John Urschel Quits Football
John Urschel, arguably the smartest player in the National Football League (NFL), just retired from football at age 26 to avoid concussions that can cause brain damage, known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE. He will finish his course work for a Ph.D. in mathematics at MIT, one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
Weight Gain with Sugar Plus Meat
If you take a sugared drink while eating meat, the animal protein reduces your ability to burn off the calories from sugar by more than a third. In this elegant new study, 27 healthy-weight adults spent two full days in a sealed “metabolic room” that measured how many calories their bodies burned each minute by tracking their intake of oxygen and outflow of carbon dioxide and measuring calories lost in their urine.
Grass-fed vs Corn-fed Meat
Nobody has presented good evidence that eating meat from grass-fed animals is more healthful than the meat from corn-fed animals. The main health arguments for eating grass-fed meat are its lower fat content and higher content of omega-3 fatty acids.
Van Gogh’s Yellow Coronas
Vincent Van Gogh is one of the world’s most renowned painters, but during his lifetime, he sold only one of his paintings, The Red Vineyard, even though he painted more than 900 canvases and penned more than 1100 drawings and sketches.
Exercisers Have More Stable Plaques
Two recent breakthrough studies give the best explanation yet of how exercise helps to prevent heart attacks. Competitive older endurance athletes may have more plaques in their arteries than non-exercisers, but they have the type of plaques that are far less likely to break off and cause heart attacks.
Incredible Senior Athletes
This week at the USA Track and Field Championships for men and women over 30, 101-year-old Julia “Hurricane” Hawkins won her age-group 100 meters race in 40.12. She holds the World Record for 100-year-olds in the 100 meters at 39.62, an age-group world record by six seconds.
John Brinkley, Goat Testicle Entrepreneur
Medical fraud is as rampant today as it has always been, but John Brinkley was among the greatest medical frauds of all time. From the 1920s onward, between World War I and World War II, he became fabulously wealthy by surgically implanting the testicles of goats into the scrotums of men to “cure” impotence and into the bellies of women “so they could become pregnant.” He charged $750 per operation (equal to about $20,000 today).
NSAIDs May Block Gains in Endurance and Strength
A new study io mice showed that taking NSAIDS (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs), to reduce muscle pain before, during or after exercise, can reduce the gains in endurance from aerobic training.
Why Meat May Increase Risk for Diabetes
Researchers followed 63,257 Chinese adults aged 45–74 for an average of 10.9 years and found that eating red meat was associated with increased risk for developing diabetes. The authors suggest that it may be the iron in meat that could cause diabetes.
Sweet Drinks Raise Risk for Diabetes
A just-published study shows that drinking either sugared or artificially-sweetened drinks is associated with increased risk for diabetes (Am J Clin Nutr, Jun 28, 2017). Of 64,850 post-menopausal women followed for 8.4 years, 4675 developed diabetes.