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.
Another Theory of Obesity
It’s been a while since someone has proposed a new theory of obesity. I’m still a believer in “a calorie is a calorie” but it’s always good to find out what may be driving us to overeat. The latest addition is the Fructose Survival Hypothesis for Obesity. The diagram above was taken from an article […]
Your BMI and Shrinkage
I received several interesting questions regarding the loss of height and its impact on BMI: should you use your current height or your tallest height? I checked the research and found some interesting ideas, but there’s no direct answer. While it may change slightly over time, your current height should be used to estimate BMI. […]
The Bottom Line on the Blue Zones
The docuseries on Blue Zones demonstrated that it really isn’t complicated to live to 100: find a purpose, a reason to get up every morning, remain physically active, eat reasonably with a focus on plant-based sources for food, and develop a social group that can provide support through the various stages of life. The docuseries […]
Blue Zones: Social Groups
As I said on Saturday, when I began watching the Blue Zones docuseries, I would have wagered that either nutrition or exercise would be the most important factor in living longer. What we eat and how much we move are important, but the key to living well to 100 are the interactions we have with […]
Blue Zones: Eat Reasonably
As I continued to consider the four areas that make up the health habits related to living to 100, I would have thought that nutrition was going to be the key. After much reflection, it’s not. However, it doesn’t mean you should live on a diet of sweets, deep-fried foods, and a lot of ultra-processed […]
Blue Zones: Keep Moving
Continuing our look at the lessons from Secrets of the Blue Zones, the next point that stood out to me was that everyone was physically active. I mentioned tai chi, but that’s organized activity. The Blue Zone secret is that the people were physically active throughout their day. In some zones, they tended to gardens […]
Blue Zones: Where Are You Going?
Why do you get up in the morning? If you’re a parent with small children, it’s obvious. If you work outside the home, easy to understand. But what happens when you decide to retire, or even retire early? If you want to live well to 100, what are you going to do for the next […]
Lessons from the Blue Zones
Living to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones is a Netflix documentary that examines the lifestyles of people in several regions of the world that have a high proportion of people who live to 100. It’s a review of the observations of Dan Buettner, who has spent the better part of 30 years finding and […]
The Cause of Obesity
On Tuesday, I said that I couldn’t get past the word disease in the statement from CDC Head of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion: “Obesity is a disease caused by many factors, including eating patterns, physical activity levels, sleep routines, genetics, and certain medications.” While we can agree that there may be a genetic or […]
Fatter Than Ever
It seems ironic that the last Memo was titled “Make Every Bite Count” while the CDC was in the process of releasing the latest obesity statistics. This shouldn’t be any newsflash, but as a country we’re fatter than ever. In 2021, 19 states exceeded 35% obesity among the residents; in 2022, it jumped up to […]
