By reshaping the gastrointestinal tract, bariatric surgery appears to set in motion a cascade of physiological changes — most obviously weight loss. But a study suggests that such surgery may also be linked, in rare cases, to a headache condition caused by a leak of cerebrospinal fluid from the brain. Neurologists generally diagnose spontaneous intracranial hypotension, which can bring on sudden headaches and nausea while a person is upright, in tall, lanky people. But research published this week in the journal Neurology found, in searching through the medical records of some 338 patients with the condition, 11 — or 3.3 percent — had had bariatric surgery. That suggests that a history of weight-loss surgery may put a person at slightly increased risk of developing these headaches. While lying down often causes the symptoms to disappear, the condition can be disabling.
Coffee bean extract gone cold
Remember when green coffee bean extract was the next big thing in weight loss, a remedy with positive clinical findings touted as a breakthrough by Dr. Mehmet Oz and aggressively hawked online? Well, fuggedaboutit. Last week, the 2012 study that started the hype and jump-started a coffee bean buying frenzy was retracted by Joe Vinson and his co-author, Bryan Burnham of the University of Scranton. Writing in the journal Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy, Vinson and Burham said they were retracting the study, published in the journal, because "the sponsors of the study cannot assure the validity of the data." The retraction followed a $3.5 million settlement last month between Applied Food Science Inc. — a manufacturer of a green coffee bean product and sponsor of Vinson and Burnham's study — and the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC called the study "hopelessly flawed."
Chocolate for memory loss?
The good stuff in chocolate may have the power to turn back the clock on age-related memory loss. In research that will need to be replicated, a concentrated daily dose of epicatechin, a compound derived from the cocoa bean, made a typical 60-year-old's memory perform more like that of a 30- or 40-year-old. The research was led by Adam M. Brickman of Columbia University Medical Center's Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's disease and the Aging Brain and builds on research by Dr. Scott A. Small at the Taub Institute. It was published in Nature Neuroscience. However, they emphasized that consuming chocolate in an effort to take in epicatechins would not be recommended: the processing of cocoa beans in the confectionery process typically strips most chocolate of those phytonutrients.
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