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.
Weight Loss: The Problem with the Study
Continuing our look at the recently published study “Efficacy of Commercial Weight-Loss Programs: An Updated Systematic Review,” there was a significant problem with the study and most likely, not in the way you might think. I saw no problem with the statistics or measurement variables as sometimes happens. It wasn’t a meta-analysis, so there were no issues in study selection. In my opinion, it goes back to the intent of the study.
In an editorial in the same edition of the journal, the author reported that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the American Heart Association . . .
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Weight Loss: The Headlines
From the relatively benign “Commercial weight-loss programs offer little evidence of success” to the more provocative “It’s all hype: Few commercial weight-loss programs are effective,” it appeared the researchers at Johns Hopkins threw a gigantic wrench into the $2.5 billion commercial weight loss industry (1). After all, if the programs don’t work, why would anyone want to fork out the money? Or maybe, just maybe, this was more hype than anything else; let’s take a look.
A group of physicians and students from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine performed a search using traditional scientific . . .
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School Lunch Study Results
Today we finish our look at a recent study designed to see if kids will eat more vegetables and fruits in school lunches (1). Over the seven-month study, there were four scenarios:
- Schools with chef-assisted meals
- Smart café approaches
- Chef-assisted meals with smart café
- Control schools that did not change their approach to school lunches
If you want to guess the results just based on logic, you would have been correct that the chef-assisted meals, with and without the smart café approach worked best. The schools . . .
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The School Lunch Study
If you’re going to get children to eat healthier foods, you have to employ the same tactics that food manufacturers, grocery stores, and restaurants use: make it look visually appealing and display it in such a way as to help them make the healthy choice first. Of course, it must taste good but if they never put it on the plate, they’ll never know if they like the taste. With that in mind, researchers selected 14 elementary and middle schools in low-income, inner-city locations with over 2,600 children to participate in a school lunch study . . .
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Better School Lunches
Just about every day, more school districts are opting out of the U.S. National School Lunch Program—some because they don’t want the government to tell them what to do, most to save money because school districts are allowed to opt out if costs are too high. If you’re not familiar with this issue, read the messages in late December about the Kids Act.
One of the reasons some schools give is that kids won’t eat the required vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, creating more food waste. Judging by the combinations of foods some school cafeteria . . .
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Diet Soda and Your Waistline: The Bottom Line
Let’s finish up our look at the recently published paper on diet soda and waist circumference (1). Should you stop drinking that diet soda or energy drink? You decide after you read this.
It’s obvious the researchers came in with a point of view: diet soda makes people fat. They had published or presented at least two other papers over the years that said the same thing using some of the same data. I can overlook that.
What is more difficult for me to accept is that the researchers believe this study means something in the real world . . .
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Diet Soda and Your Waistline
We’re continuing our look at the role that diet soda may be playing in increasing your waistline especially over 65. While the study made for sensational headlines, was the attention deserved? In my opinion, no.
The premise of the paper is that as waist circumference increases, so does the risk of cardiometabolic disease: diseases associated with visceral fat (1). That would include heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and others. Visceral fat seems to be more metabolically active (or in simpler terms, the fat under the muscle and around the organs seems to be hungrier) and thus contributes . . .
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Is Diet Soda Making You Fat?
A week or so ago we were greeted with headlines that said that diet soda will make you fatter if you’re over 65 (1). If that doesn’t make you curious just about nothing will, especially if you’re carrying extra weight and drink diet soft drinks. Let’s see what the study was all about.
Researchers at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center have been conducting a multiethnic study called the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging or SALSA for short; sometimes I think more effort goes into creating the name than designing the study. When the . . .
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Supplements for Low Back Pain
To cope with pain in the lower back, we’ve looked at solutions that deal with mechanics: trying to increase the fluid levels of the discs as well as stretching and strengthening the core muscles. The next logical step is to cover some supplements that can help with low back pain.
Where there’s pain, there’s inflammation. Two nutrients can help reduce inflammation in bones and joints: omega-3 . . .
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Ab Exercises to Help Your Back
Many of you have asked how to do the abdominal curls and the fanny raises I mentioned in Thursday’s memo. A picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ve included pictures of each along with some tips to do them correctly.
Abdominal Curl
This is a modified form of the old straight-leg sit up. There are several key elements to make sure that you protect your back and neck. The idea is to curl up as far as you can and . . .
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