Friday Tidbits #3
This short email has 5 interesting bits of information for your weekend.
Welcome to Friday Tidbits. this is a very short email with morsels of information to help you tweak your life and health for optimum longevity and healthy ageing.
Stress
Chronic stress release hormones that elevated blood sugar levels, increasing the risk for type II diabetes (1).
Glucocorticoids (cortisol) and catecholamines (adrenaline and nor-adrenaline) are the main hormonal response to stress. Acute stress is a healthy response that allows us to adapt.
Glucocorticoids stimulate the liver to release stored glucose and at the same time reduce the ability for muscles to remove the glucose from the blood by blocking the action of insulin. To make matters worse, less insulin is secreted by the pancreas. Insulin is secreted by the beta cells in the pancreas when blood sugar levels rise. Insulin acts like a key in a lock on the surface of muscle cells. This opens a door the let the glucose into the cell, removing glucose from the blood stream. Without enough insulin, blood sugar levels will rise.
Breathing
Singing requires extended, controlled exhales and is an effective technique retrain breathing muscles and breathing rhythm (2).
When first starting breath training, many people struggle to exhale slowly. They tend to dump most of the air out in the first few seconds and have no breath left to last for the longer duration. For some even an eight second exhale can be a challenge, never mind longer than 30 seconds. The act of making sounds, called phonation, make it easier to slowly exhale. The contraction of the vocal cords in the glottis acts as a valve (3) to modulate airflow. This prevents most of the air being exhaled at the start of the breath, thus allowing for a slow exhale.
Programmed singing interventions like the Singing for Lung Health (SLH) program aims to reduce breathlessness in patients with COPD and asthma (4).
Singing also makes you happy by releasing serotonin, dopamine and endorphins.
Nutrition
Protect your brain from cognitive decline by consuming a half cup of blueberries every day.
Blueberries improves brain health and function as measured by speed of processing (5) and memory (6) after 12 week supplementation.
Blueberry supplementation enhances blood flow to the brain by improving the health of blood vessel through the induction of nitric oxide production. Other benefits include improved glucose uptake, reduce insulin resistance, enhanced mitochondrial function.
Berries contain polyphenols – bioactive compounds found in plant foods with antioxidant properties (7). Blueberries have very high levels of polyphenols compared to other foods. Antioxidants protect cells from oxidative damage and enhance cell repair processes. The subgroup, anthocyanins give blueberries its dark colour. Anthocyanins (8) have strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities.
Movement
Adults older than 60 years that walk more than 6 000 steps per day reduce the risk of dying from all causes by ~50% compared to a step count of 3 000 (9).
For adults younger than 60 years (9) the daily step count associated with lower risk of dying is 8 000 from a baseline of 5 000 steps.
Taking more steps per day is associated with progressively lower risk of all-cause mortality, plateauing at different levels per age.
Although the goal of 10 000 steps per day is generally accepted as a goal for good health, it is not based on evidence, but instead originates from a marketing campaign for a pedometer in Japan (10).
Being active improves quality of life and reduce the burden and mortality of chronic diseases including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer.
Sleep
We get the majority of our Deep Sleep during the first half of the night. The Deep Sleep phase is involved in sorting and cleaning up unnecessary neural connections and preserving long-term memories (11) – preparing your brain for the next day’s inflow of information.
For example, it might not be important to remember what colour shirt we wore last Monday but it is important to remember the celebration dinner with a close friend. We need about 20% of our sleep in Deep Sleep (Slow Wave or NREM4). Lack of Deep Sleep can lead to difficulties in learning and remembering information, feeling unrested, reduced healing and restoration of tissues and lower immune function.
Get more Deep Sleep:
· Going to bed at the same time.
· Listen to Bineural beats (delta wave) before bed
· Reduce caffeine
· Reduce alcohol
Here is a good summary on sleep cycles and REM and NREM phases.
References
Sharma, Kapil et al. “Stress-Induced Diabetes: A Review.” Cureus vol. 14,9 e29142. 13 Sep. 2022, doi:10.7759/cureus.29142
Kim, Soo Ji et al. “Singing Interventions in Pulmonary Rehabilitation: A Scoping Review.” International journal of environmental research and public health vol. 20,2 1383. 12 Jan. 2023, doi:10.3390/ijerph20021383
Lewis, Adam et al. “The physiology of singing and implications for 'Singing for Lung Health' as a therapy for individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.” BMJ open respiratory research vol. 8,1 (2021): e000996. doi:10.1136/bmjresp-2021-000996
Gick, Mary L, and Jennifer J Nicol. “Singing for respiratory health: theory, evidence and challenges.” Health promotion international vol. 31,3 (2016): 725-34. doi:10.1093/heapro/dav013
Cheatham, Carol L et al. “Six-month intervention with wild blueberries improved speed of processing in mild cognitive decline: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial.” Nutritional neuroscience vol. 26,10 (2023): 1019-1033. doi:10.1080/1028415X.2022.2117475
Krikorian, Robert et al. “Blueberry Supplementation in Midlife for Dementia Risk Reduction.” Nutrients vol. 14,8 1619. 13 Apr. 2022, doi:10.3390/nu14081619
Pandey, Kanti Bhooshan, and Syed Ibrahim Rizvi. “Plant polyphenols as dietary antioxidants in human health and disease.” Oxidative medicine and cellular longevity vol. 2,5 (2009): 270-8. doi:10.4161/oxim.2.5.9498
Seeram, Navindra P et al. “Cyclooxygenase inhibitory and antioxidant compounds from crabapple fruits.” Journal of agricultural and food chemistry vol. 51,7 (2003): 1948-51. doi:10.1021/jf025993u
Paluch, Amanda E et al. “Daily steps and all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis of 15 international cohorts.” The Lancet. Public health vol. 7,3 (2022): e219-e228. doi:10.1016/S2468-2667(21)00302-9
Lee IM, Shiroma EJ, Kamada M, Bassett DR, Matthews CE, Buring JE. Association of step volume and intensity with all-cause mortality in older women. JAMA Intern Med 2019; 179: 1105–12.
Klinzing, Jens G et al. “Mechanisms of systems memory consolidation during sleep.” Nature neuroscience vol. 22,10 (2019): 1598-1610. doi:10.1038/s41593-019-0467-3
Abeln, Vera et al. “Brainwave entrainment for better sleep and post-sleep state of young elite soccer players - a pilot study.” European journal of sport science vol. 14,5 (2014): 393-402. doi:10.1080/17461391.2013.819384
Drake, Christopher et al. “Caffeine effects on sleep taken 0, 3, or 6 hours before going to bed.” Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine vol. 9,11 1195-200. 15 Nov. 2013, doi:10.5664/jcsm.3170
Park, Soon-Yeob et al. “The Effects of Alcohol on Quality of Sleep.” Korean journal of family medicine vol. 36,6 (2015): 294-9. doi:10.4082/kjfm.2015.36.6.294