Roly Poly
What is it about flour, i.e., the starch, bran, and germ of seeds of grass plants, such as modern Triticum species of wheat, that makes them extravagantly fattening? The weight gain effect of modern wheat is so powerful that I call it the perfect obesogen, a food that is perfectly crafted to cause obesity.
As a society, we have conducted a massive and inadvertent experiment. Based on the flawed logic that emerged from “white flour is bad, whole grains are good” epidemiological observations (or what I would label “white flour is bad, whole grains are less bad” observations), the American diet, thanks...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - December 13, 2017 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle blood sugar edema gluten grains Inflammation insulin opiates Weight Loss Source Type: blogs
Diet not working? Maybe it ’s not your type
Follow me on Twitter @RobShmerling
Have you heard of the blood type diet? I thought it had been debunked long ago but patients keep asking about it, so I figured I should learn more.
What’s the Blood Type Diet?
In 1996 Peter D’Adamo, a naturopathic physician, published a book in which he described how people could be healthier, live longer, and achieve their ideal weight by eating according to their blood type. One’s choice of condiments, spices, and even exercise should depend on one’s blood type. Soon, the book was a best seller and people everywhere were finding out their blood type, revising their grocery l...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - May 12, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Diet and Weight Loss Health Healthy Eating Source Type: blogs
Ottolenghi ’s Roasted Chicken with Clementines and Arak
One of these days, I’m going to visit Israel, if only to taste in situ the foods that inspire Ottolenghi, whose Jerusalem cookbook has become one of the most used cooking tomes in our household. The hummus recipe alone is worth purchasing his book.
This recipe combines orange and anise flavors with a delightful roasted chicken. Don’t let the use of Arak, a licorice flavored liquor – worry you. The anise flavor is subtle, despite the use of both fennel and fennel seeds – and perfectly balanced by the clementines.
We served it with brown basmati rice and carrots, and I used the leftovers the nex...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - January 18, 2017 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Meat & Poultry Arak Chicken Clementines Jerusalem Ottolenghi Source Type: blogs
Doped
I’ll bet you pride yourself on living a pretty clean life.
It’s doubtful that I’d stumble on you in some alley, track marks up your arms, lying in a puddle of your own urine, unconscious from a night of shooting up heroin, snorting coke, or smoking crack. And you probably have all or most of your teeth, unlike the toothless addicts on methamphetamine.
Perhaps you even avoid or minimize your use of the softer recreational drugs in cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. You likely adhere to healthy practices and keep such indulgences to a minimum.
The truth is that you’ve been doping it up for most of your life. You’v...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - June 2, 2016 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle addiction addictive appetite Gliadin grains Inflammation opiates Source Type: blogs
Alkalotics Anonymous
A 50-year-old man with a past medical history of alcoholism presented to the ED with altered mental status, nausea, and vomiting. He is arousable but a poor historian. His girlfriend said he drinks a half-gallon of rum daily, and had his last drink two days earlier. She reported that he started to feel nauseous, vomit, and go through alcohol withdrawal. She said he also has been taking a lot of calcium carbonate for an upset stomach, but she was unable to say exactly how much. His blood pressure was 146/70 mm Hg, heart rate was 110 bpm, respiratory rate was 14 bpm, PO2 was 96% on room air, and blood glucos...
Source: The Tox Cave - February 1, 2016 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
Is Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS) safe enough?
What did I eat?
Unlike most people exposed to the Frontline investigation of supplements and vitamins, I really didn’t find it shocking that a lot of supplements are dangerous and that the bottles don’t contain what they say they do. I feel sorry for people who take these products and are not helped –and are even harmed– but frankly the customers should know better.
The story got me thinking about a related topic: the safety (or lack thereof) of food additives. An NPR story from last year (Why the FDA has never looked at some of the additives in our food) sums it up well:
Companies have add...
Source: Health Business Blog - January 25, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: dewe67 Tags: Policy and politics cardiac safety cargill FDA icardiac Source Type: blogs
Is Hoof Maker cream for horses really good for your nails? Episode 111
This study is often quoted as saying it worked better than or as well as 4% hydroquinone but 4 weeks is not long enough to judge that and again, and this was not about hexylresorcinol itself .”
Finally, the website Truth in Aging says…
”HR’s ability to target pathways in the skin that lead to hyperpigmentation has propelled it into the skin lightening ingredient category. There is also thought that Hexylresorcinol has more benefits as well, including an ability to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, increase protection against UVB and UVA rays, and improve the skin’s barrier against pollution an...
Source: thebeautybrains.com - December 8, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Perry RomanowskiDiscover the beauty and cosmetic products you should use and avoid Source Type: blogs
Wheat and hunger
Pauline read the recent Wheat Belly Blog post, the Top 5 Reasons You Still Have Cravings and shared her perspective:
“Everything you say is true, Dr. Davis. I’ve been following your advice for the last 18 months and it’s taken this long to get my gut right.
