifestyle changes could stop or even reverse the decline.”
The original study on heart disease was small — 28 people were in the experimental group Ornish then followed for five years. Some skeptics criticized the program for its small sample size and said there was no way people could remain on the program’s stringent plant-based diet without supervision.
In the Ornish meal plan, no more than 10% of one’s daily calories can come from fat. To accomplish that, all animal products besides egg whites and one cup of nonfat milk or yogurt each day are banned. (This doesn’t apply to the Alzheimer’s study.) Whole grains, fruits, vegetables and legumes are the basis of the diet, along with a few nuts and seeds. Refined carbohydrates, oils and excessive caffeine are avoided, but up to two cups a day of green tea are allowed.
“It’s low-fat, but that’s just a small part of the overall diet,” Ornish said. “It’s essentially a vegan diet, low in fat and sugar, eating foods as close as possible to nature.”
The program also includes an hour a day of yoga-based stress management using stretching, breathing, meditation and relaxation techniques. Strength training and walking or other aerobic exercise are required for 30 minutes a day or an hour three times a week. Smoking is not allowed.
“There are also support groups,” Ornish told CNN, “not just helping people stay on the diet but creating a safe environment where people can let down their emotional defenses and talk openly and authentically about what’s really going on in their lives, warts and all.
“That was the part that surprised me the most — these support groups are really intimate,” he added. “Sharing things like ‘I may look like the perfect father, but my kids are on heroin,’ or whatever. Even by Zoom, they’re getting to the same level of intimacy within one or two sessions because there’s such a hunger for that.”
Ornish calls that part of his program “Love More.” He answers skeptics who wonder why intimacy is such an integral part of a plan to reverse disease by pointing to studies on people who are lonely, depressed or isolated.
Those people are “three to 10 times more likely to get sick and die prematurely from pretty much everything” when compared with people who say they have a sense of love, connection and community, Ornish maintained.
“Why? In part because you’re more likely to smoke, overeat, stop exercising and other unhealthy things when you’re feeling lonely and depressed,” Ornish said.
Impact on other chronic diseases
By 1993, insurance giant Mutual of Omaha began reimbursing policyholders for the cost of Ornish’s program, making it the first alternative therapy besides chiropractic to win insurance reimbursement. Medicare began covering lifestyle interventions for heart disease in 2006.
“And in October 2021 Medicare agreed to cover my reversing heart disease program when it’s done via Zoom, which is really a game changer,” Ornish said. “Now we can reach people at home, in rural areas and food deserts wherever they live, which will help reduce health inequities and health disparities.”
In the last two decades, Ornish’s research has shown the same four-part program can lower blood sugars and heart disease risk for patients with diabetes, reduce prostate cancer cell growth, improve depression within 12 weeks, reduce “bad cholesterol” by an average of 40%, and more.
“With all this interest in personalized medicine, just how is it that these same lifestyle changes stop, and often reverse, the progression of such a wide spectrum of the most common and costly chronic diseases?” Ornish asked.
“Because they all share the same underlying biological mechanisms: chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, changes in the microbiome, changes in gene expression, overstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system, changes in immune function and so on,” he said.
“And in turn, each one of these is directly influenced by what we eat, how we respond to stress, how much exercise we get and how much love and support we have,” Ornish said.
Those lifestyle improvements likely change the body at a cellular level, he said. A 2008 study found the Ornish program affected some 500 genes in the body via epigenetics, chemical reactions that can activate or dismantle how a gene is expressed.
“After just three months on the Ornish lifestyle program, the research found a number of genes that regulate or prevent disease are turned on, and genes that cause many of the mechanisms that cause all these different conditions are turned off,” Ornish said.
“You’re not technically changing your genes, but you’re changing the expression of those genes with chemical switches, turning them on or off,” he said. “So, that means it’s no longer all in our genes, making us victims of our genetic fate. We’re not victims. There’s a lot we can do.”
Ornish lifestyle interventions have also been shown to lengthen telomeres, the tips of chromosomes that control longevity and shorten as we age. Ornish did a 2013 pilot study with UC San Francisco biochemist Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for her work on telomeres.
“We found that telomerase, the enzyme that repairs and lengthens telomeres, increased by 30% after just three months on the program,” Ornish said. “Then we found that people who had been on the program for five years had telomeres that were about 10% longer, a sign that aging is being reversed on the cellular level.”
Will these same lifestyle interventions be enough to slow or even reverse cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s and other dementias? Time will tell. Ornish’s study is still underway and all the data must be gathered, analyzed and peer-reviewed before an outcome can be reported.
“But I believe that it’s not one diet and lifestyle intervention for heart disease, another for diabetes or prostate cancer, and yet a different one for Alzheimer’s. It’s really the same for all these different conditions,” Ornish told CNN.
“To reverse the disease, you need to follow the interventions nearly 100%. If you’re just trying to prevent disease, then the more you change, the more you improve. But what matters most is your overall way of eating, living and loving so that we can all die young as old as possible.”
This story has been updated.
