Learn For Life

Testing your blood caffeine level may provide a simple way to help diagnose Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's and Caffeine A study found that people with Parkinson's disease had significantly lower levels of caffeine in their blood than people without the disease. Even if they consume the same amount of caffeine. "Previous studies have shown a correlation between caffeine and a lower risk of Parkinson's disease," said study researcher Shinji Saiki of the University of Jundendo in Japan. But we didn't know much about how caffeine is metabolized in people with the disease." People in more severe stages of the disease did not have lower levels of caffeine in the blood. Suggesting that the decline occurs from the early stages of the disease, according to David J. Munoz of the University of Toronto, Canada. “If these results can be confirmed, they suggest an easy test for early diagnosis of Parkinson, perhaps even before symptoms appear,” M...

The prevalence of diabetes and obesity drives many individuals to try to lose weight by dieting - but low-calorie diets are difficult to maintain at many. New research published in the Journal of Physiology suggests that reducing the consumption of specific building blocks of proteins (amino acids) may resist metabolic problems that occur in diabetes and obesity. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that lowering the consumption of specific types of amino acids (called branched chain amino acids (BCCA)) improved metabolic health, even when total calories were not reduced. Importantly, the mice in this study ate significantly and therefore did not experience calorie reduction in general. Despite continuing to eat a high-fat and high-sugar diet, mice experienced an improvement in metabolic health. If these results can be translated into humans, it is possible that such diets, or drugs that mimic the effect of a low diet in some BCCA amino acids, would be easi...