Often when you hear about cancer risk, the focus is on environmental toxins that cause cancer. Things like persistent organic pollutants, asbestos, benzene, vinyl chlorides and arsenic. Environmental carcinogens are concerning but often they get too much attention because they are out of one’s control.
On the other hand, things in one’s own control that are most closely correlated with cancer, namely diet and exercise get very little attention when it comes to cancer. Obesity is a known cancer risk, quite clearly the highest of all cancer risks. Extra stores of body fat not only store carcinogens in one’s body, the foods that put on the extra pounds often contain the most carcinogens — meats and milk while tasty, delicious and protein-dense comes from animals which have spent their days eating and aggregating toxins from plants into their products consumed by humans.
I’m not an advocate for a plant-based diet but I do think moderation is key when it comes to eating animal and animal-based products. Don’t go crazy but stay away from excessive fat, carbohydrates, salts and sugars. Avoid processed foods as many are high in at least one of those four things, to cover up for the poor quality of materials used and their ultra-palliative nature. Instead, go for simpler “whole” foods and cook with appropriate spices at home.
Take more personal responsibility for your own well-being. Don’t blame the factory down the road when you are eating crap all day, smoking cigarettes and not getting outside and getting exercise. It might be tough to be tough on yourself, but it’s key to living a good, long life.
Halloween is one of the most dangerous holidays of the year for kids. It has more child pedestrian deaths than any other day of the year. Kids also get tangled in their costumes and injure themselves. But there's something that isn't a real problem: strangers giving trick-or-treaters apples with razor blades, poisoned candy or drugs.
For decades, Halloween-safety public service announcements and police officers have advised parents to inspect their children's candy before letting them eat it. Generations of kids have been told bad people want to hurt them by tampering with their Halloween candy.
"This is absolutely a legend," said Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, who has studied contaminated candy since the 1980s. "It's not a particularly great legend ... but it lives on."
"I have data going back to 1958, and I have yet to find a report of a child that's been killed or seriously hurt by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating," said Best.
Most legends exist because they are so profitable for the politicians, advertisers, television reporters and police departments. If it sells automobiles, gets politicians re-elected and enhances pension benefits, what's not to like?
For several months now, I've been studying how the new medications, Ozempic and Wegovy, cause dramatic weight loss.
Both medications contain a compound, semaglutide, that squelches hunger like a fly swatter smashes a mosquito. People who take the medication say they no longer have constant cravings for food, so they eat less frequently. The drug seems to quiet what some people call "food noise," the constant internal chatter telling them to eat.
While reading study after study about Wevgovy and Ozempic, I learned that the drug mimics a hormone that our bodies naturally make when we're eating food. It's called GLP-1. This made me wonder: Could we increase levels of this hormone by changing our diet? Sponsor Message
Turns out, the answer is yes – you can increase your body's production of GLP-1 with your diet, says Frank Duca, who studies metabolic diseases at the University of Arizona. One of the key foods that triggers its release is a food most Americans struggle to eat enough of, even though it comes with a cornucopia of health benefits. Yup, I'm talking about fiber.
The first morning camping at Monongehella National Forest was rather frosty to say the least! I think it got down into the low 20s, much cooler then it's been so far back in Albany
