the-psoriasis-treatment

I have been regularly recommending to users of the software HCE ( ) to include a column in their health data reflecting their alcohol consumption. Why? Because I suspect that alcohol consumption is behind many of what we call the “diseases of affluence”. A while ago I recall watching an interview with a centenarian, a very lucid woman. When asked about her “secret” to live a long life, she said that she added a little bit of whiskey to her coffee every morning. It was something like a tablespoon of whiskey, or about 15 g, which amounted to approximately 6 g of ethanol every single day. Well, she might have been drinking very close to the optimal amount of alcohol per day for the average person, if the study reviewed in this post is correct. Studies of the effect of alcohol consumption on health generally show results in terms of averages within fixed ranges of consumption. For example, they will show average mortality risks for people consuming 1, 2, 3 etc. drinks per day. These studie...

The amount of melanin found within our skin has long been a source of division for humans culturally, but anthropologist Nina Jablonski of Penn State tells the story of how human skin color unites us all biologically. It's become one of my favorite stories to share as it relates to nutritional biology: More pigment was naturally selected because it acted as a sunscreen needed to protect against DNA damage and destruction of folate, needed for reproduction. Depigmentation was selected for when humans dispersed from Africa and into the Northern Hemisphere where they needed skin light enough to absorb sufficient UVB rays to produce vitamin D. I first heard Jablonski discuss the nature of human skin pigmentation almost two years ago at the  AAAS conference  in Washington DC. Later, I discovered her TED talk, which I've posted above. It's older, but worth watching over and over again. Jablonski has a simple message: instead of using skin color to discriminate, use skin color t...

Credit: San Diego Zoo Try telling a Komodo dragon that physical activity doesn't matter and that all one needs to do to lose weight is eat a diet lower in carbohydrates. Meet Sunny, the obese Komodo dragon. Her San Diego Zoo keepers have put her on a strict diet based on her animal energy and metabolic requirements. She eats only mice, rats, and ground turkey mixed with vitamins and calcium. Yet, it's not enough to keep Sunny from steadily gaining weight. When in captivity, dragons are prone to obesity because of their mainly sedentary lifestyle. They do little else than sleep, bask in the sun or shade, and eat breakfast or supper. In their native habitat of Indonesian islands, Komodo dragons are extremely active. They travel up to 10 kilometers a day, run up to 13 miles per hour, swim several kilometers from island to island, then dig or climb as they hunt. Once they capture their prey, they can eat as much as 80 percent of their body weight in a single meal. That energy...

"Pick your poison" Sugars by vavroom, on Flickr In his new book, Fat Chance,  Dr. Robert Lustig argues that "sugar is more toxin than it ever was nutrient." He writes that sugar is as addictive as cocaine, that it should be regulated like tobacco, and that children should be carded before having a soda. He compares the fructose component of sugar to ethanol. "Pick your poison," he writes, arguing that fructose will "fry your liver and cause all the same diseases as does alcohol." He also challenges energy balance (calories-in-calories-out) as the dominant paradigm of understanding obesity and and argues that sugar is harmful in ways beyond the calories it provides. With statements as controversial as these, it's no wonder that the media, who tend to crave sensationalism to obtain readers or viewers, eat them up like candy. And Dr. Lustig knows what he's doing and just what to say to elicit attention. He's no stranger to the spotlight,...