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Tag: Weight Loss

  • Study Promoting Apple Cider Vinegar for Weight Loss Was Complete Bunk

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    Anyone who’s tried to lose weight knows there’s no shortage of products or fad foods out there that will supposedly speed up your slimming. One such advertised food, apple cider vinegar, will have less credibility behind it now, as a clinical trial claiming to show its weight loss success has just been yanked by the publisher.

    BMJ Group announced the retraction of the study this afternoon. Originally published last year, the small trial purportedly showed that people who drank apple cider vinegar daily lost more weight than controls over a three-month period. The publisher cited several factors, including implausible data, as reasons to yank the study.

    “Tempting though it is to alert readers to an ostensibly simple and apparently helpful weight loss aid, at present the results of the study are unreliable, and journalists and others should no longer reference or use the results of this study in any future reporting,” said Helen Macdonald, Publication Ethics and Content Integrity Editor at BMJ Group, in a statement from BMJ.

    Too good to be true

    Researchers in Lebanon conducted the study, first published in March 2024 in the journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health. The trial reportedly involved 120 teens and young adults who were overweight and obese. The volunteers were randomly assigned to one of four groups: three groups were asked to drink different doses of apple cider vinegar (diluted in water) once a day in the morning, while the fourth was asked to drink a placebo liquid.

    The trial reportedly ran for 12 weeks, and by the study’s end, the researchers claimed that people drinking apple cider vinegar lost significantly more weight than those on the placebo. On average, people taking apple cider vinegar were said to have lost between 13 and 17 pounds, and those who drank the most apple cider vinegar also tended to lose more weight than the other groups—a potential sign that the ingredient was truly improving people’s odds of weight loss (in medicine, this is called a dose-response effect). People on the apple cider vinegar diet were also said to have improved their levels of blood glucose, triglycerides, and cholesterol as well.

    It wasn’t long before outside scientists began to raise red flags about the statistical analysis underpinning the study’s findings, however. The BMJ Group initially saw fit to publish some of these critiques alongside the study itself, a common practice in science. But after further review, they determined that this wasn’t a mere disagreement about some figures here and there, but something more concerning. They enlisted statisticians to examine the raw data and to try replicating the study results from said data.

    Ultimately, the outside experts were not able to replicate the authors’ analyses; what’s more, they identified other sketchy stuff. They determined that the data contained “implausible values” and found potential evidence that participants were not truly randomized into their group as claimed. The authors also failed to proactively register their trial prior to performing it—a common precaution against later data tweaking that’s required by the BMJ Group—and didn’t explain their methods thoroughly enough, the publisher determined.

    The study authors, according to the BMJ, maintain that the statistical oddities were only honest mistakes in how they presented, exported, or calculated the data. But they’ve nonetheless agreed with the publisher’s decision to retract the work.

    Gizmodo reached out to the study authors for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

    The weight loss takeaway

    Even before this retraction, though, there really wasn’t much evidence to suggest that apple cider vinegar—or any single food, for that matter—can supercharge your weight loss attempt.

    Yes, people can certainly lose weight, even lots of it, through healthy changes in their diet and lifestyle. The much harder part is maintaining this weight loss for a sustained period of time, which is why many, if not most, people eventually regain the weight back. Newer options like GLP-1 therapies have made it easier to treat obesity, though these too aren’t miracles with no drawbacks.

    Unfortunately, long-term successful weight loss still remains a challenge, and no amount of apple cider vinegar will change that reality.

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    Ed Cara

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  • Ozempic May Be Less Effective for Emotional Eaters, Study Suggests

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    GLP-1 agonists—so-called “wonder drugs” like Ozempic or Wegovy that help individuals lower blood sugar levels and lose weight, among other things—yield significant results for some patients, but not all. People’s motivations to overeat may play a role in this, according to a new study.

    To investigate why some people don’t benefit from GLP-1 agonists as much as others, researchers observed 92 participants with type 2 diabetes in Japan during their first year of taking GLP-1 drugs. Their results, published today in Frontiers in Clinical Diabetes and Healthcare, suggest that people who overeat due to external reasons—such as the sight or smell of delicious food—had greater chances of responding well to the drugs in the long term than people who overeat for emotional reasons.

    Who will benefit most from GLP-1 drugs?

    “Pre-treatment assessment of eating behavior patterns may help predict who will benefit most from GLP-1 receptor agonist therapy,” Daisuke Yabe, senior author of the study and a professor of diabetes, endocrinology, and nutrition at Kyoto University, said in a Frontiers statement. “GLP-1 receptor agonists are effective for individuals who experience weight gain or elevated blood glucose levels due to overeating triggered by external stimuli. However, their effectiveness is less expected in cases where emotional eating is the primary cause.”

    The team revealed this by gathering data on the participants’ body weight and composition, diet, and information such as blood glucose, cholesterol levels, and relationship with food at the beginning of the treatment, three months after, and one year after. They focused on emotional eating (eating in response to negative emotions), external eating (eating because the food looks good), and restrained eating (controlling one’s diet to lose weight). While it might seem contradictory, excessive restrained eating can actually result in disordered eating, according to the researchers.

    Over the year, the participants experienced a statistically significant loss of body weight and lowered cholesterol levels and body fat percentage without changing skeletal muscle mass. While blood glucose levels ameliorated, the improvement wasn’t statistically significant. There were, however, some variations depending on eating behaviors. Three months after the start of the treatment, participants reported more restrained eating and less external or emotional eating. By the end of the year, though, participants had returned to their original restrained and emotional eating habits.

    “One possible explanation is that emotional eating is more strongly influenced by psychological factors which may not be directly addressed by GLP-1 receptor agonist therapy,” said Takehiro Kato, second author of the article and a researcher from Gifu University, “Individuals with prominent emotional eating tendencies may require additional behavioral or psychological support.”

    External eating lessened over the year of treatment

    Participants reported decreased external eating throughout the entire year, and individuals that claimed high levels of external eating at the beginning of the treatment saw the greatest benefits in blood glucose levels and weight loss. On the other hand, the team didn’t identify any association between emotional or restrained eating scores at the beginning and drug benefits by the 12-month mark.

    “While our study suggests a potential association between external eating behavior and treatment response to GLP-1 receptor agonists, these findings remain preliminary,” explained Yabe. What’s more, the team’s study was observational, and participants self-reported information, meaning the researchers revealed a potential association, not a causation.

    “Further evidence is necessary before they can be implemented in clinical practice. Should future large-scale or randomized controlled trials validate this relationship, incorporating simple behavioral assessments could become a valuable component in optimizing treatment strategies,” Yabe concluded.

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    Margherita Bassi

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  • Taking Advantage of Sensory-Specific Satiety  | NutritionFacts.org

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    How can we use sensory-specific satiety to our advantage?

    When we eat the same foods over and over, we become habituated to them and end up liking them less. That’s why the “10th bite of chocolate, for example, is desired less than the first bite.” We have a built-in biological drive to keep changing up our foods so we’ll be more likely to hit all our nutritional requirements. The drive is so powerful that even “imagined consumption reduces actual consumption.” When study participants imagined again and again that they were eating cheese and were then given actual cheese, they ate less of it than those who repeatedly imagined eating that food fewer times, imagined eating a different food (such as candy), or did not imagine eating the food at all.

    Ironically, habituation may be one of the reasons fad “mono diets,” like the cabbage soup diet, the oatmeal diet, or meal replacement shakes, can actually result in better adherence and lower hunger ratings compared to less restrictive diets.

    In the landmark study “A Satiety Index of Common Foods,” in which dozens of foods were put to the test, boiled potatoes were found to be the most satiating food. Two hundred and forty calories of boiled potatoes were found to be more satisfying in terms of quelling hunger than the same number of calories of any other food tested. In fact, no other food even came close, as you can see below and at 1:14 in my video Exploiting Sensory-Specific Satiety for Weight Loss.

    No doubt the low calorie density of potatoes plays a role. In order to consume 240 calories, nearly one pound of potatoes must be eaten, compared to just a few cookies, and even more apples, grapes, and oranges must be consumed. Each fruit was about 40 percent less satiating than potatoes, though, as shown here and at 1:45 in my video. So, an all-potato diet would probably take the gold—the Yukon gold—for the most bland, monotonous, and satiating diet.

    A mono diet, where only one food is eaten, is the poster child for unsustainability—and thank goodness for that. Over time, they can lead to serious nutrient deficiencies, such as blindness from vitamin A deficiency in the case of white potatoes.

    The satiating power of potatoes can still be brought to bear, though. Boiled potatoes beat out rice and pasta in terms of a satiating side dish, cutting as many as about 200 calories of intake off a meal. Compared to boiled and mashed potatoes, fried french fries or even baked fries do not appear to have the same satiating impact.

    To exploit habituation for weight loss while maintaining nutrient abundance, we could limit the variety of unhealthy foods we eat while expanding the variety of healthy foods. In that way, we can simultaneously take advantage of the appetite-suppressing effects of monotony while diversifying our fruit and vegetable portfolio. Studies have shown that a greater variety of calorie-dense foods, like sweets and snacks, is associated with excess body fat, but a greater variety of vegetables appears protective. When presented with a greater variety of fruit, offered a greater variety of vegetables, or given a greater variety of vegetable seasonings, people may consume a greater quantity, crowding out less healthy options.

    The first 20 years of the official Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended generally eating “a variety of foods.” In the new millennium, they started getting more precise, specifying a diversity of healthier foods, as seen below and at 3:30 in my video. 

    A pair of Harvard and New York University dietitians concluded in their paper “Dietary Variety: An Overlooked Strategy for Obesity and Chronic Disease Control”: “Choose and prepare a greater variety of plant-based foods,” recognizing that a greater variety of less healthy options could be counterproductive.

