Vegetarians consuming plant-based alternatives to meat — suggested as one of the means to lower the environmental impact of meat consumption — could have a 42 per cent increased risk of depression compared to vegetarians who refrain from them, according to a study. Published in the journal Food Frontiers, the study also found higher blood pressure and inflammation levels, along with lower levels of ‘good’ cholesterol (HDL), in vegetarians who ate plant-based meat alternatives. Researchers at the University of Surrey, UK, analysed data from over 3,300 vegetarians in the UK Biobank-about half were consumers of plant-based meat alternatives, and half were non-consumers. Made using plant-based proteins such as soy, plant-based meat alternatives (PBMA) are considered a potential solution for sustainability, as fewer natural resources such as water, land and energy are required to produce them compared to animal meat. However, these meat alternatives are also considered ‘ultra-processed foods,’ as chemicals are often added to make them taste like meat.The researchers noted that while consuming plant-based meat alternatives was not linked with clear health benefits, more studies are needed to investigate concerns related to inflammation, which may arise from eating these products. “In conclusion, while no clear health risks or benefits were associated with PBMA consumption in vegetarians, the higher risk of depression, elevated CRP (C-reactive proteins), and lower apolipoprotein A levels (HDL cholesterol) in consumers of PBMA suggest potential inflammatory concerns that warrant further investigation,” the authors wrote. Co-author Anthony Whetton, a professor of translational biosystems at the University of Surrey, said, “Ultra-processed plant-based meat alternatives can be a useful way for people to transition to a vegetarian diet effectively, which helps with sustainable agricultural practices.” “Further research, including longitudinal studies and trials with more diverse populations, is necessary to confirm these findings and the relationship between vegetarian foods and mood,” Whetton added. In the study group, the researchers found no notable differences in the intake of sodium, free sugars, total sugars, or saturated fatty acids between vegetarians who ate plant-based meat alternatives and those who did not. The team also found that consuming plant-based meat alternatives was linked to a 40% lower risk of irritable bowel syndrome. “The overall findings are reassuring, suggesting that plant-based meat alternatives may be a safe option when they are part of an overall balanced diet. However, the potential link between these foods, inflammation, and depression warrants further investigation,” said senior author Nophar Geifman, a professor of health and biomedical informatics at the University of Surrey.
(Disclaimer: Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Working odd hours or night shifts was found to disrupt signals liver sends to the brain telling it if eating is happening in sync with the body’s clock, a result that researchers said could help treat the negative effects of eating at unusual times, such as overeating. Eating at irregular times is said to be related to weight gain and diabetes, largely because it is not in sync with one’s body clock, or circadian rhythm — a 24-hour cycle of physical, mental, and behavioural changes, including sleeping and eating.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, US, found that working unusual hours disturbs the liver’s internal clock and its signals, because of which the brain overcompensates, thereby leading to overeating at the wrong times. The results, published in the journal Science, suggested that targeting specific parts of the vagus nerve — via which the liver communicates with the brain — could help address overeating in people working night shifts or experiencing jet lag, the team said.
“Both mice and humans normally eat at times when they are awake and alert, and this circuit provides feedback from the liver to the central clock in the brain that keeps the system running smoothly,” senior author Mitchell Lazar, a professor of diabetes and metabolic diseases, University of Pennsylvania, said.
“This feedback is through a nerve connection from the liver to the brain,” Lazar said.
For the study, researchers looked at the REV-ERB genes in mice, which are known to have genetic material and biological processes similar to those in humans, and help them both control the body clock.
Turning off these genes made the mice’s liver develop a faulty clock, because of which eating habits were found to change dramatically, with more food being consumed during less active hours, the team said. However, the negative effects could be reversible, as cutting the nerve connection in obese mice was found to restore normal eating habits and reduce food intake.
“This suggests that targeting this liver-brain communication (route) could be a promising approach for weight management in individuals with disrupted circadian rhythms,” author Lauren N Woodie, a post-doctoral researcher in Lazar’s lab, said.
“Our findings reveal a homeostatic feedback signal that relies on communication between the liver and the brain to control circadian food intake patterns. This identifies the hepatic vagus nerve as a potential therapeutic target for obesity in the setting of chronodisruption,” they wrote.
(Disclaimer: Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
There has been a worrying silence this week around A$AP Rocky’s plans to buy Tranmere Rovers. A co-investor has dropped out. Further finance is being urgently sought. Given the Tranmere consortium also currently features Matthew Bevilaqua from The Sopranos – a bit random, but, hey, it’s just good to see the Bevilaqua kid doing OK – it seems fair to say the field is pretty open here. What’s Badger from Breaking Bad up to these days?
