A good vaccination program like the one we have here in Sweden, which since 2020, includes HPV vaccination, for boys. My son got it last week. Todayâs vaccination protects against nine different cancers. Besides this, we have focused on a long period of breastfeeding and giving extra omega 3 when they were infants and up to age 2-3. When the kids could tolerate it, we made eggs to be a staple food to be included in most breakfasts. This and an age-relevant multivitamin is what we have done. Besides that, we try to teach them good behavior when it comes to food, homework, money, exercise, and sleep. I will encourage them to start anti-aging whe they are in their 30s.
Newborn vitamin D deficiency linked to higher risk of ADHD, schizophrenia and autism
Newborn babies with a vitamin D deficiency have a higher chance of later developing mental disorders such as ADHD, schizophrenia and autism, a major study involving the University of Queensland has found.
In the largest population study of its kind, researchers examined the vitamin D status of 71,793 people, many of whom had a mental health disorder diagnosed during childhood and early adulthood.
The research is published in The Lancet Psychiatry.
This sounds a heck of a lot more plausible than the vaccine/autism link. Maybe someone should send RFK Jr. this report???
Dementia prevention starts earlyâŚ
Many lifestyle-related dementia risk factors emerge during the teenage years, then persist into adulthood. For example, 80% of adolescents living with obesity will remain this way when they are adults. The same applies to high blood pressure and lack of exercise. Similarly, virtually all adults who smoke or drink will have started these unhealthy habits in or around adolescence.
This poses two potential issues when considering middle age as the best starting point for dementia-prevention strategies. First, altering health behaviour that has already been established is notoriously difficult. And second, most high-risk individuals targeted in middle age will almost certainly have been exposed to the damaging effects of these risk factors for many decades already.
As such, the most effective actions are likely to be those aimed at preventing unhealthy behaviour in the first place, rather than attempting to change long-established habits decades down the line.
The roots of dementia
But what about even earlier in peopleâs lives? Could the roots of dementia stretch as far back as childhood or infancy? Increasing evidence suggests yes, and that risk factor exposures in the first decade of life (or even while in the womb) may have lifelong implications for dementia risk.
Dementia risk begins in childhood, not old age, scientists warn
Many of these risk factors â which include things like obesity, lack of exercise, and smoking â are traditionally studied from middle age (around 40 to 60 years old) onwards. As a result, several of the worldâs leading health bodies and dementia charities now recommend that strategies aimed at reducing dementia risk should ideally be targeted at this age to reap the greatest benefits.
We argue, however, that targeting even younger ages is likely to provide greater benefits still. But how young are we talking? And why would exposure to risk factors many decades before the symptoms of dementia traditionally appear be important?
Many lifestyle-related dementia risk factors emerge during the teenage years, then persist into adulthood. For example, 80% of adolescents living with obesity will remain this way when they are adults. The same applies to high blood pressure and lack of exercise. Similarly, virtually all adults who smoke or drink will have started these unhealthy habits in or around adolescence.
Congratulations! You have a newborn baby. She has plump cheeks, a round little belly, and the right number of fingers and toes. Everything seems just dandy. But unbeknownst to you, a risk is hiding in her DNA: some percent chance that later in life sheâll develop high cholesterol and have a heart attack in her 40s. Maybe itâs a 5 percent chance. Maybe itâs 80.
Would you want to know?
Robert Green would. Green is the director of Genomes2People, a research program at Brigham and Womenâs Hospital, the Broad Institute, and Harvard Medical School that explores the impacts of using genomic information in medicine and in society at large.
Until genomic sequencing, Green said, the possibility of moving beyond treating sick patients and toward precision and preventative medicine was largely impossible.
âGenomics is sort of the tip of the spear, because you can actually profile some of the vulnerabilities that a child will have for their entire lifetime at the moment of birth through their DNA,â he said. âYouâre not going to capture every illness; youâre certainly not going to capture illnesses that might have more environmental or lifestyle causes. DNA isnât a crystal ball for every kind of illness by any means, but thereâs a surprisingly large amount of human health that we can now probabilistically look at in the DNA of a newborn child or really a child at any age.â
Greenâs team found that about 12 percent of babies carry a disease-associated genetic mutation. Some of them are considered rare diseases, but in the aggregate, theyâre not rare at all.
Just having the mutation doesnât guarantee a baby will get the disease, and many conditions can vary greatly in their severity. But, Green said, early detection means you can screen regularly, start diet or lifestyle choices early, or even benefit from clinical trials or novel cell therapies that werenât available a few years ago.
The cost, he says, is not zero. Thereâs the cost of genomic testing itself, which can range from $200-$600. And then thereâs the cost of preventing, managing, or treating what is discovered.
Get your kids out and enjoying regular exercise when they are young so the develop a healthy interest in it⌠a new study:
Early-life exercise extends healthspan but not lifespan
It is well-known that physical activity exerts health benefits, yet the potential impacts of early-life regular exercise on later-life health and lifespan remains poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that 3 months of early-life exercise in mice results in lasting health benefits, extending healthspan, but not lifespan. C57BL/6J mice underwent swimming exercise from 1 to 4 months of age, followed by detraining for the remainder of their lives. While early-life exercise did not extend the overall lifespan, it significantly improved healthspan in both male and female mice, as evidenced by enhanced systemic metabolism, cardiovascular function, and muscle strength, as well as reduced systemic inflammation and frailty in aged mice. Multiple-organ transcriptome analyses identified enhanced fatty acid metabolism in skeletal muscles as a major feature in aged mice that underwent early-life exercise. These findings reveal the enduring long-term health benefits of early-life exercise, highlighting its pivotal role in improving healthspan.
