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.
Winning Art and Your Health
When something unexpected happens, I just have to go with it. It wasn’t my intention to follow-up Saturday’s message, but this is just too powerful to ignore.
The ArtPrize entry that Paula chose to put in the Saturday message, a 6.5 foot cube with a light inside, won and won big—it won the public vote, the juror’s vote of art professionals, and the Grand Prize in the Installation category as well. For her efforts, artist Anila Quayyum Agha will take home $300,000.
ArtPrize and Your Health
Each fall for the past six years, artists from all over the world bring or send their work to Grand Rapids to compete for over $500,000 in cash prizes. ArtPrize was the first of its kind when it began in 2009 and this year displayed over 1,500 entries by over 1,800 artists; it’s physically impossible to see them all. It has benefitted both the artists and the economy of West Michigan, because people come from all over the world to see the art.
Paula and I visited just a few of the venues to see some . . .
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Choose Wisely
You may remember Dr. Brian Wansink from earlier messages; he and his research team do a great job of looking at the subtle things that affect how much we eat as well as the food choices we make. The journal Appetite just published his group’s latest research findings (1), testing the theory that when eating with or near an overweight person, you may be less likely to adhere to your own health goals.
The researchers hired an actress to wear a “fat” suit and not wear it as she filled her plate. There were two food choices: salad and . . .
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Vitamin E: Foods and Supplements
Finishing up our look at vitamin E, the logical question is how much vitamin E do we need and where should we get it from? Let’s get right to it.
The RDA for vitamin E, in natural form as d-alpha tocopherol, is 15 mg per day in people 14 and over and 19 mg if a women is breast feeding. That corresponds to 22.4 IU and 26.8 IU. That would be the minimum intake per day from food or supplements. Why two units of measurement? Vitamin E is reported in mg in foods and IUs in . . .
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Symptoms of Vitamin E Deficiency
If 90% of us are deficient in vitamin E as recent research estimated, what are some of the issues we could face? That’s one of the problems the author was examining because there are no documented overt symptoms of vitamin E deficiency other than children who cannot absorb it or in times of extreme malnutrition (1). That’s one reason it’s so difficult to pinpoint vitamin E deficiencies in people.
The symptoms are mostly neurological disorders that continue to get worse. It can cause nerve death in the peripheral sensory nerves—the arms and legs—and ataxia, which . . .
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Vitamin E Update
As a member of the American Society of Nutrition, I receive three e-journals. I’m not going to tell you I read them cover to cover, but I check out what’s going on in nutrition research. That’s why a recent review article titled “Vitamin E Inadequacy in Humans: Causes and Consequences” caught my attention (1). See if this wouldn’t catch your attention:
It is estimated that more than 90% of Americans do not consume sufficient dietary vitamin E as alpha-tocopherol to meet estimated average requirements.
Wow! More than 90% of us come up short? How . . .
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The Low Carb Versus Low Fat Battle: No Decision
Today I’m finishing my review of the study that compared a low-fat diet with a low-carb diet. As Paula can attest, I’ve been muttering under my breath since I read that paper—not to mention the occasional rant. Here’s why.
First, the researchers tried to get the healthiest obese people they could get—completely understandable because the idea is to eliminate confounding variables. The problem is that when every measured variable is normal to begin with, the results are meaningless unless there are huge changes in something such as body weight, cholesterol, or triglycerides. Note . . .
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The Battle Continues: Low Carb Versus Low Fat
The diet battles never seem to end: “Low carb is the best!” “No, low fat is!” “Shut up. You’re wrong!” And it escalates from there. The research to assess which diet really is the best diet also continues. The latest study has gotten considerable press, so I thought I should review it for you (1).
Researchers at Tulane University in Louisiana recruited 148 of the healthiest obese people they could find. None were diabetics or had any symptoms of heart disease, although it appears hypertension controlled by medication was permitted. Participants were randomly assigned to either a low-fat . . .
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The Best Source of Calcium
Let’s go back to where we began. Is any form of calcium, whether from foods, supplements, or some new-fangled source, any better absorbed than another?
No—not enough that it would make a real difference, anyway. There are two primary forms of calcium available that have lead to this absorption controversy, so let’s take a look at them. In supplement form, calcium carbonate has the most calcium per mg at 40% while calcium citrate has about 20%. That means that fewer milligrams of calcium carbonate are needed to get the amount a person needs to take.
The . . .
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Variances in Calcium Absorption
On top of the calcium absorption issues discussed in Tuesday’s message, there are a few more factors that have to be considered. In healthy women, gross absorption efficiency spans at least a threefold range, from 15% to 45%, even after adjustment for differences in intake.
Here’s an example. One woman, absorbing at 45% efficiency, extracts 135 mg of the calcium in an 8-ounce serving of milk containing 300 mg of calcium and after subtracting the calcium used in digestion, her net calcium is 100 mg. But another woman absorbing at 15% efficiency extracts only 45 mg and . . .
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