Oh no! Harvard Frowns on Eating Potatoes!

June 29, 2011 By Guest Contributor 22 Comments

An article in USA Today caught my eye: “Harvard weight study leaves taters tottering.” This article begins: “Potato marketers resent a recent Harvard weight-loss study that encourages Americans to bag the spuds, but pistachio growers are nuts about the study’s findings.”

Photo from Flickr/FotoosVanRobin

The USA Today story is based on a recently published study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. They looked at potential causes of long-term weight gain, suggesting that eating certain kinds of foods leads to weight gain while eating other kinds of foods leads to weight loss.

For example, the foods associated with the greatest weight gain over the 20-year study period included potato chips (for each one increased daily serving, +1.69 lb more weight gain every 4 years), other potatoes (1.28 lb), sugar-sweetened beverages (1.00 lb), unprocessed meats (0.95 lb), and processed meats (0.93 lb). Of note, several foods associated with less weight gain when their consumption was actually increased, including vegetables (−0.22 lb), whole grains (−0.37 lb), fruits (−0.49 lb), nuts (−0.57 lb) and yogurt (−0.82 lb). Evaluating all changes in diet together, participants in the lower 20% of dietary changes gained nearly 4 lbs more each 4 years than those in the top 20% —an amount equivalent to the average weight gain in the population overall.

So, if this study is right, we shouldn’t just be counting calories. Rather, we should pay attention to the kinds of foods we eat. Want to be healthier and weigh less?  Avoid potatoes in all forms, sugar-sweetened beverages, and meats. Eat more veggies, whole grains, fruits, nuts, and yogurt. (Yes, yogurt.) So, I guess the typical American meal of a burger, fries, and a Coke isn’t all that great for one’s long term health. Bummer.

By the way, the Harvard study also found that increased TV watching leads to long-term weight gain. (No kidding. Couch potatoes eating potato chips.) Interestingly, those who slept more than 6 hours a night tended to gain less weight than those who slept less than y hours. (I can understand this. When I stay up late, I eat things like chips.)

What’s the bottom line? Eat healthy food and get enough exercise and sleep, then you’ll gain less weight and be healthier overall. Aren’t those Harvard scientists smart people?

Filed Under: Living Well Tagged With: , , , 22 Comments

A Miraculous Cure for Bug Bite Itching?

May 28, 2011 By Guest Contributor 24 Comments

For the past several years, I have put up a version of this post. The response from people has been quite enthusiastic. So, given that we’re entering the buggy summer months, I thought it would be good to redo and repost this information.

First of all, though, let me be clear that I am not a doctor. (Well, okay, I have a Ph.D. But I’m not a medical doctor.) One should never take my medical advice too seriously.

Second, let me add that I’m generally very suspicious of “home remedies” for bodily ills, especially when they’re found on the Internet. There is no end to the nonsense out there.
But, I found on the Internet what I’m beginning to think is a miraculous cure for bug bite itching. (Okay, okay. It’s not miraculous in the strict sense. Just surprising and wonderful.)

A little background: I am quite allergic to bug bits and stings. I have to be especially careful with bee and wasp stings, to which my body overreacts big time. But minor bites, like from mosquitoes, often lead to an unusually strong response. Where most folks get little bumps that itch for a few hours, I can get large welts that itch terribly for days. It’s much worse with spider bites and the like.

The bad news for me is that I now live in Texas, in the country, no less. My move to the outskirts of Boerne must have brought cheers to the insect kingdom, because bugs love to bite me, and there are tons of them where we live. We’ve got the usual bees and wasps, plus mosquitoes, biting ants, fire ants, chiggers, spiders, noseeums, etc. etc. The mosquitoes haven’t been too bad, actually. But I’ve had my share of chigger and ant bites, mostly because I haven’t been careful.

This is a small fire ant mound. If you see something like this in your yard or the local park, avoid it! Photo from gurdonark on Flickr.

A couple of years ago, in my lack of caution, I manged to get about a dozen fire ant stings on my legs. If you know something about fire ants, you know that I rather lucked out by getting a dozen rather than a couple hundred. Fire ant stings hurt right way, but soon the pain disappears. A couple of days later, the stings start itching . . . terribly. They itch worse than any other kind of bite I’ve been privileged to receive.

