This is the authentic voice of an old woman who hopes she has learned some things to share. It is about transformation. It is becoming our true selves. It is finally about returning to Oneness.
It is also about writing and recovery.
Writing Prompt: What Kind of Forest Are You Growing? by Matilda Butler, July 6, 2010
Post #50 In Women's Memoirs, written and published by Kendra Bonnett
I was thrilled to meet Kendra Bonnett on LinkedIn and to be introduced to her valuable, helpful and insightful publication, "Women's Memoirs." It was more of the synchrodestiny that has been working in my life so much lately. For about a year, I had been considering doing a funked up, loose and as creative as I could get it, scrapbooked memoir of what I choose to recall and want to remember about the last 60 years.
Then Kendra introduced herself and her publication to me. She writes from her heart, and I've noticed most of the other writers on her Web site do too.
I learned, too, that there are groups of people who focus just on scrapbooking their memoirs in new and unique ways. I read articles about how to go about writing one's memoirs, and was introduced to a long list of blogs that focus on memoir writing and creating memoirs.
I am juiced in it this whole thing now. I believe I will scrapbook my lifetime with the help of all the great helpful articles and how-to-do-it pages and blogs. I'll also do a lot of journaling and blogging on the photos, collages, and art-journaled pages.
I found a Time-Life pictorial book on the Fifties and Sixties and I'm hot to trot. I have to preserve the scenes and poster images of my various ages somewhere.
Anyhow this prompt is from "Women's Memoirs," and it sounds like so much fun and at the same time darkly moody and thought-provoking, which appeals to me. I am going to write my response here and hope it gets you started so you can e-mail me yours and prove how much better of a writer you are.
1. Imagine the type of forest you are growing. Then describe the trees. Are they tall or short? Lean or ample? Evergreen or deciduous? Does each have many branches or just a few?
2. Compare your life story to your forest. Do you think you’ve been too busy to plant trees? Imagine that you can take each year of your life and turn it into a tree.
3. Look forward 10 or 20 or 30 years. Write the stories that will become your best trees.
Have fun with this prompt. Too busy to write at the moment? Then spend a few minutes thinking about how the years go by, almost without notice. Resolve to plant and nurture your years so that the lifetime forest they produce can be enjoyed by others.
I found this brief description of my inspirational tree near a photo of several on Bing Images. The photo of the woman jumping for joy in her own private poplar forest was donated to the public domain by the photographer.
I. I had never seen, and I'm going to use a word here that has become a cliche due to sloppy and not carefully chosen overuse, but I have to say it, the "awesome" poplar tree before I traveled at age 19 to Ely, MN.
Ely is a mere 15 miles south of the Canadian border and we four camped for three months in the Superior National Forest in a renewing and replenishing experience that took two couples that were street jivin', burned out, cool unto death, hippie dopers on their way to alcoholism as well and transformed them into practically innocent naifs of the wilderness. We learned how to walk by only starlight and the moon's glow without bumping into every other tree in the forest. We learned how to catch, clean and cook the best fresh Walleye any of us had ever imagined. And we learned a respect for Nature that wasn't just idle hippie rapping and pretentious chit-chat.
We survived in rudely made lean-tos fashioned from house-painting plastic tarps, chemical pills to make the Kawishiwee River water drinkable, and dug out holes in the sandy soil to hold our food that needed refrigeration. I was particularly proud of learning how to bake bread on the top of a Coleman stove.
The sweet, pungent wafting fragrance of all the tall Pine trees gathered us into its loving presence like Grandma used to drape a soft, fluffy towel over our heads and faces as she had us breathe in the camphor spirits simmering in the hot water in the sink to help us breathe better. Sinuses were never clearer and air never felt more fresh and alive than in the Superior National Forest.
But the permeating Pine essence that crept into every cell of our lives brought with it an awareness of joyful living and an excitement about what natural miracles would expose themselves next. What could you expect other than miracles when the eerie, mysterious cry of a lone loon began and ended the day on the river.
But the first time I experienced the incredibly long and tall stand, up to 80 feet, of white-barked poplar trees I felt I had crossed through and entered a surreal paradise. The sunlit glaring and light reflecting whiteness of the bark of all those poplar trees majestically lined up as though for review by a king or queen jolted me into a deeper awareness, almost a psychic communication. It was the first time trees took on real life approaching humanity for me and I felt a psychic connection.
They stood with quivering silver leaves in their nearly militarily straight-lined rows. I sensed they were waiting for something. I wanted to find out their secret. I would sit and I would meditate with their expanding spirits. I would discover their true source and path to wisdom and sharing with humanity. I would wait with them.
"The most widely distributed tree in North America is a mystery. Called quaking aspen for the trembling of its leaves, it is anything but timorous or fragile. It is unfathomably ancient and enduring, approaching what has been called "theoretical immortality." It is a lifeform persisting over time without offspring, in suspended animation, waiting patiently through the dark passage of millennia for something we can only guess at." (http://arts.envirolink.org/literary_arts/DavidLukas.html) from "Aspens," by David Lukas
Your first inclination is to delicately pass a few fingers over its exposed white flesh. It looks and feels as though it has been skinned alive or stripped naked and defenseless and left vulnerable.
