This week the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published the results of a 6 year study on over 3000 older adults to see if Ginkgo biloba really lives up to claims that it helps the memory and can stave off dementia. The results: a resounding no.

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While the rest of the West has been actively engaged in holiday festivities, the march of science continues. Researchers in both Europe and North America published studies last week relating to obesity and provide food for thought for those contemplating their New Year’s Resolutions.

Celebrity Food Rehab with Dr. Drew

While not a VH1 program yet, it might be soon. Psychology researchers in Canada noticed that bariatric (weight loss) surgery patients often demonstrated compulsive and addictive behaviors regarding food even after surgery. In their commentary in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Valerie Taylor, MD, and her associates review the concept of food addiction. It’s not an idea that’s fully accepted but there are strong similarities to drug and other compulsive and self destructive addictions, so much so that some over-eaters develop new compulsive behaviors such as shopping or gambling after gastric bypass surgery. Dr. Taylor makes it clear that this is a subset of over-eaters and not every obese person is a compulsive eater. Identifying the compulsive eaters can make weight loss and healthier behaviors a real possibility for those food addicts, though. This phenomenon is of course the entire basis for Overeaters Anonymous. It is a complicated problem, because unlike alcoholics who can avoid drinking, all of us including “food addicts” must eat to live.

It’s worse than before and louder too

Across the pond,  researchers published in the British Medical Journal some unsettling findings. Obesity is a much greater health risk than previously thought, according to George Davey Smith and his colleagues at the University of Bristol. Working with researchers in Sweden, the group found through statistical analysis that the risks of being underweight such as lung disease and cancers was actually what’s called reverse causality. That means that people who are underweight in BMI studies are often underweight because of life threatening illness rather than developing the illness because of their weight. Adjusting for reverse causality reveals that the health of obesity may have been understated by BMI studies in the past.

The news is good for coffee drinkers! A new meta analysis shows that drinking coffee or tea reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes — and it doesn’t even matter if you drink regular or decaf!

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The Winter Solstice is upon us. The days will soon begin getting longer, but cold weather and drying indoor heating systems will remain with us for some time to come. So what should you do to keep your largest organ — your skin — healthy through the winter?

We have three related items to share today. The first is some research on exercise attitudes among overweight and normal weight people. Not too shockingly, overweight people had negative attitudes about exercise, despite the fact that exercise would help them lose weight. It turns out that among other things, overweight people think exercise will make them feel better about themselves than normal weight people do! The heavier they are, the worse they think their health is. So why don’t they get out to the gym? “[O]verweight individuals felt more embarrassed and intimidated about exercising, exercising around young people, exercising around fit people, and about health club salespeople than individuals of normal weight. Overweight and normal weight individuals felt the same about exercising with the opposite sex, complicated exercise equipment, exercise boredom, and intention to exercise.”

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