Thanks in part to climate change, vegetable prices have soared in the U.S.
David Knowles, Senior Editor – December 9, 2022
Tomatoes for processing damaged by heat and drought hang on vines in a field belonging to farmer Aaron Barcellos in Los Banos, Calif., in September. (Nathan Frandino/Reuters)
Vegetable prices in the United States were up nearly 40% in November over the previous month, according to new figures from the Labor Department, and climate change is one of the reasons why.
Thanks to a significantly diminished snowpack in 2022, following the driest January and February in recorded history in the state, California’s Central Valley has also struggled to produce its usual output of fruits and vegetables.
Making matters even worse, and more expensive for consumers, lettuce production in the Salinas Valley has fallen further, thanks to an outbreak of the impatiens necrotic spot virus, which spreads from plant to plant and can decimate entire greenhouses.
“In October, most of the nation’s lettuce comes from the Salinas Valley, and they are having very low production because the virus affected their crop,” Bruce Babcock, an agricultural economist at the University of California Riverside, told NBC Bay Area. “A case of romaine is $75 now, and last January, it was $25, so that’s almost a tripling of prices at the wholesale level.”
Oranges lie on the ground in a grove in Arcadia, Fla., in October after Hurricane Ian. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The long-term climate change trend in California, however, is causing the state’s government to take action. In August, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced an $8 billion plan aimed at increasing the state’s water supply and “adapting to a hotter, drier future.”
“We are experiencing extreme, sustained drought conditions in California and across the American West caused by hotter, drier weather,” a policy outline released by the governor’s office stated. “Our warming climate means that a greater share of the rain and snow fall we receive will be absorbed by dry soils, consumed by thirsty plants, and evaporated into the air. This leaves less water to meet our needs.”
The negative farming impacts in California from climate change are much the same story in Arizona, which provides more than 9% of the country’s leafy greens during the winter months, Bloomberg reported. The combination of the drought and Colorado River water cuts have severely affected the growing season, and more cuts are coming in the new year. In August, the federal government announced that water deliveries to Arizona would be reduced by another 20%, starting in January of next year.
“Prolonged drought is one of the most profound issues facing the U.S. today,” Tommy Beaudreau, assistant secretary of the interior, said in announcing the cuts.
Eating ultra-processed foods like hot dogs and cereal bars may increase your risk of dementia, study finds
Andrea Michelson – December 8, 2022
Shutterstock
Researchers followed more than 10,000 adults as they aged to see how diet relates to mental sharpness.
They found people who regularly ate ultra-processed foods had an increased risk of cognitive decline.
Ultra-processed foods account for more than half of total calories consumed by Americans.
Most of the food we eat is processed to some degree, but not all additives are created equal.
Ultra-processed foods — a category that includes frozen meals, fast food, and most breakfast cereals — have been linked to health risks like heart disease, cancer, and early death.
Recent research suggests that eating some of the most heavily processed foods on a regular basis may impact brain health in the long term.
In a study of more than 10,000 middle-aged adults, those who got more than 20% of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods had an increased risk of cognitive decline over a 10-year period, according to results published Monday in JAMA Neurology.
That’s less than the average intake of ultra-processed foods in Brazil, where the study took place, coauthor Claudia Suemoto told CNN. In the US, consumption of processed foods is even more prevalent: about 57% of calories consumed by the US population come from ultra-processed foods, New York University researchers found in 2021.
People who ate the greatest proportions of ultra-processed foods had a 28% faster rate of global cognitive decline compared with those who ate the least. The part of the brain responsible for executive function appeared to be especially hard hit, researchers noted.
However, balancing out processed snacks with whole foods may help to preserve some brain power, the authors found.
It’s not too late to preserve brain health with healthy foods
Researchers noticed signs of cognitive decline in participants over the observation period, which lasted about eight years for each individual. The average age of participants at the start of the study was 51, underscoring the importance of taking preventive measures in middle age.
Cognitive ability was scored based on immediate and delayed word recall, word recognition, and verbal fluency, according to the study methods.
While most people who got more than 20% of their daily energy from ultra-processed foods scored progressively lower on the cognitive tests over the years, those who maintained an overall healthy diet seemed to defy the association.
The researchers grouped participants not only based on ultra-processed food consumption, but also according to their overall diet. They scored all participants based on how closely they followed the MIND diet, a cross between the Mediterranean and DASH diets that features leafy greens, berries, nuts, olive oil, whole grains, fish, and poultry.
The diet is meant to work as an intervention for neurodegenerative delays, so experts believe it helps prevent the type of cognitive decline seen in the study. As expected, participants with an above-average MIND diet score did not experience the accelerated decline observed in most processed food consumers.
Who is Viktor Bout? Infamous arms dealer swapped for Brittney Griner
Michael Weiss, Sr. Correspondent – December 8, 2022
Alleged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout sits in a temporary cell ahead of a hearing at the Criminal Court in Bangkok on Aug. 20, 2010. (Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images)
“She’s on her way home after months of being unjustly detained in Russia, held in intolerable circumstances.” So President Biden announced today from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, alerting the press to the news that Brittney Griner has finally been released from a Mordovian penal colony. Biden spoke next to Cherelle Griner, the American WNBA basketball player’s visibly affected wife.
Following months of intense negotiations, the United States managed to secure Briner’s freedom in a one-to-one swap for Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer. Not included in the deal was another American prisoner of the Kremlin, Paul Whelan, who had been rumored to have been included in the high-profile negotiations over Griner.