For those who don’t know, A$AP Rocky is a musical superstar, retailer of four million albums, famous for his association with Rihanna. For those who don’t know from the other side, Tranmere are the 1990 Football League Trophy winners, famous for their association with Elton Welsby.
At first glance this might seem an unlikely meeting of interests. But it does also look like it could be real. This type of takeover, the MC-Hammer-buys-Lincoln-City dynamic, is common now in football. The purchase model says this is all in the end just engagement, eyeballs, product-hunger. A famous face leverages the brand, even when that brand is currently a worried-looking Nigel Adkins and Mike Dean throwing limbs in a puffa coat.
It is also a good fit in a wider sense. Merseyside and New York, where A$AP Rocky is from, have their own well-seasoned links. He makes hugely popular, soulful music that connects with people. He recorded L$D, one of the most amazing love songs of all time. Rap music and football are a good fit generally, as evidenced by pictures this week of Cole Palmer looking genuinely excited to launch a new Chelsea charity alongside the London grime/drill MC Central Cee (best Central Cee- centred football lyric: Dave on Trojan Horse, “Black Brit in Italian kit, I feel like Tammy in Roma”).
A$AP Rocky in 2021. Nigel Adkins’s future boss? Photograph: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival
At which point two questions present themselves. Why are you going on about this, grandad? And why do you have so many opinions on Central Cee and A$AP Rocky? Go and listen to a podcast on the unification of Italy or something.
Answering this presents an obvious opportunity to self-cancel, to be transformed into a living embodiment of the Steve Buscemi “hello, fellow kids” skateboarding meme, and also to Get Music Wrong and annoy people (men). But sod it, this is football and words and music and no one has a monopoly on those things, and the fact is UK rap is just brilliant, addictive super-smart music.
My kids listened to it, then left me with it, so I’m kind of stuck in a particular period. But what a period. Dave, J Hus, Stormzy, Central Cee, Headie One. These are sublime creative people, not just brilliant recording artists, but also nice, wise and really funny. You will like them. It’s high art too, in my opinion. Dave is a mainstream megastar, but also just a flat-out genius with words.
At which point, football comes back in. Listening to this music will make you love and crave football, all the more so if you belong even tangentially to the alienated, game’s-gone demographic. Basically there are just constant, really good references. The obvious start point is Thiago Silva, Dave and AJ Tracey’s self-published track from 2016. The title comes from a bit where Dave describes blocking a romantic interest on his phone in the all-business style of Thiago Silva, who was at Paris Saint-Germain at the time, and in his elegant, long-striding pomp – so yes, good ref, works, scans.
Beyond this the football stuff is everywhere. Most common are random funny nods to unexpected players. Some examples:
“I’m Victor Wanyama defending that fixture.”
“I chase cheques like Aubameyang.”
“I still wonder why we had burners from young, like Alexandre Pato.”
“Loose grip on the glass/El Shaarawy man skip, then blast.”
“Didn’t wanna see me blow/So she let my talent go to waste like Robinho.”
And a favourite, from Dave: “I’m a ronin Blaszczykowski, I’m trying to score with the Polish.”
Even these simple ones are well chosen. Pato (Dave on JKYL+HYD) expresses speed, wealth and tarnished promise perfectly. In 2019’s Audacity, Stormzy is coming “off the wing like Andros Townsend”. Not the more triumphant Mo Salah or Riyad Mahrez, but with a sense he is instead trapped in certain behaviours, always moving into trouble, stepping inside not outside.
Too much? I don’t think so. These words are not chosen idly. How else to explain Kamakaze on Warm-Up Sessions, who was at the time playing for Woking while doing music shows later the same day. Or as he puts it, “doing gigs after games like his sister-in-law”, which is just triple-sided genius.
AJ Tracey in The Lane is “Controlling the game like Sepp Blatter” (grand, doomed, no regrets). Then there’s this, Stormzy saying on Know Me From: “Bare pagan boys / I come to your team and I fuck shit up, I’m David Moyes.” It’s just really funny. A few years later he’s recording the most moving, tender, uplifting song about surviving depression and wrapping it around the line “every Hendo needs a Stevie G”, which just totally makes sense in the moment.
This is hardly new, and there are already endless internet lists of this stuff out there. The connection might become a little more overt as entertainment absorbs football. But right now it seems safe to say no other form of culture has wrapped itself around football so intimately.
