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.
Don’t Touch That!
What if this sign greeted you the next time you walked into your doctor’s or dentist’s office:
Handshake-Free Zone: To protect your health and the health of those around you, please refrain from shaking hands while on these premises.
In my head, I’m thinking no way that will ever happen—then my dentist fist-bumped me the other day. I immediately knew what he had read, so this topic went to the top of my list of things to write about. I’ve been tracking some . . .
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How to Reverse Heart Disease
In this final message of the week on reversing heart disease, I’m going to tell you why I think the program was successful, a couple of problems that I have with it, and the bottom line.
The Training
The key to this program in my opinion was education. The program began with a five-hour seminar with limited participation: no more than 12 participants. Here’s what they did in the training:
- Explained the relationship between diet and heart disease in other cultures throughout the world.
- Showed the damage to arteries in very young . . .
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What to Eat to Reverse Heart Disease
We’re going to continue our look at the recently published research on the way to reverse CAD. Remember, 89% of the people recruited for this study were still following the diet more than three years later. Let’s take a look at what they ate and what they didn’t eat.
The paper describes the core diet as consisting of the following: whole grains, legumes, lentils, other vegetables, and fruit. Of course, this is a completely vegan diet. The researchers assured the subjects that they would reach their protein intake every day.
The researchers prohibited many foods as well . . .
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Reversing Heart Disease
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. and Canada in people 65 and older. Many people who are younger have high blood pressure, clogged arteries, and arrhythmias; the side effects of treating those issues impair their lives, and they can’t do all they’d like to do because of physical limitations due to coronary artery disease (CAD). But what if there were a way, without medications, without surgeries, to reverse CAD? This was the question posed in a recently published study (1) that we’ll examine this week.
The primary author is Dr. Caldwell . . .
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Reader’s Edition: How to Treat Obesity
Thank you again for your responses to my question about obesity—you all did a great job. Some answers were short, and some went into a lot of detail. Just like last week, I’ve excerpted some of your answers. Enjoy reading what others have done and are doing, because if you have weight you’d like to abandon, you’ll find some tips in here to help you out.
A New Lifestyle
“It’s a lifestyle decision to make. Eat less by using a salad plate rather than a dinner plate—no seconds. Eat heart-healthy foods . . .
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Reader’s Edition: How to Prevent Obesity
I want to thank all of you who responded—and there were plenty of you who took your time to do it! Some responses were just a single word such as “moderation” while others sounded familiar. “Eat less and move more” was the most common response; where have you heard that before?
Many of you took a lot of time and put thought into your answers, and I appreciate each and every one. Most answered the question of how to treat obesity once someone was obese. I’m going to use those a week from today because there were excellent . . .
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You’re the Expert
After last week’s messages on sarcopenic obesity, a question came to mind: how would you prevent obesity? I’d like you to send me your answer by Friday at noon.
First, some rules. No theories you’ve read about in books, heard on the Internet, or any other expert’s opinion, including me for you long-time readers. What would you do and how would you do it given what you know?
Second, there are no good foods or bad foods. I don’t care about refined, organic, sugar, artificial this or that. You can use anything you find . . .
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Sarcopenic Obesity
There is a lot that happens as we age. Especially in today’s society in the U.S. and Canada, one of the things that happens is we lose muscle mass. Why? We don’t use it. We tend to slow down as we age and don’t stress the muscles as much as we did when we were younger, and we usually don’t have as much to do—no job, no kids to run after, and so on. As a result, we lose muscle mass. That’s the sarco part of sarcopenic in the title of today’s . . .
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Pinch an Inch
Have you ever hugged someone who looks to be normal weight but seems soft? You can tell that there isn’t much muscle under their clothes. These are the people who make up that additional 5% in the obesity statistics. They fall through the cracks in the BMI scale because their BMI is normal. There’s one more thing—in general, they’re 50 years and older. The largest group in that class is the baby boomers.
How can you have a normal BMI and be obese? The CT scan slices of human thighs give you an idea (no, those . . .
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Are We Fatter Than We Think?
The number of people in the U.S. who are overweight and obese are about 70% according to the numbers reported by the Center for Disease Control. I hate to be the one to tell you, but that’s probably an underestimate. It’s probably closer to 75%. I can’t be more precise because of the way obesity is measured in large studies.
The Body Mass Index (BMI) is used to measure large groups of people. All you need is two measures: height and weight. Those are the basis for the statistics on overweight and obesity. From now on . . .
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