Some cultures have demonized alcohol while others have welcomed it. Modern research has confirmed that over indulgence in alcohol is bad for you but also shown that moderate drinking increases health and life expectancy. Most of the beneficial effects appear related to the heart and circulation – but not all. Recently, positive effects of alcohol have been shown for both Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes – but these are less clear cut.

A new study published in Diabetologia finds that children with a strong family history of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and/or type 2 diabetes were found to have cholesterol levels significantly higher than children with no family history of those conditions.

The research found that one third of the 12-year-olds studied had a strong family history of one or both diseases. This group also had unfavourable levels of cardiometabolic markers in the form of higher total cholesterol, and a higher ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol than the groups with moderate or no family history of disease.

Children with elevated levels of these markers may also have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes in adulthood.

Several times a year I find myself exiting the Florida’s Turnpike at Yeehaw Junction and heading south.  When I get to the small town of Okeechobee I take a left and head down Route 98 through Florida’s extensive agricultural backyard.  Flanked by Lake Okeechobee on the west and the affluent cities of the Atlantic coast off to the east, the small towns nestled in this sliver of land support vibrant production of sweet corn, cattle, lettuce, and sugarcane. Cane-derived sugar ends up in many cupboards as table sugar, and also is found in many consumer products.  

Epigenetics is everywhere. Nary a day goes by without some news story or press release telling us something it explains.

Why does autism run in families?  Epigenetics.
Why do you have trouble losing weight? Epigenetics.
Why are vaccines dangerous? Epigenetics.
Why is cancer so hard to fight? Epigenetics.
Why a cure for cancer is around the corner? Epigenetics.
Why your parenting choices might affect your great-grandchildren? Epigenetics.

A new claims the epigenetics of lactose intolerance may provide an approach to understanding schizophrenia - perhaps because both lactose intolerance and schizophrenia are inherited and neither condition emerges in the first years of life and in a booming fad like epigenetics, that is all you need. 

More than 65 per cent of adults worldwide are lactose intolerant and cannot process the milk sugar lactose. Lactose intolerance is influenced by one gene, which determines if a person will lose the ability to process lactose over time. More specifically, those with some variants of this gene will gradually produce less lactase, the enzyme that breaks down lactose, as they age.

There have been increases in prevalence of food allergies over the past several decades but a debate over why; some fundraising groups and websites claim it is due to science changing food while some say it is simply better diagnosis and others say it could be a changing relationship between the presence of food-specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) -- a blood marker associated with food allergy -- in children's blood between the 1980s and the 2000s.

A new study using 5,000 stored blood samples in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found no increase in the presence of IgE.

With the help of a small stool, Mercy Carrion clambers onto an examination table. The obese 50-year-old woman stands just 115.6 cm (3’9.5’’) tall. Despite being overweight, Mercy shows no sign of developing diabetes and has remarkably low blood pressure at 100/70. “That’s why they don’t care much about their weight,” says her doctor, Jaime Guevara-Aguirre.

Mercy, who has a rare genetic disorder, is one of his long-term patients. She and her peers know they are in some way protected from diabetes, cancer and a number of other diseases that threaten the rest of us as we age. As such, they have a happy-go-lucky attitude towards health and fitness.

Could organs explanted from other mammals save human lives someday? A new study shows that genetically modified pig hearts developed by US and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich researchers can survive for more than up to 2½ years when transplanted into baboons.

The salivary gland secretes saliva that helps us chew and swallow the food we eat while the pancreas secretes digestive juices that enable our bodies to break down the fat, protein, and carbohydrates in the food.

Secretions like these are important in countless activities that keep our bodies running day and night. A new study uncovers a previously mysterious process that makes these secretions possible - and it involves calcium, which is sure to set off a new supplement fad among the Dr. Oz, Mark Hyman, Joe Mercola sect.