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 and ...

My new year's resolution this year was basically to try and stop drinking caffeine and diet soda if at all possible. I used to drink probably close to 2L of diet pepsi a day in Vancouver, mostly because the office I worked at had a fountain pop machine that everyone could use for free. Whether or not diet soda is a health concern is still up for debate, but undoubtedly it has aspartame (even though it has a good safety record, it's still a chemical) as well as caffeine (which has been linked to weight gain and elevated levels of adrenaline, and cortisol, the stress hormone). I figured while I ...

A lot of the nutrition researchers continue to argue that the body needs to obey the laws of thermodynamics, that is energy in minus energy out has to equal weight gained or weight lost. Using that definition, the way to lose weight is to create a negative caloric balance (by cutting food or increasing energy expenditure) such that the weight disappears. That viewpoint neglects the fact that the body is not a closed system, and the internal cellular metabolism depends on many aspects, one of which is thought to be the macronutrient composition of the food that goes in. For example, protein is ...

So, it's only been about 5 days since I started, but I thought I'd drop a quick update. As most of you know, I am a big supporter of low-carbohydrate diets, mostly because a great deal of research show they are superior for treating things like diabetes and heart disease, but also because I once lost a great deal of weight (with relative ease) by just giving up carbs. Effectively, the last few days have really been a transition from a moderate carbohydrate to a low-carb one for me. I've been keeping accurate food, weight and activity logs, which should help me figure out what's working and what's ...

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, ...

Part of the reason I went back to Chilliwack this last weekend was to get caught up on sleep before all the craziness begins this month and next. Thankfully I managed to do just that, and often slept in until 11:30 or noon. I actually feel fairly refreshed, which is a nice change. Chilliwack Rainbow One of the things I'm going to try to do over the next two months is to lose a few pounds. Before being in the hospital and all my surgeries, I was in a fairly happy place with regards to health. But this last year has been tough and I haven't really been that vigilant with watching what I eat and ...

I've posted a few times on this subject, but this is a new paper that's hot off the presses. Once thought to help with weight loss, caffeine has recently been cast in a new light as actually contributing to weight gain. Even caffeinated diet pop can lead to weight gain, due to increased insulin secretion in the body. A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover study with periods of 7 days and washouts of 5 days comparing caffeine with placebo capsules was conducted. Participants were 16 healthy adults aged 18 to 22 years with a history of caffeine consumption. Blood samples from ...

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 ...

A few blog posts ago, I mentioned that I was going to do my best to return back to my pre-last-relationship weight. To that end, I have spent the last week hitting the gym from time to time and attempting to watch what I eat. The first week has been a bit rocky, and I hit a few tasty speed bumps at Rebecca's Cinqo de Mayo party, but for the most part I've been on track. Since my life is a bit crazy thesedays, it's challenging for me to always have access to "healthy" food, but I've been doing the best I can. So without further ado, the progress after week #1 is (RSS drum roll please): 5.5 ...

When I left Ottawa years ago, I was a pretty chubby guy. Two years of working crazy hours, drinking tons of beer, and eating primarily in restaurants had taken its toll, and my old university self had been replaced with your stereotypical software engineering stature. As soon as I got settled in Vancouver and started classes again at UBC, I decided to undo all the damage of my Ottawa experience -- I started watching what I ate, getting a bit more exercise (mostly by rollerblading and hiking), and even sleeping in a bit more. In about six months, I had dropped 40 lbs, and ended up being substantially ...

If you would have mentioned that you were trying to lose weight by a reducing your carbohydrate intake a few years ago, people would have dismissed you as crazy and told you that you were only hurting your body. However, that all changed sometime around 2003 when a prestigious medical school released a peer-reviewed study that basically showed Low Carbohyrate diets not only help people lose more weight, but also result in better blood-lipid profiles than their low-fat counterparts. Since then, I've read countless studies on PubMed that basically indicate the same thing. However, another fairly ...