    So, how can we respond to industry attempts to lure us into temptation by turning our natural biological drives against us? Should we never eat really delicious food? No, but it may help to recognize the effects hyperpalatable foods can have on hijacking our appetites and undermining our body’s better judgment. We can also use some of those same primitive impulses to our advantage by minimizing our choices of the bad and diversifying our choices of the good. In How Not to Diet, I call this “Meatball Monotony and Veggie Variety.” Try picking out a new fruit or vegetable every time you shop.

    In my own family’s home, we always have a wide array of healthy snacks on hand to entice the finickiest of tastes. The contrasting collage of colors and shapes in fruit baskets and vegetable platters beat out boring bowls of a single fruit because they make you want to mix it up and try a little of each. And with different healthy dipping sauces, the possibilities are endless.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Weight loss tougher with ultra-processed foods lurking in nearly every meal, say experts

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    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    Americans have been rethinking the role that ultra-processed foods (UPFs) play in their diets, especially those aiming to drop some pounds. 

    Recent research found that overweight adults who cut out UPFs from their daily eating habits lost nearly twice as much weight as those who did not, according to a study published in Nature Medicine, as reported earlier by Fox News Digital. The study lasted two months.

    UPFs go through multiple industrial processes. They usually contain additives such as preservatives and flavorings.

    RESTAURANT CONSULTANTS REVEAL WHAT CUSTOMERS SHOULD NEVER DO WHEN DINING OUT

    They’re not just candy bars, either. Foods fortified with nutrients and vitamins, for example, are also considered UPFs. 

    For those looking to slim down and for anyone aiming for a healthier lifestyle overall, here’s a clear look at pervasive UPFs in everyday eating — and how to make the wisest meal choices. Fox News Digital consulted the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Yale Medicine, GoodRx and other medical sources. 

    Ultra-processed foods often contain preservatives, additives and flavor enhancers that can contribute to slower weight loss. (iStock)

    Breakfast

    Some of the most obvious breakfast UPFs include sugary cereals and toaster pastries. 

    Breakfast sandwiches – both frozen and bought from fast-food chains – are also ultra-processed. 

    MAJORITY OF AMERICANS GET MORE THAN HALF OF CALORIES FROM ULTRA-PROCESSED FOODS, CDC FINDS

    Flavored oatmeal, a popular health food, is another UPF. If you’re willing to prep the night before, this can be replaced by overnight oats.

    The bread you toast might be considered a UPF as well. 

    A spoonful of oatmeal emerges from a white bowl.

    Instant oatmeal is convenient, but it’s often classified as an ultra-processed food due to the presence of additives and sweeteners. (iStock)

    Check the ingredients for corn syrup, preservatives and other additives. Mass-produced cinnamon raisin bread, for example, falls into the ultra-processed category.

    Lunch

    Any lunch that is frozen, packaged or has a long shelf life is likely a UPF.

    That includes frozen meals – even those relatively low-calorie or marketed to aid in weight loss.

    “The simplest practical approach is to look for ingredients that wouldn’t usually be used in a home kitchen.” 

    Dr. Dariusz Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University in Boston, said UPFs can sometimes be difficult to spot.

    MEDICAL EXPERTS WARN ‘BIG FOOD’ IS FIGHTING BACK AGAINST OZEMPIC WITH ADDICTIVE ITEMS FOR SALE

    “The simplest practical approach is to look for ingredients that wouldn’t usually be used in a home kitchen,” he said. 

    Even prepackaged sandwiches from grocery stores are likely made with ultra-processed ingredients.

    Woman holding turkey sandwich

    Many so-called healthy options, including lean cold cuts and breads, fall into the ultra-processed category, experts say. (iStock)

    Most cold cuts – even diet staples like turkey – are UPFs. Cheese is typically not, although shredded cheese with flavorings, American cheese and cheese sauces are considered ultra-processed.

    Mozaffarian recommended consuming fewer UPFs and eating more minimally processed foods.

    THE WORST FOODS TO BUY IN THE SUPERMARKET AND THE BETTER CHOICES INSTEAD

    “That’s going to go a long way toward a healthier diet,” he said.

    Dinner

    If you’re making pasta for dinner, check your store-bought sauce jars for ingredients. If they contain high-fructose corn syrup or flavor enhancers like yeast extract, they’re likely ultra-processed.

    Meat sauce

    Some meat sauces, including those used for pasta, are UPFs.  (iStock)

    Boxed dinner kits are another culprit. You might be using real meat in your meal, but cooking it with additive-filled taco seasoning introduces UPF ingredients.

    Your go-to hamburger or hot dog buns are also likely UPFs, along with meats including frozen meatballs, chicken nuggets, hot dogs and most sausages.

    Snacks

    You might naturally reach for some ultra-processed alternatives between meals.

    DIABETES RISK LINKED TO THESE FOOD COMBINATIONS

    Rice cakes may be found in the health foods section of a grocery store, but they’re considered UPFs since an industrial process is required to create the puffed rice.

    Butter-flavored microwave popcorn can also be in this category, along with pretzels.

    Rice cakes

    Rice cakes are made with industrial processes that make them UPFs. (iStock)

    Granola bars are almost all UPFs, along with protein bars, veggie chips and flavored yogurt cups.

    Carrie Lupoli, a Connecticut-based nutritionist, confirmed that the above foods are generally UPFs. 

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    “The key is to be an informed consumer and choose convenient options made from real food, without all the extras that can harm our health,” Lupoli told Fox News Digital.

    Choosing wisely

    Dr. Omer Awan, a physician at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, said that most UPFs are high in saturated fats, sugars and salt.

    The healthier ones, however — such as protein bars and instant oatmeal — are not always bad for weight loss, he indicated.

    “If you simply can’t give up certain UPFs, stick to the better ones.”

    “These particular foods do have some nutritional value in that they have protein and fiber,” he said.

    For more Lifestyle articles, visit foxnews.com/lifestyle

    Eating protein and fiber is key to weight loss. So if you simply can’t give up certain UPFs, stick to the better ones, Awan said.

    “If [eating] these foods will help someone avoid fast foods or late-night snacking, then they can very well help promote weight loss,” he said. He cautioned, though, that “the key is to have a balanced diet.”

    Woman holding cold cut sandwich

    “The key is to have a balanced diet,” a doctor told Fox News Digital. (iStock)

    Awan said consumers need to exercise care. 

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    “A diet high in UPFs will result in overeating and weight gain, but eating these foods occasionally won’t necessarily result in harm.”

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  • Orlando Bloom recalls his 52-pound weight loss journey, its impact on his mental health

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    Washington DC [US], August 29 (ANI): Actor Orlando Bloom shared how his weight loss transformation for a role heavily impacted his mental health, reported People.

    He talked about losing 52 pounds for his role as a retired boxer in ‘The Cut’. He shared on the recent episode of ‘This Morning’ that he was only eating tuna and cucumber in the lead-up to the film’s production.

    ‘I was just exhausted,’ he said, noting that he had ‘no energy or brain power, ‘ according to People.

    ‘Just mentally, physically, I was hangry,’ he continued. ‘I was a horrible person to be around.’

    Bloom said he worked with nutritionist Philip Goglia, the same nutritionist Christian Bale used, and Goglia advised Bloom to reduce his meals from three to two.

    ‘Suddenly, all these foods were being taken away from me, and my protein powder was the last one,’ he added. ‘I was like, ‘No! Don’t take that one.’ Then basically I came down to [eating] just tuna and cucumber for the last three weeks.’

    He explained that because his mental health was impacted, he also suffered from ‘paranoia’ and ‘intrusive thoughts,’ reported People.

    Bloom also said that Goglia would regularly check his blood. ‘We’re supposed to eat and sleep and take care of ourselves,’ he continued. ‘It’s really a commentary on the lengths a person will go to have that second shot. I think that’s so relatable.’

    He noted that while athletes are known to cut weight ‘on the regular,’ actors tend to ‘take it to the extreme’ in the short period before they star in the role.

    During the shoot, he shared that he did all to do justice to his role, Bloom said, recalling that he would be ‘lying down in between takes on set,’ and then get up to do push-ups ‘to look a little bit bulkier.’

    Although he was able to push through the ‘intense’ diet, he doesn’t ‘recommend’ it to ‘anyone at home.’

    He shared previously that he was ‘excited by the challenge’ of transforming himself for the role. He confessed that his lack of sleep caused such a mental toll on him, adding, ‘Turns out you can’t sleep when you’re hungry!, as per the outlet.

    In the upcoming film, Bloom stars as an ex-boxer who suffered a defeat that ended his career in the ring. Then, when he ‘trains for redemption,’ a synopsis teases, an ‘obsession takes hold and reality unravels — and he may be spiralling into something far more terrifying,’ reported People.

    ‘The Cut’ is in theatres on September 5. (ANI)

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  • Dietary Diversity and Overeating  | NutritionFacts.org

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    Big Food uses our hard-wired drive for dietary diversity against us.

    How did we evolve to solve the daunting task of selecting a diet that supplies all the essential nutrients? Dietary diversity. By eating a variety of foods, we increase our chances of hitting all the bases. If we only ate for pleasure, we might just stick with our favorite food to the exclusion of all others, but we have an innate tendency to switch things up.

    Researchers found that study participants ended up eating more calories when provided with three different yogurt flavors than just one, even if that one is the chosen favorite. So, variation can trump sensation. They don’t call it the spice of life for nothing.

    It appears to be something we’re born with. Studies on newly weaned infants dating back nearly a century show that babies naturally choose a variety of foods even over their preferred food. This tendency seems to be driven by a phenomenon known as sensory-specific satiety.