When you see initials or worse carved into its tender white flesh, you shudder at both its presumed loss of faith in man's love and appreciation for nature, and its sap-leaking painful wound and the scar that will long recall it. Its damaged, broken flesh is smooth and cool.
You feel like you are one of "them." The beings without roots. You are a human being and hence you have brought pain, degradation and corruption to the sacred spirit of God's tree.
Its double-sided faces on its leaves remind you of your own public and private masks. Their public persona shows healthy looking, dark-green glossy leaves. The slightest breeze reveals a definitely more private and rarer silvery white underside.
Yes, I do know what it is to have a glossy public persona who smiles through hurt sensitivities and zinged arrows that pierce self-esteem. While a private silvery moon-influenced resentment or sorrow is met with clenched teeth and hot rivers of tears that can be unleashed when no one is looking.
Here is a loving poem to my friend and co-conspirator, the Poplar. Titled simply "The Poplar" it is written by the Imagist Poet Richard Aldington.
The Poplar
WHY do you always stand there shivering
Between the white stream and the road?
The people pass through the dust
On bicycles, in carts, in motor-cars;
The wagoners go by at dawn;
The lovers walk on the grass path at night.
Stir from your roots, walk, poplar!
You are more beautiful than they are.
I know that the white wind loves you,
Is always kissing you and turning up
The white lining of your green petticoat.
The sky darts through you like blue rain,
And the grey rain drips on your flanks
And loves you.
And I have seen the moon
Slip his silver penny into your pocket
As you straightened your hair;
And the white mist curling and hesitating
Like a bashful lover about your knees.
I know you, poplar;
I have watched you since I was ten.
But if you had a little real love,
A little strength,
You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers
And go walking down the white road
Behind the wagoners.
There are beautiful beeches down beyond the hill.
Will you always stand there shivering?
I I. I stand shivering and sit crosslegged, shaking looking up, up and farther up. My three friends want to go a concert in New York in Woodstock. They say everyone will be there.
I want to stay in the woods with my poplars, pines, loon cries and yoga twice a day. I feel separated from these three humans, although one is my husband.
I feel alone but not lonely. I crave solitude. I want to hear the forest speaking, the waters of the River murmuring to me and the stars exploding in my consciousness. Why can't they drive away and leave me here? The Quivering Ash understand me. They will look out for me.
III. I love the poplars because they grow fast. One minute you are burning in the sun, and soon you are in their kind shade. I want to emulate their growth in my life. I have wasted too many years of my life.
My formative years were spent being wild, getting in trouble and getting beat by my abusive alcoholic parents who insisted that I watch their five younger kids, try to keep some order in Bedlam, and make good grades when I'd been up all night calling bars, begging them to come home. Then I had to stay up until dawn patrolling the couches and chairs for fear they'd drop a cigarette and burn down the house.
My teen years were more of the same except with more "love"/addiction to someone who needed me more than I needed him. I wanted to get the hell out of the house.
He convinced me that no one in my whole life would ever love me as much as he did. So we got married at 18 and drove off to Haight-Ashbury to see about living in a commune.
He became mentally ill from too much LSD or bad drugs, and I flew home, hoping to just forget about the whole bogus marriage. Unfortunately, I had to waste several more years supporting this grandiose husband who believed he was going to be a famous rock star and that my purpose in life was to support him doing secretarial work while he worked on "Making It Big." What Bullshit! How could I have fallen for such pablum!
When I was 23, things finally picked up. We split up and I moved to Carbondale, IL (and got off the freakin' farm) and went to college finally. I had desperately wanted to attend college, but always believed we couldn't afford it. I read in the local newspaper, The Southern Illinoisian, that now with the Democrats in office (this was early Seventies), things were opening up and were possible. I got loans and grants. I went from welfare to college and I was over my head in wonder and excitement.
So my life was then growing like the poplars. I grew tall in a short period of time. I thrived on reading Shakespeare, old, modern and contemporary writers and poets, plays, writing short stories and poetry, reading literature from around the world. I even enjoyed Earth Science, Nutrition and logic, which I took out of curiosity.
Like the poplar though, I made horrible wood to burn in the fireplace. I became president of National Lambda Delta, the National Honorary Scholastic Society for Freshman Women. I won scholarships and was given no-strings grants to use as I choose. I fell in love with a Ph.D. psychologist who became the love of my life. His area of specialization, ironically, was alcoholism. He understood me well.
My white barkless skin was vulnerable and my leaves blew sterling in the breezes, but still I shot up tall. Then I started playing with matches and combustants. I gave up some street drugs so I could study, but stupidly took the initial steps into the dreaded family disease.
