The more research that’s published, the more evidence I seem to run into that indicates insulin resistance (and consequently obesity) seems to be related to oxidative stress and/or nutritional deficiencies. As I’ve pointed out before, one of the strange paradoxes that most theories generally can’t explain is why obesity often goes hand in hand with poor nutrition. That is, if obesity is caused solely by overeating, then we should see the lack of obesity in populations where food is scarce or nutrient poor. As several populations have shown us (most notably the Pima Indians), that isn’t ...

I’ve been writing about obesity and something called hyper-insulinemia for about as long as I can remember. For those of you who don’t know, many people nowadays have something called metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of symptoms including obesity, high blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, and high cholesterol. The main component of all of these is something called hyper-insulinemia (which is also called insulin resistance). What I just wrote is pretty much accepted as fact nowadays. What is still up for debate is a) whether insulin resistance is the cause or the effect of obesity ...

It’s widely recognized nowadays that many people have a condition known as insulin resistance. Internally, their cells have become desensitized to insulin, which ultimately forces the body to create more of it in order to meet the cellular demands on the body (insulin is required to move glucose into the cells for usage). Unfortunately though, high insulin levels lead to heart disease, type II diabetes, obesity (or a difficulty in losing weight), high blood pressure, and are potentially implicated in several cancers, including breast. This metabolic condition is known in the literature as “metabolic ...

A few weeks ago I went into the doctor’s office to get a pile of tests done on myself. For those of you that remember, last year I came down with a clostridium difficile infection, which is a superbug that typically only affects people who end up in hospitals on broad spectrum antibiotics. When I was in the hospital last year with pneumonia, I ended up getting it, and it was a very nasty experience that took three rounds of antibiotics to get rid of. That being said, my stomach has never really been the same, and I frequently have an upset stomach or cramps still. Since C. Diff. has about a ...

I picked up a book the other day that I’ve been meaning to read for a few months now. It is a book by a scientific journalist named Gary Taubes entitled Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (Vintage) (although after reading it, I think a more appropriate title might be something like “The People’s History Of Diet And Nutrition.”) For those of you who follow nutritional research, you may remember Gary from a controversial article he wrote in 2002 in the New York Times called ‘What If It’s Been A Big Fat Lie?” In that article, he ...

Part of the reason I wrote the last article on insulin resistance is so I could continue to talk about that subject without continually explaining what it is I was talking about. Sometime around the year 2003, there was a pretty seminal study performed that had an undesirable, although extremely fascinating outcome. The researchers at the time were trying to guage the body’s insulin response to various foods. When they came to apple pie though, they were in for a surprise: Just half a teaspoon of cinnamon a day significantly reduces blood sugar levels in diabetics, a new study has found. The ...

Sylvain sent me this link today that basically concluded that one or more cans of diet soda can lead to health risks such as the metabolic syndrome “We found that one or more sodas per day increases your risk of new-onset metabolic syndrome by about 45 per cent, and it did not seem to matter if it was regular or diet,” Dr. Ramachandran Vasan, senior investigator for the Framingham Heart Study, said Monday from Boston. .. The study included nearly 9,000 observations of middle-aged men and women over four years at three different times. The study looked at how many 355-millilitre cans of cola ...