Public Health

Supplements are more likely than medications to lead to death or liver transplantation, according to a new paper in Hepatology. The new research shows that liver injury caused by herbals and dietary supplements increased from 7% to 20% in the study group over a ten-year period. Liver injury caused by non-bodybuilding supplements is most severe, occurring more often in middle-aged women and more frequently resulting in death or the need for transplantation than liver injury from bodybuilding supplements or conventional medications. The findings are alarming because nearly half of all…

A recently published World Health Organization (WHO)-commissioned review of evidence on e-cigarettes contains serious errors, misinterpretations and misrepresentations, which may lead to policy-makers and the public not understanding the potential public health benefits of e-cigarettes.  The authors, writing today in the journal Addiction, analyze the WHO-commissioned Background Paper on E-cigarettes, which looks to have been influential in the recently published WHO report calling for greater regulation of e-cigarettes.  They also criticize the authors of the review for…

A team of epidemiologists have written a study indicating that exposure to certain phenols during pregnancy, especially parabens and triclosan, may disrupt growth of boys during fetal growth and the first years of life. Triclosan is on store shelves and in almost every home. Bisphenol A (BPA), which has been increasingly removed from products due to environmental claims, showed no impact.  Pregnant women are exposed to several compounds that are widely produced and abundant in our environment, they write. This is the case for parabens (used as preservatives in cosmetics and healthcare…

Obesity is big business and as a result, so are bariatric surgeries. They are a popular fail safe for people who believe they lack the mental resolve to eat less but is it really the most cost effective way to treat obesity now that health care is government controlled?  Writing in both BMJ and JAMA, David Arterburn, MD, MPH, weighs the evidence on the benefits and risks of the various types of this surgery. "It's critical that we find effective—and cost-effective—ways to treat severe obesity," said Dr. Arterburn, an associate investigator at Group Health Research Institute, a Group…

There is a sure-fire way to lose weight; if you eat two cheeseburgers at McDonald's, eat one.  You don't need to read any books, slow cook, give up gluten, give up dairy, fats, carbs or booze; those can all help in the short term, because you are shocking your body and it mobilizes to deal with that, but over the long term just eat less. All diets work if you stick to them. A new study has again affirmed what every weight loss study done by people not selling you something has found; weight loss differences between popular diets are minimal and likely of little importance to those…

Here are four things I did not expect to happen to me on Wednesday August 13:  1) Waking up next to Scarlett Johansson 2) Bowling 300 with an Ikea bag over my head 3) Finding a bassoon in my eye 4) Getting invited to be on the Dr. Oz Show to talk about a weed killer.  The first three are admittedly unlikely, but the fourth really struck me as especially odd. Why on earth would Dr. Oz want to talk to me? It's not like we travel in the same socioeconomic circles. He has a 400 room mansion with an unobstructed view of lower Manhattan, while I live in a refrigerator crate…

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In every study every done on weight loss, people who consumed fewer calories than they burned lost weight. It is guaranteed success. But some people are in a hurry and diet fads come and go - martinis, gluten-free, tapeworms, they have all had their moment, yet low fat versus low sugar debates have been raging for decades. A paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine weighs in and comes down on the size of low carbohydrates as being more effective for weight loss and reducing cardiovascular risk factors than a low-fat diet. More than one third of American adults have at least one form of…

A diet of junk food not only makes rats fat, but also reduces their appetite for novel foods, a preference that normally drives them to seek a balanced diet, according to a study in Frontiers in Psychology which helps to explain how excessive consumption of junk food can change behavior, weaken self-control and lead to overeating and obesity. The World Health Organization estimates that over 10% of the world's adult population is obese and at least 2.8 million people die each year as a result of being overweight or obesity. Overweight and obesity are major risk factors for a number of chronic…

In the culture war on cigarette smoking that lingered long after the science and health issues were settled, nothing spoke to the fuzzy, non-evidence-based nature of arguments than claims that second-hand smoke would give someone lung cancer. Cigarette smoking is annoying and smelly, to be sure, and asthmatics can't be happy in a smoke-filled room any more than non-smokers are, but there are no instances where second-hand smoke has caused cancer. The American Heart Association recently went to war on electronic-cigarettes, a nicotine vapor device, after embracing nicotine patches and lozenges…