| Taubes' primary
contention is not new: high-fat diets
are not responsible for obesity and
chronic diseases such as diabetes and
heart disease. Indeed, Taubes asserts
there is nothing particularly insidious
about high-fat diets. He suggests butter
and meats can be eaten at will.
According to Taubes, the real villains
in the fattening of the American waistline
are carbohydrates. Throughout the book
he seems akin to a tenacious prosecutor
determined to implicate carbohydrates
for the crime of the rising incidence
of obesity. Personally, I think he fails
to make his case. The insulin-glucose
response mechanism he puts forward to
explain how carbohydrates make us fat
is oversimplified. He also ignores decades
of research confirming the benefits
of high-carbohydrate diet for serious
exercisers and elite athletes.
Readers are encouraged to read a heated
exchange
between Taubes and Michael Fumento at
reasononlline.com.
This debate took place following the
publication of Taubes' "What if
it's all been a
big fat lie?" in the New York
Times Magazine in 2002.
Does exercise make us thinner?
In late 2007 Gary Taubes wrote an article
for the New York magazine entitled The
Scientist and the Stairmaster. The article
is adapted from Good Calories Bad
Calories (the topic in this month's
article) and focuses on arguing that
exercise
will not help with weight loss (The
byline in the title is "Why most
of us believe exercise makes us thinner
- and why we're wrong").
Essentially Taubes' point is this:
exercise fails in helping weight loss
because if you exercise more you tend
to eat more, thus nullifying the energy
expenditure benefits from exercise.
I don't find Taubes' argument compelling.
In fact he seems to contradict his entire
argument when he writes in his concluding
sentence: "Maybe it's because we
eat foods that fatten us that the workout
becomes a necessity." Exactly.
Exercise
is a necessity. It counteracts and can
reverse the influence of the foods that
fatten us.
Is strenuous exercise a health
risk?
A student of mine recently asked whether
exercise could endanger your health.
The first thing that came to mind was
the tragic occurrences of sudden
death in athletes. There is a website
devoted to this topic. The site contains
information on the causes of sudden
death in young athletes, the incidence
and prevalence, and the proposed mechanisms.
There is certainly no definitive statement
suggesting individuals avoid exercise:
indeed, the Healthy
People 2010 initiative is cited
advocating the importance of regular
physical activity for good health. However,
a note of caution is expressed in commentary
about serious exercisers and a condition
known as "athlete’s heart:"
"While firm evidence is presently
lacking, one cannot exclude with certainty
that such extreme ventricular remodeling
due to intense conditioning may have
adverse consequences over long time
periods."
In 2007, The American College of Sports
Medicine (ACSM)
published a position paper clarifying
the potential dangers of exercise -
Exercise
and Acute Cardiovascular Events: Placing
the Risks into Perspective. The
ACSM report concludes "physical
activity decreases the risk of"
potential cardiovascular problems and
that "the benefits of physical
activity outweigh the risk." Of
note, the report does provide important
recommendations for populations of people
for whom vigorous exercise might be
potentially dangerous.
The health of young athletes
Although not usually life threatening,
sport and exercise participation can
cause serious (and not so serious) health
problems - especially for young people.
In June of 2007, The American Academy
of Pediatrics (AAP)
released a clinical report entitled
Overuse Injuries, Overtraining, and
Burnout in Child and Adolescent Athletes.
The
report is essential reading for
coaches, especially those involved in
sports requiring high-repetition vigorous
training: baseball throwing, tennis,
dancing, gymnastics, and swimming.
It documents various health problems
that can arise from prescribing sports
training programs that are too demanding
for young people. An earlier report
from the AAP in 2000 - Intensive Training
and Sport Specialization in Young Athletes
- made a strong case against children
specializing
in sports at an early age. "Young
athletes who specialize in just one
sport may be denied the benefits of
varied activity while facing additional
physical, physiologic, and psychologic
demands from intense training and competition."
Is marathon running bad for
your health?
One specific area of inquiry into potential
harm from exercise involves children's
participation in marathon running. The
journal Pediatric
Exercise Science (subscription required)
convened a roundtable of experts to
comment on the potential harmful effects
of children training and competing in
marathons. A consensus was not reached.
A more blunt assessment on the merits
of participating in marathons comes
from a retired professor of economics.
Art De Vany has a website
listing 10
reasons why children (and adults)
should not run marathons. It is an interesting
read and includes comments by visitors
to the site - some responses are in
agreement, others are against De Vany's
views.
Evolutionary fitness
Perhaps more stimulating than his comments
on marathon running is the 27-page
essay Evolutionary Fitness written
by De Vany. The essay is a terrific
read, challenging the wisdom behind
conventional ways to exercise for good
health.
Chronic lack of sleep in children
may have long term adverse effects on
cognition, emotion, and body weight
Anybody who has suffered from a few
days of little or no sleep can testify
to feeling lousy - irritable, stressed,
and unable to concentrate. A recent
article in the New York Magazine by
journalist Po Bronson comments on research
that speculates on the harm caused by
chronic
lack of sleep*
in children. Bronson writes:
"The surprise is how much sleep
affects academic performance and emotional
stability, as well as phenomena that
we assumed to be entirely unrelated,
such as the international obesity epidemic
and the rise of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder."
*
comment
by webmaster: This is an exceptionally
good article. If you can't read this
right away, you should bookmark it for
later reading.
(pelinks4u
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