September 1, 2021 — We thought we were done with this. But the stress of the pandemic is unrelenting. That stress is hitting families especially hard and it’s showing up in child health. Notably, more data is telling us that obesity is rising especially fast in younger kids. A new research letter in JAMA tells us that the prevalence […]
August 19, 2021 — It’s hard to deny that yoga has put an imprint on popular culture – especially popular concepts about fitness and wellbeing. It had an outsized role in defining a now dominant fashion trend – athleisure. Prior to the pandemic, yoga was a roughly ten billion dollar industry. But of course, the pandemic put a dent […]
October 18, 2020 — New research from Rand and the Indiana University School of Public Health at Bloomington offers a vivid picture of two major health risks colliding. Alcohol use is growing more frequent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, it’s growing heavier. This is not what we need, because alcohol use is already the number one global health risk […]
September 6, 2020 — Are we anxious? Judging by a huge leap in people filling prescriptions for anti-anxiety meds, the answer is clearly yes. Before COVID-19 was on our minds, those prescriptions were growing by a by a few percentage points, year over year. Once COVID-19 grabbed our attention, they jumped by 34 percent right away. Likewise, Rxs for […]
April 2, 2020 — Believe it or not, we are still in the early days of coping with the pandemic of COVID-19. Yes, if you live in New York City or Italy or China, you might think you’re well into it. But the truth is that the effect of this biological disaster will come in waves. It’s going to […]
March 23, 2020 — Healthy routines and habits are essential for a happy and healthy life. We say this as creatures of habit, so you can be sure that the following words reflect our bias. But it’s unmistakable. This nasty little virus that’s sweeping the world is scrambling our usual routines and habits. It’s putting us into a virtual […]
March 19, 2020 — We have a grand natural experiment underway – a huge lifestyle intervention. Suddenly, hundreds of millions of people are living a more confined lifestyle. We have no more third place, no commute to work, only the home place. So physical activity and nutrition patterns will change. Likewise, social dynamics will change, too. But we have […]
November 23, 2019 — Sleep, stress, and obesity are clearly related. But the relationship is complicated and causality is tough to unravel. Stress interferes with sleep. So does obesity. And then, too, both stress and too little sleep can contribute to obesity. So if you sleep more, will you weight less? A natural experiment in Korea tells us for […]
May 27, 2019 — Can we please retire the mantra of making the healthy choice the easy choice? It’s a great concept. Maybe it’s even a good marketing tagline…if you’re a food marketer. But for reducing obesity, it seems more and more like Eat-Less-Move-More version 2.0. Rather than pointing fingers at people for making “unhealthy choices,” we’ve moved to […]
March 21, 2019 — The simple and prevalent view of obesity is that it results from bad choices in diet and exercise. However, that view omits the role of a major factor – stress. In the Annual Review of Psychology, Janet Tomiyama offers an excellent review of the vicious cycle of stress and obesity. Multiple Pathways The connection between […]
