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Details at MedPageToday.

“Taking guns away from single women who live alone and other law-abiding citizens without mental illnesses will do nothing about the Chos, Loughners, Holmeses or Lanzas. Such people have to be separated from civil society, for the public’s sake as well as their own. But this is nearly impossible because the ACLU has decided that being psychotic is a civil right.

Consequently, whenever a psychopath with a million gigantic warning signs commits a shocking murder, the knee-jerk reaction is to place yet more controls on guns. By now, guns are the most heavily regulated product in America.

It hasn’t worked.”

– Ann Coulter

Health on Today reports on a survey of gym gross-outs.

I have a home gym: Schwinn Air-Dyne stationary bike, treadmill, weight bench, and a set of dumbbells.  No gym fees, travel time, or gross-outs.  

“…weight belts seem to provide one major benefit (limiting rotation). On the other hand, they provide no protection from another vulnerable movement (flexion), pose an additional threat for the cardiovascular system, and provide a sense of overconfidence that could increase orthopedic or muscular injury risk.”

Read the rest at Sean Preuss’ blog.  He’ll remind you how to lift heavy objects more safely.

In the 1950s, John Yudkin wrote a book, Pure, White, and Deadly, blaming sugar as the primary cause of heart disease (coronary heart disease).  The idea didn’t gain enough traction and the dietary fat theory of heart disease became the reigning dogma.  Now that the latter theory has been discredited, researchers are looking at sugar again.

The British Medical Journal has a pertinent article you may enjoy, if you enjoy these sorts of things.  I quote:

“In recent years, and slowly, the sugar hypothesis has been making a comeback, driven in part by the emerging perception of heart disease as a consequence of what’s now described as the metabolic syndrome: obesity, dyslipidaemia, raised blood pressure, and insulin resistance. Although there is still no consensus about the causes of the syndrome, an excess of fat in the liver—a response to dietary sugar—is one of the acknowledged possibilities.  Fructose, found in large quantities in nearly all added sugars, is known to increase lipogenesis in the liver and the synthesis of hepatic triglyceride.”

At least in the general population according to a new meta-analysis reviewed at Forbes. We still have a question about high egg consumption linked to heart attacks in diabetics.   

“Young and middle-age women whose diet included high levels of anthocyanins — the flavonoids present in red and blue fruits such as strawberries and blueberries — had a significantly reduced risk for myocardial infarction (MI), a large prospective study found.”

Read the rest at MedPageToday.

The protective dose  seems to be “over three servings” strawberries or blueberries per week.  Does it work for men, too?  This report didn’t address that.  I’m eating my berries!

Berries are part of all my diet programs (Advanced Mediterranean, Low-Carb Mediterranean, and Ketogenic Mediterranean).

“Children and teens who ate fast foods multiple times a week were at an increased risk for severe asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis, and eczema, researchers found.”

Read the rest at MedPageToday.

This is likely related to the improvement in asthma seen in followers of the Mediterranean diet.  Do ya’ think it’s something in the food?

“Finally, young people need to understand how much their grandparents’ generation has ruined things for them. The average American retires with less than $70,000 in savings, but an elderly man and woman receive about $275,000 in medical care during that time — and you kids are paying for it by inheriting trillions upon trillions in Medicare bills that granny and grandpa never intended to pay and will be too dead to worry about soon.”

– Bryan Goldberg