Dr. Chet’s Health Memos
If it’s in the health news today, I’ll be writing about it as soon as I read the research, both old and new. With my email Health Memos, you’ll know more about making lifestyle choices that will help you get and keep good health. These free, concise updates on health are emailed to subscribers twice a week. Subscribe today and get a free MP3, in English or Spanish, of Dr. Chet’s Top Ten Tips—Small Changes for a Healthier Life.
Raising HDL: Exercise
For many years—even back when I was a graduate student—we’ve known that one of the benefits of regular aerobic exercise is increased levels of HDL cholesterol, AKA the healthy cholesterol. If you want to increase your HDL, you should exercise regularly.
There are still many questions that need to be answered. What is the best type of exercise: aerobic or resistance training? How intense does the exercise have to be? Is walking intense enough or does it have to be faster? There are more questions, but you get the idea.
The reason we don’t know is . . .
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Why You Should Raise Your Cholesterol
Would you like to have a vacuum cleaner that sucks out the cholesterol from the plaque in your arteries? You would? Well, all right! That vacuum cleaner is called HDL-cholesterol, AKA the good or the healthy cholesterol. The problem is that most people, especially men, don’t have enough. Before we get to ways you can improve it, let me explain how it works as simply as possible.
HDL stands for high-density lipoprotein and indicates that the molecule is denser than other lipoproteins such as LDL. Adding the word cholesterol means that it carries cholesterol. The question is . . .
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The Bottom Line on E-Cigarettes
The logic behind the use of e-cigarettes is that they’re better than traditional cigarettes and that vaping will help people quit smoking. Let’s take a look.
The major benefit attributed to e-cigarettes is less exposure to toxic chemicals resulting in fewer harmful effects. In a few of the studies on chemicals found in the nicotine liquid, some metals such as cadmium, aluminum, and nickel were identified as well as the expected ingredients such as glycol and polyethylene glycol from glycerin usually found in e-cigarette liquid as a propellant (1). We don’t know whether they . . .
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The Safety of E-Cigarettes
One of the purported benefits of e-cigarettes is the decrease in exposure to harmful chemicals found in regular cigarettes. It makes sense to avoid the chemicals that could be found in the soil and on the tobacco leaves. Harvesting and processing won’t remove those from tobacco products.
The problem is that we just don’t know, because the liquids that contain the nicotine are not tested for safety. Many brands add flavorings to the liquid. While fruits may seem to be great flavors, when the juice is burned, the by-products may not be healthy even if sourced . . .
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What Is Vaping?
Last week’s message on smoking resulted in several questions about electronic cigarettes, a subject I haven’t addressed before. Let’s start with the basics.
An electronic cigarette or e-cigarette is a nicotine-delivery system. There are three essential components: the nicotine source, a heat source used to vaporize the liquid source of nicotine, and a power source in the form of a battery. The last two are pretty straightforward. The heat has to get high enough fast enough to vaporize the fluid quickly, hence the term vaping instead of smoking.
The nicotine source provides the drug. That . . .
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Health Habits: Just Do Better
Let’s finish up our look at the recent paper that concluded we’re doing poorly when it comes to our health habits (1). If you thought smoking and exercise were underwhelming, today we’ll look at diet and body fat.
When it comes to following the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines, just under 38% hit that goal. I’ve talked about this a lot over the years, and this isn’t a debate over what constitutes a good diet. While we are doing somewhat better, adults do not eat enough vegetables, fruits, or beans, and we still . . .
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Smoking and Exercise
What are we doing well when it comes to health habits? Based on the study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, we seem to be getting the message that we shouldn’t smoke tobacco: 71% of all Americans don’t smoke based on the data from the NHANES data set. This wasn’t just a questionnaire; the participants had their blood tested as part of their participation in the study. You can lie on a questionnaire, but you can’t fool a blood test for metabolites found in cigarette smoke.
Better doesn’t mean good enough in my opinion. I . . .
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Healthy Lifestyle? A Tiny 2.7 Percent
“Only 2.7% of all Americans achieve all four of the basic behavioral characteristics that experts say add up to a healthy lifestyle.”
Sensational? Yes. True? That’s what we’re going to look at this week. The health news reported about a recent study that examined the health behaviors of a group of people who participated in the Nutrition and Health Examination Survey (NHANES) in 2002–2006. The researchers picked four behaviors and assessed them with the best techniques available.
This is not the typical BMI and Food Frequency Questionnaire survey; these are numbers based on excellent assessment equipment . . .
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The Bottom Line on High-Fat Dairy
If you’re a long-time reader, you know that science by headlines makes me crazy because news reports often distort the findings of the research papers to make them seem more important than they are. It doesn’t help that research institutions send out press releases that contribute to the hype of their research findings. Such is the case with the two papers I reviewed this week.
In the first paper, researchers examined blood values of fatty acids found in high-fat dairy products as potentially . . .
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Recent Research: Milk and Obesity
The second research paper included in many news articles that talked about the potential benefits of full-fat dairy products was a report from the Women’s Health Study (1). Researchers collected dietary data and self-reported body weight and height from over 39,000 women. The analysis included only about 18,000 middle-aged and older women who had a normal BMI when the study began; they analyzed the change in body weight over 11 years of follow up.
All women gained weight over time. Those who had the highest number of high-fat dairy products gained less weight . . .
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