Articles About Health And Fitness

Blood lipids such as LDL and HDL cholesterol are markers of the biological processes that impact cardiovascular disease, and they are commonly measured to assess cardiovascular risk.  When we think about the impact of food on blood lipids, dietary fat typically comes to mind.  Yet a new study shows that dietary carbohydrate, specifically high-fructose corn syrup, can have a large impact on blood lipid markers of cardiovascular disease risk. Introduction Dietary fats have well-established impacts on blood lipids.  For example, in short-term feeding trials, saturated fat tends to increase total cholesterol, increase LDL ("bad") cholesterol, and increase HDL ("good") cholesterol, while the omega-6 polyunsaturated fat linoleic acid decreases total cholesterol and decreases LDL cholesterol.  For this reason, dietary advice to reduce cardiovascular risk tends to focus on dietary fat. The hypothesis that refined dietary sugar is harmful to the cardiovascular system isn...

Although the concept of food addiction remains controversial, there's no doubt that specific foods can provoke addiction-like behaviors in susceptible people.  Yet not all foods have this effect, suggesting that it's related to specific food properties.  A new study aims to identify the properties that make a food "addictive". Introduction Read more »

This week's luck winner... soy sauce!! Read more »

This week's lucky winner... the Pizza Hut Hot Dog Bites pizza!!! Read more »

In the last post, I reviewed a study by Gerald Reaven's group showing that insulin resistance strongly predicts the risk of cardiovascular disease over a 5-year period.  In 2001, Reaven's group published an even more striking follow-up result from the same cohort ( 1 ).  This study shows that not only does insulin resistance predict cardiovascular disease risk, it also predicts a variety of age-related diseases, including hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, type 2 diabetes, and even overall mortality risk. Read more »

I recently came across a very interesting paper by the research team of Gerald Reaven, an endocrinologist at Stanford.  He has long been one of the leading researchers studying insulin resistance, the metabolic syndrome, and their association with obesity.  Reaven's research, and that of many others, suggests that insulin resistance is a central part of the constellation of metabolic disturbances that are so common in affluent nations*.  We also have good reason to believe that it contributes to cardiovascular risk. All the way back in 1998, Reaven's group published a paper that should raise the eyebrows of anyone interested in cardiovascular health ( 1 ). Read more »

This week's lucky "winner"... Hardee's Most American Thickburger!! Read more »