Whelan, a former U.S. Marine and Michigan police officer, was arrested in Russia in December 2018 on espionage charges, which he denied; he was sentenced to 16 years in June 2020. Griner, an Olympic gold medalist, was detained in February at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, exactly one week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on charges that she was trafficking cannabis oil — a banned substance in Russia — inside vape canisters. She pleaded guilty on July 7 and was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
US Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) basketball player Brittney Griner, who was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and later charged with illegal possession of cannabis, leaves the courtroom after the court’s verdict in Khimki outside Moscow, on August 4, 2022. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)
Few U.S. officials take the Russian prosecutors’ allegations at face value; the prevailing view is that both Whelan and Griner were snatched as hostages for exactly the kind of swap now under consideration, or as bargaining chips for lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia. “The Russian security services watched Griner closely and knew they could compromise her,” a former U.S. intelligence officer told Yahoo News earlier this year. “She’s a Black gay woman who could be portrayed as carrying drugs, and they waited until she departed. This was not legitimate law enforcement but cynical power games by the Kremlin.” John Sipher, the former deputy head of “Russia House” at the CIA, said Whelan would have been unlikely to be recruited by any U.S. intelligence service owing to his compromised history: He was given a bad-conduct discharge from the Marine Corps after being court-martialed on larceny-related offenses in 2008.
Even by the Kremlin’s suspect characterization of Whelan and Griner, the allegations against Bout are far worse.
“In the late 1990s,” Jonathan Winer, a senior official in the State Department during the Clinton administration who tracked Bout’s movements, told Yahoo News, “Bout was the No. 2 target for the United States, after Osama bin Laden.” In fact, the infamous arms dealer, widely known as the “merchant of death,” has even been accused of arming al-Qaida.
Paul Whelan, a former US marine accused of espionage and arrested in Russia in December 2018, stands inside a defendants’ cage as he waits to hear his verdict in Moscow on June 15, 2020. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union until his capture in a 2008 Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation in Bangkok, Bout supplied a rogue’s gallery of governments and militias with guns, ammunition and aircraft. Nicolas Cage played a thinly veiled version of him in the 2005 film “Lord of War,” although the real-life version’s antics were more cinematically uncanny. Even Bout’s aliases — “Viktor Budd,” “Viktor Butt” and, simply, “Boris” —might have stretched credulity for a Bond villain.
Bout was chummy with a succession of African dictators, including Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko and Liberia’s Charles Taylor, the latter of whom paid him in conflict diamonds and whose child soldiers operated the antique Antonov cargo planes that Bout sold him. Warlord Sam “Mosquito” Bockarie committed crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone with Bout-proffered weapons. Some of these clients would object to Bout’s apparent racism and peremptory behavior: a pushy Russian in the midst of anticolonial (or postcolonial) leaders. But that hardly affected his bottom line or their willingness to enrich it.
The Tajikistan-born weapons merchant could play both sides of any war to his advantage. He equipped the Taliban with an air force before 9/11 and also sent weapons to their mortal enemy, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the commander of the Northern Alliance and onetime Afghan defense minister, with whom he liked to hunt the finely horned Marco Polo sheep of the Pamir Mountains. Both the Taliban and Massoud evidently knew their broker was double-dealing, but they put up with it because they had no choice, as one Bout associate later recounted to his biographers: “No one else would deliver the packages.”
Ahmad Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, speaks to journalists at Concordia Press Club, on the occasion of the intra-Afghanistan conference, in Vienna, Austria, on September 16, 2022. (Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images)
Astonishingly, even after being hunted by the U.S. government for years, Bout’s flagship company Irbis (“snow leopard” in Russian) even secretly acted as a private airlift courier for supplies intended for the U.S. military and contractors in occupied Iraq in 2004.
For all Bout’s blood-boltered infamy, some former national security officials think the Biden administration made the right call. “It’s a trade that has to be made, despite all the pitfalls,” according to Marc Polymeropoulos, who oversaw the CIA’s clandestine operations in Europe and Eurasia. “The pressure from the families on the White House is immense.” Polymeropoulos acknowledged that the trade would amount to “rewarding terrible Russian behavior” — equating an international arms trafficker with Whelan and Griner — but that the cost would be worth it. “Make no mistake, the Americans have no hope of release save for this swap. Also, let’s not forget that the Israelis have for decades swapped Palestinian terrorists for their imprisoned soldiers, and sometimes just their remains.”
Sipher agrees. “First, it’s a hard policy call, and I’m glad that Americans that were wrongly held as hostages will be freed. I understand why an American president makes such a deal. However, we should admit that we played Vladimir Putin’s game. He got what he wanted in his typical bullying manner. He knows he can push the West around and will do it until he is stopped.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) speaks with Delovaya Rossiya Public Organisation’s President, during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, on December 6, 2022. (Mikhail Metzel/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)
The U.S. sanctioned Bout in 2004 due to his gunrunning to Liberia; a year later, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned four of his associates and 30 of his companies.
According to the 2008 sealed indictment against Bout, filed in the Southern District of New York, he agreed to provide advanced weapons systems to FARC, the Colombian terrorist organization, knowing that they would be used to target Americans and U.S. military personnel.
The Russian “assembled a fleet of cargo airplanes capable of transporting weapons and military equipment to various parts of the world, including Africa, South America and the Middle East,” the indictment read. Everything from AK-47s to attack helicopters wound up in the holds of Bout’s cargo planes, of which there were scores, under different national flaggings. He maintained the largest private fleet of post-Soviet cargo aircraft in the world at one point, administering it under a veneer of legitimacy by transporting food, medicine and other licit goods along with lethal contraband.
Bout was found guilty in 2011 on all four counts of the indictment: conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, conspiracy to kill officers and employees of the U.S., conspiracy to acquire and use antiaircraft missiles, and conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a terrorist organization. He is now in the 10th year of a 25-year sentence.
