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Heart Disease And Working Overtime

The European Heart Journal studied 6,000 British civil servants and followed them for 11 years. They found that working an extra 3 to 4 hours a day is associated with increased coronary heart disease.

The researchers controlled and adjusted for lifestyle, cardiac risk factors, and other factors that would skew the results, and still found that people who worked 3 to 4 extra hours a day had a 60 percent increase in risk for heart disease. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

The Epidemic Of Sedentary Behavior

“I never worry about action, but only about inaction.”  — Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was right: Experts are saying sedentary behavior is an epidemic, with the resulting health effects potentially devastating.

Lack of muscular activity is associated with higher incidence of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, as well as a heightened risk of death. And this is regardless of one’s level of structured physical exercise, according to the authors of an article published [recently] in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The team from Stockholm, Sweden, says that sedentary behavior has become synonymous with lack of exercise, but that this is inaccurate and misleading. Rather, sedentary behavior should be defined as whole body muscular inactivity. Read more »

American Obesity And Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

We are a nation stricken with an epidemic of obesity, which contributes to the incidence of diabetes and heart disease. Each of these has been linked to consumption of sugar intake, and in particular, sugar-sweetened beverages.

There’s nothing evil about sugar — it’s just that too much of it in certain forms is bad for you. For the purpose of definition, sugar-sweetened beverages contain added, naturally-derived caloric sweeteners such as sucrose (table sugar), high-fructose corn syrup, or fruit juice concentrates. Read more »

This post, American Obesity And Sugar-Sweetened Beverages, was originally published on Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..

Got Milk AND Heart Disease?

Mmmm. I just discovered non-homogenized milk — the kind with the thick layer of cream on top and more watery milk below. You have to shake it up before each serving, and the little flecks of buttery cream never quite disappear. Non-homogenized milk can look alien at first, with tiny chunks of floating cream fooling the mind into thinking the stuff’s gone rancid. But the taste is far superior to homogenized milk. Think milk with a hint of butter.

This is the old-fashioned kind, available to humans for 10,000 years until the 1930’s when homogenized milk became widespread. Homogenization of milk is accomplished by a series of filtration steps under high pressure that squeeze milk and its relatively large fat globules through tiny tubes, breaking the globules into microscopic pieces which are then prevented from coalescing by the casein already in the milk. This process makes milk look homogenous — uniform in consistency and tasting evenly creamy. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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