Science Says Coffee Is Good

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Research is based on curiosity; in order to do good research, you have to ask good questions. Researchers in the coffee study asked: Will a little sugar negate the benefits from drinking coffee? We don’t know whether this was the initial question or if researchers wanted to find out whether artificial sweeteners might have negative effects that altered the benefits of plain coffee.

Turns out artificial sweeteners did not have an impact on the mortality of those who used it over the seven years of the observational study. If you drink from one to 4.5 cups of unsweetened or sweetened coffee, there’s a reduction in mortality from CVD and cancer.

If artificial sweeteners did have an impact on mortality, the headlines would have been bigger than they were. Last week’s look at the safety of melatonin for kids led me to ask the author “Why melatonin?” Multiminerals in gummy form generally contain iron, and that can be toxic to toddlers in high quantities. So why not start looking there and then examine other nutrients? To date, I haven’t gotten an answer.

What Do We Mean by “Coffee?”

I explained how I drink my coffee earlier in the week. However for today’s coffee drinkers, there could be high-sugar flavors added as well as whipped cream and other assorted milks. It seems like a science unto itself to know how to order some of the “coffees” available today, let alone fill those orders. Based on what I read in the Methods section, the questionnaire they used didn’t go into that kind of detail. Extra sugar and fat from elaborate coffees may have a negative impact that won’t be determined in this study.

The Bottom Line

This was an observational study, so there’s no cause and effect implied. Still it’s good to know that the cup o’ Joe isn’t doing any harm and may actually be good for you. Now, about those tea drinkers…

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Ann Internal Med. 2022. https://doi.org/10.7326/M21-2977

Coffee: One Sugar Please

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I have a strong relationship with coffee. I began drinking coffee when my mother put coffee in a bottle with a little sugar for me when I was a toddler. These days, a mother would get reprimanded by somebody if she did such a thing, but in the 1950s there weren’t the variety of drinks for children that are available today; milk, orange juice, and Kool-Aid, that was about it.

When I talk about coffee now, I don’t mean the fancy kind with steamed milk and espresso and other ingredients. I drink strong coffee, eight to ten ounces per mug, with exactly one teaspoon of sugar. I drink only Sumatra roast and use a Turkish grind, which is more like powder than grounds; I get the most flavor out of the beans when I brew it that way. I sit back and drink it, savoring every sip. (And yet somehow I married a woman who thinks the only thing coffee is good for is dipping a biscotti.)

The benefits of coffee have been established in prior studies of coffee drinkers compared to non-coffee drinkers. Coffee seems to reduce mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer. No one seemed to separate the drinkers who used sweeteners from those who didn’t, and that’s why a recently published study caught my attention.

Researchers examined data from over 170,000 subjects in the U.K. Biobank Study; their purpose was to see if adding sweeteners to coffee, either sugar or artificial sweeteners, impacted the mortality of the subjects. I won’t make you wait until Saturday: the coffee sweetened with sugar had the same reduction in mortality as the unsweetened coffee. What about artificial sweeteners? I’ll talk about those on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Ann Internal Med. 2022. https://doi.org/10.7326/M21-2977

Supplements and Safety for Kids

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The real issue with melatonin and children is not with the actual overdose. Of the 260,000 calls to the U.S. Poison Control Centers, 218,000 were about kids under five years old. Kids will put just about anything in their mouths, especially those younger than five. The issues as I see them are the delivery system and access. This doesn’t apply to just melatonin but to all dietary supplements.

The Delivery System Dilemma

Gummy vitamins are chewable vitamins with taste, flavor, color, shape, and size similar to gummy candies. Therein lies the problem. That’s the way kids see them: as gummies. And neither the candies nor the supplements are going away any time soon.

Even after years of dispensing gummy supplements to Riley, if you gave me two red bears, I’d find it hard to tell the vitamin from the candy. In the image above, it’s vitamins on the left and candy on the right, but other than the green and clear bear candies, they look alike. Some are shaped more like gumdrops, but multivitamins are often bears and look just like their candy counterparts. At seven, Riley knows which gummies he gets when, how many of each, and what the jars look like; if your kids and grandkids are younger, you’ve got a lot of teaching ahead of you. It seems helping kids learn the difference between packages is another element of keeping them safe.