    Researchers found that, “within 2 minutes after eating the test meal, the pleasantness of the taste, smell, texture, and appearance of the eaten food decreased significantly more than for the uneaten foods.” Think about how the first bite of chocolate tastes better than the last bite. Our body tires of the same sensations and seeks out novelty by rekindling our appetite every time we’re presented with new foods. This helps explain the “dessert effect,” where we can be stuffed to the gills but gain a second wind when dessert arrives. What was adaptive for our ancient ancestors to maintain nutritional adequacy may be maladaptive in the age of obesity.

    When study participants ate a “varied four-course meal,” they consumed 60 percent more calories than those given the same food for each course. It’s not only that we get bored; our body has a different physiological reaction.

    As you can see below and at 2:13 in my video How Variation Can Trump Sensation and Lead to Overeating, researchers gave people a squirt of lemon juice, and their salivary glands responded with a squirt of saliva. But when they were given lemon juice ten times in a row, they salivated less and less each time. When they got the same amount of lime juice, though, their salivation jumped right back up. We’re hard-wired to respond differently to new foods. 
    Whether foods are on the same plate, are at the same meal, or are even eaten on subsequent days, the greater the variety, the more we tend to eat. When kids had the same mac and cheese dinner five days in a row, they ended up eating hundreds fewer calories by the fifth day, compared to kids who got a variety of different meals, as you can see below and at 2:35 in my video.

    Even just switching the shape of food can lead to overeating. When kids had a second bowl of mac and cheese, they ate significantly more when the noodles were changed from elbow macaroni to spirals. People allegedly eat up to 77 percent more M&Ms if they’re presented with ten different colors instead of seven, even though all the colors taste the same. “Thus, it is clear that the greater the differences between foods, the greater the enhancement of intake,” the greater the effect. Alternating between sweet and savory foods can have a particularly appetite-stimulating effect. Do you see how, in this way, adding a diet soda, for instance, to a fast-food meal can lead to overconsumption?

    The staggering array of modern food choices may be one of the factors conspiring to undermine our appetite control. There are now tens of thousands of different foods being sold.

    The so-called supermarket diet is one of the most successful ways to make rats fat. Researchers tried high-calorie food pellets, but the rats just ate less to compensate. So, they “therefore used a more extreme diet…[and] fed rats an assortment of palatable foods purchased at a nearby supermarket,” including such fare as cookies, candy, bacon, and cheese, and the animals ballooned. The human equivalent to maximize experimental weight gain has been dubbed the cafeteria diet.

    It’s kind of the opposite of the original food dispensing device I’ve talked about before. Instead of all-you-can-eat bland liquid, researchers offered free all-you-can-eat access to elaborate vending machines stocked with 40 trays with a dizzying array of foods, like pastries and French fries. Participants found it impossible to maintain energy balance, consistently consuming more than 120 percent of their calorie requirements.

    Our understanding of sensory-specific satiety can be used to help people gain weight, but how can we use it to our advantage? For example, would limiting the variety of unhealthy snacks help people lose weight? Two randomized controlled trials made the attempt and failed to show significantly more weight loss in the reduced variety diet, but they also failed to get people to make much of a dent in their diets. Just cutting down on one or two snack types seems insufficient to make much of a difference, as seen below and at 4:44 in my video. A more drastic change may be needed, which we’ll cover next.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Hijacking Our Appetites  | NutritionFacts.org

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    I debunk the myth of protein as the most satiating macronutrient.

    The importance of satiety is underscored by a rare genetic condition known as Prader-Willi syndrome. Children with the disorder are born with impaired signaling between their digestive system and their brain, so they don’t know when they’re full. “Because no sensation of satiety tells them to stop eating or alerts their body to throw up, they can accidentally consume enough in a single binge to fatally rupture their stomach.” Without satiety, food can be “a death sentence.”

    Protein is often described as the most satiating macronutrient. People tend to report feeling fuller after eating a protein-rich meal, compared to a carbohydrate- or fat-rich one. The question is: Does that feeling of fullness last? From a weight-loss standpoint, satiety ratings only matter if they end up cutting down on subsequent calorie intake, and even a review funded by the meat, dairy, and egg industries acknowledges that this does not seem to be the case for protein. Hours later, protein consumed earlier doesn’t tend to end up cutting calories later on.

    Fiber-rich foods, on the other hand, can suppress appetite and reduce subsequent meal intake more than ten hours after consumption—even the next day—because their site of action is 20 feet down in the lower intestine. Remember the ileal brake from my Evidence-Based Weight Loss lecture? When researchers secretly infused nutrients into the end of the small intestine, study participants spontaneously ate as many as hundreds fewer calories at a meal. Our brain gets the signal that we are full, from head to tail.

    We were built for gluttony. “It is a wonderful instinct, developed over millions of years, for times of scarcity.” Stumbling across a rare bounty, those who could fill themselves the most to build up the greatest reserves would be more likely to pass along their genes. So, we are hard-wired not just to eat until our stomach is full, but until our entire digestive tract is occupied. Only when our brain senses food all the way down at the end does our appetite fully dial down.

    Fiber-depleted foods get rapidly absorbed early on, though, so much of it never makes it down to the lower gut. As such, if our diet is low in fiber, no wonder we’re constantly hungry and overeating; our brain keeps waiting for the food that never arrives. That’s why people who even undergo stomach-stapling surgeries that leave them with a tiny two-tablespoon-sized stomach pouch can still eat enough to regain most of the weight they initially lost. Without sufficient fiber, transporting nutrients down our digestive tract, we may never be fully satiated. But, as I described in my last video, one of the most successful experimental weight-loss interventions ever reported in the medical literature involved no fiber at all, as you can see here and at 2:47 in my video Foods Designed to Hijack Our Appetites.

    At first glance, it might seem obvious that removing the pleasurable aspects of eating would cause people to eat less, but remember, that’s not what happened. The lean participants continued to eat the same amount, taking in thousands of calories a day of the bland goop. Only those who were obese went from eating thousands of calories a day down to hundreds, as shown below and at 3:22 in my video. And, again, this happened inadvertently without them apparently even feeling a difference. Only after eating was disconnected from the reward was the body able to start rapidly reining in the weight.

    We appear to have two separate appetite control systems: “the homeostatic and hedonic pathways.” The homeostatic pathway maintains our calorie balance by making us hungry when energy reserves are low and abolishes our appetite when energy reserves are high. “In contrast, hedonic or reward-based regulation can override the homeostatic pathway” in the face of highly palatable foods. This makes total sense from an evolutionary standpoint. In the rare situations in our ancestral history when we’d stumble across some calorie-dense food, like a cache of unguarded honey, it would make sense for our hedonic drive to jump into the driver’s seat to consume the scarce commodity. Even if we didn’t need the extra calories at the time, our body wouldn’t want us to pass up that rare opportunity. Such opportunities aren’t so rare anymore, though. With sugary, fatty foods around every corner, our hedonic drive may end up in perpetual control, overwhelming the intuitive wisdom of our bodies.

    So, what’s the answer? Never eat really tasty food? No, but it may help to recognize the effects hyperpalatable foods can have on hijacking our appetites and undermining our body’s better judgment.

    Ironically, some researchers have suggested a counterbalancing evolutionary strategy for combating the lure of artificially concentrated calories. Just as pleasure can overrule our appetite regulation, so can pain. “Conditioned food aversions” are when we avoid foods that made us sick in the past. That may just seem like common sense, but it is actually a deep-seated evolutionary drive that can defy rationality. Even if we know for a fact a particular food was not the cause of an episode of nausea and vomiting, our body can inextricably tie the two together. This happens, for example, with cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Consoling themselves with a favorite treat before treatment can lead to an aversion to their favorite food if their body tries to connect the dots. That’s why oncologists may advise the “scapegoat strategy” of only eating foods before treatment that you are okay with, never wanting to eat again.

    Researchers have experimented with inducing food aversions by having people taste something before spinning them in a rotating chair to cause motion sickness. Eureka! A group of psychologists suggested: “A possible strategy for encouraging people to eat less unhealthy food is to make them sick of the food, by making them sick from the food.” What about using disgust to promote eating more healthfully? Children as young as two-and-a-half years old will throw out a piece of previously preferred candy scooped out of the bottom of a clean toilet.

    Thankfully, there’s a way to exploit our instinctual drives without resorting to revulsion, aversion, or bland food, which we’ll explore next.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Serena Williams reveals she’s using weight loss drugs and addresses stigma: “You’re not taking a shortcut”

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    Serena Williams is sharing how she took a swing at weight loss drugs. 

    The tennis legend, 43, explained she “hit a wall” she had never encountered before after having her kids in a campaign video for telehealth company Ro.

    “I was doing everything right — working out, eating clean, following the plan. But my body wasn’t responding the way it used to. I knew my body was missing something it needed,” she said in the ad. 

    The answer for her, she continued, was GLP-1s. 

    According to the campaign, Williams has lost 31 pounds in 8 months using GLP-1s, though it is unclear which drug she has used. The campaign noted she used another GLP-1 provider before Ro, which currently offers Zepbound, Ozempic, Wegovy and Saxenda. 

    Drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists mimic a hormone in the body known as glucagon-like peptide 1, which helps signal fullness to the brain and regulate blood sugar. Ozempic is typically used for diabetes while Saxenda, Wegovy and Zepbound are approved for weight loss. 

    Williams, now a celebrity patient ambassador for Ro, also spoke to the stigma surrounding the popular weight loss drugs. 

    “If you’re on GLP-1s too, don’t let anybody tell you it’s the ‘easy way out.’ You’re not taking a shortcut, you’re taking care of yourself, and that takes courage,” she said.  

