Articles About Health And Fitness

I recently did an interview with Seth Yoder, who has a master's degree in nutrition science and writes the blog The Science of Nutrition .  Seth caught my attention recently with his withering review of The Big Fat Surprise , the latest book to claim that ideological/incompetent scientists and public policy makers got the science of nutrition backward and we should all be eating low-carb, high-fat, high-meat diets.  I was impressed by how deeply Seth dug into the reference list, and how well he picked up on subtle but troubling misrepresentations of the evidence. Last week, Seth and I got together at a local brewpub to do an interview.  We were joined by Carrie Dennett, an MPH/RDN who has a nutrition blog and writes for the Seattle Times.  I'd probably do a lot more interviews if I could ride my bike to them and have my interviewer buy me a drink. Speaking of drinks, by the end of the interview I had a little buzz-- you might hear it in my voice if you listen...

A new study by yours truly begins to address the key question: can hypothalamic inflammation and leptin resistance be reversed? Leptin is the primary hormonal regulator of body fatness in the human body ( 1 ).  Secreted by fat tissue, it acts in many places in the body, but its most important effects on body weight occur via the brain, and particularly a brain region called the hypothalamus.  The hypothalamus is responsible for keeping certain physiological variables within the optimal range, including blood pressure, body temperature, and body fatness. In obesity, the brain loses its sensitivity to leptin, and this causes the body to begin 'defending' a higher level of body fatness, analogous to how a person with a fever 'defends' a higher body temperature ( 1 ).  Once a person has become obese, it's difficult to return to true leanness because this system vigorously opposes major fat loss.  Leptin resistance makes fat loss more difficult. In rodent models, leptin ...

This week's lucky "winner"...  Cheesecake Factory Bruleed French Toast! Read more »

University of California, San Francisco researcher Dr. Ashley Mason has asked me to spread the word about a diet-health study she's preparing to conduct in collaboration with Dr. Lynda Frassetto.  Dr. Frassetto is a widely recognized expert on mineral metabolism and bone health, and also one of the few researchers who has managed to wrangle funding to study the health impacts of a Paleolithic-style diet.  Her findings have been quite provocative.   Together with their collaborators, Drs. Mason and Frassetto are preparing another diet-health trial to study the impact of two different diets on polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS.  PCOS is a common hormonal disorder among reproductive-age women, and its signs and symptoms include ovarian cysts, excess hair growth, menstrual irregularity or absence, infertility, and obesity.  Its causes are unknown, but insulin resistance is a core characteristic of it and is thought to play an important role.  PCOS is thought t...

I've had several people tell me that the Whole Health Source post that changed their lives the most was one I published in 2012 -- about a pressure cooker. In 2012, I first reviewed the Instant Pot-- a "pressure cooker for the 21st century" that also doubles as a slow cooker and rice cooker ( 1 ).  Since then, we've used it more than 400 times, and it has saved us countless hours of kitchen drudgery.  It's indispensable for my current cooking style, and a major time saver for anyone who leads a busy life but still wants to cook wholesome food at home.  It's extremely satisfying to be able to put your ingredients into the Instant Pot, push a couple of buttons, do something else until it beeps, and then eat a healthy, inexpensive, and delicious meal. Pressure cookers are one of the most time- and energy-efficient cooking tools, but electronic versions are even more efficient than traditional stovetop pressure cookers.  They're more time-efficient because you...

I have two talks planned over the next two months.  Hope to see you there! Ancestral Health Symposium 2014: UC Berkeley, August 7-9 If you want to understand the most rigorous science available on leptin resistance-- a key mechanism of obesity and a major barrier to fat loss-- this talk is for you.  This is my primary area of professional expertise; I have years of firsthand research experience on the subject and I've published a number of related papers in peer-reviewed journals.  The talk will be accessible to nearly all levels of expertise.  AHS14 tickets are available here .  I've pasted the talk's abstract below. What Causes Leptin Resistance? Leptin is the primary hormonal regulator of body fatness.  Obese people exhibit a resistance to leptin’s effects in the brain, causing the brain to oppose fat loss by multiple mechanisms.  Research in animal models suggests that leptin resistance may be required for obesity to develop.  How does leptin...

The last two posts on fat and carbohydrate were written to answer a few important, but relatively narrow, questions that I feel are particularly pertinent at the moment: Was the US obesity epidemic caused by an increase in calorie intake? Could it have been caused by an increase in carbohydrate intake, independent of the increase in calorie intake? Does an unrestricted high-carbohydrate diet lead to a higher calorie intake and body fatness than an unrestricted high-fat diet, or vice versa ? Could the US government's advice to eat a low-fat diet have caused the obesity epidemic by causing a dietary shift toward carbohydrate? However, those posts left a few loose ends that I'd like to tie up in this post.  Here, I'll lay out my opinions on the relationship between macronutrient intake and obesity in more detail.  I'll give my opinions on the following questions: What dietary macronutrient composition is the least likely to cause obesity over a lifetime? What dietary macro...