Do you have skin tags? Often times they develop during pregnancy or in the middle years. Once they form they are permanent and sometimes they will even grow. Most doctors will tell you they are harmless because they are non-cancerous, but while they may be benign there still may be a reason to worry about them according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Pathology [1] which claims skin tags are connected to abnormal lipid levels and could signal metabolic problems before they become significant.

What are they? Skin Tags often look like small mole-sized portions of skin and they protrude above your normal skin by just a few millimeters. Some of them may be the same color as your surrounding skin while others are hyperpigmented like a freckle or a mole. In most cases, they are attached to the underlying skin by a small band of tissue called a stalk or peduncle. You can manipulate the tag without feeling any pain and they appear to be harmless even though they are unsightly. (more…)

What do you do when you have a corn allergy and you want something sweet to eat? After keeping careful watch and reading labels for a year, I have come to the conclusion that our only best bet is to make our own ‘on the go’ snacks from scratch. And drinks? Just forget about them. As a matter of fact, I challenge anyone in America to read the ingredient listings on every snack product in their favorite vending machine. It would not surprise me if every item had some association with corn, however odd or far removed as it may seem. Heck, even the water bottles are more than likely made from a corn byproduct! I digress. I really want to focus my attention on America’s romance with sugar, corn sugar to be specific, its prevalence in our lives, and a little history about how we became so addicted to the sweet stuff that grows in abundance over our midlands, and now even clutters the landscape surrounding the rocky mountain region. (more…)

The decades old firestorm debate over whether or not thimerosal in vaccines causes Autism got heated up last week when Jenny McCarthy made her accusation on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The U.S. Senate has just released a report after an 18-month long investigation of the FDA and CDC concerning thimerosal levels in pediatric vaccines and the rising rates of neurological disorders in U.S. children. Their verdict: the FDA is guilty of forcing parents to inoculate their children with hazardous amounts of poisonous mercury in the name of disease control. (more…)

A recent study preformed by Chi-Tang Ho, P.h.D., at Rutgers University found extremely high levels of reactive carbonyls in 11 different carbonated soft drinks made with high fructose corn syrup. He estimates that one can of your favorite soft drink could contain five times the amount of reactive carbonyls than what would be typically found in the blood of an adult with diabetes, blood that would contain elevated levels of reactive carbonyls as a complication of the disease.

Unbound reactive carbonyls are dangerous as they are thought to cause tissue damage, unlike bound and chemically stable fructose and glucose components found in refined sugar. Published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the study claims that High Fructose Corn Syrup laden soft drinks, when consumed in high doses, leads to the development of diabetes. (more…)

In lieu of the recent report published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition claiming that the use of High Fructose Corn Syrup in beverages affects fullness and hunger the same way as refined sugar, I decided to investigate further the use of both products. The result of this study is not surprising, given that it was sponsored by a grant from the American Beverage Association, by the Corn Refiner’s Association, and by a fellowship from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. Used as a decoy in the current war on processed and refined food products currently canvasing our grocer’s shelves, this article claims that there was no difference in participant perceptions on “sweetness, hunger and satiety profiles, or energy intakes at lunch” during the study they conducted. It just looks like one piece of manufactured “science” designed to push blame in our current nationwide obesity epidemic on another camp in our nation’s current witch-hunt on fattening foods. (more…)

“Losing weight would improve your health” - I was telling my patient last week during a consultation. His light-hearted response concerned me: “I am not obese, doctor, you’re too skinny. Everybody in my neighborhood is this size. And I like being big.”

Everyone in his neighborhood is indeed getting bigger. As the average size of the typical American grows each year, so does the tolerance for being big. I am concerned that our mass media “experts” have taken the social stigma out of fatness and made people blissfully ignorant of its health risks. Advertising, television programs, and movies that promote obesity as normal directly ignore its threat to health and well being. (more…)

The 2 million - year - old hunter-gatherer diet is healthier than the Mediterranean diet, according to a new study.

Staffan Lindeberg’s research team from Lund University in Sweden, have noted a remarkable absence of cardiovascular disease and diabetes among the traditional population of Kitava, Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea, where modern agrarian-based food is unavailable. (more…)