I lived for club and bar life and was rarely sober. Sometimes I had to drop out of school for semesters at a time. I took incompletes in courses where I was making A's because I didn't want to write a final thesis or study for a final exam. Couldn't focus, man.
A year later, I watched the grades for class after class turn into F's from what should have been A's.
It goes on. It got worse. Finally I dropped out of school for years. The love of my life, the psychologist, drowned. I fell into a abyss and stayed in that hole for years, but I did crawl out enough to get sober with help from others and a power greater than myself.
More time wasted during these lost and then recovering years. But there was nothing without recovery. Nothing much else got done.
Years later I returned to classes at the U. of I-Chicago and got my degree. I got a job in writing and editing for a magazine. My life made sense. I was growing again.
I like it that poplar trees live a good long time. I am 60 now and have 256 goals, 25 intentions to live by, a notebook full of daily synchronicities or coincidences that help me understand what direction I'm headed and what I should do next. I have a business to start, a second book to write, and much more.
In a couple of months I will take on my fall colors and believe more than ever that there is a time and a season for all things, especially beginnings. Fall fills me with desire to create something beautiful with my life. I want to contribute to our united evolution by beginning with my own. I want to learn compassion so that it passes through me as easily as air. I want to achieve higher consciousness and help others find their own if they need a hand.
I will be bursting then, as I almost am now, with desires, goals, dreams, creative juices and the golden results of daily prayer, spiritual journaling and meditation. I am a quivering Ash. I quiver with excitement about what the long future brings today and day by day.
One more thing, I want to heal: Poplars, "The juice of poplar leaves, dropped into the ears, assuages the pain; and the buds contus'd, and mixed with honey, is a good collyrium for the eyes; as the unguent to refrigerate and cause sleep." (http://www.oldandsold.com/articles11/trees-14.shtml)
Oh to be restful, be calming and restore sleep to those from who it has fled!
Finally, this seems as good as place as any to drop in something synchronicity brought me this week from one of my heroes, the Dalai Lama:
Twenty Good Karma Notes from The Dalai Lama
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R's:
- Respect for self,
- Respect for others and
- Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
20. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
Newswise — Vitamin D deficiency is highly prevalent in patients with Type 2 diabetes and may be associated with poor blood sugar control, according to a new study. The results will be presented Saturday at The Endocrine Society’s 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego.
“This finding supports an active role of vitamin D in the development of Type 2 diabetes,” said study co-author Esther Krug, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an endocrinologist at Sinai Hospital, Baltimore.
Krug and her colleagues reviewed the medical charts of 124 patients with Type 2 diabetes who came to an endocrine outpatient clinic for specialty care from 2003 to 2008. Patients’ age ranged from 36 to 89 years. All patients had a single measurement of their serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels as part of their evaluation at the clinic. The researchers divided the patients into quartiles based on vitamin D level.
Despite receiving regular primary care visits before referral to the endocrine clinic, 91 percent of patients had either vitamin D deficiency (defined as a level below 15 nanograms per deciliter, or ng/dL) or insufficiency (15 to 31 ng/dL), the authors reported. Only about 6 percent of patients were taking vitamin D supplements at their first visit.
Additionally, the investigators found an inverse relationship between the patients’ blood levels of vitamin D and their hemoglobin A1c value, a measure of blood sugar control over the past several months. Lower vitamin D levels were discovered in patients with higher average blood sugars as measured by HbA1c, Krug said. Compared with whites, blacks had a higher average A1c and lower average vitamin D level.
“Since primary care providers diagnose and treat most patients with Type 2 diabetes, screening and vitamin D supplementation as part of routine primary care may improve health outcomes of this highly prevalent condition,” she said.
Newswise — A new survey shows that diabetic individuals who live in a hot climate have important gaps in their “heat awareness,” or knowledge about proper diabetes self-care in hot weather, even though diabetes raises their risk of heat illness. The results of “Diabetes in the Desert: What Do Patients Know About the Heat?” will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society’s 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego.
Researchers from Mayo Clinic in Arizona, in collaboration with the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, surveyed patients at a Phoenix diabetes clinic and analyzed 152 surveys. Responses showed that people living with diabetes in hot climates need increased awareness of how heat affects their disease, said lead researcher Adrienne Nassar, MD, third-year medical resident at Mayo Clinic.
“People with diabetes have an impaired ability to sweat, which predisposes them to heat-related illness, as do uncontrolled, high blood sugars,” Nassar said. “Many patients surveyed had suboptimal glycemic control during the summer, possibly increasing their risk of dehydration.”
Past research shows that during hot weather people with diabetes have an increased number of emergency room visits, hospitalizations and deaths due to heat illness.
Yet one in five survey respondents said they would not take precautions until temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. “Heat illness can take place at 80 to 90 degrees when you factor in the heat index,” Nassar said.
