Vitamin D supplement fails to lower cholesterol in short term

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2012) ? Taking vitamin D supplements to compensate for vitamin D deficiency didn't improve cholesterol -- at least in the short term, according to new research in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, an American Heart Association journal.

Researchers studied 151 people with vitamin D deficiency who received either a mega-dose (50,000 internationals units) of vitamin D3 or placebo weekly for eight weeks. Participants' cholesterol levels were measured before and after treatment.

Correcting vitamin D deficiencies with high doses of oral vitamin D supplements did not change cholesterol levels, researchers found. This was despite effectively increasing vitamin D to recommended levels. Vitamin D levels nearly tripled in the group that received actual supplements, but were unchanged in the placebo group.

"Our study challenges the notion that vitamin D repletion improves cholesterol levels" said Manish Ponda, M.D., M.S., study lead author and assistant professor of clinical investigation in Dr. Jan Breslow's laboratory of biochemical genetics and metabolism at The Rockefeller University in New York, N.Y. "These clinical trial results confirm those from a recent data mining study."

The researchers also tested the effect of vitamin D supplementation on more sophisticated biomarker measures of cholesterol, such as particle size and number. "These measures of cholesterol, which are not used in routine clinical practice, also did not change in response to vitamin D therapy," Ponda said.

As expected, replenishing subjects with high-dose supplements of oral vitamin D decreased parathyroid hormone levels and increased calcium levels -- physical functional changes that were linked to participants' increase in low-density lipoprotein (LDL, bad cholesterol).

"For example, participants receiving vitamin D who had an increase in calcium levels experienced a 7 percent increase in LDL cholesterol, while those whose calcium levels fell or did not change had a 5 percent decrease in LDL cholesterol," Ponda said.

The study questions the use of vitamin D supplements to improve cholesterol, Ponda said. While the dose of vitamin D in this study was high, it was appropriate for correcting a vitamin D deficiency over an eight week period.

However, longer-term studies on the impact of the changes in LDL cholesterol as a result of high dose vitamin D supplementation are needed to make stronger recommendations. And questions remain about whether increasing vitamin D levels with exposure to sunlight, the predominant natural source, would have a different effect than with high-dose oral supplements.

To address these issues, Ponda and Breslow will begin another clinical trial this fall, comparing the effect of oral vitamin D to ultraviolet light exposure with a longer follow-up period.

Co-authors are Kathleen Dowd, R.N.; Dennis Finkielstein, M.D.; Peter R. Holt, M.D.; and Jan L. Breslow, M.D. Author disclosures and sources of funding are on the manuscript.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Heart Association.

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Journal Reference:

1. Manish P. Ponda, Kathleen Dowd, Dennis Finkielstein, Peter R. Holt, and Jan L. Breslow. The Short-Term Effects of Vitamin D Repletion on Cholesterol: A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, 2012; DOI: 10.1161/ATVBAHA.112.254110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/nutrition/~3/Ioa4t3XyZVM/120904162124.htm

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Tumor suppressor genes vital to regulating blood precursor cells in fruit flies

ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2012) ? UCLA stem cell scientists have shown that two common tumor suppressor genes, TSC and PTEN, are vital to regulating the stem cell-like precursor cells that create the blood supply in Drosophila, the common fruit fly.

The researchers examined a signaling pathway called TOR that the cells use to gauge nutrition levels and stress, said study senior author Dr. Julian A. Martinez-Agosto, an assistant professor of human genetics and pediatrics and a researcher with the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA.

"We wondered how an organism knows how many blood cells to make and when to make them in the context of injury and repair to tissue. In particular, we wondered how the blood progenitor cells sense that change and know when it's time to make more blood cells," Martinez-Agosto said. "We found that the TOR pathway uses these two genes to regulate its function and, when activated, it expands or increases the number of blood progenitor cells in the fly's blood."

The study appears Sept. 5, 2012 in the advance online issue of the peer-reviewed journal Development.

Michelle Dragojlovic-Munther, a graduate student in the Martinez-Agosto laboratory and first author of the study, found that cells with increased activity of TOR have a competitive advantage, allowing them to divide and make more of themselves so they can make blood. These progenitors, Dragojlovic-Munther found, also have high levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) -- ions or very small molecules that include free radicals -- which are known to damage cells and can predispose humans to aging and heart disease. But in this case, the ROS proved valuable.

The precursors, Martinez-Agosto said, were producing ROS all the time and when TOR was activated, the levels increased dramatically. Too much ROS caused them to divide more than normal. If they treated the flies with antioxidants, which reduce ROS levels, the cells would develop normally.

