Medical Bulletin 5/October/2022

Only 1 in 4 people have their high blood pressure under control, making it one of the nation's biggest public health problems, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. High blood pressure is caused, in part, by the levels of fluid and salt getting out of whack, putting stress on artery walls and damaging blood vessels and organs.

Reference:

Brandon Michael Blobner et al, Hypertension

Both time-restricted eating (TRE) and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) have been shown to improve cardiometabolic health in people who are overweight and at risk of serious disease. Now a randomized, controlled trial has tested whether combining these two approaches is more effective than either of them on their own. The results show that the combination improved the average long-term glycemic control compared to a no-intervention control group and induced 2- fold greater reductions in fat mass and visceral fat area compared with each intervention in isolation.

The trial had four arms: HIT alone, TRE alone, the TRE-HIIT combination, and a control group. A total of 131 women were enrolled, with 32 or 33 in each arm. All of them had overweight or obesity and had risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. TRE was defined as consuming all daily calories within a 10-hour time window. HIIT was defined as exercise done at 90% of maximum heart rate for 35 minutes, three times per week. The exercise sessions were supervised by the investigators, and the participants were asked to log their first and last calories every day.

Reference:

Trine Moholdt et al,Cell Metabolism, Haganes et al. "Time-restricted eating and exercise training improve HbA1c and body composition in women with overweight/obesity: A randomized controlled trial" https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(22)00393-X

Identifying the cellular mechanisms that underlie this process has proven difficult because so many cells and tissues are involved. In a new study in mice that expands researchers' understanding of how exercise and diet affect the body, MIT and Harvard Medical School researchers have mapped out many of the cells, genes, and cellular pathways that are modified by exercise or high-fat diet.

The researchers studied mice with high-fat or normal diets, who were either sedentary or given the opportunity to exercise whenever they wanted. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, the researchers cataloged the responses of 53 types of cells found in skeletal muscle and two types of fatty tissue.

Researchers at University of Portsmouth and Paris Nanterre University, France have found in a new study that watching TV with your child may help their cognitive development. Further creen exposure - whether that be from a TV or mobile device-can be beneficial, depending on the context in which it's viewed.

Researchers analysed 478 studies published in the past two decades. Their findings found exposure to television early on may be detrimental to play, language development and executive functioning, particularly for young infants.

Reference:

Bahia Guellai, Eszter Somogyi, Rana Esseily, Adrien Chopin, Effects of screen exposure on young children's cognitive development: A review. DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.923370 Frontiers in Psychology