Source: http://alankatz.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/broker-commission-exemption-from-mlr-bill-introduced-today/
Thursday 30 June 2011
Bill to Exempt Broker Commissions from MLR Formula Introduced Today
A bit sooner than expected: Representatives Mike Rogers and John Barrow introduced legislation today to exempt broker compensation from the medical loss ratio calculations required by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Under the PPACA, health insurance carriers are obliged to spend 80 percent of the premiums they take in on policies sold to [...]
NAPH CEO Dr. Bruce Siegel on safety net providers (podcast)
Members of the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems (NAPH) play a vital role in the US health care system. In this podcast interview, NAPH CEO Bruce Siegel, MD, MPH describes the state of safety net providers and what changes we can expect over the next few years. We touch on a variety [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/i78bhnmYnZM/
Using Turmeric & The Benefits: 2
Now that we have talked about exactly what Turmeric is and what properties it has in it, let?s talk about how you can use Turmeric in order to treat some of those cuts and wounds that you might be experiencing.� One thing that you should know is that Turmeric is a natural antiseptic and what [...]
Source: http://yourbodyyourtemple.net/health/using-turmeric-the-benefits-2/
Let?s give patients a little more credit for their role in clinical research
I was pleased to see one of my favorite companies, PatientsLikeMe, win such wide attention yesterday for its role in an observational study of lithium for ALS. The study, published in Nature Biotechnology, was noteworthy because it used the PatientsLikeMe network of patients for the research. As a result the study was designed, launched, analyzed [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/fWeRyReABnY/
Wednesday 29 June 2011
Elevated Bilirubin Levels from Finasteride?
I am a 51 y/o male. I have been taking Finasteride for the past 4 yrs. I also take Lovastatin for my cholesterol. My latest blood test showed elevated levels of Bilirubin. My doctor stated that it might be from the Finastride and that it is a possible side effect of the drug. I can’t [...]
Source: http://www.baldingblog.com/2011/06/28/elevated-bilirubin-levels-from-finasteride/
Joint and muscle pain - take ginger
A new study has suggested that daily doses of raw or heat-treated ginger are effective for relieving muscle pain following strenuous exercise.Though a favorite remedy of Chinese medicine practitioners for centuries, ginger has not been studied widely as a pain reliever.
Some research, however, has shown that ginger may have anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties similar to non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.In one study, four to 36 weeks of daily ginger doses (30 to 500 mg.) achieved reductions in knee pain from osteoarthritis.
Researchers from the University of Georgia and Georgia College and State University examined the efficacy of multiple days of ginger doses for relieving experimentally induced muscle pain from 18 eccentric muscle exercises.
For the study, student volunteers were tested on 11 consecutive days while taking ginger supplements. Seventy-four students were divided in three groups given either raw ginger, heated ginger or placebo.
The authors hypothesized that pain ratings after exercise would be lower in the ginger group compared to placebo subjects.Results from the subjects' responses data showed that both raw and heat-treated ginger lowered muscle pain intensity after eccentric exercise by 25 and 23 per cent, respectively.
Heat treating ginger, therefore, did not increase the analgesic benefit.
Tags : leg muscle pain,neck and shoulder muscle pain,joint and muscle pain,muscle pain relief,thigh muscle pain,chronic muscle pain
Some research, however, has shown that ginger may have anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties similar to non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.In one study, four to 36 weeks of daily ginger doses (30 to 500 mg.) achieved reductions in knee pain from osteoarthritis.
Researchers from the University of Georgia and Georgia College and State University examined the efficacy of multiple days of ginger doses for relieving experimentally induced muscle pain from 18 eccentric muscle exercises.For the study, student volunteers were tested on 11 consecutive days while taking ginger supplements. Seventy-four students were divided in three groups given either raw ginger, heated ginger or placebo.
The authors hypothesized that pain ratings after exercise would be lower in the ginger group compared to placebo subjects.Results from the subjects' responses data showed that both raw and heat-treated ginger lowered muscle pain intensity after eccentric exercise by 25 and 23 per cent, respectively.
Heat treating ginger, therefore, did not increase the analgesic benefit.
Tags : leg muscle pain,neck and shoulder muscle pain,joint and muscle pain,muscle pain relief,thigh muscle pain,chronic muscle pain
Source: http://www.aboutthehealth.com/2010/09/joint-and-muscle-pain-take-ginger.html
Tuesday 28 June 2011
Economist highlights the home birth debate
The latest issue of the Economist highlights the debate about home births (Is there no place like home?) and notes the charged atmosphere that prevails between supporters and detractors. They get it about right: Stereotypes and simplifications are in rich supply. Many doctors think they are trying to curb a bunch of lentil-munching fanatics who [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/9NDnFLoi6k4/
Flu Season is Here
I've noticed everyone around me getting sick lately (I seem to have become mostly immune to colds and the flu in the last couple of years), so I took a look at Google Flu Trends. Lo and behold, the United States is currently near peak flu incidence for the 2010-2011 season. Here's a graph from Flu Trends. This year's trend is in dark blue:
Flu Trends also has data for individual US states and a number of other countries.
It's time to tighten up your diet and lifestyle if you want to avoid the flu this year. Personally, I feel that eating well, managing stress effectively, and taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day in winter have helped me avoid colds and the flu.
Flu Trends also has data for individual US states and a number of other countries.
It's time to tighten up your diet and lifestyle if you want to avoid the flu this year. Personally, I feel that eating well, managing stress effectively, and taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day in winter have helped me avoid colds and the flu.
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/03/flu-season-is-here.html
New Ancestral Diet Review Paper
Pedro Carrera-Bastos and his colleagues Maelan Fontes-Villalba, James H. O'Keefe, Staffan Lindeberg and Loren Cordain have published an excellent new review article titled "The Western Diet and Lifestyle and Diseases of Civilization" (1). The paper reviews the health consequences of transitioning from a traditional to a modern Western diet and lifestyle. Pedro is a knowledgeable and tireless advocate of ancestral, primarily paleolithic-style nutrition, and it has been my privilege to correspond with him regularly. His new paper is the best review of the underlying causes of the "diseases of civilization" that I've encountered. Here's the abstract:
I gave Pedro my comments on the manuscript as he was editing it, and he was kind enough to include me in the acknowledgments.
It is increasingly recognized that certain fundamental changes in diet and lifestyle that occurred after the Neolithic Revolution, and especially after the Industrial Revolution and the Modern Age, are too recent, on an evolutionary time scale, for the human genome to have completely adapted. This mismatch between our ancient physiology and the western diet and lifestyle underlies many so-called diseases of civilization, including coronary heart disease, obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, epithelial cell cancers, autoimmune disease, and osteoporosis, which are rare or virtually absent in hunter?gatherers and other non-westernized populations. It is therefore proposed that the adoption of diet and lifestyle that mimic the beneficial characteristics of the preagricultural environment is an effective strategy to reduce the risk of chronic degenerative diseases.At 343 references, the paper is an excellent resource for anyone with an academic interest in ancestral health, and in that sense it reminds me of Staffan Lindeberg's book Food and Western Disease. One of the things I like most about the paper is that it acknowledges the significant genetic adaptation to agriculture and pastoralism that has occurred in populations that have been practicing it for thousands of years. It hypothesizes that the main detrimental change was not the adoption of agriculture, but the more recent industrialization of the food system. I agree.
I gave Pedro my comments on the manuscript as he was editing it, and he was kind enough to include me in the acknowledgments.
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-ancestral-diet-review-paper.html
Is Medicare A Good Deal?
Think about everything you will pay to support Medicare: the payroll taxes while you are working, the premiums during retirement, and your share of the income taxes that subsidize the system. Then compare that to the benefits of Medicare insurance, say, from age 65 until the day you die. Are you likely to come out [...]
Summer Wardrobe Stock-Up Sale Ends Tonight!
Right now all our t-shirts are $14.90. But the sale ends tonight at 11:59pm Eastern Time! Just enter the code SUMMERSTYLE before checkout. You can be throwing around asymptotic high fives in your asymptotic high five shirt all summer. * Discount code not applicable to package deals, subscriptions and outlet items.
Monday 27 June 2011
The Saucony Hattori: My Favorite Cross-training Shoe
There are few people more ill-suited for minimalist athletic shoes than I am. In fact, I couldn?t run more than three miles without severe knee and shin pain before I discovered the Saucony Hurricane, the only motion-control shoe that can stop my feet from turning outward when I run.But, all my workout buds have minimalist footwear. And, yes, I?ve read ?Born to Run? and ?Chi Running? ? the minimalist runner?s gospels. So I decided to give it a try with the Saucony Hattori.
At 4.4 ounces, the Hattori is little more than a piece of treaded foam with some thin fabric on top. But the first thing you?ll notice about it is comfort. It molds to your foot. Also, while you?ll quickly be identified as a true fitness geek by anyone who knows running shoes, you won?t be instantly shunned as a freak in the way that the wiggly-toe Five Fingers wearers are.
During the minimalist revolution, there are a whole lot of people who strapped on shoes like the Hattori, took off for an ?easy? 5k run, and came up injured because suddenly all the padded sole that protected their joints and arches was gone. So that?s exactly what I didn?t do. Instead, I walked around in them for a few days ? at work, through my neighborhood, just like normal shoes ? and got used to them.
