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Effect Of Long-Term Dietary Fat Quality On Metabolic Health With A Special Focus On Dairy Fat, Allison L. Unger

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Diet, and particularly dietary fat quality (i.e., fatty acid composition), is a significant modifiable risk factor in the development of metabolic diseases. However, whether the manipulation of long-term dietary fat quality may serve as an effective dietary strategy to mitigate metabolic disease risk during aging is not well defined. Accordingly, this work sought to investigate the role of life-long consumption of bioactive fatty acids from various food sources, and particularly dairy fat, on health maintenance and metabolic disease risk later in life. To address this issue, I assessed how long-term supplementation of dairy fat (butter oil), echium oil, or fish …

Neural Preparation For Step Initiation In Unpredictable Conditions With Age And Parkinson's Disease, Roman Popov

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Mobility is essential for the independent lifestyle. However, as the US population ages, challenges to mobility start to arise, among them just the aging itself which leads to decreased postural stability, falls and the second most common neurodegenerative disease, that is Parkinson’s disease (PD). We decided to investigate step initiation as it is crucial to mobility: walking is not possible without the first step.

Step initiation is impaired in PD. However, the impact of PD on the neural mechanisms of step initiation when some of the step parameters are unpredictable remains unexplored. Cortical preparation for step initiation can be assessed …

An Analysis Of The Effect Of Ss-Hydroxy-Ss-Methylbutyrate On The Flight Ability And Lifespan Of Drosophila Melanogaster, Alexandra Elizabeth Beattie

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

As muscle function deteriorates with age, the discovery of new ways to enhance the quality of human life by stunting inevitable aging processes, such as sarcopenia, is a subject of great interest to aging populations, to health care professionals and to nutritional companies. β-hydroxy-β-methylbutyrate (HMB) enhances muscle strength in humans and attenuates disease-induced and disuse-dependent atrophy in rodents. We investigated the feasibility of utilizing Drosophila as a model organism to study the biological effects of HMB in aging muscle. Using flight ability as an index of muscle function and monitoring the lifespan of flies, we found that normal food supplemented …