The First Drink What is your first drink of the morning? Water? Tea? Coffee? Booze? Energy drinks? Each gives very different messages to the body – with results that may last a lifetime. In the case of sugared soft drinks and milks – perhaps some artificially flavored ones – the link with diabetes and […]
Civilizational Obesity (1/20/14)
The Weight of Progress Life has improved for lots of people. Economic development and globalization has brought many out of poverty. Kenyan farmers shop and bank with their cell phones. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have moved from the impoverishment of the Cultural Revolution to high levels of education and ambitious middle class lives. As […]
Statins and the New Numbers Racket (12/9/13)
The Old Numbers Racket One way to keep a population unhealthy is to endlessly worry them about getting sick. For the last few decades, purveyors of cholesterol as the core of heart disease have created a medical industrial complex that has been hard to suppress. Now that complex is changing its spots again with new […]
Little Bit by Little Bit (7/31/13)
Gradually… How do people get healthy? One little bit by little bit at a time. So it seems to work with exercise. Gretchen Reynolds did a nice short review in the July 9th, New York Times on studies of short versus “long” exercise. One group studied – young men from Beijing. Monitors looked at changes […]
Going FAR to Prevent Diabetes (7/8/13)
Moving and Eating Walk after meals. Stand and move after you eat. You’ve probably heard this advice somewhere. But does it really work? If the goal is preventing diabetes, it seems to prove true – at least for a group of folks studied at George Washington University. The Study People 60 and over at risk […]