Wine Consumption Linked to Less Depression

Posted on September 2, 2013 | Comments Off on Wine Consumption Linked to Less Depression

…according to an article in The Guardian. This finding is from the PREDIMED study of Spaniards aged 50 to 88. Those who drank between two and seven glasses of wine were less prone to develop depression.

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Do We Really Know the Cause of Overweight and Obesity?

Posted on August 31, 2013 | Comments Off on Do We Really Know the Cause of Overweight and Obesity?
So easy to over-eat!

So easy to over-eat!

Isn’t it just ’cause we eat too much and exercise too little due to lack of discipline and willpower?

Science writer David Berreby has an article at Aeon suggesting it’s way more complicated than that. Even if we do eat too much, why do we? Some quotes:

And so we appear to have a public consensus that excess body weight (defined as a Body Mass Index of 25 or above) and obesity (BMI of 30 or above) are consequences of individual choice. It is undoubtedly true that societies are spending vast amounts of time and money on this idea. It is also true that the masters of the universe in business and government seem attracted to it, perhaps because stern self-discipline is how many of them attained their status. What we don’t know is whether the theory is actually correct.

***

As Richard L Atkinson, Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Wisconsin and editor of the International Journal of Obesity, put it in 2005: ‘The previous belief of many lay people and health professionals that obesity is simply the result of a lack of willpower and an inability to discipline eating habits is no longer defensible.’

Like liver, skeletal muscle, and brain, our body fat is a tissue that is carefully regulated by genes, hormones, enzymes, etc., which I’ll lump together as “metabolism.” Regulatory metabolic processes for liver, muscle, and brain will be different from each other and from fat tissue. Some processes aid fat storage, others lead to fat breakdown and weight loss.

Mr. Berreby discusses various trendy factors that may directly alter fat tissue metabolic processes, leading to overweight and obesity. Here’s his list:

  • lack of sleep
  • viruses (e.g., Ad-36)
  • stress
  • bacteria (e.g., Methanobrevibacter smithii in the large intestine)
  • industrial chemical contaminants (e.g., BPA, heavy metals, detergents, sunscreen, fire retardants, cosmetics)
  • electrification (e.g., too much light exposure, especially at night)
  • heat and air conditioning
  • undernutrition (“starvation”) during pregnancy: the children hatched are more likely to be overweight or obese as adults
  • intergenerational influence (epigenetic)

Read all about it.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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Fruit Lowers Risk of Developing Type 2 Diabetes

Posted on August 30, 2013 | 1 comment

…according to an article at MedPageToday. The Mediterranean diet provides copious fruit, perhaps partially explaining why it too is linked to lower diabetes risk.

You’ll get all the fruit you need in my Advanced Mediterranean Diet. And lose excess weight, to boot!

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Johns Hopkins Researchers Show Low-Carb Diet Beats Low-Fat for Weight Loss

Posted on August 26, 2013 | Comments Off on Johns Hopkins Researchers Show Low-Carb Diet Beats Low-Fat for Weight Loss
low-carb diet, low-carb fruits, Steve Parker MD

Low-carb doesn’t mean “meat-only”: You can eat these low-carb fruits

A low-carb diet was superior to a traditional low-fat weight loss diet, and without adverse effects on markers of systemic inflammation, according to a report at ScienceDaily. Some medical professionals are still hesitant to accept the validity of low-carb dieting, fearing that relatively high fat and protein content may promote inflammation, leading to atherosclerosis.  The study at hand should be reassuring in that regard.

Some quotes from ScienceDaily:

The researchers measured the participants’ blood levels for three common markers of inflammation — C-reactive protein, interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor-alpha — at the beginning and end of the study. They also measured body weight, body mass index (BMI) and total body and belly fat. At the start, both groups were similar in the various measures, including elevated levels of inflammation markers.

The participants on the low-carb diet lost more weight, on average, than those on the low-fat diet — 28 pounds versus 18 pounds [over the six month trial.

…

“In both groups, there was a significant drop in the levels of all three measures of inflammation,” says [Kerry] Stewart, indicating that a diet higher in fat and protein doesn’t interfere with the ability to lower inflammation, as long as you are losing weight.

Despite reading several online articles on this study, I can’t determine which low-carb diet was used, nor the level of carbohydrate restriction. Both diet groups exercised three times a week. I expect full details to be published in a scientific journal within a couple years. The research was done at Johns Hopkins University and was not funded by Atkins Nutritionals. U.S. taxpayers funded it.

If you’re looking for a low-carb diet, consider the Low-Carb Mediterranean Diet. Carb restriction starts at under 30 grams a day, but allows for increases over time as long as you’re making weight-loss progress. The typical American eats 250 to 300 grams of carbohydrate daily.

