Tag Archives: linked

What’s your poison? Alcohol linked to higher risk of pancreatic cancer

Posted on by
Reply

The research, led by the UN World Health Organization’s centre for cancer research, pooled data from nearly 2.5 million people across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America.

It revealed a “modest but significant” association between alcohol consumption and the risk of developing pancreatic cancer, regardless of sex or smoking status.

“Alcohol consumption is a known carcinogen, but until now, the evidence linking it specifically to pancreatic cancer has been considered inconclusive,” said Pietro Ferrari, senior author of the study at the international cancer research agency and Head of Nutrition and Metabolism Branch at the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

The pancreas is a vital organ that produces enzymes for digestion and hormones that regulate blood sugar. Pancreatic cancer is among the most lethal cancers, largely due to late diagnosis.

All drinkers are at risk

The IARC study found that each additional 10 grams of alcohol consumed per day was associated with a 3 per cent increase in pancreatic cancer risk.

For women consuming 15 to 30 grams of alcohol daily – about one to two drinks – the risk rose by 12 per cent compared to light drinkers. Among men, those who drank 30 to 60 grams daily faced a 15 per cent increased risk, while men drinking more than 60 grams daily saw a 36 per cent higher risk.

“Alcohol is often consumed in combination with tobacco, which has led to questions about whether smoking might confound the relationship,” Mr. Ferrari said.

“However, our analysis showed that the association between alcohol and pancreatic cancer risk holds even for non-smokers, indicating that alcohol itself is an independent risk factor.”

Further research is needed, he added, to better understand the impact of lifetime alcohol consumption, including patterns such as binge drinking and early-life exposure.

A growing global challenge

Pancreatic cancer is the twelfth most common cancer globally, but it accounts for 5 per cent of cancer-related deaths due to its high fatality rate.

In 2022, incidence and mortality rates were up to five times higher in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, and Eastern Asia than in other regions.

Here’s how coffee and cigarettes are complementary

Posted on by
Reply
For some smokers, the first cigarette of the day is just not as satisfying without a cup of coffee. That could be more than just a morning habit: Chemical compounds in roasted coffee beans may help lighten the effects of morning nicotine cravings, University of Florida researchers have found.

In a cell-based study, the researchers identified two compounds in coffee that directly affect certain high-sensitivity nicotine receptors in the brain. In smokers, these brain receptors can be hypersensitive after a night of nicotine withdrawal.

The recently published findings have yet to be tested in humans but are an important step toward better understanding how coffee and cigarettes affect nicotine receptors in the brain, said Roger L. Papke, Ph.D., a pharmacology professor in the UF College of Medicine. Caffeine is coffee’s feel-good ingredient for most people but smokers may get another kind of boost.

“Many people like caffeine in the morning but there are other molecules in coffee that may explain why cigarette smokers want their coffee,” Papke said.

The researchers applied a dark-roasted coffee solution to cells that express a particular human nicotine receptor. An organic chemical compound in coffee may help restore the nicotine receptor dysfunction that leads to nicotine cravings in smokers, the researchers concluded.

The findings have led Papke to a broader hypothesis: One of the compounds in brewed coffee, known as n-MP, may help to quell morning nicotine cravings.

Papke said he was intrigued by the idea that nicotine-dependent smokers associate tobacco use with coffee in the morning and alcohol in the evening. While alcohol’s effect on nicotine receptors in the brain has been thoroughly researched, the receptors’ interaction with coffee has been studied less.

“Many people look for coffee in the morning because of the caffeine. But was the coffee doing anything else to smokers? We wanted to know if there were other things in coffee that were affecting the brain’s nicotine receptors,” Papke said.

Coffee increases consumer spending, says another study

However, a global research team said customers are prone to impulsive purchases after consuming coffee, tea, or soda at retail stores or car dealerships.

About 85% of Americans consume at least one caffeinated beverage every day with coffee being the primary source of caffeine, followed by tea and soda. Caffeine is also found in energy drinks, chocolate, and in many over the counter and prescription medications.

These researchers said, “Understanding how and why caffeine consumption influences spending is important since caffeine is one of the most powerful stimulants that is both legal and widely available.”

