Archive for February, 2022

With More Sleep, People Eat Less, Says an RCT

February 8, 2022 — The familiar (and not always helpful) advice to move more and eat less might need to make room for a simpler prescription. Sleep more and you’ll eat less. That is the finding of a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine, published yesterday. In an RCT of 80 adults with overweight, counseling to extend their sleep from […]

Flack About Flaxseed – Irreproducible Research

February 7, 2022 — Throwing in some flaxseed seems like a good way to paint a health halo. Right now, our pantry has an open box of multigrain crackers with whole wheat and flaxseed. Sounds healthy, tastes good. But on the other hand, we’ve noted that not all of the research about the marvelous health benefits of flaxseed stands […]

Diving into a Culture of Trauma

February 6, 2022 — Is trauma losing its meaning? It seems that accounts of trauma are filling the news. Death and suffering in more than two years of a global pandemic has certainly been traumatic. So too is the toll of gun violence. With the return to more normal school operations, school shootings are once again popping up in […]

Form and Function of Fat in Obesity

February 5, 2022 — Energy storage? That is the obsolete view about the function of fat tissue that drives much of public health policy on obesity. Energy in, energy out. Eat less, move more. But in reality, fat tissue is an endocrine organ. It is highly active, complex, and essential for health. With exquisite detail, a new review paper […]

Obesity, COVID, Mortality, and Trust

February 4, 2022 — By all traditional measures of public health, Vietnam was in a bad spot when the COVID pandemic began in 2020. It is a small country with weak health and political systems. But early in the pandemic, it succeeded in keeping infections and deaths low. By contrast, the U.S. has done rather poorly. Despite a high […]

Untangling the Metabolic Effects of Higher Adiposity

February 3, 2022 — We are pretty much done with the label of healthy obesity, because it is a perfect oxymoron. If a pattern of adiposity is healthy, then it’s not obesity. But newly published in eLife is a more thoughtful approach to this subject. This study seeks to untangle the metabolic effects of higher adiposity from other effects […]

RCT: Gross Pics on Beverage Labels Deter Purchases

February 2, 2022 — PLOS Medicine has quite a good new study of gross pictures on beverage labels to deter purchases of sugary drinks. It is a randomized, controlled study which proves quite convincingly that gross pictures deter purchases of beverages when they appear prominently on labels. Mission accomplished. Our only quibble would be with the meaning these researchers […]

100,000 More Diabetes Deaths, More of Same Policies

February 1, 2022 — It is a familiar pattern, but no less disappointing because of that. A government commission issues a report and cries out for action. “Another health crisis challenges the U.S.: diabetes mellitus,” says the report issued yesterday by the National Clinical Care Commission. The report correctly identifies obesity as a key driver of rising deaths from […]