The Global Wellness Summit kicked off with a concept that is too often overlooked, thanks to the hectic pace of our lives and the drive to survive and succeed – gratitude.  Renowned filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg, whose films celebrate life and the human spirit, shared his newest work, Gratitude Revealed. 

During the pandemic, Schwartzberg, the child of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, observed how severely disrupted our rhythm of life became under the COVID cloud. Things taken for granted – meeting a friend, brainstorming with colleagues, browsing a store – were suddenly replaced by isolation. Through the solitude of then-required quarantine, we also saw the ugliness in the world – climate change, racial discrimination, disregard for the needy, and young people suffering mental health strife and worse. We recognized that we needed to engage in creating sustainable existence. 

Schwartzberg wanted to inspire during this difficult and unpredictable time. He wanted to help people in desperate need of connection by infusing within us a vision of how great life can be. His response was Gratitude Revealed. His words and film set the tone for this gathering – wellness means many things to many people. It should not be taken for granted.

Wellness is Now Big Business

The Global Wellness Summit and its corresponding research institute track the now $4.4 trillion global wellness economy that includes 11 sectors:

• Personal Care & Beauty ($955 billion)
• Healthy Eating, Nutrition, & Weight Loss ($946 billion)
• Physical Activity ($738 billion)
• Wellness Tourism ($436 billion)
• Traditional & Complementary Medicine ($413 billion)
• Public Health, Prevention, & Personalized Medicine ($375 billion)
• Wellness Real Estate ($275 billion)
• Mental Wellness ($131 billion)
• Spas ($68 billion)
• Workplace Wellness ($49 billion)
• Thermal/Mineral Springs ($39 billion)

The Shift in the Global Wellness Market – Enter Behavioral Health and Tech Investment

Private equity investment and technology are changing the world wellness landscape, and Israel was a natural choice of location for this year’s summit. More than $870 million in equity investment has been directed to innovators in Israel seeking to advance healthy, sustainable eating, mental health, pain management, and areas that engage corporate and personal wellness.

Summit Co-Chair Amir Alroy heads WellTech Ventures. It’s among the first private equity firms to focus on technologies that advance wellness and the understanding that we must move more toward self-care and life-care rather than the healthcare, sick-care approach. Alroy, who first explored the wellness movement by launching a chain of famous fitness clubs, later shifted to explore how wellness and technology could combine to accelerate behavioral change. Surrounded by a seasoned investment team, Alroy has jumped in as a market leader in the tech wellness category.

These three companies attending the Global Wellness Summit caught my attention. They should be on our radar screens – Medika Life will expand its coverage of ideas and innovators dedicated to preventing illness from progressing.

SavorEat

Food sustainability isn’t often at the forefront of our minds. We often think “healthy; sustainable food” is tasteless.  Most decisions are based on taste and convenience. The foods we eat affect blood sugar and weight management. Over time, foods that aren’t good for our bodies result in metabolic changes that range from high blood glucose to elevated cholesterol.  SavorEat is developing a revolutionary robot chef with customizable plant-based 3D printing technology as a solution for businesses and institutions requiring the production of fast, precise and consistent food output.

The concept of 3D printed food – designed to your taste preferences – might seem futuristic!  But the future is now!  Disruptive, its success can impact supply chain management, labor challenges, reduction of food waste, and food safety to address diners’ different needs. But disruptive change is never easy.  However, food production remains one of the planet’s biggest challenges – regarding access to food and its ecological impact.

Sency 

Posture and movement are part of physical health. How many people experience back or the aches and pains resulting from how we walk, run and exercise? How many visits to orthopedic surgeons, physical therapies, and pain clinics result from poor posture contributing to other structural woes? 

According to a 2021 study by the American Chiropractic Association, more than 31 million Americans suffer from poor posture. Bad posture leads to health complications, including respiratory problems, back pain, high blood pressure, spinal dysfunction, and joint degeneration. Sency technology can capture every movement using only a phone camera to analyze motion and improve physical health – the result is a physical frame that can better support healthy aging.

X-trodes

Sleep is the body’s path to regeneration. Monitoring signals from the brain, heart and muscles during sleep provides a greater understanding of personal health and wellness and how to reorient self-care efforts. Newer research is showing that sleep patterns may even determine eye health. The challenge is that people must typically head to hospital-based sleep clinics with the necessary equipment – electrodes, gel, or suction cups – and sometimes, the analysis requires an overnight clinic stay.