    In an interview with People magazine on Thursday, Williams said she feels “really good and healthy.” 

    “I feel light physically and light mentally,” she told the magazine. “I just can do more. I’m more active. My joints don’t hurt as much. I just feel like something as simple as just getting down is a lot easier for me. And I do it a lot faster.”

    This isn’t the first famous face to open up about their use of the medications. 

    In 2023, Oprah Winfrey revealed she turned to a weight-loss medication after years of struggling with her weight. Videos on social media showing dramatic transformations have also increased demand in recent years.

    The medications don’t come without risks, however. For example, the most common side effects of Ozempic are nausea, stomach pain, constipation, diarrhea and vomiting, according to the drug’s website. 

    Some people have reported severe GI-related issues, including gastroparesis, a paralysis of the stomach also called delayed gastric emptying. This condition is the basis of a lawsuit filed in 2023, which claims the drug makers failed to warn consumers.

    And long-term, it’s unclear how these drugs will affect the body.

    Sara Moniuszko

    Sara Moniuszko is a health and lifestyle reporter at CBSNews.com. Previously, she wrote for USA Today, where she was selected to help launch the newspaper’s wellness vertical. She now covers breaking and trending news for CBS News’ HealthWatch.

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  • Lose 200 Lbs Without Feeling Hungry  | NutritionFacts.org

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    I dive into one of the most fascinating series of studies I’ve ever come across.

    Anyone can lose weight by eating less food. Anyone can be starved thin. Starvation diets are rarely sustainable, though, since hunger pangs drive us to eat. We feel unsatisfied and unsatiated on low-calorie diets. We do have some level of voluntary control, of course, but our deep-seated instinctual drives may win out in the end.

    For example, we can consciously hold our breath. Try it right now. How long can you go before your body’s self-preservation mechanisms take over and overwhelm your deliberate intent not to breathe? Our body has our best interests at heart and is too smart to allow us to suffocate ourselves—or starve ourselves, for that matter. If our body were really that smart, though, how could it let us become obese? Why doesn’t our body realize when we’re too heavy and allow us the leeway to slim down? Maybe our body is very aware and actively trying to help, but we’re somehow undermining those efforts. How could we test this theory to see if that’s true?

    So many variables go into choosing what we eat and how much. “The eating process involves an intricate mixture of physiologic, psychologic, cultural, and esthetic considerations.” To strip all that away and stick just to the physiologic variable, Columbia University researchers designed a series of famous experiments using a “food dispensing device.” The term “food” is used very loosely here. As you can see at 2:02 in my video 200-Pound Weight Loss Without Hunger, the researchers’ feeding machine was a tube hooked up to a pump that delivered a mouthful of bland liquid formula every time a button was pushed. Research participants were instructed to eat as much or as little as they wanted at any time. In this way, eating was reduced to just the rudimentary hunger drive. Without the usual trappings of “sociability,” meal ceremony, and the pleasures of the palate, how much would people be driven to eat? 
    Put a normal-weight person in this scenario, and something remarkable happens. Day after day, week after week, with nothing more than their hunger to guide them, they eat exactly as much as they need, perfectly maintaining their weight, as shown below and at 2:36 in my video.

    They needed about 3,000 calories a day, and that’s just how much they unknowingly gave themselves. Their body just intuitively seemed to know how many times to press that button, as seen here and at 2:48 in my video.

    Put a person with obesity in that same scenario, and something even more remarkable happens. Driven by hunger alone, with the enjoyment of eating stripped away, they wildly undershoot, giving themselves a mere 275 calories a day, total. They could eat as much as they wanted, but they just weren’t hungry. It’s as if their body knew how massively overweight they were, so it dialed down their natural hunger drive to almost nothing. One participant started the study at 400 pounds and steadily lost weight. After 252 days of sipping the bland liquid, he lost 200 pounds, as you can see here and at 3:35 in my video.

    This groundbreaking discovery was initially interpreted to mean that obesity is not caused by some sort of metabolic disturbance that drives people to overeat. In fact, the study suggested quite the opposite. Instead, overeating appeared to be a function of the meaning people attached to food, “aside from its use as fuel,” whether as a source of pleasure or perhaps as relief from boredom or stress. In this way, obesity seemed more psychological than physical. Subsequent experiments with the feeding machine, though, flipped such conceptions on their head once again.

    When researchers covertly doubled the calorie concentration of the formula given to lean study participants, they unconsciously cut their consumption in half to continue to perfectly maintain their weight, as seen here and at 4:24 in my video. Their body somehow detected the change in calorie load and sent signals to the brain to press the button half as often to compensate. Amazing!

    When the same was done with people with obesity, though, nothing changed. They continued to drastically undereat just as much as before. Their body seems incapable of detecting or reacting to the change in calorie load, suggesting a physiological inability to regulate intake, as shown below and at 4:40 in my video. 
    Might the brains of persons with obesity somehow be insensitive to internal satiety signals? We don’t know if it’s cause or effect. Maybe that’s why they’re obese in the first place, or maybe the body knows how obese it is and shuts down its hunger drive regardless of the calorie concentration. Indeed, the participants with obesity continued to steadily lose weight eating out of the machine, regardless of the calorie concentration and the food being dispensed, as you can see here and at 5:19 in my video. 
    It would be interesting to see if they regained the ability to respond to changing calorie intake once they reached their ideal weight. Regardless, what can we apply from these remarkable studies to facilitate weight loss out in the real world? We’ll explore just that question next.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Facts about Canine Obesity | Animal Wellness Magazine

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    Canine obesity is a pressing issue affecting millions of dogs across the country. Recent research from Texas A&M University reveals startling facts about dog breeds, environments, and food motivation. Understanding these factors empowers caregivers to take proactive steps for their furry companions’ health.

    The Breed Factor: More Than Just Looks

    Some breeds face higher risks of obesity due to their natural tendencies. Sporting breeds, like Labrador and Golden retrievers, exhibit heightened food motivation. These beloved companions often struggle with weight issues, making it crucial to recognize their unique needs. Tailor feeding strategies to each dog’s breed and behavior. Regularly assess body condition scores, ensuring a healthy weight. This simple measure can lead to significant health improvements.

    The Environment: Home Sweet Home or Weight Gain Zone?

    The living situation profoundly impacts a dog’s health. Dogs in urban settings or multi-dog households often face obstacles to proper exercise. In busy environments, dogs may turn to food out of boredom. Convenience feeding practices, such as free feeding, can lead to overeating. Create a structured feeding routine. Encourage outdoor playtime and walks to stimulate both mind and body. Engaging activities help dogs stay fit and satisfied.

    Holistic Approaches: Beyond Diet and Exercise

    Consider a holistic approach to weight management. Assess nutrition carefully; choose high-quality, balanced diets tailored to the specific needs of each breed. Incorporate natural supplements, such as omega fatty acids, to support overall health. Regular veterinary check-ups ensure a clear understanding of a dog’s health status. Vets provide essential guidance on weight management and dietary adjustments.

    Building a Support System: Community Matters

    Engaging with a community of fellow dog caregivers can provide invaluable support. Share experiences and tips with others who face similar challenges. Online forums and local groups often discuss effective weight management strategies. Collaborating with trainers or behaviorists can also foster healthier habits. Every small step adds up, leading to healthier lifestyles for dogs everywhere.

    Taking action against canine obesity starts with awareness. Recognize the signs of weight gain and implement changes now. Create an enriching environment filled with exercise and healthy choices. Each dog deserves a vibrant, active life filled with joy. Let’s work together to ensure every dog thrives in a healthy, loving home.

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  • Does Black Cumin Seed (Nigella Sativa) Help with Weight Loss?  | NutritionFacts.org

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    For three cents a day, black cumin may improve our cholesterol and triglyceride levels, blood pressure, and blood sugar control, as well as accelerate the loss of body fat.

    Black cumin, also known as Nigella sativa or simply “black seed,” is not related to cumin; it’s a member of the buttercup family rather than the carrot family. Black cumin, with its peppery flavor, is a spice commonly used in Indian and Middle Eastern cuisines, but it’s also been prized for its purported medicinal benefits. Described as “a miracle herb,” with mentions going back to the Old Testament, it was found cached in King Tut’s tomb, and it’s been reported that the “Islamic prophet Muhammad once stated that the black seed can heal every disease except death.” Only in the last 50 years or so has it been put to the test, though, culminating in more than a thousand papers published in the medical literature.

    Typical doses used in studies are one or two grams a day, which is only about a quarter teaspoon. This enables researchers to perform randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials by putting the whole-food spice powder into capsules rather than studying a component or extract.

    A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized, placebo-controlled trials found that daily black cumin consumption significantly improves cholesterol and triglycerides. Researchers also found that it not only improves blood pressure, but it also improves blood sugar control. Some of the results are quite extraordinary. For example, one study found that postmenopausal women randomized to a gram a day (less than a quarter teaspoon) of black cumin powder reduced their LDL cholesterol by 27 percent within two months, significantly better than placebo. Those are the kinds of results we’d expect from a statin drug, yet it was achieved with just a sprinkle’s worth of a simple spice. Black cumin may also help with menopausal symptoms.

    Now, it doesn’t appear to cure anything—a month after stopping the spice, cholesterol levels began to creep back up, for instance, as you can see below and at 2:00 in my video Benefits of Black Cumin Seed (Nigella Sativa) for Weight Loss—but it does appear to be a cheap, safe, effective, and delicious (if you like spice) treatment for some of our deadliest risk factors. And its side effects include loss of appetite and weight loss! 

