health

Another Simple Food Weight Loss Experience

Whole Health Source reader Sarah Pugh recently went on a six-week simple food (low reward) diet to test its effectiveness as a weight loss strategy, and she was kind enough to describe her experience for me, and provide a link to her blog where she discussed it in more detail (1).

Consistent with the scientific literature and a number of previous reader anecdotes (2), Sarah experienced a reduction in appetite on the simple food diet, losing 15 pounds in 6 weeks without hunger. In contrast to her prior experiences with typical calorie restriction, her energy level and mood remained high over this period. Here's a quote from her blog:

Well, it looks like the theory that in the absence of nice palatable food, the body will turn quite readily to fat stores and start munching them up, is holding up. At the moment, the majority of the energy I use is coming from my insides, and my body is using it without such quibbles as the increased hunger, low energy, crappy thermo-regulation or bitchiness normally associated with severe calorie restriction.

I can't promise that everyone will experience results like this, but this is basically what the food reward hypothesis suggests should be possible, and it seems to work this way for many people. That's one of the reasons why this idea interests me so much.

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A Brief Response to Taubes's Food Reward Critique, and a Little Something Extra

It appears Gary Taubes has completed his series critiquing the food reward hypothesis of obesity (1). I have to hand it to him, it takes some cojones to critique an entire field of research, particularly when you have no scientific background in it, and have evidently not read any of the scientific literature on it. As of 2012, a Google Scholar search for the terms “food reward” and “obesity” turned up 2,790 papers.

The food reward hypothesis of obesity states that the reward and palatability value of food influence body fatness, and excess reward/palatability can promote body fat accumulation. If we want to test the hypothesis, the most direct way is to find experiments in which 1) the nutritional qualities of the experimental diet groups are kept the same or at least very similar, 2) some aspect of diet reward/palatability differs, and 3) changes in body fat/weight are measured (for example, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). In these experiments the hypothesis has both arms and one leg tied behind its back, because the most potent reward factors (energy density, sugar, fat) have nutritional value and therefore experiments that modify these cannot be tightly controlled for nutritional differences. Yet even with this severe disadvantage, the hypothesis is consistently supported by the scientific evidence. Taubes repeatedly stated in his series that controlled studies like these have not been conducted, apparently basing this belief on a 22-year-old review paper by Dr. Israel Ramirez and colleagues that does not contain the word 'reward' (10).

Another way to test the hypothesis is to see if people with higher food reward sensitivity (due to genetics or other factors) tend to gain more fat over time (for example, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16). In addition, studies that have examined the effect of palatability/reward on food intake in a controlled manner are relevant (17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22), as are studies that have identified some of the mechanisms by which these effects occur (reviewed in 23). Even if not all of the studies are perfect, at some point, one has to acknowledge that there are a lot of mutually buttressing lines of evidence here. It is notable that virtually none of these studies appeared in Taubes's posts, and he appeared unaware of them.
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A Brief Response to Taubes's Food Reward Critique, and a Little Something Extra

Two Recent Papers by Matt Metzgar

This is just a quick post to highlight two recent papers by the economist and fellow health writer Matt Metzgar.

The first paper is titled "The Feasibility of a Paleolithic Diet for Low-income Consumers", and is co-authored by Dr. Todd C. Rideout, Maelan Fontes-Villalba, and Dr. Remko S. Kuipers (1). They found that a Paleolithic-type diet that meets all micronutrient requirements except calcium (which probably has an unnecessarily high RDA) costs slightly more money than a non-Paleolithic diet that fulfills the same requirements, but both are possible on a tight budget.

The second paper is titled "Externalities From Grain Consumption: a Survey", with Matt Metzgar as the sole author (2). He reviews certain positive and negative externalities due to the effects of grain consumption on health. The take-home message is that refined grains are unhealthy and therefore costly to society, whole grains are better, but grains in general have certain healthcare-related economic costs that are difficult to deny, such as celiac disease.

