The effect of acute dark chocolate consumption on carbohydrate metabolism and performance during rest and exercise.

Consumption of cocoa-enriched dark chocolate (DC) has been shown to alter glucose and insulin concentration during rest and exercise compared with cocoa-depleted control (CON). However, the impact of DC consumption on exercise metabolism and performance is uncertain. Therefore, we investigated carbohydrate metabolism via stable isotope tracer techniques during exercise after subjects ingested either DC or CON.

Urinary excretion of ginkgolide terpene lactones following acute consumption of Ginkgo biloba extract.

Urinary biomarkers of plant food supplement (PFS) exposure/intake represent an accurate, objective tool for determining PFS consumption in humans with applications ranging from epidemiology to subject compliance in clinical trials. Ginkgo biloba remains one of the worlds most popular PFS, yet few studies have investigated the uptake and metabolism of its primary unique bioactives: the terpene lactones. To this end, we conducted a dual-dose, acute crossover intervention using G.

Vocation, friendship and resilience: a study exploring nursing student and staff views on retention and attrition.

Introduction: There is international concern about retention of student nurses on undergraduate programmes. United Kingdom Higher Education Institutions are monitored on their attrition statistics and can be penalised financially, so they have an incentive to help students remain on their programmes beyond their moral duty to ensure students receive the best possible educational experience.

Aims: to understand students' and staff concerns about programmes and placements as part of developing our retention strategies.

Abrupt fire regime change may cause landscape-wide loss of mature obligate seeder forests.

Obligate seeder trees requiring high-severity fires to regenerate may be vulnerable to population collapse if fire frequency increases abruptly. We tested this proposition using a long-lived obligate seeding forest tree, alpine ash (Eucalyptus delegatensis), in the Australian Alps. Since 2002, 85% of the Alps bioregion has been burnt by several very large fires, tracking the regional trend of more frequent extreme fire weather.

Dose-response plasma appearance of coffee chlorogenic and phenolic acids in adults.

Scope: Coffee contains phenolic compounds, mainly chlorogenic acids (CGAs). Even though coffee intake has been associated with some health benefits in epidemiological studies, the bioavailability of coffee phenolics is not fully understood.

Objective And Study Design: We performed a dose-response study measuring plasma bioavailability of phenolics after drinking three increasing, but still nutritionally relevant doses of instant pure soluble coffee.

Inhibition of hydroxycinnamic acid sulfation by flavonoids and their conjugated metabolites.

Hydroxycinnamic acids and flavonoids are dietary phenolic antioxidants that are abundant in our diet. Hydroxycinnamic acids are highly sulfated in vivo, and sulfotransferases (SULTs), in particular SULT1A1, play a major role in their metabolism. Flavonoids are potent inhibitors of human SULTs.

Risk assessment in mental health: introducing a traffic light system in a community mental health team.

Aims: To reports a study in which action research approach was utilised to introduce a new system of risk assessment, based on traffic lights, into a community mental health team.

Background: Risk management is a serious concern in community mental healthcare where there is less direct, real-time supervision of clients than in other settings, and because inadequate management of risk can have fatal consequences when service users are a risk to themselves and/or others.

Design: An action research design was undertaken, using three phases of Look, Think and Act.

Intestinal absorption, metabolism, and excretion of (-)-epicatechin in healthy humans assessed by using an intestinal perfusion technique.

Background: (-)-Epicatechin is a dietary flavonoid present in many foods that affects vascular function, but its action is limited by incomplete absorption, conjugation, and metabolism. Factors that influence this activity may be attributed to instability in the gastrointestinal lumen, low permeability across the intestinal wall, or active efflux from enterocytes and extensive conjugation.

Objective: With the use of a multilumen perfusion catheter, we investigated the jejunal absorption, systemic availability, metabolism, and intestinal, biliary, and urinary excretion of (-)-epicatechin in humans.

Blood pressure-renal blood flow relationships in conscious angiotensin II- and phenylephrine-infused rats.

