Dr. Chet’s Health Memos
If it’s in the health news today, I’ll be writing about it as soon as I read the research, both old and new. With my email Health Memos, you’ll know more about making lifestyle choices that will help you get and keep good health. These free, concise updates on health are emailed to subscribers twice a week. Subscribe today and get a free MP3, in English or Spanish, of Dr. Chet’s Top Ten Tips—Small Changes for a Healthier Life.
The Safety of E-Cigarettes
One of the purported benefits of e-cigarettes is the decrease in exposure to harmful chemicals found in regular cigarettes. It makes sense to avoid the chemicals that could be found in the soil and on the tobacco leaves. Harvesting and processing won’t remove those from tobacco products.
The problem is that we just don’t know, because the liquids that contain the nicotine are not tested for safety. Many brands add flavorings to the liquid. While fruits may seem to be great flavors, when the juice is burned, the by-products may not be healthy even if sourced . . .
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What Is Vaping?
Last week’s message on smoking resulted in several questions about electronic cigarettes, a subject I haven’t addressed before. Let’s start with the basics.
An electronic cigarette or e-cigarette is a nicotine-delivery system. There are three essential components: the nicotine source, a heat source used to vaporize the liquid source of nicotine, and a power source in the form of a battery. The last two are pretty straightforward. The heat has to get high enough fast enough to vaporize the fluid quickly, hence the term vaping instead of smoking.
The nicotine source provides the drug. That . . .
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Health Habits: Just Do Better
Let’s finish up our look at the recent paper that concluded we’re doing poorly when it comes to our health habits (1). If you thought smoking and exercise were underwhelming, today we’ll look at diet and body fat.
When it comes to following the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines, just under 38% hit that goal. I’ve talked about this a lot over the years, and this isn’t a debate over what constitutes a good diet. While we are doing somewhat better, adults do not eat enough vegetables, fruits, or beans, and we still . . .
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Smoking and Exercise
What are we doing well when it comes to health habits? Based on the study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, we seem to be getting the message that we shouldn’t smoke tobacco: 71% of all Americans don’t smoke based on the data from the NHANES data set. This wasn’t just a questionnaire; the participants had their blood tested as part of their participation in the study. You can lie on a questionnaire, but you can’t fool a blood test for metabolites found in cigarette smoke.
Better doesn’t mean good enough in my opinion. I . . .
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Healthy Lifestyle? A Tiny 2.7 Percent
“Only 2.7% of all Americans achieve all four of the basic behavioral characteristics that experts say add up to a healthy lifestyle.”
Sensational? Yes. True? That’s what we’re going to look at this week. The health news reported about a recent study that examined the health behaviors of a group of people who participated in the Nutrition and Health Examination Survey (NHANES) in 2002–2006. The researchers picked four behaviors and assessed them with the best techniques available.
This is not the typical BMI and Food Frequency Questionnaire survey; these are numbers based on excellent assessment equipment . . .
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The Bottom Line on High-Fat Dairy
If you’re a long-time reader, you know that science by headlines makes me crazy because news reports often distort the findings of the research papers to make them seem more important than they are. It doesn’t help that research institutions send out press releases that contribute to the hype of their research findings. Such is the case with the two papers I reviewed this week.
In the first paper, researchers examined blood values of fatty acids found in high-fat dairy products as potentially . . .
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Recent Research: Milk and Obesity
The second research paper included in many news articles that talked about the potential benefits of full-fat dairy products was a report from the Women’s Health Study (1). Researchers collected dietary data and self-reported body weight and height from over 39,000 women. The analysis included only about 18,000 middle-aged and older women who had a normal BMI when the study began; they analyzed the change in body weight over 11 years of follow up.
All women gained weight over time. Those who had the highest number of high-fat dairy products gained less weight . . .
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Recent Research: Milk and T2D
Health news headlines got my attention this past week. They announced that full-fat milk products may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and becoming overweight. I don’t know about you, but it’s been decades since I drank whole milk or ate whole-fat yogurt or ice cream. It’s not just about the calories; it just doesn’t seem to taste as good. Have I been missing something? Headlines tend to exaggerate, especially when they’re based on press releases. Let’s take a look at the first study behind the headlines.
In the first paper . . .
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Curcumin and Your Health
Curcumin certainly has the health experts excited. I understand, but I also think there are some things that you have to know about this phytonutrient before you begin taking mega-doses every day.
Absorption and Bioavailability
Curcumin is not well absorbed in the digestive system—in fact, it’s very poorly absorbed, with some studies showing that no measurable curcuminoids reach the bloodstream at all. That’s why a focus of research has been to get the active part of turmeric into a better delivery system. I mentioned combining it with piperine, a component of black pepper, on . . .
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Curcumin Research
Curcumin is fast becoming one of the most researched phytonutrients in the world. As evidence, in 2000, there were about 100 papers published on curcumin; in 2015, there were 1,100 papers published. And in the first quarter of this year, there were over 400 papers published. Why all the attention on this yellow phytonutrient?
I mentioned the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant qualities on Tuesday. The focus of a lot of research is for curcumin’s use as a potential cancer treatment and preventive for Alzheimer’s disease. Most of these are test-tube studies. Researchers are trying to examine . . .
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