Thai commandos escort back hand-cuffed Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout (C), known as the “Merchant of Death” for his role arming rebels from Africa to South America, after a press conference at Thai police headquarters in Bangkok on March 7, 2008. (Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images)
Peter Hain, the former minister of state for Africa at the British Foreign Office, told the London Sunday Telegraph in 2002 that Bout was “supplying the Taliban and al-Qaida,” an allegation that Bout always denied, portraying himself as an honest businessman toting innocent wares such as textiles and furniture to places like Afghanistan. (It was Hain who coined Bout’s unshakable moniker, the “merchant of death.”)
Bout has for years also loudly denied any connection to the Russian government or its military intelligence service, still known by its Soviet-era acronym, the GRU.
However, in “Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possibile,” a 2007 chronicle of Bout’s malign activities, authors Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun quote one of his associates: “The GRU gave him three airplanes to start the business. The planes, countless numbers of them, were sitting there doing nothing. They decided, let’s make this commercial. They gave Viktor the aircraft and in exchange collected a part of the charter money. It was a setup from the beginning.” An unnamed analyst who worked with British intelligence also told the authors that MI6, the U.K.’s foreign intelligence service, “never had any doubt Bout was GRU material.”
U.N. officials placed Bout’s earlier career as that of an interpreter for Russian peacekeepers in Angola; he had trained at the Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, a favored stalking ground for GRU recruitment. Military translators are often GRU officers stationed under diplomatic cover owing to the spy service’s polyglot job requirement. Bout has said he speaks six languages. His bodyguards in his heyday were also reportedly all veterans from GRU Spetsnaz, or special forces.
Russian Spetsnaz march during the military parade at Red Square, on May 9,2021, in Moscow, Russia. (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)
Russia’s military intelligence agency has come under international scrutiny in the last several years, particularly after U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that a team of now-indicted GRU officers in Moscow were responsible for the hack-and-leak operation against the Democratic Party email servers in 2016, with the express intent of influencing the outcome of that year’s presidential contest.
GRU operatives have been busy outside the digital domain too.
Operatives attached to an elite assassination-and-sabotage cell known as Unit 29155 were sent to Salisbury, England, in 2018 to poison a GRU defector, Sergei Skripal, along with his daughter, Yulia, with a Russian-manufactured nerve agent.
Unit 29155 has also lately been linked to a string of earlier mysterious poisonings over the last decade, including that of another arms dealer, the Bulgarian Emilian Gebrev, who succumbed to Skripal-like symptoms in 2015 along with his son and his factory manager near his office in central Sofia. A series of explosions of factories and depots elsewhere in Bulgaria and also the Czech Republic, both of them NATO and EU member states, have been attributed to Unit 29155 operatives, leading to expulsions of Russian intelligence officers from embassies in both countries. Tellingly, these sites are believed to have contained Soviet-era ammunition bound for Ukraine.
Given the unprecedented access Bout had to surplus weapons and ammunition stocks, not to mention the enormous Antonov freighters scattered like metal carcasses across airfields of the fallen Soviet empire, it beggars belief that he was not in some way linked to Russian intelligence.
A Russian Antonov 124 condor freighter, one of the worlds largest aircraft on the tarmac at RAF Kinloss, today (Fri) where it is being prepared to fly one of the three Nimord fusealages to Bournemouth, where they will undergo a major re-fit and modification. (Chris Bacon/PA Images via Getty Images)
That would certainly account for why Vladimir Putin’s regime has so desperately sought for his repatriation to Russia and why the U.S. side apparently believes Bout would be a tempting trade amid caustic tensions between the two countries. The Kremlin, said Winer, the former State Department official, “moved heaven and earth” to first prevent Bout’s extradition to the U.S. from Thailand and then to secure his release from prison. The Russian Foreign Ministry has classed him as a political prisoner and, for more than a decade after his capture, serially raised his release with Washington in some kind of exchange. “The big question was whether he was basically state-sponsored or a rogue operator whom the Russian government found useful,” Winer told Yahoo News. “Was he an agent of the GRU when we caught him?”
Given Bout’s conviction in a U.S. court for aiding and abetting FARC, it’s a slightly awkward question for the Biden administration, now facing a mounting chorus to label Russia itself a state sponsor of terrorism. On Thursday, the Senate unanimously adopted a nonbinding resolution urging Secretary of State Antony Blinken to designate Moscow as such.
US President Joe Biden, with (L-R) Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Vice President Kamala Harris and Cherelle Griner, spouse of US women’s basketball player Brittney Griner, speaks about the release of Brittney Griner, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on December 8, 2022. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
The text of the resolution not only cites Russian military atrocities against civilians in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and Ukraine but also names the Wagner Group, a U.S. sanctioned Russian mercenary outfit. Financed by the U.S.- and EU-sanctioned oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin — a catering magnate and architect of the St. Petersburg “troll farm” implicated by Mueller in the 2016 U.S. election interference scheme — the Wagner Group has committed “serious human rights abuses in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mozambique,” according to the European Union. The allegations include torture and extrajudicial killings. The Senate also accuses the group of having tried to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the start of Russia’s invasion in February.
The Treasury Department sanctioned the Wagner Group as a “Russian Ministry of Defense proxy force.” The mercenaries maintain a camp in the Russian region of Krasnodar, right next door to a well-guarded training facility for GRU Spetsnaz, of whichWagner’s leader, Dmitry Utkin, was once a brigade commander. According to Polymeropoulos, the former CIA officer, “there was never any doubt that Wagner functions as an arm of the GRU.”
Might the same be said of the man now sitting in a medium-security penitentiary in Marion, Ill., awaiting his plane back to Moscow?
“They will try to lock me up for life,” the then-45-year-old Bout told the New Yorker before his sentencing. “But I’ll get back to Russia. I don’t know when. But I’m still young. Your empire will collapse and I’ll get out of here.”
