We have, it seems, moved on from acknowledging it takes a village to raise a human being. We are well into the realm of realization that it takes a village just to be one. More and more studies are demonstrating the importance of the germs that outnumber our cells by an order of magnitude at least, to virtually every aspect of physiology. But while epiphanies of this …
The American Heart Association recently published a sobering “scientific statement” on severe obesity among children and adolescents in the U.S. in their flagship journal, Circulation. The report, predictably spawning widespread attention in the popular press, suggests that by reasonable criteria, between 4 percent and 6 percent of our kids between the ages of 2 and 19 have severe obesity.
Those percentages probably don’t fully convey how common that makes this ominous …
You probably already know that what you do know about your medicine could kill you. You may not know that what you don’t know could do so as well. Hold that somber thought — we’ll get back to it.
You, and I, and everyone else has seen those direct-to-patient drug ads that Big Pharma runs on primetime television. Invariably, they feature a person skipping through butterflies and wildflowers, demonstrating the …
One of the more salient and concerning items of medical news reported this past week is an analysis by the CDC indicating that there is 10 times as much Lyme disease in the U.S. as formal reporting channels suggest. Rather than the 30,000 official cases each year, which would already make Lyme the most common tick-borne illness in the country — there are roughly 300,000 cases. An increase in Lyme prevalence by …
Imagine a family — or for that matter, any number of families — in which everyone is hungry, thin as a rail, struggling to get enough to eat, and prone to starvation. Imagine the familial skin tautly stretched over protuberant ribs.
Now imagine that Mom — it could just as well be Dad, but we have data to suggest it is, indeed, more likely to be Mom — gazes dolefully at …
I suppose it may help diffuse any relevant tensions to get the punch line out of the way: I have a prostate, and in the context of my mostly-plant diet, will continue to eat fish and take a daily omega-3 supplement (krill oil in my case). We will, as well, continue using various omega-3 supplements in varying doses for specific therapeutic purposes in my clinic.
And now, let’s turn to the …
That breakfast is important is denoted by the name itself. At some point, we either break our fast, or just keep fasting — and eventually, starve. So for those of us disinclined to starve, fast breaking has to happen at some point. By convention, that’s breakfast.
Much else about breakfast, what we eat and when for instance, also tends to be a matter …
There is a certain irony in the nearly immediate juxtaposition of the rare introduction of a new FDA-approved drug for weight loss (Belviq) to the marketplace and the recognition of obesity as a “disease” by the AMA. A line from the movie Jerry Maguire comes to mind: “You complete me!” Drugs need diseases; diseases need drugs.
And that’s part of what has me completely worried. The notion that obesity is a disease will inevitably invite a …
Everyone has opinions. You probably know what they say about that. But leaving aside the olfactory qualities of all the opinions to which we are entitled, we at least tend to know when our opinions are just opinions. But not with nutrition, where not only does everyone have an opinion, but everyone seems to think theirs is an expert opinion. And our culture seems to be okay with that. I’m …
Ralph Cramden was the quintessential sucker. I suppose only people of a certain age — my age, for instance — will remember Ralph. If you have fewer gray hairs than that, perhaps you will remember the next incarnation of Ralph, Fred Flintstone. The Honeymooners character, brought indelibly to life by Jackie Gleason, was the inspiration for Fred, just …
Our culture — at least the movie-going part of it — seems to have embraced the adage: With great power comes great responsibility. Somehow, at the same time, it seems to have ignored the inevitable, underlying principle: Power and responsibility are conjoined. This, in turn, implies a corollary our culture also neglects routinely, if not universally: Before anyone can reasonably be expected to take responsibility, they must be suitably empowered.
After …
Doctors, psychologists, ethicists and others, along with our society at large, debate whether “the ends justify the means.” But nobody debates whether “the means justify the ends.” There is no point even looking for an answer to a question that is patently silly. For now, just hold that thought, please.
Medical ethics can be very challenging. There are the difficulties of interpreting “do everything” in desperate situations where heroic …
NuVal began as, and remains, a dream of mine — a dream about helping everyone find and choose better foods, and in the process, putting pressure on the food industry to offer better foods in the first place. They’ll stop selling what we stop buying, after all.
This was a dream born initially of frustration. I have been caring for patients for over 20 years, and placing an emphasis on the …
I recently spoke at a symposium on nutrition and public health at the Tuck School of Business at my alma mater in beautiful Hanover, N.H., Dartmouth College. Among others on the panel with me was Richard Starmann, the former head of corporate communications for McDonald’s. Those with even a modest number of Katz-column frequent flyer miles can readily guess how often he and I agreed.
One point Mr. Starmann made, more …
In that riveting courtroom scene we all know from the movie A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson’s character famously tells us: We can’t handle the truth. That often seems the case with regard to food.
I have encountered the resistance to fundamental truths about food often, but I am committed to doing the best I can to tell them even so. I tell them in narrative every chance I …
I have witnessed a lot of obesity bias in my career, and I have railed against it on more than one occasion. But it’s not the focus of my career, as it is for some of my colleagues. I have long thought those colleagues who do devote themselves to the topic may tend to overlook a very fundamental question, namely: Why would obesity bias even exist? What rational basis is …
Perhaps you already know the behind-closed-doors guiding principles of the news media, but if so, I suppose I’m a bit naïve in comparison. I thought they would be all about reliably reporting the news. Instead, I learned this guiding principle during my days working as an on-air contributor for ABC News’ Good Morning America: “Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” This is by no means an ABC mantra; …
Since an iron lung costs quite a few dollars, the prevention of polio cannot make sense. Right? If that one has you scratching your head, with a “say what?” dangling from your lip, we are on the same page. Let’s populate it accordingly. Of course prevention can save dollars. But that will only be the case when what we refer to as “prevention” really makes sense.
I am just back from my colonoscopy more or less. All went well, but I am still shrugging off the lingering tendrils of my sedation. So let’s chalk up any grammatical snafus to that, shall we?
I had, of late, had some GI symptoms. But those were mostly coincidental and likely due to extensive travel and the havoc changing time zones wreaks on circadian rhythms.
Mostly, it was just time to have …
Among others, Gary Taubes has famously argued that calories don’t count. Perhaps the more nuanced version is that the quality of calories, not the quantity, is what counts. Mr. Taubes and I have discussed this, and agreed to disagree. Leaving aside Newton and laws of thermodynamics, there is the Twinkie Diet on my side: evidence that weight can be lost when calories are restricted, no matter how truly dreadful the …
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