After a couple days and maybe eight miles of walking, I did Crossfit in them (think: high-intensity circuit training with a lot of free weights and calisthenics). Because they?re so thin, there?s a much more efficient power transfer for doing things like dead lifts, or even air squats. And, because your shock absorbers are gone, you?ll pay extra attention to your form when doing box jumps. After all, if you come down hard on a minimalist shoe, it?ll jar your whole body. Goodbye slop, hello control.
I should also mention that this is my favorite jump-rope shoe of all time. Not only are they light, but that extra clearance you gain with the slim soles makes it easy.
After about two weeks of walking around and doing Crossfit in my Hattoris, I tried running in them. It was a short run (a 400-meter warm-up), but I was thrilled with them. Again, if your form is bad, you?ll quickly feel it, so it?s actually very difficult to run poorly in Hattoris, unless you?re a masochist. Like with jumping rope, I was very light on my feet, and had silent, efficient footfalls.
I really don?t see myself running hard or long in Hattoris for quite some time, but I think it?s possible if I?m patient. Meanwhile, because of the efficiency and control that I?ve gained in the gym, the Hattori is easily my favorite cross-training shoe of all time.
-- Bryan Harris, Everyday Health SEO Editor
Maine Gains Three Year Waiver from Medical Loss Ratio Target
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires carriers offering coverage to individuals and families (not purchased on their behalf by an employer) to spend 80 percent of premium on medical claims or other costs related to health care quality. These medical loss ratio provisions took effect in January of this year and has created [...]
Death and Dying and the Economics of ER Care
Such tragic deaths happen every day in U.S. hospitals?. a crowded ED is more than a nuisance; it is a threat both to individual patients and to overall public health. Still, the financial imperatives of hospital operations trump patient safety. The GAO has noted that many hospital administrators tolerate ED crowding and even divert inbound [...]
Source: http://healthblog.ncpa.org/death-and-dying-and-the-economics-of-er-care/
Sunday 26 June 2011
Flu Season is Here
I've noticed everyone around me getting sick lately (I seem to have become mostly immune to colds and the flu in the last couple of years), so I took a look at Google Flu Trends. Lo and behold, the United States is currently near peak flu incidence for the 2010-2011 season. Here's a graph from Flu Trends. This year's trend is in dark blue:
Flu Trends also has data for individual US states and a number of other countries.
It's time to tighten up your diet and lifestyle if you want to avoid the flu this year. Personally, I feel that eating well, managing stress effectively, and taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day in winter have helped me avoid colds and the flu.
Flu Trends also has data for individual US states and a number of other countries.
It's time to tighten up your diet and lifestyle if you want to avoid the flu this year. Personally, I feel that eating well, managing stress effectively, and taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day in winter have helped me avoid colds and the flu.
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/03/flu-season-is-here.html
GOP?s best bet on health care: stick with the slogans
On today’s New York Times Op-Ed page (A Slogan, Not a Plan) conservatives Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin assert: Republicans have an effective slogan for their health care agenda: ?repeal and replace.? The problem is, they can agree only on the first half; agreeing on what to put in place of last year?s health care [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/PD524ROHTGI/
Massachusetts unions take a wise turn on health care
Massachusetts cities and towns face huge long-term health care financing challenges, thanks to ill-considered policies that allowed health insurance benefits for unionized jobs such as firefighters and teachers to get totally out of control. The legislature is finally taking some modest steps to let the municipalities control costs somewhat by moving into the very successful [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/PN77UpUWP10/
A couple smart health care-related security ideas from Consumer Reports
Consumer Reports features “Your Security” on its cover and includes articles on keeping a home and family safe. There are a couple good ideas on health care related topics. Shred anything you get from your health insurer, such as Explanation of Benefit forms Destroy the labels on your prescription medications before discarding Information on these [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/ul31QbXVKhQ/
Is the GOP ready to get serious about Medicare?
One of the most despairing aspects of the last 10 years has been Republicans’ failure to get serious about Medicare spending. As I’ve written many times, Medicare is the monster that will swallow us up if we don’t do something about it. Yet Republicans have made matters worse over the years in a number of [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/K3jb8TEJLUY/
Saturday 25 June 2011
Physical Effects of Stress on Your Body
The old adage of stress is a killer is truer than you may realize. To better understand what stress does to your body, let’s first take a look at stress. The Mayo Clinic defines stress as the natural alarm system to your body’s “flight or fight” reaction. Stress is hardwired into your body and is [...]
Source: http://www.fitnesshealthzone.com/fitness/physical-effects-of-stress/
Back Pain Exercises: Things You Ought To Know About Your Back Pain
Back pain exercises are for those people who know what a back pain is. Back pain affects a lot of people worldwide and has caused frequent absenteeism in the workplace; proof that if left untreated can be debilitating and frustrating. If you will try to Google search remedies for back pain it will give you [...]
Source: http://www.fitnesshealthzone.com/exercises/back-pain-exercises/
Grand Rounds is up at e-Patient Dave
Dave deBronkart, aka e-Patient Dave hosts the newest edition of Grand Rounds. This week’s version features a variety of videos from the TEDx Maastricht conference. Share
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/M2iw7KsIbO0/
What to Cut Out and What to Include in Your Six Pack Abs Diet?
While exercises are important for those ripped six pack abs, what is also vitally important is an appropriate six pack abs diet which will help you lower the body fat percentage and add definition to the underlying muscles of the abdomen. Here are the things that you should include in your six pack abs diet: [...]
Source: http://www.fitnesshealthzone.com/diet-nutrition/six-pack-abs-diet/
Friday 24 June 2011
Broker Testimony Before NAIC Concerning MLR and Commissions
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners will be meeting in Austin, Texas this week to consider a number of issues related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. One topic will be how the medical loss ratio provisions of the health care reform bill impacts brokers and consumers. A coalition of broker organizations will [...]
Hospitals to patients: Go away and don?t come back soon
It seems that Medicare?s focus on reducing readmissions to hospitals is stimulating renewed attention to hospital discharge planning and communications. I?ve found it shocking how patients are often abruptly transitioned from high tech, high touch hospital care to their homes with minimal discharge instructions or after receiving information that?s on a 10th generation photocopy and [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/OY7mg_8jepE/
Natural Black Eye Treatments: 1
All right guys, so I am going to share something personal with you ? I fell down the stairs this past weekend.� Sunday, I took a tumble down on top of a bunch of laundry and I definitely bruised not just my hand, thigh, calf and head but I bruised my eye.� When I woke [...]
Source: http://yourbodyyourtemple.net/health/natural-black-eye-treatments-1/
Food Reward: a Dominant Factor in Obesity, Part III
Low-Fat Diets
In 2000, the International Journal of Obesity published a nice review article of low-fat diet trials.� It included data from 16 controlled trials lasting from 2-12 months and enrolling 1,910 participants (1).� What sets this review apart is it only covered studies that did not include instructions to restrict calorie intake (ad libitum diets).� On average, low-fat dieters reduced their fat intake from 37.7 to 27.5 percent of calories.� Here's what they found:
Read more �
In 2000, the International Journal of Obesity published a nice review article of low-fat diet trials.� It included data from 16 controlled trials lasting from 2-12 months and enrolling 1,910 participants (1).� What sets this review apart is it only covered studies that did not include instructions to restrict calorie intake (ad libitum diets).� On average, low-fat dieters reduced their fat intake from 37.7 to 27.5 percent of calories.� Here's what they found:
Read more �
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/05/food-reward-dominant-factor-in-obesity_18.html
Thursday 23 June 2011
US Omega-6 and Omega-3 Fat Consumption over the Last Century
Omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats (PUFA) are essential nutrients that play many important roles in the body. They are highly bioactive, and so any deviation from ancestral intake norms should probably be viewed with suspicion. I've expressed my opinion many times on this blog that omega-6 consumption is currently too high due to our high intake of refined seed oils (corn, soybean, sunflower, etc.) in industrial nations. Although it's clear that the quantity of omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fat have changed over the last century, no one had ever published a paper that attempted to systematically quantify it until last month (1).
Drs. Chris Ramsden and Joseph Hibbeln worked on this paper (the first author was Dr. Tanya Blasbalg and the senior author was Dr. Robert Rawlings)-- they were the first and second authors of a different review article I reviewed recently (2). Their new paper is a great reference that I'm sure I'll cite many times. I'm going to briefly review it and highlight a few key points.
1. The intake of omega-6 linoleic acid has increased quite a bit since 1909. It would have been roughly 2.3% of calories in 1909, while in 1999 it was 7.2%. That represents an increase of 213%. Linoleic acid is the form of omega-6 that predominates in seed oils.
2. The intake of omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid has also increased, for reasons that I'll explain below. It changed from 0.35% of calories to 0.72%, an increase of 109%.
3. The intake of long-chain omega-6 and omega-3 fats have decreased. These are the highly bioactive fats for which linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid are precursors. Arachidonic acid, DHA, DPA and EPA intakes have declined. This mostly has to do with changing husbandry practices and the replacement of animal fats with seed oils in the diet.
4. The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats has increased. There is still quite a bit of debate over whether the ratios matter, or simply the absolute amount of each. I maintain that there is enough evidence from highly controlled animal studies and the basic biochemistry of PUFAs to tentatively conclude that the ratio is important. At a minimum, we know that excess linoleic acid inhibits omega-3 metabolism (3, 4, 5, 6). The omega-6:3 ratio increased from 5.4:1 to 9.6:1 between 1909 and 2009, a 78% increase.
