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Persistent organic pollutants--POPS--are pervasive in the environment and accumulate in our bodies. Pesticides, pharmaceuticals and many industrial chemicals contribute to this potentially toxic tide.
In an earlier post, I reported on findings by epidemiologist Miquel Porta and his colleagues revealing that ten percent of Americans have 10 or more different POPS in our blood at abnormally high concentrations.
Porta and his team are now studying the impacts of these long-lived organic compounds that many of us unknowingly carry in our bodies and bloodstream.
His most recent findings, reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, reveal a strong correlation between people's toxic loads and metabolic abnormalities such as high blood pressure, insulin resistance, high blood sugar, unhealthy lipid profiles, and chronic inflammation--factors that increase the risk of metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease.
Porta and his colleagues at the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute in Barcelona (IMIM), and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, evaluated 860 people enrolled in the Catalan Health Interview Survey. Participants included obese and normal-weight men and women from the age of 18 to 74. Statistical analyses controlled for the effects of age, sex, BMI, educational level and social-economic status. It's the first study looking at the relationship between POPs and metabolic abnormalities in normal-weight individuals.
"The take-home message of our study," says Porta, "is that POPs contribute to cause unhealthy metabolic phenotypes as well as the metabolic syndrome."
Intriguingly, the correlation was stronger for people of normal weight than for obese people. This may help to explain why many people of normal weight turn out to be metabolically unhealthy, and why some obese people remain metabolically normal.
It wasn't a small effect--people of normal weight carrying high loads of POPs were four times more likely to be metabolically unhealthy than normal-weight peers with low toxic loads. Obese individuals with high toxic loads were 1.4 times as likely to suffer from metabolic abnormalities than those with low levels of toxins in their blood. And regardless of weight, metabolically unhealthy people carried nearly twice the load of toxins than their healthy peers.
A separate research study reports that normal-weight people who are metabolically unhealthy have three times the risk of heart attack, stroke or death compared to their metabolically healthy, normal-weight peers.
Although we are all exposed to organic pollutants from many sources--the air we breathe, the water we drink, furniture, fabrics, food containers and many other sources, the authors point out that fatty animal foods are the biggest source, and one that we can control by what we choose to eat.
They add, however, that individual efforts to eat a healthy diet and maintain a healthy weight are only part of the solution. Government action to minimize the accumulation of POPs and other toxins in the workplace, consumer goods and the environment are also needed, as well as similar efforts by private companies.
"Individual habits play a role, but so do public and private policies," says Porta, "that is, polices of governments and companies that have been shown to decrease 'internal contamination' by POPs."
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You can access the abstract of Porta's journal article at this URL.
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If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for email alerts from zerospinzone.blogspot.com (right column above).
Some common organic pollutants
Credit CunhaEnviroSci
In an earlier post, I reported on findings by epidemiologist Miquel Porta and his colleagues revealing that ten percent of Americans have 10 or more different POPS in our blood at abnormally high concentrations.
Porta and his team are now studying the impacts of these long-lived organic compounds that many of us unknowingly carry in our bodies and bloodstream.
His most recent findings, reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, reveal a strong correlation between people's toxic loads and metabolic abnormalities such as high blood pressure, insulin resistance, high blood sugar, unhealthy lipid profiles, and chronic inflammation--factors that increase the risk of metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease.
Porta and his colleagues at the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute in Barcelona (IMIM), and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, evaluated 860 people enrolled in the Catalan Health Interview Survey. Participants included obese and normal-weight men and women from the age of 18 to 74. Statistical analyses controlled for the effects of age, sex, BMI, educational level and social-economic status. It's the first study looking at the relationship between POPs and metabolic abnormalities in normal-weight individuals.
"The take-home message of our study," says Porta, "is that POPs contribute to cause unhealthy metabolic phenotypes as well as the metabolic syndrome."
Intriguingly, the correlation was stronger for people of normal weight than for obese people. This may help to explain why many people of normal weight turn out to be metabolically unhealthy, and why some obese people remain metabolically normal.
It wasn't a small effect--people of normal weight carrying high loads of POPs were four times more likely to be metabolically unhealthy than normal-weight peers with low toxic loads. Obese individuals with high toxic loads were 1.4 times as likely to suffer from metabolic abnormalities than those with low levels of toxins in their blood. And regardless of weight, metabolically unhealthy people carried nearly twice the load of toxins than their healthy peers.
A separate research study reports that normal-weight people who are metabolically unhealthy have three times the risk of heart attack, stroke or death compared to their metabolically healthy, normal-weight peers.
Although we are all exposed to organic pollutants from many sources--the air we breathe, the water we drink, furniture, fabrics, food containers and many other sources, the authors point out that fatty animal foods are the biggest source, and one that we can control by what we choose to eat.
They add, however, that individual efforts to eat a healthy diet and maintain a healthy weight are only part of the solution. Government action to minimize the accumulation of POPs and other toxins in the workplace, consumer goods and the environment are also needed, as well as similar efforts by private companies.
"Individual habits play a role, but so do public and private policies," says Porta, "that is, polices of governments and companies that have been shown to decrease 'internal contamination' by POPs."
-----
You can access the abstract of Porta's journal article at this URL.
-----
If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for email alerts from zerospinzone.blogspot.com (right column above).
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