pjaniszewski | May 31, 2010
(Photo by Marina Komolova)
As our readers may have noticed, Travis has been solely carrying the Obesity Panacea load, while I have been a bit absent since my PhD defense. As some of you may know, I am taking the summer off to travel through South America with my partner, Marina, who also just defended her PhD thesis. While you can follow our adventures on our travel blog, I am also keeping notes during the travels that may be of greater interest to the readers of Obesity Panacea. Here is the 1st in the series of posts on lifestyles throughout South America: Galapagos edition.
We have just…
tsaunders | May 30, 2010While we regularly post lengthy discussions on Obesity Panacea, there are many research updates, news stories, videos, etc. in the field of obesity, physical activity and nutrition that we come across on a daily basis that never grace the pages of the blog. Most of these mini-stories we share with our followers on Twitter, and we encourage those of you with active Twitter accounts to communicate with us there to get real-time updates of all the stuff we are discussing (Follow Peter and/or Follow Travis). For those of you who shy away from Twitter, enjoy below the best mini-stories that we…
tsaunders | May 28, 2010
A few weeks ago Peter wrote about the Acai Berry Scam, and reader izzlecanoe made an interesting comment:
But I do find it annoying that alongside your posts are advertisements
for the very products you are exposing. Can science blogs be persuaded
not to allow advertising from such woo pushers.
She was seconded by Jim Purdy:
Those phony ads are infuriating. And it's even more disappointing when
they appear often on many of my favorite news sites. When a news site
carries lying advertisements, it takes away from the credibility of
their news stories.
Annoying and infuriating indeed. Peter…
tsaunders | May 26, 2010Sorry for the absence the past few days - I am just back from the Bluenose Marathon Weekend in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My girlfriend and I have a lot of family and friends in Halifax, so the race was a great excuse to spend the May long weekend visiting with them. Daun and I ran in the 10km and Half-Marathon respectively, and 12 members of my extended family from 3 different generations walked or jogged the 10km. This is my first time racing in the Bluenose, but last year I volunteered in the Youth Run, which was at least as much fun as racing, if not more so (and not just because of the…
pjaniszewski | May 21, 2010
Does this look "normal" to you?
A significant number of overweight and obese individuals believe their body weight to be appropriate or normal and are satisfied with their body size. Misperception of overweight status is most common among the poor vs wealthy, African Americans vs white Americans, and men vs women. The unfortunate consequence is that overweight individuals who perceive themselves to be of normal weight are less likely to want to lose weight in contrast to overweight individuals with accurate perceptions. Such individuals are also more likely to smoke, have a poor diet,…
tsaunders | May 20, 2010
The following post was originally published on Obesitypanacea.com on October 7, 2009.
As many of our readers know, I performed my MSc under the direction of Dr Bob Ross at Queen's University (Peter recently completed his PhD in the same lab). Dr Ross is a world leader in the measurement of body fat and body fat distribution, which is why many of our publications focus on the associations of various body fat depots with markers of metabolic risk. During my time at Queen's I was also fortunate to work with Drs Jen Kuk and Lance Davidson (now at York and Columbia respectively), who were…
tsaunders | May 18, 2010
Image by MikeBaird.
Last week ParticipACTION and the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP) released recommendations for updated Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines. The previous guidelines were released between 1998 and 2002, and although they were based on the best research available at the time, from what I understand there simply wasn't a tremendous amount of evidence to draw on in some situations. Since then there have been a number of advances in physical activity research, allowing for the creation of updated, and increasingly evidence-based guidelines.
The guidelines…
tsaunders | May 16, 2010While we regularly post lengthy discussions on Obesity Panacea, there are many research updates, news stories, videos, etc. in the field of obesity, physical activity and nutrition that we come across on a daily basis that never grace the pages of the blog. Most of these mini-stories we share with our followers on Twitter, and we encourage those of you with active Twitter accounts to communicate with us there to get real-time updates of all the stuff we are discussing (Follow Peter and/or Follow Travis). For those of you who shy away from Twitter, enjoy below the best mini-stories that we…
pjaniszewski | May 13, 2010 Photo credit: Jeff Cronin
In the recent past both Travis and I have taken a jab or two at the evolving acai berry craze, whether it was making fun of celebrities (i.e. Rachael Ray) who endorse it or by critiquing weight-loss products based on the magical berry (i.e. AcaiBurn). Apparently, we were onto something.
This past Monday, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has released a consumer warning, urging consumers to not fall prey to the viral ads of countless acai berry based products for weight loss, sexual dysfunction, cancers, and other ailments.