5. The biggest factor in both linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid intake changes was the astonishing rise in soybean oil consumption. Soybean oil consumption increased from virtually nothing to 7.4% of total calories, eclipsing all sources of calories besides sugar, dairy and grains! That's because processed food is stuffed with it. It's essentially a byproduct of defatted soybean meal-- the second most important animal feed after corn. Check out this graph from the paper:
I think this paper is an important piece of the puzzle as we try to figure out what happened to nutrition and health in the US over the last century.
Drs. Chris Ramsden and Joseph Hibbeln worked on this paper (the first author was Dr. Tanya Blasbalg and the senior author was Dr. Robert Rawlings)-- they were the first and second authors of a different review article I reviewed recently (2). Their new paper is a great reference that I'm sure I'll cite many times. I'm going to briefly review it and highlight a few key points.
1. The intake of omega-6 linoleic acid has increased quite a bit since 1909. It would have been roughly 2.3% of calories in 1909, while in 1999 it was 7.2%. That represents an increase of 213%. Linoleic acid is the form of omega-6 that predominates in seed oils.
2. The intake of omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid has also increased, for reasons that I'll explain below. It changed from 0.35% of calories to 0.72%, an increase of 109%.
3. The intake of long-chain omega-6 and omega-3 fats have decreased. These are the highly bioactive fats for which linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid are precursors. Arachidonic acid, DHA, DPA and EPA intakes have declined. This mostly has to do with changing husbandry practices and the replacement of animal fats with seed oils in the diet.
4. The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats has increased. There is still quite a bit of debate over whether the ratios matter, or simply the absolute amount of each. I maintain that there is enough evidence from highly controlled animal studies and the basic biochemistry of PUFAs to tentatively conclude that the ratio is important. At a minimum, we know that excess linoleic acid inhibits omega-3 metabolism (3, 4, 5, 6). The omega-6:3 ratio increased from 5.4:1 to 9.6:1 between 1909 and 2009, a 78% increase.
5. The biggest factor in both linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid intake changes was the astonishing rise in soybean oil consumption. Soybean oil consumption increased from virtually nothing to 7.4% of total calories, eclipsing all sources of calories besides sugar, dairy and grains! That's because processed food is stuffed with it. It's essentially a byproduct of defatted soybean meal-- the second most important animal feed after corn. Check out this graph from the paper:
I think this paper is an important piece of the puzzle as we try to figure out what happened to nutrition and health in the US over the last century.This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/04/us-omega-6-and-omega-3-fat-consumption.html
Hospital clowning: Video introduction to Hearts & Noses Hospital Clown Troupe
I’ve been a board member and financial supporter of the Hearts & Noses Hospital Clown Troupe for ten years, but always struggle to convey in words exactly what the troupe does and how special it is. The clown aspect people think they get, but it’s hard to explain how empowering the professionally trained, dedicated volunteers [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/jVKQFQtkxaA/
Cavalcade of Risk is up at Chatswood Moneyblog
Chatswood Moneyblog hosts the latest –and what Hank Stern calls the greatest– Cavalcade of Risk blog carnival. Share
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/-JqfevvkmDo/
Workouts to Get Faster
Many athletes require speed to perform explosive sports specific movements. Increasing your speed can help give you the added benefit that will improve your athleticism. Runners, football players, bicyclists, boxers, basketball players, and even weekend warriors rely on quickness to perform the required movements of their sport. For example, a football player needs to be [...]
Source: http://www.fitnesshealthzone.com/exercises/workouts-to-get-faster/
Wednesday 22 June 2011
The FDA?s Perspective on Finasteride Risks
Dr Rassman
The New England Journal of Medicine published an article that is freely accessible online to the public and addresses the FDA?s perspectives on risks and benefits of 5?-reductase inhibitors for prostate-cancer prevention and the recent additions (warnings) to the product labels.
Link: The Risks and Benefits of 5?-Reductase Inhibitors for Prostate-Cancer Prevention
Of course, I am [...]
The New England Journal of Medicine published an article that is freely accessible online to the public and addresses the FDA?s perspectives on risks and benefits of 5?-reductase inhibitors for prostate-cancer prevention and the recent additions (warnings) to the product labels.
Link: The Risks and Benefits of 5?-Reductase Inhibitors for Prostate-Cancer Prevention
Of course, I am [...]
Source: http://www.baldingblog.com/2011/06/20/the-fdas-perspective-on-finasteride-risks/
Upcoming Talks
I'll be giving at least two talks at conferences this year:Ancestral Health Symposium; "The Human Ecological Niche and Modern Health"; August 5-6 in Los Angeles. This is going to be a great conference. Many of my favorite health/nutrition writers will be presenting. Organizer Brent Pottenger and I collaborated on designing the symposium's name so I hope you like it.
My talk will be titled "Obesity; Old Solutions to a New Problem." I'll be presenting some of my emerging thoughts on obesity. I expect to ruffle some feathers!
Tickets are going fast so reserve one today! I doubt there will be any left two weeks from now.
TEDx Harvard Law; "Food Policy and Public Health"; Oct 21 at Harvard. My talk is tentatively titled "The American Diet: a Historical Perspective." This topic interests me because it helps us frame the discussion on why chronic disease is so prevalent today, and what are the appropriate public health measures to combat it. This should also be a great conference.
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/04/upcoming-talks.html
Food Reward: a Dominant Factor in Obesity, Part II
How to Make a Rat Obese
Rodents are an important model organism for the study of human obesity. To study obesity in rodents, you have to make them fat first. There are many ways to do this, from genetic mutations, to brain lesions, to various diets. However, the most rapid and effective way to make a normal (non-mutant, non-lesioned) rodent obese is the "cafeteria diet." The cafeteria diet first appeared in the medical literature in 1976 (1), and was quickly adopted by other investigators. Here's a description from a recent paper (2):
Investigators have known for decades that the cafeteria diet is a highly effective way of producing obesity in rodents, but what was interesting about this particular study from my perspective is that it compared the cafeteria diet to three other commonly used rodent diets: 1) standard, unpurified chow; 2) a purified/refined high-fat diet; 3) a purified/refined low-fat diet designed as a comparator for the high-fat diet. All three of these diets were given as homogeneous pellets, and the textures range from hard and fibrous (chow) to soft and oily like cookie dough (high-fat). The low-fat diet contains a lot of sugar, the high-fat diet contains a modest amount of sugar, and the chow diet contains virtually none. The particular high-fat diet in this paper (Research Diets D12451, 45% fat, which is high for a rat) is commonly used to produce obesity in rats, although it's not always very effective. The 60% fat version is more effective.
Consistent with previous findings, rats on every diet consumed the same number of calories over time... except the cafeteria diet-fed rats, which ate 30% more than any of the other groups. Rats on every diet gained fat compared to the unpurified chow group, but the cafeteria diet group gained much more than any of the others. There was no difference in fat gain between the purified high-fat and low-fat diets.
So in this paper, they compared two refined diets with vastly different carb:fat ratios and different sugar contents, and yet neither equaled the cafeteria diet in its ability to increase food intake and cause fat gain. The fat, starch and sugar content of the cafeteria diet was not able to fully explain its effect on fat gain. However, each diets' ability to cause fat gain correlated with its respective food reward qualities. Refined diets high in fat or sugar caused fat gain in rats relative to unpurified chow, but were surpassed by a diet containing a combination of fat, sugar, starch, salt, free glutamate (umami), interesting textures and pleasant and invariant aromas.
Although the cafeteria diet is the most effective at causing obesity in rodents, it's not commonly used because it's a lot more work than feeding pellets, and it introduces a lot of variability into experiments because each rat eats a different combination of foods.
How to Make an Obese Human Lean
In 1965, the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published a very unusual paper (3). Here is the stated goal of the investigators:
It's a machine that dispenses bland liquid food through a straw, at the push of a button. They don't give any information on the composition of the liquid diet, beyond remarking that "carbohydrate supplied 50 per cent of the calories, protein 20 per cent and fat 30 per cent. the formula contained vitamins and minerals in amount adequate for daily maintenance."
Volunteers were given access to the machine and allowed to consume as much of the liquid diet as they wanted, but no other food. Since they were in a hospital setting, the investigators could be confident that the volunteers ate nothing else.
The first thing they report is what happened when they fed two lean people using the machine, for 16 or 9 days. Both of them maintained their typical calorie intake (~3,075 and ~4,430 kcal per day) and maintained a very stable weight during this period.
Next, the investigators did the same experiment using two "grossly obese" volunteers. Again, they were asked to "obtain food from the machine whenever hungry." Over the course of the first 18 days, the first (male) volunteer consumed a meager 275 calories per day. The second (female) volunteer consumed a ridiculously low 144 calories per day over the course of 12 days, losing 23 pounds. Without showing data, the investigators remarked that an additional three obese volunteers "showed a similar inhibition of calorie intake when fed by machine."
