Is red meat risk exaggerated? Do you know good stress from bad?

This week’s health briefs include chronic stress and what your body knows about it that your brain doesn’t, as well as new research suggesting studies of red meat’s impact on health may have gotten it wrong.

Will red meat hurt you?

A new study from Baylor College of Medicine and the U.S. Department of Agriculture published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that fear of negative health effects may be exaggerated.

Inflammation is a well-known risk factor for many chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, and the impact of diet on inflammation is an area of growing scientific interest, according to background information on the study. The release noted that many recommendations to limit red meat consumption are, in fact, based on older studies that have not been validated recently.

“The role of diet, including red meat, on inflammation and disease risk has not been adequately studied, which can lead to public health recommendations that are not based on strong evidence,” said Dr. Alexis Wood, associate professor of pediatrics-nutrition at the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, in the news release. “Our team sought to take a closer look by using metabolite data in the blood, which can provide a more direct link between diet and health.”

The team examined cross-sectional data from 4,000 older adults in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. Cross-sectional data comes from “free-living” people, who are not assigned to any type of lifestyle for the purpose of research.

The scientists used their self-reported food intake and several biomarkers and also measured some blood metabolites to track how food is processed, digested and absorbed.

When they adjusted for body mass intake, the amount of red meat — beef, pork or lamb — eaten was not directly associated with inflammation markers, suggesting to the researchers that a person’s weight, not their red meat intake, could drive the increased systemic inflammation.

They did not find a link between eating red meat and C-reactive protein, either. That protein is the primary risk marker of inflammation in chronic disease.

Wood said in the news release that the study “does not support previous observational research associations linking red meat intake and inflammation.”

What’s needed now, the researchers say, are randomized controlled trials to see if red meat changes inflammation. They noted that several of those have shown “lean unprocessed beef can be enjoyed in heart-healthy dietary patterns.

“We have reached a stage where more studies are needed before we can make recommendations to limit red meat consumption for reducing inflammation if we want to base dietary recommendations on the most up-to-date evidence,” Wood said. “Red meat is popular, accessible and palatable — and its place in our diet has deep cultural roots. Given this, recommendations about reducing consumption should be supported by strong scientific evidence, which doesn’t yet exist.”

What your body and brain know about stress

Your body can tell good stress from bad. But can you? That’s the subject of a new Mayo Clinic Healthcare post on stress overload.

People need some stress and healthy levels build resilience, according to Safia Debar, a stress management expert at Mayo Clinic Healthcare in London. In an expert alert, she calls stress a physical and psychological reaction to some kind of demand. It can be good stress, called eustress, or bad, which is distress. And some things are both. Her example is a wedding, which could create either or both.

The question is how your body handles it. Debar says, “Chronic stress will impact every organ system in the body: You might feel anxiety, depression and digestive issues, for example.”

If someone perceives a threat, cortisol activates. That person starts to focus, laser-like, on negatives. Fight or flight reactions involve more than the brain — the heart, lungs and muscles play along, with a faster pulse, higher blood pressure and accelerated breathing. Because the digestive and reproductive systems have no role, their activities slow, she adds The immune system can kick off a cytokine storm.

When you figure out the threat passed, all those things return to normal. But with repeated stress, it gets harder to get back to a baseline, she says.

“The lack of recovery” is the problem, rather than the stressor itself, according to the Mayo Clinic post.

Signs of stress overload, which should be addressed, she says, include:

Feeling that stress never ends. Or it feels uncontrollable and you can’t relax or you are on autopilot. You need help, too, if you can’t regulate your emotions or you start hiding from people and life in general. There are also physical symptoms, including headaches, chest pain, stomach upsets, sleeping problems or getting sick more often, Debar says.

“Chronic stress can have long-term health effects. People who feel ongoing physical symptoms or find that lifestyle changes do not seem to help should consult with their health care team,” Debar says.