There is no magic weight loss pill. In other news, the Easter Bunny does not exist either. He was killed yesterday in a tragic reality awareness accident.

But back to StarCaps. This health hazard was sold by Beverly Hills socialite Nikki Haskell (not sure if she’s related to Eddie or not) and endorsed by her friends. You can’t sneeze in that town without hitting 12 actors desperate to drop pounds for a peachy role. While most of the offending products have been recalled, some websites such as 911healthshop.com and fastdietusa.com continue to sell a variety of the other brands.

StarCaps is promoted as a natural dietary supplement containing a rare blend of papaya and garlic but the FDA discovered bumetanide inside, a powerful diuretic that can cause serious health problems like high blood pressure, seizures, and toxic interactions with your other meds that make it hard for doctors to diagnose problems.

The FDA is planning to issue a long list of ALL the problem brands with hidden drugs in the near future. Stay tuned, Strangely, it appears that most of the supplements were imported from China, land of lead painted child toys and tainted milk. Hey Wal-Mart, thanks for training us to accept seriously inferior and dangerous foreign products into the public consciousness. I’m sure Sam would be proud.

Oh, by the way – WAL-MART SUCKS! And so does Nikki Haskell.

Read the whole article here.

Here’s a sampling of information to get you started.

By the way, for the purposes of this article, we’re only dealing with health issues. If you choose to abstain from red meat on ethical grounds, that’s a whole different can of worms.

The traditional perspective is that red meat should be eaten in limited quantities, primarily due to the saturated fat content, which is a contributing factor to high cholesterol, according to the American Heart Association. Furthermore, some studies have linked red meat to chronic diseases like breast cancer, colon, cancer, prostate cancer, and heart disease.

A professor of nutrition at Harvard claims red meat would be best eaten sparingly or not at all.

But in the other corner -

The American Dietetic Association (ADA) claims lean beef is equal to skinless chicken when it comes to lowering cholesterol. The ADA goes on to point out that red meat is the single richest source of iron and zinc for three galaxies and is stuffed full of proteins and vitamins as well. They say you can eat lean red meat five days a week and still reduce cholesterol.

So if you decide to make red meat a part of your diet, keep these factors in mind:

1. Pasture or grass-fed cattle are healthier than hormone-injected cattle factories.

2. Processed meats like hot dogs and bologna are nutritionally dead.

3. Frying, searing, grilling, or broiling can produce heterocyclic amines, chemicals that can lead to cancer.

Hmm, I guess that just leaves us with one question for the next 4th of July cookout picnic. Would you like your steak boiled or poached?

Good luck out there, kids!

It’s called gastric bypass surgery. ‘Tis a conundrum certainly. When should you think about weight loss surgery as a solution? It seemed to work out okay for formerly chunky celebs like Star Jones and Al Roker. Why not you?

But will a doctor consider you a candidate for the procedure? Maybe. Here’s what they are going to look at.

Have you tried and failed to lose weight with traditional diet and exercise?

Does your obesity come from a genetic source or has it progressed to the point that it is disabling or life threatening?

Have you had an extremely high Body Mass Index for more than five years?

You should have no history of drug or alcohol abuse and no untreated psychiatric disorder.

Are you between the ages of 18-65?

Being a good candidate for weight loss surgery means also understanding the procedure and having realistic expectations of the results. While the surgery should improve your physical appearance and general health, it may not be the magic bullet to turn your life around. Significant behavior modifications are also necessary.

If you believe gastric bypass or gastric band surgery is appropriate for you, check out the website here for more general information, then contact a doctor for further advice.

Back in the mid 90s researchers began to investigate the French Paradox to try and discover why people who ate so much cheese fat weren’t having more heart attacks. Turns out the credit goes to a moderate but steady national wine drinking habit. Research from all sorts of sources continues to surface supporting the initial findings.

Originally, the health benefits were credited to an antioxidant found in red grape skins but now it turns out that white wine is just as good for you. Here are a few of the more recent studies with source and benefit observed.