    The latest systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled weight-loss trials found that about a quarter teaspoon of black cumin powder a day does appear to cause weight loss within a span of a few months. If it really can benefit so many facets of health, why don’t we hear more about it? Why wasn’t I taught about it in medical school? Maybe because there’s little profit motive. Black cumin is just a common, natural spice. The daily dose used in most of these studies would cost about three cents a day. Stockholders won’t be thrilled to sell something that can’t be patented and costs only three pennies a day. Black cumin has become a staple in my family’s daily diet. I keep a pepper mill filled with it right on the kitchen table and grind it onto foods just as I would black pepper—easy and delicious.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Eating to Keep Ulcerative Colitis in Remission  | NutritionFacts.org

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    Plant-based diets can be 98 percent effective in keeping ulcerative colitis patients in remission, far exceeding the efficacy of other treatments.

    “One of the most common questions physicians treating patients with IBD [inflammatory bowel disease] are asked is whether changing diet could positively affect the course of their disease.” Traditionally, we had to respond that we didn’t know. That may now be changing, given the “evidence in the literature that hydrogen sulfide may play a role in UC,” ulcerative colitis. And, since the sulfur-containing amino acids concentrated in meat cause an increase in colonic levels of this rotten egg gas, perhaps we should “take off the meat.” Indeed, animal protein isn’t associated only with an increased risk of getting inflammatory bowel disease in the first place, but also IBD relapses once you have the disease.

    This is a recent development. “Because the concept of IBD as a lifestyle disease mediated mainly by a westernized diet is not widely appreciated, an analysis of diet in the follow-up period [after diagnosis] in relation to a relapse of IBD has been ignored”—but no longer. Ulcerative colitis patients in remission and their diets were followed for a year to see which foods were linked to the return of their bloody diarrhea. Researchers found that the “strongest relationship between a dietary factor and an increased risk of relapse observed in this study was for a high intake of meat,” as I discuss in my video The Best Diet for Ulcerative Colitis Treatment.

    What if people lower their intake of sulfur-containing amino acids by decreasing their consumption of animal products? Researchers tried this on four ulcerative colitis patients, and without any change in their medications, the patients experienced about a fourfold improvement in their loose stools. In fact, they felt so much better that the researchers didn’t think it was ethical to try switching the patients back to their typical diets. “Sulfur-containing amino acids are the primary source of dietary sulfur,” so a “low-sulfur” diet essentially means “a shift from a more traditional western diet (high in animal protein and fat, and low in fiber) to more of a plant-based diet (high in fiber, lower in animal protein and fat).” “Altogether, westernized diets are pro-inflammatory, and PBD [plant-based diets] are anti-inflammatory.”

    What can treatment with a plant-based diet do after the onset of ulcerative colitis during a low-carbohydrate weight-loss diet? A 36-year-old man lost 13 pounds on a low-carb diet, but he also lost his health; he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. When he was put on a diet centered around whole plant foods, his symptoms resolved without medication. He achieved remission. That was just one case, though. Case reports are akin to glorified anecdotes. The value of case reports lies in their ability to inspire researchers to put them to the test, and that’s exactly what they did.

    Until then, there had never been a study published that focused on using plant-based diets for treating ulcerative colitis. Wrote the researchers, a group of Japanese gastroenterologists, “We consider that the lack of a suitable diet is the biggest issue faced in the current treatment of IBD. We regard IBD as a lifestyle disease caused mainly by our omnivorous (Western) diet. We have been providing a plant-based diet (PBD) to all patients with IBD” for more than a decade and have published extraordinary results, far better than have been reported elsewhere in the medical literature to date. (I profiled some of their early work in one of the first videos that went up on NutritionFacts.org.) The researchers found a plant-based diet to be “effective in the maintenance of remission” in Crohn’s disease by 100 percent at one year and 90 percent at two years. What about a plant-based diet for relapse prevention in ulcerative colitis?

    “Educational hospitalization” involved bringing patients into the hospital to control their diet and educate them about the benefits of plant-based eating (so they’d be more motivated to continue it at home). “Most patients (77%) experienced some improvement, such as disappearance or decrease of bloody stool during hospitalization.” Fantastic!

    Here’s the really exciting part. The researchers then followed the patients for five years, and 81 percent of them remained in remission for the entire five years, and 98 percent kept the disease at bay for at least one year. That blows away other treatments. Those relapse rates are far lower than those reported with medication. Under conventional treatment, other studies found that about half of the individuals relapse, compared to only 2 percent of those taught to eat healthier.

    “A PBD was previously shown to be effective in both the active and quiescent stages of Crohn’s disease. The current study showed that a PBD is effective in both the active and quiescent stages of UC as well.” So, the researchers did another study on even more severely affected cases with active disease and found the same results, with plant-based eating beating conventional drug therapy by far. People felt so much better that they were still eating more plant-based food even six years later. The researchers conclude that a plant-based diet is effective for treating ulcerative colitis to prevent a relapse.

    Why? Well, plant-based diets are rich in fiber, which feeds our good gut bugs. “This observation might partly explain why a PBD prevents a variety of chronic diseases. Indeed, the same explanation applies to IBD, indicating that replacing an omnivorous diet with a PBD in IBD is the right approach.” 
     
    It’s like using plant-based diets to treat the cause of heart disease, our number one killer. Plant-based eating isn’t only safer and cheaper, but it also works better with no noted adverse side effects. Let’s compare that to the laundry list of side effects of immunosuppressants used for ulcerative colitis, like cyclosporine, which you can see below and at 5:40 in my video. 

    We now have even fancier drugs costing about $60,000 a year, about $5,000 a month, and they don’t even work very well; clinical remission at one year is only about 17 to 34 percent. And, instead of no adverse side effects, the drugs can give us a stroke, give us heart failure, and can even give us cancer, including a rare type of cancer that often results in death. Also, a serious brain disease known as progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, which can kill us, and for which there is no known treatment or cure. One drug lists an “increased risk of death” but touts that it’s just “a small pill” in an “easy-to-open bottle.” I’d skip the pills (and their potential side effects) and stick with plant-based eating.

    Doctor’s Note:

    If you missed the previous video, see Preventing Inflammatory Bowel Disease with Diet and stay tuned for The Best Diet for Crohn’s Disease Treatment, coming up next. 
     
    Check the related posts below for some older videos on IBD that may be of interest to you.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Drinking Water, Losing Weight  | NutritionFacts.org

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    A few times a day, drink two cups of cold water on an empty stomach for weight loss.

    After drinking two cups (half a liter) of water, you can get a surge of the adrenal hormone noradrenaline in your bloodstream, as if you had just smoked a few cigarettes or had a few cups of coffee, boosting your metabolic rate up to 30 percent within an hour, as shown below and at 0:22 in my video Optimizing Water Intake to Lose Weight. When put to the test in randomized controlled trials, that appeared to accelerate weight loss by 44 percent, making drinking water the safest, simplest, and cheapest way to boost your metabolism. 

    Now, this entire strategy may fail if you’re on a beta-blocker drug. (Beta blockers are typically prescribed for heart conditions or high blood pressure and tend to end with the letters lol, such as atenolol, nadolol, or propranolol, sold as Tenormin, Corgard, or Inderal, respectively.) So, for example, as you can see below and at 0:59 in my video, if you give people the beta-blocker drug metoprolol (sold as Lopressor) before they drink their two cups (480 mL) of water, the metabolic boost is effectively prevented. This makes sense since the “beta” being blocked by beta blockers are the beta receptors triggered by noradrenaline. Otherwise, drinking water should work. But what’s the best dose, type, temperature, and timing?

    Just a single cup (240 mL) of water may be sufficient to rev up the noradrenaline nerves, but additional benefit is seen with drinking two or more cups (480 mL). A note of caution: One should never drink more than about three cups (710 mL) in an hour, since that starts to exceed the amount of fluid your kidneys can handle. If you have heart or kidney failure, your physician may not want you to drink extra water at all, but even with healthy kidneys, any more than three cups of water an hour can start to critically dilute the electrolytes in your brain with potentially critical consequences. (In How Not to Diet, I talk about a devastating, harrowing experience I had in the hospital as an intern. A patient drank himself to death—with water. He suffered from a neurological condition that causes pathological thirst. I knew enough to order his liquids to be restricted and have his sink shut off, but I didn’t think to turn off his toilet.)

    Getting back to it. What kind of water are we talking about? Does it have to be plain, regular water? It shouldn’t matter, right? Isn’t water just water whether it’s flavored or sweetened in a diet drink? Actually, it does matter. When trying to prevent fainting before blood donation, drinking something like juice doesn’t work as well as plain water. When trying to keep people from getting dizzy when they stand up, water works, but the same amount of water with salt added doesn’t, as seen below and at 2:40 in my video. What’s going on? 

    We used to think the trigger was stomach distention. When we eat, our body shifts blood flow to our digestive tract, in part by releasing noradrenaline to pull in blood from our limbs. This has been called the gastrovascular reflex. So, drinking water was thought to be a zero-calorie way of stretching our stomachs. But, instead, if we drink two cups (480 mL) of saline (basically salt water), the metabolic boost vanishes, so stomach expansion can’t explain the water effect.

    We now realize our body appears to detect osmolarity, the concentration of stuff within a liquid. When liquids of different concentrations were covertly slipped into people’s stomachs via feeding tubes, detection of plain water versus another liquid was demonstrated by monitoring sweat production, which is a proxy for noradrenaline release. It may be a spinal reflex, as it’s preserved in people who are quadriplegic, or picked up by the liver, as we see less noradrenaline release in liver transplant patients (who’ve had their liver nerves severed). Whichever the pathway, our body can tell. Thought we only had five senses? The current count is upwards of 33.

