Showing all posts tagged: health

Apple Cider Vinegar, the ‘true-ish’ story of wellness guru Belle Gibson

22 January 2025

Belle Gibson is a former Australian wellness influencer who claimed to have cured herself of several cancers by way of a diet, exercise, and alternative medicine regimen. Her story brought hope to others stricken with similar diseases. But it seemed too good to be true, and it was. Investigations later revealed Gibson had been healthy, and disease free, the entire time.

In addition, Gibson claimed to be making donations to a number of charities, through money she had raised, but these organisations saw little, if any, of these funds. Her story is the subject of a “true-ish” Netflix produced TV mini-series, Apple Cider Vinegar, trailer, which premieres on Thursday 6 February 2025.

I’m not quite sure about the “true-ish” tagline of the series. I take this to mean some of the story is factual, while some is fiction. Netflix say they did not speak to Gibson during production of the show, but worked “carefully” to fend off the possibility of legal action being taken against them.

RELATED CONTENT

, , ,

Time to replace the BMI as a measure, or otherwise, of obesity

20 January 2025

The Body Mass Index (BMI), may, at last, be about to be shown the door. Health care experts from across the world have been calling for a new means of defining obesity, according to research published by The Lancet:

We recommend that BMI should be used only as a surrogate measure of health risk at a population level, for epidemiological studies, or for screening purposes, rather than as an individual measure of health. Excess adiposity should be confirmed by either direct measurement of body fat, where available, or at least one anthropometric criterion (eg, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, or waist-to-height ratio) in addition to BMI, using validated methods and cutoff points appropriate to age, gender, and ethnicity.

It’s always struck me as an odd way to determine whether a person is of a healthy, or otherwise, weight, simply by dividing their height by their weight.

My BMI has always been in the OK zone, but I often wondered how it could useful for people who are, say, professional athletes, or front-rowers of the Wallabies. Surely their height to weight ratios would send the BMI into meltdown. I queried a past GP about this, who told me the BMI was but one tool available to medical professionals, but did not elaborate further.

I made me immediately think if there are other such measures, why aren’t they used more widely.

RELATED CONTENT

, ,

Mysterious, deadly, flu-like disease outbreak in Congo

10 December 2024

The details are pretty scant at the moment. So far the flu-like disease killed close to one-hundred-and-fifty people in the south west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in November.

Infected people had flu-like symptoms including high fever and severe headaches, Remy Saki, the deputy governor of Kwango province, and Apollinaire Yumba, the provincial minister of health, said on Monday.

Whether the illness is contained and dealt with, or spreads further, remains to be seen. It sounds nasty though, whatever it is.

RELATED CONTENT

,

The science of standing desks does not quite stack up

13 November 2024

Pretty popular are sit/stand desks at the moment. I’ve helped a few people assemble them, when they’ve bought one for their home office. Good for your health, sit/stand desks, or so we’re told.

Mainly because you’re not sitting all day while working. Some recent research however, suggests the health benefits of sit/stand desks could be overstated. Sitting for extended periods may not be ideal, but too much time spent standing can also cause problems:

“More time spent sitting didn’t necessarily lower a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease, nor did it increase the risk,” Ahmadi says. “It was a null finding. But what it did do was actually increase their risk of circulatory diseases.” Standing for more than two hours a day increased that risk by 11 percent for every extra half hour, which is bad news for retail workers and the standing desk industry.

RELATED CONTENT

,

How to reduce bad screen time, while needing good screen time?

17 October 2024

Mary Grace Descourouez, writing for Stanford Lifestyle Medicine:

Additional studies found that adults who engage in excessive screen time or have a diagnosed smartphone addiction had lower gray matter volume. Gray matter is brain tissue essential for daily human functioning and is responsible for everything from movement to memory to emotions. Gray matter volume naturally decreases as we age, so along with reducing screen time, engaging in activities that maintain our gray matter volume and promote brain health, such as exercise and movement, restorative sleep, social engagement, and stress management, is crucial.

I think it’s a given that an excess of time spent gazing at computer and laptop screens is detrimental to our health and well-being. But these devices are deeply ingrained in our lives, so going cold-turkey, or switching to a dumbphone, AKA a featurephone, aren’t exactly realistic options. Even though some people have reported a marked difference in well-being, from doing so.

