There is, of course, stuff we can chew and swallow that isn’t food. Play-Doh comes to mind. As does Silly Putty.
My thoughts turned to those substances, among others, when my friends at Time magazine asked me recently to opine on the suggestion that junk foods should carry warning labels. My first inclination was: No, that’s too much. But then it dawned on me: Is anything that …
Should junk foods carry warning labels?
I was recently on the Katie Couric Show to discuss integrative medicine. Somewhat ironically, I returned from Manhattan that same day to a waiting email from a colleague, forwarding me a rather excoriating critique of integrative medicine and asking me for my opinion.
The juxtaposition, it turns out, was something other than happenstance. The Cleveland Clinic has recently introduced the use of herbal medicines as an option for its patients, generating considerable media attention. Some of …
A holistic view on integrative medicine
A column entitled “The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease” appeared in the Wall Street Journal recently. To spare you any guessing about where this is headed, I’ll tell you right away: The column itself was pretty darn questionable.
The article starts off very dubiously when the author, Nina Teicholz, tells us that a now somewhat infamous study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine concluded, that “saturated fat …
Don’t take dietary advice from non-experts
We have long had abundant reason to believe that most of us living in the modern world consume too much sodium and would benefit from consuming less. But whether the topic is salt, or saturated fat, or calories, or even the health effects of consuming vegetables and fruits — saltation (the jumping from one position to another) seems to be the prevailing inclination in modern nutrition. Certainly it …
Salt in our diet: The impact of recent studies
The recent concentration of misleading media hooey about health has been excruciating, but the problem is perennial. I trust I needn’t make the case that you are under constant assault by distorted, contorted, titillating, and insipid headlines. This is certainly true in my domain of health and medicine; it may well be true more generally, but I tend to limit my commentary to the realm of my actual expertise. But to …
The deadly consequences of media distortion in health and medicine
Weight is not a behavior, and weight is not a choice. Nobody wakes up and decides what to weigh today. In an age when healthy and unhealthy behaviors are increasingly subject to incentives and disincentives, respectively, this is all too easily forgotten.
Of course, weight is largely the byproduct of behaviors and choices, namely what and how much we eat, and what and how much we do: calories in and calories …
Weight loss resistance is real
Among the more contentious issues regarding health and weight control — perhaps surprisingly, contentious among professionals and the general public alike — is the role of personal responsibility. Unfortunately, this readily devolves into discord, because the cultural tendency of our time is denigrate those with whom we disagree, and hunker down in our distal, opposing corner. Just take a look at Congress to see how well this is working …
Obesity: It’s time to compromise and meet in the middle
The media headlines attached to the major medical news story of the past week might have been: “Shocking but true: Nearly 1 in 10 US children under the age of 5 is obese!” Had that been the headline, it would indeed have been every bit as true as it is shocking. And the really shocking part is: that’s the good news! Hold that thought, please.
Some years ago, at the prompting …
Has the tide really turned against childhood obesity?
A paper published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association) highlights the importance of nutrient fortification to the diets of our children. The researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to determine the sources of micronutrients in the diets of over 7,000 kids ages 2 to 18, and assessed overall dietary intake in this cohort assembled …
Fortification masks our deplorable dietary circumstances
Increasingly, the stuff we buy is electronic. In fact, not only that, but increasingly the stuff we buy with is electronic, too. We are using gizmos to shop for gadgets, or possibly gadgets to shop for gizmos.
In any event, we are ever more frequently in the company of the energy fields our electronic devices, and in particular our smart phones, generate. This deserves more attention than most of us accord …
Cell phones and brain cancer: Is cellular technology innocuous?
As a scientist with a brain naturally inclined to skepticism and analysis, I suppose my spiritualism may be best captured by: Keep the faith, but get the data. While some of my fellow skeptalytics, if I may coin such a term to catalog us, may be inclined to renounce that first clause altogether, thinking there is no need for faith, I am obliged to disagree.
We are all a mass of electrons …
Keep the faith, but get the data
With the exception of rare and particularly bleak days, I don’t tend to think of myself as a moron — nor, as far as I can tell, do those who know me well and love me. I will hazard a guess that neither you nor those who love you think of you as a moron, either. So let’s be bold, proffer one another the mutual benefit of …
We are missing the big picture when it comes to nutrition
Relevant research and conventional wisdom alike suggest that, despite their irresistible perennial tug on our collective conscience, New Year’s resolutions generally have about the staying power of champagne bubbles. Pledged to ourselves and one another in the short, dark days of late December, sorrowfully few survive to see the crocuses come up. Some studies suggest 20 percent or so live that long. Frankly, I’m surprised the numbers are that good.
The …
Why it’s hard to keep your New Year’s resolution
I rather doubt you need me to bring the roiling statin debate to your attention, given its prominence in scientific circles and mass media alike. In essence, a new set of guidelines for the use of lipid-lowering drugs to prevent heart disease was issued with considerable fanfare and then set off a firestorm of controversy. The old approach relied heavily on levels of LDL cholesterol, while the new approach relies on …
The statin debate ignores the signal of lifestyle as medicine
Hippocrates recognized the power of lifestyle as medicine some 2,500 years ago, testimony to his wisdom and prescience. As president-elect of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, I celebrate the possibility of finding our way back to a future informed by such insight.
But for now, in the immediate aftermath of announcement and ongoing debate about just how many of us should take statins, let’s consider …
Lifestyle is the blockbuster drug few people take
We have long known that sleep is of profound importance to health. It is a requirement for living, much like breathing, but with awake and asleep playing out over longer spans and to slower rhythms than inhalation and exhalation. Sleep is essential. We must turn off if we are to go on.
Unlike many of the factors that affect health profoundly, the impact of sleep is both immediate and intimate. You …
The impact of sleep is both immediate and intimate
In medicine, we pledge: primum non nocere. First, do no harm. But before we can do no harm as doctors, we need to be doctors. And before we can be doctors, we need to be human beings. Being a doctor is a great privilege, but it is a subordinate privilege. Being human comes first.
I distinctly recall the time in my medical education when I realized I was becoming more medical …
Doctors need to remember that they need to be human first
Recently, colleagues and I published what I consider a very important paper in the American Journal of Public Health, indicating that tens of thousands of relatively young women who have undergone hysterectomy are dying needlessly because of an over-generalized fear of hormone replacement. Publication in the the Journal of the American Medical Association of a rich compilation of findings from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) trial does nothing to change our …
Hormone replacement and the profound importance of maybe
For reasons I confess I don’t quite understand, zombies are in these days. They populate blockbuster movies, TV shows, and even commercials. There are the classic, grisly, menacing variety, and even some new-age variants that seem almost cuddly, in a creepy sort of way.
But whatever explains the fascination with zombies, they seem to belong to that same taxonomic category of interest as purple cows of silly poem fame: People …
Our children will be living a growing number of zombie years
I have been a loyal patron of the Karma Hair Salon in New Haven, Conn. for at least the past 15 years. Whenever my hair looks good, it is thanks to Karma and owner Cheryl McMahon’s expert attention to my unruly head (the thickness of my hair — a good problem, I know! — could give a yak envy; and I have more cowlicks than several small countries). If ever my hair doesn’t look …
Medical training is a product of willful preparation
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