Emerging evidence supports that early-life experiences and fitness affect long-term health outcomes10. Recent epidemiological studies highlight a positive correlation between higher levels of physical activity in childhood and enhanced aerobic fitness, elevated bone mineral density (BMD) and reduced risks of metabolic diseases, including obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and cardiac disease later in life11,12,13. We recently reported that early-life exercise enhances anti-inflammatory immunity in middle-aged male mice14. These findings suggest the enduring potential of early-life physical activity to positively impact human health over time. However, the precise influence of early-life exercise on adult health remains uncertain, given that individuals with higher physical activity during childhood tend to sustain elevated activity levels into adulthood15. In addition, due to the relatively short follow-up periods in human studies, it is unknown whether early-life exercise confers lifelong benefits. In this study, we investigated the impact of early-life exercise alone on overall health in later life in mice and found that 3-month exercise during early-life exerts significant long-term health benefits, improving healthspan in both male and female mice.
Open access Paper:
Childhood Trauma Predicts Poor Mental Health in Adults
A study showed that increased exposure to childhood trauma was associated with poor mental health outcomes, increased stress, and higher risks for suicideamong adults. Stress appraisals and perceived stress mediated this association.
METHODOLOGY:
- In this prospective study, 273 adults (mean age, 38 years; 48.4% men; 85% White) completed online questionnaires in two sessions.
- Researchers assessed the potential associations between childhood trauma (including emotional/physical/sexual abuse and emotional/physical neglect) and outcomes in adulthood related to mental health, suicide risk factors, and stress.
- Session 1 included the collection of data on demographics, history of childhood trauma, perceived social support, subjective socioeconomic status, and suicide-related experiences.
- After 1 week, session 2 included the collection of data on daily stress appraisals; severity of depression and anxiety; and perceived stress, defeat, and entrapment.
Thank you @RapAdmin for posting these really cool studies. The early life exercise one is brilliant.
And yes, Iâd also read news articles about the research into childhood trauma and how many negative effects carry on into adulthood. It did make me wonder how many people experience trauma, especially when parenting has generally been pretty bad for the last couple generations.
saw this recentlyâŚ
Kidsâ cereal is getting worse.
A new JAMA Network Open study found that from 2010â2023, childrenâs cereals crept up in sugar, salt, and fat, and slid down in protein and fiber [the study]. One bowl can now hit 45% of a childâs daily added sugar limit. Brands hide it behind âwhole grainâ claims and vitamin sprinkles.
Our take: Big Cereal spends 27¢ of every $1 you spend on marketing⌠and just 4¢ on ingredients. After having my baby I decided to take Stanfordâs free child nutrition course so Iâd never get fooled by the box [the course]. Best lesson? Ignore the front. Read the label.
Thatâs what people want to eat though, or theyâre probably A/B testing changes and seeing how sales change.
The McDonaldâs CEO have said if people bought salads they would have it on the menu (at the same time they are advertising people to get to their establishment), basically he said the menu is darwinian, what works is what sticks on it.
Basically the same what people in tech are doing.
The Soviet Union didnât have McDonaldâs.
Yes, absolutely. Thatâs how it works, but itâs not how it should work. This is where government should be stepping in and regulating this. I believe in personal freedom, but this is blatantly exploitative behaviour targeting children. Parents can only do so much. Kids have peer pressure. Other kids and parents give them stuff. The marketing is targeted towards kids, and the product is designed to be addictive. Governments need to step up, stop being so afraid of corporations, and protect their citizens. Itâs also self-serving/self-preservation because this stuff is becoming a national crisis - youâve got a huge number of chronically sick people, and a lot of that starts in childhood.
For example, 71% of the young adult population wouldnât be eligible to serve in the military (Unfit to Serve | Physical Activity | CDC) This is actually becoming a national security issue too.
Itâs a mess, but I donât see why big pharma couldnât come and clean it with GLP-1 agonists, it could lead to an armâs race between Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Tech, but pharma has an upper hand as thereâs a limit how much you can optimize with food rather than small molecules. Unless Big Food and Tech tackle it in a different way like a large scale information campaign, anti-GLP-1 agonists additives, etc. Tech is on a different evolution tree though than the target of GLP-1 agonists as far as I know.
Realistically GLP1 will lose their patents in the late 2030s and more affordable options will be used by pretty much everyone.
Is it really that expensive though in Europe, feel like people will save money on fast food when theyâre taking it as well. If people are using 1.5 mg wegovy a week.
But, to me, this is part of the problem. So thereâs a competition between food/media/advertising industry vs the pharma industry. But what theyâre competing over is who can profit the most from my money, and theyâre using my health as the leverage.
So the food companies research how to make things tastier, more addictive, and spend a fortune on advertising it to our kids. Then, when weâre all fat and stupid, pharma will take more of your money to help you fix it and the medical industry will take your money to deal with all the chronic diseases.
It seems like a lose-lose to me. The fact there is an entire weight-loss industry is a bad sign, because itâs a solving a problem that shouldnât even exist. The only winners are the few wealthy people controlling or who are major shareholders in those companies.
Itâs not a lose-lose, itâs a lose-win. You lose by environment, pollution, etc, you win with good pharma. Either way in your optimal scenario, thereâs a limit of what you can do with lifestyle, maybe 10-15 years of healthy life, so pharma is both necessary and good.
I have absolutely no problem with using pharma products (I take many!), and I think theyâre hugely beneficial in many situations.
However, from the perspective of raising children with a longevity mindset, I believe the ideal situation is that they wonât ever actually need the GLP1RA in the first place.