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Great article by The Huffington Post medical writer debunking the benefits of low-carb (and all) diets! http://huff.to/e5k6Gu
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LOVE THIS ARTICLE from today's Huffington Post online newspaper. Stop waiting for someone to take control of your health and follow their advice. Check it out:
"There's a wellness revolution going on, but creating real global change depends on one thing: you. Such was the conclusion of Arianna Huffington and Dr. Frank Lipman, who spoke Thursday as part of Urban Zen NYC's "Conversations on Sustainable Wellness" series. During the hour and a half talk, Dr. Lipman and Arianna made the case for a wellness revolution that would not only transform individual lives -- in body, mind and spirit -- but would even help solve the health care crisis in the United States. Dr. Lipman, who is the founder of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center and a long-time HuffPost blogger, ended the night's discussion by answering his own opening question: How do we get the revolution out there? 'The wellness revolution,' he said, 'starts with a personal revolution.' You have a choice: Drive yourself into the ground or start making different, better choices. Our culture has made unhealthy decisions the default. Today, we need to build toward a critical mass of wellness-consciousness. Dr. Lipman says Arianna has given a voice to the integrative medicine world and helped begin the revolution. 'For me, it's not just the detoxification of the body, it's the detoxification of the mind,' Huffington said. And during the conversation, she and Dr. Lipman described some key practices for attaining such holistic healing.
With the Internet and organizations like Urban Zen, we don't have to wait. The information -- the wisdom -- is available. We have the power to revolutionize wellness now. Now, if only we had that GPS for the soul..." Could not have said it any better, and in fact, I didn't! One can only dream of a world where health and happiness are the default. Happy Tuesday Dr. M This article's findings are not surprising to me, having had lots of clinical and non-clinical experience with women and their body image issues (including my own). But it's still interesting to see the numbers and exactly how much we, as women, are willing to give up for a slim bod. My guess is that men are getting in on the pychosis as well. Sad, but it's reality.
Per Dr. Weil... "Here's new and somewhat shocking evidence of how big an issue weight remains for some women. A survey at 20 colleges in Britain revealed that women students would be willing to reduce their lifespan by a year in order to achieve and maintain their ideal body weight. Even worse: 10 percent of these women said that they would give up two to five years of life in order to be thin, and three percent were willing to give up 10 years or more. Most of the women were young - under 25 - but some were as old as 65. Of the 320 women who participated in the survey, 78 percent were within or under a healthy weight range but four out of five still said they wanted to weigh less. Five percent reported having had some type of cosmetic surgery and 39 percent said they would have a cosmetic procedure if they could afford it. The survey also showed that 25 percent of the women would give up more than $8,000 of their annual salary, a promotion at work, spending time with their families and even their health to meet their ideal of slimness. The survey was sponsored by England's Succeed Foundation and led by Professor Philippa Diedrichs of the University of the West of England. The foundation's mission is to raise awareness of eating disorders and support people affected by eating disorders. My take? Unfortunately, this survey suggests that an unhealthy preoccupation with weight is still prevalent. This new information indicates that even after adolescence (when girls are most at risk of eating disorders) women remain focused on what may be unrealistic weight goals. These aspirations are influenced by socio-cultural factors including the powerful influences of the entertainment and fashion industries, which have fostered the perception that beauty and sexual attractiveness equate with being ultra-thin. The danger is that some of these preoccupations with weight and body image will escalate into full-fledged eating disorders. I hope that with maturity, the young women surveyed will put their weight and body image into perspective and strive instead for good health." I'd love to hear your experiences and thoughts on this topic. What can we do, as a society, to curb this way of thinking? This is a serious topic that seems to be getting worse as society progresses and modernizes. Not only does it leave people with feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem, but it can lead to OCD-like behaviors and even legit psychosis (google narcisstic personality disorder). Personally, I believe our body image, like most things, starts in early childhood. Parents, please instill healthy eating and living habits in your children and be as positive as possible about the way they look, even if you believe otherwise! Please leave a comment or reaction below or email them to me. Source: www.DrWeil.com online newsletter LOVE THIS!
From the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) Newsletter: "Scientist in the Spotlight: Susan E. Steck, PhD, MPH, RD Eating to Keep Inflammation at Bay Inflammation is common to cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Some foods seem to protect us from inflammation, while others promote it. AICR's former grantee Susan Steck, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of South Carolina, shares her research into how foods influence inflammation and interact with our genes. Steck started her career in the business world, but soon realized she wanted to work in a field with more meaning: the diet-cancer link fit well. 'I always enjoyed statistical analysis, number crunching and I had a personal interest in nutrition, knowing that things I had changed in my own diet had changed my health in a positive way,' said Steck. 'And applying epidemiology to cancer [risk] was a way I could contribute.' Indexing Foods To help better understand the inflammatory effects of diet, Steck was involved in developing an inflammatory index. One goal of the index, published in the Journal of Nutrition, is to help people find out how healthy or damaging their diet may be. ' It's a challenge to assess something as complex as people's diets,' says Steck, an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics who was also a Marilyn Gentry Fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. ' Researchers have started by looking at single foods or components, like fat or carbohydrates. But this study is an effort to look at many components of peoples' diets and how they may be interacting to affect health.' Steck and the research team analyzed evidence from almost 1,000 human, animal and lab studies to create a dietary inflammatory index that was linked to C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of chronic inflammation. Tracking Inflammation Levels During inflammation, the blood has a high level of cytokines protein molecules that activate immune cells. People who are overweight or obese, or have risk factors for heart disease usually also have high levels of CRP. 'Now scientific evidence is building to show that inflammation and high CRP levels also are related to a higher risk of colon and other cancers,' says Steck. Because approximately two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, it's likely that most people have some degree of inflammation all the time. A Western diet high in red meat, high-fat dairy product, refined grains and simple carbohydrates (like sugar) has been associated with higher levels of CRP, Steck points out. But diets high in fruits, vegetables and whole grains (all complex carbohydrates) are associated with lower levels of inflammation. Garlic, tea and monounsaturated fats (olive and canola oils) counted as anti-inflammatory. Steck says she hopes the inflammation index will someday become a tool for health professionals but more research is needed on creating healthy eating patterns. Our Nutrients + Genes Another of Steck's research areas includes looking at how nutrient-gene interactions play a role in cancer risk. One study, for example, suggests that women with mutations in certain genes may be more susceptible to the carcinogens found in charred red meat, which may play a role in breast cancer development. She is also part of a team investigating how people who carry different versions of certain genes may get less or more cancer-protective benefits from broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables. 'We sometimes see inconsistent results between studies of diet and cancer in humans. The study of gene-diet interactions might explain why there are different results in studies across varying populations,' said Steck. 'That's one of the driving forces behind the work that I am doing.'" Thanks to AICR for publishing this...Dr. Steck's research is fascinating! |
AuthorDr. Maltz earned a Medical Degree and Master in Public Health from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, TX. She completed a combined Internal and Preventive Medicine Residency at UTMB in June, 2011. She then completed a 2-year Integrative Medicine Fellowship at Stamford Hospital in Stamford, CT, during which she simultaneously underwent an intensive 1000-hour curriculum created by The University of Arizona Integrative Medicine Program founded by Dr. Andrew Weil. Archives
January 2019
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