There are a lot of ideas floating around on the blogosphere, some good and others questionable. Composing a manuscript and submitting it to a reputable scientific journal is a good way to demonstrate that your idea holds water, and it's also a good way to communicate it to the scientific community. The peer review process isn't perfect but it does encourage scientific rigor. I think Metzgar is a good example of someone who has successfully put his ideas through this process. Pedro Bastos, who also spoke at the Ancestral Health Symposium, is another example (3).

Does High Circulating Insulin Drive Body Fat Accumulation? Answers from Genetically Modified Mice

The house mouse Mus musculus is an incredible research tool in the biomedical sciences, due to its ease of care and its ability to be genetically manipulated. Although mice aren't humans, they resemble us closely in many ways, including how insulin signaling works. Genetic manipulation of mice allows researchers to identify biological mechanisms and cause-effect relationships in a very precise manner. One way of doing this is to create "knockout" mice that lack a specific gene, in an attempt to determine that gene's importance in a particular process. Another way is to create transgenic mice that express a gene of interest, often modified in some way. A third method is to use an extraordinary (but now common) tool called "Cre-lox" recombination (1), which allows us to delete or add a single gene in a specific tissue or cell type.

Studying the relationship between obesity and insulin resistance is challenging, because the two typically travel together, confounding efforts to determine which is the cause and which is the effect of the other (or neither). Some have proposed the hypothesis that high levels of circulating insulin promote body fat accumulation*. To truly address this question, we need to consider targeted experiments that increase circulating insulin over long periods of time without altering a number of other factors throughout the body. This is where mice come in. Scientists are able to perform precise genetic interventions in mice that increase circulating insulin over a long period of time. These mice should gain fat mass if the hypothesis is correct.

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m a n i f e s t o

So here it is: m a n i f e s t o: part 1

It's been a while in the making and is the first of two parts.

A colourful version is available here alongside a straight black and white word version. A short animated film and podcast version will be available shortly.

I know that it's what some of you expected, because we’ve talked about it.

I know that it's not what some of you expected, because we’ve talked about it.

So respond to it, talk about it and share it, and we’ll get some of these thoughts into part 2 and see how it grows!

Thank you everyone who’s been involved.

And of course, I’ll give some presentations around it, and encourage some debate.

No more round-robins for November, whilst I am away at the 3rd International Conference for Arts, Health and Well-being, but there may be the odd conference posting if you have a moment to visit this blog.

Please post all comments around the m a n i f e s t o to artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk and excuse the brief silence.

...and for those of you who haven't taken part in the process, it may be worth looking at the references first!

On Friday 7th October, the Marmot Review Team launched a consultation on the European Review of the Social Determinants of Health & the Health Divide in the WHO European Region. At the present moment, this consultation makes no reference to the role of the arts and creative interventions on health inequalities, and the time is right for our input. I will be making some comments on this consultation, but if you want to read more and contribute yourself, click on the logo above or follow this link:
http://www.marmotreview.org/reviews/european-review-of-hi/consultation.aspx

The Brain Controls Insulin Action

Insulin regulates blood glucose primarily by two mechanisms:

Suppressing glucose production by the liver
Enhancing glucose uptake by other tissues, particularly muscle and liver

Since the cells contained in liver, muscle and other tissues respond directly to insulin stimulation, most people don't think about the role of the brain in this process. An interesting paper just published in Diabetes reminds us of the central role of the brain in glucose metabolism as well as body fat regulation (1). Investigators showed that by inhibiting insulin signaling in the brains of mice, they could diminish insulin's ability to suppress liver glucose production by 20%, and its ability to promote glucose uptake by muscle tissue by 59%. In other words, the majority of insulin's ability to cause muscle to take up glucose is mediated by its effect on the brain.

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GMAHN Library and Website Launched...the Un-Conference and SO much more...

Musique et Sante
The wonderful Musique et Sante who regularly work with our collegues at the Royal Northern College of Music, (RNCM) have developed their own website, which I recommend to you all. Partners and allies of the finest quality.
http://www.musique-sante.org/en

Bi-Monthly Networking Evening
(a change to our advertised programme)
I'll be 'out of service' for much of November, and instead of cancelling the networking evening planned for the end of the month, I'm thrilled that Holly at the RNCM has offered network members the opportunity to attend a talk on Music for Health as part of the RNCM Research Forum Series. It will take place on Wednesday 23 November at 5.15pm – 6.45pm in the RNCM Lecture Theatre and is entitled ‘Creating musical space in a medical place’. Holly Marland will be sharing insights into the role that music can play in hospital settings and the training and support that can be offered to musicians. There will be an opportunity for discussion and some informal networking in the RNCM bar afterwards. Places are limited so if you’d like to come along, please drop holly an email at holly.marland@rncm.ac.uk

An Evidence Review of the Impact of Participatory Arts on Older People
A very important contemporary review of arts participation conducted by the Mental Health Foundation.
http://www.baringfoundation.org.uk/EvidenceReview.pdf

Greater Manchester Arts Health Network Library
I am thrilled to be supporting the Greater Manchester Arts Health Network website which was formally opened last week. This on-line resource provides a fantastic one-stop-shop for some of the latest thinking, research and development in the field. Please check it out and in particular the extensive LIBRARY.
Fantastic work Anne and Phil.
http://www.greatermanchesterartshealth.org.uk/

Brief thoughts on the Un-Conference
Last Thursday’s Un-Conference was a (long) day of challenging, exciting and provocative debate and activity around our arts/health field. Divided into 4 themed sessions, the day gave the opportunity to participants to engage in 1 or more of the day’s events.

Langley Brown and Phil Burgess were quick to provoke and excite, getting people on their feet and active and using deeply personal stories of their own experiences as artists to question narratives and in part suggest, that its never too late to have a happy childhood.

Lynn Frogett and her team shared their psychosocial approach to understanding how the arts can change individuals and communities through theory and practice in an interactive workshop exploring how practitioners and organisations can evidence this.

Clive, Dorothy and Anne

Dorothy Rowe was utterly compelling and shared some of her thoughts on the myth of depression and its chemical origins, alongside notions of imagination. The repose to Dorothy’s session has been quite overwhelming.

                   Thought Provoking
                       Inspiring
                          Moving and concise

Mark O’Neil and Leisa Gray gave an excellent two-hander to round the day off, exploring the potential of museums and galleries to impact on public health at a population level, and a more intimate hands-on experience of literally handling objects. A perfect end to a wonderful day.

A Gentle Prod at those who take for granted...
The venue wasn’t perfect for the day, with some distracting noise from people working, and a couple of people complained there wasn’t food! I do have some sympathy about the ambient distractions, but for those demanding food…the day was free to all participants, and cost a fortune to host. So, no more greedy bleating please.

And finally a big thanks to everyone who made it possible.

Losing Fat With Simple Food-- Two Reader Anecdotes

Each week, I'm receiving more e-mails and comments from people who are successfully losing fat by eating simple (low reward) food, similar to what I described here. In some cases, people are breaking through fat loss plateaus that they had reached on conventional low-carbohydrate, low-fat or paleo diets. This concept can be applied to any type of diet, and I believe it is an important characteristic of ancestral food patterns.

At the Ancestral Health Symposium, I met two Whole Health Source readers, Aravind Balasubramanian and Kamal Patel, who were interested in trying a simple diet to lose fat and improve their health. In addition, they wanted to break free of certain other high-reward activities in their lives that they felt were not constructive. They recently embarked on an 8-week low-reward diet and lifestyle to test the effectiveness of the concepts. Both of them had previously achieved a stable (in Aravind's case, reduced) weight on a paleo-ish diet prior to this experiment, but they still carried more fat than they wanted to. They offered to write about their experience for WHS, and I thought other readers might find it informative. Their story is below, followed by a few of my comments.

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Power, Older People, Australia, Young People, Drugs and St Perry of Essex

Ai Weiwei tops the art world’s ‘power 100 list’…whatever that is! ‘His art activism has been a reminder of how art can reach out to a bigger audience and connect with the real world…Institutions, while they are really important, can be great tombs.’
Mark Rappolt, Editer, Art Review

How we value older people, the arts and the 'market'
I’m thrilled to be giving the opening key-note at the 3rd Annual Art of Good Health and Wellbeing International Arts and Health Conference, which is taking place at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra between the 14 and 17 November 2011. I’ve written a paper which explores the role of the arts when we are faced with serious illness and which asks, in the face of our own mortality, just what relevance can culture and the arts play, if any. An article in today’s Gurdian chimes with much of the sentiment of my paper (see directly below)

The Hon Simon Crean MP Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, Minister for the Arts, will be opening the conference and I’ll be giving my paper at around 6:15 on Monday the 14th, so if you want to hear it and get involved in our international debate, please come along.
http://www.artsandhealth.org

Illustration by Andrzej Krauze

NHS end-of-life care has been crippled by a marketised mindset that sees everything in terms of its economic value 'Our market-shaped way of life has no time for the elderly or the art of caring.' Madeline Bunting captures some of the outrageous issues affecting us all, around how we age; end of life care and the insidious ‘market led’ approach to ‘care.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/16/market-no-time-elderly-caring

What young people are really thinking?
The Art of Protest is a pop-up exhibition organised that will take place in empty shops on Manchester's Market Street from 19 to 27 October. The charity Noise sent photographers Liam Carter, Sebastian

Heise, Lucia Zapata and Marta Julve out on the streets of Manchester, Madrid, Valencia and Berlin, to ask young people the question: 'What would make you protest?' Displaying the resultant images in an area hit by the recent riots is a powerful statement of disillusioned youth

To find out more go to: http://noisefestival.com/

Why Americans Pay So Much More For Brand-Name Drugs (and Canadians don’t)
Brilliant Graphics and another sharp commentary on the pharmaceutical industry from http://medicalbillingandcodingcertification.net/high-cost-of-rx/
…and a Big Thanks to Cheryl Godden

On the Secular Beatification of St Perry of Essex
I’m often asked if I’m after a ‘celebrity’ to be a patron of Arts for Health, and in truth, we’ve had some great people behind our work over the years including Lord Attenborough; Joan Bakewell; Melvyn Bragg and Sam Taylor-Wood, but the current obsession with fame and all its glories, has left a bit of doubt in my mind around publicity, for publicity’s sake. Much of this has been reflected by the vapid self-celebration of contemporary British art.

This said, I had an almost revelatory moment at the British Museum this weekend, in the exhibition by Grayson Perry: Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, which I would recommend to anyone, particularly the people who ask, ‘what’s the relationship between arts and heath?’ I tend to open up a conversation about it being more than just a prescription...

Perry has produced something completely exquisite in his curation of artifacts’ from the British Museum and creation of his own work. I don’t particularly think he lays it on with a trowel either. It’s a beautiful show, with some challenging work that whilst exploring Perry’s own experience of being human, offers though the arts, far wider thoughts on being individual and part of a community. It’s not dumbed down in the slightest…if anything, he ups the ante.

So on the basis of his enduring wit, cynicism and piercing beauty, I suggest some kind of secular beatification of Perry, and instead of approaching him to be a patron, he could be co-opted as our very own (and exquisitely flawed) Patron-Saint of the Arts.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/grayson_perry.aspx
http://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/_12

An artists answer to the credit crisis…
Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine was unveiled at the Frieze Art Fair last week. The huge Jean Tinguely-inspired contraption, pieced together from a random collection of found objects such as mannequin limbs and Mickey Mouse figures, is surrounded by tiny bits of shredded credit cards on the floor. In return for a drawing made by the machine that bears Landy’s signature, people have to hand over a valid credit card for shredding. An assistant feeds pre-signed sheets of paper into the machine and off it goes, with a marker pen attached to a metal arm doing an automated random drawing (you can choose the colour). Some 300 credit cards were shredded during the first day alone (including the private view). Landy, of course, is best known for shredding all his worldly possessions a few years ago. (Thanks to itsnicethat.com and Thomas Dane)
http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/michael-landy-frieze-2011
http://www.thomasdane.com/artist.php?artist_id=7

...and for all of you eagerly awaiting Part 1 of the m a n i f e s t o for arts/health, I can confirm that the wonderful Kamila Kasperowicz has been creating a stunning digital and hard copy version for your delectation…