Only about half of the patients knew the definition of the heat index—the combination of air temperature and humidity. High humidity makes heat more dangerous because it slows the evaporation of perspiration, the way the body cools itself.
Heat also can harm the effectiveness of diabetes medications and supplies. “Oral medications as well as insulin have a therapeutic temperature range above which they lose efficacy,” Nassar said. The drug’s package insert includes information about proper temperatures for storage.
Although 73 percent of respondents had received information about the harmful effect of heat on insulin, fewer knew about the adverse effects of heat on their oral diabetes medications (39 percent) and on glucose meters (41 percent) and glucose test strips (38 percent).
Even when survey respondents knew that they should protect their diabetes medications and glucose-testing supplies from heat, an alarming proportion—37 percent—chose to leave them at home rather than risk heat exposure.
“If they are unable to check their blood sugars while they are away from home, that’s unsafe,” Nassar said.
“Increasingly more people with diabetes are living in places characterized by hot weather. Patient education focusing on diabetes management in hot climates is needed,” she said.
Newswise — A diet rich in natural antioxidants improves insulin sensitivity in insulin-resistant obese adults and enhances the effect of the insulin-sensitizing drug metformin, a preliminary study from Italy finds. The results will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society’s 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego.
“The beneficial effects of antioxidants are known, but we have revealed for the first time one of their biological bases of action—improving hormonal action in obese subjects with the metabolic syndrome,” said principal author Antonio Mancini, MD, an endocrinology researcher at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome.
The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of metabolic risk factors for developing diabetes, heart disease and stroke. People with this syndrome cannot efficiently use insulin, the hormone that regulates glucose (sugar) in the blood.
Some evidence exists that oxidative stress may play a role in the metabolic syndrome, according to Mancini. Oxidative stress, a biochemical mechanism which can lead to damage to blood particles and to cells, results from an imbalance between an excessive amount of oxidants and decreased antioxidant defenses. Oxidative stress also plays a part in aging.
Antioxidants, which are found naturally in fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts, include vitamins E and C, selenium and carotenoids, such as beta-carotene. Past research shows that antioxidants can prevent oxidative damage to cells and in some cases also help repair damage.
Mancini and his colleagues studied the effects of dietary antioxidants on insulin resistance, with partial financial support from MIUR, the Italian Department for University and Research. The study included 16 men and 13 women, ages 18 to 66 years, who were obese and insulin-resistant, but were not yet diabetic.
The researchers randomly assigned the subjects to one of four treatment groups. All groups ate a low-calorie, Mediterranean-type diet averaging 1,500 calories daily, containing only 25 percent from protein foods, with the rest made up of low-glycemic-index carbohydrates (carbs that do not raise blood sugar levels quickly or greatly, such as whole grains). Group A only ate this kind of diet, and group B ate the same diet plus took the drug metformin. For groups C and D, the researchers prescribed a diet enriched in antioxidant, with a calculated intake, 800 to 1,000 milligrams a day, coming from fruits and vegetables, but group D also took metformin.
Despite similar weight loss in all the groups, only the two groups receiving the antioxidant diet (groups C and D) had a significant decrease in insulin resistance, the authors reported. Group D had the best improvement in insulin resistance on some measures of insulin response to an oral glucose tolerance test, according to the abstract.
Subjects reported no adverse effects from the antioxidant diet, Mancini said. When asked about the risk of adding more antioxidants to a diet, he stated, “We think that a total antioxidant level of 800 to 1,000 milligrams a day is safe and probably not close to the maximum tolerable level.”
Newswise — A diet rich in natural antioxidants improves insulin sensitivity in insulin-resistant obese adults and enhances the effect of the insulin-sensitizing drug metformin, a preliminary study from Italy finds. The results will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society’s 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego.
“The beneficial effects of antioxidants are known, but we have revealed for the first time one of their biological bases of action—improving hormonal action in obese subjects with the metabolic syndrome,” said principal author Antonio Mancini, MD, an endocrinology researcher at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome.
The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of metabolic risk factors for developing diabetes, heart disease and stroke. People with this syndrome cannot efficiently use insulin, the hormone that regulates glucose (sugar) in the blood.
Some evidence exists that oxidative stress may play a role in the metabolic syndrome, according to Mancini. Oxidative stress, a biochemical mechanism which can lead to damage to blood particles and to cells, results from an imbalance between an excessive amount of oxidants and decreased antioxidant defenses. Oxidative stress also plays a part in aging.
Antioxidants, which are found naturally in fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts, include vitamins E and C, selenium and carotenoids, such as beta-carotene. Past research shows that antioxidants can prevent oxidative damage to cells and in some cases also help repair damage.
Mancini and his colleagues studied the effects of dietary antioxidants on insulin resistance, with partial financial support from MIUR, the Italian Department for University and Research. The study included 16 men and 13 women, ages 18 to 66 years, who were obese and insulin-resistant, but were not yet diabetic.