Biden says Brittney Griner is ‘safe’ after release from Russia in prisoner swap
Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – December 8, 2022
President Biden on Thursday said Brittney Griner is “safe” and on her way home after being freed from Russian custody in a prisoner exchange for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.
“She’s safe, she’s on a plane, she’s on her way home,” Biden said in brief remarks at the White House, where he was joined by Griner’s wife, Cherelle, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “After months of being detained in Russia, held under intolerable circumstances, Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones, and she should’ve been there all along.”
Biden said he spoke with Griner and that she is in “good spirits.”
President Biden speaks to reporters about the release of WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner on Thursday. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
“The fact remains that she’s lost months of her life, experienced needless trauma,” he said. “She deserves space, privacy and time with her loved ones to recover and heal from her time being wrongfully detained.”
Griner has been held in Russia since February, when she was detained in Moscow after being found carrying vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison.
“This is a day we’ve worked toward for a long time,” Biden said. “We never stopped pushing for her release. It took painstakingly intense negotiations.”
Biden said Griner was “unjustly detained” in Russia before she was released in a prisoner swap with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. (Alexander Zemlianichenko, File/AP)
The president thanked those in his administration who worked to secure her release as well as the United Arab Emirates, where a plane transporting Griner back to the United States landed.
“These past few months have been hell for Brittney and Cherelle and her entire family,” Biden said. “People across the country have learned about Brittney’s story, advocated for her release throughout this terrible ordeal. And I know that support meant a lot to her family.”
The president also said the U.S. has not given up on Paul Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive who has been jailed in Russia since 2018 on espionage charges.
“We did not forget about Brittney, and we have not forgotten about Paul Whelan, who has been unjustly detained in Russia for years,” Biden said. “This was not a choice of which American to bring home.”
The White House released this image of Biden and Griner’s wife, Cherelle, speaking to the WNBA star after she was released from Russia. (The White House/Handout via Reuters)
Biden pointed to Trevor Reed, a 30-year-old U.S. Marine veteran who was released in a prisoner swap with Russia in April.
“We brought home Trevor Reed when we had a chance earlier this year,” the president said. “Sadly, for illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s. And while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up.”
In a statement, the Whelan family said the Biden administration “made the right decision” in securing Griner’s release and “to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn’t going to [happen].”
In brief remarks, Cherelle Griner thanked Biden for helping secure Brittney’s release.
“Today my family is whole,” Cherelle Griner said. “But as you all are aware, there’s so many other families who are not whole.”
She added: “Brittney and I will remain committed to the work of getting every American home, including Paul, whose family is in our hearts today.”
Nearly half of COVID patients worldwide still have symptoms after 4 months, according to a giant new study
Erin Prater – December 7, 2022
Almost half of COVID survivors globally—both children and adults—have lingering symptoms four months later, according to a landmark new study.
Researchers at the University of Leicester in England performed an analysis of nearly 200 studies of prior COVID patients, involving nearly 750,000 people in all. The patients—some of whom were hospitalized and some of whom weren’t—lived across the globe.
More than 45% of study participants had at least one lingering symptom four months out from their initial infection. A quarter of the patients reported fatigue, and a similar number said they felt pain or discomfort. Meanwhile, sleep issues, breathlessness, and problems participating in normal daily activities were reported in just under a quarter of patients, according to the study.
Often, no clinical abnormalities could be found to explain such symptoms. But some signs were reported in many patients who had been hospitalized with COVID, including changes in lung structure and function. An abnormal CT scan and/or X-rays were found in nearly half of previously hospitalized patients, in addition to a decreased capacity to diffuse carbon monoxide in nearly a third of patients.
“Changes in pulmonary function are similar to those observed following other viral infections including SARS and MERS,” the authors wrote.
When nonhospitalized COVID survivors were singled out, more than a third of them had lingering symptoms at four months, the study found.
“The reasons as to why so many patients are experiencing long COVID remains unknown,” the authors wrote, adding that possible causes include organ damage, inflammation, altered immune systems, and psychological effects.
While some studies have found a higher rate of long COVID in females, the study out of Leicester didn’t find that any particular age group or gender experienced higher rates of the disabling condition. Researchers weren’t able to reliably assess any potential association with race, as only a quarter of studies examined provided participants’ race or ethnicity.
Nearly 20% of American adults who’ve had COVID—an estimated 50 million—report having long COVID symptoms, according to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau this summer.
Long COVID is roughly defined as symptoms that persist or appear long after the initial infection is gone, but a consensus definition has not yet been broadly accepted. Many experts contend that long COVID is best defined as a chronic-fatigue-syndrome–like condition that develops after COVID illness, similar to other post-viral syndromes that can occur after infection with herpes, Lyme disease, and even Ebola. Other post-COVID complications, like organ damage and post–intensive-care syndrome, should not be defined as long COVID, they say.
Brains of older people with higher levels of the nutrient function better, say nutritionists.
The main natural source is sunlight but wrinkly skin is less efficient at converting it, meaning older individuals are more likely to be deficient.
Corresponding author Dr Sarah Booth said: “This research reinforces the importance of studying how food and nutrients create resilience to protect the ageing brain against diseases such as Alzheimer’s and other related dementias.”
The number of cases worldwide will triple to more than 150 million by 2050. And with no cure in sight, there is an increasing focus on preventive measures such as lifestyle.
Dr Booth and colleagues examined post mortem samples of brain tissue from 209 participants in the Rush Memory and Ageing Project that began in 1997.
It is the first analysis of its kind, comparing vitamin D levels in adults who suffered from varying rates of cognitive decline.
Lead author Professor Kyla Shea said: “Many studies have implicated dietary or nutritional factors in cognitive performance or function in older adults, including many studies of vitamin D, but all of them are based on either dietary intakes or blood measures of vitamin D.