Read the rest at ScienceDaily.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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Posted in Low-Carb Eating, Overweight & Obesity, Uncategorized, Weight Loss

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Another Reason to Exercise Regularly: Less Insomnia

Posted on August 24, 2013 | Comments Off on Another Reason to Exercise Regularly: Less Insomnia

The Well blog at the New York Times has details. The study at hand involved only 11 women with insomnia, mostly in their 60s. A key take-away is that it took as long as four months for some  to see an improvement. So don’t get discouraged and stop exercising too soon.

It doesn’t take much exercise.

Read the whole thing (it’s brief).

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Lou Schuler’s Advice to Weight Training Newbies

Posted on August 24, 2013 | Comments Off on Lou Schuler’s Advice to Weight Training Newbies
Steve Parker MD, Advanced Mediterranean Diet, Ketogenic Mediterranean Diet

Not me or Mr. Schuler

I was glad to see that four of my basic exercises were listed by Schuler as foundational: squat, deadlift, pushup, and row. A little more from him:

Every good training program is based on bedrock principles like progressive overload. You give your body a stimulus. You repeat the stimulus an optimal number of times. And then you give your body the opportunity to recover from it. Every good lifter eventually learns how to apply the principles in a way that works for him or her, but it always starts with the basics: learn the movements, apply the movements, build on the movements.

Every bad training program ignores these fundamentals, but it ignores them in a unique way. Too much stimulus with too little recovery. Too little stimulus with too much recovery. Poor exercise selection for the individual’s abilities and goals.

Read the whole thing.

h/t Yoni Freedhoff, M.D.

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Where Do Cashews Come From?

Posted on August 23, 2013 | Comments Off on Where Do Cashews Come From?
natural cashews, cashew apple

Cashews fresh off the tree. They’re fruits, not nuts.

A few quotes on cashews from “Medium”:

In the case of the cashew, someone, somewhere, a long time ago determined that it had to be roasted. The cashew was once nicknamed the blister nut, because if you try to eat it raw from the tree, your mouth pays the price. The cashew is not a nut, however; it’s a seed. On the tree, the fruit that contains it looks like a bloated green kidney bean or a boxing glove dangling comically below an upside-down red or yellow bell pepper, the swollen stalk of the fruit, called the cashew apple.

Just as the cashew isn’t really a nut, this so-called apple is a false fruit. Nonetheless, it’s juicy and edible, but it’s too perishable to ship, lasting only a day off the tree before becoming moldy and starting to rot, which is why it’s not sold in the United States. But in warmer countries…

***

Unlike other nuts (false or otherwise), cashews aren’t sold in the shell. That is because the testa skin, the inner lining between the outer shell (the actual fruit) and the kernel (the cashew), is toxic. A relative of poison ivy and poison sumac, the cashew contains the same rash-inducing chemicals, known as urushiols, as its kin. Heating the whole green fruit hardens this toxic stuff, allowing it to be separated from the seed. Once removed, this caustic goo is used in industrial materials such as waterproof paint, varnishes, lacquers, and brake linings, and meanwhile, cashew workers often suffer from skin and eye irritations and minor burns. The processing of cashews is therefore incredibly labor intensive, since most of the many steps—roasting, burning, boiling, soaking, cracking, and peeling—are completed by hand, labor performed by workers in factories primarily in India and Brazil.

Read the whole thing.

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Posted in Nuts

QOTD: Alanis Morisette on Eating and Antibiotics

Posted on August 22, 2013 | Comments Off on QOTD: Alanis Morisette on Eating and Antibiotics

how ’bout getting off these antibiotics
how ’bout stopping eating when I’m full up

—first 2 lines of Alanis Morisette‘s song, “Thank You”

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News Alert: Researchers Discover That Diets Only Work If You Follow Them

Posted on August 20, 2013 | 2 comments

MedPageToday has the details. For instance:

“The only consistent finding among the [diet] trials is that adherence — the degree to which participants continued [their diet] or met program goals for diet and physical activity — was most strongly associated with weight loss and improvement in disease-related outcomes,” they wrote online in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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Another Study Links Mediterranean Diet With Lower Risk of Type 2 Diabetes

Posted on August 17, 2013 | 1 comment
Steve Parker MD, Advanced Mediterranean DIet

Caprese salad: mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, basil, extra virgin olive oil

And eating low glycemic load contributes, too, according to an article at MedPageToday. The 22,000 Greek study participants were followed for 11 years. From the article:

The findings suggest that eliminating or strictly limiting high glycemic load foods such as those high in refined sugars and grains and following the largely plant-based Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes vegetables, fruits, nuts and legumes, can have a significant impact on diabetes risk, La Vecchia said.

“The impact of the diets was synergistic,” he told MedPage Today. “The message is that eating a largely Mediterranean diet that is also low in glycemic load is particularly favorable for preventing diabetes.”

Spanish researchers found the same thing a few years ago.

The Mediterranean diet is also healthy for those who already have type 2 diabetes.

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