Tag Archives: research

Facebook Can (And Maybe Already Did) Mess With Your Mood

Sometimes social media can feel like a giant social experiment. As we learned this week, sometimes it actually is.

Facebook

It was recently revealed that for a week in early 2024, Facebook tweaked the content almost 690,000 users saw on their Timelines. Some were shown more positive posts, while others were shown more negative posts. This was done as an experiment by researchers from Cornell, the University of California, San Francisco, and Facebook.

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Posted on June 30, 2023 by Elizabeth

The Toll Behind the Toe Loop: New Study Looks at the Physical Impact of Figure Skating

Women’s figure skating, arguably one of everyone’s favorite events, has concluded for another Olympiad. Russian Adelina Sotnikova upset favorite and defending gold-medalist Yuna Kim of South Korea in a decision that has a lot of people talking. But let’s put politics aside for a minute. We know it takes serious strength to get through a figure skating free skate, but just how much of a beating does an Olympic skaters body take during the performance?

That’s what researchers at Brigham Young University and the United States Figure Skating Association set to figure out. In a series of tests a skating coach at BYU, Jacquelyn Packard, helped demonstrate not only the grace of skating, but the force it puts on the body, some of which can cause injury.

“[Injury] happens more often than you think,” she said in an interview with BYU News. “A lot of these skaters are skating in a lot of pain.”

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Posted on February 21, 2024 by Elizabeth

Fear Of Gaining Weight After Quitting Smoking is Legit

Quitting smoking leads to more weight gain than originally thought, discovered a recent study, with an average gain of eight to eleven pounds in the first year.

Researchers analyzed data from earlier studies that were conducted between 1989 and 2024 in the United States, Europe, Australia and east Asia. They looked at weight changes of people who had successfully quit smoking.

They discovered the majority of the weight is put on during the first three months. For quitters who did not use nicotine replacement therapy they gained an average of 2 pounds the first month, 5 pounds the second month, 6 pounds during the third month, 9 pounds at six months and 10 pounds after a year.

Previous experts estimated people only gained an average of 6 pounds when quitting. This new research shows that the weight gain is more than most women are willing to tolerate when it comes to attempting to quit.

However, you shouldn’t let the fear of gaining weight discourage you from quitting. Experts continue to stress that the health benefits of quitting far outweigh the risks of weight gain. (more…)

Posted on July 11, 2023 by Kristina

Family And Friends May Be Unintentional Diet Saboteurs

Social gatherings can be difficult for dieters. Family food pushers like the grandmother who wants to care for you or the aunt who wants to be admired for a special recipe can make holidays and other family gatherings tricky. At other social gatherings it may be difficult to find things that fit within your food plan, friends may forget your diet, or acquaintances may not be aware of your goals. Medi-Weightloss Clinics recently commissioned a survey that they believe suggests that “it might be easier to lose weight these days if you live alone in a cave with no spouse, family, friends or colleagues.” As I look at the survey responses, though, I think there may be another interpretation.

The online survey was completed by 325 women between the ages of 25 and 55 who were currently dieting or had dieted in the past. It is unclear how these specific women were recruited or chosen. We are also missing further demographic information that might help us explain the results. When asked if they had ever felt others were not respecting their diet, 66 percent of participants agreed. Those most blamed for not respecting a diet were significant others, friends, and relatives; however, these are the people with whom we are most likely to have frequent interaction and most likely to share a meal. The more time we spend with someone, the more chance there is that person could disappoint us. Respondents were least likely (17 percent) to feel disappointed by their best friends.

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Posted on April 5, 2024 by Brooke Randolph

Fructose Research Does Not Change Perception of HFCS

A couple of weeks ago Medpage Today published an article titled Fructose May Not Be Culprit in Weight Gain which seems to contradict the Princeton research that found considerable more weight gain from ingesting high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Even when caloric intake was the same, rats gained more weight when eating HFCS than table sugar. Diets in Review has consistently spoken out against high fructose corn syrup as an unhealthy genetically modified food. Fructose and HFCS are not exactly the same as Tanvir Hussain, physician and adjunct professor of bioethics at Pepperdine University School of Law, points out, “[the study] did not include high fructose corn syrup in their analysis, but only simple fructose. Thus it would be difficult to make conclusions about high fructose corn syrup and weight gain based on this particular study. Nonetheless, the results do call into question the hypothesis that fructose disproportionately contributes to weight gain over other carbohydrates.”

Those are exactly the questions that have been posed to me – does this mean that HFCS is not bad for you?

Ann A. Rosenstein clearly explains the difference between sugar and HFCS, saying, “HFCS is an industrial food product and far from “natural” or a naturally occurring substance. It is extracted from corn stalks through a process so secret that Archer Daniels Midland and Carghill would not allow the investigative journalist Michael Pollan to observe it for his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The sugars are extracted through a chemical enzymatic process resulting in a chemically and biologically novel compound called HFCS.”

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Posted on March 9, 2024 by Brooke Randolph