The first volunteer continued eating bland food from the machine for a total of 70 days, losing approximately 70 pounds. After that, he was sent home with the formula and instructed to drink 400 calories of it per day, which he did for an additional 185 days, after which his total weight loss was 200 lbs. The investigators remarked that "during all this time weight was steadily lost and the patient never complained of hunger or gastrointestinal discomfort." This is truly a starvation-level calorie intake, and to eat it continually for 255 days without hunger suggests that something rather interesting was happening in this man's body.
This machine-feeding regimen was nearly as close as one can get to a diet with no rewarding properties whatsoever. Although it contained carbohydrate and fat, it did not contain any flavor or texture to associate them with, and thus the reward value of the diet was minimized. As one would expect if food reward influences the body fat setpoint, lean volunteers maintained starting weight and a normal calorie intake, while their obese counterparts rapidly lost a massive amount of fat and reduced calorie intake dramatically without hunger. This suggests that obesity is not entirely due to a "broken" metabolism (although that may still contribute), but also at least in part to a heightened sensitivity to food reward in susceptible people. This also implies that obesity may not be a disorder, but rather a normal response to the prevailing dietary environment in affluent nations.
A second study by Dr. Michel Cabanac in 1976 confirmed that reducing food reward (by feeding bland food) lowers the fat mass setpoint in humans, using a clever method that I won't discuss for the sake of brevity (4). I learned about both of these studies through the writing of Dr. Seth Roberts, author of The Shangri-La Diet. I'd also like to thank Dr. Stephen Benoit, a researcher in the food reward field, for talking through these ideas with me to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting them.
I'd like to briefly remark that there's an anatomical basis for the idea of two-way communication between brain regions that determine reward and those that control body fatness. It's well known that the latter influence the former (think about your drive to obtain food after you've just eaten a big meal vs. after you've skipped a meal), but there are also connections from the former to the latter via a brain region called the lateral hypothalamus. The point is that it's anatomically plausible that food reward determines in part the amount of body fat a person carries.
Some people may be inclined to think "well, if food tastes bad, you eat less of it; so what!" Although that may be true to some extent, I don't think it can explain the fact that bland diets affect the calorie intake of lean and obese people differently. To me, that implies that highly rewarding food increases the body fat setpoint in susceptible people, and that food with few rewarding properties allows them to return to a lean state.
In the next few posts, I'll describe how food reward explains the effectiveness of many popular fat loss diets, I'll describe how this hypothesis fits in with the diets and health of non-industrial cultures, and I'll outline new dietary strategies for preventing and treating obesity and certain forms of metabolic dysfunction.
Rodents are an important model organism for the study of human obesity. To study obesity in rodents, you have to make them fat first. There are many ways to do this, from genetic mutations, to brain lesions, to various diets. However, the most rapid and effective way to make a normal (non-mutant, non-lesioned) rodent obese is the "cafeteria diet." The cafeteria diet first appeared in the medical literature in 1976 (1), and was quickly adopted by other investigators. Here's a description from a recent paper (2):
In this model, animals are allowed free access to standard chow and water while concurrently offered highly palatable, energy dense, unhealthy human foods ad libitum.In other words, they're given an unlimited amount of human junk food in addition to their whole food-based "standard chow." In this particular paper, the junk foods included Froot Loops, Cocoa Puffs, peanut butter cookies, Reese's Pieces, Hostess Blueberry MiniMuffins, Cheez-its, nacho cheese Doritos, hot dogs, cheese, wedding cake, pork rinds, pepperoni slices and other industrial delicacies. Rats exposed to this food almost completely ignored their healthier, more nutritious and less palatable chow, instead gorging on junk food and rapidly attaining an obese state.
Investigators have known for decades that the cafeteria diet is a highly effective way of producing obesity in rodents, but what was interesting about this particular study from my perspective is that it compared the cafeteria diet to three other commonly used rodent diets: 1) standard, unpurified chow; 2) a purified/refined high-fat diet; 3) a purified/refined low-fat diet designed as a comparator for the high-fat diet. All three of these diets were given as homogeneous pellets, and the textures range from hard and fibrous (chow) to soft and oily like cookie dough (high-fat). The low-fat diet contains a lot of sugar, the high-fat diet contains a modest amount of sugar, and the chow diet contains virtually none. The particular high-fat diet in this paper (Research Diets D12451, 45% fat, which is high for a rat) is commonly used to produce obesity in rats, although it's not always very effective. The 60% fat version is more effective.
Consistent with previous findings, rats on every diet consumed the same number of calories over time... except the cafeteria diet-fed rats, which ate 30% more than any of the other groups. Rats on every diet gained fat compared to the unpurified chow group, but the cafeteria diet group gained much more than any of the others. There was no difference in fat gain between the purified high-fat and low-fat diets.
So in this paper, they compared two refined diets with vastly different carb:fat ratios and different sugar contents, and yet neither equaled the cafeteria diet in its ability to increase food intake and cause fat gain. The fat, starch and sugar content of the cafeteria diet was not able to fully explain its effect on fat gain. However, each diets' ability to cause fat gain correlated with its respective food reward qualities. Refined diets high in fat or sugar caused fat gain in rats relative to unpurified chow, but were surpassed by a diet containing a combination of fat, sugar, starch, salt, free glutamate (umami), interesting textures and pleasant and invariant aromas.
Although the cafeteria diet is the most effective at causing obesity in rodents, it's not commonly used because it's a lot more work than feeding pellets, and it introduces a lot of variability into experiments because each rat eats a different combination of foods.
How to Make an Obese Human Lean
In 1965, the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published a very unusual paper (3). Here is the stated goal of the investigators:
The study of food intake in man is fraught with difficulties which result from the enormously complex nature of human eating behavior. In man, in contrast to lower animals, the eating process involves an intricate mixture of physiologic, psychologic, cultural and esthetic considerations. People eat not only to assuage hunger, but because of the enjoyment of the meal ceremony, the pleasures of the palate and often to gratify unconscious needs that are hard to identify. Because of inherent difficulties in studying human food intake in the usual setting, we have attempted to develop a system that would minimize the variables involved and thereby improve the chances of obtaining more reliable and reproducible data.Here's a photo of their "system":
It's a machine that dispenses bland liquid food through a straw, at the push of a button. They don't give any information on the composition of the liquid diet, beyond remarking that "carbohydrate supplied 50 per cent of the calories, protein 20 per cent and fat 30 per cent. the formula contained vitamins and minerals in amount adequate for daily maintenance."Volunteers were given access to the machine and allowed to consume as much of the liquid diet as they wanted, but no other food. Since they were in a hospital setting, the investigators could be confident that the volunteers ate nothing else.
The first thing they report is what happened when they fed two lean people using the machine, for 16 or 9 days. Both of them maintained their typical calorie intake (~3,075 and ~4,430 kcal per day) and maintained a very stable weight during this period.
Next, the investigators did the same experiment using two "grossly obese" volunteers. Again, they were asked to "obtain food from the machine whenever hungry." Over the course of the first 18 days, the first (male) volunteer consumed a meager 275 calories per day. The second (female) volunteer consumed a ridiculously low 144 calories per day over the course of 12 days, losing 23 pounds. Without showing data, the investigators remarked that an additional three obese volunteers "showed a similar inhibition of calorie intake when fed by machine."
The first volunteer continued eating bland food from the machine for a total of 70 days, losing approximately 70 pounds. After that, he was sent home with the formula and instructed to drink 400 calories of it per day, which he did for an additional 185 days, after which his total weight loss was 200 lbs. The investigators remarked that "during all this time weight was steadily lost and the patient never complained of hunger or gastrointestinal discomfort." This is truly a starvation-level calorie intake, and to eat it continually for 255 days without hunger suggests that something rather interesting was happening in this man's body.
This machine-feeding regimen was nearly as close as one can get to a diet with no rewarding properties whatsoever. Although it contained carbohydrate and fat, it did not contain any flavor or texture to associate them with, and thus the reward value of the diet was minimized. As one would expect if food reward influences the body fat setpoint, lean volunteers maintained starting weight and a normal calorie intake, while their obese counterparts rapidly lost a massive amount of fat and reduced calorie intake dramatically without hunger. This suggests that obesity is not entirely due to a "broken" metabolism (although that may still contribute), but also at least in part to a heightened sensitivity to food reward in susceptible people. This also implies that obesity may not be a disorder, but rather a normal response to the prevailing dietary environment in affluent nations.
A second study by Dr. Michel Cabanac in 1976 confirmed that reducing food reward (by feeding bland food) lowers the fat mass setpoint in humans, using a clever method that I won't discuss for the sake of brevity (4). I learned about both of these studies through the writing of Dr. Seth Roberts, author of The Shangri-La Diet. I'd also like to thank Dr. Stephen Benoit, a researcher in the food reward field, for talking through these ideas with me to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting them.
I'd like to briefly remark that there's an anatomical basis for the idea of two-way communication between brain regions that determine reward and those that control body fatness. It's well known that the latter influence the former (think about your drive to obtain food after you've just eaten a big meal vs. after you've skipped a meal), but there are also connections from the former to the latter via a brain region called the lateral hypothalamus. The point is that it's anatomically plausible that food reward determines in part the amount of body fat a person carries.
Some people may be inclined to think "well, if food tastes bad, you eat less of it; so what!" Although that may be true to some extent, I don't think it can explain the fact that bland diets affect the calorie intake of lean and obese people differently. To me, that implies that highly rewarding food increases the body fat setpoint in susceptible people, and that food with few rewarding properties allows them to return to a lean state.