The researchers randomly assigned the subjects to one of four treatment groups. All groups ate a low-calorie, Mediterranean-type diet averaging 1,500 calories daily, containing only 25 percent from protein foods, with the rest made up of low-glycemic-index carbohydrates (carbs that do not raise blood sugar levels quickly or greatly, such as whole grains). Group A only ate this kind of diet, and group B ate the same diet plus took the drug metformin. For groups C and D, the researchers prescribed a diet enriched in antioxidant, with a calculated intake, 800 to 1,000 milligrams a day, coming from fruits and vegetables, but group D also took metformin.
Despite similar weight loss in all the groups, only the two groups receiving the antioxidant diet (groups C and D) had a significant decrease in insulin resistance, the authors reported. Group D had the best improvement in insulin resistance on some measures of insulin response to an oral glucose tolerance test, according to the abstract.
Subjects reported no adverse effects from the antioxidant diet, Mancini said. When asked about the risk of adding more antioxidants to a diet, he stated, “We think that a total antioxidant level of 800 to 1,000 milligrams a day is safe and probably not close to the maximum tolerable level.”
A diet rich in natural antioxidants improves insulin sensitivity in insulin-resistant obese adults and enhances the effect of the insulin-sensitizing drug metformin, a preliminary study from Italy finds. The results will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society’s 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego. “The beneficial effects of antioxidants are known, but we have revealed for the first time one of their biological bases of action—improving hormonal action in obese subjects with the metabolic syndrome,” said principal author Antonio Mancini, MD, an endocrinology researcher at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome. The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of metabolic risk factors for developing diabetes, heart disease and stroke. People with this syndrome cannot efficiently use insulin, the hormone that regulates glucose (sugar) in the blood. Some evidence exists that oxidative stress may play a role in the metabolic syndrome, according to Mancini. Oxidative stress, a bioc
Newswise — Fructose, the sugar widely used as high-fructose corn syrup in soft drinks and processed foods, often gets some of the blame for the widespread rise in obesity. Now a laboratory study has found that when fructose is present as children’s fat cells mature, it makes more of these cells mature into fat cells in belly fat and less able to respond to insulin in both belly fat and fat located below the skin.
The results will be presented Sunday at The Endocrine Society’s 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego by lead author Georgina Coade, a PhD student at the University of Bristol in the U.K.
“Our results suggest that high levels of fructose, which may result from eating a diet high in fructose, throughout childhood may lead to an increase in visceral [abdominal] obesity, which is associated with increased cardiometabolic risk,” Coade said.
Defined by a large waistline, abdominal obesity raises the risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. The abdominal cavity contains one of two major types of fat in the body: visceral fat. The other type, subcutaneous fat, is found below the surface of the skin.
Although researchers have shown the negative effects of fructose on the fat distribution of rodents, the effects of this sugar on human adipocytes, or fat cells, are not clear, according to Coade. Therefore, she and her fellow researchers studied biopsy specimens of both subcutaneous and visceral fat from 32 healthy-weight children who had not yet gone through puberty.
From the biopsy samples, the investigators obtained preadipocytes—the precursors to fat cells that have the potential to differentiate, or mature, into fat-containing adipocytes. They then allowed the precursor cells to mature for 14 days in culture media containing normal glucose (the main sugar found in the bloodstream and the principal source of energy in the body), high glucose or high fructose. The researchers assessed cell differentiation by measuring activity of an enzyme (GPDH) and the abundance of the adipocyte fatty acid binding protein, which are both present only in mature fat cells.
Fructose, the research team found, had different effects to that of glucose and caused the fat cells to differentiate more—that is, to form more mature fat cells—but only in visceral fat.
For both types of fat cells, maturation in fructose decreased the cells’ insulin sensitivity, which is the ability to successfully take up glucose from the bloodstream into fat and muscles. Decreased insulin sensitivity is a characteristic of Type 2 diabetes.
Although prolonged exposure to fructose had a negative effect on insulin sensitivity, when Coade and her co-workers exposed mature fat cells, rather than preadipocytes, to fructose for 48 hours, the cells’ insulin sensitivity increased. The reason why is unknown. However, she said, “Fructose alters the behavior of human fat cells if it is present as the fat cells mature. We can maybe compare this [timing] to periods in children when they are making their fat.”
The London-based organization Diabetes UK helped fund this study.
Fructose, the sugar widely used as high-fructose corn syrup in soft drinks and processed foods, often gets some of the blame for the widespread rise in obesity. Now a laboratory study has found that when fructose is present as children’s fat cells mature, it makes more of these cells mature into fat cells in belly fat and less able to respond to insulin in both belly fat and fat located below the skin.
Newswise — More than 20 percent of deaths in a study of 12,000 Bangladeshis were attributable to arsenic exposure from contaminated drinking water, new research reports.
The large 10-year study is the first to prospectively measure the relationship between individual exposure to arsenic and its associated mortality risk, the authors said. The data, collected by an international team from Chicago, New York, and Bangladesh, will be published early online Saturday in The Lancet.
