Category: News
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Things to Read
2 comments on Things to ReadIf you can (not allergic to eggs etc) get your flu shot. Yes, really. The Kindle edition of A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” by Rachel Held Evans is $1.99 right now. I enjoyed it, and not just for the debunking of the “Wives are required by God to appear…
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Fat Doesn’t Require Apology
You may have seen the video where WKBT anchor Jennifer Livingston responds to a viewer complaint about her weight. In her response, Livingston thanks those who have come to her support. She encourages people to speak against bullying and to think about what they say in front of kids. What she does not say? Jennifer Livingston does not apologize for her size. Livingston acknowledges her size and does…
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Big Fat Sleep
No, it’s not news that lack of sleep is tied to fat. What sleep researcher Dr. Orfeu Buxton found is more information on how this occurs. The resting metabolic rate of the volunteers by the end of the five weeks was 8% lower than where they had started. […] That could explain why night shift workers tend to gain more weight and have a higher likelihood of obesity than day workers;…
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Not News
The website Fark makes fun of news stories that are not, actually, news. Example: Students Discover Desks Have More Germs Than Toilets Why isn’t it news? Well, it’s a common story that pops up once a year or two, and relies on people not thinking about which is more likely to get janitorial attention. Today my Google Health section looked a bit like Fark. First: Paula Deen…
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Vitamin B12 in the news
I’ve written about my vitamin B12 absorption problem before. The NY Times recently posted a good primer on B12 deficiencies, including those at risk: Natural plant sources are meager at best in B12, and the vitamin is poorly absorbed from them. […C]hronic users of acid-suppressing drugs like Prilosec, Prevacid and Nexium, as well as ulcer medications like Pepcid and Tagamet, are at risk of developing a B12…
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Medical Insurance Helps People Feel Better!?
On the one hand, it’s good to have actual research backing this up. On the other hand, it’s insane that this didn’t exist before. From the NY Times: When poor people are given medical insurance, they not only find regular doctors and see doctors more often but they also feel better, are less depressed and are better able to maintain financial stability, according to a new, large-scale…
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QOTD: Fitness and fatness
From Reuters, on a study in patients with coronary artery disease that looked at fitness levels and BMI: [Heart specialist and study leader Dr. Francisco] Lopes-Jimenez said, the lesson for patients is clear: try to improve your physical fitness. “It is much easier to become fit than it is to become slim,” he said. “Anybody who has gone into an exercise program would agree with that.” While Lopes-Jimenez…
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Heart Risk – BMI Not Useful
Or as Reuters put it: “[T]he best predictors of future heart risk are measures of blood pressure, cholesterol and history of diabetes.” According to a paper in The Lancet: BMI, waist circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio, whether assessed singly or in combination, do not importantly improve cardiovascular disease risk prediction in people in developed countries when additional information is available for systolic blood pressure, history of diabetes, and lipids.…
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Plus-Sized Athletes (with heads)
There’s a story making the rounds on “plus-sized athletes” reacting to the US “Let’s Move” campaign. The fitness community has embraced the first lady’s ‘Let’s Move’ program, but many health experts balk at equating improving health with lowering weight. Fat aerobics instructor Sandy Shaffer and physical trainer GeMar Neloms are interviewed. Dr Kenneth Cooper, a longtime supporter of measuring fitness independent of body weight, comments. All suggest that…
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Sex or Thinness?
Obviously it takes a certain kind of mind to ask 2,400 women if they would sacrifice a full year of sex to be skinny. In this case, the mind works at Fitness magazine. 51% of the 2,400 women said “Yes”. Now, I’m sure that some of those women interpreted “sex” to mean “sex with a partner”, are single, and figure they aren’t getting any anyway, so why not? However,…
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Ban Fat Marriage?
Yes, I know that Dan Savage’s screed on banning fat marriage is trying to illustrate the point that gay marriage bans are ludicrous. Fellow Stranger writer Lindy West has already responded with a solid “why fat hate doesn’t work” aimed at those who don’t want to get it, and I don’t disagree with it. However. I do think Dan seriously missed the boat bringing up the silly “fat is…
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Culture Affects Science Reporting
The bare facts in this piece on breakfast size are simple: German researchers studied the food intake of 280 obese adults and 100 of normal weight. The subjects kept records of everything they ate over two weeks, and were carefully instructed about the importance of writing down what they ate as soon as they ate it. For both groups, a large breakfast simply added to the number…
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Fat Discrimination Research
Rebecca Puhl, director of research and weight stigma initiatives at the Rudd Center, is quoted on studying weight bias in The Toronto Star: [It’s] one of the easiest [bias] fields to research as the prejudices are so widespread and socially acceptable that people easily admit to them. This is a form of bias that is so prevalent, society accepts it unchallenged […] It’s a social justice issue and…
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MLK Day
I was born in 1966, in a state which entered the Union in 1889, and thus had always been a “free” state; some of the founders came here because they couldn’t legally own land in other states. Yet state history included two of the most prominent counties being named in honor of the pro-slavery President Pierce and Vice President King. I learned about the Reverend Martin Luther…
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Dawn French, “Happy In Her Skin”
In a recent interview tied to her new novel (not yet out in the US), Dawn French mused about how most articles about her mention her weight. “Sometimes it’s done in a mean way, but I do find it strange because it’s not as though it’s a new thing, I’ve been this size for a long time, you would think people might not feel the need to…
Living ~400lbs 