Doctor reversed heart disease. Now he looks at Alzheimer’s
“I think our unique contribution has been to use these very high-tech, expensive, state-of-the-art scientific measures to prove how powerful these very low-tech and low-cost interventions can be,” said Ornish, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
“What’s good for your heart is good for your brain and vice versa,” Ornish said. “Prior studies have shown moderate changes in lifestyle can slow the rate of progression of dementia and Alzheimer’s. So, my hypothesis is that more intense lifestyle changes could stop or even reverse the decline.”
The original study on heart disease was small — 28 people were in the experimental group Ornish then followed for five years. Some skeptics criticized the program for its small sample size and said there was no way people could remain on the program’s stringent plant-based diet without supervision.
In the Ornish meal plan, no more than 10% of one’s daily calories can come from fat. To accomplish that, all animal products besides egg whites and one cup of nonfat milk or yogurt each day are banned. Whole grains, fruits, vegetables and legumes are the basis of the diet, along with a few nuts and seeds. Refined carbohydrates, oils and excessive caffeine are avoided, but up to two cups a day of green tea are allowed.
“It’s low-fat, but that’s just a small part of the overall diet,” Ornish said. “It’s essentially a vegan diet, low in fat and sugar, eating foods as close as possible to nature.”
The program also includes an hour a day of yoga-based stress management using stretching, breathing, meditation and relaxation techniques. Strength training and walking or other aerobic exercise are required for 30 minutes a day or an hour three times a week. Smoking is not allowed.
“There are also support groups,” Ornish told CNN, “not just helping people stay on the diet but creating a safe environment where people can let down their emotional defenses and talk openly and authentically about what’s really going on in their lives, warts and all.
“That was the part that surprised me the most — these support groups are really intimate,” he added. “Sharing things like ‘I may look like the perfect father, but my kids are on heroin,’ or whatever. Even by Zoom, they’re getting to the same level of intimacy within one or two sessions because there’s such a hunger for that.”
Ornish calls that part of his program “Love More.” He answers skeptics who wonder why intimacy is such an integral part of a plan to reverse disease by pointing to studies on people who are lonely, depressed or isolated.
Those people are “three to 10 times more likely to get sick and die prematurely from pretty much everything” when compared with people who say they have a sense of love, connection and community, Ornish maintained.
“Why? In part because you’re more likely to smoke, overeat, stop exercising and other unhealthy things when you’re feeling lonely and depressed,” Ornish said.
Impact on other chronic diseases
By 1993, insurance giant Mutual of Omaha began reimbursing policyholders for the cost of Ornish’s program, making it the first alternative therapy besides chiropractic to win insurance reimbursement. Medicare began covering lifestyle interventions for heart disease in 2006.
“And in October 2021 Medicare agreed to cover my reversing heart disease program when it’s done via Zoom, which is really a game changer,” Ornish said. “Now we can reach people at home, in rural areas and food deserts wherever they live, which will help reduce health inequities and health disparities.”
In the last two decades, Ornish’s research has shown the same four-part program can lower blood sugars and heart disease risk for patients with diabetes, reduce prostate cancer cell growth, improve depression within 12 weeks, reduce “bad cholesterol” by an average of 40%, and more.
“With all this interest in personalized medicine, just how is it that these same lifestyle changes stop, and often reverse, the progression of such a wide spectrum of the most common and costly chronic diseases?” Ornish asked.
“Because they all share the same underlying biological mechanisms: chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, changes in the microbiome, changes in gene expression, overstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system, changes in immune function and so on,” he said.
“And in turn, each one of these is directly influenced by what we eat, how we respond to stress, how much exercise we get and how much love and support we have,” Ornish said.
Those lifestyle improvements likely change the body at a cellular level, he said. A 2008 study found the Ornish program affected some 500 genes in the body via epigenetics, chemical reactions that can activate or dismantle how a gene is expressed.
“After just three months on the Ornish lifestyle program, the research found a number of genes that regulate or prevent disease are turned on, and genes that cause many of the mechanisms that cause all these different conditions are turned off,” Ornish said.
“You’re not technically changing your genes, but you’re changing the expression of those genes with chemical switches, turning them on or off,” he said. “So, that means it’s no longer all in our genes, making us victims of our genetic fate. We’re not victims. There’s a lot we can do.”
Ornish lifestyle interventions have also been shown to lengthen telomeres, the tips of chromosomes that control longevity and shorten as we age. Ornish did a 2013 pilot study with UC San Francisco biochemist Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for her work on telomeres.
“We found that telomerase, the enzyme that repairs and lengthens telomeres, increased by 30% after just three months on the program,” Ornish said. “Then we found that people who had been on the program for five years had telomeres that were about 10% longer, a sign that aging is being reversed on the cellular level.”
Will these same lifestyle interventions be enough to slow or even reverse cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s and other dementias? Time will tell. Ornish’s study is still underway, and while preliminary results appear promising, all the data must be gathered, analyzed and peer-reviewed before an outcome can be reported.
“But I believe that it’s not one diet and lifestyle intervention for heart disease, another for diabetes or prostate cancer, and yet a different one for Alzheimer’s. It’s really the same for all these different conditions,” Ornish told CNN.