    In my Daily Dozen recommendation, I rank certain teas as among the healthiest beverages. After all, they have all the water of water with an antioxidant bonus. But, from a weight-loss perspective, plain water may have an edge. That may explain the studies that found that overweight and obese individuals randomized to replace diet beverages with water lost significantly more weight. This was chalked up to getting rid of all those artificial sweeteners, but, instead, it may be that the diet drinks were too concentrated to offer the same water-induced metabolic boost. As you can see below and at 4:29 in my video, diet soda, like tea, has about ten times the concentration of dissolved substances compared to tap water. So, plain water on an empty stomach may be the best. 

    Does the temperature of the water matter? In a journal published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, an engineering professor proposed that the “secret” of a raw food diet for weight loss was the temperature at which the food was served. “Raw food, by its very nature, is consumed at room temperature or lower.” To bring two cups (480 mL) of room-temperature water up to body temperature, he calculated the body would have to dip into its fat stores and use up 6,000 calories. Just do the math, he says: A calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise one gram of water one degree Celsius. So, since two cups of water are about 500 grams and the difference between room temp and body temp is about a dozen degrees Celsius, it’s about 500 x 12 = 6,000 calories needed. 

    Do you see the mistake? In nutrition, a “calorie” is actually a kilocalorie, a thousand times bigger than the same word used in the rest of the sciences. Confusing, right? Still, I’m shocked that the paper was even published.

    So, drinking two cups of room-temperature water actually takes only 6 calories to warm up, not 6,000. Now, if you were a hummingbird drinking four times your body weight in chilly nectar, you could burn up to 2 percent of your energy reserves warming it up, but it doesn’t make as much of a difference for us.

    What about really cold water, though? A letter called “The Ice Diet” published in the Annals of Internal Medicine estimated that eating about a quart (1 L) of ice—like a gigantic snow cone without any syrup—could rob our body of more than 150 calories, which is the “same amount of energy as the calorie expenditure in running 1 mile.” It’s not like you directly burn fat to warm up the water, though. Your body just corrals more of the waste heat you normally give off by constricting blood flow to your skin. How does it do that? Noradrenaline.

    If you compare drinking body-temperature water, room-temperature water, and cold water, there’s only a significant constriction in blood flow to the skin after the room-temperature water and the cold water, as seen below and at 6:39 in my video. 

    What’s more, as you can see here and at 6:45 in the video, neither the warm nor tepid water could boost metabolic rate as much as cold (fridge temperature) water. Our body does end up burning off more calories when we drink our water cold (at least indirectly). 

    So, two cups of cold water on an empty stomach a few times a day. Does it matter when? Yes, watch my Evidence-Based Weight Loss lecture to see how you can add the benefit of negative-calorie preloading by drinking that water right before your meals.

    Too good to be true? No. Check out my other three videos on water and weight loss in the related posts below.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Boosting Your Metabolism Safely  | NutritionFacts.org

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    If you drink two cups of water, the adrenal hormone noradrenaline can surge in your bloodstream, similar to the response of smoking a few cigarettes or having a few cups of coffee.

    Given the 60 percent surge in noradrenaline within minutes of drinking just two cups of water, as shown in the graph below and at 0:13 in my video What Is the Safest Metabolism Booster?, might one be able to get the weight-loss benefits of noradrenaline-releasing drugs like ephedra—without the risks? You don’t know until you put it to the test. Published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, the results were described as “uniquely spectacular.” Researchers found that drinking two cups of water increased the metabolic rate of men and women by 30 percent. The increase started within ten minutes and reached a maximum within an hour. In the 90 minutes after drinking one tall glass of water, the study participants burned about an extra 25 calories (100 kJ). Do that four times throughout the day, and you could eliminate 100 additional calories (400 kJ). That’s more than if you had taken ephedra! You’d trim off more calories drinking water than taking weight-loss doses of the banned substance ephedrine (the active component of ephedra) three times a day. And we’re just talking about plain, cheap, safe, and legal tap water.

    Using the Ten-Calorie Rule I’ve explained previously, drinking that much water could make us lose ten pounds over time unless we somehow compensated by eating more or moving less. Concluded one research team, “In essence, water drinking provides negative calories.

    A similar effect was found in overweight and obese children. Drinking about two cups of water led to a 25 percent increase in metabolic rate within 24 minutes, and it lasted at least 66 minutes, until the experiment ended. So, just getting the recommended daily “adequate intake” of water—about 7 cups (1.7 L) a day for children aged 4 through 8, and for ages 9 through 13, 8 cups (2.1 L) for girls and 10 cups (2.4 L) for boys, as shown below and at 1:45 in my video—may offer more than just hydration benefits. 

    Not all research teams were able to replicate these findings, though. For example, one found an increase of only about 10 to 20 percent, while another found only a 5 percent increase, and yet another team found effectively none at all. What we care about, though, is weight loss. The proof is in the pudding. Let’s test the waters, shall we?

    Some researchers suggest that the “increase in metabolic rate with water drinking could be systematically applied in the prevention of weight gain….” Talk about a safe, simple, side-effect-free solution. It’s free in every sense. Drug companies may spend billions of dollars getting a new drug to market. Surely a little could be spared to test something that, at the very least, couldn’t hurt. That’s the problem, though. Drinking water is a “cost-free intervention.”

    There are observational studies suggesting that those who drink four or more cups (1 L) of water a day, for example, appear to lose more weight, independent of confounding factors, such as drinking less soda or exercising more. What happens when you put it to the test?

    In 2013, “Effect of ‘Water Induced Thermogenesis’ on Body Weight, Body Mass Index and Body Composition of Overweight Subjects” was published. Fifty “overweight girls”—who were actually women, aged 18 to 23—“were instructed to drink 500 ml [2 cups] of water, three times a day, half an hour before breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which was over and above their daily water intake” and without otherwise changing their diets or physical activity. The result? They lost an average of three pounds (1.4 kg) in eight weeks. What happened to those in the control group? There was no control group, a fatal flaw for any weight-loss study due to the “Hawthorne effect,” where just knowing you’re being watched and weighed may subtly affect your behavior. Of course, we’re just talking about drinking water. With no downsides, why not give it a try? I’d feel more confident if there were some randomized, controlled trials to really put it to the test. Thankfully, there are!

    I hate it when the title ruins the suspense. “Water Consumption Increases Weight Loss During a Hypocaloric Diet Intervention in Middle-Aged and Older Adults.” Overweight and obese men and women randomized to two cups of water before each meal lost nearly five pounds more body fat in 12 weeks than those in the control group, as shown below and at 4:08 in my video. Both groups were put on the same calorie-restricted diet, but the one with the added water lost weight 44 percent faster.

    A similar randomized controlled trial found that about 1 in 4 in the water group lost more than 5 percent of their body weight compared to only 1 in 20 in the control group. The average weight-loss difference was only about three pounds (1.3 kg), but those who claimed to have actually complied with the three-times-a-day instructions lost about eight more pounds (4.3 kg) compared to those who only drank the extra water once a day or less. This is comparable to commercial weight-loss programs, like Weight Watchers, and all the participants did was drink some extra water. 

    The video I mentioned is The New Calories per Pound of Weight Loss Rule.

    If you missed my previous video, see The Effect of Drinking Water on Adrenal Hormones.

    For all the specifics, check out Optimizing Water Intake to Lose Weight, coming up next. 

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Does Drinking Water Affect Our Adrenal Hormones?  | NutritionFacts.org

    Does Drinking Water Affect Our Adrenal Hormones?  | NutritionFacts.org

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    Drinking water can be a safe, simple, and effective way to prevent yourself from fainting.

    Within three minutes of drinking a few cups of water (12 mL/kg of body weight), the level of the adrenal gland hormone noradrenaline in our bloodstream can shoot up by 60 percent, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:19 in my video The Effect of Drinking Water on Adrenal Hormones. 

    When researchers had people drink two cups (500 mL) of water with electrodes on their legs, about a 40 percent increase in bursts of fight-or-flight nerve activity within 20 minutes was documented, as shown in the graph below and at 0:25 in my video. 

    If you drink two or three cups (11 mL/kg of body weight) of water, blood flow squeezes down in your arms and calves, clamping down nearly in half, as the arteries to your limbs and skin constrict to divert blood to your core, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:42 in my video. That’s why drinking water can be such a safe, simple, and effective way to prevent yourself from fainting, which is known medically as syncope. 

    Fainting is “the sudden brief loss of consciousness caused by diminished cerebral blood flow,” that is, to the brain. About one in five people experience this at least once, and about one in ten may have repeated episodes. It’s the cause of millions of emergency room visits and hospitalizations every year. Though fainting can be caused by heart problems, it is most often triggered by prolonged standing (because blood pools in our legs) or strong emotions, which can cause our blood pressure to bottom out. 

    About 1 in 25 people has what’s called blood-injury-injection phobia, where getting a needle stick, for example, can cause you to faint. More than 150,000 people experience fainting or near-fainting spells each year when they donate blood. To help prevent yourself from getting woozy, try drinking two cups of water (500 mL) five minutes before getting stuck with the needle. The secret isn’t in bolstering your overall blood volume. If you drink two cups of water or even a whole quart (500 to 1,000 mL), your blood volume doesn’t change by more than 1 or 2 percent. Rather, it’s due to the shift in the distribution of blood toward your center, caused by the noradrenaline-induced peripheral artery constriction, as you can see in the graph below and at 1:56 in my video. 