The global gummy vitamins market size was estimated to be valued around $5.9 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $10.6 billion by 2025. According to Market and Market, Millennials prefer consuming these gummies due to factors such as busier lifestyles, rising disposable incomes, growing awareness regarding preventive healthcare measures, and maintaining better health. But don’t blame the Millennials; every age group has seen increases in the use of gummies as dietary supplements. They’re easier to use for people who find it hard to swallow whole pills, and let’s face it, they’re just more fun.

Chewables and powders are on the increase as well. Those shakes you make? Check the labels to see if they contain vitamins or minerals. Phytonutrients from whole plants are fine, but some powders add nutrients and herbs that may not be safe for children in high quantities.

Out of Sight Is Safe

I think the key issue is that kids need to be taught that gummy dietary supplements are not candy. Even more so, they have to be kept out of reach of children, not on the counters where they’re more convenient for adults (and for kids). Multivitamin-minerals, omegas, melatonin, and others have push-tops that can challenge even adults. Still it would be best to keep them as high as possible and out of reach, especially if you also use the adult versions.

For most kids, eating too many supplement gummies may result in an upset tummy at most, but some vitamins and minerals can be toxic to children, especially under five. Everyone with small kids underfoot should know the number for the U.S. Poison Control Center for many reasons: (800) 222-1222; registered nurses and pharmacists are there to help 24/7. Most other countries have similar help available.

The Bottom Line

I think the promotion of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report melatonin article was done poorly. Pediatric melatonin ingestions are not all poisonings as the article implied. However, delivery systems and child access can be problematic, and that should have been the focus. Every news outlet likes sensational headlines, but if the writers had actually read the paper, which is free to the public, instead of reading comments by the paper’s authors, they’d not have been so sensational in their presentation. Or maybe they would have. Who knows?

Now you know the real deal about the safety issues surrounding dietary supplements for kids. If you want to know more about the safety of melatonin for children as well as comments by the authors, listen to the latest Straight Talk on Health by becoming a Member or Insider.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Gummy vitamins Market. Market and Market, 2020.

Melatonin: Is It Safe for Kids?

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Health headlines can dictate what I write about if they concern nutrition, exercise, or supplements: one article in my newsfeed, and my world gets changed. Such is the case when the CDC published an article in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report titled Pediatric Melatonin Ingestions—United States, 2012–2021. The resulting health headlines said Melatonin Poisoning Cases Soaring Among U.S. Kids! What???

The report in MMWR was the result of examining calls to the U.S. Poison Control Centers asking about accidental or intentional consumption of melatonin by children from birth to 19 years old. A call to the Poison Control Center is not necessarily to report a poisoning: it’s to ask what to do when your child takes a substance that may be hazardous. In a 10-year period, 260,435 calls were made inquiring about melatonin ingestion. Of that 88% were resolved with no issues. The other 12% went to a medical facility where almost 20,000 were sent home with no issues. About 4,000 were hospitalized and 287 ended up in intensive care; five kids required mechanical ventilation and two died. Those are the numbers in the report.

The issue is that medical records were not consulted to know whether the melatonin was the cause or whether it happened to be taken by someone with a serious medical condition or used as an overdose; remember we’re talking about kids up to 19, not just little ones. Was there a potentially more serious issue behind this report the authors should have focused on? I’ll talk about it on Saturday.

I don’t want to be guilty of trying to scare you, so I’ll tell you this: our grandson Riley has been taking melatonin for kids at bedtime for a couple years. Without it he takes an hour or more to fall asleep, and he needs that hour. And we’ve been obsessive with teaching him the difference between gummy candy and gummy vitamins, so we aren’t worried about it at all.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: MMWR Weekly / June 3, 2022 / 71(22);725–729.

Soreness and Specificity of Training

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The first Super Bowl Webinar I ever did was about specificity of training. A running buddy years ago summarized how to run faster this way: “If you want to run faster, you gotta run faster.” In other words, even short bursts of running very fast would eventually help build speed more than slow, long runs.

