“Are Beyond Meat Plant-Based Meat Alternatives Healthy?” As the chair of Harvard’s As the nutrition department put it, transitioning global diets towards healthy plant-based dietary patterns would require large-scale public health efforts but could be instrumental in ensuring future human health. In my book How Not to Diet, in the chapter on habit formation,…
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“How to Get the Weight Loss Benefits of Ephedra Without the Risks” Thermogenic drugs like DNP can cause people to overheat to death; they can increase resting metabolic rates by 300% or more. A more physiological spread would range about 10 times less, from a 30% slower metabolism in people with an underactive thyroid…
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“Is Fasting Beneficial for Weight Loss?” Fasting causes consistent, dramatic weight loss, but how do fasted individuals do long-term? Some research groups reported extremely disappointing results. Here’s what they saw. The average subject started at about 270 pounds and, in the six months before the fast, continued to gain weight as obese persons tend…
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“Fasting to Naturally Reverse High Blood Pressure” Medically supervised water-only fasting in the treatment of high blood pressure. A hundred seventy-four consecutive patients were treated in an inpatient setting. First, a few days of fruits and vegetables. This is to kind of clear out the gut so they don’t become constipated, followed by 10…
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“The Weight Loss Program That Got Better with Time” The CHIP program may be the most well-published community-based lifestyle intervention in the medical literature and one of the most effective with clinical changes approaching that achieved in live-in residential lifestyle programs. Encouraging people to transition towards a more whole food plant-based diet achieved blood…
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“Treating Advanced Prostate Cancer with Diet: Part 2” Dr. Ornish and colleagues were able to show an apparent reversal in the progression of early stage localized prostate cancer with a plant-based diet and lifestyle program, and researchers at the University of Massachusetts and elsewhere showed a similar diet may help slow the progression of…
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“The 5-2 Diet and the Fasting- Mimicking Diet Put to the Test” What about instead of eating every other day you ate five days a week and fast the other two? The available data is similar to that of alternate-day fasting. About a dozen pounds of weight loss was reported in overweight men and women…
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“Treatment for High Lp(a) Risk Factor for Atherosclerosis” What could help explain severe coronary disease in someone considered to be at low cardiovascular disease risk with a healthy lifestyle? A young man ends up in the ER with a heart attack, ultimately found to have severe coronary artery disease, yet given his age, blood pressure,…
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“Benefits of Flaxseed Meal for Weight Loss” Canada now allows a health claim on the labels of products with flaxseeds, saying that we know with sufficient certainty that flaxseeds do indeed help lower cholesterol levels. The products have to contain two tablespoons and have to be relatively healthy in the first place, so they can’t…
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“How to Treat Reflux in Children with Diet” Excessive spitting up and vomiting in infants may be treated by putting them on their left-side down after meals, but of course never when sleeping— it’s always face-up to wake up to reduce the risk of crib death. Also, you can try smaller more frequent feedings, thickening…
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“The Best Time to Workout for Weight Loss” What is the optimal exercise timing for weight loss? Is it better to exercise in the morning or in the evening? Before breakfast or after breakfast? There was a Nobel Prize- winning exercise physiologist who said he always ran a mile every morning before breakfast. Was he…
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“Does Chewing Gum Help with Weight Loss?” Chewing gum may only burn about three calories an hour, but the calorie expenditure is not just your little jaw muscles at work. For some reason, gum chewing revs up your heart rate, as much as an extra 12 beats per minute after chewing two sticks of gum.…
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