“To reverse the disease, you need to follow the interventions nearly 100%. If you’re just trying to prevent disease, then the more you change, the more you improve. But what matters most is your overall way of eating, living and loving so that we can all die young as old as possible.”
COVID symptom: Study shows loss of smell due to COVID could be reversed
Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University are developing a treatment for people who have lost their smell due to COVID-19.
What is anosmia? Anosmia is known as loss or change of smell and it can alter or take away the taste of food. The issue can lead to a loss of interest in food, which could potentially lead to other health problems, according to WebMD.
- A study published by the JAMA Network shows that 1.5 million people in the U.S. have experienced the long-term loss of smell after being infected with COVID-19.
What causes loss of smell? When infected, the coronavirus does not actually attack the nerve cells that detect the smell. However, the virus attacks the supporting cells that are lining the nasal cavity.
- The infected cells shed and die, as immune cells rush to the area to fight the virus. The inflammation of cells blocks the smell receptors from functioning properly, according to a study published in Cell.
How is it being treated? Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University are using platelet-rich plasma as a restorative therapy to regenerate olfactory cells.
- The process dissolves plasma from a patient’s blood and then implants it into the nose. The goal is to repair the cells that might have been damaged due to a COVID-19 infection, stated ABC News.
- The process is administered in monthly applications for a minimum of three months. The research is currently in the first phase, the scientists involved are planning to expand the research to focus on patients who are experiencing long-term loss of smell due to COVID-19, according to Jefferson University.
Does it work? Although the research is in an early phase, participants are reporting an improvement in symptoms.
- “Losing my smell and taste from COVID has been life-changing. I felt like I was missing a part of myself. … Fortunately, the treatments provided by Thomas Jefferson University Hospital are improving my symptoms and showing signs of progress. For the first time in a long time, I have hope for getting my life back to normal,” said Nancy A. Damato, a participant in the study.
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Dementia’s early signs could be reversed by a good social life, study finds
Early signs of dementia could be reversed by a good social life, study finds
- People who spend face-to-face time with friends and family, attend classes, volunteer or attend religious services may see brain function return to normal
- This can happen even if they’d started deteriorating years before – which is good news for those whose memory and processing skills declined during lockdown
- Lead researcher Ming Wen, of University of Utah, US, said she was happily surprised by the findings
A better social life could reverse memory problems in people with early signs of dementia, research suggests.
People who spend face-to-face time with friends and family, attend classes or groups, volunteer or attend religious services may see their brain function return to normal.
This can happen even if they had started deteriorating years before – which is good news for those whose memory and processing skills declined during lockdown.
Researchers analysed the brain function, lifestyles and social lives of nearly 2,200 Americans aged 62 to 90, including 972 people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) – often a precursor to dementia.
A better social life could reverse memory problems in people with early signs of dementia, research suggests. People who spend face-to-face time with friends and family, attend classes or groups, volunteer or attend religious services may see their brain function return to normal. (File photo)
Five years later, they found 22 per cent of participants with MCI had improved to such an extent their brain function was now considered normal.
Another 12 per cent had declined into dementia and 66 per cent stayed the same. Those with higher levels of social activity were most likely to have improved.
Lead researcher Ming Wen, of the University of Utah, US, said she was happily surprised by the findings.
‘Most people would think that this is a one-way direction, once you are cognitively impaired there’s no way to come back,’ she said after presenting the research at the Alzheimer’s UK Research Conference in Brighton this week.
‘But we found that even if you were cognitively impaired five years ago, if you actively participate in social interactions – activities such as volunteering, meeting with friends, socialising, attending religious services – then possibly a proportion of these people will get better and become normal again, which is really exciting.’
Increasing social activity by as little as one event per year could improve a person’s likelihood of reversing brain decline by up to 41 per cent, the findings suggested.
Researchers analysed the brain function, lifestyles and social lives of nearly 2,200 Americans aged 62 to 90, including 972 people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) – often a precursor to dementia. (File photo)
‘Anything is better than nothing,’ Professor Wen added. But the more regular activity a person was involved in, the stronger the effect.
Having close social relationships was also linked to a protective effect against developing full dementia, although it did not appear to be connected to improving someone’s chances of reversing MCI.
The research took into account exercise levels, whether participants smoked or drank, if they worked, their age, sex, ethnicity and socio-economic background.
Because of the way the study was carried out, it was unclear whether those whose brain health improved had increased or maintained their levels of social activity over the five-year period.
The research has not yet been published or peer reviewed.
Commenting on the study, Dr Susan Kohlhaas, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: ‘We know keeping connected is a pillar of good brain health and that mid-life is increasingly being identified as a key time in people’s lives when we can act… Further research is needed to delve deeper into [the study’s] findings.’
Making a few simple switches to a better diet could also help prevent dementia, research shows.
Eating ‘a healthy UK diet with a few added extras’ – including more nuts, beans and pulses and using olive oil for cooking – could improve memory and brain function within six months, according to research at the University of East Anglia which was also presented at Alzheimer’s UK’s Research Conference.