Articles About Health And Fitness

The meta-analysis by Chowdhury et al. raised quite a furor from certain segments of researchers and the popular media.  I find this reaction interesting.  I usually write about obesity, which is a topic of great interest to people, but my post about the review paper received more than twice my usual traffic.  People whose findings or opinions are questioned by the paper are aggressively denouncing it in the media, even calling for retraction ( 1 ).  This resembles what happens every time a high-profile review paper is published that doesn't support the conventional stance on fatty acids and health (e.g., Siri-Tarino et al. [ 2 ], which despite much gnashing of teeth is still standing*).  I'm not sure why this issue in particular arouses such excitement, but I find it amusing and disturbing at the same time.  This kind of reaction would be totally out of place in most other fields of science, where aggressive public media outbursts by researchers are usually frowned upon. As it ...

Chris Kresser has been a major figure in the ancestral health community for some time now.  It's funny to recall that I was actually one of his first readers, back in the early days of his blog when it was called The Healthy Skeptic and the audience was small.  Chris's readership rapidly eclipsed mine, and now he's in high demand for his ability to convey ideas clearly and offer practical solutions to important health concerns. He recently published a book titled Your Personal Paleo Code , which also happens to be a New York Times bestseller.  The primary goal of the book is to help you develop a diet and lifestyle that support health and well-being by starting from a generally healthy template and personalizing it to your needs.  Let's have a look. Introduction Kresser opens with the poignant story of his own health problems, which began with an infectious illness in Indonesia and several courses of antibiotic therapy.  After years of struggling with the resulting s...

A new review paper on dietary fatty acids and heart disease risk was just published by Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury and colleagues in the Annals of Internal Medicine-- one of the top medical journals ( 1 ).  The goal of the paper is to comprehensively review the studies evaluating the effect of dietary fatty acids on heart (coronary) disease.  The review covers observational and intervention studies pertaining to saturated, monounsaturated,  trans , omega-6 polyunsaturated, and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats.  The paper is notable for its comprehensiveness (inclusion criteria were very lax). Here is a summary of the results: In observational studies that measured diet, only trans fat was related to cardiovascular risk.  Saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fats were unrelated to risk. In observational studies that measured circulating concentrations of fatty acids, long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (DHA, DPA, EPA, AA) were associated with lower risk.  The dairy-fat-derived margar...

This week's lucky "winner"...  the Taco Bell waffle taco!! Read more »

The specter of unseen, unspecified toxins eroding our health is worth many millions of dollars in the United States and abroad.  Companies offer "detox" supplements, beverages, and creams that supposedly rid us of supposed toxins, despite a complete lack of evidence that these products do anything at all*.  This comes from an industry that excels at creating boogeymen and offering costly solutions for them. If your wallet needs to lose weight, then these products are highly effective, otherwise it's probably best to save your money.  Here's why. The body is equipped with an extremely advanced system for excreting toxins.  The kidneys are part of this system, and their design is genius.  The basic functional unit of the kidney is the nephron , and the average kidney contains about a million of them.  Nephrons have two major parts: a renal corpuscle and a renal tubule .  A nephron .  In this image, ...

This week's lucky "winner"...  Kirkland Signature Cashew Clusters!!      WHS reader Brad Dieter mentioned these on Facebook the other day: Nutrition tip of the day. Do not buy Cashew Clusters from Costco. You will eat an entire bag in one fell swoop. Sweet, salty, crunchy, and calorie dense, the perfect storm in Stephan Guyenet's model of overeating. I have n=1 data as proof. n=1 quickly turned into n=6 as other people chimed in, including myself.  I can attest to the fact that Cashew Clusters are like crack.  Here's more evidence from their  Amazon reviews : " Addiction with less guilt!"  These things are SO freaking good!!!... I'm eating some right now and I am having trouble keeping my hand out of the bag long enough to write this review! "Delicious".  I gave this as a gift to my girl friend... She loved it ! Heard there wasn't much sugar either. Seems the nuts were crispy and the clusters were very addicting , in a nice way. I...

Here is a photo of all visible food in my kitchen:     Along the back wall, we have glass containers of raw nuts, unsalted roasted nuts, grains, and legumes.  It's easy and attractive to organize your dry foods using inexpensive  2 quart Ball jars .  They also have the advantage of being moth-proof.  On the left, we have fresh fruit and a few onions.  On the far left in the background is our hand-cranked conical burr grinder, for occasional coffee ( Skerton ).   If I walk into my kitchen between meals, the only food available to eat without doing any cooking or reheating is unsalted nuts and fresh fruit.  There is no other snack food in the kitchen.  No chips, cookies, bars, popcorn, snack mix, candy, or anything else that's tempting and easy to grab and devour.    When it's mealtime, we eat good home-cooked food.  When it isn't mealtime, we don't have anything available that w...