Saturday, November 8, 2014

The Effects of Poor Eating Can Persist Long After Changing Diet




In a new report that was published in the November 2014 issue of Journal of Leukocyte Biology, a study done on mice has shown that the effects of poor eating habits can last for a long time, long after those eating habits were improved. This is due to the poor eating habits altering the way that genes express themselves, which can lead the immune system functioning poorly.

In the study, the scientists used mice that had an altered gene, making them more likely to develop high blood cholesterol and atherosclerosis. They fed these mice a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet. The bone marrow of these mice were transplanted into genetically similar mice, who had their own bone marrow eliminated. Then, these mice with the transplanted bone marrow were fed a more nutritional diet of chow for many months. The control group of mice had bone marrow transplanted into them from chow-fed mice, and were fed chow for many months. The two groups were measured for the development of atherosclerosis in the heart, and the number/condition of their immune cells. The mice with the bone marrow from the “unhealthy” mice were found to have large differences in their immune system and more likely to have atherosclerosis than those mice with the “healthy” mice bone marrow.



This study can have implications for the treatment of diseases with immune underpinnings in humans, and new treatments that can modify gene expression.

This article shows moreso how our diets affect us in more ways than just weight. I wish the article would have gone more in-depth into the diets given to the mice, because nutrition is more complicated than just “high-fat, high-cholesterol”, knowing that there are good and bad fats/cholesterol. Either way, it never occurred to me that our diets could have such a long term effect on the expression of our genes and gives even more importance to striving to eat healthy.

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