Public Health

Between 2003 and 2014, consumption of sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages declined and yet obesity has continued to rise. Yet governments seeking new sources of revenue are looking for reasons to place sin taxes on soda are saying it's for public health. When even Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health says it's not so clear, you can bet it's not clear. They are usually on the front lines of scaremongering some food types and promoting new food fads. However, not all groups showed a decline. Kids still like soda, as do black and Hispanic groups, which lends weight to…

Too much caffeine is bad for you. It's very risk to buy powdered caffeine for that reason. But it's addictive and people do it. Likewise, too much nicotine is bad for you and you can't shouldn't buy undiluted optically pure nicotine and start inhaling it.  But young people will do risky things. Some may smoke marijuana or cigarettes, some may get addicted to alcohol or drugs. Young people who take up vaping rather than opioids today are a lot better off than a generation ago. Obviously no one is suggesting young people should take up vaping any more than health advocates want young…

My wife and I annually host Thanksgiving dinner for extended family and friends.  It’s a big affair and since we live in a fairly remote, albeit stunningly beautiful, part of northern Michigan, and our guests have to travel hundreds of miles to get here, the event stretches over multiple days.  One of my responsibilities is to ensure we have sufficient quantity and diversity of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to appeal to all of our guests who span four generations and have varied tastes. Something that gives me particular angst each year is choosing the right wines to pair…

My wife and I annually host Thanksgiving dinner for extended family and friends.  It’s a big affair and since we live in a fairly remote, albeit stunningly beautiful, part of northern Michigan, and our guests have to travel hundreds of miles to get here, the event stretches over multiple days.  One of my responsibilities is to ensure we have sufficient quantity and diversity of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to appeal to all of our guests who span four generations and have varied tastes. Something that gives me particular angst each year is choosing the right wines to pair…

Though there are often conversations about the health of larger minority groups such as African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, smaller groups are a real worry for an increasingly overburdened government health care system.   Most health data only code participants into standard non-Hispanic white, Hispanic, African American and Asian American racial categories, while excluding multiracial, NHOPI and AIAN individuals from analysis. For example, almost all health data about Pacific Islanders are grouped with Asian Americans, who tend to be healthier, and that leaves out a big…

Rich people are more likely to shop at Whole Foods, buy supplements, vote for a particular political party and...racially discriminate against minorities? That last part is according to a new sociology paper which will force some inconvenient questions about race and money in America. Though it is commonly believed that wealth leads to better health and less discrimination, wealthier African- and Latino-Americans report more racial discrimination than poor ones, according to survey results. Meanwhile, as whites became more wealthy they report improved health. The paper evaluated responses…

In 2017 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) published a report that it developed for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to evaluate the evidence that chemicals are capable of causing health effects at low-doses.  For this exercise, the NAS committee chose to define low dose as “…external or internal exposure that falls within the range estimated to occur in humans,” and only lightly touched on the separate, but related, topic of non-monotonic dose response curves (NMDRs).   Low dose effects and NMDRs are often confused as they are…

It’s been shown that the primary route of human exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) is through the diet.   One source of BPA in the diet is the protective coating inside many food and beverage cans, which helps to protect the safety and integrity of the food.  Epoxy resin-based coatings have been used for decades because they excel in this application.  Since epoxy resins are made from BPA, trace amounts of residual BPA can leach from the coatings into the food or beverage that we then ingest. An important factor that has a significant impact on whether exposure to BPA is…

Expectant moms get a lot of advice from the Internet, friends, and even strangers. It's a lot of judgment, given that this miracle of birth has already happened 13 billion times without anyone telling mothers to eat purple vegetables or their child won't get into Stanford. The digital age, where publication is cheap, coupled with epidemiology which can show almost anything, has led to a lot of confusion. But when the word "stillbirth" is invoked, as was recently down in The Journal of Physiology, pregnant women will panic.  Yet they shouldn't. No babies were harmed in a study which…

Mothers have always been put upon culturally when it comes to how kids turn out. Though the physical costs of gestation are literally borne by mothers while fathers are basically done at conception(1), everyone feels they hav a say in telling expectant moms what to do. - Society once insisted pregnant mothers not only to abstain from participating in sports but even abstain from watching sports. The excitement would be too much for the baby, women were told. - Doctors also told women not to put their arms over their heads or the umbilical cord might get wrapped around the baby's neck.…