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Todays’ menu:

1) Say what? AI can help diagnose diabetes?

2) Insulin overload: How Type 2 Diabetes and Pancreatic Cancer are linked

3) Eating more plants: the century-old hack for better cognitive health

📲 Say What? AI can help diagnose diabetes

🎤 Voice over

AI is a buzzword in business, but could AI be used to diagnose type 2 diabetes from your phone?

A study investigated the potential of using voice technology to identify diabetic people, and how these differences could be used to train AI models for pre-screening or monitoring.

Using an app, participants recorded a fixed phrase 6 a day for two weeks, resulting in 18,465 recordings. Fourteen acoustic features were extracted from each recording and fed into a machine-learning AI model to analyze differences between non-diabetic and type 2 diabetic individuals, and create a prediction methodology for diabetic status.

Key takeaways:

• Six to ten seconds of voice recording was enough to identify diabetic individuals.

• Significant differences were found between voice recordings of non-diabetic and type 2 diabetic men and women.

• Women with type 2 diabetic had a slightly lower pitch with less variation, and men with type 2 diabetic had slightly weaker voices with more variation.

• The AI was able to diagnose women more accurately, with a success rate of 89%. It diagnosed type 2 diabetes in 86% of men when combined with basic health data such as age, sex, height, and weight.

🏠 Take home message

Voice synthesis is a complex process that relies on the combined effects of the respiratory system, the nervous system, and the larynx.

Since type 2 diabetes is known to affect these systems, voice technology has the potential to revolutionize diabetes diagnosis and monitoring. Voice can be recorded using a smartphone or portable device, making it non-invasive, inexpensive, and convenient. The AI model would enable diagnosis to be made remotely and automatically.

This is just the start! Type 2 diabetes prevalence is rising fast, and its considerable impact on global health has gained substantial attention in recent years, prompting a push for proactive measures.

Did you know….you can power your friends’ and family’s wellbeing with the latest nutrition science, simplified?

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🔥 Insulin overload: How Type 2 Diabetes and Pancreatic Cancer are linked

⚖️ A fine balance

In addition to type 2 diabetes and obesity, pancreatic cancer is another major global health challenge. A new study has shown how these three conditions are linked.

The pancreas is an organ that is almost entirely responsible for breaking down proteins and fats in the intestine. It does this by releasing ‘digestive juices’ into the intestine. The pancreas also regulates blood sugar levels by releasing hormones such as insulin into the blood. These are the same hormones and sugar levels that are disrupted in type 2 diabetes.

Here is a simplified explanation of how pancreatic cancer may develop in people with type 2 diabetes and obesity:

1. Type 2 diabetes and severe obesity reduce the body's response to insulin.

2. Blood sugar levels rise.

3. More insulin is released to compensate for step 1.

4. Excessive insulin overstimulates the pancreas cells to produce more digestive juices.

5. This overstimulation leads to inflammation.

6. Inflammation converts these cells into precancerous cells.

This is the first detailed explanation of why people with obesity and type 2 diabetes are at an increased risk of pancreatic cancer. It can be traced back to elevated insulin levels and their role in disease initiation

🏠 Take home message

It is crucial to keep insulin levels within a healthy range. This is best done by reducing visceral fat (the fat around the abdomen) through lifestyle changes that limit the risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. These include sleep, diet, exercise, and sun exposure. Medications can help in some cases, but they are often the last resort.

The study focused on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the most prevalent and aggressive pancreatic cancer (with a five-year survival rate of less than 10%). This may be a limitation, but the incidence of pancreatic cancer is on the rise, and PDAC is expected to become the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths by 2030.

The findings may pave the way for new cancer prevention strategies and therapeutic approaches to prevent or slow the progression of pancreatic cancer. However, we now know that the part of the pancreas that releases insulin and the part that is responsible for digestive juices communicate and should be targeted in combination.

Did you know….you can power your friends’ and family’s wellbeing with the latest nutrition science, simplified?

Share this article with them! 

🌱 Eating more plants: the century-old hack for better cognitive health

👩 (For women only!)

Cognitive hacks are all the rage online these days. People are living longer and caring more about longevity and brain health, and influencers are cashing in!

But what if the ultimate hack for cognitive health is simply diet? (Who would have thought!?)

A study investigated this by examining the effects of a blood pressure-lowering dietary intervention (simply eating more plant-based foods) on cognitive decline.

You may be wondering what blood pressure has to do with cognitive decline? Well, long-standing research shows that high blood pressure, especially in midlife, is a risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia.

So researchers surveyed the women's diets in 1985 and 1991, when the participants were an average of 49 years old. The participants were then followed for more than 30 years and asked to report any cognitive complaints.

The researchers found that women who followed diets designed to lower blood pressure during midlife were about 17% less likely to report memory loss and other signs of cognitive decline decades later. Women who most closely adhered to the DASH diet had a 17% reduction in the odds of reporting multiple cognitive complaints.

In case you are wondering, subjective complaints about daily cognitive performance are early predictors of more serious neuro-cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's.

🏠 Take home message(s)

First, lifestyle habits have a compounding effect. The longer you have a habit, the greater the effect, whether good or bad.

Second, midlife lifestyle modifications aimed at reducing blood pressure may improve cognitive function later in life for women. This is important because women make up more than two-thirds of those diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Third, the "famous" blood pressure-friendly diet is basically a high intake of plant-based foods that are beneficial for cognitive function due to a combination of factors, including:

• The abundance of essential nutrients and bioactive substances with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties in plants. 

• Lower intakes of unhealthy fats and sugars, which can have a harmful effect on brain inflammation.

• Diet-induced changes to the gut microbiome. A shift towards pro-inflammatory gut microbes in women has been linked to greater reporting of subjective cognitive complaints.

More research is needed to understand how these different factors affect the risk of cognitive impairment.

However, we currently know that improvements in diet quality during midlife, especially diets related to hypertension and cardiovascular health, may play a role in maintaining optimal subjective cognitive function in women.

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😂 And finally!

Now that the century-old hack for better cognitive health is out (aka eating more plants), watch our for gurus 😂

To your health!

Paolo

Hungry for more reading?

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