In the next few posts, I'll describe how food reward explains the effectiveness of many popular fat loss diets, I'll describe how this hypothesis fits in with the diets and health of non-industrial cultures, and I'll outline new dietary strategies for preventing and treating obesity and certain forms of metabolic dysfunction.
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/05/food-reward-dominant-factor-in-obesity.html
Tuesday 21 June 2011
Safflower Oil Study
A few people have sent me a new study claiming to demonstrate that half a tablespoon of safflower oil a day improves insulin sensitivity, increases HDL and decreases inflammation in diabetics (1). Let me explain why this study does not show what it claims.
It all comes down to a little thing called a control group, which is the basis for comparison that you use to determine if your intervention had an effect. This study didn't have one for the safflower group. What it had was two intervention groups, one given 6.4g conjugated linoleic acid (CLA; 50% c9t11 and 50% t10c12-CLA) per day, and one given 8g safflower oil. I have to guess that this study was originally designed to test the effects of the CLA, with the safflower oil group as the control group, and that the interpretation of the data changed after the results came in. Otherwise, I don't understand why they would conduct a study like this without a control group.
Anyway, they found that the safflower oil group did better than the CLA group over 16 weeks, showing a higher insulin sensitivity, higher HDL, lower HbA1c (a marker of average blood glucose levels) and lower CRP (a marker of inflammation). But they also found that the safflower group improved slightly compared to baseline, therefore they decided to attribute the difference to a beneficial effect of safflower oil. The problem is that without a control (placebo) group for comparison, there's no way to know if the improvement would have occurred regardless of treatment, due to the season changing, more regular check-ups at the doctor's office due to participating in a study, or countless other unforeseen factors. A control group is essential for the accurate interpretation of results, which is why drug studies always have placebo groups.
What we can say is that the safflower oil group fared better than the CLA group, because there was a difference between the two. However, what I think really happened is that the CLA supplement was harmful and the small dose of safflower oil had no effect. Why? Because the t10c12 isomer of CLA, which was half their pill, has already been shown by previous well-controlled studies to reduce insulin sensitivity, decrease HDL and increase inflammatory markers at a similar dose and for a similar duration (2, 3). The safflower oil group only looked good by comparison. We can add this study to the "research bloopers" file.
It's worth noting that naturally occurring CLA mixtures, similar to those found in pastured dairy and ruminant fat, have not been shown to cause metabolic problems such as those caused by isolated t10c12 CLA.
It all comes down to a little thing called a control group, which is the basis for comparison that you use to determine if your intervention had an effect. This study didn't have one for the safflower group. What it had was two intervention groups, one given 6.4g conjugated linoleic acid (CLA; 50% c9t11 and 50% t10c12-CLA) per day, and one given 8g safflower oil. I have to guess that this study was originally designed to test the effects of the CLA, with the safflower oil group as the control group, and that the interpretation of the data changed after the results came in. Otherwise, I don't understand why they would conduct a study like this without a control group.
Anyway, they found that the safflower oil group did better than the CLA group over 16 weeks, showing a higher insulin sensitivity, higher HDL, lower HbA1c (a marker of average blood glucose levels) and lower CRP (a marker of inflammation). But they also found that the safflower group improved slightly compared to baseline, therefore they decided to attribute the difference to a beneficial effect of safflower oil. The problem is that without a control (placebo) group for comparison, there's no way to know if the improvement would have occurred regardless of treatment, due to the season changing, more regular check-ups at the doctor's office due to participating in a study, or countless other unforeseen factors. A control group is essential for the accurate interpretation of results, which is why drug studies always have placebo groups.
What we can say is that the safflower oil group fared better than the CLA group, because there was a difference between the two. However, what I think really happened is that the CLA supplement was harmful and the small dose of safflower oil had no effect. Why? Because the t10c12 isomer of CLA, which was half their pill, has already been shown by previous well-controlled studies to reduce insulin sensitivity, decrease HDL and increase inflammatory markers at a similar dose and for a similar duration (2, 3). The safflower oil group only looked good by comparison. We can add this study to the "research bloopers" file.
It's worth noting that naturally occurring CLA mixtures, similar to those found in pastured dairy and ruminant fat, have not been shown to cause metabolic problems such as those caused by isolated t10c12 CLA.
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/03/safflower-oil-study.html
Using Turmeric & The Benefits: 1
Something that you traditionally see in the kitchen is an herb called Turmeric.� It is a fantastic flavoring agent and it is certainly an herb that you should be using in your dishes, but did you know that this particular herb is also good for other things?� Believe it or not, most people do not. [...]
Source: http://yourbodyyourtemple.net/health/using-turmeric-the-benefits-1/
Monday 20 June 2011
Rate Regulation Grants Announced by HHS
Carriers set health insurance premiums based on several criteria. The single biggest component is the expected cost and utilization of medical services. Then there?s the need to cover overhead (such as operations, sales costs, marketing and armies of lawyers to deal with regulation) and profit (or retained earnings for non-profits). Insurers know they don?t operate [...]
Source: http://alankatz.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/rate-regulation-grants-announced-by-hhs/
Sunblock That Takes the Heat
There are few things that can ruin a much-needed vacation, but sunburn is definitely one of them (take it from ultra-pale, quick-to-burn me, who?s managed to go from pasty white to bright red everywhere from Antigua to Boston ? yes, Boston). So as I started packing my bags for a week-long trip to the tropics, I jumped at the chance to try out Scape SPF 50+ sunblock.
Let?s start with the lotion (4 oz. for $14.99): I?m sensitive to smells, and I?ve slathered on my fair share of stinky sunscreens, but this one didn?t offend me (granted, it wasn?t a welcome coconut or citrus scent, but the odor was neutral). It wasn?t greasy, either, another fault I usually find with sunblock. The white lotion quickly disappeared as I rubbed it into my skin (though it was hard to conceal on my husband?s stubbly face ? he should?ve used the face stick, but more on that in a moment!). The issue with the fast-vanishing lotion is that it was easy to miss spots on my skin ? and I paid dearly for this in the form of a stripe of sunburn on my stomach that?s still pink two weeks after the rays first got to me. Full disclosure: I tend to prefer colored sunscreens (I know, I know ? those are supposed to be for kids) that stay colored for a while so I know what areas I still need to cover with sunblock.
Back to this sunscreen. It claimed to be waterproof and sweatproof. I did plenty of swimming and sweating while I wore it, and it seemed to withstand both. But at SPF 50+, I thought I wouldn?t need to reapply while I lounged (mostly in the shade) by the pool. The parts of me not covered by the umbrella started to turn pink after a few hours, so if you?re pale like me, be prepared to slather it on again halfway through the day.
I also used the face stick sunblock ($11.99). Its major draw is that it supposedly won?t get into your eyes, even if you sweat. I must have applied the stick a bit too close to my eyes on day one because I felt the sting. I kept it above my eyebrows after that and didn?t have any problems. The face stick is a little greasy, which is why my husband preferred to use the lotion on his face, but I don?t think women who are used to wearing facial moisturizer will mind the feeling. The stick is also clear, so I liked that there were no white spots on my face. Again, the issue with invisible sunscreen is that you?re likely to miss spots. Plus, the face stick is flat on the surface, so, just as straight-across razors don?t always shave off hairs on your rounded knees, the face stick won?t always protect spots on the curves of your face. I?m sporting a bit of a Rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer look as a result.
Lastly, I skipped my regular cherry Chapstick in favor of Scape's Athlete Lip Balm ($3.50), which has vitamin E, aloe, and antioxidants that are supposed to moisturize. It seems to have worked ? my lips were extra smooth that week, despite the harsh Aruba winds. One downside: I was conscious not to lick my lips, but I still got a taste of the lip balm, which was kind of nasty and chemical-y (unlike my cherry Chapstick).
I would use these all again, but I?d ask someone more thorough than me to make sure every spot of my skin is covered!
Meredith Bodgas, Associate Editor at What to Expect
Let?s start with the lotion (4 oz. for $14.99): I?m sensitive to smells, and I?ve slathered on my fair share of stinky sunscreens, but this one didn?t offend me (granted, it wasn?t a welcome coconut or citrus scent, but the odor was neutral). It wasn?t greasy, either, another fault I usually find with sunblock. The white lotion quickly disappeared as I rubbed it into my skin (though it was hard to conceal on my husband?s stubbly face ? he should?ve used the face stick, but more on that in a moment!). The issue with the fast-vanishing lotion is that it was easy to miss spots on my skin ? and I paid dearly for this in the form of a stripe of sunburn on my stomach that?s still pink two weeks after the rays first got to me. Full disclosure: I tend to prefer colored sunscreens (I know, I know ? those are supposed to be for kids) that stay colored for a while so I know what areas I still need to cover with sunblock. Back to this sunscreen. It claimed to be waterproof and sweatproof. I did plenty of swimming and sweating while I wore it, and it seemed to withstand both. But at SPF 50+, I thought I wouldn?t need to reapply while I lounged (mostly in the shade) by the pool. The parts of me not covered by the umbrella started to turn pink after a few hours, so if you?re pale like me, be prepared to slather it on again halfway through the day.
