Life is Healthy

Have you tried out Blogger in draft, Blogger’s experimental features site, recently? Blogger in draft is a version of Blogger with features we’re trying out before we “publish” them to everybody on the main site. (See our original announcement: “Blogger... in draft.”)

If you’re feeling adventurous, all you need to do to try it out is log in to draft.blogger.com instead of www.blogger.com. If you see the blueprint logo then you’re in the right place.

Our two latest features, which you can try out now on draft.blogger.com, are:

• Scheduled Post Publishing If you write a post on Blogger in draft and set the post’s date and time to some time in the future, we’ll schedule the post to appear on your blog at that time, and not before.
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I'm thinking of doing Boot Camp. That's a six-week program of intense exercise taught by someone who is a hardcore athlete. I really want to do it. My reservations: being at there at 5 a.m.—that's currently the time I get up—and it costs $150—and that's kind of steep for me right now. I think I'm in good enough shape to do it. But I'm still on the fence. It would be a good kick in the butt, though.

The other day, I came across this nice review article from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It gives a thorough but accessible overview of the current state of research into carbohydrate-restricted diets, without all the fatophobic mumbo-jumbo. It points out a few "elephants in the room" that the mainstream likes to ignore. First of all, the current approach isn't working:

The persistence of an epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes suggests that new nutritional strategies are needed if the epidemic is to be overcome.

In contrast to current Western diets, the traditional diets of many preagricultural peoples were relatively low in carbohydrate (1, 2). In North America, for example, the traditional diet of many First Nations peoples of Canada before European migration comprised fish, meat, wild plants, and berries. The change in lifestyle of several North American aboriginal populations occurred as recently as the late 1800s, and the numerous ensuing health problems were extensively documented (3-5). Whereas many aspects of lifestyle were altered with modernization, these researchers suspected that the health problems came from the change in nutrition—specifically, the introduction of sugar and flour.

It may also be that the mere lowering of serum insulin concentrations, as is seen with LCDs, may lead to a reduction in appetite. In support of this idea, several studies have found that insulin increases food intake, that foods with high insulin responses are less satiating, and that suppression of insulin with octreotide leads to weight loss (27-29).

Several outpatient diet studies have shown reductions in CVD risk factors after an 8–12-wk LCKD, during weight loss, and during weight maintenance (21, 60-62).

We emphasize that strategies based on carbohydrate restriction have continued to fulfill their promise in relation to weight loss and that, contrary to early concerns, they have a generally beneficial effect on most markers of CVD, even in the absence of weight loss. In combination with the intuitive and established efficacy in relation to glycemic control in diabetics, some form of LCD may be the preferred choice for weight reduction as well as for general health.

Update: This was an April Fools Day post. :)

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