An anti-aging effect in red grape skins from Harvard Medical School in 2004.

Improved lung function from antioxidants in white wine from the American Thoracic Society in 2002.

Coronary heart disease reduced from the University of California, Davis in 1995.

Healthier blood vessels in the elderly from the University of Ferrara in Italy in 2004.

Ulcer causing bacteria reduced from American Journal of Gastroenterology in 2003.

Cancer cells killed by protein in red grape skins from the University of Virginia Health System in 2004.

On and on it goes. It turns out to be quite a formidable body of evidence in support of swilling the stuff. But there’s got to be a catch, right? Of course there is. You can’t get fall down slobbering drunk and expect that fits the description of moderate wine consumption. In fact, over-indulge results in plenty of negative health benefits.

What’s appropriate? A glass or two each day and, no, you can’t save them up and drink them all Saturday night. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. So, feel perfectly at ease while you’re sipping that glass of wine tonight. It’s your new health drink. Cheers!

Still, maybe one of the following devices are exactly what you’ve been waiting your whole life to find, if not for the fitness potential, then surely for the comedy value.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing:

Osim IGallop: Legitimate exercise device or thinly disguised sex machine? You Decide. Click here to view the commercial.

Power Plate: Ever wanted to simply stand on something that vibrated you back to good health? Want no longer. Click here to find out what life inside a vibrator is like.

JumpSnap: Now you can jump rope – without the rope! Perfect for the uncoordinated and the gullible. Click here.

HandyTrim: Bet you never thought you could become Mr. Olympia by spinning a yo yo. Ha! You can’t. But you can click here to discover a new fad the world could do without.

Weight Loss Magnet Earrings: From the Chinese Center for Stupid Western Devil Tricks – lose weight by wearing magnet earrings. Click here to participate in the lunacy.

Shanghia Exercise Chairs: Do the Twist sitting down. Seriously, why spend hundreds for one of these when you can do the exact same thing on your toilet at home while you’re pooping? Kill two birds with one stone. Click here for the horror.

Hula Chair: Umm, does it come with the girl to demonstrate how to use it? Thank you, Japan, for another national nightmare. Click here if you have nothing better to do.

The sad part about it all is you could go out right now with your credit card and acquire every single piece of ‘fitness’ equipment on this list. In fact, I dare you to do just that. Go on. Do it. Start your own personal training business. Franchise in the East first. They seem to like this stuff.

By the way, this list in no way supersedes the recent post about equipping a cheap home gym.

Normally fads don’t last four millennia. Atkins diet aficionados, give me a call around 6,009 AD.

Recent scientific research in Asia and the United States is providing hard data to back up centuries of circumstantial evidence. Turns out there are many health benefits associated with drinking green tea.

Consider:

• In 1994 the Journal of the National Cancer Institute published study that showed a 60% reduction in esophageal cancer by drinking green tea.

• University of Purdue researchers recently concluded there is a compound in green tea that inhibits the growth of cancer cells.

• Other research suggests green tea improves the good to bad cholesterol ratio.

Conditions it likely will help are cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, high cholesterol, infection, cardiovascular disease, and impaired immune function.

What makes green tea so special? It’s rich in powerful anti-oxidants with the special ability to kill cancer cells without harming healthy tissue. Other Chinese teas like oolong and black start out with the same anti-oxidants but are made from fermented leaves, while green tea leaves are steamed.

Even newer evidence from Swiss researchers is showing that drinking green tea helps dieters burn more calories. It also helps prevent tooth decay and will wash your windows when you aren’t looking. The only apparent downside is it can cause mild insomnia due to the caffeine content, although it has much less than a cup of coffee.

How much should you drink? Try starting with four cups a day and see what happens.

What kind of exercise? I’m glad you asked ‘cause I was going to tell you anyway. This way it won’t seem so forward of me. Exercise, especially the aerobic variety like you get from 60 minutes on the treadmill, suppresses ghrelin and peptide YY. Non-aerobic exercise, like weightlifting only seems to affect the ghrelin.

