After about age 20, we may have all the insulin-producing beta cells we're ever going to get. So if we lose them, we may lose them for good. Autopsy studies show that by the time type 2 diabetes is......

In light of recommendations for heart healthy eating from national professional organizations encouraging Americans to limit their intake of meat, the beef industry commissioned and co-wrote a review of randomized controlled trials comparing the effects of beef versus chicken......

In my video If Fructose is Bad, What About Fruit?, I explored how adding berries to our meals can actually blunt the detrimental effects of high glycemic foods, but how many berries? The purpose of one study out of......

No matter where we live, how old we are or what we look like, health researchers from the Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health have discovered that 90% of the chance of having a first heart attack "can be......

Where do the international consensus guidelines to dramatically lower saturated fat consumption come from? (I show the list in my video, The Saturated Fat Studies: Buttering Up the Public). They came from literally hundreds of metabolic ward experiments, which......

Much of the low-carb and paleo reasoning revolves around insulin. To quote a paleo blogger, "carbohydrates increase insulin, the root of all evil when it comes to dieting and health." So the logic follows that because carbs increase insulin,......

Maria Fernandez has received nearly a half million dollars from the egg industry and writes papers like "Rethinking dietary cholesterol." She admits that eggs can raise LDL cholesterol, bad cholesterol, but argues that HDL, so-called "good cholesterol," also rises,......

In my video, Does Meditation Affect Cellular Aging?, I discussed how stress reduction through meditation might be able to lengthen telomeres, the protective caps at the tips of our chromosomes that tend to deplete as we age. What about......

One of the craziest studies I read all year involved feeding people a single serving of Brazil nuts to see what it would do to the cholesterol levels of healthy volunteers. They gave ten men and women a single......

Blood cholesterol levels are clearly increased by eating dietary cholesterol. In other words, putting cholesterol in our mouth means putting cholesterol in our blood, and it may also potentiate the harmful effects of saturated fats, meaning when we eat......

Why don't more doctors practice preventive cardiology? Time availability is a reason frequently cited by physicians, but if you probe a little deeper, the number one reason given was their perception that patients fear being deprived of all the......

The Global Burden of Disease Study published in 2012, is the most comprehensive and systematic analysis of causes of death undertaken to date, involving nearly 500 researchers from more than 300 institutions in 50 countries, and starting with almost......

A Nutritional Update for Physicians was published in the official journal of Kaiser Permanente, the largest managed care organization in the United States. It told physicians that healthy eating may best be achieved with a plant-based diet, defined as......

The eating habits of modern Americans have been described as, "eating breakfast in their cars, lunch at their desks and chicken from a bucket." Within the last few decades, Americans are eating out more and more, and cooking fewer......

The rates of dementia differ greatly around the world, from the lowest rates in Africa, India, and South Asia, to the highest rates in Western Europe and especially North America. Is it all just genetics? Well, the incidence of......

How else can we make decisions for ourselves and our families but by the best available balance of evidence? The latest meta-analysis, pooling data from more than a dozen studies involving more than 300,000 people, indicates that there is......

In reaction to the study that found a similar exponential increase in artery clogging plaque in both smokers and egg eaters, one critic countered that eggs have beneficial effects on vascular endothelium, the inner lining of our arteries, citing......

In my video, Eggs vs. Cigarettes in Atherosclerosis, I profiled a study showing that both smoking and eating eggs can harm our arteries. But even egg yolks alone were associated with artery-clogging plaque buildup nearly two thirds as bad......

Good news for nut lovers: Eating at least one serving of walnuts per week may drop our chances of a cardiovascular-related death by 50%. However, walnut consumption may only drop our cholesterol levels about 5%. How could we get......

What does breast cancer have to do with cholesterol? There are many potential mechanisms by which cholesterol boosts breast cancer growth. For example, our bodies make estrogen, which is correlated with an increased risk of breast cancer, out of......

One in eight American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. There are a number of compounds in plant foods that may protect against breast cancer by a variety of mechanisms. I've talked about the benefits......

I previously discussed the power of fruits and vegetables to help prevent and treat asthma and allergies. If adding a few more servings of fruits and vegetables may help asthma, what about a diet centered around plants? Twenty patients......

Many studies have shown that calorie restriction, without malnutrition, can increase lifespan and lower the risk of age-related diseases, such as cancer. However, for many people, calorie restriction clearly has its drawbacks. In the classic Minnesota Starvation Study, many......

When he was a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. published a controversial paper in the American Journal of Cardiology, highlighted in my video, Fully Consensual Heart Disease Treatment, noting that heart bypass operations carry significant......

People going on low carb diets may not see a rise in their cholesterol levels. How is that possible? Because weight loss by any means can drop our cholesterol. We could go on an all-Twinkie diet and lower our......