Public Health

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that U.S. Marshals seized almost 90,000 bottles worth over $400,000 of a dietary supplement said to contain a psychoactive plant.  The FDA targeted Dordoniz Natural Products LLC in South Beloit, Ill., about 100 miles northwest of Chicago. The company sells the products under the brand name RelaKzpro. RelaKzpro’s main ingredient, according to advertisements, is the South Asian plant Mitragyna speciosa, also known as kratom. M. speciosa is a tree in the coffee family whose leaves have been used in the region as a substitute for…

President Barack Obama has used an executive order to bypass Congress and tighten control and enforcement over firearms in the United States, in response to concerns about gun violence and gun safety. If it survives the inevitable court challenges, it will mean more background checks, expanded registration and $500 million for mental health initiatives. President Obama believes these measures will keep firearms from criminals - and they should - but he also claims that it will reduce suicides. That is not so simple to believe. As is well-known, 60 percent of deaths due to firearms are…

Urban elites tend to think being fat and dumb is a rural problem but studies show just the opposite; that is why so many health planners want to add more parks and places for people to walk, it emulates country life more. Genetics are somewhat important, it impacts how many calories someone can eat given their metabolism, but social environment is a big factor. Since agricultural science has made it possible for poor people be fat, that is exactly what has happened, and not just in America. Obesity has risen dramatically in Europe as well.  A recent study created a body-mass index (BMI)…

When government pays for your health care, they get the right to tell you what behavior can be detrimental to your health - but before that they will pay for medication to help them stop smoking. But only 10 percent are doing so. Why?  Smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease in the United States and it puts a particularly heavy burden on Medicaid. One-third of US adults with Medicaid coverage currently smoke, a rate that is roughly twice as high as that for the general public. 10 percent is about the effectiveness of smoking cessation techniques but clearly if Medicaid were…

It won't surprise you to learn that people have different metabolisms and body types. Some people can eat a lot and stay thin, others have to struggle to keep pounds off. While there is no "obesity" gene, it is the time of year when epidemiologists talk about it anyway. One such gene that has been causalated to obesity is FTO and a new paper suggest a physically active lifestyle can change that genetic determinism.  Yes, if you exercise and burn more calories, you will lose weight. "This provides a message of hope for people with obesity predisposing genes that they can do…

America has led the way in achieving something that was once believed to be science fiction: For the first time in history, poor people can afford to be fat.  But because that is a new development, we have not quite learned how to cope with it. Social authoritarians want to ban things, of course, but that doesn't solve any problems. The issue is is that we don't yet know how to be responsible around convenient foods engineered for maximum tastiness. Advertising also means we are being bombarded with the temptation to eat. So people in contemporary societies often eat because tasty food…

In the spirit of year end top 10 lists, but not restricting myself to 2015, I offer the following as the best 10 books ever written on the topic of obesity and/or weight loss. 1. Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary TaubesThis 2007 tome needs to be the foundation of anyone’s understanding of how humans became remarkably heavier in conjunction with the advice to avoid dietary fat. The book is an exhaustive examination of obesity research in the 20th century that I used as a sort of bible for the better part of a year. Before turning out the light each night, I would tell my wife that I needed…

I almost feel badly for continuing to pick on Chipotle. The company has been supernaturally inept this year. They can do nothing right. They may not even be able to make gravity work anymore.Yet, they are so smug, and transparently phony that it is difficult to refrain from kicking them when they are down, as in "keep down"—something their patrons are having trouble doing with their lunch. It is ironic that most of their problems began when they hopped on the phony anti-GMO express. I guess it seemed like a good corporate maneuver at the time, but I think they picked the wrong train: Yet,…

“Is my cholesterol too high?” may become an irrelevant question. There was a time when the total cholesterol number rising above 240 meant that you had a simple condition called “high cholesterol” and that avoiding fat and perhaps taking medication could reduce your “cholesterol” level the blood. If you did this, you could avoid a heart attack. Cholesterol was described as a fatty molecule that clogged arteries in the heart and having too much of it made heart attacks and strokes more likely. This "plumbing" analogy made sense to almost everyone, so we proceeded to eat low fat diets and…

In order to save you-all the trouble of poring over the 2000 page Omnibus Budget bill passed last week, let me point out some of its issue of concern:Let's get the good part out of the way: it won't take long. The elimination of the ban on exporting crude oil and gas, dating from the Arab oil crisis of the 1970s, will aid American companies and further our influence on global energy issues. Those opposed to this salutary and long-overdue change include deep-greeniacs who want to "keep it in the ground", the "it" being all fossil fuels no matter the effects on our standard of living or overall…