Insulin Resistance Predicts a Variety of Age-related Diseases

In the last post, I reviewed a study by Gerald Reaven's group showing that insulin resistance strongly predicts the risk of cardiovascul...

Does "Metabolically Healthy Obesity" Exist?

Obesity is strongly associated with metabolic alterations and negative health outcomes including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some ...

Ancestral Health Symposium 2012

I recently returned from AHS12 and a little side trip to visit family.  The conference was hosted at Harvard University through the Harvard ...

New Review Paper by Yours Truly: High-Fat Dairy, Obesity, Metabolic Health and Cardiovascular Disease

My colleagues Drs. Mario Kratz, Ton Baars, and I just published a paper in the European Journal of Nutrition titled " The Relationship ...

Is Sugar Fattening?

Buckle your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen-- we're going on a long ride through the scientific literature on sugar and body fatness.  ...

What Causes Insulin Resistance? Part VII

In previous posts, I outlined the factors I'm aware of that can contribute to insulin resistance.  In this post, first I'll list the...

The Brain Controls Insulin Action

Insulin regulates blood glucose primarily by two mechanisms: Suppressing glucose production by the liver Enhancing glucose uptake by other ...

Fast Food, Weight Gain and Insulin Resistance

CarbSane just posted an interesting new study that fits in nicely with what we're discussing here.  It's part of the US Coronary Ar...

Food Reward: a Dominant Factor in Obesity, Part III

Low-Fat Diets In 2000, the International Journal of Obesity published a nice review article of low-fat diet trials.  It included data from ...

Oltipraz

Oltipraz is a drug that was originally used to treat intestinal worms. It was later found to prevent a broad variety of cancers ( 1 ). Thi...

Intervew with Chris Kresser of The Healthy Skeptic

Last week, I did an audio interview with Chris Kresser of The Healthy Skeptic , on the topic of obesity. We put some preparation into it, a...

Saturated Fat and Insulin Sensitivity, Again

A new study was recently published exploring the effect of diet composition on insulin sensitivity and other factors in humans ( 1 ). 29 me...

What's the Ideal Fasting Insulin Level?

[2013 update.  I'm leaving this post up for informational purposes, but I think it's difficult to determine the "ideal" in...

Butyric Acid: an Ancient Controller of Metabolism, Inflammation and Stress Resistance?

An Interesting Finding Susceptible strains of rodents fed high-fat diets overeat, gain fat and become profoundly insulin resistant. Dr. Jia...

Fructose vs. Glucose Showdown

As you've probably noticed, I believe sugar is one of the primary players in the diseases of civilization. It's one of the "bi...

Peripheral vs. Ectopic Fat

I went to an interesting presentation the other day by Dr. George Ioannou of the University of Washington, on obesity and liver disease. He...

Health is Multi-Factorial

Thanks to commenter Brock for pointing me to this very interesting paper , "Effects of fish oil on hypertension, plasma lipids, and tu...

Leptin

I've been puzzled by an interesting question lately. Why is it that certain cultures are able to eat large amounts of carbohydrate and ...

Visceral Fat

This week, I stumbled upon a very interesting series of articles from the lab of Dr. Nir Barzilai. The first article I came across showed t...