Healthy Spirits:Beer of the Month Club Update/Toronado 20th Contest

Hello Everyone,
Just a few words about April's Beer of the Month Club. Thank you to everyone for being patient. One of the beers has not arrived yet. We are expecting it tomorrow (Monday) so with any luck, we should be releasing it then. You will receive an e-mail with the tasting notes when everything is ready to go.
Also, the Toronado 20th raffle is still going! By signing up for Beer of the Month Club, you are automatically entered for a chance to win a free bottle of this rare, sought-after beer. We will draw a winner on April 15.

cheers,

dave hauslein
beer manager
415-255-0610

Healthy Spirits: You've gotta try this CYDER!

CHRISTOPHER MURRAY SPARKLING BRUT CYDER.
If you're a fan of the Etienne Dupont Cidre Bouche and other high quality organic ciders, you will appreciate this delicious, reasonably priced cider from Sonoma. Crisp and sparkling with a musty sweetness. Delicious.


cheers,

dave hauslein
beer manager
415-255-0610

Body mass index and cancer deaths in various US states

Ancel Keys is often heavily criticized for allegedly originating the fat phobia that we see today in the US and other countries, perhaps with good reason. But he has also made many important contributions to the health sciences.

One of them was the index known as body mass index (BMI), calculated based on a person's weight and height. Unlike other measures, such as body fat percentage and body fat mass, BMI is very easy to calculate; divide your weight (kg) by your height (m) squared.

BMI is strongly correlated with body fat percentage, and body fat mass. Very muscular people are exceptions; they may have a high BMI and yet reduced body fat.

Excessive body fat mass leads to chronic inflammation, due in part to elevated circulating levels of pro-inflammatory hormones such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha (cute name eh?).

Chronic inflammation, in turn, leads to increased incidence of cancer.

Thus it should be no surprise that having a BMI above 30 (obesity level) is strongly correlated with cancer death rates; see graph below (click on it to enlarge), from: Florida, 2009 (full reference at the end of this post).

The correlation for the graph above is a high 0.702, calculated as the square-root of the R-squared value shown at the bottom-right. The R-squared is the percentage of explained variance for cancer deaths, meaning that nearly 50 percent of the cancer deaths are "explained", or caused, by the BMI percentages.

One more reason to bring body fat down to healthy levels.

How do you do that? A good way to start is to replace refined carbohydrates and sugars with natural sources of protein and fat in your diet; eggs included, no need to worry about dietary cholesterol.

Reference:

Florida, R. (2009). The geography of obesity. Creative Class, Nov. 25.

New Stuff: Midnight Sun Brewing Co.

1. Midnight Sun Monk's Mistress (Belgian Dark)
2. Midnight Sun Party Peeler (Belgian Tripel)
3. Rogue First Growth Dirtoir Black Lager
4. Zywiec Baltic Porter (back in)
5. Ale Smith Horny Devil (back in)
6. Ale Smith Grand Cru (back in)

Come and get it!


Nate

Healthy Spirits: New Arrivals

1. Drie Fontinen Oude Gueuze (bottled 2008)!!!
2. Haandbryggeriet Dark Force
3.Haandbryggeriet Hesjeol (Harvest Ale)
4.Haandbryggeriet Barrel Aged Porter (Aquavit Barrels)
5.Haandbryggeriet Nissefar (Holiday Ale)
6.Nogne-O Batch #100 is back!!!
7.Nogne-O Dugges Sahti is back!!!
8.Nogne-O Andhrimnir Barley Wine Ale
9.Cuvee de Ranke is back!!!
10. De Ranke Kriek is back!!!
11.Sierra Nevada/Anchor 30th Anniversary Ale
12.Anderson Valley Summer Solstice


Come on over!

dave hauslein
beer manager
415-255-0610

Adiponectin supplementation: Body fat loss

Adiponectin is a hormone exclusively secreted by body fat. This hormone has been recently gaining attention from researchers because of some of its functions. Two important ones are the regulation of glucose and fat metabolism.

Elevated levels of adiponectin are associated with increased insulin sensitivity, and increased fat catabolism (i.e., fat burning). And these associations appear to be causal. That is, adiponectin levels do not seem to be only markers, but causes of increased insulin sensitivity and fat catabolism.

In other words, an increase in circulating adiponectin seems to lead to increased insulin sensitivity and increased fat catabolism. Insulin sensitivity is the opposite of insulin resistance. The latter is a precursor to diabetes type 2, and is associated with elevated fasting and postprandial (i.e., after a meal) glucose levels.

Adiponectin also seems to work closely with leptin, another hormone implicated in a number of diseases of civilization. It appears that adiponecting and leptin modulate each other’s secretion and effects in metabolic processes.

So what do we do to increase our levels of circulating adiponectin?

Well, apparently there is only one guaranteed way, and that is to lose body fat!

Adiponectin is unique among hormones secreted by body fat in that it increases as body fat decreases. Other important body fat hormones, such as leptin, decrease with body fat loss.

The figure below (from: Poppitt et al., 2008) shows a graph where adiponectin levels are plotted against body mass index (BMI). BMI is strongly correlated with body fat percentage.

