Entries by Chet Zelasko

Let’s Talk About Dietary Supplements

I’m in a constant state of frustration over comments about the use of dietary supplements. Not by gurus and influencers; I don’t expect much from them except promotion of specific products for monetary gain. I mean the people with the credentials, with the scientific background, who say things that are simply not accurate. They seem […]

Adaptation: Maintenance

While you’re losing weight, I’ve always taught people to adopt a diet you can maintain for the rest of your life, because that’s how you’re going to have to eat for the rest of your life to maintain your weight loss. During the process, you have an opportunity: it’s going to take time to lose […]

Obesity: A Man-Made Disease

In order to determine whether obesity is an untreatable disease without pharmaceuticals, I took a look at BMI data since 1960. In comparing the BMI of people in the lowest income brackets with the highest income from 1960 through 2024, the lowest income group is always about one BMI unit above the highest income group. […]

Absolutely Monumentous!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers who perform monumentous tasks every day. For those of you who still have your mom in your life, make it a habit to treat your mom like every day is Mother’s Day. It’s similar to working on your health. It’s not what you do once in a while […]

Monumentous Marathon

Once in a while, something happens that you need a made-up word to describe. More than momentous, more than monumental, the new world record for the marathon was more than that. It was monumentous: four athletes broke the world record for the men’s and women’s marathon. At the London Marathon in late April, the official […]

When in Doubt…

When I was doing a post-doc in the late 1980s, I was part of a team of researchers who tested a group of swimmers. This was one of four parts of an overall documentary on an innovative look at health by the PBS’s Nova. I had about a half-second of screen time in this PBS […]

Does Your Weight Affect Disease?

Researchers from Finland investigated the relationship between being overweight/obese and infectious diseases. Not any one specific disease—all 925 of the known microbes that cause infectious diseases. They used data from two Finnish studies and the UK Biobank Study. They obtained the height and weight to calculate BMI and examined hospital and death records from the […]

Spring Means Renewal

It’s no secret I’ve had one cataract removed, and the other eye is next week. When I was having the surgeon check the eye this week, he asked me a question. The conversation went something like this. “Do you have a son?” “No,” said I. “I was wondering because there’s this guy on the radio, […]

Are Peptide Shots Safe?

The FDA held a meeting at last Friday to define what constitutes “from foods” in dietary supplements. The focus was on peptides, short chains of amino acids that have many functions in the body. For example, GLP-1 receptor agonists that are popular for type 2 diabetes and weight loss is a peptide. Insulin is also […]

Everything Old Is New Again

In Tuesday’s Memo, I said I’ve heard this song before. Actually, I’ve heard it twice before. Due to the nature of this trip around the world of high protein, the song “Everything Old is New Again” seems completely appropriate. The first time I heard the high-protein song was in the early 1990s. When the first […]