Welcome to my Health and Exercise Research Page

Authored by Dr. Mike Jezercak – Professor of Chemistry – University of Central Oklahoma

Welcome!

This site is a constantly growing project that will be constantly updated and dedicated to providing structure, information and documents dedicated to teaching you how to make substantial improvements in your health and wellness. Topics included and supporting files include research articles from current literatures and some topical information subject to my opinions based on the research I collect in response to questions that I am asked. I have personal opinions based on MY readings and research which may differ from your own or others. THAT IS GOOD. I welcome well informed/quality research-based opinions.

Please browse the pages, and do not hesitate to provide feedback and dissention if you like. All comments are welcome. That’s how we all learn!

Note: There is information for browsers and for those wanting deeper information. I’ve tried to document and present as much original quality research as is possible. Commentary is provided for many and more will be added as this site becomes more complete. Keep checking back.

A mirror of this site is available at any time on CD by contacting me. This site and the CD includes videos, excel and web sheets for calculating foods, exercise, body fat, etc.. Also, research articles and links to related sites.

Help is available to help with questions and strategies. Click here to E-mail me...

Health, Exercise and Fitness News + Colgan Institute Newsletters

¨ (updated 2/1/2006)

Optimum Nutrition and Food Choices

Diseases and Degeneration Processes

Exercise Strategies with Eating and Injury

Diet, Weight and General Health Strategies

Recipes and Clever Cooking Tricks

Evaluation and Use Nutritional Supplements along with My Favorite Sources for Supplements

A Plan for Beginners who Just want to Start

A Book Reading List with Commentary

Links to Useful Informational Sites

Controversy – Presentation of Some Arguments

NEW

THE BATTLE BEGINS!

Remember the insane legal battles over tobacco. Who won? The lawyers! Money extorted from the tobacco industry went largely to the legal counsels and what remained went to the states. The money was intended for health-related funding, but most was diverted into other areas. Well, the attack on fast foods, fat foods, etc. is on! Although evidence is overwhelming that these foods are NOT in the best interest of the health of individuals, to SUE over it is, in my opinion, against the nature of a free society. An organization has taken up the fight, the Center for Consumer Freedom. Although I do not always agree with this group, I am in agreement with their fight in this regard. They are a bit propagandist in my opinion, but much I agree with. Check out their site.

Where I think there might be room for legislation is in the unfair targeting of kids. They are inundated with targeted ads in schools, out-and-about, from all angles. The intent is to make warm-fuzzy associations with a product. The psychological war pays dividends to the food companies when the kids make decisions on their own of what to eat and how much. A group that undertakes this battle is the Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood. Visit their site and consider their point of view.

And your nations leaders? Is the eating right pyramid based on science or on lobbying? REALLY SUPERB information is available in the book “Food Politics” by Marion Nestle. Here is another interesting article with similar findings from a recent Men’s Health issue, “I Want You to be Fat”

Finally, we are ultimately to blame for the inability to obtain fresh healthy foods in restaurants. Consider the CEO of Burger-King, a company that has gone over the top recently with offerings that include the 1400 cal burger! WOW! Examine this article.

BRAND NEW! – Part of many recent claims and discoveries is the fact that eating low/no fat is just not advisable. Genetic research has the capabilities of learning more about the processes of metabolism. Very recently, some interesting research at the Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that you have to eat fat to lose fat. A summary of the research is below. In short, they produced mice that were unable to synthesize and store fat in the body. Fat could only be removed from fat stores. The interesting part is that the fat that was removed from fat stores by the body was only burned as fuel when “new” fat was consumed! A no fat diet actually prevented the mice from metabolizing their own fat stores. Not humans, of course, but still makes one wonder.

“New” hepatic fat activates PPARα to maintain glucose, lipid, and cholesterol homeostasis

Manu V. Chakravarthy¹^,³, Zhijun Pan¹^,³, Yimin Zhu¹, Karen Tordjman¹, Jochen G. Schneider¹, Trey Coleman¹, John Turk¹ and Clay F. Semenkovich¹^,²^,^,

¹Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Lipid Research, Department of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, Campus Box 8127, 660 South Euclid Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri 63110
²Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110

Received 15 November 2004; revised 4 March 2005; accepted 7 April 2005. Published: May 10, 2005. Available online 10 May 2005.

Summary

De novo lipogenesis is an energy-expensive process whose role in adult mammals is poorly understood. We generated mice with liver-specific inactivation of fatty-acid synthase (FAS), a key lipogenic enzyme. On a zero-fat diet, FASKOL (FAS knockout in liver) mice developed hypoglycemia and fatty liver, which were reversed with dietary fat. These phenotypes were also observed after prolonged fasting, similarly to fasted PPARα-deficiency mice. Hypoglycemia, fatty liver, and defects in expression of PPARα target genes in FASKOL mice were corrected with a PPARα agonist. On either zero-fat or chow diet, FASKOL mice had low serum and hepatic cholesterol levels with elevated SREBP-2, decreased HMG-CoA reductase expression, and decreased cholesterol biosynthesis; these were also corrected with a PPARα agonist. These results suggest that products of the FAS reaction regulate glucose, lipid, and cholesterol metabolism by serving as endogenous activators of distinct physiological pools of PPARα in adult liver.

FINALLY…

As more and more studies become available on dietary practices, the recommendations are centering onto a common line. No surprise, the dietary protocols recommended are those that fit the way our bodies were grown. Just as there is an optimum fuel for an Indy car engine, there is an optimum fuel for our engines. Meta-Analysis is a review of hundreds of high quality clinical and epidemiological studies to find correlations or common agreement among the studies. Such a review has recently been carried out and published in the Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine. See the link at the page of one of the authors, Dr. Loren Cordain (Meta-Analysis), or a pdf version here in the Paleo section. Also, is a post article summarizing much of what is discussed in very useful and general terms. Published in the Mayo clinic Proceedings, it is DEFINITELY worth reading!! See it here (Mayo Clin Proceed)or in the Paleo section of this site.

New review studies and techniques are bolstering the Caloric Restriction method of improved health and longevity. This is getting serious folks! Check out the latest review article in the Caloric Restriction section.

New Research on life expectancy with the Mediterranean Diet. A (peer-reviewed?) article from BMJ.com, an independent research site dedicated to bringing quality research online. I need more time to evaluate the peer-reviewing process, however, it looks like a promising site. This is an interesting article.