Entries by Chet Zelasko

Fasting: Another Piece of the Puzzle

Fasting is gaining popularity. Actually, periods of complete abstinence from food within a 24-hour cycle is what really seems to be gaining in popularity, but this study doesn’t address intermittent fasting. It examines fasting for a specific period of time before a dietary change—in this case, to the DASH diet. We don’t know if the […]

How Fasting Affects the Microbiome

How did you do? I asked you to reduce your caloric intake to fewer than 1,200 calories and keep it vegan if you can. Paula and I did okay, but not completely vegan. Before I describe the study, you need to know that wasn’t the actual fasting part of the study—that was the fasting preparation […]

Summer Body Prep Time

This week culminates with the first outdoor holiday of the summer season, and for many of us, the first family cook-out in over a year. Next week I’m going to review a study on the benefits of intermittent fasting, but I want to challenge you to mimic part of the study before the weekend to […]

Vision Health: Never Too Young

Continuing with what I asked Dr. Laura Kenyon during my interview with her, the question is still “What are the mistakes people make related to retaining their vision?” Here are the rest of her answers as well as a program every parent needs to know about. Eye Protection The third mistake we make is not […]

Keeping Your Eyes Healthy

When I interviewed our optometrist, Dr. Laura Kenyon, for my Sunday radio show here in Grand Rapids called Straight Talk on Health (you can listen live via the Internet by going to https://www.wgvunews.org/programs/straight-talk-health), I learned a lot about how to take care of your eyes. In this week’s Memos, I want to cover the things […]

Metabolically Healthy and Obese

The researchers in Germany continued to determine which factors associated with being obese were the most predictive of mortality from any cause and from cardiovascular disease. While not explicitly stated, it seems to me that they attempted to use variables that were simple to assess. With that in mind, here are the variables which demonstrated […]

Can You Be Obese and Healthy?

The research question that was most interesting to me as a graduate student was this: could you be overweight, even obese, and still be healthy? That question still interests me today, and for good reason: 70% of the U.S. population is overweight or obese, and we’ve just passed 40% of the entire population falling into […]

Omega-3s and A-Fib: More Analysis Required

I hope that you took the time to review the paper on atrial fibrillation as well as the research letter on omega-3s and atrial fibrillation. If you haven’t, especially the primer on A-fib, please do it. It’s a serious condition that requires attention if you have it; in most cases, fixing it is surprisingly simple. […]

Research Update on Omega-3s and A-Fib

A recent research letter to The European Heart Journal caught my attention. This was a continuing meta-analysis of data linking the use of omega-3 fatty acids to atrial fibrillation. The result of the original analysis in 2020 and the additional studies that were examined in the current meta-analysis led to the conclusion that there’s an […]

Aging with a Vengeance and Your Proteome

This year’s Super Bowl Webinar focused on aging with a vengeance—becoming the best version of yourself, no matter your age. The study we just reviewed on the proteome suggests that the people were healthier who were biochemically younger than their actual age. Here are the actions I believe can help at the three critical phases […]