 |
|
|
|||||
Dont beat yourself up if you do some serious damage on a cheese plate during holiday festivities this year: You just may do your future self a favor. A new study has found that eating nearly 2 ounces or more of high-fat cheese each day has been associated with a 16% lower risk of dementia, according to the study published this week in Neurology. Lest you think this is some sort of propaganda by Big Cheese, the study followed nearly 28,000 adults in Malmö, Sweden for roughly 25 years. The studys findings indicate that Swedes who ate more cheese with a fat content exceeding 20%which includes many varieties of cheddar, gouda, and blue cheese, among othershad a lower risk of all-cause dementia. The researchers didnt find a similar link with other high-fat dairy products and noted that further confirmation of these findings in diverse populations is warranted. While the amount of cheese in questionequivalent to less than a handful of diced cubesmay not seem significant, scientists are keen to identify even something small that could raise or lower the risk of dementia. More than 6 million Americans are currently living with dementia, and 42% of Americans over the age of 55 could eventually develop such declines in mental abilities, according to figures from the National Institutes of Health. QUESTIONING THE FINDINGS It might be tempting to give yourself permission to go wild on full-fat cheese for your brain, though your waistline could pay the price. The studys authors said their findings require caution in interpretation, something that other experts were quick to do. The researchers only captured the dietary habits of participants at one point in 1991 and didnt follow up with the majority of them over the course of the next 25 years. This sort of approach raises questions about the robustness of the studys conclusions, Dr. Tian-Shin Yeh, a physician and nutritional epidemiologist at Taipei Medical University in Taiwan, wrote in an editorial published alongside the study. Whats more, the benefits of eating high-fat cheeses were most evident when participants swapped cheese for other foods, like processed or high-fat red meat, which might just reveal the difference of better options, according to Yeh. It is not so much that high-fat cheese is inherently neuroprotective, but rather that it is a less harmful choice than red and processed meats, she wrote. BENEFITS OF CHEESE The findings may not apply to somewhere like the U.S., where much of our cheese is processed, according to Emily Sonestedt, who led the new study and is a senior lecturer and associate professor of nutrition at Lund University in Sweden, Still, its possible that there are benefits from certain healthful components of cheese, like vitamins K or B12, or minerals like calcium, she told The New York Times. As with any of these sorts of studies, its also important for people to remember that correlation doesnt imply causationsomething Sonestedt reinforced. This does not prove that cheese prevents dementia, but it does challenge the idea that all high-fat dairy is bad for the brain, Sonestedt said in an email to CNN. HIGH-FAT FOODS IN FOCUS Some people dont need purported brain benefits to convince them to eat foods high in saturated fats. These foods have been embraced in the keto diet, among others, in recent years, despite long-standing nutrition guidelines that recommend people limit their consumption of foods high in saturated fats because of the evidence that they raise LDL cholesterol levels, along with the risk of heart attack or stroke. But those guidelines are likely to see a shake-up in 2026 as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. secretary for health and human services, has said that the next edition of the federal dietary guidelines will instead stress the need to eat saturated fats, dairy, fresh meat, and vegetables. And even if the results of this study are appealing to cheese lovers, the quirks of how the research was conducted mean that some experts arent exactly buying the results. NOT BUYING IT In fact, because the link between cheese consumption and dementia risk was at the margin of statistical significance, it could be due to just chance, notes Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Im not running out to buy a block of cheese, Willett said in an email to CNN.
Category:
E-Commerce
Bitcoin investors are bracing for Witching Friday tomorrow, December 18, when billions of options are due to expiremaking for what could be a highly volatile, roller-coaster ride at the end of the week for the markets. Some $23 billion in contracts are set to expire just on Deribit, the largest Bitcoin exchange, according to Bloomberg. Here’s what to know. What is ‘Witching Friday’? “Witching Friday,” also known as “triple witching” or “the triple witching hour,” refers to the last hour of the stock market trading session on the third Friday of March, June, September, and December, when three kinds of securities expire simultaneously, often leading to increased volatility. Those securities are: stock index futures, stock index options, and stock options, (plus single-stock futures), according to Decrypt. These “triple witching” days often generate more trading activity, thus more volatility, or larger swings, since the expiration of the contracts trigger buying or selling of the underlying security, per Investopedia. “These witching days simply indicate higher volume and the ability to inflict maximum pain if certain thresholds are hit,” Michael Terpin, author of Bitcoin Supercycle and CEO of Transform Ventures, told Fast Company. “It’s by no means a guarantee of falling prices, but with the steady drumbeat of fear in the market, including the Japan rate hike decision, the odds of a lower low grow higher.” Where does Bitcoin stand now? In the lead-up to Friday’s event, Bitcoin continues to fall, as it has in recent weeks, triggered in part by the Federal Reserves recent interest rate cut by 25 basis points on December 10, and compounded by uncertainty over the long-term, macroeconomic environment ahead, the Bank of Japan’s potential rate hike, and fear of growing U.S. inflation in 2026. On Thursday afternoon, at the time of this writing, the digital cryptocurrency (BTC) was trading down nearly 1%, dipping well below $90,000, to $85,184. Its part of an overall decline in the crypto market that also saw closely watched digital asset XRP fall nearly 2%, hovering around $1.82 per token on Thursday, while Ethereum (ETH) held steady and was trading at $2,802 at the time of this writing.