The key element of specificity of training is that you can’t run faster by swimming or cycling or weight training; you have to do that by running. The same concept applies to just about any physical endeavor. Chefs can’t improve their knife skills by running or weight training: they have to spend hours chopping and slicing.

If you use an elliptical trainer or recumbent bike or you ride a bicycle, you’re training specific muscles to fire in specific patterns. When you change to another mode of exercise such as walking or running, you’re going to use the same muscles but in different ways; some muscles maintain balance and others maintain posture in addition to those that are doing the bulk of the work moving your body. And they’re different in different modes of exercise; even with all my education and experience, I was surprised at how sore I was when I had to switch from running to walking. Until you’ve trained those muscles for the particular activity, you’re going to be sore. And the sad news is that it gets worse as you get older.

Dealing with Discomfort

The important thing to understand is that this discomfort is temporary; the exception is if you had an orthopedic issue that never has been resolved. For me it was my knee, and now that’s resolved. If you’ve avoided getting something repaired, it’s your call but the longer you wait, the more you risk not getting back the mobility you had.

If you’ve changed your mode of exercise, here are some ways to deal with it:

  1. Start with heat followed by easy stretching. We think that our muscles and connective tissue are like rubber bands while stretching. Not exactly accurate, but warm muscles are more pliable so doing some kind of warm up will help you avoid injury. Easy does it; stretching too far too fast is a recipe for even more pain.
  2. Increase fluid intake to “flush” out some of the breakdown products of muscle and other connective tissue.
  3. Use glucosamine and vitamin C to help the connective tissue repair process. The purpose of breakdown is to build back better, but to do that, you need the nutrients that repair the microtears in the connective tissue.
  4. Ice specific areas, especially the front of the shins; shin splints is the common name for pain in this area. The connective tissue compartment that holds the tibialis anterior muscle (the one that pulls up your toes) isn’t very pliable, so reducing inflammation in that muscle can really help.
  5. Most of the soreness you’re feeling is from inflammation. If you feel you need to, and have no medical reason you can’t, use a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug such as ibuprofen; it relieves pain, but reducing inflammation is key to your recovery and continued progress.

The Bottom Line

It can literally be a pain to start to exercise or change your mode of exercise. There’s a price to pay but in comparison to the benefits you’ll get, the cost is minimal. Be sure to start slow: if you push too far too fast, you’re going to set back your progress while you recover. In the long run, you’ll get farther by taking small steps so you can keep going without a pause for injuries.

We’re not done talking about walking yet, but if you have any stories about finding the right shoe for you, let me know. I’m doing background research on that, so I won’t write about it next week—you have time to send me your stories.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Walking for Exercise Again

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How did you do with the Summer Kickoff Challenge? Let’s start with exercise. Did you get at least a 15-minute walk or some other activity done—especially if you’ve been sedentary? As I said last week, this was my first attempt at walking with a purpose since my knee replacement surgery. Of course I’ve been walking around the house and doing spring yardwork, but walking to exercise is different: heel through toe, step after step, keeping some form of pace.

I have a half-mile loop across the street from my house. The first day, I finished two laps in 19:12. I didn’t really notice anything unusual in terms of pain or discomfort the rest of the day. I walked the reverse route the next morning; I was a little stiff but finished in 18:34. The rest of the day was miserable—every muscle in my lower body was stiff and sore. All of that and I was never even breathing hard during the walk! I took the next day off to stretch and let the muscles recover.

How did you do? Let me know, especially if you changed your mode of exercise. Why would walking have such a dramatic effect when we’ve been exercising with other modes for so long? That was the topic of the very first Super Bowl webinar I ever did, and I’ll tell you that on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Summer Kickoff Challenge

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This weekend kicks off the summer holiday season: cook-outs, concerts, backyard cornhole tournaments, the beach. And of course, the food: barbeque, hot dogs and hamburgers, potato salad, ice cream sundaes and pies—more foods than I can name.