X-trodes is changing how we obtain that information – at any time of the day or night! Their goal is to perfect innovative wearable technology for the measurement and analytics of electrophysiological signals through a patented technology that provides an automated and high-resolution analysis at any time.  X-trodes wearable wireless technology will enable consumers, professional athletes and health professionals to monitor sleep patterns from home in a natural sleep environment. The science of sleep comes to homes!

Two Pioneers Continue to Expand the Wellness Tent 

Global Wellness Summit founders Susie Ellis and Nancy Davis are must-watch leaders of a conversation that has evolved into a powerful economic movement. The United States now dedicates almost 20 percent of its GDP to healthcare, and global spending on health rose between 2000 and 2018 and reached US $8.3 trillion, or 10% of the worldwide GDP. However, most nations that invest in preventive – well-care – are spending far less than the United States yet enjoy significantly greater longevity. 

Ellis and Davis have created a big tent for the wellness community. Yes, long-term experts in travel, hot spring treatments, and spas focusing on reorienting diet and mindfulness are present at the Summit. So are the scientists, epidemiologists, public health officials, and entrepreneurs. Health is holistic. There is no one path to a long, healthy life. It’s no longer a question of how long we will live. Medical innovation can sustain life. Now, with those added years, we must choose how we will enjoy the journey.

Medika Life will soon publish its Top 50 Global Wellness Leaders list – the pioneers, entrepreneurs and game changers advancing wellness.

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A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE IS ASSOCIATED WITH A LOWER RISK of developing fatty liver disease. Today we explore the connection between inadequate sleep and fatty liver disease.

First, did you catch the error in my post illustration? The striking image at the top of this piece has a bull’s eye on the stomach, not the liver. Don’t worry: I did not skip the Yale School of Medicine anatomy class.

Let’s get back to one of the dangers of insufficient sleep. Fatty liver disease is the leading chronic liver disease worldwide, striking one in four of the population.

Fatty liver disease

Fatty liver disease is a common condition resulting from too much-stored fat in the liver. Most individuals have no symptoms, but the fatty liver disease can occasionally lead to liver damage.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can often prevent (or even reverse) fatty liver disease with positive lifestyle interventions.

Fatty liver disease is common.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) happens in those who aren’t heavy consumers of alcohol. The condition affects about one in three adults (and one in ten childer) in the United States. Worldwide, the disease affects one in four adults, according to the Cleveland Clinic (USA).

Scientists do not know the exact cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. However, we know several factors, including diabetes and obesity, can increase your risk. Moreover, fatty liver disease may progress to end-stage liver disease.

Fatty liver disease hits certain groups more.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease can affect anyone, regardless of age or race. By race, it appears more common among individuals of Hispanic descent, and Black people are less likely to get NAFLD (with whites in the middle).

Of those with non-alcoholic fatty disease, up to 75 percent have obesity or diabetes. Looking the other direction, up to 90 percent of those with advanced or class III obesity have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Fatty liver disease causes

Before we get to the sleep and fatty liver relationship, let’s look at some suspected factors:

• Diet. A high fructose diet may increase your risk of developing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Think common table sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Alas, the latter is a common added sweetener in many American foods. I have become a label reader. I want to avoid metabolic syndrome, a disease cluster that increases our risk of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. The risk-raising conditions include high blood sugar, too much body fat around the waist, abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels, and high blood pressure.
• Genetics. Inherited genetics may explain why individuals of certain races appear to get fatty liver disease more often.

Fatty liver disease causes

Researchers suspect several factors contribute to non-alcoholic fatty liver risk, including:

• Metabolic syndrome. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease seems linked to a group of related metabolic disorders involving high body mass index, elevated blood lipid levels, diabetes, and high blood pressure. These factors influence one another and affect how your body stores fats and metabolizes nutrients.
• Diet and nutritional causes. A fructose-rich diet can increase your risk of developing NAFLD. Fructose is one of the ingredients in common table sugar and is the dominant ingredient in high fructose corn syrup, a common sweetener. It’s highly linked to metabolic syndrome.
• Genetics. Inherited genes may make you more likely to develop NAFLD. It may also help explain why individuals of certain races seem to get it more often.
• Gallbladder removal (cholecystectomy).

You may wonder if you should have screening for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, particularly if you have a risk factor such as obesity or diabetes.

The American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases guidelines does not call for screening given uncertainties around which test to use (since liver enzyme levels may be normal in patients with NAFLD), how to treat NAFLD if discovered, and whether screening is cost-effective.