The study finds that drinking a caffeinated beverage before shopping leads to more items purchased at the store and increased spending. Their studies also show that the effect of caffeine is stronger for “high hedonic” products such as scented candles, fragrances, décor items, and massagers and weaker for “low hedonic” products such as notebooks, kitchen utensils, and storage baskets.

Yoga awareness campaign of the Ministry of Ayush with the help of human size Yoga mascots in the run up to the International Day of Yoga, at Metro Walk Mall, Rohini, in New Delhi on June 10, 2017.(PIB Photo)

Caffeine also impacted the types of items bought at the stores. The group that took in caffeine bought more hedonic (enjoyable/fun) items such as scented candles and fragrances. However, there was very little difference between the two groups with regard to utilitarian purchases such as utensils and storage baskets. Also, the effects of caffeine on spending hold for those who drink a little over two cups of coffee (or less) daily and is weakened for heavy coffee drinkers.

“Overall, retailers can benefit financially if shoppers consume caffeine before or during shopping and that the effects are stronger for high hedonic products. This is important for retailers to factor in to determine the proportion of hedonic products in their stores. Policy makers may also want to inform consumers about the potential effects of caffeine on spending,” conclude the researchers.

 

 

More daytime sleepiness, more Alzheimer’s disease?

Posted on by
Reply

Aging adults who report being very sleepy during the day were nearly three times more likely than those who didn’t to have brain deposits of beta amyloid, a protein that’s a hallmark for Alzheimer’s disease, years later.

The finding, published on Sept. 5 in the journal SLEEP, adds to a growing body of evidence that poor quality sleep could encourage this form of dementia to develop, suggesting that getting adequate nighttime sleep could be a way to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

“Factors like diet, exercise and cognitive activity have been widely recognized as important potential targets for Alzheimer’s disease prevention, but sleep hasn’t quite risen to that status–although that may well be changing,” says Adam Spira, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“If disturbed sleep contributes to Alzheimer’s disease,” he said. “We may be able to treat patients with sleep issues to avoid these negative outcomes.”

The study used data from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) that was started way back in  1958 to follow the health of thousands of volunteers as they age. Volunteers filled a questionnaire between 1991 and 2000 that asked a simple yes/no question: “Do you often become drowsy or fall asleep during the daytime when you wish to be awake?” They were also asked, “Do you nap?” with response options of “daily,” “1-2 times/week,” “3-5 times/week,” and “rarely or never.”

A subgroup of BLSA volunteers also began receiving neuroimaging assessments in 1994. Starting in 2005, some of these participants received positron emission tomography (PET) scans using Pittsburgh compound B (PiB), a radioactive compound that can help identify beta-amyloid plaques in neuronal tissue, which are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers identified 123 volunteers who both answered the earlier questions and had a PET scan with PiB an average of nearly 16 years later and then analyzed it to see if there was a correlation between participants who reported daytime sleepiness and whether they scored positive for beta-amyloid deposition in the brain.

The results showed that those who reported daytime sleepiness were about three times more likely to have beta-amyloid deposition than those who didn’t report daytime fatigue. After adjusting for other health factors, the risk was still 2.75 times higher among them.

The unadjusted risk for amyloid-beta deposition was about twice as high in volunteers who reported napping, but this did not reach statistical significance.

It’s currently unclear why daytime sleepiness would be correlated with the deposition of beta-amyloid protein, Spira says. One possibility is that daytime sleepiness itself might somehow cause this protein to form in the brain.

Based on previous research, a more likely explanation is that disturbed sleep or insufficient sleep due to other factors, causes beta-amyloid plaques to form through a currently unknown mechanism, and that these sleep disturbances also cause excessive daytime sleepiness.

“However, we cannot rule out that amyloid plaques that were present at the time of sleep assessment caused the sleepiness,” he added.

This new study adds to growing evidence that poor sleep might actually contribute to Alzheimer’s disease development. Spira suggests that sleep quality could be a risk factor that’s modifiable by targeting disorders that affect sleep, such as obstructive sleep apnea and insomnia, as well as social- and individual-level factors, such as sleep loss due to work or binge-watching TV shows.

“There is no cure yet for Alzheimer’s disease, so we have to do our best to prevent it. Even if a cure is developed, prevention strategies should be emphasized,” Spira says.