“We wanted to know if vitamin D is even present in the brain, and if it is, how those concentrations are linked to cognitive decline.”
The team at Tufts University in Massachusetts found more vitamin D in all four regions looked at correlated with better mental skills.
Two areas are associated with changes linked to Alzheimer’s, one with dementias due to to blood flow and the other without any associations with brain or vascular diseases.
Participants’ cognitive function was assessed at the outset and as they aged – with irregularities in their brain tissue identified after death.
No connection was found between vitamin D levels and any of the physiological markers associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
These included rogue amyloid beta proteins that gather in plaques, Lewy body disease or chronic or microscopic strokes.
This means it is still unclear exactly how vitamin D might affect brain function.
Prof Shea said: “Dementia is multifactorial, and lots of the pathological mechanisms underlying it have not been well characterised.
“Vitamin D could be related to outcomes that we didn’t look at yet, but plan to study in the future.”
Vitamin D is also known to vary between racial and ethnic populations, and most of the participants in the original cohort were white
The researchers are planning followup studies using a more diverse group of subjects to look at other brain changes associated with cognitive decline.
They hope their work leads to a better understanding of the role vitamin D may play in staving off dementia.
Experts caution people not to use large doses of vitamin D supplements as a preventive measure.
The recommended dose of vitamin D is 600 IU (international units) for under 70s and 800 for those older.
Excessive amounts can cause harm, and have been linked to the risk of falling.
Prof Shea said: “We now know that vitamin D is present in reasonable amounts in human brains, and it seems to be correlated with less decline in cognitive function.
“But we need to do more research to identify the neuropathology that vitamin D is linked to in the brain before we start designing future interventions.”
The study was published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia.
Harnessing the brain’s immune cells to stave off Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases
Kristine Zengeler, University of Virginia – December 7, 2022
Many neurodegenerative diseases, or conditions that result from the loss of function or death of brain cells, remain largely untreatable. Most available treatments target just one of the multiple processes that can lead to neurodegeneration, which may not be effective in completely addressing disease symptoms or progress, if at all.
But what if researchers harnessed the brain’s inherent capabilities to cleanse and heal itself? My colleagues and I in the Lukens Lab at the University of Virginia believe that the brain’s own immune system may hold the key to neurodegenerative disease treatment. In our research, we found a protein that could possibly be leveraged to help the brain’s immune cells, or microglia, stave off Alzheimer’s disease.
Challenges in treating neurodegeneration
No available treatments for neurodegenerative diseases stop ongoing neurodegeneration while also helping affected areas in the body heal and recuperate.
In terms of failed treatments, Alzheimer’s disease is perhaps the most infamous of neurodegenerative diseases. Affecting more than 1 in 9 U.S. adults 65 and older, Alzheimer’s results from brain atrophy with the death of neurons and loss of the connections between them. These casualties contribute to memory and cognitive decline. Billions of dollars have been funneled into researching treatments for Alzheimer’s, but nearly every drug tested to date has failed in clinical trials.
Another common neurodegenerative disease in need of improved treatment options is multiple sclerosis. This autoimmune condition is caused by immune cells attacking the protective cover on neurons, known as myelin. Degrading myelin leads to communication difficulties between neurons and their connections with the rest of the body. Current treatments suppress the immune system and can have potentially debilitating side effects. Many of these treatment options fail to address the toxic effects of the myelin debris that accumulate in the nervous system, which can kill cells.
A new frontier in treating neurodegeneration
Microglia are immune cells masquerading as brain cells. In mice, microglia originate in the yolk sac of an embryo and then infiltrate the brain early in development. The origins and migration of microglia in people are still under study.
Microglia play important roles in healthy brain function. Like other immune cells, microglia respond rapidly to pathogens and damage. They help to clear injuries and mend afflicted tissue, and can also take an active role in fighting pathogens. Microglia can also regulate brain inflammation, a normal part of the immune response that can cause swelling and damage if left unchecked.
Microglia also support the health of other brain cells. For instance, they can release molecules that promote resilience, such as the protein BDNF, which is known to be beneficial for neuron survival and function.
But the keystone feature of microglia are their astounding janitorial skills. Of all brain cell types, microglia possess an exquisite ability to clean up gunk in the brain, including the damaged myelin in multiple sclerosis, pieces of dead cells and amyloid beta, a toxic protein that is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. They accomplish this by consuming and breaking down debris in their environment, effectively eating up the garbage surrounding them and their neighboring cells.
Given the many essential roles microglia serve to maintain brain function, these cells may possess the capacity to address multiple arms of neurodegeneration-related dysfunction. Moreover, as lifelong residents of the brain, microglia are already educated in the best practices of brain protection. These factors put microglia in the perfect position for researchers to leverage their inherent abilities to protect against neurodegeneration.
New data in both animal models and human patients points to a previously underappreciated role microglia also play in the development of neurodegenerative disease. Many genetic risk factors for diseases like Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis are strongly linked to abnormal microglia function. These findings support an accumulating number of animal studies suggesting that disruptions to microglial function may contribute to neurologic disease onset and severity.
This raises the next logical question: How can researchers harness microglia to protect the nervous system against neurodegeneration?
Engaging the magic of microglia
In our lab’s recent study, we keyed in on a crucial protein called SYK that microglia use to manipulate their response to neurodegeneration.
Our collaborators found that microglia dial up the activity of SYK when they encounter debris in their environment, such as amyloid beta in Alzheimer’s or myelin debris in multiple sclerosis. When we inhibited SYK function in microglia, we found that twice as much amyloid beta accumulated in Alzheimer’s mouse models and six times as much myelin debris in multiple sclerosis mouse models.
