A University of Virginia researcher named Hannah Menefee contacted me recently to ask for our help. She and her colleagues are conducting a study on how people with type 2 diabetes use Facebook to manage their health, and how that technology can be leveraged to support effective health communication. If you have type 2 diabetes, and you'd like to participate in the study, please join their Diabetes Management Study Facebook group. There, you'll receive more information about the study, you'll receive a short survey, and you may be invited into one of the study phase...
My AHS14 Talk on Leptin Resistance is Posted
The Ancestral Health Society just posted a video of my recent talk "What Causes Leptin Resistance?" Follow the link below to access it. Enjoy!What Causes Leptin Resistanc...
Thoughts on the McDougall Advanced Study Weekend
For those of you who aren't familiar with him, Dr. John McDougall is a doctor and diet/health advocate who recommends a very low fat, high starch, whole food vegan diet to control weight and avoid chronic disease. He's been at it for a long time, and he's a major figure in the "plant-based diet" community (i.e., a diet including little or no animal foods).Dr. McDougall invited me to participate in his 3-day Advanced Study Weekend retreat in Santa Rosa, CA. My job was to give my talk on insulin and obesity, and participate in a panel discussion/debate with Dr. McDougall in which we sorted through issues related to low-carb, Paleo, and the health implications of eating animal foods. I was glad to receive the invitation, because...
What about the Other Weight Loss Diet Study??
The same day the low-fat vs low-carb study by Bazzano and colleagues was published, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a meta-analysis that compared the effectiveness of "named diet programs". Many people have interpreted this study as demonstrating that low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets are both effective for weight loss, and that we simply need to pick a diet and stick with it, but that's not really what the study showed. Let's take a closer look.Johnston and colleagues sifted through PubMed for studies that evaluated "named diet programs", such as Ornish, Atkins, LEARN, Weight Watchers, etc (1). In addition, the methods state that they included any study as low-carbohydrate that recommended less...
Low-carbohydrate vs. Low-fat diets for Weight Loss: New Evidence
A new high-profile study compared the weight loss and cardiovascular effects of a low-carbohydrate diet vs. a low-fat diet. Although many studies have done this before, this one is novel enough to add to our current understanding of diet and health. Unlike most other studies of this nature, diet adherence was fairly good, and carbohydrate restriction produced greater weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor improvements than fat restriction at the one-year mark. Yet like previous studies, neither diet produced very impressive results.The StudyLydia A. Bazzano and colleagues at Tulane University randomly assigned 148 obese men and women without cardiovascular disease into two groups (1):Received instructions to eat less...