“I always know when I’ve inadvertently eaten something containing wheat, generally when I’m eating out with friends. It’s an almost instantaneous increase in hunger, making me go looking for something carb/sugary to eat a few hours later. It also causes gut and joint pain that comes within 24 hours.
“Other than that, I can go all day withou...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - August 15, 2015 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle cravings Gliadin gluten grains hunger Source Type: blogs
Wheat, wheat everywhere
If you’ve already begun your Wheat Belly adventure, you know that wheat is a ubiquitous ingredient in processed foods, found in everything from salad dressing to licorice. Wheat, along with corn, can be found in virtually every processed food on supermarket shelves, cheap, tasty filler that provides the appearance of bulk and value.
In our quest to banish all things wheat and grain from our lives, you don’t need me to tell you that there are obvious sources of wheat: breads, rolls, pancake mix, wraps, pretzels, crackers, pies, cakes, muffins, breakfast cereals, breadcrumbs, bagels, muffins, ramen noodles, past...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - August 10, 2015 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle gluten grain re-exposure grains Inflammation Weight Loss Source Type: blogs
Study on Potential Toxicity of E-Cigarette Flavorings Produces Unwarranted Scare
A study published in the journal Tobacco Control this past April has produced an unwarranted scare about the potential toxicity of the flavorings in electronic cigarettes.(See: Tierney PA, et al. Flavour chemicals in electronic cigarette fluids. Tobacco Control. Published online ahead of print on April 15, 2015. DOI: 0.1136/tobaccocontrol-2014-052175.)The study used gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to analyze the chemical constituents in e-liquids of various flavors. It appears that 30 different e-liquid flavors were tested. Multiple flavors of two brands of disposable e-cigarettes (Blu and NJOY) were tested along with...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - July 16, 2015 Category: Addiction Source Type: blogs
Preservative free products can be dangerous! Episode 91
Perfume for poop
I never realized how important it is to have a good perfume for poop.
We really take a lot of things for granted living in a first world country and one of them is proper sanitation. A lot of places lack proper plumbing and instead use latrines or outdoor toilets. That’s not as much fun as it sounds like because sometimes the stench in these latrines becomes so great the people stop using them and just go outside. When that happens the groundwater can become contaminated which leads to the spread of all sorts of illnesses. This is not a trivial problem – it affects about 2.5 billion people ...
Source: thebeautybrains.com - July 14, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Perry RomanowskiDiscover the beauty and cosmetic products you should use and avoid Source Type: blogs
Whistleblowers wanted
Something happened to wheat in the 1970s during the efforts to generate a high-yield strain that required less fertilizer to make a 24-inch, rather than a 48-inch, stalk. Multiple other changes occurred, including changes in the structure of gluten, changes in wheat germ agglutinin, changes in alpha amylase (responsible for wheat allergy) . . . to name a few.
But chief among the changes in wheat were changes in the gliadin protein molecule. We know, for instance, that the Glia-alpha 9 sequence, absent from traditional wheat, can be found in virtually all modern wheat. This is likely the explanation underlying the four-fold...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - March 29, 2015 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle appetite Gliadin whistleblower Source Type: blogs
How to tell if your makeup primer is worth it. Episode 71
This week Randy and I explain how to test your makeup primer to see if it’s worth the money.
Improbable products
You know this game – I look for beauty products that are just too ridiculous to be true, then I make up one that’s even more ridiculous and challenge Perry to guess which one is fake. Can you spot the phony?
The HeMan nail brush
If you’re too macho for those dainty plastic brushes that women used to scrub their fingernails then you’ll love this new brush made from an actual galvanized box nail with bristles attached to one side.
The iBrush
There’s nothing worse than wanting to sn...
Source: thebeautybrains.com - February 24, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Perry RomanowskiDiscover the beauty and cosmetic products you should use and avoid Source Type: blogs
How to pick the perfect makeup remover
Makeup can be tough to remove so it’s important to pick the right kind of cleanser. Tune in to this week’s show to learn everything you need to know about the perfect product to clean your face.
Click below to play Episode 63 or click “download” to save the MP3 file to your computer.
Show notes
The Beauty Brains on Dr.Oz
I just returned from New York where I not only attended the annual Society of Cosmetic Chemists meeting but I also appeared on the Dr. Oz show! I talked about beauty myth busting and I’ll post a link to the video as soon as I know when the episode airs.
Question of the week: How...
Source: thebeautybrains.com - December 30, 2014 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Perry RomanowskiThe Beauty Brains Tags: Best Podcast Problems Source Type: blogs
