If there’s one thing that’s consistent in the field of nutrition, it’s that information is always changing. With the barrage of latest headlines about the scientific research on nutrition, how can we cut through the confusion and make healthy choices? I usually spend a fair amount of time reading Nutrition Facts labels at the grocery store,
‘Tis the season for making New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps your resolutions include healthier eating and losing weight. There is certainly plenty of info in my past articles on how to construct a healthy diet that will help you live longer and prevent chronic diseases. One element that may have been overlooked in all the scrutiny over what to eat is when to eat.
Sitting, and its effects on health, is a hot topic these days. I recently wrote a review of current research, showing how excessive sitting increases our risk of chronic disease and death; it even cancels out the benefits of regular exercise.
It seems like I’m hearing more about this everywhere I turn.
Healthy lifestyle habits: we know we should do them, but sometimes, it just seems like work. Yes, Dr. Peters, I know that a Mediterranean diet and exercise will decrease my risk of dying, but it’s just one more thing to add to the daily to-do list. A phenomenon has popped up in recent years that makes it just a little less onerous to keep our minds and bodies fit:
One of the main impediments that many people cite in avoiding healthy foods is taste. When the average American is faced with the choice between a Frappuccino and a kale salad, it’s no mystery which one will be chosen. Our brains are hard-wired to seek out fats, sugar, and salt for survival — but with the modern food-industrial complex,
This is the headline would like to see, whenever we hear about the latest scientific research in the media. However, even with the best scientific journals, pinning down “the truth” in medicine can be a tricky business. I think that science is important in guiding our health care decisions this, but we must be wary about overreliance on so-called evidence-based medicine.
Imagine two co-workers: one slim, the type who can seem to eat anything without gaining a pound — and therefore does not feel the need to exercise; the other one overweight, but who works out regularly. In spite of your latter colleague’s efforts, he has found it very difficult to lose weight. Which one is at greater risk for health problems down the road?
“Holistic medicine” does not just mean substituting herbs for prescription drugs; it means looking at the whole person — body and mind. Stress has a powerful impact on our mental/emotional health, as well as our physical health (via the neurologic and endocrine systems). To that end, I often teach people techniques such as quiet breathing exercises to improve stress management.
There has been a lot of speculation about the increasing rates of obesity over the last few decades. Many of the causes of this phenomenon are well known, and I have covered them in past articles: the move from whole foods to more processed foods, a decrease in physical activity with the rise in technology,
By now, you’ve probably heard that coffee is not the no-no that natural health experts used to think it was. True, if you drink a lot of it, it can have negative effects such as disrupting sleep, increasing anxiety, and over the long term, exhausting your adrenal reserves. In fact, you may recall that researchers have even found the cut-off for how much is too much: more than four cups (32 fluid ounces) per day increases the risk of death.