Blocking SYK function in the microglia of Alzheimer’s mouse models also worsened neuronal health, indicated by increasing levels of toxic neuronal proteins and a surge in the number of dying neurons. This correlated with hastened cognitive decline, as the mice failed to learn a spatial memory test. Similarly, impairing SYK in multiple sclerosis mouse models exacerbated motor dysfunction and hindered myelin repair. These findings indicate that microglia use SYK to protect the brain from neurodegeneration.
But how does SYK protect the nervous system against damage and degeneration? We found that microglia use SYK to migrate toward debris in the brain. It also helps microglia remove and destroy this debris by stimulating other proteins involved in cleanup processes. These jobs support the idea that SYK helps microglia protect the brain by charging them to remove toxic materials.
Finally, we wanted to figure out if we could leverage SYK to create “super microglia” that could help clean up debris before it makes neurodegeneration worse. When we gave mice a drug that boosted SYK function, we found that Alzheimer’s mouse models had lower levels of plaque accumulation in their brains one week after receiving the drug. This finding points to the potential of increasing microglia activity to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
Future studies will be necessary to see whether creating a super microglia cleanup crew to treat neurodegenerative diseases is beneficial in people. But our results suggest that microglia already play a key role in preventing neurodegenerative diseases by helping to remove toxic waste in the nervous system and promoting the healing of damaged areas.
It’s possible to have too much of a good thing, though. Excessive inflammation driven by microglia could make neurologic disease worse. We believe that equipping microglia with the proper instructions to carry out their beneficial functions without causing further damage could one day help treat and prevent neurodegenerative disease.
Listen to The Conversation’s podcast series Uncharted Brain: Decoding Dementia to find out more about the latest research unlocking clues to the ongoing mystery of how dementia works in the brain. Find all episodes via The Anthill podcast.
Nearly half of COVID patients worldwide still have symptoms after 4 months, according to a giant new study
Erin Prater – December 7, 2022
Hyoung Chang—The Denver Post/Getty Images
Almost half of COVID survivors globally—both children and adults—have lingering symptoms four months later, according to a landmark new study.
Researchers at the University of Leicester in England performed an analysis of nearly 200 studies of prior COVID patients, involving nearly 750,000 people in all. The patients—some of whom were hospitalized and some of whom weren’t—lived across the globe.
More than 45% of study participants had at least one lingering symptom four months out from their initial infection. A quarter of the patients reported fatigue, and a similar number said they felt pain or discomfort. Meanwhile, sleep issues, breathlessness, and problems participating in normal daily activities were reported in just under a quarter of patients, according to the study.
Often, no clinical abnormalities could be found to explain such symptoms. But some signs were reported in many patients who had been hospitalized with COVID, including changes in lung structure and function. An abnormal CT scan and/or X-rays were found in nearly half of previously hospitalized patients, in addition to a decreased capacity to diffuse carbon monoxide in nearly a third of patients.
“Changes in pulmonary function are similar to those observed following other viral infections including SARS and MERS,” the authors wrote.
When nonhospitalized COVID survivors were singled out, more than a third of them had lingering symptoms at four months, the study found.
“The reasons as to why so many patients are experiencing long COVID remains unknown,” the authors wrote, adding that possible causes include organ damage, inflammation, altered immune systems, and psychological effects.
While some studies have found a higher rate of long COVID in females, the study out of Leicester didn’t find that any particular age group or gender experienced higher rates of the disabling condition. Researchers weren’t able to reliably assess any potential association with race, as only a quarter of studies examined provided participants’ race or ethnicity.
Nearly 20% of American adults who’ve had COVID—an estimated 50 million—report having long COVID symptoms, according to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau this summer.
Long COVID is roughly defined as symptoms that persist or appear long after the initial infection is gone, but a consensus definition has not yet been broadly accepted. Many experts contend that long COVID is best defined as a chronic-fatigue-syndrome–like condition that develops after COVID illness, similar to other post-viral syndromes that can occur after infection with herpes, Lyme disease, and even Ebola. Other post-COVID complications, like organ damage and post–intensive-care syndrome, should not be defined as long COVID, they say.
US sees worst flu outbreak in 10 years: Which states are being hit hardest by ‘tripledemic’?
Linda Carroll – December 6, 2022
Fears of a “tripledemic” in the U.S. seem to be coming to true, as flu hospitalizations hit their highest level in a decade, COVID cases rise following Thanksgiving gatherings, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) continues to sicken children across the country.
“This year’s flu season is off to a rough start,” Dr. Sandra Fryhofer, board chair of the American Medical Association, said at a Dec. 5 press briefing hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Flu is here. It started early, and with COVID and RSV also circulating, it’s a perfect storm for a terrible holiday season.”
While cases of RSV, which have been straining children’s hospitals since the early fall, may have peaked in some parts of the country, flu activity is surging ahead of schedule, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at the briefing. And the number of new COVID-19 cases per day has increased 16% over the past two weeks, according to NBC News’ tally.
The continued shortage of health workers is also making this winter a difficult one for illnesses. Even prior to the pandemic, there were already too few health workers to go around, but it’s gotten worse in the years since. In fact, TODAY.com previously reported that some hospitals have beds available but no staff to care for those patients.
What is a tripledemic?
The tripledemic of 2022 refers to the possibility that COVID-19, seasonal influenza and RSV will all surge at the same time. COVID-19 and the flu are certainly on the upswing, but RSV may be slowing down, per CDC data. That said, all three viruses are still continuing to cause widespread illness.
The number of positive RSV tests in the U.S. fell from over 19,000 the week ending Nov. 12 to 7,500 the week ending Nov. 26, per CDC data. At the Dec. 5 briefing, Walensky said RSV cases have peaked in the South and Southeast and plateaued in the Mid-Atlantic, New England and Midwest. It’s not clear if the trend will hold, however.