The finding could be important because the TOR pathway is abnormally activated in many cancers, and it may be possible to target the levels of ROS, which may help regulate the pathway.

"What this study may be telling us is that too much ROS is causing more cells to divide and we may be able to target therapies that reduce ROS to significantly improve the condition," Martinez-Agosto said, adding that specifically targeted antioxidants might be a potential treatment in certain subsets of blood disorders. "Sometimes that pathway is working more than it should, and we need the right amount of ROS for balance. It's like Goldilocks, there can't be too little or too much. We need it just right."

Going forward, Martinez-Agosto and his team will try to determine where the ROS is coming from and perhaps discover an enzyme that may be a good target for therapeutics. They know that the higher ROS levels in blood progenitors are not coming from mitochondria, the cell's power source, but have not identified how they are being produced.

"This study highlights mechanistic differences between TSC and PTEN on TOR function and demonstrates the multifaceted roles of a nutrient-sensing pathway in orchestrating proliferation and differentiation of myeloid-specific blood progenitors through regulation of ROS levels and the resulting myeloproliferative disorder when deregulated," the study states.

The study was funded by a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health (GM007185) and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Michelle Dragojlovic-Munther and Julian A. Martinez-Agosto. Multifaceted roles of PTEN and TSC orchestrate growth and differentiation of Drosophila blood progenitors. Development, 2012; DOI: 10.1242/dev.074203

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/PDU3Rntw9U4/120905111015.htm

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John Gorham Out at Interurban - - Portland Food and Drink

September 4, 2012 By Food Dude 2 Comments

John Gorham

John Gorham has parted ways with Interurban, stating that he wishes to focus on his brand with Toro Bravo and Tasty n Sons, with plans to expand with a second Tasty n Sons location in the near future. Details upcoming.

John opened Interurban in a partnership with Chefstable in 2011, saying ?he wanted to open a bar with simple but really good food. The resulting gastropub came out at number nine on the PFD 2012 Reader Survey for Best New Restaurant in Portland.

"I have a wide-range of food experience - working in the restaurant industry on both sides of the house, later in the wine industry, and finally traveling/tasting my way around the world. Whether you agree or disagree, you can always count on my unbiased opinion. I don't take free meals, and the restaurants don't know when, or if, I am coming."

Source: http://www.portlandfoodanddrink.com/john-gorham-out-at-interurban/

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PPC Publishing: Internet and Businesses - Logan Columbus's blog

As my websites get more and more look for engine visitors, I am confronted with trying to determine how to best profit my visitors. I am currently using mainly Search engines AdSense ads, but since I have added more online applications to webpages that are getting visitors I am realizing a very nice increase in my per month earnings.

I have read in many places that online ads that are plainly shown will take away from your AdSense earnings. I must acknowledge that on websites where my online applications are simply generally related to my website as a whole, my online earnings is almost non-existent. However lately I have been learning my visitors records carefully and looking at the keywords people have been using to discover my webpages.

Once I have identified the key term, I then filter it down to the website they discovered when they entered in that term. Once this is established I look for high and low for an online online network that suits "that page" and "that key phrase". Once this fantastic program has been discovered, I add it plainly to the website.

On the two websites I have used this method, not only have my AdSense earnings stayed almost the same but last month but my online earnings more than doubled as well.

My advice is, do what works for "your site", all websites are unique and respond in a different way, but you may want to give this mixture a try it has really proved helpful amazing things for me.

This content was offered by Jon Yarbrough of [http://www.articlebooster.com], also if you would like to get more visitors earning cash tips like this one, and then there are Jon?s publication at [http://www.trafficloot.com]. You may use this content as long as the content is the same and all hyperlinks are unchanged such as this source box.

Source: http://ppc-publising.blogspot.com/2012/09/internet-and-businesses.html

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Source: http://logancolumbus.typepad.com/blog/2012/09/ppc-publishing-internet-and-businesses.html

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Fitness Magazines: What's with them? - Revista Women's Health

With the concept of staying fit and healthy dominating the society today, how hard you should be pushing yourself depends on your level of fitness and your health history. You can kick off with your doctor?s recommendation regarding optimal heart rate target for working out based on these factors.

On the other hand, you may start reading fitness magazines in order to entice you to start toning those thighs and biceps and have beautiful abs that can be very amusing to the others.

Since the advent of the printing technology, printing has been a crucial factor in progressive development of a person as well as a nation. Through prints, you now have some fitness magazines that do not only offer colorful graphics and superb layout but also helpful and useful tips and advices that people can use.

Fitness magazines are specifically designed to provide people with facts and information to come up with an improved body and a healthier life.