Stormzy has referenced Jordan Henderson, Steven Gerrard and David Moyes in his music. Photograph: Naomi Rahim/WireImage
Certainly music has never spoken to the game like this. What did we get previously? Rod Stewart kicking a ball around in winkle-pickers on Top of the Pops. Indie bands worshipping 1970s mavericks. But no one wrote actual, warm, meaningful lyrics about Steve Bould or Peter Shilton.Otherwise music and football is basically the Kasabian bloke at Leicester looking as if he wants to fight someone in a kebab shop. It’s Oasis and Manchester City, old men retailing Abu Dhabi-branded clothing while making music that sounds like a stadium version of the noise inside the head of an alcoholic pub dog.
Whereas in UK rap you get nuance and love and connection with the players. The music can feel like a version of some classic storytelling tradition, from Calypso to Chaucer, riffing on dirty jokes and the stuff in front of you.
Not that it’s all heartwarming. A lot of this is driven by pain and anger and difficulty, the desire to burn things down. But the talent and the life is real. It is also, from a football angle, the exact opposite of what this industrialised sport can look like, the wall of corporate waffle, accountancy tools, money, politicking, white noise on the internet. Connection is good, moments and shared energy are good. And yes, for older people there is something worthwhile in even a baffled attempt to understand why things can still be good while also being different.
How long can it last? My own frame of reference is limited. Some of the established canon is ageing already. “I’m Pep, I ball with flair,” Stormzy says on Clash from 2021. Is this still accurate? It feels pre-Haaland, pre-four-centre-backs, pre-champions of the world.
But then late last year Dave released a song with the US rapper Jack Harlow, a breakout moment in the biggest market on earth, and there were of course no football references right up until Dave’s last line, where he says: “She more Olivier than France is.” And yes, he just couldn’t resist, because this is, I think, a reference to being Oliver Twist, pissed, but mixed into football with Olivier Giroud. And obviously almost nobody in America is going to get this, which just makes it even greater.
Back in the real world the A$AP Rocky thing may or may not happen from here. Tranmere have just lost to Grimsby, Crewe and Oldham and host Newport County on Saturday, which may or may not prove an additional lure. But it’s hardly the craziest idea out there. And music and football, well, that’s a live connection.
There has been a worrying silence this week around A$AP Rocky’s plans to buy Tranmere Rovers. A co-investor has dropped out. Further finance is being urgently sought. Given the Tranmere consortium also currently features Matthew Bevilaqua from The Sopranos – a bit random, but, hey, it’s just good to see the Bevilaqua kid doing OK – it seems fair to say the field is pretty open here. What’s Badger from Breaking Bad up to these days?
For those who don’t know, A$AP Rocky is a musical superstar, retailer of four million albums, famous for his association with Rihanna. For those who don’t know from the other side, Tranmere are the 1990 Football League Trophy winners, famous for their association with Elton Welsby.
At first glance this might seem an unlikely meeting of interests. But it does also look like it could be real. This type of takeover, the MC-Hammer-buys-Lincoln-City dynamic, is common now in football. The purchase model says this is all in the end just engagement, eyeballs, product-hunger. A famous face leverages the brand, even when that brand is currently a worried-looking Nigel Adkins and Mike Dean throwing limbs in a puffa coat.
It is also a good fit in a wider sense. Merseyside and New York, where A$AP Rocky is from, have their own well-seasoned links. He makes hugely popular, soulful music that connects with people. He recorded L$D, one of the most amazing love songs of all time. Rap music and football are a good fit generally, as evidenced by pictures this week of Cole Palmer looking genuinely excited to launch a new Chelsea charity alongside the London grime/drill MC Central Cee (best Central Cee- centred football lyric: Dave on Trojan Horse, “Black Brit in Italian kit, I feel like Tammy in Roma”).
A$AP Rocky in 2021. Nigel Adkins’s future boss? Photograph: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival
At which point two questions present themselves. Why are you going on about this, grandad? And why do you have so many opinions on Central Cee and A$AP Rocky? Go and listen to a podcast on the unification of Italy or something.
Answering this presents an obvious opportunity to self-cancel, to be transformed into a living embodiment of the Steve Buscemi “hello, fellow kids” skateboarding meme, and also to Get Music Wrong and annoy people (men). But sod it, this is football and words and music and no one has a monopoly on those things, and the fact is UK rap is just brilliant, addictive super-smart music.