As you can see from the figure above adiponectin levels more than double when BMI goes from 26 to 20. One does not need to be obese to take advantage of this effect, and to benefit from having increased adiponectin levels.

The linear (Pearson) correlation between BMI and adiponectin levels is indicated as a high 0.551. The fluctuations around the line (the "line" looks more like a quasi-linear curve obtained through quadratic regression), which are why the correlation is not 1, are probably due chiefly to two factors:

    - BMI is not a very precise measure of body fat. A very muscular person will have a high BMI and low body fat. That person will consequently have much higher adiponectin levels than an obese person with equal BMI.

    - Adiponectin levels are naturally higher in women than in men. This is another point in favor of adiponectin, as women have always been the evolutionary bottleneck among our Paleolithic ancestors.

Now you know why doctors prescribe weight loss to patients with diabetes type 2.

And, when we look at various hunter-gatherer groups that were apparently free of diseases of civilization prior to westernization, there are only a few common denominators. Diet was not one of them, as Weston Price and others have shown us, at least not in the sense of what they included in their diet.

One of the few common denominators was arguably the fact that those hunter-gatherers typically had relatively low levels of body fat; an almost universal feature among non-westernized hunter-gatherers.

Reference:

Poppitt, S.D. et al. (2008). Postprandial response of adiponectin, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, and C-reactive protein to a high-fat dietary load. Nutrition, 24(4), 322-329.

LDL, chylomicrons, HDL, and atherosclerosis: A lazy Sunday theory

Notes:
  - This post is a joke, admittedly a weird one, which is why it is labeled “humor” and is filed under “Abstract humor”.
  - I apologize for this spoiler. Some people probably like humor posts better if they do not know what they are in advance, but several others may think that reading a post like this is a waste of their time. If you are in the latter category, move on to another post! If not, here it goes …

***

Today I was spending some time under the sun, in one of the year’s 364 sunny days in Laredo, Texas. The goal was to see if I could obtain a precise count of the number of advanced glycation endproducts (a.k.a. AGEs) that would form as my skin was exposed to the sun’s damaging rays.

Then I read a post by Peter at Hyperlipid, and inspiration consumed me. A new theory was born regarding the interplay of LDL, chylomicrons, HDL, and atherosclerosis. By the way, Peter is a fat genius, by which I mean a genius regarding all fat issues – who happens to be thin.

A key observation forms the main pillar on which this new theory solidly rests:

The endothelium gaps, which let atherogenic particles enter into the forbidden area and do their damage, are around 25 nanometers in diameter. And what is the typical size of LDL particles? You guessed it, 25 nanometers in diameter! And guess what more, quite a few of the chylomicrons, another group of particles that would elicit immediate revulsion in any normal human being, are even smaller than 25 nanometers in diameter; those atherogenic pests!

So here is the theory, in a nutshell. A 500-page book will clearly be needed to discuss it in more detail.

The Devil created LDL particles to kill us all. But LDL particles were not such effective killers, because the Devil, trying to pack as much killer cholesterol into them, ended up making them too big! At 25 nanometers in diameter, on average, they basically had to squeeze their way into the forbidden area.

Since LDL particles were not doing a good enough job, the Devil also created chylomicrons, and those chaotic pests come in all sizes. In fact, it is well known that the word chylomicron has a Greek origin: chylo = killer, micron = particle (Deth & Disis, 1999; full reference at the end of this post).

And, needless to say, LDL particles and chylomicrons are fat particles that make the blood kind of taste and smell like butter, a toxic substance often fed to laboratory rats and known for its powerful carcinogenic properties among all living creatures except descendants of Vlad the Impaler. The latter has long been rumored to have been one of the Devil's best buddies, so no surprise there.

Michael the Archangel, who dislikes the Devil, and usually takes a hands-on approach to dealing with those he dislikes, the Devil in particular, gave us HDL particles. If you have any doubts about Michael’s hands-on approach, check the picture below (from: Wikipedia), which clearly shows what Michael had already done to the Devil. And that was over a relatively minor disagreement.

And don’t think about trying to discredit this theory by asking why HDL particles are so small compared with LDL particles and chylomicrons! This is easy. For the same reason that David was small and Goliath big!

But those nasty particles, the LDLs and chylomicrons, weren't only two big bullies, they were two against one. HDL particles were doing a valiant job at fighting the damage done by the Devil’s two evil particles, but not quite enough to save everybody from atherosclerosis.

Michael cried foul, and threatened to give the Devil another lesson. God, seeing this, said: Michael, no, mankind must be given a choice! If men and women want to gorge on the fatty flesh of the beasts they savagely slaughter, let them sin and face the consequences.

And so it was.

This theory probably needs some adjustments and refinements based on analysis of refereed research, especially solid research supported by drug manufacturers, and consultation with the most interesting man in the world. But I am pretty confident it can, after adjustments and refinements, pass the test of time.

The only nagging problem is the Original Sin. To the best of my knowledge, it was not eating the fatty flesh of beasts. It was eating a very sweet apple …

Reference:

Deth, R., & Disis, M. (1999, Feb 31). The origins of killer lipids: An evolutionary-theological perspective. The Lipid Review, 123(7), 77-66.