Since the widespread installation of hand-pumped wells to tap groundwater sources in the 1970's, as many as 77 million people - about half the population of Bangladesh - have been accidentally exposed to dangerous levels of arsenic. The World Health Organization calls the exposure "the largest mass poisoning of a population in history."
The Health Effects of Arsenic Longitudinal Study (HEALS) was led by Habibul Ahsan, MD, MMedSc, Director of the Center for Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Arsenic levels from well drinking-water and repeated biennial urine samples of 12,000 subjects were associated with deaths in that population over the last decade.
For the 25 percent of people exposed to the highest levels of arsenic, mortality risk increased by nearly 70 percent, the study determined. People exposed to moderate levels of the poisonous chemical also exhibited increased deaths from chronic disease, relative to those whose exposure was within WHO recommendations of 10 parts per million.
"The results of this study have important public health implications for arsenic in drinking water," the authors write. The exposure levels studied are "similar to other populations that have low-level arsenic exposure."
Arsenic is known to be a potent carcinogen and toxic to organs such as the liver, skin, kidney and the cardiovascular system. But previous studies assessing the effects of long-term drinking-water exposure to arsenic have lacked resolution, relying upon retrospective analysis and estimations of exposure on a group, rather than individual, level.
The HEALS project sought to improve upon this body of research with a prospective study, actively monitoring exposure levels in a large set of individual Bangladeshis. Nearly 12,000 subjects were recruited and tested for baseline arsenic levels in drinking water and urine between 2000 and 2002, then underwent follow-up tests approximately every 2 years thereafter.
"We set up this study to measure health effects based on individual level data so that other factors or biases that may affect our study findings were much less likely," Ahsan said. "This allowed us to examine disease quite reasonably in a more accurate way."
The collection of so many samples was no simple task. More than 100 staff members traveled to remote Bangladesh villages by foot, car, or boat to collect samples from subjects and measure arsenic levels in the water from local wells. Millions of such wells were installed by global health organizations in the 1970's to provide a supposedly cleaner source of water than that available from dirty rivers and streams.
"In Bangladesh, waterborne illnesses have gone down in the last 2 to 3 decades," Ahsan said. "Unfortunately, there is now this new problem affecting them."
While a quarter of the study's population was within the WHO-determined safe range of 10 µg/L, the upper quartile was exposed to 27 times that amount on average. Those individuals were found to be 68 percent more likely to die from a chronic disease over the time period studied, compared to individuals with exposure less than 10 µg/L, after controlling for other factors such as sex, age, body mass, blood pressure and smoking.
Subjects with moderate arsenic exposure were at a smaller yet still elevated risk of mortality. When the entire population exposed to arsenic levels above the WHO guideline was combined, 21.4 percent of all deaths and 23.5 percent of deaths from chronic disease could be attributed to arsenic exposure, the authors wrote.
An ongoing expansion of the HEALS project to 20,000 subjects hopes to clarify the deleterious effects of the lower doses, which are similar to the levels found in the groundwater of some regions in the United States, Argentina, Mexico and other countries.
"With a larger population, we can make much more definitive conclusions on whether this low dose exposure between 10 to 150 micrograms that some US populations have been exposed to are indeed deleterious, increasing cancer or even deaths," Ahsan said.
The study found no reduction in mortality risk for subjects with high baseline arsenic levels that were subsequently lowered in follow-up measurements. That suggests that the effects of chronic exposure to high levels of arsenic are not reduced even when the individual is given access to cleaner drinking water – at least not during the time surveyed by the study.
"This says that further exposure to arsenic for those individuals already exposed needs to be reduced immediately if possible," Ahsan said. "Unfortunately in a developing country such as Bangladesh, the real solution of replacing the source of drinking water from contaminated to safe water sources for 50 million people is quite a task. What is needed is for the government and international community to deal with that challenge."
The paper, "Arsenic exposure from drinking water, and all-cause and chronic-disease mortalities in Bangladesh (HEALS): a prospective cohort study," will be published online Saturday by The Lancet. Other authors include Maria Argos, Tara Kalra, Paul J. Rathouz, and Brandon Pierce of the University of Chicago; Faruque Parvez, Vesna Slavkovich, Alexander van Geen, and Joseph Graziano of Columbia University; Yu Chen of New York University; and Tariqul Islam, Alauddin Ahmed, Muhammad Rakibuz-Zaman, Rabiul Hasan, Golam Sarwar of the University of Chicago Research Office in Bangladesh. Funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health.
More than 20 percent of deaths in a study of 12,000 Bangladeshis were attributable to arsenic exposure from contaminated drinking water, new research reports. The large 10-year study is the first to prospectively measure the relationship between individual exposure to arsenic and its associated mortality risk.
