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.
Are Heart Meds Forever?
The prevailing thought on pharmacological treatment of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is that once you’re on a class of medications, you’re on them for life—new meds may be developed to replace some, but treatment continues forever. That contributes to the conspiracies about big pharma and the greed of the medical community. I’m not going to say […]
A Little Good News
On January 2, 2023, the Buffalo Bills were playing the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday night football. A Bengal caught a pass, was tackled and fell into one of the Bills, Damar Hamlin, hitting him in the chest as he fell. Both players got up, and then Hamlin fell down again. What we didn’t know for […]
The FFQ: Still Too Vague
I spent a long time examining validation and reliability studies on the Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQ). It was interesting to compare the original validation studies with a new FFQ that was published in early 2024; researchers asked subjects in those studies that began decades ago to participate in this recent validation study. The Stats I […]
The Problem with the Food Frequency Questionnaire
I’ve made no secret that I don’t like Food Frequency Questionnaires. (FFQ). I understand why they are used; when a study may contain 500, 5,000, or 500,000 subjects, to do a dietary recall of the prior 24 hours, using a dietician to help determine portion sizes, would be close to impossible or very difficult at […]
Is Red Meat Linked to Type 2 Diabetes?
The next study actually precedes the heme iron paper, not only in time but in size—with close to 2 million subjects! This was an attempt to check on whether red meat, chicken, or processed red meat, such as bacon and sausage, are associated with type 2 diabetes. This was a Herculean task that would never […]
Iron from Meat and Type 2 Diabetes
The abstract begins simply enough: “Dietary Haem iron intake is linked to an increased risk of Type 2 Diabetes.” Haem iron is another word for heme iron, iron sourced from animal meat. But let’s get back to the statement. The first question that pops into my mind is this: how did they measure iron intake […]
Nutrition Research: Incomplete
In July and August, I wrote about recently published studies on multivitamins and mortality and fish oil and atrial fibrillation. My criticism of those observational studies was because the analyses of the data were incomplete, in my opinion. Here’s how the study we just finished on quercetin and irritable bowel did the correct analysis. Researchers […]
Quercetin and Irritable Bowel
In the study I talked about on Saturday, the typical way of analyzing this data is to divide the group into segments by a specific variable and then compare the hazard ratios. In this case, the variable was quercetin and they chose to divide the subjects up by quartiles. During the follow-up time of nine […]
If You Have an Irritable Bowel…
It seems many people experience digestive issues, from constipation, heartburn, and many types of irritation in their bowels. Many people are avoiding some food or ingredient—from gluten, most often found in wheat and bread products, to certain ingredients that are found in food, at least the foods that are available today. I have a slight […]
One Decision, Lasting Impact
I love behind-the-scenes shows: how do things work? That probably explains why I like to dig into health studies the way I do. My latest fascination is with a show on the National Geographic channel called Disaster Autopsy. Several scientists examine man-made disasters to find out what went wrong. Most of the time, it comes […]
