Isegoria

I find this headline interesting: Atkins Diet May Be No Better Than Just Cutting Fat. Just cutting fat? It’s not as if the Atkins diet involves cutting fat and something more.

Anyway, according to the article, Atkins dieters lose weight faster initially, but everything evens out between low-carb dieters and conventional dieters. Interestingly, triglyceride levels fell further and “good” cholesterol levels rose higher on the Atkins regimen than on the low-fat diet.

In one six-month study, obese volunteers on the low-carbohydrate, high-fat and high-protein Atkins diet lost 13 pounds versus four pounds for obese people on a low-fat diet.

In a second year-long study, obese people on the Atkins diet lost nearly 10 pounds more after six months than volunteers on a conventional diet. But by the end of the year, the differences between the two groups were not significant, suggesting the Atkins diet is no better at helping fat people shed pounds than traditional weight-loss regimens.
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The Atkins diet, first published in 1972, has been criticized by doctors because its high fat content increases the risk of heart disease, kidney problems and cancer. The 12-month study found, however, that triglyceride levels fell further and “good” cholesterol levels rose higher on the Atkins regimen than on the low-fat diet.

Fascinating. Strong Mothers Bear More Sons:

In an Ethiopian community facing hard physical work and regular food shortages, British researchers have found that strong mothers appear more likely to bear sons than daughters.

The discovery suggests that during tough times, mothers’ bodies somehow manipulate the sex of their children to maximize the chance of successful reproduction, anthropologists Dr. Ruth Mace and Mhairi Gibson write in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.

This is because bringing a boy to term is more physiologically demanding on the mother, as boys grow faster in the womb and tend to be bigger, Mace said. And in biological terms, undernourished males might have more trouble finding a partner.
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The link between muscle mass and male children was particularly marked, they say. Among women whose arm muscle was less than 33 centimeters, three boys were born for every five girls. In those with the biggest muscles — over 38.9 centimeters — eight boys were born for every five girls.

Although this phenomenon has been seen in wild animals, this is the first time it has been reported in humans, Mace said.

For metric-impaired Americans, 33 cm is 13 inches, and 38.9 cm is over 15 inches — which is huge for a woman.

From Skipping Meals May Help, Not Hurt, Health:

A report released Monday found that a diet in which mice ate only every other day appeared to protect them more from diabetes and the memory-robbing Alzheimer’s disease than either a low-calorie diet or eating as much food as they wanted every day.

Interesting. How did they test this exactly?

The mice were forced to fast for a day and then given free reign to gorge on food the next. Consequently, those who fasted ate as many calories as did mice given as much food as they wanted every day, the researcher explained. A third group of mice ate every day, but consumed 40 percent fewer calories than the other rodents.

After the mice followed the diet for five months, the researchers gave them a neurotoxin that selectively damages nerve cells important for learning and memory, a pattern typically seen in Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers found that the toxin damaged fewer nerve cells in the brains of mice who fasted than in those who either ate freely or followed the low-cal diet.

Furthermore, blood tests revealed that mice who fasted had lower insulin levels than those who followed the other diets, an indication they also had a reduced risk of developing diabetes.

So fasting and gorging may be healthier than eating a steady diet because…it protects mice against a neurotoxin that selectively damages nerve cells important for learning and memory?

Temporary Syndrome Found in Ironman Athletes reports on an amusingly named syndrome that affects endurance athletes who alternate between dehydration and overhydration:

Triathletes have to be the fittest of the fit, but a small, unpublished study of athletes who competed in an Ironman triathlon suggests that the arduous, all-terrain event can take its toll, creating a “constellation of symptoms” defined as post extreme endurance syndrome (PEES).

More than a third of the athletes who sought medical attention suffered from the condition, which is characterized by decreased body temperature, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, headache, cramping and the inability to drink fluids, said Dr. Hilary Ann Petersen of the University of Arkansas Medical Center.

John Derbyshire’s What happened to Aldous Huxley gives some interesting Huxley history:

All of Huxley’s biographers begin by pointing out that his bloodlines were distinguished, but somewhat oddly mixed. His paternal grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley, the great Victorian biologist, best remembered for his victory against Archbishop Wilberforce in the 1860 debate about evolution. Known as “Darwin’s bulldog,” T. H. Huxley advocated scientism — that is, the belief that there is no area of human experience or understanding into which science will not eventually advance, or which the scientific method will be unable to explain. He seems to have coined the word “agnostic,” and used it to describe his own position on the mysteries of mind, spirit, and creation.

Fascinating! “Darwin’s bulldog” coined “agnostic”.

Aldous’s mother was a granddaughter of the great evangelical headmaster Dr. Thomas Arnold, the “Doctor” in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, originator of the “muscular Christianity” style of boarding-school education for boys, and father of the poet Matthew Arnold (who was, therefore, Aldous Huxley’s great-uncle). Dr. Arnold was an intensely religious man, who, when headmaster of Rugby, was reported to break down and weep openly in front of the whole school at the story of Christ’s Passion.

I originally found the notion of “muscular Christianity” perplexing — do you associate muscularity with Christianity? — but a little history cleared things up. The first modern fitness craze came about with the rise of sedentary office jobs in the Victorian era. A misunderstanding of Darwinian evolution and “survival of the fittest” fueled the fire, and soon Protestant leaders worried about not being fit and manly enough to withstand an influx of Catholic immigrants.

Yes, silly, but now you know why we have YMCAs — Yound Men’s Christian Associations — full of weights and swimming pools.

According to Stress Test Recovery Predicts Heart Attack Death:

Lauer and his team found that the traditional stress test could predict some deaths. Patients with premature heartbeats during exercise were 80 percent more likely to be dead within five years than people with a normal rhythm.

But they found that the heart’s behavior during the recovery period was even more revealing.

The death rate when an irregular beat surfaced immediately after exercise was 240 percent higher than normal, with an 11 percent chance of death over the next five years compared to 5 percent for people without the rhythm abnormality.
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Three and a half years ago, Lauer and his colleagues discovered that patients whose hearts failed to slow down quickly during the first minute after exercise were four times more likely to die over the next six years that people whose hearts had a normal recovery time.

According to Fitness May Prevent Cancer Deaths Among Men, fit men and thin women are less likely to get cancer:

The study included 2,585 women and 2,890 men who were followed from the early- to mid-1970s to 1998. At the start of the study, volunteers performed a treadmill test to measure their heart health and had their body mass index, or BMI, measured. BMI is a measure of weight in relation to height used to gauge obesity.

After taking into account factors that could influence health, Evenson’s team found that the fittest men were about half as likely to die from cancer as less fit men. Fitness levels did not have a significant effect on cancer deaths in women, however.

But a woman’s BMI at the start of the study was related to her chances of dying from cancer during the next 25 years, according to the report. Women with the highest BMI were almost 50% more likely to die from cancer than less obese women.