Hey, don’t get on my case about the spelling of ‘ghrelin’. If I was in charge of things I never would have placed a ‘g-h-r’ in consecutive order. Whadya’ gonna do but roll with it?

The research was conducted with 11 university students over the course of three eight hour sessions somewhere in the United Kingdom. First they ran on the treadmill for 60 minutes then rested for seven hours. Then they lifted weights for 90 minutes and rested for one hour and thirty minutes. During the final session they didn’t do anything except whine about how bored they were.

Over the course of each session, the participants filled out surveys describing how hungry they were or weren’t at various points. Ghrelin and peptide YY were measured along the way. Based on the hunger ratings, both aerobic and resistance exercise suppressed appetite but aerobic to a larger extent.

What does this mean for you? That you should click here to read the entire article at ScienceDaily.com!

The first published study on the matter took 208 sedentary 7-11 year olds and either stuck ‘em in a 10-15 week long afterschool aerobic exercise program or kept them on their inactive routine. They used before and after measurements taken on some mumbo jumbo invention called the Pediatric Anger Expression Scale, which is used to measure common anger expressions like hitting, slamming doors, and putting kittens in blenders.

“Exercise had a significant impact on anger expression in children,” said Dr. Catherine Davis, clinical health psychologist in the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine. “This finding indicates that aerobic exercise may be an effective strategy to help overweight kids reduce anger expression and aggressive behavior.”

I may be going out on a limb here but it seems to me that the lack of exercise may not be as much to blame as the fact they’re playing video games all freakin’ day and night. That’ll make anyone aggressive. Ever watched a kid with a video game? Even Super Mario turns them into wild dingos.

So, basically Davis is saying get them out of the house and make them run. That is perfect. Seriously. Run their little lard hienies into the ground and they won’t have enough energy left to act like hellions. Here’s a tip. Before you open a can of drill sergeant on the youngsters, take away their video games and turn off the television for a while.

The inspiration for this article was ScienceDaily.com. Click hereto read more about the study.

Seems we’ve come full circle. In the beginning, the whole point of technology was to make life easier. Now it’s gotten so easy that we have an epidemic of obesity in children brought on by easy access to nutritionally deficit food and entertainment that involves a television screen and body indention in the couch rather than real trees and risk of broken limbs.

Dzewaltowski believes that it is innate in the nature of children to want to move, so emerging game technologies that incorporate movement will be popular to youngsters also.

For example, Wii Fit involves yoga, strength training, balance, and aerobics. You can step onto the balance board and mimic snowboarding down a mountain. These games are interactive and require players to physically move, which is better than others’ that encourage no more activity than reaching slightly to the left to grab another Twinkie or go elbow deep into the Cheetos bag.

Within the inherent limitations, Wii Fit also actually encourages a healthy lifestyle for some people by calculating their Body Mass Index when you step aboard. Though it doesn’t work as well for still-growing children, it can be a good screening tool for adults – yes, it will tell you if you’re overweight or obese when you step on board, so get ready for that and try to refrain from throwing the infernal device out the window.

It’s not Nintendo’s fault you can’t bypass the ice cream aisle at the grocery store. The contents herein are based on an article posted at ScienceDaily.com, which can be read in its entirety by clicking here.

A potential weight loss drug called lorcaserin created by Arena Pharmaceuticals announced midstage study results in the Obesity journal which boasts significant weight loss in the 469 patients currently undergoing treatment in the blind study. The late stage results are expected in March.

Couples currently dealing with infertility are reminded that weight can affect fertility in both males and females. Up to 12% of fertility issues are a direct result of one or both potential parents being overweight, and even affects the effectiveness of infertility treatments.

CalorieLab tries the Smart For Life Cookie Diet which is now available at a Costco store near you. The results don’t sound too tasty, so I guess the diet cookie wars continue.