My kids listened to it, then left me with it, so I’m kind of stuck in a particular period. But what a period. Dave, J Hus, Stormzy, Central Cee, Headie One. These are sublime creative people, not just brilliant recording artists, but also nice, wise and really funny. You will like them. It’s high art too, in my opinion. Dave is a mainstream megastar, but also just a flat-out genius with words.
At which point, football comes back in. Listening to this music will make you love and crave football, all the more so if you belong even tangentially to the alienated, game’s-gone demographic. Basically there are just constant, really good references. The obvious start point is Thiago Silva, Dave and AJ Tracey’s self-published track from 2016. The title comes from a bit where Dave describes blocking a romantic interest on his phone in the all-business style of Thiago Silva, who was at Paris Saint-Germain at the time, and in his elegant, long-striding pomp – so yes, good ref, works, scans.
Beyond this the football stuff is everywhere. Most common are random funny nods to unexpected players. Some examples:
“I’m Victor Wanyama defending that fixture.”
“I chase cheques like Aubameyang.”
“I still wonder why we had burners from young, like Alexandre Pato.”
“Loose grip on the glass/El Shaarawy man skip, then blast.”
“Didn’t wanna see me blow/So she let my talent go to waste like Robinho.”
And a favourite, from Dave: “I’m a ronin Blaszczykowski, I’m trying to score with the Polish.”
Even these simple ones are well chosen. Pato (Dave on JKYL+HYD) expresses speed, wealth and tarnished promise perfectly. In 2019’s Audacity, Stormzy is coming “off the wing like Andros Townsend”. Not the more triumphant Mo Salah or Riyad Mahrez, but with a sense he is instead trapped in certain behaviours, always moving into trouble, stepping inside not outside.
Too much? I don’t think so. These words are not chosen idly. How else to explain Kamakaze on Warm-Up Sessions, who was at the time playing for Woking while doing music shows later the same day. Or as he puts it, “doing gigs after games like his sister-in-law”, which is just triple-sided genius.
AJ Tracey in The Lane is “Controlling the game like Sepp Blatter” (grand, doomed, no regrets). Then there’s this, Stormzy saying on Know Me From: “Bare pagan boys / I come to your team and I fuck shit up, I’m David Moyes.” It’s just really funny. A few years later he’s recording the most moving, tender, uplifting song about surviving depression and wrapping it around the line “every Hendo needs a Stevie G”, which just totally makes sense in the moment.
This is hardly new, and there are already endless internet lists of this stuff out there. The connection might become a little more overt as entertainment absorbs football. But right now it seems safe to say no other form of culture has wrapped itself around football so intimately.
Stormzy has referenced Jordan Henderson, Steven Gerrard and David Moyes in his music. Photograph: Naomi Rahim/WireImage
Certainly music has never spoken to the game like this. What did we get previously? Rod Stewart kicking a ball around in winkle-pickers on Top of the Pops. Indie bands worshipping 1970s mavericks. But no one wrote actual, warm, meaningful lyrics about Steve Bould or Peter Shilton.Otherwise music and football is basically the Kasabian bloke at Leicester looking as if he wants to fight someone in a kebab shop. It’s Oasis and Manchester City, old men retailing Abu Dhabi-branded clothing while making music that sounds like a stadium version of the noise inside the head of an alcoholic pub dog.
Whereas in UK rap you get nuance and love and connection with the players. The music can feel like a version of some classic storytelling tradition, from Calypso to Chaucer, riffing on dirty jokes and the stuff in front of you.
Not that it’s all heartwarming. A lot of this is driven by pain and anger and difficulty, the desire to burn things down. But the talent and the life is real. It is also, from a football angle, the exact opposite of what this industrialised sport can look like, the wall of corporate waffle, accountancy tools, money, politicking, white noise on the internet. Connection is good, moments and shared energy are good. And yes, for older people there is something worthwhile in even a baffled attempt to understand why things can still be good while also being different.
How long can it last? My own frame of reference is limited. Some of the established canon is ageing already. “I’m Pep, I ball with flair,” Stormzy says on Clash from 2021. Is this still accurate? It feels pre-Haaland, pre-four-centre-backs, pre-champions of the world.
But then late last year Dave released a song with the US rapper Jack Harlow, a breakout moment in the biggest market on earth, and there were of course no football references right up until Dave’s last line, where he says: “She more Olivier than France is.” And yes, he just couldn’t resist, because this is, I think, a reference to being Oliver Twist, pissed, but mixed into football with Olivier Giroud. And obviously almost nobody in America is going to get this, which just makes it even greater.
