A friend of mine recently asked me “Is regular soda or diet soda better for you?” I tried to probe for details.  “Are you talking about calories?  Obviously, if you’re watching your weight or restricting carbohydrates, you should have the diet soda.” “No, I don’t mean the calories.” “Oh, you mean the concern that the citric acid might leach calcium out of your body?” “No.  I just mean overall,...

My regular readers know the controversies and challenges posed by prostate cancer.  It is very common.  Over half the men who die at advanced age of other causes will have prostate cancer on autopsy.  It is very slow.  From the time that prostate cancer is detectable on biopsy to the time that it causes symptoms or shortens life can be as long as a decade.  It is not very lethal.  Because it tends...

This week, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association received a lot of undeserved media attention.  The study wanted to examine the relationship between exercise and long-term weight changes among women who were eating a normal diet (i.e. not dieting).  It followed for over a decade 34,000 women who were 45 years old or older and correlated their self-reported physical act...