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump’s plans to add a ballroom to the White House would be bad for the design of the White House complex and grounds, according to a National Park Service (NPS) report. The report said the annex would “disrupt the historical continuity of the White House grounds and alter the architectural integrity of the easts side of the property.” Still, Trump is clear for now to move ahead with his plans. The NPS report is just the latest speed bump facing Trump’s plan to build a new annex since he had the White House East Wing demolished in October without seeking outside approval. It’s a saga of inflated expectations and a ballooning budget that’s blowing past calls for preservation and restraint. The NPS’s environmental assessment was released because the agency manages the White House, its grounds, and surrounding areas including Lafayette Square and sites in and around the Ellipse. The National Environmental Policy Act and Department of Interior regulations also compel the agency to. Their assessment found no significant environmental impact from building a ballroom and noted successive administrations have wanted a permanent, secure event space on White House grounds. But it also highlighted aesthetic and cultural concerns about Trump’s plans. That might not matter. Here’s where Trump’s plans to build a new building on the White House grounds stands: Trump replaces the original architect Trump confirmed on Dec. 4 to the Washington Post that he replaced the ballroom’s original architect McCrery Architects with a new firm called Shalom Baranes Associates. The switch up came following reports that Trump and McCrery Architects CEO Jim McCrery II disagreed over the planned size of the new building. McCrery reportedly believed Trump’s plans for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom would dwarf the 55,000-square-foot building of the main White House mansion. Trump has inflated the estimated cost and size of the planned ballroom over time, and initially said it wouldn’t interfere with the East Wing. In July the White House announced a building that would seat 650 people for an estimated $200 million. That grew to plans for complex with space to seat around 1,000 people that Trump said Wednesday would cost $400 million. The White House says private donors are paying for construction costs. Demolition of the East Wing of the White House, during construction on the new ballroom extension of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. [Photo: Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg/Getty Images] Preservationists file lawsuit to pause construction The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit on Dec. 12 accusing Trump of breaking the law by moving ahead with the East Wing teardown and plans for a new ballroom without public input or any sort of independent review. The National Trust said that Trump should have submitted his plans to Congress and the National Capital Planning Commission and the group asked the court to put a pause on construction. No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoevernot President Trump, not President Biden, and not anyone else, the lawsuit reads. And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in. In a court filing on Dec. 15, the Trump administration claimed construction must continue for unnamed national security reasons. Attorneys for the administration said the National Capital Planning Commission and the congressional Commission of Fine Arts will review Trump’s plans “without this Courts involvement.” A judge on Dec. 16 ruled that construction could move ahead after it rejected the National Trust’s request to temporarily halt the project. NPS weighs in An NPS environmental assessment published Dec. 15 estimated Trump’s plans for a 90,000-square-foot building with seating for more than 1,000 people would be completed by Trump’s final summer in office, in 2028. It also said the building would adversely effect the cultural landscape of the White House grounds. The report notes the imbalance of a ballroom that’s bigger than the rest of the White House and in adding a two-story East Colonnade. “The new building’s larger footprint and height will dominate the eastern portion of the site, creating a visual imbalance with the more modestly scaled West Wing and Executive Mansion,” it says. “These changes will adversely alter the design, setting, and feeling of the White House and the grounds over the long-term.” The assessment also notes that construction introduce temporary risks to the rest of the White House due to things like noise and vibration. Regardless of the report’s findings, it concludes that the planned building would meet the needs of providing a permanent, secure event space on the White House grounds, and that it doesn’t rise to the level of needing an environmental impact statement to be prepared.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||