In this week’s health news round up, we cover menopausal disordered eating, air pollution & Alzheimer’s, and cold sore comebacks:

When the body starts changing…

Eating disorders are often thought of as a “teenage girl thing”. But in fact, eating disorders in girls/women mostly occur along with “the three Ps”:

• Puberty
• Pregnancy
• Perimenopause & menopause

In very many cases, it’s likely “my body is changing and I have strong opinions on how it should be”. Those opinions are often reflective of societal norms and pressures, but still, they are earnestly felt also. In the case of pregnancy, the societal pressures and standards are generally lifted while pregnant, but come back immediately postpartum, with an expectation to rebound quickly into the same shape one was in beforehand. And in the case of menopause, this is often concurrent with a sense of loss of identity, and can be quite reactionary against what is generally considered to be the ravages of time.

Of course, looking after one’s health is great at any age, and certainly there is no reason not to pursue health goals and try to get one’s body the way one wants it. However, it is all-too-easy for people to fall into the trap of taking drastic steps that are not actually that healthy, in the hopes of quick results.

Further, 13% of women over 50 report current core eating disorder symptoms, and that is almost certain vastly underreported.

Read in full: Eating disorders don’t just affect teen girls—the risk may also go up around pregnancy and menopause

Related: Body Image Dissatisfaction/Appreciation Across The Ages From Age 16 To Age 88

Where there’s smoke…

It’s been known for a while that air pollution is strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease incidence, but exactly how this happens has not been entirely clear, beyond that it involves S-nitrosylation, in which NO-related particles bind to sulfur (S) atoms, forming SNO (and scientists being how they are, the term for the resultant brain effect has been called a SNO-STORM).

However, researchers have now found that it has to do with how certain toxins in the air (notwithstanding our heading here, they don’t have to be smoke—it can be household chemicals or other things too) cause this resultant SNO to interfere with protein CRTC1, which is critical for forming/maintaining connections between brain cells.

This is important, because it means that if a drug can be made that selectively blocks S-nitrosylatoin actions affecting CRTC1, it can reverse a lot of Alzheimer’s brain damage (as was found in the laboratory, when testing the theory with CRTC1 proteins that had been genetically engineered to resist S-nitrosylation, which is not something we can do with living human brains yet, but it is “proof of principle” and means funding will likely be forthcoming to find drugs to do the same thing).

Read in full: Study reveals how air pollution contributes to Alzheimer’s disease

Related: 14 Powerful Strategies To Prevent Dementia

The virus that comes back from the cold

Cold sores are created by the Herpes simplex virus (yes, the same one as for the genital variety), and by adulthood, most of us are either infected (and periodically get cold sores), or else infected (as an asymptomatic carrier). A noteworthy minority, but a minority nevertheless, are immune. Unless you’ve never had physical contact with other humans, it’s highly unlikely you’re not in one of the above three categories.

For those who do get cold sores, they can seem random in their reoccurrence, but in reality the virus never went away; it was just dormant for a while.

This much was known already, but scientists have now identified the trigger protein (known as “UL 12.5” to its friends) that acts as an alarm clock for the virus—which may pave the way to a greatly-improved treatment, if a way can be found to safely interfere with that wake-up call:

Read in full: Cold sore discovery identifies unknown trigger for those annoying flare-ups

Related: Beyond Supplements: The Real Immune-Boosters!

Take care!