HUB's LIST of medical fun facts

The Battle of the Best Diets –
Low-carb? Low fat? Keto? Intermittent fasting? Paleo? Gluten-free?
“The science of nutrition is confusing and contradictory. How are we supposed to figure out what to eat?”

A Stanford nutritionist’s study of 600 people, half on low carb diet and half on low fat diet for a whole year, not only found no difference in weight loss between the two groups, but also revealed wide variations in weight change in individuals within each group. Some members in each group actually gained 10 to 20 pounds! Furthermore the researches had no success in predicting which individuals would do better on one or the other diet.

“With diets, there are too many dry drunks around – people who have found a way to drop some weight and now want to force everyone else to see the light.” The only consensus about the best diet is:
1.  reduce or eliminate added sugar.
2. reduce or eliminate refined grains, processed carbs, and processed meats.
3. eat as many green, leafy vegetables as possible (avoid white potatoes).
(Neil Swidey, Boston Globe magazine, August25, 2019, pg. 17-20)

Vaping Illness Epidemic
“In 2019 so far there have been six deaths in the U.S. connected to vaping, as compared with more than 10,000 gun-related deaths. That can mean only one thing: EXPECT IMMEDIATE LEGISLATION RESTRICTING VAPING.”
(Brian Pomodore, Letter to the Editor, Bos Globe September 13, 2019)

Nap for Heart Health
A Swiss study tracked 3,462 healthy adults for five years and found that those who took a nap once or twice a week had about half the risk of a heart attack or stroke. More frequent naps and naps over an hour provided no additional protection. The researchers admit they have no idea how napping provides that benefit, but speculate that it might be “stress relief”.
(Nadine Hauser, NBCNews, September 2019)

Vitamin D Supplement Does Not Strengthen Bones
Canadian researchers studied 311 healthy adults from the “land of lesser sun” (Calgary and Alaska) taking vitamin D supplements daily for three years and discovered that supplemental Vitamin D actually was associated with a decline in bone density: 1.2% decrease in those taking 400 units daily, 2.4% in those taking 4,000 units, and 3.5 % in the 10,000 units a day group. (The official Canadian recommendation for Vitamin D is 600 units a day)
(Burt, JAMA 2019 August 27;322)

Is Dark Chocolate Good For Your Heart?
The Mayo Clinic says that the beneficial ingredient in chocolate is flavanol which which acts as “an antioxidant that can reduce cell damage implicated in heart disease, helps lower blood pressure, and improve vascular function.” The problem, of course, is to get the flavanol benefit you would have to eat about seven average chocolate bars a day! The flavanol in cocoa is actually bitter and has to be masked with fats and sugar to make delicious-tasting  commercially available chocolate; consumption of which can lead to weight gain  and increased risk of associated diseases. Many of the “favorable studies” of the effect of chocolate have been industry-funded so “should be taken with a grain of salt, , , and not another square of chocolate.”
(Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, Marion Nestle, NYU Professor of Nutrition and no relation to the candy maker, Bos Globe 10/27/19, A28)

Does Smartphone Screen Time Effect the Sense of Well Being?
Not really. A rigorous meta-analysis of 226 studies involving 275,000 people showed no significant link between depression and suicide and increased screen time. There was a tiny effect; about the same effect as wearing glasses. Many studies were based only on “time spent onscreen” with no data on “screen content”. It seems clear that heavy use of social media can be associated with harmful effects, but concern over average use of social media technology is overblown. One must remember that “association” does not prove “cause and effect”. Radio, video games, television, and even comics have caused consternation in the past about the harmful effects of technological innovation. in fact, Socrates bemoaned the new tradition of writing for fear it would diminish the power of memory. He was wrong about writing, but was prophetically correct about cell phones and our memory of phone numbers.
(Lydia Denworth, Scientific  American, November 2019, pg. 49)

Is Reading Printed Books with Children Better Than Reading Digital Books?
Yes. Reading printed books with children increased the mutual, reciprocal interactions between parental reader and the child when compared with reading digital, tablet-based books. Control and intrusive behavior on the part of both parent and child were decreased when reading printed books.

Is Red Meat Bad For You?
The Annals of Internal Medicine just “ corrected” (retracted) its publication of a 2019 study saying that most people could continue eating red and processed meat at their average consumption level without bad health effects. That report went against the prevailing scientific view that red or processed meat consumption is bad for you because of high amounts of saturated fat. The retraction was caused by the discovery that the principal author failed to disclose that he had received a sizable grant from Texas A&M AgriLife. It raised questions about conflict of interest and the researchers’ agenda “to make saturated fat look benign or beneficial”.

Benefits of Probiotics?

Enuff said.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 1st, 2020 at 6:43 PM and is filed under current events, evidence-based medicine, gun violence, heart health, nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.