    Drinking water stimulates as much noradrenaline release as drinking a couple cups of coffee or smoking a couple unfiltered cigarettes. If the simple act of drinking water causes such a profound fight-or-flight reaction, why doesn’t it cause our heart to pound and shoot our blood pressure through the roof? It’s like the diving reflex I talked about in my previous video. When we drink water, our body simultaneously sends signals to our heart to slow it down, to “still your beating heart.” You can try it at home: Measure your heart rate before and after drinking two cups (500 mL) of water. Within ten minutes, your heart rate should slow by about four beats per minute. By 15 minutes, you should be down by six or seven beats, as you can see in the graph below and at 2:42 in my video. 

    One of the ways scientists figured this out was by studying heart transplant patients. When you move a heart from one person to another, you have to sever all the attached nerves. Amazingly, some of the nerves grow back. But still, if you give healed heart transplant patients two glasses of water, their blood pressure goes up as much as 29 points. The body is unable to sufficiently quell the effect of that burst of noradrenaline. Some people have a condition known as autonomic failure, in which blood pressure regulation nerves don’t work properly and their pressures can skyrocket dangerously by more than 100 points after drinking about two cups (480 mL) of water. That’s how powerful an effect the simple act of drinking water can be. The only reason that doesn’t happen to all of us is that we have an even more powerful counter-response to keep our hearts in check. (This reminds me of the woman who had a stroke after taking the ice bucket challenge due to an insufficient diving reflex to tamp down all that extra noradrenaline release.)

    This remarkable water effect can be useful for people suffering from milder forms of autonomic failure, such as orthostatic hypotension, which is when people get dizzy after standing up suddenly. Drinking some water before getting out of bed in the morning can be a big help. What about that metabolic boost, though? With so much noradrenaline being released and your adrenal gland hormones in overdrive, might drinking a few glasses of water cause you to burn more body fat? Could tap water be a safe form of ephedra, giving us all the weight loss but with a nice slowing of our heart rate instead? Researchers decided to put it to the test, which we’ll explore next.

    If you missed the previous video, check out How to Get the Weight Loss Benefits of Ephedra Without the Risks.

    Stay tuned for What Is the Safest Metabolism Booster? and Friday Favorites: Optimizing Water Intake to Lose Weight.

    What kind of water is better? Find out in Is it Best to Drink Tap, Filtered, or Bottled Water?.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Ephedra-Like Weight Loss Minus the Risks  | NutritionFacts.org

    Ephedra-Like Weight Loss Minus the Risks  | NutritionFacts.org

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    The diving reflex shows that it’s possible to have selective adrenal hormone effects.

    Thermogenic drugs like DNP can cause people to overheat to death; they can increase resting metabolic rates by 300 percent or more. A more physiological spread would range about ten times less, from a 30 percent slower metabolism in people with an underactive thyroid to a 30 percent higher metabolism when the part of our nervous system that controls our fight-or-flight response is activated. In response to a fright or acute stress, special nerves release a chemical called noradrenaline to ready us for confrontation. We experience this by our skin getting paler, cold, and clammy, as blood is diverted to our more vital organs. Our mouth can get dry as our digestive system is put on hold, and our heart starts to beat faster. What we don’t feel is the extra fat being burned to liberate energy for the fight.

    That’s why people started taking ephedra for weight loss—“to stimulate the release of noradrenaline from nerve endings.”

    Ephedra is an evergreen shrub. It’s been used in China for thousands of years to treat asthma because it causes that same release of noradrenaline that offers relief to people with asthma by dilating their airways. In the United States, it was appropriated for use as a metabolic stimulant, shown to result in about 2 pounds (0.9 kg) of weight loss a month in 19 placebo-controlled trials. By the late 1990s, millions of Americans were taking it. The problem is that it also had all the other noradrenaline effects, like increasing heart rate and blood pressure. So, chronic use resulted in “stroke, cardiac arrhythmia, and death.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned of its risks in 1994, but ephedra wasn’t banned until a decade later after a 23-year-old Major League Baseball pitcher dropped dead. His “autopsy report revealed evidence of ephedra, which the medical examiner said contributed to his death.”

    In the current Wild West of dietary supplement regulation, not only can a supplement be “marketed without any safety data” at all, but the manufacturer is under no obligation to disclose adverse effects that may arise. No surprise, then, that online vendors assured absolute safety: “No negative side effects to date.” “No adverse side-effects, no nervous jitters or underlying anxiety, no moodiness…” “100% safe for long-term use.” “It will not interact with medications and has no harmful side effects.” The president of Metabolife International, a leading seller of ephedra, assured the FDA that the company had never received a single “notice from a consumer that any serious adverse health event has occurred…” In reality, it had received about 13,000 health complaints, including reports of serious injuries, hospitalizations, and even deaths. 

    If only there were a way to get the good without the bad. As I discuss in my video How to Get the Weight Loss Benefits of Ephedra Without the Risks, there is. But to understand it, you first have to grasp a remarkable biological phenomenon known as the diving reflex.

    Imagine walking across a frozen lake and suddenly falling through the ice, plunging into the freezing depths. It’s hard to think of a greater, instantaneous fight-or-flight shock than that. Indeed, noradrenaline would be released, causing the blood vessels in your arms and legs to constrict to bring blood back to your core. You can imagine how fast your heart might start racing, but that would be counterproductive because you’d use up your oxygen faster. Remarkably, what happens instead is your heart rate slows down. That’s the diving reflex, first described in the 1700s. Air-breathing animals are born with this automatic safety feature to help keep us from drowning.

    In medicine, we can exploit this physiological quirk with what’s called a “cold face test.” To determine if a comatose patient has intact neural pathways, you can apply cold compresses to their face to see if their heart immediately starts slowing down. Or, more dramatically, it can be used to treat people who flip into an abnormally rapid heartbeat. Remember that episode of ER where Carter dunked a patient’s face into a tray of ice water? (That show aired on TV when I was in medical school, and a group of us would gather around and count how many times they violated “universal precautions.”)

    What does this have to do with weight loss? The problem with noradrenaline-releasing drugs like ephedra is the accompanying rise in heart rate and blood pressure. What the diving reflex shows is that it’s possible to experience selective noradrenaline effects, raising the possibility that there may be a way to get the metabolic boost without the risk of stroking out. Unbelievably, this intricate physiological feat may be accomplished by the simplest of acts: Instead of drowning in water, simply drink it. Really? Yes, you can boost your metabolism by drinking water. Buckle your safety belts because you are in for a wild ride—one that continues next.

    This is the first in a four-part video series. Stay tuned for:

    You may also be interested in Friday Favorites: The Best Diet for Weight Loss and Disease Prevention.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Clarkson’s Farm star Kaleb Cooper reveals drastic weight loss following Jeremy Clarkson’s near-death health scare

    Clarkson’s Farm star Kaleb Cooper reveals drastic weight loss following Jeremy Clarkson’s near-death health scare

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    Clarkson’s Farm star Kaleb Cooper has revealed how he achieved his impressive weight loss.

    Kaleb is a star on Jeremy Clarkson‘s hit Amazon Prime show, Clarkson’s Farm. It follows the pair as they work on Diddly Squat Farm.

    Kaleb has become a firm favourite with viewers, with many wanting to keep up with his personal life. Now, in a new interview, Kaleb has opened up about his weight loss.

    It comes after Jeremy suffered a health scare, which resulted in him having to have heart surgery.

    Kaleb has revealed he’s lost nearly a stone (Credit: ITV)

    Kaleb Cooper from Clarkson’s Farm

    Chatting to The Sun, Kaleb, 26, said he’s on a sugar-free diet. He said: “I’m on a no-sugar thing, and it’s all because I had this dream. I did and didn’t understand the dream, but I knew I had to quit sugar.

    I’m on a no-sugar thing, and it’s all because I had this dream.

    “I went to tell Taya [his ­partner] and she thought I wouldn’t do it. I’m four weeks in now, and I’ve lost six kilos, which is pretty good.”

    He added: “I do have the odd cheat day, but only sugars that naturally occur.”

    Kaleb also shared a health update on Jeremy following his heart surgery. He said the former Top Gear host is “doing all right” as he branded him a “fighter” and “strong man”.

    Earlier this month, Jeremy, 64, opened up about his health scare. The TV star said he went to hospital after suffering symptoms following a swim on holiday.

    Jeremy said he felt “clammy”, had a “tightness in my chest” and “pins and needles in my left arm”.

    Writing for The Sunday Times, he said he had to “take a moment to make sure my limbs were working properly” when he stood up.

    Jeremy Clarkson at the Chelsea Flower Show
    TV star Jeremy recently suffered a health scare (Credit: SplashNews.com)

    Jeremy Clarkson health scare

    Jeremy said he also struggled to climb a flight of stairs “without holding someone’s hand”.

    He explained: “Back at home, though, the sudden deterioration began to gather pace. I woke on Wednesday morning not feeling too good. I was clammy and there was a tightness in my chest.”

    Read more: Clarkson’s Farm star Kaleb Cooper admits ‘it was all going so well’ following hospital dash

    After going to hospital, Jeremy said: “It seems that of the arteries feeding my heart with nourishing blood, one was completely blocked and the second of three was heading that way.”

    Jeremy said doctors believed he was potentially “days away” from becoming very ill.

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    Do you like watching Clarkson’s Farm? Tell us on our Facebook page @EntertainmentDailyFix.

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    Rebecca Carter

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  • Epigenetics and Obesity  | NutritionFacts.org

    Epigenetics and Obesity  | NutritionFacts.org

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    Identical twins don’t just share DNA; they also share a uterus. Might that help account for some of their metabolic similarities? “Fetal overnutrition, evidenced by large infant birth weight for gestational age, is a strong predictor of obesity in childhood and later life.” Could it be that you are what your mom ate?

