Health: 23 1/2 Hours
Watch this engaging, fact-packed and persuasive lecture by a Toronto physician, Dr. Mike Evans and it's just under 10 minutes.
I enjoy his style so much that I spent an enlightening (sedentary, I admit) hour on his web site, which is a trove of well-researched health information. Evidence rules! Go, Mike!
What do you think?
Comments
Now I'm off to take a walk. :)
As for me, I'm leaving the car home this morning and walking to work.
Fantastic. Brilliant presentation, such fun.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
xo,
Tish
And a great opportunity to commend Canada for its excellent, pioneering work in evidence based medicine and wellness.
With the exception of the B-thingie up there, all of my numbers are exactly where my doc likes them to be -- probably moreso now that I'm fitter than I used to be.
For me, being a non-driver has had a protective effect: I walk everywhere with a pretty little French wicker shopping cart. Not only do I avoid traffic and parking headaches and get more than the recommended 30 minutes of activity most days, I see things that drivers miss: a hawk swooping close to the ground, the first snowdrops in a sunny corner, the barber standing outside his shop who smiles and says "Hi, Doll." Good for my health in more ways than one.
Thanks for sharing this little film.
C.
I certainly walk at least half an hour every day, usually more if I have time, and certainly when I can ride my bicycle (soon, I hope) it is very rare that I don't get in an hour - only when I have a HUGE rush of work.
I loved the dog bark and bicycle bell... Cats are less effective at getting us to exercise, once they are out of kittenhood. They are constantly doing so, but very much on their own, being cats.
Duchesse, I hope you are satisfied with the walkability of our neighbourhood.
Thanks for this.
Eleanorjane
In the audio clip "New Year's Diets and Exercise", Evans cites studies that show one diet is no better than another *for weight loss*, so he disagrees with your "only diet" view, but adds that some diets such as the Mediterranean, are *healthier* than others, and agrees with you re total caloric deficit. He also discusses genetic vulnerability to body shape and obesity, which is another factor.
Re the effectiveness of any one diet versus another in terms of weight loss, see also: http://www.aafp.org/afp/2003/0201/p507.html
though as a medical research (sic) you might know this.
Evans does not say that 30 minutes of walking will *cause* significant weight loss; in the lecture, he is aggregating evidence for an assortment of issues.
Evidence-based medicine is where I firmly continue to sit, or should I say, walk.
1. Kind of you to recommend the blog. However, I'm the director of a large medical research laboratory, professor in a medical school, and interact extensively with the NIH, NSF, and DoD in the US, as well as--to a lesser extent--the print and television media. Given how I spend my day, maintaining a blog dedicated to the same area would hardly be a good idea in terms of relaxation :)
2. These ideas aren't my own, and I can't take credit for them. Unfortunately, there's a significant disconnect between scientific knowledge (basic research) and it's trickle down to clinical research, and then even more so, the medical practitioner. A good presentation of the growing consensus in scientific circles that our common knowledge about diet is based upon some pretty fundamentally flawed and misrepresented experiments (including the Framingham Study that Evans referenced), can be found in Gary Taubes' well-researched book: "Good Calories Bad Calories." I recommend it strongly.
3. "Evidence-based Medicine" is, like "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice," a loaded name for an idea that is often anything by empirically reliable. Evidence based is short-hand for "we try two things and see which one gives us our outcome measure." The contrary view is "hypothesis-based," which suggests that not only do you need to see which one is better, but just as importantly--you need to understand *why* it works. The reason has to do with statistics. EB medical research seems to be often performed by physicians who lack a profound understanding of either basic physiology, experimental design, or data analysis. Finding a correlation between X and Y variables may allow you to publish (and get picked up by the media), but spurious correlations due to errors in data fitting, biased sampling, and common causes are easily found, particularly in large and complex data sets. That's why the NIH is putting so much emphasis on identification of *mechanism*, because otherwise you just have a bunch of meaningless correlations, with results that change every week.
