“What can you do with three diabetics?” This past fall, I attended a conference and ran into a favorite mentor. He keeps up with the latest studies and the first thing he said to me was, “What can you do with three diabetics?” I was confused – not sure if it was a joke or a hypothetical question. He went on to tell me about a hot-off-the-presses study in BMJ Case Reports that demonstrated the effectiveness of intermittent fasting to improve glucose control for three patients referred to a dietary management clinic.
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A food desert is an area that lacks or has limited access to fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthy foods; they typically occur in urban or low-income areas. We’ve shared posts discussing multiple aspects of food deserts, such as: examining the effects of banning new fast-food restaurants, challenging long accepted theories surrounding food deserts, and evaluating how proximity to a supermarket may or may not lead to a healthier weight.
While it was once generally accepted that food deserts contribute to the rate of overweight/obesity, more recent studies have found that new grocery stores and increased access to food did not cause significant improvements to BMI and self-reported health. There was an increase in psychological health and “perceptions of food access” reported, but not the health outcomes that we would’ve once expected. Bubble tea has gained popularity since its first invention in 1980 when a teashop owner experimented by adding black tapioca balls (“boba” or pearls) to milk tea. The trend of adding toppings in tea drinks has now expanded to a wide variety of drinks and topping options, such as jelly, white pearls, popping boba, aloe vera, etc.
There are a few things that we all know; people eat more if their food is served on larger plates, or if they’re watching something exciting like an action movie. If you go grocery shopping when hungry, you’ll end up with more calories in your cart than if you’d gone shopping with a full stomach. Children can be encouraged to make better food choices if healthier foods are made more appealing, perhaps by giving them catchy names like “power peas” or decorating them with stickers. There’s just one problem with all these “facts” – they may not be true.
A poor night of sleep can leave most of us feeling groggy, moody, or fatigued. Aside from these obvious symptoms, other negative health effects also occur in the body. New research from Sweden finds that even one sleepless night may be enough to trigger the body to store extra fat and break down muscle. Researchers at Uppsala University demonstrated that one night of sleep loss impacts regulation of gene expression and metabolism. If one night can have measurable effects, chronic sleep loss could profoundly impair our metabolism and adversely affect body composition.
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