My last post was political and got 17 comments just in the first six hours. I suppose that means I’m due for another post about religion, or one about sex. Given Stephan Guyenet’s recent post about the dangers of hyperpalatability, though, I’m inclined to obey the proverb “don’t take too much honey” and delicately sprinkle …
Here’s another short post in honor of my readers with ADHD. One subject that came up in Dr. Lustig’s recent interview on “Sugar and Health” is the need to formulate public policy in order to reduce fructose consumption. I think, as advocates of real traditional foods that will invariably have differing political dispositions, we need to …
My apologies to anyone who received this in their RSS feed on Thursday as a teaser. I have now revised and extended it to include several studies showing that diet-induced obesity can be achieved in rats and mice without using any sugar at all, and have included a clearer conclusion. Ancel Keys is best known …
A new study claims to show that carbohydrate restriction is superior to calorie restriction at improving fatty liver disease: Browning JD, Baker JA, Rogers T, Davis J, Satapati S, Burgess SC. Short-term weight loss and hepatic triglyceride reduction: evidence of a metabolic advantage with dietary carbohydrate restriction. Am J Clin Nutr. 2011 In this study …
I have a new article on nonalcoholic fatty liver disease appearing in the outgoing issue of Wise Traditions, and the online version just went up on the web site: Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease — A Silent Epidemic of Nutritional Imbalance The article contains a lot of information that I’ve already posted on this blog, but …
In a previous post, “The Great Unknown: Using the Statistics to Explore the Secret Depths of Unpublished Research,” I discussed one way a study can show something to be true when it’s false, or vice versa. If some nutrient or drug has a “true” biological effect, and we repeat many studies of the phenomenon, we …
Are high concentrations of LDL-cholesterol a major cause of heart disease? If we are a proponent of the “lipid hypothesis,” we say yes. If we are a “cholesterol skeptic,” we say no — total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, LDL particles, triglycerides, and other blood lipids have little or nothing to do with heart disease. I believe both of these positions …
by Chris Masterjohn Not much, simply because the data are so poor. However, let’s take a look at some data for the very weakly supported hypothesis that people in the 19th century with familial hypercholesterolemia lived longer than other people and perform a little “thought experiment” to see what it could teach us about genetics if …
In my last two posts, I argued for the importance of distinguishing the lipid hypothesis, which holds that high concentrations of cholesterol in the blood cause heart disease, from the diet-heart hypothesis, which holds that high amounts of saturated fat in the diet cause heart disease. If you missed them, you can read them here: The Proper …
In my last post (The Proper Use of the Term “Lipid Hypothesis”), I traced the origin of the term “lipid hypothesis” to Edward Ahrens in 1976, who defined it as the hypothesis that reductions in blood cholesterol levels will lead to reductions in heart disease risk. This can be seen as a testable prediction of …