Timed Lives Time rules life, and body clocks direct and define much of yours. Twenty-four hour (circadian) clocks continue to be implicated in most aspects of human health, joy, and performance. A recent British study out of the UK Biobank of 91000 people recently refocused attention on how disruptions in body clocks play out in depression and […]
You Want to Live Long?
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
Endless Jet Lag
Body Clocks and Food The world is filled with very different kinds of folks – and I’m not referring to politics. There are night people and day people, owls and larks. Researchers have been trying for decades to determine what else is different about them, from their DNA to their diets. Now there’s new data demonstrating […]