The best thing about most fitness magazines is that they do not ?beat around the bush.? Most fitness magazines provide you with straightforward, no hype or shortcuts, just detailed and reliable information and feasible tips about form, health, and ideas on how to life a quality life. Fitness magazines only provide relevant pieces of information that matter most to you and your family.

Each article written in fitness magazines are classified according to the topics they possess. The categories may range from basic information about foods to the sports and fitness advices from health and fitness experts.

Consequently, one of the known benefits of having form?magazine in the market is based on the premise that people need ageless realities bounded by true-to-life testimonials of other people. The articles written in fitness magazines are based on unfussy, systematic approach specifically made to answer timely issues about health and fitness.

These articles are specifically generated to motivate people to cope up and succeed in spite of the many adversities in life.

Best of all, fitness magazines are also great sources of advertisements that focus more on health products such as vitamins and minerals food supplements and other necessary equipments needed to keep your body at its optimum peak of health.

Alternatively, with the advent of information technology, form?magazines are now available in the Internet. Like its printed replica, electronic forms of fitness magazines likewise provide pertinent information about health and fitness.

The only edge they have with their printed counterparts is that they can be easily accessed anytime, anywhere. You can even download some articles free of charge. There is also a wide array of tips and advices regarding some frequently asked questions of fitness buffs.

Moreover, fitness magazines on the Internet also provide some healthy gourmet recipes that fitness aficionados can use. These recipes do not just offer alternative way to stay fit but also provides sumptuous treat to the palate.

Best of all, virtual fitness magazines offers readily available hyperlinks to web sites that offer form?products and equipments, and with the convenience of online shopping, you can readily purchase these products with just one click.

Indeed, there could be no better way to acquire the right information and facts about health and form?like what fitness magazines can provide. It is definitely your one-stop health journal in a snap.

Source: http://revistawomenshealth.com/fitness-magazines-whats-them.html

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Successful S-Corp Owners - Small Business Trends

The Obama Administration?s plans to increase taxes in 2013 won?t hit all small business owners equally. Owners of successful S-corps and partnerships, it turns out, are most likely to face a tax increase.

The economic impact of the administration?s tax plans, particularly their impact on small business is a major political issue. Ernst & Young LLP just released a report, Long-Run Macroeconomic Impact of Increasing Tax Rates on High-IncomeTaxpayers in 2013, commissioned by several business groups, which shows that the tax increases that the President has put in place or would like to put in place in 2013 would have long term negative effects on the economy, including cutting output by $200 billion and eliminating 710,000 jobs.

The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has countered that these claims are overblown. In particular, they argue, few small businesses will be affected by the tax increase.

Citing a recent Treasury Department study, Methodology to Identify Small Businesses?and Their Owners, they explain that less than 3 percent of small business owners are taxed in the top two brackets (which would face tax increases under the plan) when small business is defined as the Treasury Department does in its study.

I have pointed out that the two sides are focused on different dimensions of the debate, with the Democrats concentrating on the number of small business owners affected by the tax increase and the Republicans stressing the impact on income and employment.

I don?t want to rehash what I have written about before, nor do I want to discuss whether ?true? small businesses are affected by the tax increase; whether the wealthy would bear more than their fair share of the increase; or whether tax increases really lead small business owners to invest and hire less, all of which have been addressed by others.

I just want to point out that the President?s tax plans would affect different types of small business owners differently. Many more small business owners who run partnerships and Sub Chapter S corporations will face higher taxes than small business owners who run sole proprietorships. That?s because S-Corps and partnerships tend to generate more income.

Of the 30.2 million pass through businesses that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates are in operation in the United States, 77 percent are sole proprietorships.

According to the Ernst and Young report, only 2 percent of sole proprietors have income that would subject them to higher taxes under the administration?s plan. By contrast, Ernst and Young estimates that 13 percent of Sub Chapter S corporation owners and 12 percent of partnership owners will pay higher taxes if all the proposed changes go through.

The effects on income are even more extreme because the income of S Corps and partnerships is more skewed than the income of sole proprietorships. Ernst and Young?s analysis shows that the tax increases will hit only 24 percent of sole proprietorship income, but 73 percent of S Corp income and 70 percent of partnership income.

Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/09/successful-s-corp-owners-tax-increase.html

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Israeli billionaire's company faces money woes

FILE - In this Sunday, July 1, 2012 file photo, Israeli businessman Nochi Dankner, sits at the annual gathering of the rabbi's followers and supporters in the town of Netivot, southern Israel. One of Israel's wealthiest businessmen may quickly be going from riches to rags. Dankner, the blue-eyed darling of Israel's business community who is often credited with helping rescue Israel's economy at the height of the violence of the Palestinian uprising, is now struggling to keep his mammoth holding company above board. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov, File)

FILE - In this Sunday, July 1, 2012 file photo, Israeli businessman Nochi Dankner, sits at the annual gathering of the rabbi's followers and supporters in the town of Netivot, southern Israel. One of Israel's wealthiest businessmen may quickly be going from riches to rags. Dankner, the blue-eyed darling of Israel's business community who is often credited with helping rescue Israel's economy at the height of the violence of the Palestinian uprising, is now struggling to keep his mammoth holding company above board. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov, File)

JERUSALEM (AP) ? One of Israel's wealthiest businessmen may quickly be going from riches to rags, and experts warn he could drag Israel's economy down with him.

Nochi Dankner, a favorite of Israel's business community who is often credited with helping rescue Israel's economy at the height of a Palestinian uprising, is struggling to keep his mammoth holding company above water.

IDB Holding Corp., which controls a large piece of the Israeli economic pie ? a large cellphone company, a major supermarket chain, an insurance company and a cement producer monopoly, among other concerns ? announced over the weekend that it may not be able to pay tens of millions of dollars of debts in the coming year.

The plight of Dankner has raised concern that his bondholders could lose on their investments and Israelis could see their retirement funds, heavily exposed to IDB investments, in danger.

"We are now going through difficult times. It's not easy for any of us," Dankner began a letter to employees last weekend.

Israel's finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, sought to douse the flames, estimating a "less than one in a thousand" chance that Israeli citizens' pensions would be affected.

Economists forecast a much gloomier picture should Dankner's company founder. Because so much of Israel's economy is controlled by Dankner's holding company, Israel is in more danger than the U.S. economy was in during the credit crisis of the late 2000s, said Daniel Doron, director of the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress.

"It's a domino effect," said Doron. "Creditors would lose money. A lot of people would lose jobs. It would be a great tragedy."

The 58-year-old billionaire's downturn has come swiftly.

Born to an aristocratic Israeli family with a powerful investment firm, Dankner made a mark in 1999 when he sold his shares in the firm to his relatives for $100 million.

His timing was right. A year later, a Palestinian uprising erupted, paralyzing Israel's economy and causing the shares in his family's business to tank.

At the height of the uprising, Dankner and his partners borrowed millions of dollars from Israeli banks and bought IDB Holding Corp.

"No one understood who would buy during the crisis ... it was a deal that amazed everyone," said Stella Korin Lieber, a commentator at the Globes financial newspaper. "He signaled the end of the crisis."

Under Dankner's leadership, IDB became Israel's largest holding company, and Dankner became a celebrity. Last year, he garnered 11th place on Forbes Magazine's ranking of wealthy Israelis. He was known to travel in a private jet and to lunch with his longtime friend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

His public image was as a handsome, mild-mannered man with a spiritual side, traveling to Nepal to study Buddhism and forging a close relationship with a Kabbalistic healer in Israel known as the "X-ray Rabbi."

In 2006, as rockets rained down on northern Israel during its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Dankner visited Israelis in bomb shelters and donated large sums for their welfare.

Then he became overconfident, Korin Lieber said.

In 2007, he and another Israeli billionaire invested in plans to build a Las Vegas casino when U.S. real estate prices were at their peak, and the project quickly tanked. From 2008-2010, a Dankner subsidiary bought shares in the Swiss multinational bank Credit Suisse, but last year lost millions of dollars in the deal. He also bought Maariv, an unprofitable Israeli daily newspaper, in what was seen as more of an ego trip than a smart business decision.

Then last summer, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to protest the country's high cost of living.

Dankner's picture was plastered on protesters' posters ? one of many business tycoons accused of monopolizing much of the Israeli market, keeping prices high.

Food prices came down, the government facilitated more cellphone companies to enter the market, and Dankner's supermarket chain and mobile phone company suffered losses.

"He didn't pay attention to the changes that were taking place in the business world," Korin Lieber said. "He had a lot of arrogance and conviction ? 'we will be fine.'"

Dankner has vowed to meet an $8.8 million payment to one group of bondholders this week. The company owes about $425 million to bondholders and $75 million to Israeli banks, Israel's Haaretz daily reported. IDB Holding Corp. is asking for more time to find another investor for the company.

At a meeting of bondholders Monday, one bondholder told Israel's Channel 10 TV that Dankner should dip into in his own wealth to repay his debts.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-09-03-Israel-Billionaire%20Blues/id-f9f5f0f3e0d144299ef590d17e821954

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