I’ve blogged on many occasions about my frustration with our national response to type 2 diabetes. While type 2 diabetes can be dramatically improved, and often outright cured, with lifestyle interventions such as diet and exercise, our system instead treats it as an intractable chronic illness that can merely be managed, not banished. Millions of patients are immediately put on medication at the first sign of poor blood sugar control, and while they are typically given some lip service about eating more healthfully, exercising, and losing weight, the focus of their treatment over the ensuing years involves an ever expanding pharmacopeia of medications. There is certainly evidence that many of these medications do help when compared to doing nothing, but it’s clear that even well treated diabetics don’t live as long and full lives as non-diabetics. So to me, this medication-centered approach is a tragedy of epic proportions.
Last year, I blogged in two separate posts about research into the topic of heart health and the keto diet. Now a follow-up study on this research has been published which sheds some important light on the topic.
Before getting into this new research, it would be worth your time to read (or re-read) my two prior posts on this topic, which can be found by clicking here and by clicking here.
A topic that I love, but haven’t yet gotten to comment on on this blog, is the remarkable health benefits of sauna use.
Over the past few decades, a large body of scientific research has shown that brief exposure to temperature extremes (both hot and cold) can lead to some biochemical processes in the body that promote better health. In a way, this is analogous to intense exercise. During a bout of intense exercise (say, doing sprints or jump ropes), certain chemical processes are upregulated in your body. In the hours after you finish exercising, these processes lead to beneficial effects in your body such as lowering your blood pressure, slowing your resting heart rate, and improving your insulin sensitivity. Similarly, being exposed to 15 or 20 minutes of uncomfortably hot air can lead to changes in your body over the ensuing hours that are beneficial to health.
One of the popular strategies for weight loss over the past decade has been intermittent fasting, or as some researchers call it, time restricted eating.
In case you don’t know what this is, it’s simply setting a restricted schedule around when you eat and when you don’t. Studies have shown that the typical American spends more than 15 out of every 24 hours in a “feeding” state, meaning that they eat shortly after waking in the morning, and then consume multiple meals and snacks throughout the day right up until shortly before bedtime. As a result, the longest stretch they ever go without eating in a typical day is no more than 9 hours, most of which consists of the time they are asleep overnight.
By contrast, somebody who is intermittent fasting might follow one of the following schedules:
