July 5, 2018 — JAMA Internal Medicine has just published the latest chapter in a hot debate about insulin and sugar as culprits responsible for obesity. David Ludwig and Cara Ebbeling present the prosecution’s case. A spike in highly processed carbs – like refined starches and sugar – is giving us a high glycemic load, they say. And in turn, […]
June 11, 2018 — Sunday morning at Nutrition 2018, the seemingly endless pursuit of good and bad calories continued. Five distinguished scientists presented diverse views. But it all adds up to the same thing. All calories make a difference. Energy balance is a helpful concept. And physiology usually wins. Jim Hill: A Complex Adaptive System Hill offered a detailed […]
May 22, 2018 — The science of fat tissue has progressed in quite an impressive way over the last decade. And just yesterday, researchers added a new milestone to that progress. With a new paper in Nature Medicine, Heejin Jun and colleagues identified a neurological pathway that may be critical for activating beige fat cells to burn energy. And […]
April 23, 2018 — You’ve probably heard that dieting can wreck your metabolism. It’s a simple way to explain repeated cycles of losing and regaining weight. But it’s a pretty poor explanation for the complexity of metabolic adaptation. A new study in Obesity asks us to consider an alternate view. Calorie Restriction or Overfeeding? It’s true enough that when […]
January 30, 2018 — The range of health benefits from exercise is really quite remarkable. A longer, happier life, better sleep, better memory, and better health – just to name a few. But how can using your muscles have such a profound effect on your whole body? Well, it turns out that your muscles talk to the rest of your […]
May 10, 2017 — What could be simpler than salt? Plenty, it seems. New research in the Journal of Clinical Investigations suggests that some basic concepts about dietary salt are way off the mark. You think it makes you thirsty so you’ll drink more water? As it turns out, that’s not how it works. Instead, salty food and drink […]
October 28, 2016 — In the complex jungle of systems that influence the development and prevalence of obesity, two physiologic mechanisms stand out: metabolic rate and appetite. In new research from NIH to be presented at ObesityWeek 2016, Kevin Hall and colleagues have put a number on the role of appetite in making sure that people regain most of the […]
August 28, 2016 — For decades, the common dogma of energy balance stated that weight gain or loss is a simple matter of “calories in and calories out.” On the second day of YWM2016, Steve Blair called for a rethinking of “nonsense presented repeatedly without any data to back it up.” At the top of his list for such nonsense, he […]
August 26, 2016 — Faith – defined as an enduring belief in something that cannot be directly observed or proven – has played an undeniable role in human history that continues to this day. In the face of uncertainty or incomplete answers, we instinctively fall back on ideas that provide meaning and direction as we search for truth. And so it is that […]
June 4, 2016 — An energetic and well-informed debate at the 2016 Blackburn Course in Obesity Medicine provided a deep dive yesterday into controversy regarding competing ideas about energy balance. Sam Klein presented the view that energy balance is an issue of physics. David Ludwig presented the view that it is an issue of biology. Klein provided an entertaining […]
