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.

Superbugs

Omega-3s: New Weapon Against Superbugs?

One of the biggest concerns with hospitalization is catching an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection. It happened to my father-in-law about 15 years ago, and it was a serious infection requiring over a week in the hospital. He survived, but more superbugs are still around and have gotten worse. Researchers in Australia examined one such superbug to […]

TreadmillCoach

High-Intensity Walking Is Better for Peripheral Artery Disease

As I said in Tuesday’s memo, high-intensity walking was better than low-intensity walking in terms of physical measurements after one year; subjects were able to cover more distance in a six-minute walk and they were able to walk for a longer period of time on a treadmill. Another important outcome was that there was no […]

PAD

Exercise for Peripheral Artery Disease

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a narrowing of the arteries in the arms or legs, usually caused by the build-up of plaque similar to what can happen in the arteries of the heart or the neck. The result is pain in the muscles of the legs, sometimes mild, other times severe. As you might expect, […]

EmptyPlate

Fasting: Another Piece of the Puzzle

Fasting is gaining popularity. Actually, periods of complete abstinence from food within a 24-hour cycle is what really seems to be gaining in popularity, but this study doesn’t address intermittent fasting. It examines fasting for a specific period of time before a dietary change—in this case, to the DASH diet. We don’t know if the […]

VegetableJuice

How Fasting Affects the Microbiome

How did you do? I asked you to reduce your caloric intake to fewer than 1,200 calories and keep it vegan if you can. Paula and I did okay, but not completely vegan. Before I describe the study, you need to know that wasn’t the actual fasting part of the study—that was the fasting preparation […]

Irises

Summer Body Prep Time

This week culminates with the first outdoor holiday of the summer season, and for many of us, the first family cook-out in over a year. Next week I’m going to review a study on the benefits of intermittent fasting, but I want to challenge you to mimic part of the study before the weekend to […]

BabyEyeTest

Vision Health: Never Too Young

Continuing with what I asked Dr. Laura Kenyon during my interview with her, the question is still “What are the mistakes people make related to retaining their vision?” Here are the rest of her answers as well as a program every parent needs to know about. Eye Protection The third mistake we make is not […]

Sunglasses

Keeping Your Eyes Healthy

When I interviewed our optometrist, Dr. Laura Kenyon, for my Sunday radio show here in Grand Rapids called Straight Talk on Health (you can listen live via the Internet by going to https://www.wgvunews.org/programs/straight-talk-health), I learned a lot about how to take care of your eyes. In this week’s Memos, I want to cover the things […]

Runners

Metabolically Healthy and Obese

The researchers in Germany continued to determine which factors associated with being obese were the most predictive of mortality from any cause and from cardiovascular disease. While not explicitly stated, it seems to me that they attempted to use variables that were simple to assess. With that in mind, here are the variables which demonstrated […]

TreadmillWorkout

Can You Be Obese and Healthy?

The research question that was most interesting to me as a graduate student was this: could you be overweight, even obese, and still be healthy? That question still interests me today, and for good reason: 70% of the U.S. population is overweight or obese, and we’ve just passed 40% of the entire population falling into […]