In a front-page story, the San Francisco Chronicle  (2/2, A1, Allday) reports, “Like alcohol and tobacco, sugar is a toxic, addictive substance that should be highly regulated with taxes, laws on where and to whom it can be advertised, and even age-restricted sales, says a team of UCSF scientists” in a commentary published in Nature.

The Los Angeles Times  (2/2, Kaplan) “Booster Shots” blog reports that, according to the authors, “For both alcohol and tobacco, there is robust evidence that gentle ‘supply side’ control strategies which stop far short of all-out prohibition  taxation, distribution controls, age limits  lower both consumption of the product and the accompanying health harms.” They add, “Consequently, we propose adding taxes to processed foods that contain any form of added sugars.”

ABC News  (2/2, Gann) “Medical Unit” blog reports, “Increased control is necessary, they say, because efforts to keep excessive sugar out of the American diet have failed.”

CBS News  (2/2, Jaslow) “HealthPop” blog reports that the authors “said that over the past 50 years, sugar consumption has tripled worldwide. That’s also helped contribute to the obesity epidemic – so much so that there are 30 percent more obese people in this world than there are malnourished people.”

MedPage Today  (2/2, Fiore) reports that the authors “called sugar ‘toxic,’ particularly in excessive amounts, noting that it poses dangers similar to those of alcohol. Fructose, specifically, can harm the liver, they wrote, and overconsumption has been linked with all the diseases involved with metabolic syndrome: hypertension, high triglycerides, insulin resistance, and diabetes.” Also covering the story are BBC News  (2/2, Briggs), the UK’s Daily Mail  (2/2, Macrae), and WebMD  (2/2, Doheny).

The San Francisco Chronicle  /Bloomberg News (1/12, Lopatto) reports a study in Nature showing that irisin, “a hormone naturally found in muscle cells…rises during exercise, converting white fat into brown fat, a substance whose primary function is to generate body heat.” When irisin was injected “into obese, pre-diabetic mice, the animals lost weight and their blood sugar levels improved.” Researchers suggested that this finding “may lead to treatments for obesity and diabetes, as well as other disorders where exercise may benefit patients who are too weak to engage in it.”

The New York Times (1/12, Reynolds) “Well” blog notes that activity increases the protein “PGC1-alpha, which is produced in abundance in muscles during and after exercise,” which then stimulates “the expression of a protein known as Fndc5,” which then “[breaks] into different pieces,” generating irisin. “Follow-up experiments with muscle cells from human volunteers who’d completed a controlled, weeks-long jogging program found that they had much higher levels of irisin in their cells than before the exercise program began.”

The Boston Globe  (1/12, Johnson) “White Coat Notes” blog reports, “A Boston startup company, Ember Therapeutics, has already licensed the technology and is working to develop a form of the hormone that could be used as a drug that would mimic some of the benefits of exercise.”

The UK’s Daily Mail  (1/12) notes, “Those who like a toned physique may still have to make the odd trip to the gym, as irisin does not appear to strengthen muscles.” The NPR  (1/12, Chappell) “The Two Way” blog and the UK’s Telegraph  (1/12, Hough) also cover the story.

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AOA Survey: Most Teachers Say Vision, Learning Are Interdependent. The News Record (8/15) reported, “A visit to the eye doctor for a comprehensive eye exam is an important part of overall health,” and is especially important for youngsters about to return to school. In fact, “according to an American Optometric Association survey of K-12 teachers, 81 percent believe vision and learning are interdependent.”

In a poster presentation here at the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s annual meeting, Payne also reported that multivitamin use appeared to be helpful in preventing vitamin D insufficiency — at least as currently defined.

“If you were taking a daily multivitamin, your mean vitamin D [25-hydroxyvitamin D] was about 31 [ng/mL] versus about 22 if you weren’t taking a multivitamin,” he told MedPage Today. Because 30 ng/mL was the cutoff Payne and colleagues had used to define insufficiency, “now you’re up to the optimum level.”

But he acknowledged that some researchers have begun to advocate for higher levels of daily vitamin D intake and serum levels of the 25-OH-D metabolite, relative to current norms, as necessary for health.

The synopsis of the study can be found at the above link.

The UK’s Press Association (8/23) reported, “Eating berries may combat age-related mental decline by ‘cleaning up’ the brain” according to research presented at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston. “Scientists have found the first evidence that polyphenol compounds in the fruits activate the brain’s natural ‘housekeeping’ mechanism.” The polyphenolic compounds found in berries appear to help “special immune system cells in the brain called microglia which engulf, remove and recycle harmful biochemical debris.”

The UK’s Telegraph (8/23, Adams) reported, “Eating fruits with deep orange, red or blue pigments can even reverse the loss of brain power, according to a two month study of laboratory rats fed a berry-rich diet.” The UK’s Daily Mail (8/24) reports that “walnuts may have a similar effect.” WebMD (8/23, Hendrick) also covered the story.