August 5, 2019 — Facts are stubborn. So, too, is an entrenched bias. The bias that obesity is a simple matter of choice runs especially deep. Thus it creeps into headlines and even scientific journals. A new study in PLOS Genetics provides a vivid case in point. Unwarranted causal language in a paper flows through to a press release. […]
July 11, 2019 — Does money bring happiness? That’s a matter of some debate. Though poverty doesn’t do it, research suggests that money isn’t always the best answer for pursuing happiness. In fact, recent research suggests that active living might bring more joy than money. Exercise and Mental Health In Lancet, Sammi Chekroud and colleagues published a large study […]
July 6, 2019 — As health authorities in the U.K. whip up fears about obesity, it becomes fodder for entertainment writers. With a witty headline, Brian Beacom tells us that he has the answer for obesity. “There’s fat chance of tackling obesity without school sports investment,” he writes. Of course, not a shred of evidence supports his assertion. But […]
June 16, 2019 — If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. This apocryphal quote supposedly came from Harry Truman. But Truman never kept that advice, or a dog, for that matter. However, it does seem that for those who are so inclined, dog owners have a helpful excuse for staying more active. A Robust Relationship A […]
May 31, 2019 — We wait for it every day. That magic moment when our fitness band goes nuts with good vibrations to tell us that we’ve crossed the magic threshold of 10,000 steps for the day. But if you dig into it, you can easily learn that the 10,000 step benchmark is more arbitrary than magic. And new […]
May 24, 2019 — Isn’t dealing with excess weight already hard enough? Now, researchers from Japan want us to walk and chew gum and lose weight all at once. In a randomized controlled trial, Susumu Kanno and colleagues recently showed that walking and chewing gum causes people to burn more fat than just walking without the gum. The authors […]
May 21, 2019 — Another solution to obesity popped up in the headlines today. “Student Loses 115 Lbs. by Walking to High School Every Day,” says People magazine. That headline happened to coincide with the release of a new study in BMC Public Health. A press release from the University of Cambridge tells us: Children who regularly walk or […]
May 15, 2019 — The prospect of losing your mental edge is scary enough to make people open their wallets for scams. The Luminosity brain training scam earned its marketers a $50-million judgment for false advertising. Right now, FTC is going after scammers selling a jellyfish supplement to keep your brain sharp. But we don’t need the scams to […]
May 12, 2019 — It’s basic physiology and it’s the bane of obesity care – weight regain. When a person loses weight, homeostasis kicks in. The body protects itself by working really hard to restore its reserves of energy in fat tissue. But the lore of weight loss holds that a person can fight that off with physical activity […]
April 29, 2019 — Killer traffic. It’s a hyperbolic complaint. Or then again, maybe not. Consider these two factoids. One, the WHO tells us that road accidents are now the biggest killers of young people around the world. And two, new research presented at the 26th European Congress on Obesity tells us that the risk of death is a […]
