Public Health

A short time ago, the National Institutes of Health 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee held its second public meeting to discuss recommended changes. It was very authoritative, they said they were concerned about cancer and chemicals and obesity and they assured us they were looking at all of the new literature. The panel signaled it wants to go after Frappuccinos and aspartame. The problem is that none of those issues are why they were created. The mandate of the group historically is to inform the public about a healthy, achievable diet, not to pick winners and losers in food…

An organ donor waiting list is not just who has been waiting the longest, an equation ranks patients based on age, waiting time, and other checklist. Yet the 'other factors may' mean a secret sauce that leads to disparity the same way EPA panels refusing to disclose data in studies its epidemiologists choose to use leads to erosions in public trust. Transplant centers may be ignoring such secret sauce determinations. A new analysis of 11 centers between 2015 and 2019 found that 78 percent of kidneys offered to these centers were not placed with candidates at the top of the list of…

Calories cause obesity and while everyone wants a magic solution to eating too much for a prolonged period of time, those with the means can make it reality in the form of surgery. COVID-19 set off a panic in much of culture. Schools were closed, people were ostracized if they didn't think flipping masks up and down between sips of water was clinically valid, but decisions were being made in real-time so a lot of things that once again seem silly in hindsight were the Precautionary Principle in all its glorious flawed reasoning. Some people like me chew gum or go for a walk to relieve stress…

New food surveys show what you probably knew; if you eat too much, you will get fat, and obesity is a risk factor for numerous health issues. In most cases, health advocates worry about the pediatric age but they focus on choosing winners and losers in foods rather than the real culprit, too much food. High fructose corn syrup, trans fats and now ultra-processed foods are the latest fad targets for the nutrition activism marketplace. Yet people still smoke and drink too much, and it is rare they do that in childhood and it can also be the case with food that bad habits develop later in life…

In the past two decades, children have become more obese and have developed obesity at a younger age. A 2020 report found that 14.7 million children and adolescents in the U.S. live with obesity. Because obesity is a known risk factor for serious health problems, its rapid increase during the COVID-19 pandemic raised alarms. Without intervention, many obese adolescents will remain obese as adults. Even before adulthood, some children will have serious health problems beginning in their preteen years. To address these issues, in early 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics released its…

A new paper in Canadian Medical Association Journal has linked irregular heartbeats in 322 Chinese cities to small-micron particulate matter, invisible pollution that needs an electron microscope to visualize. Given its minute size, PM2.5 is one-fourth the size of real pollution, PM10, there is four times as much of it, so the paper could have used PM10 and achieved the same statistical significance. It just would have been less dramatic So they go for drama, because everyone already knows smog is harmful. After over 12,000 died in a short period in London in the 1950s, a deadly confluence of…

Hershey is rolling out Reese’s Plant Based Peanut Butter Cups this month, and it is a great idea. Plant-based foods are all the rage - unless the entire market is about to collapse - and people who like vegan stuff are willing to overpay for food they can then annoy everyone at parties by going on and on about. Weren't peanut butter cups already vegan? No, they contain milk and vegans say any milk produced by an animal is bad. This new thing swaps out the milk for highly-processed oats and continues their efforts to appeal to everyone with money to spend on their belief system. I applaud such…

If you have ever had a CT scan using a contrast material like iodine, you were probably told to drink plenty of fluids to flush it out of your system. It is one-size-fits-all advice more to protect people who may have received a lot of them, because the dose makes the poison, or those who have chronic kidney disease. Allergies can happen but claims of build-up or toxicity in otherwise healthy people are in the same camp as endocrine disruption and other homeopathic effects.(1) That is why a new paper seeking to link infusions containing the gadolinium that enhances MRI scans to side…

A lot of people went into 2023 hoping to lose some weight. It's no surprise. Putting it on is easy and rich countries make delicious food at affordable prices while our culture has not yet overcome our biological mandate to eat because animals are programmed to be unsure when the next meal will be. If you went into 2023 trying some miracle diet - keto, gluten-free, Mediterranean, et al. - you have probably already failed. Yet each of those diets has proponents because it worked for them individually. With enough individual anecdotes epidemiologists will find correlation using food frequency…

Reducing the risk of transfusion-transmitted HIV from blood donations is important for public health and the U.S. currently uses time-based deferrals to assess donor eligibility. Now the FDA is proposing individual risk-based questions to reduce the risk of transfusion-transmitted HIV similar to policies in place in countries like the United Kingdom and Canada. Blood donations are important and FDA believes the implementation of the proposed individual risk-based questions will not compromise the safety or availability of the blood supply. The new draft recommendations are based on data from…