Newswise — Patients who had experienced a heart attack and lowered their blood homocysteine levels with folic acid and vitamin B12 supplementation did not have an associated lower risk of heart attack, coronary death or stroke, according to a study in the June 23/30 issue of JAMA. However, the researchers did find that folic acid supplementation did not increase the risk of cancer, which has been speculated.
Blood homocysteine levels are positively associated with cardiovascular disease, but it is uncertain whether the association is causal, according to background information in the article. A meta-analysis of prospective studies indicated that, after adjustment for known risk factors, a 25 percent lower than usual homocysteine concentration was associated with an 11 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease and 19 percent lower risk of stroke. “Daily supplementation with folic acid typically lowers homocysteine levels by about 25 percent, and the addition of vitamin B12 lowers it by a further 7 percent,” the authors write. Other research has suggested supplementation with folic acid may offer a protective effect against stroke.
Jane M. Armitage, F.R.C.P., of the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and colleagues with the Study of the Effectiveness of Additional Reductions In Cholesterol and Homocysteine (SEARCH) trial assessed the effects of lowering homocysteine levels with folic acid plus vitamin B12 in 12,064 survivors of myocardial infarction (heart attack) in secondary care hospitals in the United Kingdom between 1998 and 2008. Patients were randomized to receive either 2 mg. folic acid plus 1 mg. vitamin B12 daily or matching placebos. The primary outcomes measured included first major vascular event, defined as major coronary event (coronary death, heart attack, or coronary revascularization), fatal or nonfatal stroke, or noncoronary revascularization.
Patients who received the study vitamins reduced homocysteine by an average of 3.8 µmol/L (28 percent). During 6.7 years of follow-up, major vascular events occurred in 1,537 of 6,033 participants (25.5 percent) allocated folic acid plus vitamin B12 vs. 1,493 of 6,031 participants (24.8 percent) allocated placebo. “There was no evidence of any benefit beginning to emerge with more prolonged treatment and follow-up,” the authors write.
Receipt of study vitamins also was not associated with a significant effect on any stroke (vitamins, 4.5 percent vs. placebo, 4.4 percent); noncoronary revascularizations (vitamins, 3.0 percent vs. placebo, 2.5 percent); or major coronary events (vitamins, 20.4 percent vs. placebo, 19.6 percent). There were no apparent differences in the numbers of deaths attributed to vascular causes or nonvascular causes.
New primary cancers (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) were diagnosed in 11.2 percent of the participants allocated folic acid plus vitamin B12 vs. 10.6 percent allocated placebo, with this difference not being significant.
“Taken together with the previous homocysteine-lowering trials, the results of SEARCH indicate that folic acid supplementation has no significant adverse effects on cancer or other major health outcomes, even if it also produces no beneficial effects on cardiovascular disease. In addition, these results highlight the importance of focusing on drug treatments (e.g., aspirin, statins, and antihypertensive therapy) and lifestyle changes (in particular, stopping smoking and avoiding excessive weight gain) that are of proven benefit, rather than lowering homocysteine with folic acid-based vitamin supplements, for the prevention of cardiovascular disease,” the authors conclude.
(JAMA. 2010;303[24]:2486-2494. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org)
Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Patients who had experienced a heart attack and lowered their blood homocysteine levels with folic acid and vitamin B12 supplementation did not have an associated lower risk of heart attack, coronary death or stroke, according to a study in the June 23/30 issue of JAMA. However, the researchers did find that folic acid supplementation did not increase the risk of cancer, which has been speculated.
Newswise — For individuals 65 years of age and older, obesity, excess body fat around the waist and gaining weight after the age of 50 are associated with an increased risk of diabetes, according to a study in the June 23/30 issue of JAMA.
“Incidence of diabetes in the United States has doubled in the past 15 years, and is highest among adults 65 to 79 years of age. Approximately 70 percent of U.S. men and women 60 years of age and older are overweight or obese [BMI - body mass index 25 or greater]. Adiposity [body fat] is a well-recognized risk factor for type 2 diabetes among young and middle-aged adults, however, the relationships between different measures of body composition and diabetes in older adults [65 years of age or older] are not well described,” the authors write.
Mary L. Biggs, Ph.D., of the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues examined the relationship between measures of overall body fat, fat distribution, changes in these measures, and diabetes risk among 4,193 men and women 65 years of age and older. Measures of adiposity were determined when participants entered the study, and repeated 3 years later. The incidence of diabetes was ascertained based on use of antidiabetic medication or a fasting blood glucose level of 126 mg/dL or greater.
Over a median (midpoint) follow-up of 12.4 years, 339 new cases of diabetes were diagnosed among the study participants. The researchers found that BMI at baseline, BMI at 50 years of age, weight, fat mass, waist circumference, waist-hip ratio, and waist-height ratio were all strongly related to the risk of diabetes. “For each measure, there was a graded increase in the risk of diabetes with increasing quintiles of adiposity. Participants in the highest category of adiposity had an approximately 2- to 6-fold increased risk of developing diabetes compared with those in the lowest category. We found no evidence of significant statistical interaction by sex or race,” the authors write.
