Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Picture Books Shouldn't Teach Toddlers To Be Self-Conscious About Weight

A patient brought in this picture book.

It's apparently from a series of picture books about "Pot Bellied Buddies"

It's about a bunny who as a consequence of eating too many carrots, no longer fits in his bunny hole.

And so what did the bunny do?

Well he decided to "cut back a little, and exercise"

Another patient brought in a Thomas and Friends book.

In it, kids are introduced to, "The Fat Controller"

And when exploring other Thomas and Friends characters I learned there's also a "Thin Controller". There are no other body based descriptors of any other characters. Weight is apparently an important distinction.

In the past I've noted weight biased messaging in:

A beloved and award winning children's author's book
Harry Potter
The Princess Bride
A kid's movie whose entire premise rides on the suggestion that being fat is horrific
The Muppets reboot
Scooby-Doo
Johnny Test
Max and Ruby

and

An attraction at Disney's Epcot Center.

That weight hate and stereotyping is so prevalent in children's books and movies speaks to how deeply ingrained weight bias is in society today. Parents, please be on the lookout for this sort of messaging, and when (not if) you come across it, use it as an opportunity to have a thoughtful discussion with your kids about why it's wrong.

Monday, November 27, 2017

Whether Or Not You Can Outrun A Bad Diet Depends On Your Finish Line

If you're trying to run away from weight, the likelihood of you succeeding without also addressing your diet is pretty darn low.

On the other hand, if you're trying to run towards health, well then my money's on your feet.

Exercise is, second only perhaps to not smoking, the most important health behaviour anyone can cultivate.

Whether you're running to reduce the risk or burden of most chronic diseases, or to preserve and improve your functional independence, or to reduce pain, live longer, improve sleep, bolster mood, gain strength, lengthen endurance etc., increasing and sustaining regular exercise, regardless of weight and independently of diet, is incredibly powerful.

And I'm not aware of there being any credible voices suggesting otherwise.

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Saturday Stories: Window Girl, Graffiti Kids, And Iron Lungs

Lane Degregory in Floridian on the girl in the window (apparently an update to this 2008 story is imminent).

Mark McKinnon in The Globe and Mail on the graffiti kids who sparked the Syrian war.

Jennings Brown in Gizmodo on the last few people living in iron lungs.

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

10 Easy Non-Junk Food Rewards Teachers Can Dole Out

It happens in my kids' classes too. Teachers use junk food to reward academic accomplishments, good behaviour, fundraising and other social initiatives.

I'm sure the intentions are good. Rewarding desired behaviours reinforces the behaviour. Of course it also reinforces the rewards.

Teachers teaching their students, usually their very young students, that candy and pizza are rewards for every job well done no matter how small, might not be a great lesson for kids.

Moreover, there are so many better rewards that could be metered out.

In no particular order, here are ten (some whole class, some single kid), and please feel free to share this post and list with the your children's teachers. Honestly, they care about your kids, but they may not have thought about the issue much, and they're just doing what's nowadays considered to be normal.

1. An extra period of recess
2. An in class dance party
3. Dress up (or down) days (PJs, costumes, fancy clothes, whatever)
4. Class put in charge of school PA system for the day
5. Painting a hallway or classroom mural
6. Stickers or temporary tattoos
7. Sit wherever you want for a period (teacher's chair, floor, under desk)
8. Get out of one night of homework free card
9. Phone a kid's parents to tell them how terrific their kid is
10. Scrabble/boggle/other sort of educational game competition/hour

Monday, November 20, 2017

Of Course You Can Be Fit And Fat

Undeniably fit ultra-marathoner Mirna Valerio (from a 2015 Runner's World story (am quoted))
How about I pose a different question.

Can you be fit and have diabetes?

Of course you can. It'd be ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

So why doesn't the question of whether or not a person can be fit and fat sound equally ridiculous?

Why instead do we regularly see articles like this recent one from the New York Times that cover the "controversy" of the fit fat person?

In part it's because these stories conflate fitness with being free from other chronic diseases and/or from the risk of developing other chronic diseases.

But is that the average person's definition of fitness?

I don't think so.

I think most people think of fitness as the thing one gains as a consequence of regular exercise. That's why when it comes to the question of can you be fit and have diabetes, it sounds ridiculous as of course you can exercise and have diabetes.

