Before doing so, I just want to clarify my point of view about this: I am not suggesting that butter is a health food, nor that you might not be better off eating less of it. The balance of the evidence, for example, strongly suggests that good quality olive oil is much healthier for you than butter. So please don’t read this post and walk away thinking that butter is unambiguously good for you and that the more of it you eat the better, as is promoted by some health influencers on the internet.
Time for some inspiration. Last year there was quite a bit of media coverage about one Richard Morgan, a 93 year old Irish man who is a champion indoor rower. Scientists analyzed Mr. Morgan and found him to have the cardio-respiratory fitness of a man half his age. The reason this is so amazing is that Mr. Morgan didn’t take up any exercise at all until age 73, after he retired from his career as a baker. And while it’s impossible to ever draw broad medical conclusions based on one-single case, his story certainly lends credibility to the idea that it is never too late to start getting into better shape.
In my last post I covered a new line of research about possible post-vaccine harms, and how it has been sensationalized and misrepresented in the media. Today I want to step back and more broadly share some personal thoughts on COVID and on the vaccines.
I haven’t commented on the vaccines nor on COVID before, and I have a lot to say on the topic. So I am going to split this into two posts. Today I’m going to deal with the above article only; in my next post I will give you my thoughts more broadly on COVID and on the vaccines, as somebody who worked on the “front lines” during the COVID pandemic and has experience treating thousands of COVID cases.
I’ve written at length on this blog about the benefits of regular physical activity and a simple approach to staying fit that doesn’t just rely on “working out.” To highlight this point from a different angle, I want to revisit a study that is now a quarter-century old.
I discuss nutrition a lot on this blog, and two themes I come back to over and over again are the importance of avoiding processed foods and the benefits of increasing protein. I’ve also stated in the past that I am diet agnostic, by which I mean I believe a multitude of diets can work and the most important thing is to find the diet that works for you. With that said, patients and readers of this blog may have picked up on the fact that I tend to be partial to low-carb diets. This is not because I believe that low-carb diets are the only way to lose weight or that they are always the best choice, but because in my years of practice I’ve found many patients to have an easier time sticking to these plans and therefore achieving results than they do with other types of diets.
Where do plant based/vegan diets fall into my thinking?