“RSV is usually seen in January and February,” Dr. Roberto Posada, a professor of pediatrics at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital in New York City, tells TODAY.com. “We hadn’t seen that much in the way of RSV and even influenza over the past two years, and that may be because of masking and people not getting together.” Because of that, people have less immunity at a time when they are gathering more and masking less, Posada explains.
Influenza is also on the rise, with the U.S. seeing the highest number of hospitalizations for this time of year in a decade, NBC News reported. Roughly 78,000 people have been hospitalized with flu and 4,500 have died since early October, NBC News reported. The number of flu hospitalizations in the U.S. doubled from the second-to-last week in November to the last. Since Oct. 1, the flu has caused 8.7 million illnesses; for context, 9 million illnesses were reported for the entire 2021-2022 flu season.
And third, putting the “triple” in “tripledemic,” is the steady increase in COVID-19 cases since the Thanksgiving holiday. In addition to the increase in daily new cases recorded by the NBC News tally, daily COVID-related hospital admissions increased 18% from the week ending Nov. 22 to the week ending Nov. 29, per CDC data. Experts previously told TODAY.com that it’s likely cases will continue to increase as people gather for Christmas and New Year’s and spend more time indoors as temperatures drop.
“If you add an omicron surge to the current RSV surge, there’s no place … to put another 50 kids that need to be admitted to the hospital,” Dr. Jason Newland, professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, tells TODAY.com.
Even though flu and RSV may be a bit early, it’s typical in winter to see a surge of these viruses, Dr. Michael Angarone, associate professor of infectious diseases at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, tells TODAY.com. But this year is likely to be different: “What we are worried about is having the typical cold and flu seasons combined with SARS-CoV-2,” he says.
The real fear around a tripledemic is the possibility that the three viruses will peak at the same time and inundate hospitals, filling every bed and stretching staff thin, Posada adds.
What parts of the U.S. are highest risk for a tripledemic in 2022?
RSV, COVID-19 and flu are more likely to have a severe impact on parts of the country that are colder, Dr. David Buchholz, a pediatrician and founding medical director of primary care at Columbia University in New York City, tells TODAY.com.
When the air is frigid, people are more likely to huddle indoors and keep their windows closed, which makes transmission of the viruses more likely, Buchholz says. “Where it’s warmer, people are more likely to spend time outdoors and open their windows,” he adds.
Another factor pumping up the spread of these three bugs in cold climates is the viruses’ affinity for cool, dry air, Dr. Timothy Brewer, professor of medicine and epidemiology at University of California, Los Angeles, tells TODAY.com. In fact, this phenomenon may explain the burst of flu activity in Texas and the Southeast in early November, which experienced a cold snap right before, he says.
As of the week ending in Nov. 26, all but five states are experiencing “high” or “very high” flu activity, the CDC reported. Based on the CDC’s flu activity ranking by level, New Hampshire is the only state at level 1 (also called “minimal”), and 11 states are at the highest level recorded so far, 13. These are:
California
Colorado
Kentucky
Nebraska
New Mexico
Ohio
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
Washington
Brewer also says the parts of the U.S. with the lowest vaccination rates against COVID-19 and flu “will most likely get into trouble with these viruses,” he said. (There’s no vaccine against RSV.)
Many of the Mountain and Southern states have low vaccination rates against COVID-19, per CDC data; in 15 states, including Idaho, Alabama, South Carolina, Wyoming, Tennessee and Mississippi, less than 60% of the eligible population completed the primary series, which is approved for everyone 6 months and older.
Flu shot distribution is also lagging across the country. As of the week ending Nov. 26, the immunization rate is lower than at the same point in the previous two seasons. These states had the lowest flu vaccination rates during last year’s season, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation:
Mississippi
Wyoming
Nevada
Idaho
Florida
How to protect yourself during a tripledemic
The best way for people to protect themselves amid the possibility of a tripledemic is to get the latest COVID-19 booster and a flu shot, Angarone says. So far, it looks like the flu vaccine this year is a good match to the strains of influenza virus currently circulating, Brewer adds. There’s no vaccine for RSV, but one could be on the horizon.
Even though most people will not experience severe symptoms with RSV and the flu, “we have to be aware of others when we are sick,” Angarone says. “Even though it’s not COVID-19, you probably should not go to work and get your colleagues sick. You should make sure you are washing your hands.”
Having trouble breathing, such as the skin around the ribs sucking in or the nostrils flaring when the child tries to breathe.
Grunting in babies, or difficulty speaking in older kids.
Diminished number of wet diapers and other signs of dehydration.
Increased or persistent lethargy, such as a child being difficult to wake.
Any sign of blue around the lips.
Irritability, such as crying that won’t stop.
The good news is RSV and influenza aren’t new, so we know how to prevent and treat them, and there are vaccines available to protect against two of the three viruses that contributing to the tripledemic.
Forget diets: This is how to lose weight and keep it off for good
Kristin Kirkpatrick – December 6, 2022
Losing weight is notoriously difficult. And as hard as it is to get the scale to tick down, it’s even harder to keep the weight off. Unfortunately, recent studies show that most of us will put weight back on in two years. By fiveyears, almost all of it may come back. Further, many people end up gaining more weight than they lost.
But keeping your focus on the end goal — better health and longevity — may increase your odds more than any extreme diet and fitness regime. In fact, the path to maintaining a healthy weight starts long before you get close to your goal weight. Here are some evidence-based ways to approach weight loss and maintenance in a healthy way.
Don’t fixate on the numberon the scale
When I see patients for the first time, we discuss their health goals. The truth is that most people are aiming for a particular number. “I want to lose this many pounds,” or “I want to reach this number on the scale.” But fixating on a goal weight may work against a lot of us. Studies show that focusing on the numbers that speak to overall health may be more impactful in sustained behavior change. So, throw out the scale and focus on your lipid panel, your blood-sugar numbers, or perhaps even your inflammation markers.
