July 23rd, 2010 by DrWes in Better Health Network, Humor, Opinion
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All it takes to assure you’ll keep your local cardiologist employed is 19 strips of bacon and an egg and you’ve got yourself one heck of a solid bacon burger:
Having read about the difficulties people making such burgers have had keeping them together, I decided to add one large egg to the food processor along with the 19 slices of bacon. I ground the bacon and the egg together, then, using my hands, pulled the mixture out and used a hamburger press to make a burger. It is possible that my hands have been greasier at some point in my life, but if so I have (fortunately) forgotten it. I was not quite prepared for the raw burger to look like pure fat, and I must admit that it didn’t look very appealing. But it was for science, so I soldiered on!
I put the burger on the rack-Pyrex assembly and slid it under the broiler. Having learned a lesson from last week, I turned the stove exhaust fan to high immediately. I peeked in on it as it cooked, and it seemed to be cooking nicely, with tons of little fat bubbles sizzling on top. After seven minutes or so, I took it out to turn it over, and was pleased how easily it flipped. Five minutes later, it looked done, so I took the temperature of the inside (you need to be careful with pork, of course), and it registered at 160 degrees Fahrenheit, so out it came. Now it looked like food, and smelled delicious.
My family and I thank you, America!
-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
July 6th, 2010 by Joseph Scherger, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Research
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Most of us know that salt raises blood pressure in many people. When I learned that in medical school almost 40 years ago, I have not touched a salt shaker since. I enjoy having a low normal blood pressure. A new study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (July 2010) suggests that sugar, especially the fructose that comes from corn syrup, may also raise blood pressure.
A study team from the University of Colorado in Denver looked at sugar intake among thousands of Americans in a major national nutrition survey between 2003 and 2006. Those who consumed more added sugars, such as the fructose in soft drinks, had significantly higher blood pressures than those who did not and ate more natural foods such as fresh fruit. Fructose from corn syrup is a major cause of the obesity epidemic and may also be contributing to high blood presure, the most common chronic disease in adults. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at eDocAmerica*
April 10th, 2010 by Peggy Polaneczky, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion, Research, True Stories
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I’ve been waiting for this soup for weeks. Eleven weeks, to be exact. That’s how long I was enrolled in a research diet study, and unable to eat anything other than the food they provided me, which was nowhere near as delicious as this soup.
The study is designed to compare the effects of three different diets — the American Diet, the Mediterrnean Diet, and a high-protein diet — on weight loss and cardiovascular disease risk.
I randomized to the American Diet, meaning that Thursday’s lunch was a slice of pizza with potato chips and an afternoon snack of Oreos and chocolate pudding, Saturday’s lunch was hamburger and fries, and the most veggies I ever saw at one sitting was a measly stalk of broccoli.
Despite this, I lost 30 pounds over the 11 weeks of the study, primarily because my caloric intake was only 1,200 calories per day, carefully calculated based on my basal metabolic rate. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Blog that Ate Manhattan*
