Help Advance Diabetes Research

A University of Virginia researcher named Hannah Menefee contacted me recently to ask for our help.  She and her colleagues are conducting a study on how people with type 2 diabetes use Facebook to manage their health, and how that technology can be leveraged to support effective health communication.

If you have type 2 diabetes, and you'd like to participate in the study, please join their Diabetes Management Study Facebook group.  There, you'll receive more information about the study, you'll receive a short survey, and you may be invited into one of the study phases.

Food Reward Friday

Today's lucky "winner"... waffles!!!

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My AHS14 Talk on Leptin Resistance is Posted

The Ancestral Health Society just posted a video of my recent talk "What Causes Leptin Resistance?"  Follow the link below to access it.  Enjoy!

What Causes Leptin Resistance?

USING WATER AS A MEDICINE : DRINKING WATER ON EMPTY STOMACH

A current trend in Japan today is drinking water immediately after getting out of bed. Scientific tests have confirmed the medical value of this practice. This water treatment has been confirmed by Japanese medical authorities to completely cure certain diseases, whether they are more serious or simply mild afflictions. A list of these diseases follows.

Headaches, Body aches, Arthritis, Heart problems, Epilepsy, Obesity, Tuberculosis, Meningitis, Kidney diseases, Vomiting, Gastritis, Diabetes, Constipation, Uterine diseases, Ear and throat diseases

The Method

1) When you wake up, before doing anything, drink four 6 ounce glasses of water, or 160 milliliters. (If for any reason you cannot drink this much water at one time, you may start with as much water as you can drink, then gradually increase the amount.)

2) Brush your teeth and perform basic oral hygiene, then wait 45 minutes before eating or drinking anything.

3) After the 45 minute waiting period you may eat and drink normally.
4) Once a meal is completed, do not eat or drink anything for 2 hours.

Specific Diseases

Using the above method, the research indicates the number of days the regimen must be followed to cure each disease.

• High blood pressure – 30 days
• Gastric problems – 10 days
• Diabetes – 30 days
• Constipation – 10 days
• Cancer – 180 days
• Tuberculosis – 90 days
• Arthritis – use the method for only 3 days the first week, then return to the regular daily regimenUsing this treatment method has no side effects other than increased urination at the beginning of the program. Drinking water and staying healthy and active are ways that will better out lives. Including this water drinking regimen will also help you to stay healthy.
  Both the Chinese and Japanese drink hot tea with their meals instead of cold water. Cold water slows down the digestive process and solidifies the oily foods you have just eaten. Once these solidified oils react with the stomach acid, it is absorbed more quickly by the intestine and lines the intestinal wall. The long term accumulation of these digested oils can lead to cancer. Perhaps Western cultures should adopt this practice, as there is everything to gain and nothing to lose.
  About Heart Attacks
  Women should be aware that pain in the left arm is not the only a sign of a heart attack
  A heart attack may occur even without a chest pain
  Other symptoms of a heart attack are nausea and intense sweating
  About 60 percent of people who have a heart attack while sleeping do not wake up
  Be aware of any pain that is in the jaw. You may be awaken from a sound sleep by this type of pain. It could be a sign of a heart attack.
  Let us be careful and notice the possible symptoms of a heart attack. One cardiologist says that if we are willing to send this to everyone we know, and they do the same, at least one life will be saved.
  Please be a true friend and send this article to all your friends you care about. THANKS TO  : BANOOSH.COM
  
  

Thoughts on the McDougall Advanced Study Weekend

For those of you who aren't familiar with him, Dr. John McDougall is a doctor and diet/health advocate who recommends a very low fat, high starch, whole food vegan diet to control weight and avoid chronic disease.  He's been at it for a long time, and he's a major figure in the "plant-based diet" community (i.e., a diet including little or no animal foods).

Dr. McDougall invited me to participate in his 3-day Advanced Study Weekend retreat in Santa Rosa, CA.  My job was to give my talk on insulin and obesity, and participate in a panel discussion/debate with Dr. McDougall in which we sorted through issues related to low-carb, Paleo, and the health implications of eating animal foods.  I was glad to receive the invitation, because I don't see myself as a diet partisan, and I believe that my evidence-based information is applicable to a variety of diet styles.  I saw the Weekend as an opportunity to extend my thoughts to a new community, challenge myself, and maybe even learn a thing or two.  It was particularly interesting to compare and contrast the Advanced Study Weekend with the Ancestral Health Symposium, which is more Paleo- and low-carb-friendly.

General Observations

The attendees were a lot older than AHS attendees.  I estimate that most of them were in their 60s, although there were some young people in attendance.

I don't place too much emphasis on peoples' personal appearance at conferences like this.  You don't know what a person's background, genetics, or personal struggles may be, you don't know how closely they adhere to the program, and you don't know to what degree a group of people might be self-selected for particular traits*.  But I will note that Dr. McDougall, his family, and many of the other starch-based/plant-based diet advocates tended to be extremely lean with low fat and muscle mass.  They also tended to have a healthy and energetic appearance and demeanor.  As I would expect, decades of exceptionally high starch intake hasn't made them obese or obviously ill.

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What about the Other Weight Loss Diet Study??

The same day the low-fat vs low-carb study by Bazzano and colleagues was published, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a meta-analysis that compared the effectiveness of "named diet programs".  Many people have interpreted this study as demonstrating that low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets are both effective for weight loss, and that we simply need to pick a diet and stick with it, but that's not really what the study showed.  Let's take a closer look.