Paying attention to health, rather than weight can shift the reason why you want to drop pounds in the first place. Other quality of life parameters — like better sleep, less chronic pain or increased energy —can all be major motivation for changing your habits. Finally, if you must rely on a scale, choose an option that assess body fat and muscle mass.
Learn from weight maintenance warriors
Multiple studies have tried to demystify why one person succeeds at weight loss while another doesn’t. Two studies in the journalObesity surveyed almost 6,000 individuals who had participated in a structured weight-loss program. The surveyed participants lost on average 50 pounds and kept their weight off for three years or more.
Based these studies, as well as previous data, people who were successful at losing weight and keeping it off did these things:
Made healthy food choices most of the time — and found that these choices effortless and “unconscious.”
Self-monitored and journaled about their food intake.
Celebrated their past achievements and embraced their current health.
Another crucial component of weight loss success was mindset — especially in the face of challenges and adversity. While both health and appearance were significant motivating factors, greater confidence and being more mentally and physically fit topped the list for being able to maintain healthy habits.
A recent study from the University of Colorado found that when individuals engaged in physical activity, they maintained more steps per day (about 12,000) and maintained a higher energy expenditure. Another study published in the Archives of Internal Medicinefound that in order to maintain weight loss, women needed to exercise at least 55 minutes, five days per week. This recommendation surpasses the current guidelines for exercise, which calls for only 150 minutes of moderate physical activity throughout the week and two days of muscle-building training.
Adding protein to each meal — like enjoying an egg white omelet for breakfast — has been shown to help maintain weight loss. (Sergio Amiti / Getty Images)
Fall in love with protein
A 2020 study in the Journal of Nutrition found that high-protein diets were associated with greater success in maintaining weight loss. The study showed that having more protein often counteracted the process of adaptive thermogenesis — a state where the body adapts to a new weight by altering energy expenditure. An easy way to up your protein intake is to add some kind of protein to every meal and snack. For example, consuming eggs whites at breakfast, hummus for a snack and wild salmon for dinner.
Assess your social circle
If you’ve ever had a friend tell you that “one bite of something won’t kill you,” you know that your loved ones can have a major influence on your health habits. A study from The University of North Carolina found that individuals that lose weight may face a “lean stigma” where friends and family consciously or unconsciously sabotage or undermine efforts of the successful weight loss.
Researchers found that effective communication techniques were one way to mitigate comments and discouraging attitudes from friends and family. For example, telling loved ones ahead of time your motivation to lose weight or communicating weight-loss efforts as a way to obtain better health — and not better appearance — is a good way to let your loved ones know why your health goals are important to you.
Accept the fact that there’s no magic weight loss fix
“Unfortunately, there’s no magic bullet to lose weight quickly and sustainably,” Samantha Cassetty, a registered dietitian and author of “Sugar Shock,” told TODAY.com. “Some people like the idea of a jump-start plan, which may involve fewer calories or carbs as you’re starting out. If that helps you feel motivated and get in the right mindset to form lasting habits, go for it. But for permanent weight loss, be realistic about what you can sustain,” Cassetty explained.
Also, Cassetty added, it’s important to keep in mind that when you fast weight loss, you might overlook behaviors that need to be addressed — such as nighttime snacking or eating when you’re bored. Cassetty said that a jump-start plan probably doesn’t include your favorite foods, but it’s much more realistic to learn how to live with indulgences than to try to avoid them forever. “Overly restricting less healthy foods can be stressful, which can stall weight loss efforts,” said Cassetty.
Embrace your body — and adapt to it when it changes
Studies indicate that frequent attempts to lose and then regain weight (often referred to as yo-yo dieting) can have an adverse impact on health and lead to an increased risk of further weight gain. A 2016 study showed that repeated dieting could cause the brain to think it’s going through periods of famine. In response, the body continues to work toward fat storage to prepare for the next round. The body adapts and becomes efficient at the current lower weight, and if you don’t adapt with it, you will most likely gain the weight back.
Imagine putting on a 20-pound vest and taking a walk around the block. The walk would be challenging, and you may have to work harder during the activity. Exertion is higher, and with it so are the calories you are burning as well. Now imagine taking the vest off. The body does not have to work that hard anymore to get you around the block. If you’ve lost 50 pounds, and changed nothing in your physical activity or eating habits, you are more likely to gain that weight back. Your metabolism works with the new weight, so constant adaptation is essential.
Let go of the idea that you can target belly fat
There’s a lot of trending advice about how to lose belly fat, but the truth is that it’s difficult to target weight loss. “If you lose weight, you will lose fat in your midsection, but it’s impossible to target belly fat,”Cassetty told TODAY. However, belly fat tends to respond well to modifications in your diet and activity, Cassetty explained. “And there’s evidence that when your waist shrinks, cholesterol and blood sugar levels improve,” she said.
If you experience, belly-specific health issues, you may need to address those. “If your belly seems bigger after you eat and you experience painful bloating, it could be a sign of a food sensitivity or gut health problem,” Cassettty said. “If this is the case, consult with your healthcare provider to determine the cause and treatment plan.”
Take a break from dieting
If your idea of weight loss and weight maintenance is a “diet,” then studies show you are likely bound for failure. A 2017 randomized controlled trial found that individuals that took breaks from dieting were more likely to lose weight and keep it off. The cornerstone of dieting is often restriction. The more restricted, the less we lose. So, take a break from diets and embrace lifestyle changes instead.
Weight loss — especially when the reduction occurs in the midsection — can have a significant impact on health and longevity, though. When you focus on longevity, happiness and increased energy, your reasons for losing the weight in the first place will be clear and your ability to maintain better health will be easier.
