wellness weekly

The News:

Poly pharmacy: This term generally refers to situations when a person is taking several medications to treat more than one disease. I am thinking of it today in regards to polytherapy or taking multiple meds for the treatment of one disease. This has become almost the standard in regards to blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol as well as some mental illnesses. For example, we have commercials promoting the drug Abilify as an adjunct to a persons existing antidepressant regimen. When I hear the ad voice over that suggests the depressed person ask their doctor about adding a medicine if the one they are on is not helping I wonder why medicine is the first choice for treatment at all. But this is the way the world is now and the next disease that will be addressed with two or even three concurrent meds is tobacco dependence. Research supports that combination medications used over the long term will significantly increase quit rates. Sometimes the medications are nicotine based and I have to wonder why we don’t give alcoholics some type of transdermal patch to treat their condition.
Simple Rule for Healthy Eating: I can only take credit for sharing Michael Pollan’s advice with as many people as I can not for saying this myself, except I have made many of these same suggestions and have certainly seen the proof in science. The simplest thing that he says, I will repeat verbatim. “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” This is of course the Mediterranean diet. Mr. Pollan cautions against eating things that contain ingredients that one cannot pronounce and items with more than five ingredients and foods that will never turn bad. He advises that you always leave the table a little hungry, which you will if you eat small frequent meals. He does have one recommendation that I had not thought to make and it is a pearl. He tells us not to get our food from the same store that we purchase our gasoline. Eat, eat whole food, don’t stuff yourself, and let me add, move your body every chance you get!
Pharm Industry Update: A couple of interesting notes out this week. The first is that the advertising that I so loathe is actually being curtailed for the first time in many years. A chart in the WSJ shows the amount spent trending up starting in 2002 and finally dropping in 2008. Be aware, the yearly expenditures were no less than 4 billion a pop. They are now spending less on direct marketing to consumers and they are spending less on marketing to health care professionals. They are laying off some of the sales staff. This is not good for employees but it may allow us to get back to medicating patients because they really need it and not because the drug company said they did. What is not positive in the recent news is that the companies are increasing the price for many medications. One reason offered is that the companies are trying to fill the coffers before some of their big names go generic.
Good Fat You May Already Have: This story didn’t stay around long, but it was an interesting report on a research studies that were released this month on another type of adipose tissue. More often we hear about visceral fat vs subcutaneous fat. Now we have something, well we always had it, but it is brown fat. Brown fat appears to be very different from the other kind, which I believe is white. Scientists were aware of the fat but thought that it was more often found in children and when in adults it didn’t really do much. But it does. It is an active tissue which means it burns calories whereas white adipose tissue stores energy and is inactive. One of the studies noted that the brown tissue becomes active to generate heat, to keep a person warm. Here is the irony. We want more brown than white fat and guess who has the brown fat… young, thin, women. No doubt some biotech company is at this moment diligently trying to find something to help obese people turn their white fat to brown.
Foods that Make You Want to Eat More: Ah, reread that caption will you. They do not make you eat more, but want to eat more. You control whether or not you eat! I say this because some studies have suggested that eating foods with artificial sweeteners or drinking diet sodas leads to weight gain. It only leads to weight gain if you consume more calories than you need. I drink a diet soda a day and I also eat the right amount of calories for myself… on most days anyway. Still, an article in the WSJ’s Health Journal this week notes some foods that do seem to trigger appetite. The reason is one you have heard before.. the consequences of eating simple carbs. Spike your blood sugar and pay later by being hungry, cranky and metabolically disadvantaged. Here are the foods listed as appetite generators. Bread, sweets, juice, pasta, wine or beer before dinners and artificial sweeteners. To avoid this phenomena, eat foods that are complex and that have a fiber component… for example , eat an apple instead of apple sauce, eat an orange over orange juice OR, be very mindful of the amount of calories you are consuming!


Okay, let’s do some cooking.

Mini Meals for the week ahead

Live Well
Deirdre