I also used the face stick sunblock ($11.99). Its major draw is that it supposedly won?t get into your eyes, even if you sweat. I must have applied the stick a bit too close to my eyes on day one because I felt the sting. I kept it above my eyebrows after that and didn?t have any problems. The face stick is a little greasy, which is why my husband preferred to use the lotion on his face, but I don?t think women who are used to wearing facial moisturizer will mind the feeling. The stick is also clear, so I liked that there were no white spots on my face. Again, the issue with invisible sunscreen is that you?re likely to miss spots. Plus, the face stick is flat on the surface, so, just as straight-across razors don?t always shave off hairs on your rounded knees, the face stick won?t always protect spots on the curves of your face. I?m sporting a bit of a Rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer look as a result.
Lastly, I skipped my regular cherry Chapstick in favor of Scape's Athlete Lip Balm ($3.50), which has vitamin E, aloe, and antioxidants that are supposed to moisturize. It seems to have worked ? my lips were extra smooth that week, despite the harsh Aruba winds. One downside: I was conscious not to lick my lips, but I still got a taste of the lip balm, which was kind of nasty and chemical-y (unlike my cherry Chapstick).
I would use these all again, but I?d ask someone more thorough than me to make sure every spot of my skin is covered!
Meredith Bodgas, Associate Editor at What to Expect
Source: http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/health-beauty-reviews/sunblock-that-takes-the-heat
Bipartisan cooperation on Medicare: I?m getting more optimistic
There’s been so much acrimony about health care on Capitol Hill that it’s easy to conclude that we’ll never find a political compromise on key issues. A month ago (Are we entering an era of political cooperation on Medicare?) I took the tack that there was reason for optimism. Until recently, Republicans showed essentially no [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/p0HNg_XIb8w/
Sunday 19 June 2011
Gluten-Free January Raffle Winners Selected!
Raffle winners have been selected and shirts are on their way. You know who you are. Thanks to everyone who participated and filled out the survey! For those who didn't, there's always next year.
Janine Jagger, Matt Lentzner and I are busy crunching the mountain of data we collected from the GFJ survey. We got 279 responses, which is remarkable for a survey of this nature.
Stay tuned for data!
Janine Jagger, Matt Lentzner and I are busy crunching the mountain of data we collected from the GFJ survey. We got 279 responses, which is remarkable for a survey of this nature.
Stay tuned for data!
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/03/gluten-free-january-raffle-winners.html
Take me out to the Health Wonk Review
Glenn Laffel hosts a very informative Spring Training edition of the Health Wonk Review blog carnival at Pizaazz. I hope his beloved Yankees play as poorly this year as his blog is good. Share
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/9qQwjnbFlX8/
Does Mitt Romney deserve the abuse he?s getting on health care? Yes he does
Mitt Romney took a big beating on the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page today, the same day he laid out his health care plan in the USA Today and defended his position on the topic in a speech in Michigan. I’m not a big Romney fan but had been feeling sympathetic enough toward him on [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/yBT3krVb3Ss/
Saturday 18 June 2011
Uterine Artery Embolization-non surgical Fibroids treatment
A simple scar-less procedure that requires just an overnight stay at the hospital brings hope to women. According to experts like Dr Muley, Uterine Artery Embolization (UAE), a non-surgical treatment for fibroid is fast becoming popular the world over. Until now, the most common treatment for fibroid removal was hysterectomy.
But the surgery has an irreversible side effect. After the surgery, women had to forget about conception for the rest of their lives.During an UAE, however, the blood supply to the fibroid is reduced gradually until it is completely cut off from nourishment. Even after it has shrunk, the surrounding normal uterine muscles continue to get their requisite blood supply and can survive.
Deprived of blood, nutrition and oxygen, the fibroids shrink during the next three to six months after the embolization treatment."Around 66 per cent of women who have undergone the UAE have conceived," says Dr Muley. What makes it even more popular is that single or multiple fibroid (up to 12-14 cm in size) can be effectively treated. And the chances of recurrence are almost negligible.
The advantages of UAE are several - it is done under local anesthesia, requires only a tiny incision in the skin and the recovery period is shorter than for, say, an open surgery. Besides, all the fibroid can be treated in one sitting with the patient suffering no blood loss. Recovery is quick, but in case there is excessive vaginal bleeding, all it takes is a couple of days of rest to be up on your feet again.
But the surgery has an irreversible side effect. After the surgery, women had to forget about conception for the rest of their lives.During an UAE, however, the blood supply to the fibroid is reduced gradually until it is completely cut off from nourishment. Even after it has shrunk, the surrounding normal uterine muscles continue to get their requisite blood supply and can survive.
Deprived of blood, nutrition and oxygen, the fibroids shrink during the next three to six months after the embolization treatment."Around 66 per cent of women who have undergone the UAE have conceived," says Dr Muley. What makes it even more popular is that single or multiple fibroid (up to 12-14 cm in size) can be effectively treated. And the chances of recurrence are almost negligible.
The advantages of UAE are several - it is done under local anesthesia, requires only a tiny incision in the skin and the recovery period is shorter than for, say, an open surgery. Besides, all the fibroid can be treated in one sitting with the patient suffering no blood loss. Recovery is quick, but in case there is excessive vaginal bleeding, all it takes is a couple of days of rest to be up on your feet again.
Source: http://www.aboutthehealth.com/2010/08/uterine-artery-embolization-non.html
Fat-ten-u
I recently bought the book Food in the United States, 1820s-1890. I came across an ad for an interesting product that was sold in the late 1800s called Fat-ten-u. Check your calendars, it's not April fools day anymore; this is for real. Fat-ten-u was a dietary supplement guaranteed to "make the thin plump and rosy with honest fleshiness of form." I found several more ads for it online, and they feature drawings of despondent, lean women and drawings of happy overweight women accompanied by enthusiastic testimonials such as this:"FAT-TEN-U FOODS increased my weight 39 pounds, gave me new womanly vigor and developed me finely. My two sisters also use FAT-TEN-U and because of our newly found vigor we have taken up Grecian dancing and have roles in all local productions."I'm dying to know what was in this stuff, but I can't find the ingredients anywhere.
I find this rather extraordinary, for two reasons:
- Social norms have clearly changed since the late 1800s. Today, leanness is typically considered more attractive than plumpness.
- Women had to make an effort to become overweight in the late 1800s. In 2011, roughly two-thirds of US women are considered overweight or obese, despite the fact that most of them would rather be lean.
Here are two more ads for Fat-ten-u and "Corpula foods" for your viewing pleasure:
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/04/fat-ten-u.html
Dr. Kevin Patterson on Western Diets and Health
A few readers have pointed me to an interesting NPR interview with the Canadian physician Kevin Patterson (link). He describes his medical work in Afghanistan and the Canadian arctic treating cultures with various degrees of industrialization. He discusses the "epidemiological transition", the idea that cultures experience predictable changes in their health as they go from hunter-gatherer, to agricultural, to industrial. I think he has an uncommonly good perspective on the effects of industrialization on human health, which tends to be true of people who have witnessed the effects of the industrial diet and lifestyle on diverse cultures.
A central concept behind my thinking is that it's possible to benefit simultaneously from both:
A central concept behind my thinking is that it's possible to benefit simultaneously from both:
- The sanitation, medical technology, safety technology, law enforcement and lower warfare-related mortality that have increased our life expectancy dramatically relative to our distant ancestors.
- The very low incidence of obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease and other non-infectious chronic diseases afforded by a diet and lifestyle roughly consistent with our non-industrial heritage.
But it requires discipline, because going with the flow means becoming unhealthy.
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/03/dr-kevin-patterson-on-western-diets-and.html
Friday 17 June 2011
Benefits Of Dark Chocolate: 2
Now that we have discussed dark chocolate and how it is healthy for you, let?s figure out how exactly chocolate is healthy for you!� For one, dark chocolate is actually jam-packed with an antioxidant called phenol, which actually has a lot of positive effects on your blood pressure and can actually increase the nitric oxide [...]
Source: http://yourbodyyourtemple.net/health/benefits-of-dark-chocolate-2/
Finasteride and Donating Bone Marrow
Hi there. I have been taking Finpecia for about 7 months and recently I have been considering donating bone marrow. Since starting to take finasteride I have had to stop donating blood and I was wondering if you knew if this would stop me from being able to donate marrow? I cannot find information on [...]
Source: http://www.baldingblog.com/2011/06/15/finasteride-and-donating-bone-marrow/
Good News: Smokers Pay Their Own Way
It is likely that cigarette taxes are near the external cost level at current rates of taxation. If the goal is for tobacco taxes to simply account for the purely external costs of smoking, then that policy goal has roughly been achieved. Smokers cross subsidize Social Security, as well as Medicare, meaning smokers receive less [...]
Source: http://healthblog.ncpa.org/good-news-smokers-pay-their-own-way/
Are Sideburn Transplants Done?
I have lived my whole life without sideburns as I have never been able to grow them. Are sideburn transplants an option? Are they at all common where a doctor would be comfortable doing one? I would also be interested to know if you’ve done any and if there were any problems.
Thanks.
Also, any photos you [...]
Thanks.
Also, any photos you [...]
Source: http://www.baldingblog.com/2011/06/16/are-sideburn-transplants-done/
Thursday 16 June 2011
Finasteride and Donating Bone Marrow
Hi there. I have been taking Finpecia for about 7 months and recently I have been considering donating bone marrow. Since starting to take finasteride I have had to stop donating blood and I was wondering if you knew if this would stop me from being able to donate marrow? I cannot find information on [...]
