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20/20 InSights

September 2008 - Posts

  • Old Wives' Tales

    When it comes to health and wellness, there are soooooo many old wives' tales out there.  While there may be truth to some of these, the rest belong in the fiction section of your local bookstore.

    MSN had a nice little summary of 5 old wives' tales that are common in health and wellness.  They are:

    1. Cell phones are dangerous to use in hospitals because they interfere with medical equipment (JURY'S OUT)
    2. It's safe to follow the "5-second" rule for food dropped on the floor (FALSE)
    3. Cracking your knuckles can cause arthritis (FALSE)
    4. Cola-type soft drinks may damage your kidneys (TRUE)
    5. "Double dipping" spreads germs from one chip to another (TRUE)

    I've addressed other old wives' tales in the past, such as here.  However, I'm curious to hear from you.  Are there any old wives' tales out there that you've wondered about?  Is there anything that you or others have tended to believe, but you wondered, "Is that REALLY true?"  If so, post a comment here, and I'll do some digging.  I'll then write a blog post covering what I found out about the topics you suggested.

     

     

    Posted Sep 30 2008, 10:45 AM by jkrieger with no comments
  • Tuesday Twosome

    Got a couple topics to talk about today.....

    Cancer Crapola

    In a past blog, I told you about bogus medical devices that were supposed to cure cancer.

    Cancer-curing medical devices aren't the only things that are bogus.  You'll often find supplements that are supposed to "cure" cancer as well.  In fact, 5 supplement companies are facing lawsuits from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for marketing cancer cures.  Six others settled out of court.

    Cancer is such a difficult disease.  People who suffer from it are often willing to try anything to help themselves get better.  I hate it when I see companies try to take advantage of people's desperation in such difficult times.

    Treadmill Typing

    In a past blog, I talked about "walk and work" desks...workstations that were combined with a treadmill.

    The New York Times recently had an article about this.  More and more people have been purchasing the commercial version of these Walkstations, or setting up their own.  And it doesn't stop there.  There's now a growing number of walk-and-work blogs, as well as a growing social network of office-walkers.  The Mutual of Omaha has put 4 walkstations on their call floor as part of a small study to see if these stations could help improve employee health.

    And these walkstations are working.  One man lost 16 pounds in two months, walking 2 hours per day at work.

    Nothing can improve your daily energy expenditure like walking.  When you walk at only 1 mile per hour, you double your energy expenditure over sitting.  In fact, if you used one of these walkstations for half of your work day, you would expend an extra 500 calories per day!  That's as much as you would get in a workout in the gym.  An extra 500 calories per day would be 52 pounds of weight loss per year, assuming everything else is equal. 

    So, nothing beats getting more walking into your day.  And if you can't have one of these walkstations at your desk, get a pedometer and make an effort to get as many steps in per day as possible.

     

    Posted Sep 23 2008, 01:21 PM by jkrieger with no comments
  • Metabolism Fiction

    I came across the following article on MSN Health today:

    Metabolism Fact and Fiction

    The article is supposed to tell you what is fact and what is fiction in regards to metabolism and weight loss.  However, some of what they claim to be fact is more along the lines of fiction.

    On the very first page, it says, "different studies have suggested that 5 or 6 ice cold glasses of water could help you burn about 10 extra calories a day, equaling about 1 pound of nearly effortless weight loss each year."

    I hate statements that say, "Studies suggest" without any references to the studies.  I've seen such "studies suggest" statements before, when in fact there are no such studies.

    But, let's say there's a study or two that shows 5-6 glasses of water will help you expend an extra 10 calories per day.

    Big deal.

    On paper, everything else being equal, yeah, you might lose an extra pound per year.  But in reality, it doesn't work this way.  You can't micromanage your body like this.  First, the calories you eat each day can vary dramatically from one day to the next, even if you're perfect at meal tracking.  This is because you can't measure precisely what's goes in your body.  That 100 calorie yogurt you eat, for example, may have 80 calories or 120 calories (there's a margin of error on food labels).

    Also, our bodies are pretty good at making adjustments to small changes in energy balance, so that our weight stays pretty stable when it comes to small changes.  I wrote about this in another blog.  You need much larger changes in energy balance to "jolt" your body into losing weight.

    On the second page, the article mentions research from Utah that indicates drinking water may boost metabolism.  However, this research, to my knowledge, was never published in a scientific journal (I did a PubMed search for one of the study's authors, E. Wayne Askew, and nothing turned up).    This strongly suggests that the methodology of this study wasn't strong enough for publication, and its results may have been questionable.