In the warning, the…
tsaunders | May 10, 2010
The Toronto Charter for Physical Activity
As many of you know, I spent last week attending the 3rd International Congress on Physical Activity and Public. It. Was. Awesome! I've been to 5-6 conferences since I started grad school in 2006, and they've all been good experiences, but this one was by far the best. And of the more seasoned researchers that I've spoken to, they all seem to rank it among the best they've attended as well. Unfortunately I wasn't able to liveblog the conference as I'd hoped (the wifi was pricier than I'd expected) so I thought I'd recap my experiences here…
tsaunders | May 7, 2010As many of you probably know, when I am not working in the lab or posting here at Obesity Panacea I am also a content editor at ResearchBlogging.org. Each weekday a different Research Blogging editor selects their favourite posts from the past week in their area of expertise, and you can find my favourite posts on Health and Clinical Research here every Wednesday. Since there are always great Health-related posts on Research Blogging that don't necessarily overlap with obesity/fitness/nutrition, I don't usually cross-post my Research Blogging selections here on Obesity Panacea. But this…
pjaniszewski | May 6, 2010
Way too much, according to a recent study by Johnson and colleagues, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Personally, I love salty foods. While I have never been too fond of sweet things (chocolate, candy, etc.), just a few years ago I could have easily gone through a bag of chips or pretzels in one sitting. Just writing about that crunchy/salty goodness makes my mouth water.
However, since hypertension runs in my family, I have recently made a concerted effort to limit my sodium intake - largely by cutting out my intake or salty snacks. This process was made that much easier by…
tsaunders | May 4, 2010
This week I will be heading to the International Congress on Physical Activity and Public Health in Toronto, Ontario. It should be a terrific conference - the program includes presentations by friends of Obesity Panacea including Drs Jen Kuk and Meghann Lloyd, not to mention other internationally renowned physical activity researchers like Steve Blair, Peter Katzmarzyk and Neville Owen. There will also be a large number of oral and poster presentations on a variety of topics by my own lab group, including my own poster ("Relationship between daily steps and clustered cardiometabolic risk…
pjaniszewski | May 3, 2010While I have covered the literature on the "health protective" effect of lower body adiposity and have previously discussed my original paper investigating the effect of losing lower body fat on metabolic health, along with Dr. Jennifer Kuk, I just published a letter to the editor at the International Journal of Obesity discussing some of the limitations of a recent review in the area. Rather than yet again writing about lower body fat and why losing it during weight loss may or may not be bad for your health, Travis and I decided to try our hand at the first of what we hope to be many…
pjaniszewski | May 1, 2010
While we regularly post lengthy discussions on Obesity Panacea, there are many research updates, news stories, videos, etc. in the field of obesity, physical activity and nutrition that we come across on a daily basis that never grace the pages of the blog. Most of these mini-stories we share with our followers on Twitter, and we encourage those of you with active Twitter accounts to communicate with us there to get real-time updates of all the stuff we are discussing (Follow Peter and/or Follow Travis). For those of you who shy away from Twitter, enjoy below the best mini-stories that we…
pjaniszewski | April 28, 2010After just under 4 years, my PhD has finally come to an end. The congratulatory emails, phone calls, blog comments, FB and Twitter messages have been rolling in steadily - I thank you all for the kind words, and will try my best to respond to everyone personally in due time.
As Travis briefly explained yesterday, the defense went off smoothly despite my nerves. I was asked quite a number of questions (many more than during my Master's defense), but my committee members were all very friendly and polite so I felt pretty comfortable during the question and answer period. All the questions and…
tsaunders | April 27, 2010Just a quick note to let everyone know that Peter (aka Dr Janiszewski) successfully defended his doctoral thesis this morning! As usual the presentation was excellent, and the reviewers all seemed quite impressed with the work in general. With any luck he will have some time to share his thoughts later this week. And in case anyone was wondering, Obesity Panacea was actually mentioned positively in several of the questions!
I couldn't be prouder of Peter and the work he has done during his PhD, please join me in congratulating him!
Travis
tsaunders | April 26, 2010From the Obesity Panacea Archives: The following post first appeared on January 11, 2010.
In the past year or so I've seen lots of online discussion about the nutritional value of juice, and the role that it may play in obesity and weight management. Although there are a lot of good nutritional arguments against juice consumption, they are all a bit abstract (for a quick review of the main arguments, click here). We can tell people again and again that orange juice is the nutritional equivalent of Coke, but when they look at at a glass of orange juice, it still looks like a glass of…
tsaunders | April 25, 2010
While we regularly post lengthy discussions on Obesity Panacea, there are many research updates, news stories, videos, etc. in the field of obesity, physical activity and nutrition that we come across on a daily basis that never grace the pages of the blog. Most of these mini-stories we share with our followers on Twitter, and we encourage those of you with active Twitter accounts to communicate with us there to get real-time updates of all the stuff we are discussing (Follow Peter and/or Follow Travis). For those of you who shy away from Twitter, enjoy below the best mini-stories that…
tsaunders | April 21, 2010
Image by thelastminute.
You read that correctly - last week the RCMP was called in to break up a game of road hockey in Enfield, a suburb of Halifax, Nova Scotia. From the Halifax Chronicle Herald [emphasis mine]:
Ryan Jefferies and his buddies enjoyed playing road hockey almost every free minute in front of Ryan's house here. But anonymous complaints recently put an end to that.
Ryan's mom, Debbie Jefferies, said Monday she has no idea who complained or why, but the games came to an end last Thursday when an RCMP officer showed up at their door.
"He just said they had received two…