Source: http://www.baldingblog.com/2011/06/15/finasteride-and-donating-bone-marrow/
How Congestion Can be Cured Naturally: 2
It is a good time for chest congestion. That is, a lot of people are suffering from it. If you are not interested in over the counter medications, there are plenty of natural remedies for this problem. For starters, herbal tea can be extremely helpful, especially if you inhale the steam. By adding apple cider [...]
Source: http://yourbodyyourtemple.net/health/how-congestion-can-be-cured-naturally-2/
Spreading the health care cost pain to the elderly
Medicare is the ever-growing elephant dragging the country under, so I’m pleased to see that its beneficiaries are starting to feel a bit of a squeeze. In Medicare rise could mean no Social Security COLA, the AP explains how Medicare premium increases are sucking up the full Social Security cost of living increase for many [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/-Cor_kZLIRI/
Wednesday 15 June 2011
Flu Season is Here
I've noticed everyone around me getting sick lately (I seem to have become mostly immune to colds and the flu in the last couple of years), so I took a look at Google Flu Trends. Lo and behold, the United States is currently near peak flu incidence for the 2010-2011 season. Here's a graph from Flu Trends. This year's trend is in dark blue:
Flu Trends also has data for individual US states and a number of other countries.
It's time to tighten up your diet and lifestyle if you want to avoid the flu this year. Personally, I feel that eating well, managing stress effectively, and taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day in winter have helped me avoid colds and the flu.
Flu Trends also has data for individual US states and a number of other countries.
It's time to tighten up your diet and lifestyle if you want to avoid the flu this year. Personally, I feel that eating well, managing stress effectively, and taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day in winter have helped me avoid colds and the flu.
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/03/flu-season-is-here.html
Oltipraz
Oltipraz is a drug that was originally used to treat intestinal worms. It was later found to prevent a broad variety of cancers (1). This was attributed to its ability to upregulate cellular detoxification and repair mechanisms.
Researchers eventually discovered that oltipraz acts by activating Nrf2, the same transcription factor activated by ionizing radiation and polyphenols (2, 3, 4). Nrf2 activation mounts a broad cellular protective response that appears to reduce the risk of multiple health problems.
A recent paper in Diabetologia illustrates this (5). Investigators put mice on a long-term refined high-fat diet, with or without oltipraz. These carefully crafted diets are very unhealthy indeed, and when fed to rodents they rapidly induce fat gain and something that looks similar to human metabolic syndrome (insulin resistance, abdominal adiposity, blood lipid disturbances). Adding oltipraz to the diet prevented the fat gain, insulin resistance and inflammatory changes that occurred in the refined high-fat diet group.
The difference in fasting insulin was remarkable. The mice taking oltipraz had 1/7 the fasting insulin of the refined high-fat diet comparison group, and 1/3 the fasting insulin of the low-fat comparison group! Yet their glucose tolerance was normal, indicating that they were not low on insulin due to pancreatic damage. The low-fat diet they used in this study was also refined, which is why the two control groups (high-fat and low-fat) didn't diverge more in body fatness and other parameters. If they had used a group fed unrefined rodent chow as the comparator, the differences between groups would have been larger.
This shows that in addition to preventing cancer, Nrf2 activation can attenuate the metabolic damage caused by an unhealthy diet in rodents. Oltipraz illustrates the power of the cellular hormesis response. We can exploit this pathway naturally using polyphenols and other chemicals found in whole plant foods.
Researchers eventually discovered that oltipraz acts by activating Nrf2, the same transcription factor activated by ionizing radiation and polyphenols (2, 3, 4). Nrf2 activation mounts a broad cellular protective response that appears to reduce the risk of multiple health problems.
A recent paper in Diabetologia illustrates this (5). Investigators put mice on a long-term refined high-fat diet, with or without oltipraz. These carefully crafted diets are very unhealthy indeed, and when fed to rodents they rapidly induce fat gain and something that looks similar to human metabolic syndrome (insulin resistance, abdominal adiposity, blood lipid disturbances). Adding oltipraz to the diet prevented the fat gain, insulin resistance and inflammatory changes that occurred in the refined high-fat diet group.
The difference in fasting insulin was remarkable. The mice taking oltipraz had 1/7 the fasting insulin of the refined high-fat diet comparison group, and 1/3 the fasting insulin of the low-fat comparison group! Yet their glucose tolerance was normal, indicating that they were not low on insulin due to pancreatic damage. The low-fat diet they used in this study was also refined, which is why the two control groups (high-fat and low-fat) didn't diverge more in body fatness and other parameters. If they had used a group fed unrefined rodent chow as the comparator, the differences between groups would have been larger.
This shows that in addition to preventing cancer, Nrf2 activation can attenuate the metabolic damage caused by an unhealthy diet in rodents. Oltipraz illustrates the power of the cellular hormesis response. We can exploit this pathway naturally using polyphenols and other chemicals found in whole plant foods.
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/03/oltipraz.html
Food Reward: a Dominant Factor in Obesity, Part II
How to Make a Rat Obese
Rodents are an important model organism for the study of human obesity. To study obesity in rodents, you have to make them fat first. There are many ways to do this, from genetic mutations, to brain lesions, to various diets. However, the most rapid and effective way to make a normal (non-mutant, non-lesioned) rodent obese is the "cafeteria diet." The cafeteria diet first appeared in the medical literature in 1976 (1), and was quickly adopted by other investigators. Here's a description from a recent paper (2):
Investigators have known for decades that the cafeteria diet is a highly effective way of producing obesity in rodents, but what was interesting about this particular study from my perspective is that it compared the cafeteria diet to three other commonly used rodent diets: 1) standard, unpurified chow; 2) a purified/refined high-fat diet; 3) a purified/refined low-fat diet designed as a comparator for the high-fat diet. All three of these diets were given as homogeneous pellets, and the textures range from hard and fibrous (chow) to soft and oily like cookie dough (high-fat). The low-fat diet contains a lot of sugar, the high-fat diet contains a modest amount of sugar, and the chow diet contains virtually none. The particular high-fat diet in this paper (Research Diets D12451, 45% fat, which is high for a rat) is commonly used to produce obesity in rats, although it's not always very effective. The 60% fat version is more effective.
Consistent with previous findings, rats on every diet consumed the same number of calories over time... except the cafeteria diet-fed rats, which ate 30% more than any of the other groups. Rats on every diet gained fat compared to the unpurified chow group, but the cafeteria diet group gained much more than any of the others. There was no difference in fat gain between the purified high-fat and low-fat diets.
So in this paper, they compared two refined diets with vastly different carb:fat ratios and different sugar contents, and yet neither equaled the cafeteria diet in its ability to increase food intake and cause fat gain. The fat, starch and sugar content of the cafeteria diet was not able to fully explain its effect on fat gain. However, each diets' ability to cause fat gain correlated with its respective food reward qualities. Refined diets high in fat or sugar caused fat gain in rats relative to unpurified chow, but were surpassed by a diet containing a combination of fat, sugar, starch, salt, free glutamate (umami), interesting textures and pleasant and invariant aromas.
Although the cafeteria diet is the most effective at causing obesity in rodents, it's not commonly used because it's a lot more work than feeding pellets, and it introduces a lot of variability into experiments because each rat eats a different combination of foods.
How to Make an Obese Human Lean
In 1965, the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published a very unusual paper (3). Here is the stated goal of the investigators:
It's a machine that dispenses bland liquid food through a straw, at the push of a button. They don't give any information on the composition of the liquid diet, beyond remarking that "carbohydrate supplied 50 per cent of the calories, protein 20 per cent and fat 30 per cent. the formula contained vitamins and minerals in amount adequate for daily maintenance."
Volunteers were given access to the machine and allowed to consume as much of the liquid diet as they wanted, but no other food. Since they were in a hospital setting, the investigators could be confident that the volunteers ate nothing else.
The first thing they report is what happened when they fed two lean people using the machine, for 16 or 9 days. Both of them maintained their typical calorie intake (~3,075 and ~4,430 kcal per day) and maintained a very stable weight during this period.
Next, the investigators did the same experiment using two "grossly obese" volunteers. Again, they were asked to "obtain food from the machine whenever hungry." Over the course of the first 18 days, the first (male) volunteer consumed a meager 275 calories per day. The second (female) volunteer consumed a ridiculously low 144 calories per day over the course of 12 days, losing 23 pounds. Without showing data, the investigators remarked that an additional three obese volunteers "showed a similar inhibition of calorie intake when fed by machine."
The first volunteer continued eating bland food from the machine for a total of 70 days, losing approximately 70 pounds. After that, he was sent home with the formula and instructed to drink 400 calories of it per day, which he did for an additional 185 days, after which his total weight loss was 200 lbs. The investigators remarked that "during all this time weight was steadily lost and the patient never complained of hunger or gastrointestinal discomfort." This is truly a starvation-level calorie intake, and to eat it continually for 255 days without hunger suggests that something rather interesting was happening in this man's body.