Also, compared with participants whose weight remained stable (plus or minus 4.4 lbs.) over the time period, those who gained 20 lbs. or more between the age of 50 years and study entry had an approximately 3-fold greater risk of developing diabetes during follow-up, regardless of their BMI at 50 years of age. Participants who were obese (BMI 30 or greater) at 50 years of age and who experienced the most weight gain (more than 20 lbs.) between the age of 50 years and study entry had 5 times the risk of developing diabetes compared with weight-stable participants with normal BMI (less than 25) at 50 years of age.
The researchers also found that participants in the highest categories of both BMI and waist circumference had more than 4 times the risk of those in the lowest category of both measures. Participants with a greater than 4 inch increase in waist size from baseline to the third follow-up visit had a 70 percent higher risk of type 2 diabetes compared with those who gained or lost 0.8 inches or less.
“Results of this study affirm the importance of maintaining optimal weight during middle age for prevention of diabetes and, while requiring confirmation, suggest that weight control remains important in reducing diabetes risk among adults 65 years of age and older,” the authors conclude.
(JAMA. 2010;303[24]:2504-2512. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org)
Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
For individuals 65 years of age and older, obesity, excess body fat around the waist and gaining weight after the age of 50 are associated with an increased risk of diabetes, according to a study in the June 23/30 issue of JAMA.
Newswise — In research led by a Saint Louis University investigator, molecular biologists have discovered a way to harness the enzyme thrombin’s anti-blood clotting properties. The finding opens the door to new medications that will treat diseases related to thrombosis, the presence of blood clots in blood vessels, which is responsible for nearly a third of all deaths in the U.S.
“Thrombosis is one of the most prevalent causes of fatal disease,” said lead researcher Enrico Di Cera, M.D., chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. “If we could develop an anti-thrombotic drug that didn’t carry a risk of hemorrhage, it would revolutionize the treatment of cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S. and Western world.
“This research carries us closer to that goal.”
Blood clotting has long ensured our survival, stopping blood loss after an injury. On the other hand, if triggered in the wrong conditions, clotting can lead to debilitating or fatal conditions like heart attack, stroke and deep vein thrombosis.
Funded by the National Institutes of Health, and published in the June 18, 2010 edition of The Journal of Biological Chemistry (Vol. 285. No. 25), researchers zeroed in on thrombin, a vitamin K-dependent enzyme key to blood coagulation.
An unusual enzyme, thrombin performs distinct and even opposing functions, acting as a pro-coagulant, pro-thrombotic but also as an anti-coagulant factor depending on which target protein – fibrinogen, PAR1 or protein C – becomes activated in the blood. Researchers studied thrombin to decipher the structure-function code that enables this protein to do so many different things.
Tackling this problem far below the level of tissue and organs, molecular biologists looked deep inside the structure, examining thrombin’s amino acids to note how they behave and interact with each other.
Using protein engineering, researchers produced mutations in the enzyme’s amino acid sequence, carefully taking out pieces and replacing them, a few at a time, to find the exact locations that influence the function of thrombin. Once they found these “hot spots,” researchers went even further – trying each of the 20 natural amino acids to see which mutation would allow them to turn on and off the pro-coagulant, pro-thrombotic and anti-coagulant functions.
“We asked the question, what if we can take this enzyme and dissociate the functions, allowing only the function we want?” said Di Cera.
In earlier research, Di Cera’s team did just that. They engineered thrombin to promote activity toward protein C – the anticoagulant target protein – and minimize activity toward fibrinogen and PAR1 – the procoagulant and prothrombotic targets.
“In 2000, we engineered a thrombin mutant with potent anticoagulant properties both in vitro and in vivo and we are moving this mutant to a phase I trial,” said Di Cera. “In this study, however, we pressed further. We wanted to optimize this mutant to completely abrogate activity toward fibrinogen and PAR1.”
“With this research we optimized the mutant so that there is no clotting at all. Furthermore, we generated a new mutant with exclusive prothrombotic activity, thereby demonstrating that the individual functions of thrombin can be dissociated by replacing a single amino acid in the protein.”
Once clinical trials are performed, researchers hope to have developed an alternative to heparin, a blood thinner that is used to prevent blood clots and is often used before surgery, but which also causes allergic reactions, dosage challenges and bleeding.
“Heparin is a brute-force remedy that shuts down all thrombin functions, including its beneficial anti-coagulant role,” said Di Cera. “Our approach is a new strategy that like a smart bomb only targets the functions we want to turn off.”
Established in 1836, Saint Louis University School of Medicine has the distinction of awarding the first medical degree west of the Mississippi River. The school educates physicians and biomedical scientists, conducts medical research, and provides health care on a local, national and international level. Research at the school seeks new cures and treatments in five key areas: cancer, liver disease, heart/lung disease, aging and brain disease, and infectious disease.
Post #50 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompt – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
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