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Eat, Drink and Be Healthy?

unicopia@comcast.

unicopia@comcast.net.

Best regards

Simon Evans
http://www.thebraincode.com

Eat, Drink and Be Healthy?
Copyright (c) 2006 The Brain Code LLC

Did you see the news this week? Red wine keeps you healthy
even if you pig out ? at least that's what the headlines
read. It's true that there has been an established link
between moderate red wine consumption and cardiovascular
health for quite some time. A compound found in wine,
called resveratrol, is prime suspect of the
health-promoting benefits of red wine.

The new study published this week in Nature added fuel to
that fire by showing that resveratrol was able to reverse
many of the problems associated with eating a high calorie
diet. The experiment worked this way: The scientists
established three groups of mice. One group ate a standard
diet and the other two groups ate high calorie diets; but
one of the high calorie diet groups received resveratrol at
the same time.

The mice stayed on those three diets until death (some are
still alive) and the researchers looked at a lot of
different things, including: how much weight the mice
gained, how long they lived, insulin and glucose
sensitivities (markers of diabetes), the conditions of
their hearts and livers upon death, and a whole bunch of
biochemical pathways related to disease.

It turned out that resveratrol treatment made the mice that
ate a high calorie diet look a lot like the mice that ate a
standard diet. So what does the media want you to believe
is the bottom line . . . ? You guessed it ? You can eat
whatever you want as long as you drink red wine, you'll be
fine. Do you believe it? Do you want to believe it? The
study certainly supports that point of view.

Do you want to take preventative drugs?

In fact, the scientist in charge of the study is the
co-founder of a pharmaceutical company that is now
developing a high potency resveratrol pill as a drug to
treat obesity and all kinds of diseases related to aging.
Now I don't want to just leave that statement hanging there
because that could obviously be construed as a conflict of
interest ? Big Time! However, most people have many
conflicts of interest in their lives. The real question
should relate to the ethics of the people involved ? that's
all that matters. I'm not going to suggest that the
conflict is a problem in this case, but you should know
about it nonetheless.

The bigger problem, in my view, relates to the notion that
you can drug your way out of a problem that you behaved
your way into. I have written posts in the past on this
subject and in lieu of this new study feel that I have to
bring it up again.

This is the 3rd study over the past couple of months that
has been published in a very high profile scientific
journal making this ?magic bullet' type of claim. The other
two studies promoted research that suggested you could
inject a vaccine or a protein into rats and they would stay
thin no matter what they ate. That is a little different
from the new study, which says you can give mice drugs to
keep them healthy, even though they get fat.

The first two studies focused on using drugs to stay thin
and the last one focused on using drugs to stay healthy
while you got fat. I know these conclusions are incredibly
appealing but I ask again ? do you believe it? I just have
a hard time subscribing to the magic bullet theory of
anything, especially when it comes to biology. Here's why.
. .

Are we smarter than nature?

The human body has about 30,000 genes. We have a good
understanding of what 1,000 ? 2,000 of them do, and some
idea about the role of another 5,000 ? 10,000. This means
that at least one half of our genes are complete mysteries
to us. Why is this important?

Drugs work on the notion that when something is wrong with
our biochemistry we can fix it with a drug that will
interact with the problem-causing biochemical pathway, and
set it straight. That's a simplistic view, but essentially
that's how drugs work. And in many cases it works very well
? for the specific biochemical pathway we are targeting.
However, there are thousands of biochemical pathways that
we don't understand and we cannot predict how they will
respond to drugs ? or in some cases we simply don't care as
long as the desired effect is observed.

Here's an example. Most people know about statin drugs that
are used to lower cholesterol. They are very effective at
doing their job ? lowering cholesterol. They work by
actually inhibiting a part of the biochemical pathway
leading to cholesterol synthesis and so reduce cholesterol.
However, there are other important molecules that are also
synthesized in that same pathway and by inhibiting it
(which has the benefit of reducing cholesterol) you are
also reducing the production of those. One such molecule is
coenzyme Q, which is important for energy production, and
very important for the heart and brain. Yes, statins also
reduce coenzyme Q production. This is obviously not one of
the ?advertised benefits'.

The point is that while the drug is doing it's job,
reducing cholesterol, it is also reducing conenzyme Q
production. This is just one of hundreds of examples of
?side effects' from targeted drug use. The real problem is
that we probably don't even know about most of the side
effects of most drugs because we know so little about the
biochemistry. How can we predict the outcome of
manipulating a system without understanding how the parts
work?

Most drugs on the market enter clinical trials because they
have some apparent benefit and then get tested for toxicity
and side effects in larger studies. By the way, most fail
at this point. Still, we can only measure toxicity and side
effects for things that we know to look at. There are
thousands of potential side effects that are not being
looked at because we don't have a deep enough understanding
of the system.

Your body knows best

So what does all of this mean? It means that in order to
stay healthy ? the best way is to live a healthy lifestyle.
Don't buy into the media hype for ?magic bullets'. Our
bodies are designed to run optimally under healthy living
conditions ? eating nutritious foods, taking your vitamins,
getting plenty of exercise and getting enough sleep. Our
bodies have an innate wisdom, coded in our genes, that
knows how to keep us healthy as long as we supply them with
the right stuff. Trying to outsmart nature with drugs ?
like resveratrol ? might sound appealing but I just can't
believe that it will work in the long term. We're just not
that smart!

Is this to say that all drugs are bad? Personally, I use
things like ibuprofen or acetaminophen when I have a
headache that I can't get rid of or a sports injury, but I
try to minimize using them. I also believe that drugs can
benefit people who are already very ill and just cant' seem
to recover on their own. However, the studies I talked
about above are geared toward developing drugs for
relatively healthy people that don't want to live a healthy
lifestyle. They are drugs developed to prevent the
consequences of poor behavior. That is a recipe for
disaster and I encourage you never to buy into that way of
thinking. So feel good about having that glass of red wine
with dinner, but please don't expect it to fix all your
problems.

----------------------------------------------------
Are you Feeding your Kids Dreams or Disaster? Get the scoop
on the latest advances in neuroscience to maximize your own
child's brain power. Visit http://www.thebraincode.com to
take action today.
Dr. Simon Evans is a neuroscientist at the University of
Michigan and a nationally licensed youth sports coach.

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