Welcome to Straight Talk on Health. I’m your host Dr. Chet Zelasko. Straight Talk on Health is a joint production with WGVU in Grand Rapids MI. I examine the practical application of health information. Nutrition. Exercise. Diet. Supplementation. I look at the science behind them, and let you know whether it’s something to consider or not. You can check out other things that I do on my website Drchet.com and sign up for my free emails.
Besides doing research, and by that I mean reading research on a variety of health topics, I spend my time answering questions. That usually results in doing more research because every person has a slightly different nuance on the questions they ask. I always consider that an opportunity to learn something that I didn’t know before. With that in mind, a couple of questions that have come up that may be interesting to many listeners and an observation.
My grandson has soccer practice at a local middle school. The nice thing for me, is that the age-group soccer fields are width wise in the middle of a standard 400 meter track. I’ve taken to getting in my 3 mile walk/jog while he and the team practice. As I rounded the bend, on the first lap, I was hit by the overwhelming smell of a musk-based cologne. Even though it was a little windy, it hung in the air. It instantly reminded me of something I don’t think I’ve ever talked about: odors.
We live in a world that is trying to smell better. I don’t understand it because most things don’t smell that bad but shampoo, conditioners and other personal care products have clingy fragrances. Fabric softeners? Have you seen the commercials of people entering another universe because of the odors in the fabric? Make your self, your home, and your car smell better.
There are certainly health implications as some people are allergic to the chemicals that make up those odors. But more than that, the extreme fragrances just about kill your sense of smell. The receptors in your nasal passages adapt pretty quickly and you stop noticing the odors. That’s why people who own cats never smell the cat urine in the litter box—as much as manufacturers create products that kill the smell.
My pretend daughter is definitely in that category of adapting to odors. Everything seems like it’s over perfumed. Thank goodness she uses fragrance free detergent and fabric softener. She used my spare car for a year and I still haven’t gotten the perfume odor out of it.
Here’s the downside of it. A person also adapts to odors they produce in their mouth. Yep—we’re taking gum infections. The odors are significant. Because I usually get up close to people when I talk to people in a public place for some semblance of privacy, I’m always amazed how they can’t smell the infection in their gums themselves. Well, now you know why. Whether it’s for personal health reasons or adapting to pleasant odors, you can clog the odor receptors. One can be bad for your health while the other might be a problem for the rest of us. Just keep that in mind the next time you reach for that special odor fabric softener. If you want to smell the great outdoors, open the door and go for a walk.
Let's look at a couple of topics that just might be ones you’ve thought about. Let's start with this question: can I still be obese even if I have a normal body mass index? The short answer is yes. But I think it bears some explaining because if you've been listening for a while, one of the things that I say should be a goal for everyone is to get to a normal body weight as assessed by BMI and stay there. That's based on research of people who live well to 100 years in blue zones, areas of the world where groups of people live well to old ages.
Is my observation still true? Yes. Then how can someone be obese at what's considered a normal body weight for their height? In a single word, they are fluffy. Fluffy? Yes fluffy. Let me break it down for you this way.
A normal body mass index would be a range starting at 18.0 and extend to 24.9. 25.0 would be considered OW, 30.0 and over would be considered obese, and so on. But what do those numbers really mean? The units would be kg per meter2. What does that mean? It’s a measure of surface area. The more surface area you have, the more fat, or in some cases muscle, you have. It works well most of the time. Body builders complain that they may be assessed as obese when they have no visible fat. That’s what I mean by most of the time.
The other times that can happen is when someone loses a large amount of muscle mass as in someone who has age-related sarcopenia. Because muscle is denser than fat, someone could have a BMI that’s in the normal range but have lost so much muscle mass that they could actually be obese because of the percentage of body fat. It does not mean that muscle turns to fat! That’s not possible because they are completely different types of cells. But, people can reduce the skeletal muscle in large muscle groups like the abdomen, the hips, the thighs and the calves. As the muscle wastes away, fat cells can be added in the same areas—again, not replacing the muscle but being a convenient location to grow more fat cells.
The best example I can think of this was from MRIs on two people about 30 years ago and replicated in other places since then. The MRIs were a cross section of the mid-thigh of two women—one 25 years old and the other 75 years old. Both thighs were the exact same circumference. In the 25 year old, you can see the skin, the fat layer just under the skin, and muscle that reaches the bone. In the 75 year old, you see the skin. In this case, the fat layer reaches almost to the bone before you see some muscle. The muscle has atrophied and fat cells grew to fill in the space. Imagine that happening in the abdominal area, the hips, and on and on. That would be enough of a change that could tremendously increase the body fat of the older individual.
Could it be enough to classify someone as obese who might still have a normal body weight for their height? Absolutely. Those people appear to be fluffy. They don’t really have a solid area. So the answer is yes, you can be a normal weight for your height and still be obese.
The final question is this: “do I have to keep tracking my body weight, my blood sugar, or any other metric tied to a health issue like exercise?’” Yes. Life is all about patterns of behavior and subsequent outcomes. The only way you can get that is by writing it down to be able to examine it later. Or use a spread sheet. Or use a smart watch or smart phone. When I talk to people, and I ask them whether they exercise or not, they, especially men, will tell me about the best workout they’ve had. They ran. They lifted weights. On and on. Then I ask them when they last did that. It was months ago and they really haven’t done much since. That’s why you track.
I’ve been tracking my caloric intake off and on for several months. Off and on? Look, I’m no different than you. When I know my eating gets away from me, I start to skip days until I no longer record them. Then I begin again. Because my weight is slowly, agonizingly slowly, moving toward my normal body weight for height, I reviewed the last month of recordings. I reviewed what I recorded and two things stood out. I’ve slipped back to eating nuts a little too often as well as kettle chips. It’s obvious that I have a salty crunchy weakness that I have to address. Finding that one thing is just never going to happen. No carrot nor celery nor apple nor anything else I’ve tried works. The only thing left is to use pretzels or popcorn to satisfy that salty crunchy—and track those calories as well.
The second thing is that I never seem to give my digestive system a chance to rest for a while. I’ve become a sort of grazer—which has never happened to me ever before. I would rather not eat during the mornings and begin mid-afternoon if I need to. I’m most productive on an empty stomach. Once I begin eating, my clarity diminishes. So I’m addressing that as well.
The point of this is not about me. The point is that if I didn’t track my calories, I would have never noticed the pattern. The same is true if you’re trying to find out foods are bothering your digestive system such as using the FODMAP diet as recommended by your gut doctor. Salt if you’re tracking blood pressures and on and on and on. Tracking your diet or exercise is not always fun but the information you get can help you tremendously with one caveat: you actually have to look at the information to see the patterns.
I hope you found these answers informative whether they were your questions or not. That’s it for now because I’m all out of time. This is Dr. Chet Zelasko saying health is a choice. Choose wisely today and every day.