Chronic ANG II infusion in rodents is widely used as an experimental model of hypertension, yet very limited data are available describing the resulting blood pressure-renal blood flow (BP-RBF) relationships in conscious rats. Accordingly, male Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 19) were instrumented for chronic measurements of BP (radiotelemetry) and RBF (Transonic Systems, Ithaca, NY). One week later, two or three separate 2-h recordings of BP and RBF were obtained in conscious rats at 24-h intervals, in addition to separate 24-h BP recordings.

Cocoa and human health.

Cocoa is a dry, powdered, nonfat component product prepared from the seeds of the Theobroma cacao L. tree and is a common ingredient of many food products, particularly chocolate. Nutritionally, cocoa contains biologically active substances that may affect human health: flavonoids (epicatechin and oligomeric procyanidins), theobromine, and magnesium.

Dose-response plasma appearance of green tea catechins in adults.

Scope: Tea is an infusion of the Camellia sinensis leaves. The most prevalent bioactive compounds in green tea are catechins (C), which are of great interest for their potential health-promoting effects. However, metabolism and bioavailability of C are not fully understood.

Controlled flax interventions for the improvement of menopausal symptoms and postmenopausal bone health: a systematic review.

Concerns regarding hormone therapy safety have led to interest in the use of phytoestrogens for a variety of menopause-related health complaints. Recent meta-analyses concerning soy and postmenopausal bone mineral density, flax and serum cholesterol indicate that significant benefits may be achieved in postmenopausal women. This study aimed to systematically review controlled flax interventions that had reported on menopausal symptoms and bone health in perimenopausal/postmenopausal women.

Structure- and dose-absorption relationships of coffee polyphenols.

Chlorogenic acids (CGAs) from coffee have biological effects related to human health. Thus, specific data on their bioavailability in the upper gastrointestinal tract are of high interest, since some molecules are absorbed here and so are not metabolized by colonic microflora. Up to now, no data on structure-absorption relationships for CGAs have been published, despite this being the most consumed group of polyphenols in the western diet.

Analysis of phenolic compounds in Portuguese wild and commercial berries after multienzyme hydrolysis.

Berry fruits are a good source of phenolic compounds and thus, potentially beneficial to health. Phenolic compounds are mainly present as a variety of conjugated forms, either with sugars via O-glycosidic bonds or with other polyols as esters. This chemodiversity makes characterization and identification highly demanding.

Absorption and isomerization of caffeoylquinic acids from different foods using ileostomist volunteers.

Background: Polyphenols are thought to play important roles in human nutrition and health but these health effects are dependent on their bioavailability. This study is one of a series with the aim of determining possible effects of food matrices on caffeoylquinic acid (CQA) bioavailability using ileostomy volunteers.

Methods: After a CQA-free diet, ileostomists consumed coffee (746 μmol total CQA), and CQAs in excreted ileal fluid were subsequently identified and quantified with HPLC-diode array detection and HPLC-ESI-MS/MS.

Activities of daily living are associated with older adult cognitive status: caregiver versus self-reports.

We compared the extent to which subjective report of activities of daily living (ADLs) by caregivers and older adults were associated with objective measures of older adults' cognition. In independent studies (Study 1 N = 238; Study 2 N = 295), bivariate correlations and multiple regression analyses examined the association of caregiver and self-rated reports of older adult basic, instrumental, and total ADLs and older adult cognition. We examined the magnitude of the caregiver/self-report discrepancy and older adult cognition.

Attenuation of glucose transport across Caco-2 cell monolayers by a polyphenol-rich herbal extract: interactions with SGLT1 and GLUT2 transporters.

Previous studies have indicated that secondary plant metabolites may modulate glucose absorption in the small intestine. We have characterized a polyphenol-rich herbal extract and its potential intestinal metabolites by LC-MS(2) and investigated the inhibition of glucose transporters SGLT1 and GLUT2 using the well-characterized Caco-2 intestinal model. Differentiated Caco-2 monolayers were incubated with an extract of a mixture of herbs and spices.