Here’s my challenge to you: how about making a couple of small changes? First, get a little exercise if you aren’t exercising now. Go for a 15-minute walk every morning during the weekend (or in the evening if you’re not a morning person); I’m starting mine this weekend as well. That’s enough time to help you start to lower your blood sugar if you’re pre-diabetic. Enlist a friend or your kids and grandkids to make it more fun.

And second, prepare your summer foods in a healthier way. Impossible? I think it’s possible, and I’ll give you some examples along with the possible outcomes.

  • Whole grain buns: maybe the extra fiber in the whole grain feeds the correct probiotic, which will then destroy the salmonella bacteria you ate in the potato salad—no food poisoning.
  • Ketchup: maybe using ketchup instead of mayo on the burger provides the phytonutrients that prevents the extra dense LDL-cholesterol from being produced, and you don’t get the damage to your arteries that causes a stroke in two years.
  • Watermelon: maybe eating watermelon instead of ice cream provides additional electrolytes that help lower your blood pressure. No downside here. And it’s good for your dog as well.
  • Apples: maybe the apple provides the quercetin that helps reduce your allergic response while you spend the entire weekend outside.
  • Dry-rub ribs: sweet or hot paprika, cumin, chili powder, garlic and onion powder, and on and on. Skip the sugary sauces and use a Carolina vinegar sauce. The number of phytonutrients you’ll get together with the reduction of fat from the slow cooking is a better way to go.

There’s no better time to experiment with changing habits for the better than right now. We do what we’ve come to expect during the summer based on past experiences. Let’s kick off with some small changes so we end up having our best summer even as we get healthier.

And once you prove to yourself that you can make those healthy changes, go all in and buy the Optimal Performance download. You can train your body for targeted energy, plus losing weight and burning fat.

I’ll be back next week with the next Memo. Enjoy the experiment. And don’t forget the sunscreen!

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

P.S. Insiders and Members, the new Straight Talk on Health is posted; Dr. Evan Parks talks with me about how to deal with the increased anxiety we’re all feeling these days.

Distress Is Normal!

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We’ve experienced ever-present stress over the past three years, from pandemics to politics to prices of just about everything. It hasn’t slowed down, and that can take its toll—if you let it. Am I saying that stress is normal? I already said that in the last Memo. The objective is to train the body to adapt to stress.

I’m not going to review the entire general adaptation syndrome, but put simply, you expose yourself to a planned stressor, such as exercise, to train the body to adapt to the hormones released during stress. That way the body is trained to respond to stress hormones when you’re exposed to other types of stress.

The Stress Response

The most extreme yet common example of the stress response I can think of for almost everyone would be this: did you ever almost have a car accident? I mean within seconds, you’d have been severely injured and maybe dead. Remember that first minute afterward? If you had sensors to test yourself, your heart rate and blood pressure would be sky high. You’d be breathing heavily. You’d most likely be shaking. All the hormones that caused those reactions would still be coursing through your body; it would take time for your body to normalize. That’s the extreme, fight-or-flight, type of stress response.

When you exercise regularly, you train your body to deal with that hormone surge, although the results aren’t as extreme as when you’re exposed to life-threatening stress. How you respond is at least partially in your control.

Dealing with Stress

I interviewed psychologist Evan Parks again to ask him how a person can deal with the anxiety caused by today’s stress. Here are his recommendations:

  • Stand outside your body and take a survey of what’s going on. Is there anything you attribute the symptoms to? Are you feeling stress in response to something specific, or is it just a general feeling of anxiety?
  • Does talking about it with a spouse or a friend help clarify things for you?
  • Can you center your thoughts from doom and gloom to a realistic perspective by prayer or meditation?

If these steps help, great. If not, it may be time to seek professional help.

Psychology isn’t my area of expertise. You can hear the interview in Straight Talk on Health on drchet.com if you’re an Insider or Member; it will be posted no later than Monday. Dr. Evan Parks does a great job of explaining all of it in more detail.