    A dramatic illustration from the animal world is the crossbreeding of Shetland ponies with massive draft horses. Either way, the offspring are half pony/half horse, but when carried in the pony uterus, they come out much smaller, as you can see below and at 0:47 in my video The Role of Epigenetics in the Obesity Epidemic. (Thank heavens for the pony mother!) This is presumably the same reason why the mule (horse mom and donkey dad) is larger than the hinny (donkey mom and horse dad). The way you test this in people is to study the size of babies from surrogates after in vitro fertilization. 

    Who do you think most determines the birth weight of a test-tube baby? Is it the donor mom who provided all the DNA or the surrogate who provided the intrauterine environment? When it was put to the test, the womb won. Incredibly, a baby who had a thin biological mother but was born to a surrogate with obesity may harbor a greater risk of becoming obese than a baby with a heavier biological mother but born to a slim surrogate. The researchers “concluded that the environment provided by the human mother is more important than her genetic contribution to birth weight.”

    The most compelling data come from comparing obesity rates in siblings born to the same mother, before and after her bariatric surgery. Compared to their brothers and sisters born before the surgery, those born when mom weighed about 100 pounds less had lower rates of inflammation, metabolic derangements, and, most critically, three times less risk of developing severe obesity—35 percent of those born before the weight loss were affected, compared to 11 percent born after. The researchers concluded that “these data emphasize how critical it is to prevent obesity and treat it effectively to prevent further transmission to future generations.”

    Hold on. Mom had the same DNA before and after surgery. She passed down the same genes. How could her weight during pregnancy affect the weight destiny of her children any differently? Darwin himself admitted, “In my opinion, the greatest error which I have committed, has been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of the environment, i.e. food…independently of natural selection.” We finally figured out the mechanism by which this can happen—epigenetics.

    Epigenetics, which means “above genetics,” layers an extra level of information on top of the DNA sequence that can be affected by our surroundings, as well as potentially passed on to our children. This is thought to explain the “developmental programming” that can occur in the womb, depending on the weight of the mother—or even the grandmother. Since all the eggs in your infant daughter’s ovaries are already preformed before birth, a mother’s weight status during pregnancy could potentially affect the obesity risk of her grandchildren, too. Either way, you can imagine how this could result in an intergenerational vicious cycle where obesity begets obesity.

    Is there anything we can do about it? Well, breastfed infants may be at lower risk for later obesity, though the benefits may be confined to those who are exclusively breastfed, as the effect may be due to growth factors triggered by exposure to the excess protein in baby formula, as you can see below and at 3:51 in my video. The breastfeeding data are controversial, though, with charges leveled of a “white hat bias.” That’s the concern that public health researchers might disproportionally shelve research results that don’t fit some goal for the greater good. (In this case, preferably publishing breastfeeding studies showing more positive results.) But, of course, that criticism came from someone who works for an infant formula company. Breast is best, regardless. However, its role in the childhood obesity epidemic remains arguably uncertain.

    Prevention may be the key. Given the epigenetic influence of maternal weight during pregnancy, a symposium of experts on pediatric nutrition concluded that “planning of pregnancy, including prior optimization of maternal weight and metabolic condition, offers a safe means to initiate the prevention rather than treatment of pediatric obesity.” Easier said than done, but overweight moms-to-be may take comfort in the fact that after the weight loss in the surgery study, even the moms who gave birth to kids with three times lower risk were still, on average, obese themselves, suggesting weight loss before pregnancy is not an all-or-nothing proposition.

    What triggered the whole obesity epidemic to begin with? There are a multitude of factors, and I covered many of them in my 11-video series on the epidemic in the related posts below.

    We are what our moms ate in other ways, too. Check out: 

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • TikTokkers Say Cinnamon Helps Burn Fat. Here’s What the Science Says

    TikTokkers Say Cinnamon Helps Burn Fat. Here’s What the Science Says

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    So overall, the weight loss we see from these high-quality studies is very small, and mostly with no change in body composition.

    The studies included people with different diseases, and most were from the Middle East or the Indian subcontinent. So we can’t be certain we would see this effect in people with other health profiles and in other countries. They were also conducted over different lengths of time, from two to six months.

    The supplements were different, depending on the study. Some had the active ingredient extracted from cinnamon, others used cinnamon powder. Doses varied from 0.36 g to 10 g per day.

    They also used the two different types of cinnamon—but none of the studies used cinnamon from the grocery store.

    How Could Cinnamon Result in Small Amounts of Weight Loss?

    There are several possible mechanisms.

    It appears to allow blood glucose (sugar) to enter the body’s cells more quickly. This lowers blood glucose levels and can make insulin work more effectively.

    It also seems to improve the way we break down fat when we need it for energy.

    Finally, it may make us feel fuller for longer by slowing down how quickly the food is released from our stomach into the small intestine.

    What Are the Risks?

    Cinnamon is generally regarded as safe when used as a spice in cooking and food.

    However, in recent months the United States and Australia have issued health alerts about the level of lead and other heavy metals in some cinnamon preparations.

    Lead enters as a contaminant during growth (from the environment) and in harvesting. In some cases, it has been suggested there may have been intentional contamination.

    Some people can have side effects from cinnamon, including gastrointestinal pain and allergic reactions.

    One of the active ingredients, coumarin, can be toxic for some people’s livers. This has prompted the European Food Authority to set a limit of 0.1 mg per kg of body weight.

    Cassia cinnamon contains up to 1 percent of coumarin, and the Ceylon variety contains much less, 0.004 percent. So for people weighing above 60 kg, 2 teaspoons (6 g) of cassia cinnamon would bring them over the safe limit.

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    Evangeline Mantzioris

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  • The Largest Study on Fasting in the World  | NutritionFacts.org

    The Largest Study on Fasting in the World  | NutritionFacts.org

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    The Buchinger-modified fasting program is put to the test.

    A century ago, fasting—“starvation, as a therapeutic measure”—was described as “the ideal measure for the human hog…” (Fat shaming is not a new invention in the medical literature.) I’ve covered fasting for weight loss extensively in a nine-video series, but what about all the other purported benefits? I also have a video series on fasting for hypertension, but what about psoriasis, eczema, type 2 diabetes, lupus, metabolic disorder, rheumatoid arthritis, other autoimmune disorders, depression, and anxiety? Why hasn’t it been tested more?

    One difficulty with fasting research is: What do you mean by fasting? When I think of fasting, I think of water-only fasting, but, in Europe, they tend to practice “modified therapeutic fasting,” also known as Buchinger fasting, which is more like a very low-calorie juice fasting with some vegetable broth. Some forms of fasting may not even cut calories at all. As you can see below and at 1:09 in my video The World’s Largest Fasting Study, Ramadan fasting, for example, is when devout Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, yet, interestingly, they end up eating the same amount—or even more food—overall.

    The largest study on fasting to date was published in 2019. More than a thousand individuals were put through a modified fast, cutting daily intake down to about ten cups of water, a cup of fruit juice, and a cup of vegetable soup. They reported very few side effects. In contrast, the latest water-only fasting data from a study that involved half as many people reported nearly 6,000 adverse effects. Now, the modified fasting study did seem to try to undercount adverse effects by only counting reported symptoms if they were repeated three times. However, adverse effects like nausea, feeling faint, upset stomach, vomiting, or palpitations were “observed only in single cases,” whereas the water-only fasting study reported about 100 to 200 of each, as you can see below and at 2:05 in my video. What about the benefits though?

    In the modified fasting study, participants self-reported improvements in physical and emotional well-being, along with a surprising lack of hunger. What’s more, the vast majority of those who came in with a pre-existing health complaint reported feeling better, with less than 10 percent stating that their condition worsened, as you can see in the graph below and at 2:24 in my video. 

    However, the study participants didn’t just fast; they also engaged in a lifestyle program, which included being on a plant-based diet before and after the modified fast. If only the researchers had had some study participants follow the healthier, plant-based diet without the fast to tease out fasting’s effects. Oh, but they did! About a thousand individuals fasted for a week on the same juice and vegetable soup regimen and others followed a normocaloric (normal calorie) vegetarian diet.

    As you can see below and at 2:54 in my video, both groups experienced significant increases in both physical and mental quality of life, and, interestingly, there was no significant difference between the groups.

    In terms of their major health complaints—including rheumatoid arthritis; chronic pain syndromes, like osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, and back pain; inflammatory and irritable bowel disease; chronic pulmonary diseases; and migraine and chronic tension-type headaches—the fasting group appeared to have an edge, but both groups did well, with about 80 percent reporting improvements in their condition and only about 4 percent reporting feeling worse, as you can see below and at 3:25 in my video. 

    Now, this was not a randomized study; people chose which treatment they wanted to follow. So, maybe, for example, those choosing fasting were sicker or something. Also, the improvements in quality of life and disease status were all subjective self-reporting, which is ripe for placebo effects. There was no do-nothing control group, and the response rates to the follow-up quality of life surveys were only about 60 to 70 percent, which also could have biased the results. But extended benefits are certainly possible, given they all tended to improve their diets, as you can see below and at 4:00 in my video.

    They ate more fruits and vegetables, and less meats and sweets, and therein may lie the secret. “Principally, the experience of fasting may support motivation for lifestyle change. Most fasters experience clarity of mind and feel a ‘letting go’ of past actions and experiences and thus may develop a more positive attitude toward the future.”

    As a consensus panel of fasting experts concluded, “Nutritional therapy (theory and practice) is a vital and integral component of fasting. After the fasting therapy and refeeding period, nutrition should follow the recommendations/concepts of a…plant-based whole-food diet…”

    If you missed the previous video, check out The Benefits of Fasting for Healing.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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