August 28, 2024 — Type 2 diabetes prevalence is up and the Lancet Regional Health has a simple way to reduce it. Daniel Windred and colleagues write: “Advising people to turn off their lights at night, or use lights that reduce the circadian impact (dim and “warm” light), is a simple, cost-effective, and easily-implementable recommendation that may promote cardiometabolic […]
July 10, 2024 — The headline is compelling. “Zepbound outperforms Ozempic and Wegovy in head-to-head weight loss study.” It certainly confirms the bias of a lot of people in the field. But is it true? Did tirzepatide (Zepbound) really beat semaglutide (Wegovy) in a head-to-head comparative study for obesity? In a word, no. Uncontrolled, Observational, and Inequivalent Dosing The […]
July 8, 2024 — Cancer might not be top of mind when most people think about the complications of obesity. But at least 13 different cancers have a clear association with obesity. A new study published Friday in JAMA Network Open examines the risk of these cancers in patients with type 2 diabetes and obesity. The primary objective was […]
July 5, 2024 — Dietary supplements generated U.S. sales of $177 billion in 2023 and multivitamins are the single most common dietary supplement that people actually take. According to NIH, about one in three of us take one. The use of them goes up with age, perhaps as a response as mortality comes into sharper view. But a new […]
July 1, 2024 — Two presentations of research about ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and health at Nutrition 2024 offer associations and puzzles that should make us think twice about sweeping generalizations on this subject. Increased Death On one hand, Erikka Loftfield presented data from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study in which she found an association of consuming ultra-processed foods […]
June 11, 2024 — Keeping up with virtues and vices in food just keeps getting harder. Planetary health is a virtue to pursue, but ultra-processed food is a vice, and plant-based foods are virtuous unless they are ultra-processed. Then perhaps they become virtuous vices. So confusing. A series of publications this week adds to the confusion. In the American […]
May 26, 2024 — Skimming the headlines, it would be easy to think that the combination of mobile phones and social media are responsible for quite a range of our current ills – including mental health and obesity. If you want to dig deeper, you can find a whole tome on the subject from Jonathan Haidt. He has woven […]
May 6, 2024 — Sometime in the 1960s, economist Ronald Coase, a Nobel laureate, advised colleagues that torturing a set of data can always yield a confession to serve the purpose at hand. As if to prove this adage, a new publication in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology shows us 1,208 ways to analyze NHANES data on all-cause mortality […]
May 1, 2024 — If you pay attention to nutrition headlines in consumer media, avocados sound pretty amazing. “Eating more avocados could help women stave off type 2 diabetes,” says one report. “Avocado a day may keep diabetes at bay,” says another. The only problem is that neither of the studies that prompted those stories actually support the claims […]
April 6, 2024 — Sleep apnea is a complication of obesity and at the same time, obesity can be a complication of sleep apnea. This two-way relationship sets up a problem that is serious and can be hard to resolve. But it deserves close attention because it can lead to an early death. So, given the tangled relationship between […]