Anyway, sorry for the interruption. From now on I'll just enjoy your posts on scarves and cashmere, and keep quiet :)
1. Kind of you to recommend the blog. However, I'm the director of a large medical research laboratory, professor in a medical school, and interact extensively with the NIH, NSF, and DoD in the US, as well as--to a lesser extent--the print and television media. Given how I spend my day, maintaining a blog dedicated to the same area would hardly be a good idea in terms of relaxation :)
2. These ideas aren't my own, and I can't take credit for them. Unfortunately, there's a significant disconnect between scientific knowledge (basic research) and it's trickle down to clinical research, and then even more so, the medical practitioner. A good presentation of the growing consensus in scientific circles that our common knowledge about diet is based upon some pretty fundamentally flawed and misrepresented experiments (including the Framingham Study that Evans referenced), can be found in Gary Taubes' well-researched book: "Good Calories Bad Calories." I recommend it strongly.
3. "Evidence-based Medicine" is, like "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice," a loaded name for an idea that is often anything by empirically reliable. Evidence based is short-hand for "we try two things and see which one gives us our outcome measure." The contrary view is "hypothesis-based," which suggests that not only do you need to see which one is better, but just as importantly--you need to understand *why* it works. The reason has to do with statistics. EB medical research seems to be often performed by physicians who lack a profound understanding of either basic physiology, experimental design, or data analysis. Finding a correlation between X and Y variables may allow you to publish (and get picked up by the media), but spurious correlations due to errors in data fitting, biased sampling, and common causes are easily found, particularly in large and complex data sets. That's why the NIH is putting so much emphasis on identification of *mechanism*, because otherwise you just have a bunch of meaningless correlations, with results that change every week.
Anyway, sorry for the interruption. From now on I'll just enjoy your posts on scarves and cashmere, and keep quiet :)
1. Kind of you to recommend the blog. However, I'm the director of a large medical research laboratory, professor in a medical school, and interact extensively with the NIH, NSF, and DoD in the US, as well as--to a lesser extent--the print and television media. Given how I spend my day, maintaining a blog dedicated to the same area would hardly be a good idea in terms of relaxation :)
2. These ideas aren't my own, and I can't take credit for them. Unfortunately, there's a significant disconnect between scientific knowledge (basic research) and it's trickle down to clinical research, and then even more so, the medical practitioner. A good presentation of the growing consensus in scientific circles that our common knowledge about diet is based upon some pretty fundamentally flawed and misrepresented experiments (including the Framingham Study that Evans referenced), can be found in Gary Taubes' well-researched book: "Good Calories Bad Calories." I recommend it strongly.
3. "Evidence-based Medicine" is, like "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice," a loaded name for an idea that is often anything by empirically reliable. Evidence based is short-hand for "we try two things and see which one gives us our outcome measure." The contrary view is "hypothesis-based," which suggests that not only do you need to see which one is better, but just as importantly--you need to understand *why* it works. The reason has to do with statistics. EB medical research seems to be often performed by physicians who lack a profound understanding of either basic physiology, experimental design, or data analysis. Finding a correlation between X and Y variables may allow you to publish (and get picked up by the media), but spurious correlations due to errors in data fitting, biased sampling, and common causes are easily found, particularly in large and complex data sets. That's why the NIH is putting so much emphasis on identification of *mechanism*, because otherwise you just have a bunch of meaningless correlations, with results that change every week.
Anyway, sorry for the interruption. From now on I'll just enjoy your posts on scarves and cashmere, and keep quiet :)
I have worked for years in the field of health promotion, in two major teaching hospitals and with the Faculty of Family Medicine, where Evans now works. I know good public health education when I see it, which is not always the same as good research. Get people to cut the empty calories first, then fiddle with the diets, and read all the books they want. It's what the person does that counts.
I like your last comment too. Change starts with small steps. Research and knowledge are great, but overwhelming to most people. The true sign of success is to get someone to start with something.
~skye