Food Is Medicine: The Time Is Now.

Virtually every professional society globally now endorses a plant-forward diet that is lower in fat and processed foods as key components of disease prevention and health promotion. It is characterized by whole grain foods, and predominantly made of fresh foods. With healthcare expenditures at record levels across the globe, implementing a treatment plan that has larger magnitude health improvements than nearly any known medicine, that is extremely inexpensive, and has the power to not only improve human health but also planetary health is critical. That plan is Food is Medicine (FIM) which will be explored in this manuscript.

Lifestyle Medicine: An Antidote to Cardiovascular Diseases.

Despite numerous advances in basic understanding of cardiovascular disease pathophysiology, pharmacology, therapeutic procedures, and systems improvement, there hasn't been much decline in heart disease related mortality in the US since 2010. Hypertension and diet induced risk continue to be the leading causes of cardiovascular morbidity. Even with the excessive mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020, heart disease remained the leading cause of death. Given the degree of disease burden, morbidity, and mortality, there is an urgent need to redirect medical professionals' focus towards prevention through simple and cost effective lifestyle strategies. However, current practice paradigm and financial compensation systems are mainly centered disease management and not health promotion. For example, the financial value placed on 3-10 min smoking cessation counseling (.24RVUs) is 47-fold lower than an elective PCI (11.21 RVUs). The medical community seems to be enamored with the latest and greatest technology, new devices, and surgical procedures. What if the greatest technology of all was simply the way we live every day? Perhaps when this notion is known by enough, we will switch to this lifestyle medicine technology to prevent disease in the first place.

Association of Common Foods with Inflammation and Mortality: Analysis from a Large Prospective Cohort Study.

Some dietary patterns are associated with inflammation, while others lower inflammation and improve health. However, many people cannot follow a complete, healthy diet. Therefore, this study's aim was to identify specific foods associated chronic inflammation and mortality. The study used Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) research materials from the NHLBI Biologic Specimen and Data Repository Information Coordinating Center. Three plant-based and three animal-based MESA food categories were chosen based on perceived availability in the western diet. The assessed food categories were avocado, ham, sausage, eggs, greens, and broccoli. Inflammatory markers assessed were interleukin-6 (IL-6), fibrinogen antigen, C-reactive protein, D-Dimer, interleukin-2, matrix metalloproteinase 3, necrosis factor-a soluble receptors, oxidized LDL (oxLDL), and total homocysteine. The primary outcome was the multivariable association of foods and inflammatory markers with all-cause mortality. All inflammatory makers, except oxLDL, were associated with mortality in univariate analysis. The effect was largest with IL-6 and D-dimer. The category of broccoli had the most consistent association in univariate analyses with lower inflammation and lower mortality odds. Low and high broccoli consumption versus no consumption were associated with lower mortality odds in the multivariable models with IL-6 and D-dimer. Consumption of the MESA-defined food category "broccoli" (i.e., broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, sauerkraut, and kimchee) was associated with lower inflammation and lower mortality odds. These findings should be validated in randomized controlled trials testing a "food is medicine" approach to identify which, if any, of these foods may have potential as an herbal therapeutic for chronic inflammation.

College Student Video Gaming: Risk or Resilience for Mental Health?

Video gaming has become a popular method of entertainment for college students. Previous work indicates mixed results regarding the link between video gaming and mental health outcomes. However, little research has addressed how different genres of video games might produce various mental health outcomes. The current study examined whether video game genre enjoyment moderated the links between time spent playing video games and anxiety and stress in college students. College students responded to measures assessing various components of mental health indicating their engagement with various genres of video games. Results indicated no evidence of moderation in all genres of video games. The only significant association to emerge was that of time spent playing life simulation games and anxiety. Our findings demonstrate a minimal influence of video gaming on stress and anxiety levels among college students. Discussed are rationales for the null results and future directions for video game focused research.

An Urgent Need to Incorporate Evidence-Based Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine Into Medical Training.

It is well established that evidence based clinical nutrition and lifestyle practices play a pivotal role in the prevention, treatment and potential reversal of various common chronic diseases. However, this area of science is under appreciated at all levels of medical education and training. Most medical schools and residency programs do not offer any organized training in nutrition and lifestyle medicine. Given recent data on the rising cost and loss of quality of life secondary to preventable causes, there is an absolute need for a drastic reform of the US medical education system.

Correlated conductance fluctuations close to the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in ultrathin NbN films.

We probe the presence of long-range correlations in phase fluctuations by analyzing the higher-order spectrum of resistance fluctuations in ultrathin NbN superconducting films. The non-Gaussian component of resistance fluctuations is found to be sensitive to film thickness close to the transition, which allows us to distinguish between mean field and Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) type superconducting transitions. The extent of non-Gaussianity was found to be bounded by the BKT and mean field transition temperatures and depends strongly on the roughness and structural inhomogeneity of the superconducting films. Our experiment outlines a novel fluctuation-based kinetic probe in detecting the nature of superconductivity in disordered low-dimensional materials.

Iliac artery stenosis masquerading as diuretic resistant congestive heart failure.

Iliac artery stenosis is a rare cause of renal dysfunction in renal allograft recipients. Its presence can mimic renovascular hypertension and yet alter the very radiologic tests used to diagnose renal artery stenosis. We investigate a case of iliac artery stenosis that presented with diuretic resistant fluid overload, hypertension and limb claudication that exposed the pitfalls in the diagnosis and management of this condition. Successful stent placement, 8 months after transplant, resulted in return of the serum creatinine below the post-transplant nadir.

ECG compression and recognition using complete tree representation.

This paper deals with a novel method of Electrocardiogram (ECG) representation, compression and recognition using Complete Tree algorithm. The construction of Complete Tree is like overlaying a ECG waveform on a grid. The waveform is observed through the grid structure with vertical and horizontal grid lines. In addition to nodes created for each interval enclosed by that waveform on a quantisation level, nodes are also created for each point where the waveform cuts the vertical grid line between the current quantisation level and the next quantisation level. A leaf node represents the data sample of ECG at that position. For reconstruction of this ECG waveform, only the leaf nodes are used resulting in ECG compression. This representation is also useful in ECG pattern matching and recognition without reconstructing the original waveform. The ECGs with sampling rate of 500 sps are used. A compression ratio (CR) of 4.8:1 with percent RMS difference (PRD) of 8.45% is obtained. The reconstruction of original ECG waveform from its tree representation shows high fidelity in all its complexes of ECG. The results are compared with all other compression techniques such as AZTEC, TP, FAN, DPCM etc. By using Tree merging and splitting algorithms, the matching and recognition of ECG is implemented.