Your Flip-Flops Might Kill You

Check out this scary, out-of-context quote:

"Worst-case scenario...you die."

Pretty scary, huh? Dennis Kinney, PhD microbiologist, said that.

If you wear flip-flops around all summer, especially if you live in a city, they have like 20,000 bacteria on them. If you were to get a cut on your foot and a particularly virulent bacterium got into your bloodstream, you could have organ failure and die if you weren't treated with antibiotics.

So, you should not wear them all day long, every day in the city. This goes doubly for women, since they're not flattering the way high heels are. Even that mediocre woman from Sex and the City looked attractive because she always wore high heels, even with a tank top and gym shorts. That's the real lesson here.

Here's the New York Daily News article.

Here are some tips from eHow on how to clean your flip-flops -

1. Step 1

   Start with plain old soap and water and an old toothbrush. Remove most of the grime with a little scrubbing.

2. Step 2

   Put them in the dishwasher. Do not wash them with dishes, and use a gentle cleaner when running your rubber sandals through the wash. Add vinegar and baking soda to the wash to do double duty--cleaning your shoes and your dishwasher.

3. Step 3

   Let your tub fill with water while you take a shower. Soak flip flops to loosen dirt, and scrub with a nail brush afterward.

4. Step 4

   Use the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser as an easy way to remove grime from your flip flops and bathtub.

5. Step 5

   Try an oxygen cleaner and water to get stains off your sandals. You may need to add the power of a scrub brush for maximum results.

6. Step 6

   Use steel wool pads with soap to get down and dirty with the grit in your flip flops. This method works best after soaking the sandals in a sink of water for about an hour.

Haven't Talked About Soda In a While...

The American Heart Association is the latest group to come down on sugary drinks. Some day in our post-apocalyptic, Big Brother-run dystopia, one will likely be unable to buy sugarful soft drinks in 12-ounce cans, since they exceed the daily recommended allowance of sugars. I'm glad I did the right thing and got one of those old fashioned bottles at lunch today. I think those are safe. The enormous Mountain Dew that you get with your Taco Bell - not good.

"'Over the past 30 years, total calorie intake has increased by an average of 150 to 300 calories per day, and approximately 50 percent of this increase comes from liquid calories (primarily sugar-sweetened beverages),' the report reads.

"And daily consumption of sweetened soft drinks rose 70 percent between 1970 and 2000. One 12-ounce (0.35 liter) can of regular soda contains roughly 130 calories, which exceeds a woman's daily discretionary sugar budget."

Full article here on Reuters Health.

MSN Health & Fitness to Time Magazine: "You Suck"

So, that Time article about exercise not making people thin was, of course, a big hit with all the people who want an excuse for not losing weight. There are undoubtedly millions of people who want to think that there is nothing they can do about the excess weight they carry and this article justified that mindset.

It reminds me that studies show that most people search the internet not for unbiased information from which to learn, but rather that which backs up a previously held belief.

MSN Health & Fitness writer, David Zinczenko, whose name sounds like he should be playing professional tennis, writes in his article -

"Bottom line: Our responses to diet and exercise are all highly individualized, explains Dr. Church. Sure, some people might compensate for their exercise by eating more, but according to Dr. Church, this isn’t the fault of exercise. More likely, he says, it’s because people don’t realize how easy it is to consume 1,000 calories at the drive-thru compared to burning just 250 calories on a treadmill. 'If your weight is a concern for you, exercise is important. But it doesn’t give you license to eat what you want,' cautions Dr. Church. 'You still need to pay close attention to what you’re putting in your mouth.'

"Exercise can protect your muscle. A Penn State University study found that people who lifted weights along with a program of diet and aerobic exercise had the same weight loss as those who only dieted (or who dieted and performed aerobic exercise). The difference? The lifters lost 5 pounds more fat because almost none of their weight loss came from muscle. Read: Resistance training didn’t improve weight loss, but it did improve fat loss. And isn’t that what really matters?

"Exercise may help you stick to your diet. University of Pittsburgh researchers studied 169 dieters for 2 years and found that the participants who didn’t follow a 3-hour-a-week training plan ate more than their allotted 1,500 calories per day. The reverse was also true—sneaking snacks sabotaged their workouts. 'One healthy behavior without the other will not work—you need to diet and exercise to maintain long-term weight loss,' says lead study author John Jakicic, Ph.D. That’s because both actions can act as a reminder to stay on track.

"Exercise may target belly fat. While weight loss was similar among all four groups in the LSU study, only the groups that exercised saw their waist size decrease. The Time story downplays this finding, but isn’t it relevant? Think about it: This study actually shows that even a small amount of low-intensity exercise—performed in, say, just three 24-minute sessions a week—could help your jeans fit better. In other words, it makes you thinner. Doesn’t sound like a waste of time to me."

I don't think a fair reading of the Time article leads to the conclusion that exercise is not good for you. Time does, however, play up the argument that it doesn't make you thin, and certainly doesn't put much emphasis on the health benefits of exercise, which was a disservice to Time readers.

Time: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

That's the most read and most emailed article on time.com today. It's no surprise that the topic concerns many. That there's so much disagreement about what it takes to lose weight is pretty amazing, considering how much medicine and health care have advanced. The conclusion of the article is basically this -

"The problem ultimately is about not exercise itself but the way we've come to define it. Many obesity researchers now believe that very frequent, low-level physical activity — the kind humans did for tens of thousands of years before the leaf blower was invented — may actually work better for us than the occasional bouts of exercise you get as a gym rat. 'You cannot sit still all day long and then have 30 minutes of exercise without producing stress on the muscles,' says Hans-Rudolf Berthoud, a neurobiologist at LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Center who has studied nutrition for 20 years. 'The muscles will ache, and you may not want to move after. But to burn calories, the muscle movements don't have to be extreme. It would be better to distribute the movements throughout the day.'"

So what the article argues is that what you eat is more important than how much rigorous exercise you do. You're better off keeping moderately active and eating less rather than working out feverishly and then rewarding yourself with ice cream and a cigarette (though there isn't one mention of cigarettes in the entire article, which I find somewhat surprising).

Haw Haw Haw, Zere Eez Prohblem Een Zee Fronce

As the healthcare debate rages on in the U.S., the Sarkozy administration is attempting to make some cost-saving changes to the universal system in France. As an American, it is really funny to hear some of the stories from other countries where so much is provided by the government and taken for granted. It's not free though, smart guys. It has to come from somewhere.

This is my favorite -

"Yet even the smallest budget moves are proving controversial. Local residents are up in arms over a cost-cutting measure that makes patients pay €1.10 an hour to park at the hospital. 'It's a scandal,' says retired local Communist politician Gérard Eude. 'It goes against the very idea of universal health care.'"

Read the article on WSJ.com.