40% of Female Teens Deficient in This Nutrient

💃 If you’re a nonpregnant woman or teen, listen up.

A study just published in JAMA found 40% of US females between the ages of 12 and 21 were deficient in iron 🩸

Why should you care?

Because screening for iron deficiency is not routine for this age group!

Guidelines in the US recommend screening for iron-deficient anemia every 5-10 years, but this recent study found that only 6% of the participants actually had anemia, compared with the 40% with iron deficiency.

⚠️ That means iron deficiency can exist WITHOUT anemia and can easily be missed by routine screenings.

What can we do?

The best way to test for iron deficiency is with a blood test for ferritin 🩸It’s a simple thing, but your provider needs to be proactive to order it and know how to interpret it.

In functional medicine, we aim for optimal levels on blood tests, which are not always the same as what’s considered “normal.” If ferritin levels are low, this can usually be corrected through dietary changes and supplementation.

Do you know what the most common symptom of iron deficiency is? Drop your guess in the comments and I’ll let you know.

↗️ Share to your stories to spread the word!

Reference

Weyand AC, Chaitoff A, Freed GL, Sholzberg M, Choi SW, McGann PT. Prevalence of Iron Deficiency and Iron-Deficiency Anemia in US Females Aged 12-21 Years, 2003-2020. JAMA. 2023;329(24):2191–2193. [link]

How to Combat the Aging Brain [New Study] 🧠

This one is for anyone who cares about their memory as they age 🧠

🗞️ The just-released COSMOS-Web Study asked this question: Can flavanol supplements benefit the aging brain?

Flavanols are naturally occurring compounds in plant foods that have antioxidant and health-promoting properties, but not everyone eats enough 🍎🍇🍫

Building on over 15 years of research, the current study assigned 3500 healthy older adults to take a daily flavanol supplement (or placebo) for 3 years. The supplement contained 500 mg of flavanols, including 80 mg of epicatechins.

The results?

✅ Memory scores improved slightly for everyone taking the daily flavanol supplement.

✅ Memory scores improved most significantly (by 16%) in those who were consuming a poorer diet and had lower baseline levels of flavanols.

✅ Even more importantly, memory improvement was sustained for at least two more years

Think of it like this:

Just like the developing brain of newborns and small children requires specific nutrients for proper development, so too does the aging brain require specific nutrients for optimal health.

Now we know flavanols are some of those key brain nutrients.

Reference

Brickman AM, Yeung LK, Alschuler DM, et al. Dietary flavanols restore hippocampal-dependent memory in older adults with lower diet quality and lower habitual flavanol consumption. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023;120(23):e2216932120. [link]

Junk Food Messes with Sleep (New Research!)

New Research!! ⤵️

👉👉 Even if you sleep the exact same number of hours, eating junk food during the day can affect the QUALITY of your sleep—making sleep more shallow and less restorative.

Let’s back up 🚙

Sleep consists of different stages with different functions. Deep sleep, for example, regulates hormonal release. Each sleep stage is also marked by specific electrical activity in the brain.

A brand new study in the journal Obesity looked at what happened to sleep quality (measured in a sleep laboratory) when healthy young men ate nutritious meals vs. junk food. Here’s what they found:

🔹 Participants slept the same number of hours, regardless of which diet they consumed.

🔹 They also spent the same amount of time in each of the sleep stages.

🔹 But slow-wave brain activity (a measurement of how restorative deep sleep is) was less in those who ate the junk food.

This means that the junk food resulted in sleep that was less deep—similar to what happens with aging and insomnia.

Why should you care about restorative sleep?

Because it’s essential for…

💫 Graceful Aging

💃 Balanced Hormones

🔥 Healthy Metabolism

🧠 Brain Function, Mood, & More!

Like if you learned something ❤️

Share to spread the word ↗️

Reference

Brandão LEM, Popa A, Cedernaes E, Cedernaes C, Lampola L, Cedernaes J. Exposure to a more unhealthy diet impacts sleep microstructure during normal sleep and recovery sleep: A randomized trial [published online ahead of print, 2023 May 28]. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2023;10.1002/oby.23787. [link]

🗞️ Probiotics Safety: Latest Update

Update on Probiotic Safety 👇

Most people assume that if something is “natural” then it’s safe.

I recommend a lot of natural products and supplements to my clients—but only with specific intention and caution because here’s the thing:

Even natural products can be dangerous if:

X Taken by the wrong person

X Taken for the wrong reason

X Mixed with medications that interact

X Contaminated with potential toxins

To give you an example, The International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) just released an update on probiotic safety, saying:

✅ Probiotics should be used with extra caution in newborns, pregnancy, short-bowel syndrome, and people who are immunocompromised.

✅ Probiotic supplements should be tested for purity, potency, and potential contaminants.

I believe that if a natural product has the potential to do good (as in—to actually improve a person’s health) then it also has the potential to do harm. We can’t have one without the other!

One thing I do to keep my clients safe is to recommend products that meet the highest quality standards, such as using the most effective ingredients and third-party testing for purity.

Let’s respect natural products for the powerful therapeutics they are.

Reference

Merenstein D, Pot B, Leyer G, et al. Emerging issues in probiotic safety: 2023 perspectives. Gut Microbes. 2023;15(1):2185034. [link]

Making Sense of Folic Acid Supplements

⬇️ Proof that more of a good thing isn’t always better!

Folic acid is proven to reduce the risk of birth defects, like spina bifida. That’s why more than 80 countries have programs to fortify foods with folic acid.

But if women take folic acid supplements, is it possible to take too much? Here’s what a new study found:

➡️ Supplementing HIGH folic acid was just as dangerous as LOW folic acid when it came to genetic mutations ⬅️

If you want to know the science-y explanation for why, keep reading, but here are some takeaways:

✅ Too much folic acid is dangerous.

✅ Folic acid is synthetic. It is not found in nature.

✅ Folic acid is not active until after it’s processed in the body by an enzyme (and many people have a genetic mutation so this enzyme is not fully functional).

✅ Natural forms of folate that the body can process more easily are folinic acid and methylfolate.

Now you want the science?

Folic acid supports methylation of DNA. Too much can lead to hypermethylation. When DNA repair genes become hypermethylated, they work more slowly and allow more mutations to occur.

Phew 😅

Just remember: there is no one-size-fits-all in health, medicine, or nutrition. More is not always better.

Questions about nutritional supplements? Drop them below ⤵️

Reference

Cao X, Xu J, Lin YL, et al. Excess folic acid intake increases DNA de novo point mutations. Cell Discov. 2023;9(1):22. [link]