Back in the real world the A$AP Rocky thing may or may not happen from here. Tranmere have just lost to Grimsby, Crewe and Oldham and host Newport County on Saturday, which may or may not prove an additional lure. But it’s hardly the craziest idea out there. And music and football, well, that’s a live connection.
A study has uncovered how microbes in one’s gut helps manage stress by interacting with the body’s circadian rhythms, or biological clock.
Researchers from the University College Cork, Ireland, found that the trillions of microorganisms in the gut — or the gut microbiome — control the hormones produced in response to stress in a time-dependent manner.
A healthy gut, thereby, helps in creating day-night rhythms in the production of stress hormones, whereas, a reduced gut microbiome leads to a disrupted body clock and is related to altered rhythms in how stress hormones are produced, the team said.
The findings, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, highlighted the importance of maintaining a healthy gut, they said.
The study’s results could also be looked into for developing treatments for mental conditions such as anxiety and depression, which are known to be linked to stress and often involve disrupted body clock and sleep cycles, the researchers said.
“Our research has revealed an important link between the gut (microbiome) and how the brain responds to stress in a time-specific way,” lead researcher John Cryan, University College Cork, said.
“The gut microbiome doesn’t just regulate digestion and metabolism; it plays a critical role in how we react to stress, and this regulation follows a precise circadian rhythm,” Cryan said.
For the study, the researchers looked at mice, which are known to have biological processes and genetic material similar to humans.
The team found an “intricate relationship” between the gut microbes and three regions in the brain forming the HPA axis — the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland and the adrenal gland. The HPA axis is the body’s central stress response system.
The researchers showed that a depletion of the gut microbiome results in an over-activation of the HPA axis in a manner specific to the time of the day. This, combined with changes to the brain’s regions responding to stress and the biological clock, leads to an altered body’s response to stress over the entire day, they said.
Specific gut bacteria, including a Lactobacillus strain (Limosilactobacillus reuteri), were identified as “key influencers” of this body clock-related stress response.
(This content including advice provides generic information only. It is in no way a substitute for qualified medical opinion. Always consult a specialist or your own doctor for more information. NDTV does not claim responsibility for this information.)
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Latest news on November 5, 2024: Sleep is integral to the brain’s health. Chronic sleep problems make the brain age faster.
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Nov 5, 2024 11:23 AM IST
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The South Korean beauty manufacturing giant and Harvard Medical School’s Massachusetts General Hospital with focus on skin conditions such atopic dermatitis, acne and psoriasis.
The research aims to examine how lifestyle factors like diet, outdoor activities, stress, air quality, and sunlight exposure can affect the skin’s microbial ecosystem of people who have these skin conditions.
Through this joint project, Cosmax and Harvard aim to provide customised skin care solutions that will consider difference by region, climate, race, and nationality, as well as individual lifestyles and environmental factors.
This project follows Cosmax and Harvard University’s agreement to collaborate on developing cosmeceutical products.
According to the press statement, this research could eventually lead to anti-ageing skin care developments.
“We have high expectations for the positive changes that our joint research with Cosmax will bring to improving people’s skin conditions. We believe that this will allow us to develop new anti-ageing cosmetics,” said Dr. Britton Nicholson, senior vice president of research, Harvard University’s Massachusetts General Hospital.
This research will leverage Massachusetts General Hospital’s extensive global bio big data along with years of clinical research gathered from the treatment of patients from over 90 countries.
This vast and diverse amount of data will be complemented by Cosmax’s skin microbiome research, which includes around 3,000 microbial species and over 80 patents. The company has also published around 20 papers in SCI-level journals.
Cosmax microbiome projects
Lee Byung-joo, CEO of Cosmax, said this partnership would take its own ‘world-class’ microbiome research capabilities to a new level.
“This joint research will serve as the foundation for creating a new chapter in the biomedical cosmetics field that will lead the future cosmetics industry.”
In April this year, Cosmax announced that it developed Untopinol, a “steroid alternative” for atopic skin.
The efficacy of Untopinol was proven in human clinical trials conducted on 100 patients with mild to moderate atopic dermatitis.
In an eight-week clinical trial, 46.2% of patients showed improvement in atopic dermatitis severity (EASI score).
In addition, significant improvements were confirmed in skin moisture content, transepidermal water loss (TEWL) rate, itching score, skin barrier structure, and blood inflammation index.
According to the firm, the ingredient is highly effective with minimal side effects.
