Yesterday, the Dan's Plan blog Eat Move Sleep published a blog post I wrote about sleep, artificial light, your brain, and a free computer program called f.lux that can help us live healthier lives. Head over to Eat Move Sleep to read it.
Tuesday, 29 October 2013
Thursday, 10 October 2013
The Power of 10? How UCSB is being Screwed
The University of California likes to say that one of the things that make it the best public university system in the world is that the system acts as if it is a single system with pooled resources and power. However, there are often large inequities within the system. In fact, for several decades, tuition dollars and state funds were distributed in a secret and unfair way. It took a UC-AFT sponsored state audit to help change this system. Now, tuition dollars are kept on the campuses, and there is an ongoing effort to distribute state funds in a more equitable fashion, yet decades of inequity cannot be easily reversed.
One of the major effects of this long history of secret subsidizations is that the campuses without medical centers have much lower staff and faculty salaries. Unfortunately, these under-funded campuses are also the campuses with the highest numbers of under-represented minority students. Adding insult to injury, the new healthcare plans for the UC system discriminate against UCSB, which also has some of the lowest salaries in the system.
Although we should support the UC effort to take advantage of the fact that it has many outstanding medical facilities, we should remember that these institutions have been built out of a secret subsidy, which has disadvantaged campuses like UCSB. The medical centers and schools have also relied on shared UC resources to finance their debt and construction endeavors. Moreover, while it is not uncommon for medical professors and administrators to make over $300,000 a year, most other UC faculty and staff have seen their salaries stagnate.
Everyone in the system has to embrace a broader understanding of equity and the power of 10.
Wednesday, 9 October 2013
Sleep and Genetic Obesity Risk
Evidence is steadily accumulating that insufficient sleep increases the risk of obesity and undermines fat loss efforts. Short sleep duration is one of the most significant risk factors for obesity (1), and several potential mechanisms have been identified, including increased hunger, increased interest in calorie-dense highly palatable food, reduced drive to exercise, and alterations in hormones that influence appetite and body fatness. Dan Pardi presented his research at AHS13 showing that sleep restriction reduces willpower to make healthy choices about food.
We also know that genetics has an outsized influence on obesity risk, accounting for about 70 percent of the variability in body fatness between people in affluent nations (2). I have argued that "fat genes" don't directly lead to obesity, but they do determine who is susceptible to a fattening environment and who isn't (3). I recently revisited a 2010 paper published in the journal Sleep by University of Washington researchers that supports this idea (4).
Read more �
We also know that genetics has an outsized influence on obesity risk, accounting for about 70 percent of the variability in body fatness between people in affluent nations (2). I have argued that "fat genes" don't directly lead to obesity, but they do determine who is susceptible to a fattening environment and who isn't (3). I recently revisited a 2010 paper published in the journal Sleep by University of Washington researchers that supports this idea (4).
Read more �
