Fork U with Dr. Terry Simpson

Implementing the Mediterranean Diet: Vegetables The increase of vegetables in the diet is one way to reduce inflammation. Vegetables are an important part of the Mediterranean diet, providing essential nutrients . A diet rich in vegetables that contain antioxidants . As a result, the Med diet reduces the risk of heart disease, cancer, dementia, and anti-inflammatory diseases. Vegetables are low in...

Do You Need A Liver Cleanse? Fatty liver disease is the most common reason for liver transplantation. Fatty liver disease replaced alcoholic liver disease a decade ago. The rise of obesity has contributed to fatty liver disease, and fat, like alcohol, is deadly to your liver. So can you clean out your liver?  Simple answer - no. But that doesn't stop the world from making dubious claims . His...

Erythritol and Heart Attacks: Is It Hype? Does the artificial sweetener erythritol increase the risk of heart attacks? In fact, some say that this is just hype. The article abstract can be found here . Erythritol is an artificial sweetener It has been used for years in food as a "non-nutritive sweetener." Erythritol is used in many processed foods, replacing the calories from sugar. The Food and D...

Don't Fear the Fruit, Enjoy It Are you afraid that eating fruit will cause your blood sugar to spike? Let us bust that myth right now. Only ten percent of adults eat enough whole fruit daily despite the clear benefits of fruit. Eating fruit and Living Longer  My 98-year-old dad eats fruit with breakfast for as long as I have known him. We would have grapefruit every morning. We even had those...

Salt: Toxicity is in the Dose For the human body, salt is both an essential metal and toxic at a high dose.  The most common form of sodium comes from sodium chloride, a salt.  However, too much salt and arteries become stiff, and the risk of heart disease and cardiovascular disease increases. The majority of dietary salt comes from processed foods. Salt Toxcity Deniers Probably the most...

Why you should ditch your gas stove Did you ever wonder what the controversy is about gas stoves? There is no controversy. Gas range tops are responsible for high levels of indoor pollution. But what should we do? The answer, change to an induction cooking top Types of Indoor Cooking You can imagine the first time cooking was brought indoors. Probably a fire inside a cave. It turns out that wasn't...

Whole Grains Reduce Obesity While the low-carb world and its extremists will tell you that grains are evil, they are wrong. There is a significant difference between refined and whole grains. The difference Whole grains contain the bran, a fiber-rich outer sheath. Further whole gains have the germ cell and the endosperm. But the refined grain is just the endosperm. Compare whole grain bread, which...

Are Vegetables BS? If you have ever seen Paul Saldino, his famous line is that Kale is BS. He even sells the shirt. But are they? Saldino isn't the only one who proposes this. Dr. Gundry, a former heart surgeon, has his own take. Gundry claims modern health problems come from eating lectins. Lectins are compounds found in beans that are natural pesticides.  Thus, Gundry claims lectins harm pe...

The term vitamin was coined by the chemist Casimir Funk as he revealed the Thiamine structure to the world. So while you may think – isn’t vitamin A (it is the alphabet) the first vitamin – we take our poetic license here to point out that the first compound to be called a vitamin was Thiamine, now known as vitamin B1. But the story of that vitamin was made possible by two individuals – but t...

The Green Mediterranean Diet Imagine being able to improve the Mediterranean Diet with a few changes. Is the new "Green" Mediterranean Diet the ultimate hack? The Green Mediterranean Diet   (Green-Med) has become the hottest version of the MED diet yet. Advantages of the Green Mediterranean Diet There are three advantages to Green-Med Less Fatty Liver Decreased risk of heart disease Less Visc...

LiverKing Falls From Grace Not that anyone was surprised the so-called Liverking was using steroids. But he fooled many people that his diet and intense training led to this frame. The diet he recommended was some form of an "ancestral" diet. We have covered the carnivore-type diet before. So how did this all happen? The Rise of LiverKing LiverKing's rise was meteoric. He began posting on Instagra...

Leaky Gut: Facts and Fads The latest fad of supplement makers is to talk about "gut health." The latest boogyman for the gut is the "leaky gut." The other name for leaky gut is intestinal permeability. A Surgeon's View As a surgeon, a "leaky gut" is a devastating surgical emergency. Surgeons emergently operate to remove the gut that no longer has a barrier function. The dark gut is dead and needs...

