A different, new age of anxiety is brewing. To understand why, look around. One of the world’s favored centers of “chill” just burned to the ground. In the peacefully pleasant California wine country residents woke to winds whipping fire. Within minutes their homes reduced to ashes, their vehicles melted. They had no warning. In the morning light […]
Fighting Dementia Using Your Eyes and Ears
Dementia scares people. Rates are rising. New evidence shows decreased vision and hearing make dementia more likely. One study out of Stanford found people who had vision loss and did not seek treatment showed five times the cognitive decline rate, and over nine times the Alzheimer’s rate as those without problems, through a period of eight and a half […]
Want to Lose Weight? Ask Your Gut
Want to lose weight, particularly body fat? Choose the right gut bacteria. They’ve already chosen you. But can you select them? A recent study in Copenhagen checked gut bacteria before starting some overweight people on a half year diet. Using a crude measure of different bacteria populations (high Prevotella to Bacteroides ratio,) the high ratio group who ate […]
Exercise – A Great Way to Learn
We are often admonished to exercise. It’s anti-inflammatory – we’re told. You’ll get less heart attacks and strokes. Fewer tumors. Clearly less Alzheimer’s disease. And you might lose weight and look better. But what is it we do during exercise? We learn. Become more biologically intelligent. For if learning is the acquisition of knowledge and skills, exercise […]
When You Eat May Be As Important as What (Breakfast of Champions)
Reinventing Breakfast A patient asked me “I only eat one meal a day, a kind of late breakfast. Is that bad?” “No,” I replied. He’s a physically healthy man. Though pretty lean, he worries about his weight. I explained that in Army experiments where biddable privates were given only a single, 2000 calorie meal each day, […]