• 4/18/2005
  • Palm Beach, FL
  • Dan Moffett
  • Palm Beach Post

So, I’m sitting here, feeling a bit dehydrated as I try to work up the courage to do something about lunch. I’ve come to accept the likelihood that anything I put into my mouth will hasten my departure from the planet. This tends to diminish one’s appetite.

I read a New York Times story last week that changed my thinking about health and medical science, probably permanently. The story told of research on hundreds of runners in the 2002 Boston Marathon. Dozens of them finished the race suffering from something called hyponatremia, a potentially life-threatening condition of abnormally low blood-sodium levels in the blood.

The runners developed the problem because they drank too much water. The finding is nothing short of astonishing. For decades, health experts have told athletes to drink plenty of water — all you can hold — to avoid dehydration. The idea that a runner, football player, Little Leaguer or construction worker could drink too much was laughable.

Now, we’re told that it’s possible to commit suicide with a pair of jogging shoes and a bottle of Evian. What a fool I’ve been. I thought we at least had water figured out.

I have lost all faith in medical science when it comes to eating and drinking. One study contradicts another; the prevailing wisdom of today turns 180 degrees from yesterday. Who knows what to believe? If you don’t like the latest research, just wait for the next report.

Doctors warn patients about drinking coffee because the caffeine raises blood pressure and makes them jittery. But research also shows that people who don’t drink coffee are five times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than people who drink four or five cups a day. Another study found that coffee has more antioxidant activity than red wine, green tea or orange juice. But I should also mention that coffee can impair the absorption of calcium and contribute to osteoporosis, so watch out.

You could try to prevent osteoporosis by drinking plenty of milk. But be careful. A study in 2000 found that men who consumed several servings of milk and dairy products daily were 30 percent more likely to get prostate cancer.

You can do something to diminish the risk of prostate cancer. The Harvard Medical School studied tomatoes and found that regular servings — even pizza sauce — can reduce the risk of the disease by as much as 34 percent. Before you fork that tomato in the salad, however, you probably should ask the waiter how well it was washed. Florida farmers lead the nation in pesticide use per acre, and traces of those chemicals will show up inside you. They can cause cancer.

Before you drink that can of soda, think about what that sugar can do to put diabetes in your future. But you really don’t want the diet sodas, do you? Some researchers link the sweetener aspartame to short-term memory loss, which in a stressful world could be beneficial. The National Cancer Institute worries about a link between aspartame and brain tumors. But get this: A study published seven years ago in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics showed that “aspartame worked about as well as aspirin to relieve (arthritis) pain and inflammation” and didn’t irritate the stomach.

Who knows what to think about Dr. Robert Atkins? Eight years ago, a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association said the more saturated fat men eat, the less likely they are to have a stroke. Two studies in 2003 showed that low-carb diets could lower triglycerides that contribute to atherosclerosis. Maybe Dr. Atkins was right. It could explain the French Paradox — why the French gorge themselves on cheese, butter and rich foods but suffer less heart disease than Americans. Some researchers believe that the polyphenols in red wine keep French arteries clean. Clearly, more research is needed, so why not volunteer?

If you pick the beef entree in the cafeteria, you have to worry about E. coli and mad cow. If you choose chicken, it’s salmonella; pork, it’s trichinosis. A nice piece of fish would be OK, but researchers say to limit servings of tuna and salmon because of all that mercury out there. Twenty years ago, the advice was to avoid eggs because of cholesterol worries. Now we’re told that they’re a good source of vitamin B12, which might prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

About lunch? I’m going to chug a couple of diet sodas, snort some lines of NutraSweet, forget all this, and eat whatever I want.