Seems Like Red Bull May Not be a Health Drink

The most surprising thing about this article for me was that up until very recently, drinks like Red Bull and Monster had been classified as 'natural health products', rather than the 'aggressive vodka mixers' I had always considered them to be.  Well Canada has now got wise to these energy drinks, after a report revealed that none of them do a goddam thing for you, except getting you wired on caffeine extract.  

I was interested to hear about a Japanese study from the 1970's - the only one to come up with something good to say about energy drinks - which noted the increased swimming ability of rats injected with a glucose compound commonly used in the stuff.   Not quite enough to sway the argument, sadly.


Source:  The Star (Canada)

New Study Reveals Guaranteed Weight Loss Secret

So don't keep us in suspense, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre, what is this miraculous solution to the age old problem?

    "Exercise and diet".

Congratulations gentlemen, you have done your nation a great service with this new Research.  Humankind will look back on this moment with gratitude.  Exercise and diet, eh?  Fascinating...

Source:  Los Angeles Times

Drinking Red Wine is Exactly Like Exercising

The Mayo clinic recently performed a Study where they hung up some rats by their back legs & then injected them with stuff to see what would happen.  Some of the stuff was stuff you can find in red wine, other stuff was not.  The rats given the red wine stuff did better out of the deal.  It was as if they'd been exercising instead of having been clamped by a bunch of scientist types.  Hence the optimistic claim in the news feed below that red wine is 'exercise in a bottle'.  Wow - what a world that would be!  I think we all want this to be true whilst knowing full well that it isn't.  I don't care how buff the wine ingredient drinking rats were, sitting on my sofa guzzling Merlot is just not going to give me those defined abs I'm after.

Source:  CBS News

Marathons: Stop after 50 minutes.

Welcome news for those of us who would rather eat their own ear  than run for an eye-watering 42 kilometres:  Marathons are bad for your health.  That's what US journal 'Heart' has decided at any rate, and it makes a certain amount of sense.  One or two is alright, they say, but don't overdo it.  Duly noted.  According to these fellows, 50 minutes is the maximum amount of exercise you should do in one day, which were this advice to be followed to the letter would result in extremely unsatisfying conclusions to football matches around the world.  

The good doctors end with one of the feeblest pieces of prose ever committed to print, which I shall of course regurgitate here: "running too far, too fast, and for too many years may speed one's progress to towards the finishing line of life".  
I couldn't have put it worse.


Source:  Independent (UK)

Eating Cake for Breakfast Will Make You Thin

Tel Aviv university have come up with this cake-lovers dream diet.  Their experiment consisted of getting a load of fat people and putting them on strict low calorie diets.  Except one group was allowed to pig out on a big breakfast with dessert as part of their calorie allowance, while the other (less fortunate) bunch poked unenthusiastically at porridge and diet yogurt.  I like to picture them all sitting at one big table, split down the middle, with the cake-eaters slowly licking their spoons as they stare unswervingly at their fruit salad munching counterpart.  Well the cake eaters lost more weight at the end of it all, thus allowing fat people everywhere to justify eating Black Forest Gateaux with whipped cream at 7.45 in the morning.  Hurrah!

Source:  Canberra Times