The Bottom Line

Distress is normal, so you’d better get used to it. One way to do that is to use a positive stressor such as exercise to help you prepare your body. Yes, eating a better diet and eating less may help as well. Use planned distress to your advantage by preparing your body for the unpredictable stress of today’s life.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Living in Anxious Times

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A psychologist I’ve interviewed on my local radio show on WGVU-FM, the Grand Rapids NPR affiliate, called me recently to talk about a wave of anxiety that seems to be impacting people: increased visits to doctors and ERs for chest pain, headaches, high blood pressure, and many more symptoms that don’t have a physiological explanation. Without a physical explanation, the symptoms may be our response to the stressful times in which we live.

Think about it. Things seem to be out of control. We’re exiting a pandemic that has changed the way society interacts. On top of that, every day there seems to be another major act of violence, such as the one recently in my home town of Buffalo, NY. Inflation is talked about incessantly. Supply chain issues are having serious effects on our lives—there’s nothing more serious than being unable to feed your baby. If we’re on social media, we can’t escape it. The stress of life is having an impact on every single one of us.

I think what’s happened over the last few decades, at least in the U.S. and Canada, is that we’ve come to believe that a happy life is one free of stress. We’ve gotten to believe that those stress feelings are not good. Is stress bad? I’ll discuss that as well as how to cope with stress on Saturday.

This month’s Insider Conference Call is tomorrow night. The call is where you can get your product and health questions answered. I’ll have a research topic or two that I’ll talk about, and then it’s on to your questions.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

P.S. A reminder that the Optimal Performance Program has gone digital: you can you can buy and download the four audios and the workbook. My keystone energy-building, weight-management, and fitness product is still available as CDs and a bound workbook, but if you are more accustomed to listening to MP3s and you don’t like paying for shipping, this deal is for you. I’m introducing the download version only for only $29.95; Member and Insider discounts apply. Regardless of age or current fitness level, you can achieve Optimal Performance. Get your copy today!

My Nutrition Questions for This Next Year

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Is 100 years a long time? How about 10,000 years or a million? The answer: it depends on the reference point. In human terms, 100 years is a long time, but in terms of changes within a specific type of food or in terms of the microbiome, maybe not.

In the next year, there are three major questions and several smaller ones I plan to research and, I hope, come up with some answers.

Where Is the Nutrition “Sweet Spot”?

How much vegetables and fruits do you need to eat to offset some foods considered not as good? For example, cabbage is a great cruciferous vegetable; not everyone likes it cooked, but they often like coleslaw. Here’s my question: how much sugar and mayonnaise can you add to cabbage in your coleslaw before it’s not a healthy food? Real mayonnaise and sugar can be adjusted in the dressing recipe, so you’re getting the flavor but not quite as much sugar and fat.

Berries with ice cream? Carrots with brown sugar? Ketchup on French fries? Cucumbers and lettuce with Italian dressing? On and on. We need the phytonutrients. How much good cancels the bad?

Can We Get All The Nutrients We Need from a Well-Balanced Diet?

This has been my question for almost 25 years; now I’m trying a different approach to getting the answer to that question.

Has the Microbiome Changed Significantly Since We’ve Changed the Food Supply?

Plant and animal husbandry have resulted in plants and animals with more desirable traits while eliminating others. Have the microbes been modified in response to what we’ve done?

There are more questions, such as does our inability to make vitamin C impact the ability to metabolize other nutrients or medications? Are the LDL-cholesterol sub-fractions more important than the total-LDL number?

The Bottom Line

My objective to answering my questions is to make it reasonable to modify diet, exercise, and supplements to achieve the best health we can at any age. But I do know the answer to one: what’s the most important factor in obtaining good health? The answer to this question is, as always:

What are you prepared to do today?

New: The Optimal Performance Program Goes Digital!

Starting today you can buy and download the Optimal Performance Program audio and workbook. While I’ll be back on the road starting this summer, I’ve decided to go digital with my keystone energy-building, weight-management, and fitness product—not only because so many of us prefer digital, but also because shipping costs preclude the product from being offered around the world. From the semi-ketogenic meal plan, eating at timed intervals, and high-intensity interval training (HIIT), you can train to have the energy you need exactly when you want it.

I’m introducing the download version only for only $29.95; Member and Insider discounts apply. Regardless of age or current fitness level, you can achieve Optimal Performance. Get your copy today!

        Dr. Chet