Well guess what, you can also exercise and have obesity.

And in fact, that same study on which the New York Times based their article, didn't even try to quantify whether or not exercise provided health and/or quality of life benefits to people with obesity (of course exercise does). It simply looked at the heart disease risk of people with obesity, who didn't have other chronic medical conditions.

So basically the study concluded that obesity ups cardiovascular disease risk, not that those with obesity couldn't be fit.

And exercise mitigates, to varying degrees, the risks associated with virtually all chronic diseases, and obesity is no different.

Coming back to why we see stories in even the world's most reputable newspapers framing fitness and fatness as a controversy, well I think it just comes down to weight bias - specifically the trope that assumes that anyone with obesity must be lazy, because without that bias as a backdrop, there really isn't much of a story.

Saturday, November 18, 2017

Saturday Stories: Gene Drives x 2, and The Uncounted

By Mariuswalter (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Ed Yong, in The Atlantic, on how New Zealand's war on rats might change the world (and not necessarily for the best).

Carl Zimmer, in The New York Times, on why scientists believe gene drives (like the one discussed in Ed Yong's article) are too risky to employ.

Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal, also in The New York Times, with an incredible piece of journalism on the accuracy, or lack thereof, of America's bombing of ISIS.

And lastly, if you enjoy my blog, please consider a donation to my Movember fundraising for men's health initiatives. Thanks to the generosity of friends, family and readers, I'm 91% of the way to my $3,500 goal. You can give anonymously and it's fully tax deductible. Just click here! No donation is too small.



Thursday, November 16, 2017

Physicians Best To Have Practiced What They Preach Regarding Lifestyle

A few days ago I put out a tweet that stated that physicians (and with more characters here I'll say other allied health professionals as well) shouldn't give lifestyle advice unless they've followed it themselves. Given it led to a varied discussion, thought I'd expand more here.

First, I'm talking primarily about diet and fitness advice which pertain to any diet/fitness responsive condition or simply on healthy living as its own aim.

Second, while I think it'd be terrific if all physicians continually walked their talks, this isn't a reasonable expectation. What is however reasonable, at least in my opinion, is that a physician providing lifestyle advice has spent at least some time following their own advice (barring of course any physical or medical limitations that might preclude same).

Living the whys, wherefores, real-life challenges, and logistics, of their own lifestyle advice provides physicians with insights and empathy that in turn will help in their understandings of their patients' struggles and barriers. That understanding is likely to improve the counselling and support those physicians provide.

Whether it's keeping a food diary, following a particular diet, cooking the majority of meals from fresh whole ingredients, exercising a particular amount each week or day, mindfully meditating, etc - spending a real amount of time doing so (my non-evidence based suggestion would be for a month at least) will make you a better clinician.

[And to be clear, as there were those online who wanted to extrapolate my statement into one that suggested physicians must themselves all live incredibly healthful lives and maintain certain weights - that's definitely not what I'm saying, nor of course does weight provide real insight into the health of a person's lifestyle (as plenty of people with obesity live healthy lives, and plenty of people without don't).]

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Early Childhood Physical Activity Does Not Vaccinate Against Obesity

By Pete (originally posted to Flickr as determination_0970) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
It's not uncommon when I meet parents of children with obesity for them to tell me either that it doesn't make sense because their child is extremely active, or that inactivity is to blame for their child's struggles.

And while my confirmation bias is that weight leads to inactivity in kids rather than inactivity to weight, data is somewhat mixed, with some studies finding total daily energy expenditure in very young children is associated with lesser weight gain, and others, not.

One of the shortcomings of prior studies were that they focused primarily on energy expenditure measured during a child's first year of life, and didn't cover the period known as adiposity rebound whereby BMI typically decreases until the age of 4-7 years before beginning to increase through late childhood.

A recent small study, High energy expenditure is not protective against increased adiposity in chldren, included that time period.

Briefly, 81 subjects who were classified as either at low risk of developing obesity (in that they had lean mothers with an average BMI of 19.5), or at high risk (mothers with an average BMI of 30.3), were recruited, and 53 remained through to the study's conclusion of 8 years. Three measures of adiposity at 8 years were collected - BMI percentile, BMI Z-score, and percent body fat. Total energy expenditure was measured using doubly labelled water at 4 months, 2, 4, 6, and 8 years of age (though only 58% of all total measurements were collected). Body composition was measured by way of bio-impedance analysis at ages 0.25 and 2 years, and by way of DEXA at ages 4 and 6.

