Dr. Eric Li's Blog

New study published this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine shows that sitting for an extended pe

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Raw fruits and vegetables are the most nutritional.  However, you may be confused about all the advices on how to clean them.

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Telomeres are short bits of specialized DNA that cap the chromosomes, which tell a cell what to do. Over time, cells divide over and over to keep the body alive.

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In the new book, Testosterone for Life, Harvard Doctor, Abraham Morgentaler, wrote about the myth of testosterone replacement and prostate cancer.  It is a landmark book detailing the history of scientific discovery and the implication to male hormone replacement.  Below is a summary of my reading of the book:

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In YBM, we have introduced to our members in YBM Diet a few wonder seeds, flaxseed, wheatgerm, chia, quinoe, black sesame, as replacement to common starchy carbohydrates such as rice and wheat flours and their cooked products (steam rice, bread, etc.).  In our online Coach, we also showed videos and recipes of how to eat these wonder seeds.

In our continuing research for wonder seeds, we are glad that hempseed passed our high criteria as a wonder seed.  So now we recommend to add hempseed into our shopping list for the first time.  Here is a good article about the nutritional value of hempseed.

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 I had the honor to present during the China Anti-aging conference to a broad spectrum of scientists and practitioners - introducing our state of the art anti-aging program, YBM Life!  The reception was very warm and welcoming.  

I'd like to make the presentation available to www.youngbodymind.com members.  You may read the presentation by clicking this link.

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Reading the article on Yahoo Healthy Living, "7 anti-aging super foods", I kept thinking about how people could be confused by the expert's advice. 

For example, Chocolate is singled out as a super food.  However, it can hardly believe that the food in the picture on the left can be really healthy!  The rationale in the article is that "The Kuna people of the San Blas islands, off the coast of Panama, have a rate of heart disease that is nine times less than that of mainland Panamanians. The reason? The Kuna drink plenty of a beverage made with generous proportions of cocoa, which is unusually rich in flavanols that help preserve the healthy function of blood vessels"  It is a pretty good conclusion.  

However, most chocolate products contain too much sugar, and less flavanols.  Therefore, there's more harm than help.

At least the article should let people know that they should at least take 70-80% cocoa chocolate, and with minimum sugar content.

Take another example, red wine is also touted as a super food.  Red wine is a particularly rich source of resveratrol and the flavonoids which are healthy to the heart.  However, it also contains a good dose of alcohol.  Studies showed that alcohol drinking may increase triglycerides (another Bad blood lipids) and result in weight gain due to its high empty calories. Other studies also suggested that alcohol consumption is associated with cancer risk.  Alcohol is also an oxidant. 

Therefore, if you really want to take resveratrol and the flavonoids, why not eat some black grapes, blackberries, ..., taking the good without the bad?

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The mainstream media and belief is that alternative medicine such as Traditional Chinese Medicine, most of them thousands of years old, are not based on sciences, rather they are based on trial and error without rigorous scientific experiments to verify the validity.

I submit here that time proven medicines are indeed sciences if they can survive for thousands of years.

In applied mathematics and statistics, as I studied in Harvard, there're two types of statistical averages, the ensemble average and the time average.  Both can be statistically significant. 

Ensemble average is to observe an phenomena (e.g., an experiment) over many times (or objects) - the very base of scientific research.  For example, if you want to proven the effecacy of a drug, you design an experiment, and apply the drug to a number of rats or human (e.g., 300) for a few months, calculate the average results and draw conclusion. 

On the other hand, time average is to apply this drug only on a single person at a time.  When this person is not availabe, apply to another (again only one person).  If you do this over many many years, you will get identical results as the ensemble average, if both experiments are designed correctly.

In mathematical terms, if a1, a2, ..., an are the measurements for the n rats or people during a fixed period, then the ensemble average EA = (a₁ + a₂ + ...+a_n)/n.  If b(t₁), b(t₂), b(t₃), ..., b(t_n) are the measurements oberserved sequentially during a long period time, t₁<t₂<t₃<...<t_n, then, time average TA = [b(t₁)+b(t₂)+...+b(t_n)]/t_n.  As n goes to infinity, EA = TA.

This means

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