Posted by Tim at Jan 30th, 2007 in Main
Michael Pollen is an award winning and well known writer about food, architecture, agriculture, gardens, drugs. He particularly focuses on mankind’s intersections with these areas.
Last Sunday he penned a typically extensive article in the New York Times Magazine about man’s relationship with food. His basic theme is that we should eat less food, particularly meat and avoid processed foods to the maximum extent possible. You should read the entire article which can be found here, which is too extensive to summarize in this blog. However, he does close out the article with nine “rules of thumb” for eating, which he has collected in his “nutritional odyssey,” which I’ve summarized below:
- Eat (real) food. In other words avoid highly processed substances or substances that our forebears would not have recognized as foods. Think non dairy creamer as a “non food.”
- Foods bearing health claims don’t necessarily have a good pedigree. The claims are dubious and the foods apt to be heavily processed. Margarine started out as a way to improve health. Low fat snack bars, etc. are not healthful.
- Avoid food products that contain ingredients that are either more than five in number, unpronounceable or unfamiliar. Read labels.
- Expand your shopping horizons beyond the traditional supermarket. Think farmer’s markets.
- Pay more—eat less. Don’t be afraid to spend more money for quality foods.
”All tomatoes are not created equal.” Calorie restriction is a proven health benefiting activity.
- Eat more plants, especially leaves. Try to treat meat as a side dish, not as the main dish. Besides being healthful vegetables and legumes have fewer calories.
- Borrow from the basic tenets of the French, Italian and Japanese diets. For example the French eat a wide variety of foods but don’t snack (and they get more exercise.) Italian meals are high in carbs but low in meats. Japanese eat lots of vegetables.
- Cook your own food. This way you know what is in it and you can better control your intake of quality foods and eliminate unnecessary and often unhealthy ingredients. Grow your own food if possible (tough one to follow!)
- Eat like an omnivore. Diversify your diet widely. Diversity in your diet will help you attain your nutritional needs.
READ THE WHOLE THING HERE.
While some of Mr. Pollen's ideas are tough to follow, such as growing your own food, his general ideas about eating less meat, avoiding highly processed foods and, importantly, seriously studying and learning about food so that you can be a more informed consumer of food are impressive.
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Posted by Tim at Jan 27th, 2007 in Main
A new study, reported here in the Los Angeles Times, indicates that living close to a highway can cause permanent impairment to lung function.
“The 13-year study of more than 3,600 children in 12 Central and Southern California communities found that the damage from living within 500 yards of a freeway is about the same as that from living in communities with the highest pollution levels, the team reported Thursday in the online version of the medical journal Lancet.”
While some studies results seem almost counter intuitive in their results, this appears to be obvious. It clearly can’t help children’s lungs to be constantly breathing the toxic fumes emitted by trucks, cars and busses.
“In the new study, W. James Gauderman (lead author and epidemiologist at the Keck School of Medicine of USC) and his colleagues found that by their 18th birthday, children who lived within 500 yards of a freeway had a 3% deficit in the amount of air they could exhale and a 7% deficit in the rate at which it could be exhaled compared with children who lived at least 1,500 yards, or nearly a mile, from a freeway. The effect was independent of the overall pollution in their community.”
Normally families to take into consideration the noise and additional traffic hassles of living near a freeway in their housing decisions. But I wonder how many carefully consider the health effects on themselves and their children. This new study makes that imperative.
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Posted by Tim at Jan 21st, 2007 in Main
This HealthDay News article via Forbes describes a study that indicates that certain medicines designed to lower blood pressure may have a very negative side effect: increased risk of diabetes.
There are several major classes of drugs that are used to treat diabetes and the link to diabetes is quite different depending on the class of drugs used.
The two drug classes most linked to an increased risk of diabetes are: beta blockers and diuretics. The two drug classes with the least link to diabetes are: ACE inhibitors and ARBS.
If you are taking either beta blockers or diuretics for your diabetes, it’s probably worth while to consult with your doctor to see if another drug class with a lower risk of diabetes side effects could be used. Doctors emphasize that for some patients the diabetes side effect is definitely less of a problem than leaving the condition untreated with either beta blockers or diuretics. Therapy must be individualized for each patient based on their overall condition.
The article makes the tangential point that lifestyle changes are as effective as pharma in reducing the risk of getting Type II diabetes in many patients.
According to the article: “Researchers from Leicester reviewed studies that measured the effects of different interventions — lifestyle, diabetes drugs and anti-obesity drugs — on people with impaired glucose tolerance. They found that lifestyle changes, such as switching to a healthier diet and increasing exercise, were at least as effective as taking drugs. On average, the study found, lifestyle changes helped to reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by around half and were also less likely to have adverse side effects.”
Read the whole article here.
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Posted by Tim at Jan 15th, 2007 in Main
This Daily Mall article sounds a very discordant note by indicating that some researchers feel that there may be a link between the widely prescribed and very effective cholesterol fighting drugs called statins and Parkinson’s disease. If true, this would be a major bombshell in the medical community because statins are now felt to be one the most significant pharma advances of the last century. Statins lower cholesterol and fight heart disease and strokes.
The study found that people with very low LDL (low density lypo-proteins) are three times more likely to develop Parkinson’s. Statins directly lower LDL (also called “bad” cholesterol.)
According to the article, most medical experts feel that it is entirely too early to draw any conclusions from this study and that statins are proven life savers whose should not be discontinued based on this very preliminary study.
See our earlier post on the same subject, based on a NYT article here.
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Posted by Tim at Jan 6th, 2007 in Main
In a HealthDay article via Forbes, Dr. David L. Katz, an associate professor of public health and director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine reports on the side effects of weight loss drugs like sibutramine (Meridia), orlistat (Xenical) and rimonabant (Acomplia).
Dr Katz does not feel that obesity is likely to be solved by pharma.
Here are his extremely insightful words as quoted in the article: “Obesity is less about the body doing anything wrong than it is about an environment that is all wrong for our bodies. We are adapted to survive in a world where calories are scarce and physical activity demands high. To use pharmacotherapy to fight obesity, we are, in essence, hoping to redirect the fundamental activities of human metabolism. I don't think we'll ever succeed in doing so, without dire cost in toxicity and side effects.”
Articulately and concisely Dr. Katz has stated the reality. And it’s a reality that Americans really don’t want to hear in my opinion. Americans like the quick fix, and there is no quick fix to the obesity tsunami. Diet and exercise, diet and exercise are true solutions, not pharma.
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Posted by Tim at Jan 2nd, 2007 in Main
In a surprise finding, this NYT article reports that a new study may have found a link between low levels of LDL cholesterol and Parkinson’s disease. LDL is so the so called “bad” cholesterol and a low reading is normally considered a benefit that leads to a lower risk of heart disease. So it’s somewhat counter intuitive that this study would indicate a link between low LDL and Parkinson’s.
The study indicted that those in the lowest 25 percentile of LDL had a two to three and a half times greater risk factor for Parkinson’s.
According to the article the study could not find a causative relationship between lowered levels of LDL and Parkinson’s.
Doctors quoted in the article urged patients not to adjust their diets in light of this new information.
This seems to be on of those counter intuitive studies results that needs a lot more study before someone can truly evaluate what it might mean for our national health, if it means anything at all.
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