Johnston and colleagues sifted through PubMed for studies that evaluated "named diet programs", such as Ornish, Atkins, LEARN, Weight Watchers, etc (1).  In addition, the methods state that they included any study as low-carbohydrate that recommended less than 40% of calories from carbohydrate, was funded by the Atkins foundation, or was "Atkins-like".  These criteria weren't extended to the low-fat diet: only studies of name-brand low-fat diets like the Ornish diet were included, while the meta-analysis excluded low-fat diet studies whose guidelines were based on recommendations from government and academic sources, even though the latter group represents the majority of the evidence we have for low-fat diets.  The inclusion criteria were therefore extremely asymmetrical in how they represented low-carb and low-fat diets.  This fact explains the unusual findings of the paper.

The abstract immediately activated my skeptic alarm, because it states that at the one-year mark, low-carbohydrate diets and low-fat diets both led to a sustained weight loss of about 16 pounds (7.3 kg).  Based on my understanding of the weight loss literature, that number seems far too high for the low-fat diet, and also too high for the low-carbohydrate diet.

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Low-carbohydrate vs. Low-fat diets for Weight Loss: New Evidence

A new high-profile study compared the weight loss and cardiovascular effects of a low-carbohydrate diet vs. a low-fat diet.  Although many studies have done this before, this one is novel enough to add to our current understanding of diet and health.  Unlike most other studies of this nature, diet adherence was fairly good, and carbohydrate restriction produced greater weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor improvements than fat restriction at the one-year mark.  Yet like previous studies, neither diet produced very impressive results.

The Study

Lydia A. Bazzano and colleagues at Tulane University randomly assigned 148 obese men and women without cardiovascular disease into two groups (1):

1. Received instructions to eat less than 40 grams of carbohydrate per day, plus one low-carbohydrate meal replacement per day.  No specific advice to alter calorie intake.  Met regularly with dietitians to explain the dietary changes and maintain motivation.
2. Received instructions to eat less than 30 percent of calories from fat, less than 7 percent of calories as saturated fat, and 55 percent of calories from carbohydrate, plus one low-fat meal replacement per day.  No specific advice to alter calorie intake.  This is based on NCEP guidelines, which are actually designed for cardiovascular risk reduction and not weight loss.  Met regularly with dietitians to explain the dietary changes and maintain motivation.

Participants were followed up for one year, with data reported for 3 month, 6 month, and 12 month timepoints.  This study actually measured body fat percentage, but unfortunately did so using bioelectrical impedance (like on some bathroom scales), which is essentially meaningless in this context.

Results

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Less Sleep in Teen Years Tied to More Pounds at 21

THURSDAY, Aug. 28, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Lack of sleep not only puts teens at risk for poor grades, it also puts them at increased risk for obesity, researchers warn.

The study authors analyzed data collected from more than 10,000 Americans when they were aged 16 and 21. Nearly one-fifth of them got less than six hours of sleep a night when they were age 16, and this group was 20 percent more likely to be obese at age 21 than those who got more than eight hours of sleep per night at age 16, the investigators found.

Although lack of exercise and too much time spent watching television were also risk factors for obesity, these behaviors did not account for the link between lack of sleep and obesity, according to the study published online recently in the Journal of Pediatrics.

"Lack of sleep in your teenage years can stack the deck against you for obesity later in life. Once you're an obese adult, it is much harder to lose weight and keep it off. And the longer you are obese, the greater your risk for health problems like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer," study author Shakira Suglia, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City, said in a university news release.

"The message for parents is to make sure their teenagers get more than eight hours a night. A good night's sleep does more than help them stay alert in school. It helps them grow into healthy adults," Suglia added.

Teens should get nine to 10 hours of sleep a night, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It's known that daytime sleepiness and fatigue affect what and how people eat by triggering cravings and altering appetite. For example, sleep-deprived people find it easier to buy calorie-laden fast food rather than preparing a healthy meal.

SOURCE: Columbia University, news release, August 2014

Rate of drug OD deaths in city has jumped by 41% in four years, Health Dept. reveals

A Overdose Prevention Rescue Kit 

The rate of drug overdose deaths in the city has soared by 41% since 2010, data released Thursday by the city Health Department revealed.
Driven by a rise in heroin and prescription drug abuse, the drug overdose death rate jumped from 8.2 for every 100,000 New Yorkers in 2010 to 11.6 in 2013.

In all, 782 New Yorkers died from accidental overdoses in 2013, up from 541 in 2010, the Health Department said.

The vast majority of the deaths - 77% - involved an opioid such as heroin or prescription pain killers.

The death rate from heroin doubled over the same period, from 3.1 to 6.2 for every 100,000 New Yorkers. Some 420 people overdosed on heroin in 2013, more than double the 209 deaths in 2010

The Bronx had the highest heroin death rate at 8.8, followed closely by Staten Island at 8.6. Queens saw the sharpest increase, from 1.9 to 4.3.

Residents of poor neighborhoods were still mostly likely to OD on heroin, but rich neighborhoods saw the biggest spike - a 195% jump over three years.

Meanwhile, prescription drug deaths were on the rise in Brooklyn and Queens, and residents of the wealthiest neighborhoods were most likely to die from the drugs.Staten Island, which has experienced an epidemic of prescription drug abuse, had the highest rate of deaths from those drugs in 2013, but after an aggressive effort to target the drugs there the death rate dropped by 32% since 2011.

“After seeing a troubling increase in opioid overdose deaths in Staten Island, the Department took an aggressive approach to save lives. Over the last two years, the Health Department educated both health care providers and residents on the risks of these highly addictive drugs, and worked with community groups, syringe access programs, and first responders to increase overdose reversals with naloxone,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett.

“Though we have seen progress in Staten Island, there is still much more work to be done.”

She said the department plans to next bring a similar program to the Bronx.