Fatty liver disease — possible complications

Here are the two major complications of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease:

• Pregnancy complications. NAFLD in pregnancy is associated with a higher risk of complications for the mother and fetus. For example, high blood pressure problems (such as preeclampsia) are more likely to affect the mother. Other associated problems include bleeding after delivery and preterm birth. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in pregnancy has tripled over the past ten years in the United States.
• Steatohepatitis. Up to 20 percent of individuals with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease may develop non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) or chronic liver inflammation. This inflammatory state can progressively damage the liver, culminating in scarring (cirrhosis).

Non-alcoholic fatty disease risk and short sleep

Do you have a sedentary lifestyle? Are you getting insufficient sleep? A new study points to a higher risk of developing fatty liver disease.

According to Dr. Yan Liu of Guangdong (China), the takeaway message is:

“Those with poor nighttime sleep and prolonged daytime napping have the highest risk for developing fatty liver disease. A moderate improvement in sleep quality appeared associated with a nearly one-third (29 percent) drop in fatty liver disease risk (even for those with unhealthy lifestyles).

The scientists arrived at their conclusions by analyzing self-reported sleep behaviors from just over 5,000 Chinese adults. Late bedtime, daytime napping for more than 30 minutes, and snoring appeared to be linked to an increased risk of fatty liver disease.

Sedentary individuals and those with central obesity had especially noticeable adverse effects from poor sleep quality.

Summary: Sleep and fatty liver disease

In summary, even a moderate improvement in sleep quality can reduce the risk for fatty liver disease, especially in those with unhealthy lifestyles. Thank you for joining me today.

The post One More Peril of Short Sleep appeared first on Medika Life.

In a new longitudinal study, investigators discovered that older adults who sleep less than 4.5 hours or more than 6.5 hours a night report significant cognitive decline over time, but the cognitive scores for those with sleep duration in between the range, remain stable.

The study was published online on the 20th of October this year in the journal Brain, as part of a growing body of research that looks to address if sleep can be used as a marker of Alzheimer’s disease progression. Previous studies have suggested a strong relationship between sleep patterns and Alzheimer’s disease, which affects close to 6 million Americans.

So if the research is really on to something, to protect your brain you need to get a minimum of four and a half hours sleep a night and no more than six and a half, so set your alarm clock for a 6 am wake up call if you’re hitting the hay at midnight and you’ll be within safe limits.

The studies lead author Brendan Lucey, MD, MSCI, associate professor of neurology and director of the Washington University Sleep Medicine Center, St. Louis, Missouri had this to say;

“This really suggests that there’s this middle range, a ‘sweet spot,’ where your sleep is really optimal,”

Sleep, AD and Cognitive function

The problem researchers face is unwinding the complex relationship shared by sleep, Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), and cognitive decline. In an earlier study by the same group, poor sleep quality was associated with early signs of AD, and a report published in September found that elderly people who slept less than 6 hours a night had a greater burden of amyloid-beta, a hallmark sign of AD.

For this particular study, however, researchers monitored sleep-wake activity over 4–6 nights in 100 participants who underwent annual cognitive assessments and clinical studies, including APOE genotyping, as part of a longitudinal study at the Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center at Washington University.

Participants also provided cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) total tau and amyloid-β42 and wore a small EEG device on their forehead while they slept. The majority of participants had a clinical dementia rating (CDR) score of 0, indicating no cognitive impairment. Twelve individuals had a CDR >0, with most reporting mild cognitive impairment. For more details on the trial itself, please refer to the linked article above.

What does the new data mean?

Understanding how sleep changes at different stages of AD could help researchers determine if sleep can be used as a marker of disease progression, which could in turn lead to interventions to slow that process. It’s like identifying a tell tales symptom that allows AD patients to be identified for possible treatment.

The upshot is that you want to try and ensure at least six hours of restful sleep a night, which, as you age, can prove challenging. As I age I now often find myself wide awake at 4 am and inevitably resort to coffee and the laptop, two terrible habits that are guaranteed to ban any further thought of sleep.

These are patterns we need to be aware of and try to address to ensure we’re hitting that sweet spot. Our sleep patterns may however reveal far more and as this research highlights, could soon be used as markers for certain conditions.

According to Lucey, who plans to repeat the study,

“We’re not at the point yet where we can say that we need to monitor someone’s sleep time and then do an intervention to see if it would improve their risk for cognitive decline, but that’s a question I’m very excited to try to answer.”

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