What was found was that total daily energy expenditure increased with body size, but,
"there was no evidence supporting the hypothesis that a low habitual TEE for that body size leads to subsequent increase in BMI or % body fat"
Nor was there an association between measures of adiposity at age 8 and total energy expenditure between the ages of 0.25 and 6 years.

The authors overarching conclusion is that when it comes to the genesis of childhood obesity, it's energy in, not energy out.

I can't help but wonder, were that to be the prevailing belief, would parents with concerns about their children's weights be more conscious of their children's diets (especially liquid calories and purchased meals) as energy-in is something that many parents deemphasize during our initial discussions.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Saturday Stories: Trump's USDA, ORBITA, and 'Woman, Black',

Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair on Trump's USDA.

James Hamblin in The Atlantic covers the ORBITA trial and wonders how much of heart disease is a state of mind?

Future physician Chika Oriuwa with her spoken word poetry slam 'Woman, Black'



Thursday, November 09, 2017

More Evidence That More Exercise Doesn't Up Total Daily Calorie Burn

Why is it that exercise doesn't seem to help appreciably with weight loss (and for those who enjoy building strawmen out there, note I'm talking about weight loss, not fat loss, nor fitness, nor health)?

One possible reason is that many people eat back their exercise in the form of a reward for doing it, or because they have been taught by savvy marketers that they need to refuel or recover something or other.

Another possible reason is that upping intentional exercise may lead bodies to decrease unintentional calorie burn (decreased fidgeting/NEAT, decreased autonomic tone, etc.) and also by way of improved exercise efficiency.

Overarchingly the latter theory is called constrained energy expenditure, and the evidence on all of this is early, and somewhat mixed.

Well a few months ago another block was added to the pile (at least for older women without obesity) suggesting constrained energy expenditure is a real phenomenon. It was a study published in Physiological Reports and it detailed the impact that a 4 month long moderate-intensity walking program had on the total daily energy expenditures of older women without obesity.

The study's 87 included participants reported being physically inactive, and weren't found to have any significant medical issues. The group was randomized into either receiving one of 2 doses of moderate intensity exercise for 4 months. Importantly, the exercise itself was supervised. Before and after measurements included resting energy expenditure (via indirect calorimeter), total daily energy expenditure (via doubly labeled water), body composition (via DEXA), graded exercise test (via treadmill VO2 max), physical energy expenditure (TDEE*0.9-RMR (to account for thermic effect of food reduced by 10%), and NEAT (by subtracting exercise energy expenditure - physical activity energy expenditure).

When it was all said and done, the lesser group added an average of 105 minutes of walking to their weeks, while the higher group added 160 minutes to their weeks.

There was a teeny tiny bit of weight lost in both groups (1.7lbs), and a tiny change to body fat percentage (-0.7%), but there were no between group differences. Expectedly, V02max improved more in the larger amount of exercise group.

What didn't change?

Everything else.

Despite marked increases in intentional exercise, and marked differences in adhered to doses of exercise, there were no differences found for participants' total daily energy expenditures, resting metabolic rates, NEAT, non-exercise physical activity or even total physical activity.

These results changed some when they further analyzed the data as they determined that those patients with higher baseline levels of physical activity showed lower levels of NEAT (important to note, difference did not reach statistical significance) post 4 months of exercise, whereas those with lower levels of baseline activity experienced decreases to resting metabolism with exercise (authors suggested latter might be due to weight loss, but given how small weight loss was, I find this confusing as the RMR drops were not small).

All this to say when it comes to exercise and its impact on calories burned, it's clearly far from a simple math formula. It's also incredibly unfair to weight. But as always, when it comes to improving health, nothing beats it.

[Thanks to Matt Woodward for sharing this study with me]

Monday, November 06, 2017

Guest Post: Special K Nourish Ad Perpetuates Supermom Nonsense

I've never been a fan of Kellogg's Special K's pretending to give a crap advertising, and so when I received an email from longtime reader Rosemary, who was unimpressed to say the least with one of their latest ads (embedded at the end of this post), I asked her if I could share her thoughts. She kindly agreed. Raw to say the least, and though I don't fully agree with every sentiment expressed herein, I'm betting they'll resonate with many.
I know soooo many women (and men!) that eat these products - thinking they are a whole / healthy choice.