Nor are the simplistic calls made by some to go “back to the old ways”, because it worked for them, in their day. For my part, being able to do so much, from a device in my hand, sees me lead a life and work style that earlier generations of my family could not have possibly imagined. While I’m full well aware of the dangers of too much screen time, I’m not about to dumb-down anytime time soon.

We get around over-doing screen time by getting outside for two to three hours daily, weather permitting, in the early evenings. Naturally we carry our phones with us, in the event family or friends need to make contact. Moving at a brisk pace for several hours though is not much conducive to looking at a screen, so we score at least a few screen-free hours. Taking a solid break like this seems more sensible than trying to ration, or restrict, looking at screens, at other times.

At least, that’s our experience.

RELATED CONTENT

, ,

Playing Tetris may ease post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms

24 September 2024

Sara E. Teller, writing for Legal Reader:

The research, published in BMC Medicine, focuses on the use of video games, particularly the well-known Tetris game that has been around for decades, to help reduce intrusive memories, a core and sometimes debilitating symptom of the condition.

Invented in 1984 by Alexey Pajitnov, Tetris is a straightforward yet fun, video game. Anything that can help PTSD survivors, in any way, has to be a good thing.

RELATED CONTENT

, , ,

Moderate drinking is not beneficial, in fact is it harmful

1 August 2024

Michael Le Page, writing for New Scientist:

Drinking even small amounts of alcohol reduces your life expectancy, rigorous studies show. Only those with serious flaws suggest that moderate drinking is beneficial. That’s the conclusion of a review of 107 studies looking at how drinking alcohol affects people’s risk of dying from any cause at a particular age.

I’ve hardly touched alcohol in ten years. I didn’t make a conscious decision to stop drinking as such, I woke up one morning and simply didn’t feel like having it anymore. End of story. But I’m not one-hundred teetotal. I have a swig now and then. New Year’s Eve was the last time, I think. But I know I’m fortunate, and that stopping, or giving up, is far from straightforward for some people.

RELATED CONTENT

,

Your fixed calorie budget stops weight loss through exercise

23 July 2024

This news, via Kurzgesagt, may not be what some people want to hear. Exercising is useful, necessary in fact, but not so much when it comes to trying to lose weight it seems.

Active people who work out regularly do burn more than inactive people. But only very little, often as low as 100 calories, the equivalent of a single apple. For some strange reason, the amount of calories you burn is pretty much unrelated to your lifestyle. Per kilo of body weight, your body has a fixed calorie budget it wants to burn per day.

RELATED CONTENT

, ,

COVID-19: third most lethal cause of death in Australia

10 July 2024

From The Daily Aus. Aside from being linked to a slight decrease in life expectancy, COVID-19 was the third highest cause of death in Australia in 2022, claiming almost ten-thousand lives:

COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in Australia in 2022, according to AIHW. It was the first time in more than 50 years that an infectious disease has appeared in the top five causes of death.

COVID deaths were four times higher in 2022, compared to 2021. As a comparison, three-hundred-and-eight “influenza-associated” deaths were reported between 1 January and 9 October 2022.

Heart disease and dementia, respectively, were the top two causes of death in 2022. COVID may not dominate the conversation, as it did two or three years ago, but that has not diminished its severity in the least.

RELATED CONTENT

,

The health benefits of giving up drinking coffee

21 May 2024

As with many things we consume, the science on coffee can be conflicted. One decade caffeine consumption is a no-no, the next it seems coffee is quite beneficial. Regular readers will know I’m a coffee drinker, but in — what I consider to be — moderation: two (large serve) cups per day.

But some people struggle with coffee addiction. And the same people say their general health, and mental well-being, much improved when they stopped drinking coffee all together. Jesse Downes, based on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, says he used to drink seven cups of coffee a day, before giving up completely about three months ago:

Three months into his coffee-free life, Mr Downes is noticing some changes. “The anxiety levels generally seem to be more managed, or reduced, if you like, and I would have to say there’s a sustained energy level,” he said.

Good for him. Just because many people enjoy something, doesn’t mean everyone will. I guess we all have our no-no vices. Mine would be alcohol and soft drink, both of which I only partake of a couple of times a year.

RELATED CONTENT

, ,