    On the third page, the article says that your metabolism drops as you lose weight, which makes it harder to keep off.  While it's true that your metabolic rate decreases with weight loss, this has nothing to do with why you regain weight.  In fact, one study clearly showed that resting metabolic rate was not related to 4-year weight gain in women who had lost weight.

    The decrease in metabolic rate is perfectly proportional to your weight loss (there's a direct relationship between body weight and metabolic rate), so you can't stop the decrease in metabolic rate no matter how hard you try.

    On the seventh page, the article says you will boost your metabolism by 100 calories if you add 3 pounds of muscle.  This is false; 3 pounds of muscle will only boost your metabolism by 18 calories.

    The rest of the articles were accurate for the most part.

    Articles like this make me think that we really need a factcheck.org of the nutrition world.

     

     

    Posted Sep 16 2008, 10:27 AM by jkrieger with 4 comment(s)
  • Banning fast food restaurants?

    Some of you may already know that California was the first state to ban trans fats in restaurants.

    Apparently they're taking it one step further.  Los Angeles has put a moratorium on fast food restaurants in low-income and minority neighborhoods.

    I don't really see how a moratorium like this would do much good.  First, there's already tons of fast-food restaurants in these areas.  People are still going to eat there.  Banning the opening of new ones isn't going to help anything.

    Second, it doesn't address the primary reason why low-income people eat fast food in the first place...it's cheap and easy.  If you ban a fast food restaurant, people will just go look elsewhere for one.  Or, they'll go to a convience store and find food that is just as bad.

    L.A. councilwoman Jan Perry said the law is intended to attract healthy alternatives and grocery stores, which are few and far between in poor neighborhoods.

    I still don't see how that will help.  Places that sell healthy alternatives, and grocery stores, aren't attracted to these areas, probably due to the higher crime rates.  Also, some places that sell healthy food simply are out of the income range of some of the people in these areas.  I doubt Whole Paycheck, err, I mean Whole Foods would have much success setting up in an area like this.

    I think Los Angeles should find other ways to help encourage healthy eating in the lower-income neighborhoods.  For example, maybe they could give tax breaks to fast-food businesses that offer healthy alternatives that cost the same as less healthy ones.

    I'd like to hear your opinions.  How should Los Angeles tackle the problem of poor eating habits in lower income neighborhoods?  Is it even something that is possible to do something about?

     

     

    Posted Sep 08 2008, 05:06 PM by jkrieger with 1 comment(s)
  • Friday Fusion

    A lot of different little blurbs to talk about today, a "fusion" of topics if you will.....

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    Most Important Meal of the Day Part Deaux

    In a past blog I talked about the importance of breakfast.  Let's add another study to the growing body of evidence supporting eating breakfast in weight control.

    A study published in Diabetes Care found an inverse relationship between breakfast eating and BMI.  Fewer breakfast meals per week were associated with a higher BMI.

    There's just something about breakfast that "sets" your appetite and blood sugar regulation for the rest of the day.  So don't miss it!

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    More Meals = Less Metabolic Syndrome

    As a 20/20 client, you already know the importance of multiple meals per day, so I'm preaching to the choir here, but it never hurts to mention studies that support what you're doing.

    In the journal Obesity, researchers found that eating meals regularly was inversely associated with risk for metabolic syndrome.  People who ate on a regular basis on were 73% less likely to have metabolic syndrome.

    So chalk up another point for multiple small meals per day when it comes to your health.

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    Morning Protein Power

    I can't seem to get away from this breakfast theme.  Dr. Wayne Campbell (who I met last year at the Protein Summit in Charleston) of Purdue University published a study showing how people had better satiety when they ate more protein at breakfast versus lunch or dinner.

    This was a pretty cool study.  First, the subjects in the study were all overweight.  He then put them on two diets.  On the first diet, their protein intake was normal.  On the second diet, they ate additional protein.  This additional protein was either added at breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or was divided evenly throughout the day.

    The people who ate a lot of protein at breakfast had the greatest feelings of fullness throughout the day.

    It makes you think how American has got it all wrong when it comes to breakfast.  For breakfast, we often eat cereal, or pancakes, or oatmeal, or some other high carbohydrate food.  But this is backwards...we should be loading up on the protein in the morning instead.

    So get your protein for breakfast, whether that's some whey protein mixed in with your oatmeal, or cottage cheese, or a protein shake, or eggs and ham, or something along those lines.

     

    Posted Sep 05 2008, 11:13 AM by jkrieger with no comments
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