By Monique Tello, MD, MPH There’s a ton of incredibly promising intermittent fasting (IF) research done on fat rats. They lose weight, their blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugars improve … but they’re rats. Studies in humans, almost across the board, have shown that IF is safe and...
Susan Burke March

Weight loss is not always by the numbers
By Nancy Clark "Why am I not losing weight? “I religiously track my food and exercise. I’m eating 1,300 calories (the number my tracker told me to eat if I want to lose 2 pounds a week). I’ve been following a strict diet and the scale hasn’t budged. My friends tell me I am eating too little. I...
What about ‘Immunity Passports’ for Covid-19? At this point, they’re a ‘no go’
By Jaime Moreno Do you know what is the difference between politics and science? Our understanding is that science requires evidence, coping with uncertainty, weighting efficacy and safety. Whereas politics aspires for certainty, resulting in a true fight between the deductive and the inductive...
Our Covid-19 experience: How an expat couple discovers they have the virus and overcome it
Editor's note: This is the story of Jane and Steve Miner’s experience with Covid-19 in May/June 2020. Some of you will have already followed their journey as documented on Facebook. They were both fortunate to have had very mild cases and feel that, as more knowledge about this virus unfolds, it...
Why alcohol doesn’t ‘turn to sugar’ and other myths about drinking
Author's note: All good things must come to an end, at least for now! I've enjoyed writing the Food, Nutrition, and Your Health column for CuencaHighLife over the past five-plus years, and I hope you've enjoyed reading them. My husband and I last November decided that we'd like to relocate to...
FDA’s supplement warning system has deadly limitations
By Ryan Felton In August 2011 a Colorado woman was rushed to an emergency room in cardiac arrest a day after her husband injected her with a mineral salt called cesium chloride. For the better part of a year, the 61-year-old had taken a dietary supplement containing cesium as an alternative...
Combination of healthy lifestyle traits may substantially reduce Alzheimer’s
Combining more healthy lifestyle behaviors was associated with substantially lower risk for Alzheimer’s disease in a study that included data from nearly 3,000 research participants. Those who adhered to four or all of the five specified healthy behaviors were found to have a 60% lower risk of...
Flushing may release coronavirus-containing ‘toilet plumes’
By Karin Brulliard and William Wan Add this to our list of worries in these anxious times: coronavirus-containing clouds that waft into the air when a toilet is flushed. Scientists who simulated toilet water and air flows say in a new research paper that aerosol droplets forced upward by a flush...
Taste first! Take this quiz to see how much you know about salt
The World Health Organization, (WHO) based on peer-reviewed research and in concert with health experts throughout the world, writes that an estimated 2.5 million deaths could be prevented yearly if global salt consumption were limited to the recommended 2,000 mg daily. Cultures across the globe...
A tale of two pandemics: Covid-19 and obesity
By Marc Sollinger There are a lot of possible explanations for why Japan has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic better than the United States. It’s possible that the Japanese are more used to wearing masks, that the government used contact tracing to more effectively to contain outbreaks, and that...