Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

The Truth About Weight Gain

Consuming excess calories increases body fat, regardless of how many calories come from protein. High-protein diets do affect energy expenditure and storage of lean body mass, just not body fat storage.

To evaluate the effects of overconsumption of low-, normal-, and high-protein diets on weight gain, researchers conducted a single-blind, randomized controlled trial of 25 healthy, weight-stable adults in an inpatient metabolic unit in Baton Rouge, La. Patients were ages 18 to 35 with a body mass index between 19 and 30. The study was headed by George A. Bray, MD, MACP.

After consuming a weight-stabilizing diet for 13 to 25 days, participants were randomized to diets containing 5% of energy from protein (low protein), 15% (normal protein) or 25% (high protein). Only the kitchen staff who supervised participants while they were eating knew the assignments. There was no prescribed exercise, and alcohol and caffeine were restricted.

Patients were Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

The New Science Of Social Networks Shows The Spread Of Weight And Happiness Among Friends

The people you live with, work with, talk to, email, chatter with on Twitter and Facebook—your social network—can be good medicine, or bad.

The intriguing new science of social networks is demonstrating how personal interconnections can affect our health. Ideas and habits that influence health for better or for worse can spread through social networks in much the same way that germs spread through communities. In social networks, though, transmission can happen even though the people may be hundreds of miles apart.

An article in the December issue of the Harvard Men’s Health Watch explores how social networks can affect weight and mood.

Spreading weight

A study of people taking part in the landmark Framingham Heart Study found that Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*

Majority Of California Children’s Hospitals Found To Offer Unhealthy Meals

A study published in the journal Academic Pediatrics reveals that 93% of California children’s hospitals offered unhealthy food to outpatients, visitors and staff in the cafeteria and snack bars.  Said another way, only 7% offered healthy food.  What did these foods consist of to be called “unhealthy”?  Try fried food, sweetened beverages, burgers and lots of sugary sweets.

The study found that 81% of the cafeterias placed high-calorie, high-sugar items like ice cream right by the cash register, a well known marketing plan to tantalize and increase selection.  Forty four percent didn’t even offer low calorie salad dressing and fewer than 1/3 had no nutrition information.

Health care workers, like the rest of America, suffer from increasing obesity.  One study showed over 54% of Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

The Freshman Fifteen Fallacy: How Much Weight Do College Students Actually Gain?

Fear of the “freshman 15” weight gain is overrated, says one researcher who found that the average college student packs on only between about 2.5 and 3.5 pounds.

And it might not even be the college lifestyle that causes one’s backpack to become a little more snug. Rather, it’s part of the natural transition into adulthood. The typical freshman only gains about a half-pound more than a same-age person who didn’t go to college.

“Not only is there not a ‘freshman 15,’ there doesn’t appear to be even a ‘college 15’ for most students,” researchers said in a press release.

The researchers concluded that the myth of the freshman 15 may contribute to Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Weight Gain Associated With Years Following Marriage And Divorce

Women gain weight after marriage and men after divorce, especially among those over 30, likely the result of “weight shock” to people’s routines in physical activity and diet, sociologists reported.

The research, led by a sociology doctoral student at The Ohio State University, was presented at a roundtable on Marriage and Family at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. They used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth ’79, a nationally representative sample of men and women ages 14 to 22 in 1979. The same people were surveyed every year up to 1994 and every other year since then, reported a press release.

Data on more than 10,000 people surveyed from 1986 to 2008 was used to determine Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles