The video below shows Chris Gardner, Ph.D., researcher from Stanford University, giving a presentation about the data he generated when he compared the Atkins diet to the Ornish diet, the Zone diet and the LEARN diet.  You all probably remember this study, which he published in JAMA in 2007, showing the low-carb diet brought about greater weight loss and better lab value improvement than the other three diets.

As you watch this long video (and you should watch it; it’s extremely entertaining and filled with a ton of good info), there are a few things you should note.

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You think carbohydrates aren’t addictive?  You think it’s easy to give them up?  You don’t think it possible that people might prefer carbs to life?

Think again.

A story appeared in the online version of Time Magazine last year that I read when it came out, put aside to blog about later, then got sidetracked.  A reader sent me a link to it a few days ago, which brought it back to the front of my mind.

The article discusses a study being done in Germany using a carb-restricted diet to fight cancer.  In pre-WWII days, a German scientist, Otto Warburg, received a Nobel Prize for his work in sussing out the fact that cancer cells don’t generate energy the same way that normal cells do.  Cancer cells get their energy, not like normal cells, from the mitochondrial oxidation of fat, but from glycolysis, the breakdown of glucose withing the cytoplasm (the liquid part of the cell).  This different metabolism of cancer cells that sets them apart from normal cells is called the Warburg effect.  Warburg thought until his dying day that this difference is what causes cancer, and although it is true that people with elevated levels of insulin and glucose do develop more cancers, most scientists in the field don’t believe that the Warburg effect is the driving force behind the development of cancer.

But it stands to reason that it can be used to treat cancer that is already growing.  Since cancers can’t really get nourishment from anything but glucose, it stands to reason that cutting off this supply would, at the very least, slow down tumor growth, especially in aggressive, fast-growing cancers requiring a lot of glucose to fuel their rapid growth.

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I had a question from a friend today about migraine headaches. I remembered reading about them in Dr. Larry McCleary’s new book The Brain Trust Program, so I thumbed through the book to see what he had to say. (I had read the book in manuscript form, but couldn’t remember the specific recommendation for migraine headaches.) I became engrossed in the material all over again, and after a couple of hours of reading it dawned on me that I hadn’t reviewed the book for this blog.

First, a bit of disclosure. Dr. McCleary is a good friend of mine as well as a business partner for a number of years. And MD and I wrote the Introduction to his book. But we didn’t write it because he was a friend and partner, but because the book is so good.

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Based on the number of comments I get and the number of questions that come through the email on our website, it seems that there is much confusion about the interplay of calories, the caloric deficit, weight loss, and weight gain. I’ll use this space to expand on my views of these complex and confusing issues.First, let’s look at a concept that will help explain a lot. It’s a concept that Gary Taubes explores in great detail in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories, which, by the way, is available now. (Grab a copy and spend a fascinating couple of days poring over it. The rewards will be immense.) The concept in question is interpretation of the energy balance equation, which looks like this:

ΔWeight = Calories in – Calories out

What this equation basically says is that the change in weight (ΔWeight) equals the number of calories consumed minus the number of calories burned off in the process of daily living.

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