Unpopular Health Imagine a magic elixir that’s free and grants much longer life (12 years for men, 14 years for women.) Despite benefits radically dwarfing the advantages of all health care, the elixir is almost universally spurned. For to receive this magic elixir individuals must put up with what are commonly regarded as unacceptable intrusions: they must […]
Stress, Overeating, and Sleep
Stress makes you sleepless. Insomnia makes you hungry, especially ravenous for fat and sugar. You eat more, gain weight, get more stressed. Then repeat. When expectations exceed realities stress becomes one’s constant companion. The plane flight to see your ailing mother is delayed, then cancelled. Your kid forgets his homework and you can’t leave work […]
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, […]
How Food Can Make You Smarter
Eating trains every part of your body. Except most of that education is not conscious. When you bite down into a juicy hamburger and watch your vegan friends turn their faces away, the effects of your taste preference are far greater than than just social and psychological. Food is more than taste, politics, culture and tradition. It’s training […]
Does Sleeping Less Make Me Hungry?
There are lots of sleepless people out there right now. Many of us do not sleep the entire night. Innumerable reasons wake us up – everything from election nights, World Series games, working shifts and tweets from long forgotten lovers, to tobacco (smokers perpetually wake up in nicotine withdrawal) to drinking an alcohol nightcap, depression and […]