Statins and Diabetes – Time to Let the Cat out of the Bag

Recently, concerns have been raised about the increased risk of diabetes associated with statin therapy. However, it has been pointed out that the risk of diabetes is low in absolute terms and when compared with the reduction in cardiovascular events achieved by treatment. In other words, the potential benefits to health are believed to outweigh potential … Read more

Benefits of Coffee – Caffeine Benefits Explained

It’s been almost forty years since Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris sang about the guy who left his gypsy girl for a journey “to the valley below”. His final cup of coffee became a classic. One more cup of coffee for the road One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go To the valley below – Bob Dylan 1976 Coffee, second … Read more

The Year of the Fat

During the first few months of this year, we’ve seen at least three strong signs suggesting that health authorities have misled the public for several decades about dietary fats. This finding is of particular interest because later this year the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans will be published. Ever since the beginning of the 1960s, “eat less fat, in … Read more

What About Saturated Fats if You Already Have Heart Disease?

We’re all aware of the aggressive campaign driven by public health authorities and medical professionals to decrease blood cholesterol. It all started more than fifty years ago when the Framingham Heart Study reported that high blood cholesterol was a major risk factor for coronary heart disease (1).     Central to the dogma was the belief that lowering blood cholesterol would … Read more

Metabolic Syndrome and Insulin Resistance

The metabolic syndrome is a constellation of risk factors, most usually associated with increased body weight, fat accumulation around the abdominal organs often termed central, or visceral obesity (1), and increased resistance to the effects of insulin. Other names that have been used to describe the metabolic syndrome are syndrome X, the insulin resistance syndrome, the deadly quartet (2) and … Read more