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.
We Adapt
In a recent paper in the magazine Nature, researchers compared the genes of a group of Inuit Indians, Europeans, and Chinese. As you might expect, there are many similarities. We’re all human, after all. But there were some specific differences, including an area in the genes related to the way the Inuit processed fat and the hormones they produce and how it contributes to height and weight.
The typical Inuit diet involves high amounts of fatty fish, rich in omega-3 fatty acids and protein; they don’t have access to many vegetables or fruit. We would expect this . . .
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What We Don’t Know
This past weekend, Paula and I along with our good friend Sharon went to the 100th Homecoming game of Michigan State University as they played Purdue; Sharon and I went to grad school together at MSU and Paula graduated from Purdue. Those pesky Boilermakers showed up in the second half and almost beat the Spartans. As you may suspect, that’s not the reason for this message.
When you sit in a single seat in a stadium as large as Spartan Stadium which holds just over 75,000 people, you can feel insignificant. In Dr. Chet World, it has a . . .
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The Bottom Line on the Saturated Fat Debate
Finishing up this look at saturated fat and the Dietary Guidelines, those who oppose the limit on saturated fat argue that saturated fat is not related to cardiovascular disease. They go on to argue that if fat is limited, carbohydrates will take their place—and high carbohydrate intake is the real cause of obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.
Before I go any further, if you’re reading this at home, write down three of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines that you remember. How about two? One? Exactly. Unless you’ve just taken a course in healthier eating, you don . . .
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Handpicking the Data
I’m continuing my look at a recent paper that called into question the process for limiting saturated fat intake to less than 10% in the new Dietary Guidelines (1). What else should we know about how the conclusions were derived and who wrote the op-ed? Let’s start with the author.
Nina Teicholz is an investigative journalist and accomplished writer and has more of a scientific background than most health and nutrition writers today. That’s great, but it’s just not good enough. After reading the article, I watched a TEDx talk she gave. She has a . . .
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Saturated Fat Debate
The new Dietary Guidelines for 2015 have stirred a lot of controversy this year and they aren’t even published yet. The latest headline related to the new Dietary Guidelines has been an op-ed piece written by a journalist and published in the British Medical Journal (1). It has everything a good mystery has: potential conspiracy, implied payoffs, big business, ignoring facts. I’m going to take a look at it this week.
The paper The Scientific Report Guiding the U.S. Dietary Guidelines: Is It Scientific? was written by Nina Teicholz, an investigative journalist who has . . .
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Prove It
The final opinion I’m going to share began with a recently published report titled “Chain Reaction: How Top Restaurants Rate on Reducing Use of Antibiotic in their Meat Supply.” It was published by a number of environmental groups. It’s free and you can get a copy by clicking on the link in the references. Read it and you can form your own opinion on what they did and how they did it.
The problem I have is what they didn’t do. Assuming this is a significant issue, you have to prove that there are antibiotics in the . . .
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Just Be Honest
One of the problems that I have with many websites and health gurus is that they won’t tell you what they’re really about. This isn’t the same as reposting websites; they get paid for getting you to click on links and thus don’t really care what they post as long as it’s eye-catching. The people and websites that bother me write most frequently about the food supply and what is and is not healthy for you. Fine. I do that, too. What isn’t apparent is why they do what . . .
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“That Saved My Life!”
This is going to be an opinionated week of messages, starting with a recent conversation. Actually, I’ve had the conversation with many people over the years who feel that at a time when their health was spinning out of control, they heard or read something that made sense, and they feel it saved their lives—a product, a diet, or even a person.
I don’t see it that way. When people get to the point of realizing that the path they’re on is going to kill them, whatever trigger gets them on a better path gets the . . .
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Blood Pressure: Lifestyle First
Today I’m going to share a caution from one of the lead authors in the Mayo Clinic arm of the study and tell you what I think is the biggest mistake the researchers made in announcing the preliminary results of the SPRINT Study.
The Mayo Clinic posted a video from Dr. William Haley, a lead researcher in the SPRINT Study; remember there were 102 different clinical sites that provided data for this study. What he said was significant. Here’s my interpretation: The results of a large study such . . .
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Blood Pressure: More Drugs
Continuing our look at the SPRINT Study from Tuesday, the study showed a significant reduction in mortality from cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes in subjects older than 50. I can’t argue that those are important results. The question is how did they do it? Here’s how: The group of subjects whose target systolic blood pressure (SBP) was less than 140 were treated with an average of two antihypertensive medications. What did they do with the group whose target SPB was less than . . .
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