Two pharmaceutical researchers from UBC with a background in testing drug companies' claims tested the claims of the Cold-fX maker CV Technologies and concluded that there is no evidence that Cold-fX statistically reduced the percentage of subjects who ended up getting a cold. In the interesting article above their claims are countered by the company's president. The article is a good introduction to experiment design in undergraduate courses.
In Health Canada approved the CV Technologies claims that the product "helps reduce the frequency, severity and duration of cold and flu symptoms by boosting the immune system.
So, wrong approach — and when it fails, we blame the patients for not sustaining it. The ketogenic diet is a widely accepted dietary treatment for epilepsy, but in your book you go further, describing it as a potential solution to the obesity epidemic and type 2 diabetes. What is the thinking for why a ketogenic diet can help in these cases? Fat accumulation is primarily regulated by the hormone insulin, and the idea is that for those who are obese, diabetic, or predisposed, they have to minimise their insulin levels to solve the problem.
By restricting carbohydrate, the ketogenic diet minimises insulin, and so instead of accumulating fat, your body starts mobilising it, and synthesising ketones out of it to use as fuel. While there is some evidence that restricting carbohydrate intake can help obese patients, and those with type 2 diabetes, many doctors and nutrition experts feel that it remains relatively limited.
What do we know so far? The most impressive research has been done by a Californian startup called Virta Health. They did a clinical trial at Indiana University where subjects either received conventional nutritional advice and medications, or a well formulated ketogenic diet. Over two years , the patients on the diet had remarkable results, effectively putting their diabetes in remission. But studies like this are causing a shift in the medical community, and people are embracing the idea that carbohydrates are fattening.
In a lengthy article published in in Science for which he has long been a correspondent Gary raised doubts about the claim that low-salt diets are healthy. In a cover story for The New York Times Magazine , Gary questioned the truism that people are getting fatter because they eat too much—especially fatty foods—and exercise too little. Carbohydrates, Gary contended, have fueled the epidemic of obesity in the U.
I have great respect for Gary. He's a science journalist's science journalist, who researches topics to the point of obsession—actually, well beyond that point—and never dumbs things down for readers. I read both of Gary's fat books, invited him to speak about diet at my school two years ago , and discussed the subject with him on Bloggingheads. Gary marshals mountains of data in support of his thesis, but I still have misgivings about it.
My reaction is partly visceral; the Atkins diet—which prescribes little fruit and vegetables and lots of meat—strikes me as, well, gross. Here is Gary's personal diet, as described on his blog :. I cook with butter and, occasionally, olive oil the sausages. My snacks run to cheese and almonds. So lots of fat and saturated fat and very little carbohydrates. The article examined the "here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of medical wisdom," such as the claim—touted in the s and retracted a decade ago—that estrogen could improve the health of aging women.
Gary noted that even the best-designed epidemiological studies are confounded by factors such as "healthy-user bias," the tendency of people who faithfully adhere to a treatment to be healthier than those who are less compliant—even if the treatment is a placebo. He warned that if a study implies that "some drug or diet will bring us improved prosperity and health," we should "wonder about the unforeseen consequences.
Gary, it seems to me, applies this critical outlook more to high-carb, low-fat diets than to the Atkins diet, which he celebrates for helping him and many others lose weight "almost effortlessly. One problem, Gary says, is that many people become addicted to carbs, and their craving makes them fall off the Atkins wagon. Switching from a high-carb, low-fat diet to the Atkins system, Gary also acknowledges in Why We Get Fat , can trigger "weakness, fatigue, nausea, dehydration, diarrhea, constipation," among other side effects.
Gary assures readers that they'll reap the benefits if they just stick to Atkins, but he slams advocates of less-fat, more-exercise diets for giving people this same just-stick-to-it advice. Gary is a big guy, 1. Exercise didn't help him slim down, he said, but the Atkins diet did. Because Gary cites his personal experience as evidence, I can cite mine as counterevidence. I'm 1.
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