The Beer and Sausage Diet There are a lot of crazy diets out there. All of them you can lose weight with. Weight loss has many advantages. But the beer and sausage diet was fun. Here is what we learned: A calorie is just a calorie Being in calorie deficit is difficult Meticulous journaling is important Your lab values will improve with weight loss A beer is a good unit measure Weighing your food i...

Losing Weight With Apps Can a phone app help you lose weight? How about with your cholesterol, blood pressure, or waist size? Perhaps you've heard the latest Noom ads, where they boast forty publications showing that their app will help you lose weight. Apple is coming out with more ways to have their new watch track your heart rate and steps, with apps even looking at your yoga workout and eventu...

Decreasing cholesterol: drugs and diet There is a persistent belief that lifestyle can take care of all cholesterol problems. Lifestyle can make things worse, but once things are worse, it cannot make things better. Once you have disease, or cholesterol is higher, you need treatment often beyond lifestyle management. This distresses many people, who wish to have control over their fate. High ...

Alcohol and the Mediterranean Diet Alcohol consumption is controversial.  No one disputes that excess alcohol consumption leads to dire consequences. But what about moderate alcohol consumption? Can we define moderate alcohol consumption? Is there a safe and therapeutic level of alcohol consumption? Alcohol is a component of the Mediterranean Diet. However, the consumption is limited to 10 ou...

Mediterranean Diet after weight loss surgery Success after weight loss surgery doesn't end with an operation. It just gets started. The most recalcitrant people to diets are those who undergo weight loss surgery. Weight loss surgery patients were on multiple diets prior to surgical intervention.  The Mediterranean Diet is the best post-operative diet one can have. Weight Loss and the Mediterr...

Implementing the Med Diet - Part One Do you think you eat enough plants in your diet? How many plants do you eat in a week? Not refined grains, but plants. You can cook them, boil, bake, microwave, roast them or even eat them raw. How many? Further, it's not just eating more volume of plants, it's diversity. Mediterranean Diet and Plants Adherence to the Mediterranean diet depends more on plants....

Mediterranean Diet - Fats Perhaps the most important part of the Mediterranean Diet is this plant. Olive oil is the single ingredient most associated with the Mediterranean Diet. It is the one single food substitution you can do that will improve your health immediately and have great consequences. But not all olive oil is the same. Olive oil and your heart There are many types of fat that you can...

Inflammation and the Mediterranean Diet The Mediterranean Diet is the most anti-inflammatory diet studied. The inflammatory response is the body's mechanism to fight infection, repair itself and rid itself of cancer.  Inflammation is a coordinated response to trauma, infection, and cancer. Without inflammation, we would be dead within twenty-four hours. Too little or too much Too much inflamm...

Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease. The Seven Country Cohort Study clearly showed this . But what about cancer? Does the Mediterranean Diet impact cancer or cancer prevention? To study this, another cohort study began called the EPIC study. Uniquely, the EPIC showed not only a decreased risk of cancer but also mortality from cancer. All vegetables, eve...

Was Ancel Keys responsible for the modern epidemic of obesity? If you have read any low carb blog lately, you would think so. Their revisionist history is broken down to this: Ancel Keys was an influential scientist who thought fat was to blame for heart disease He did a study of diet and correlated fat and heart disease in those people of the seven countries But Dr. Keys left out countries that w...

Scientists and dieticians consistently  rank The Modern Mediterranean Diet (MED diet ) as the diet most recommended.  But often people don't know what the MED diet is. This post will  define the Med diet. Critics of the Med Diet Critics  argue that there is no uniform MED diet. They make these assertions based on one of these three arguments: That there is no uniform diet of th...

If you don’t have diabetes, should you even consider a blood glucose monitor? Well, here is the science behind this new tiktok trend and why these Continuous Blood Glucose Monitors (CGM) are here to stay and what we know about them. The device First, the device – a continuous blood glucose monitor is a device that you place on your body and it measures the blood glucose level and reports that data...

About 15 years ago physician came to me telling me that she was opening a new venture, distributing plant-based bioidentical hormones, and surgically implanting those hormones as pellets. She wanted me to send her all of my patients who presented in menopause because "with bioidentical hormones they won't need weight loss surgery." She went on to say how every woman would be tested for their hormo...