This ad is so much ugh. Of course they had to throw in the shot of the well-endowed woman in the bra. "Casually getting dressed" ... while literally stuffing her face. Geneen Roth would not approve! Lol.

The whole "I am woman hear me roar - I can do anything - I am fierce - around food / being in charge of the food / feeding the kids - this media trope is so such nonsense. I dont know any women that work / live / eat the way this ad depicts.

Just perpetuating that myth -women- no, we don't deserve time carved aside to eat calmly - we are just too damn busy being everything to everyone. Just perpetuates this super mom woman role nonsense.

Most women I know / especially those with young school age children LOATHE grocery shopping / planning meals / making lunches / cleaning up (cuz let's face it, cooking proper whole foods is more work) / and just generally feeling the societal pressure to excel to be creative (and inspired! (Oh shut up Jamie Oliver))- about feeding their families. (And isn't this just code for "if you love your family you should be obsessing about this too like every other delusional Martha Stewart wannbe? Most of us are just so exhausted from overwork / we lose the motivation. In secret, we all admit how much we hate it and what drudgery it is.)

And there Kellogg's is trying dutifully to hit all their "diversity notes" - woman motorcycle mechanic / buzzcut lgbt-ish rainbow wristband girl - / It is all so contrived.

They are depicting the overworked woman - and they are the solution, when in fact, eating their crap that masquerades as "breakfast" and "food" probably actually contributes to feeling exhausted - re unstable blood sugar - carby weight gain - making one less energized to shop and prepare. It's a cycle.

I know when I eat next to no processed food - my energy levels are great. After about 4 days of not eating any crap.

The cereal is 10g's of sugar per 3/4 cup serving. That would maybe cover the bottom of the cereal bowl. No one eats only 3/4 cup of cereal when they pour a bowl.

And the granola bars are even worse - palm oil - and many different forms of sugar. Cane in the chocolate and corn syrup.

No reply necessary - yer bizzy - just wanted to pass it along.



Saturday, November 04, 2017

Saturday Stories: Global Trolling, Pain Empires, and Fake News Towns

A non-bylined piece (at least not that I could see) in The Economist explaining how the world has been trolled and why social media is to blame.

Patrick Radden Keefe in The New Yorker on the Sackler family and their empire of pain.

Caitlin Dickerson in the New York Times on what fake news did to Twin Falls, Idaho

[If you find this blog entertaining, interesting, and/or valuable, know I'll never ask you for money to read it, nor will I subject you to ads, but I will, once a year, ask you for donations to support my #Movember efforts. Please to report I'm nearly halfway to my $3,500 fundraising goal! Click here to give. No amount is too small, you'll get a tax receipt, and if you don't want it known by me or anyone else that you hang out here from time to time, you can give wholly anonymously as well.]


Wednesday, November 01, 2017

And So It Begins (#Movember)

And so it begins (again).

This month I pledge to grow my something of a Pedro Pascal inspired lip-terpillar in the name of raising awareness (and $s) for men's health.

If you enjoy my blog, a blog fully free from advertising, I'd like to ask you to donate to my Movember fundraising efforts. I've kicked them off by donating $100 myself and I'm hoping to raise more than last year's $3,500.

Contrary to what some believe, Movember is not a prostate cancer charity per se, and though some of its funds do support prostate cancer research and treatment, Movemeber supports multiple men's health initiatives including those involving mental health, suicide, body image, eating disorders, testicular cancer, substance abuse, and more. Regarding prostate cancer, I was pleased to see that Movember encourages patients to speak with their physicians about the value (or lack thereof) of PSA screening, rather than suggesting it's a good idea for one and all.

Donating is easy. Just click here and give! And of course, Movember is a registered charity, so all donations are fully tax deductible.

In return I vow to continue to blog freely, to never allow advertisements, and to regularly post pictures of what might well have been an effective form of birth control in my home had I sported it year round back in the day.

For me the ask is also personal. My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer when I was in medical school, and soon I'll need to start wrestling with whether or not with that strong family history, I should walk the slippery slope of testing. My oldest cousin Marshall - we lost him to substance abuse.

Every dollar counts, no donation is too small.

(And if you want, you can make your donation anonymously so no one (me included) will know you hang out here from time to time.)