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.
Folic Acid, Lead, and Autism
Every once in a while, a research study provides an important lesson as well as some interesting findings. Let’s begin with the study. During 2008 through 2011, researchers selected almost 1,900 pregnant women as subjects from 10 cities across Canada for the study. The overall goal was to identify environmental impacts on the mothers and […]
Do Weekend Warriors Improve Their Health?
Let’s finish the week with a question no one asked but was the topic of a recent study: what’s better for your health—being a weekend warrior or working out according to established guidelines? The major component of the guidelines is more than 150 minutes of moderate to intense exercise a week spread out over most […]
What About Fiber?
Here’s one more thing you might want to add to your smoothie: fiber. In this case, it depends on the type of fiber more than anything else. Let me illustrate. My grandson Riley and I have something we call “soup” almost every night. It has two kinds of fiber as well as a probiotic mixed […]
Should You Put Probiotics in Your Smoothie?
Continuing with smoothies and shakes, another popular ingredient most people want to add are probiotics, either from yogurt or a supplement. Would there be any issue with adding probiotics to smoothies? No, as far as I could find. It’s the same idea as with the digestive enzymes: the probiotic will start to do its job, […]
What Do You Want to Know?
I’m back from a weekend in Louisville where I talked to many, many people about their nutrition questions. One of the great advantages of these trips is that I know which nutrition questions are most important to people right now. So let’s talk about shakes. I prefer chewing my food. I’ve tried shakes and smoothies, […]
Are Heart Meds Forever?
The prevailing thought on pharmacological treatment of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is that once you’re on a class of medications, you’re on them for life—new meds may be developed to replace some, but treatment continues forever. That contributes to the conspiracies about big pharma and the greed of the medical community. I’m not going to say […]
A Little Good News
On January 2, 2023, the Buffalo Bills were playing the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday night football. A Bengal caught a pass, was tackled and fell into one of the Bills, Damar Hamlin, hitting him in the chest as he fell. Both players got up, and then Hamlin fell down again. What we didn’t know for […]
The FFQ: Still Too Vague
I spent a long time examining validation and reliability studies on the Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQ). It was interesting to compare the original validation studies with a new FFQ that was published in early 2024; researchers asked subjects in those studies that began decades ago to participate in this recent validation study. The Stats I […]
The Problem with the Food Frequency Questionnaire
I’ve made no secret that I don’t like Food Frequency Questionnaires. (FFQ). I understand why they are used; when a study may contain 500, 5,000, or 500,000 subjects, to do a dietary recall of the prior 24 hours, using a dietician to help determine portion sizes, would be close to impossible or very difficult at […]
Is Red Meat Linked to Type 2 Diabetes?
The next study actually precedes the heme iron paper, not only in time but in size—with close to 2 million subjects! This was an attempt to check on whether red meat, chicken, or processed red meat, such as bacon and sausage, are associated with type 2 diabetes. This was a Herculean task that would never […]