This machine-feeding regimen was nearly as close as one can get to a diet with no rewarding properties whatsoever. Although it contained carbohydrate and fat, it did not contain any flavor or texture to associate them with, and thus the reward value of the diet was minimized. As one would expect if food reward influences the body fat setpoint, lean volunteers maintained starting weight and a normal calorie intake, while their obese counterparts rapidly lost a massive amount of fat and reduced calorie intake dramatically without hunger. This suggests that obesity is not entirely due to a "broken" metabolism (although that may still contribute), but also at least in part to a heightened sensitivity to food reward in susceptible people. This also implies that obesity may not be a disorder, but rather a normal response to the prevailing dietary environment in affluent nations.
A second study by Dr. Michel Cabanac in 1976 confirmed that reducing food reward (by feeding bland food) lowers the fat mass setpoint in humans, using a clever method that I won't discuss for the sake of brevity (4). I learned about both of these studies through the writing of Dr. Seth Roberts, author of The Shangri-La Diet. I'd also like to thank Dr. Stephen Benoit, a researcher in the food reward field, for talking through these ideas with me to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting them.
I'd like to briefly remark that there's an anatomical basis for the idea of two-way communication between brain regions that determine reward and those that control body fatness. It's well known that the latter influence the former (think about your drive to obtain food after you've just eaten a big meal vs. after you've skipped a meal), but there are also connections from the former to the latter via a brain region called the lateral hypothalamus. The point is that it's anatomically plausible that food reward determines in part the amount of body fat a person carries.
Some people may be inclined to think "well, if food tastes bad, you eat less of it; so what!" Although that may be true to some extent, I don't think it can explain the fact that bland diets affect the calorie intake of lean and obese people differently. To me, that implies that highly rewarding food increases the body fat setpoint in susceptible people, and that food with few rewarding properties allows them to return to a lean state.
In the next few posts, I'll describe how food reward explains the effectiveness of many popular fat loss diets, I'll describe how this hypothesis fits in with the diets and health of non-industrial cultures, and I'll outline new dietary strategies for preventing and treating obesity and certain forms of metabolic dysfunction.
Rodents are an important model organism for the study of human obesity. To study obesity in rodents, you have to make them fat first. There are many ways to do this, from genetic mutations, to brain lesions, to various diets. However, the most rapid and effective way to make a normal (non-mutant, non-lesioned) rodent obese is the "cafeteria diet." The cafeteria diet first appeared in the medical literature in 1976 (1), and was quickly adopted by other investigators. Here's a description from a recent paper (2):
In this model, animals are allowed free access to standard chow and water while concurrently offered highly palatable, energy dense, unhealthy human foods ad libitum.In other words, they're given an unlimited amount of human junk food in addition to their whole food-based "standard chow." In this particular paper, the junk foods included Froot Loops, Cocoa Puffs, peanut butter cookies, Reese's Pieces, Hostess Blueberry MiniMuffins, Cheez-its, nacho cheese Doritos, hot dogs, cheese, wedding cake, pork rinds, pepperoni slices and other industrial delicacies. Rats exposed to this food almost completely ignored their healthier, more nutritious and less palatable chow, instead gorging on junk food and rapidly attaining an obese state.
Investigators have known for decades that the cafeteria diet is a highly effective way of producing obesity in rodents, but what was interesting about this particular study from my perspective is that it compared the cafeteria diet to three other commonly used rodent diets: 1) standard, unpurified chow; 2) a purified/refined high-fat diet; 3) a purified/refined low-fat diet designed as a comparator for the high-fat diet. All three of these diets were given as homogeneous pellets, and the textures range from hard and fibrous (chow) to soft and oily like cookie dough (high-fat). The low-fat diet contains a lot of sugar, the high-fat diet contains a modest amount of sugar, and the chow diet contains virtually none. The particular high-fat diet in this paper (Research Diets D12451, 45% fat, which is high for a rat) is commonly used to produce obesity in rats, although it's not always very effective. The 60% fat version is more effective.
Consistent with previous findings, rats on every diet consumed the same number of calories over time... except the cafeteria diet-fed rats, which ate 30% more than any of the other groups. Rats on every diet gained fat compared to the unpurified chow group, but the cafeteria diet group gained much more than any of the others. There was no difference in fat gain between the purified high-fat and low-fat diets.
So in this paper, they compared two refined diets with vastly different carb:fat ratios and different sugar contents, and yet neither equaled the cafeteria diet in its ability to increase food intake and cause fat gain. The fat, starch and sugar content of the cafeteria diet was not able to fully explain its effect on fat gain. However, each diets' ability to cause fat gain correlated with its respective food reward qualities. Refined diets high in fat or sugar caused fat gain in rats relative to unpurified chow, but were surpassed by a diet containing a combination of fat, sugar, starch, salt, free glutamate (umami), interesting textures and pleasant and invariant aromas.
Although the cafeteria diet is the most effective at causing obesity in rodents, it's not commonly used because it's a lot more work than feeding pellets, and it introduces a lot of variability into experiments because each rat eats a different combination of foods.
How to Make an Obese Human Lean
In 1965, the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published a very unusual paper (3). Here is the stated goal of the investigators:
The study of food intake in man is fraught with difficulties which result from the enormously complex nature of human eating behavior. In man, in contrast to lower animals, the eating process involves an intricate mixture of physiologic, psychologic, cultural and esthetic considerations. People eat not only to assuage hunger, but because of the enjoyment of the meal ceremony, the pleasures of the palate and often to gratify unconscious needs that are hard to identify. Because of inherent difficulties in studying human food intake in the usual setting, we have attempted to develop a system that would minimize the variables involved and thereby improve the chances of obtaining more reliable and reproducible data.Here's a photo of their "system":
It's a machine that dispenses bland liquid food through a straw, at the push of a button. They don't give any information on the composition of the liquid diet, beyond remarking that "carbohydrate supplied 50 per cent of the calories, protein 20 per cent and fat 30 per cent. the formula contained vitamins and minerals in amount adequate for daily maintenance."Volunteers were given access to the machine and allowed to consume as much of the liquid diet as they wanted, but no other food. Since they were in a hospital setting, the investigators could be confident that the volunteers ate nothing else.
The first thing they report is what happened when they fed two lean people using the machine, for 16 or 9 days. Both of them maintained their typical calorie intake (~3,075 and ~4,430 kcal per day) and maintained a very stable weight during this period.
Next, the investigators did the same experiment using two "grossly obese" volunteers. Again, they were asked to "obtain food from the machine whenever hungry." Over the course of the first 18 days, the first (male) volunteer consumed a meager 275 calories per day. The second (female) volunteer consumed a ridiculously low 144 calories per day over the course of 12 days, losing 23 pounds. Without showing data, the investigators remarked that an additional three obese volunteers "showed a similar inhibition of calorie intake when fed by machine."
The first volunteer continued eating bland food from the machine for a total of 70 days, losing approximately 70 pounds. After that, he was sent home with the formula and instructed to drink 400 calories of it per day, which he did for an additional 185 days, after which his total weight loss was 200 lbs. The investigators remarked that "during all this time weight was steadily lost and the patient never complained of hunger or gastrointestinal discomfort." This is truly a starvation-level calorie intake, and to eat it continually for 255 days without hunger suggests that something rather interesting was happening in this man's body.
This machine-feeding regimen was nearly as close as one can get to a diet with no rewarding properties whatsoever. Although it contained carbohydrate and fat, it did not contain any flavor or texture to associate them with, and thus the reward value of the diet was minimized. As one would expect if food reward influences the body fat setpoint, lean volunteers maintained starting weight and a normal calorie intake, while their obese counterparts rapidly lost a massive amount of fat and reduced calorie intake dramatically without hunger. This suggests that obesity is not entirely due to a "broken" metabolism (although that may still contribute), but also at least in part to a heightened sensitivity to food reward in susceptible people. This also implies that obesity may not be a disorder, but rather a normal response to the prevailing dietary environment in affluent nations.
A second study by Dr. Michel Cabanac in 1976 confirmed that reducing food reward (by feeding bland food) lowers the fat mass setpoint in humans, using a clever method that I won't discuss for the sake of brevity (4). I learned about both of these studies through the writing of Dr. Seth Roberts, author of The Shangri-La Diet. I'd also like to thank Dr. Stephen Benoit, a researcher in the food reward field, for talking through these ideas with me to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting them.
I'd like to briefly remark that there's an anatomical basis for the idea of two-way communication between brain regions that determine reward and those that control body fatness. It's well known that the latter influence the former (think about your drive to obtain food after you've just eaten a big meal vs. after you've skipped a meal), but there are also connections from the former to the latter via a brain region called the lateral hypothalamus. The point is that it's anatomically plausible that food reward determines in part the amount of body fat a person carries.
Some people may be inclined to think "well, if food tastes bad, you eat less of it; so what!" Although that may be true to some extent, I don't think it can explain the fact that bland diets affect the calorie intake of lean and obese people differently. To me, that implies that highly rewarding food increases the body fat setpoint in susceptible people, and that food with few rewarding properties allows them to return to a lean state.
In the next few posts, I'll describe how food reward explains the effectiveness of many popular fat loss diets, I'll describe how this hypothesis fits in with the diets and health of non-industrial cultures, and I'll outline new dietary strategies for preventing and treating obesity and certain forms of metabolic dysfunction.
This post was written by Stephan Guyenet for Whole Health Source. If it appears on another website without clear attribution, or if it is used for commercial purposes, it has been plagiarized.
Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/05/food-reward-dominant-factor-in-obesity.html
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