Take a few seconds and think about the word "disease." What comes to mind?
Most of us think of a "disease" as a fixed state of decreased health. It's something that can be "caused" and sometimes "cured" or "managed," but it's definitely an "it." A thing. A noun. Something that either exists or doesn't exist.
Big deal, you say? Howie's been reading the dictionary again. Who cares?
In a meeting with T. Colin Campbell (author of The China Study, the only book ever pitched on bended knee by Gary Player live on the Golf Channel), a bunch of us were examining the current model of health care. Dr. Campbell, who has made a career of looking at the obvious and seeing trends that nobody else notices, threw out a comment that our prevailing definition of "disease" is very limiting, and actually leads us to do things that don't really work very well.
What is he talking about? Keep Reading…
Kathleen Melanson, Director of the University of Rhode Island's Energy Metabolism Laboratory, is conducting a series of brilliant and simple experiments about the connection between how fast we eat and how many calories we consume.
One experiment even got press in USA Today: 30 college-age women were asked to eat a meal of pasta and sauce with grated cheese, and a glass of water on two different occasions. One time they were asked to eat quickly, and were given a large spoon and bowl, and the other time they were asked to eat as slowly as possible, with a small spoon and bowl, and instructed to place their spoon down between bites.
The results: Keep Reading…
Hey, I like video games as much as the next guy… if the next guy is Mahatma Gandhi. Reuters (reported in The Age out of Australia) shared research on the cardiovascular effects of the video game "Dance Dance Revolution" on overweight kids. They found that while playing the game increased heart rate and burned more calories (than, for example, sitting on their butts watching other people dance on MTV), essentially, it made no difference to their weight or fitness. Keep Reading…
Julie's Health Club blog shared an article questioning whether Whole Foods is selling out by offering products from Coke and Pepsi (Odwalla and Fuelosophy, respectively). The post sparked a spirited discussion, and as offen happens, I found myself sort of agreeing with everyone, despite the fact that they were disagreeing with each other.
So I called my dear friend Danny Warshay, who has as good a pedigree in the natural foods business world as anyone I know. He's a serial entrepreneur, has an MBA from Harvard, years in brand management at Procter & Gamble, and five years as a founding partner of Health Business Partners, a natural foods investment and mergers and acquisions consultancy. He's now the managing director of DEW Ventures, whose portfolio includes Culinova, a "functional foods" company that seeks to put healthy and tasty in the same foods. He's met the CEOs and founders of many of the companies that product the "health foods" we see on our supermarket shelves, and helped to midwife dozens of acquisitions of these little "mission-driven" companies by much larger ones.
I recorded the call, which you can listen to online or right-click the "Download mp3" link to download to your computer or iPod: Keep Reading…
Peter Bregman called me yesterday to tell me about an article in the September 18, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, about the neuro-psychology of financial decision-making. He said there were a number of concepts very key to our understanding of health behaviors as well, specifically those related to doing things that involve delayed gratification.
One example is the "Christmas Account" many banks offer. Check out this deal: a zero-interest account with a penalty for early withdrawal. Woo-hoo!
Yet it's a popular option, despite the fact that it makes no "rational" sense. Why? Keep Reading…
Brian Wansink's new book, Mindless Eating, is due out in a few days. The Cornell professor has conducted fascinating experiments looking our how much we eat, and why most of us seem to be eating way more than we need.
His conclusions are fascinating, and they speak to the large topic of mindlessness. For example, moviegoers in Chicago were given buckets of 5-day-old popcorn to eat as they entered the theater. Those given large buckets ended up eating 53% more stale popcorn than those with smaller buckets. And they didn't even enjoy it! Keep Reading…
Are you ever confused about what makes up a healthy diet?
Have you ever heard mixed messages from doctors, from experts, from the media?
This confusion is no accident - it's exactly what is intended by the sickness profiteers - the people whose economic fortunes depend on your inability to tell healthy from unhealthy food.
I've written an article that sheds a lot of light on the subject, and explains the truth about one particularly horrible illness: cancer. It contains information that you will have a very hard time finding in the mainstream media, and shows you how to make yourself and your kids virtually cancer-proof.
Download the article by right-clicking here.
Connie Bennett, writer of the Sugar Shock blog, points to a Harvard study suggesting that Americans' rampant consumption of sugary beverages is contributing mightily to our collective enlargement and our stampede toward Type II Diabetes.
Keep Reading…
Q: What do you think of the Weston A Price Foundation?
A: They are half right, and because of this, they are doubly dangerous about the half they get wrong.
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An article in the September 2, 2006 New York Times discusses research that fails to find a big genetic reason for why some people get sick and die young, while others live to a ripe old age. Some impressive identical twin studies found that factors besides genetics seem to be much more important in determining disease and death, or lack thereof.
But here's the interesting thing - the researchers are frustrated because they can't tell us what those factors are. Wealth? Nutrition? Exercise? Church membership? Having a pet? Positive mental outlook?
What's the problem here? Why is the holy grail of medicine - keeping people healthy for a long time - so elusive?
Keep Reading…