Oral green tea catechin metabolites are incorporated into human skin and protect against UV radiation-induced cutaneous inflammation in association with reduced production of pro-inflammatory eicosanoid 12-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid.

Green tea catechins (GTC) reduce UV radiation (UVR)-induced inflammation in experimental models, but human studies are scarce and their cutaneous bioavailability and mechanism of photoprotection are unknown. We aimed to examine oral GTC cutaneous uptake, ability to protect human skin against erythema induced by a UVR dose range and impact on potent cyclo-oxygenase- and lipoxygenase-produced mediators of UVR inflammation, PGE2 and 12-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (12-HETE), respectively. In an open oral intervention study, sixteen healthy human subjects (phototype I/II) were given low-dose GTC (540 mg) with vitamin C (50 mg) daily for 12 weeks.

Racial disparities in advanced-stage colorectal cancer survival.

Purpose: African-Americans (AA) have a higher incidence of and lower survival from colorectal cancer (CRC) compared with European Americans (EA). In the present study, statewide, population-based data from South Carolina Central Cancer Registry are used to investigate the relationship between race and age on advanced-stage CRC survival.

Methods: The study population was comprised of 3,865 advanced pathologically documented colon and rectal adenocarcinoma cases diagnosed between 01 January 1996 and 31 December 2006: 2,673 (69 %) EA and 1,192 (31 %) AA.

Double-balloon jejunal perfusion to compare absorption of vitamin E and vitamin E acetate in healthy volunteers under maldigestion conditions.

Background/objectives: The vitamin E derivative, α-tocopheryl acetate, is often included in formulations used in enteral nutrition. In this respect, we compared α-tocopherol and α-tocopheryl acetate absorption under 'maldigestion' conditions, such as occurring during enteral tube feeding, using differentially labeled RRR-[5,7-methyl-((2)H(6))]-α-tocopherol and RRR-[5-methyl-(2)H(3)]-α-tocopheryl acetate allowing direct comparison between free and esterified forms.

Subjects/methods: The two derivatives were given together in a single dose to six volunteers directly into the jejunum using a double-balloon perfusion system.

Possible effects of dietary polyphenols on sugar absorption and digestion.

Excessive post-prandial glucose excursions are a risk factor for developing diabetes, associated with impaired glucose tolerance. One way to limit the excursion is to inhibit the activity of digestive enzymes for glucose production and of the transporters responsible for glucose absorption. Flavonols, theaflavins, gallate esters, 5-caffeoylqunic acid and proanthocyanidins inhibit α-amylase activity.

Giant eucalypts - globally unique fire-adapted rain-forest trees?

Tree species exceeding 70 m in height are rare globally. Giant gymnosperms are concentrated near the Pacific coast of the USA, while the tallest angiosperms are eucalypts (Eucalyptus spp.) in southern and eastern Australia.

The relationship between particulate pollution levels in Australian cities, meteorology, and landscape fire activity detected from MODIS hotspots.

Smoke from bushfires is an emerging issue for fire managers because of increasing evidence for its public health effects. Development of forecasting models to predict future pollution levels based on the relationship between bushfire activity and current pollution levels would be a useful management tool. As a first step, we use daily thermal anomalies detected by the MODIS Active Fire Product (referred to as "hotspots"), pollution concentrations, and meteorological data for the years 2002 to 2008, to examine the statistical relationship between fire activity in the landscapes and pollution levels around Perth and Sydney, two large Australian cities.

Dose-dependent absorption of chlorogenic acids in the small intestine assessed by coffee consumption in ileostomists.

Scope: Until now, the question of how the ingested doses of chlorogenic acids (CGA) from coffee influence their absorption and metabolism remains unresolved. To assess absorption in the small intestine, we performed a dose-response study with a randomized, double-blinded, crossover design with ileostomist subjects.

Methods And Results: After a polyphenol-free diet, the volunteers consumed, on three separate occasions, coffee with different total CGA contents (high 4525 μmol; medium 2219 μmol; low 1053 μmol).