I recently came across a paper that was published almost ten years ago (2017) but which I think is highly relevant and very interesting. But before I get into it, let me give a bit of context.
Recent headlines about a new study from Consumer Reports have created a scare about protein powders. For example, CBS has a typically alarmist opening paragraph:
Let’s leave aside the pros and cons of protein powder for this post and just grant for the moment that:
a) people can get all the protein they need from a well balanced diet and don’t need protein powders, and b) some people, for a variety of reasons, find benefit to including protein powders in their diets.
For those who fall into this later category, should they stop using protein powders simply for fear of lead contamination?
The researchers in the study performed several separate lines of research and published them all in one paper. First, using advanced lab techniques, they studied humans and determined the following:
Here’s a quick review of an older study (from 1997). In the study, they took middle-aged diabetics and randomized them to do either nothing, or to do 45 minutes of vigorous cycling on a stationary bike twice per week, plus one session of high-intensity interval cardio training (consisting of two minutes of vigorous exercise followed by three minutes of light exercise for five cycles, for a total of 25 minutes).
After two months, the people who did the exercise had lost 48% of their visceral fat, and significantly improved their insulin sensitivity and blood glucose numbers, even though they didn’t lose a significant amount of weight overall. You can read the full study by clicking here.
Gratitude to my wife (and office manager) for sharing this interesting study, published in 2022, with me.
Researchers at Penn State University randomly assigned 235 post-menopausal women to either eat 50 grams of prunes (aka dried plums) or not every day for a year. For context, 50 grams of prunes is about six prunes per day. After a year, they found that the women eating the prunes had better bone mineral density, and an accordingly lower estimated risk for bone fractures, than the women who weren’t.
In other words, doing absolutely nothing other than adding six prunes per day to your diet might be a tool to keep your bones healthy, at least in post-menopausal women.
In the study, the famed Dr. Dean Ornish (who is best known for a 1990 study that used a similar intervention to reduce heart attack risk) at the University of California San Francisco took patients with early-stage dementia and divided them into a control group (who didn’t do anything in particular) and a study group who received an intensive lifestyle intervention that consisted of:
A low-fat vegan diet
Regular meditation and yoga for stress reduction
Daily “cardio” type exercise
Prioritizing good quality sleep
The results after 40 weeks were that the people in the control group got worse (as expected), whereas in the people receiving the intervention, 46% improved and 37% stabilized on a series of cognitive tests. Put another way, 83% of people doing the lifestyle program did a lot better than the people not doing the lifestyle program.