In my itching agony, I couldn’t sleep. I’d been using the typical treatments – hydrocortisone cream, Benadryl cream, aloe, etc. – with modest success. But I wondered if I could find something better. So I decided to check out the Internet, the source of all wisdom. (Not!) As I surfed around, I started running into lots of people who found heat to be helpful in reliving itches. Here are some examples: Poison Ivy; People’s Pharmacy; Home Remedies.

This is ironic, of course, because heat often causes itches (heat rash, etc.) or can make them worse. But many people testified that applying significant heat to an itch for a short amount of time made the itch disappear for several hours, maybe even longer. I was skeptical, but figured it would be worth a try. After all, what did I have to lose?

Some of the proponents of heat therapy for itches recommend using very hot water, not so hot as to burn the skin, but just a little cooler than this. Others swear by hair dryers. They recommending pointing a hair dryer at an itchy spot for several seconds or minutes. The skin should become uncomfortably hot, but not anywhere near being burned. After this heating of the skin happens, the itch is supposed to go away.

I got out my wife’s hair dryer and followed the instructions I had found online. I heated up one of my worst bites for about 45 seconds. My skin felt hot and began to hurt just a bit. But I was careful not to burn myself. When it seemed like I had done enough, I removed the hair dryer and waited to see what would happen. In a few more seconds, it seemed like the itch had completely disappeared. But I thought I might be doing a mind over matter trick, so I decided to treat my other bites and see what happened. In about eight minutes, I had heated up all of my bites. And it felt as if I had no more itching, just some residual warmth. About ten minutes later the feeling of warmth had vanished and so had my itching. Completely. I felt amazing relief. And it continued for probably six hours. Then I did a second treatment, and that was pretty much the end of itching. The bites were still there as nasty little welts. But I had no discomfort.

Since that first experiment, I’ve treated many more bites with the same results. It’s worked with mosquito bites, wasp stings, and spider bites. (So far I’ve managed to avoid scorpions!) I’m quite sure I’m not fooling myself with wishful thinking. Heating up a bite and the area right around it with a hair dryer really does seem to take away the itch.

I’m sharing my findings with you because it’s summertime and the bugs are hungry. If you try the blow-drying method and it brings relief, then I’m glad. I do realize there’s some risk in putting this up online. If you do something stupid and burn yourself with your hair dryer or get electrocuted, you or your heirs will probably want to sue me. So let me say, once again, that I am not a medical doctor. I don’t know if there are any long-term disadvantages to this method of itch relief.

Whatever you do, don’t burn yourself. Be sure to read and follow all the warnings that come with your hair dryer. Don’t do what I’m recommending while sitting in a bathtub. Don’t do it in a rainstorm. Don’t do it while standing up high on an aluminum ladder. Don’t do it while driving in a car or talking on a cell phone. Don’t do it while filling your car with gasoline. Don’t do it while using mind-altering prescription drugs. Etc. etc. etc. Fill in your own legal boilerplate.

If you try this and it works for you, please add a comment to this post. If you try it and it doesn’t work, ditto. And if you have some other sure fire method itch relief, let us know. Good luck!

Filed Under: Living Well, Nature Tagged With: , , 24 Comments

Living Well: A Memory Tonic for the Aging Brain

May 26, 2011 By Guest Contributor 10 Comments

Do you find yourself forgetting things that you should remember? Are you wishing that you could somehow improve your memory?

Gretchen Reynolds of the New York Times has a suggestion. In “A Memory Tonic for the Aging Brain,” she reports that physical exercise has a positive effect on memory. The article begins by chronicling what many of us over-50 folk have experienced: memory weakens with age. Yet the news is not all bad:

But there is hope, Dr. Yassa said. “Exercise is one of the things that might directly change this process,” he said. In other experiments, exercise has been found to jump-start neurogenesis, or the creation of new brain cells, especially in the dentate gyrus, he said, potentially improving that area’s health and functioning. . . .

“What I’d say for now is that you can’t go wrong by exercising,” he said. “We don’t know if it can reverse” any damage if you already have memory slips. But there are indications that it might slow or possibly prevent memory deterioration, if you begin exercising early enough — meaning that, among the many benefits of a health club membership, your workout may help you to recall where in the gym parking lot you left your car.

Of course we all know that exercise is good for our bodies. But it may be good for our minds too.

Filed Under: Living Well Tagged With: , , 10 Comments