Forget all the others, hormone diets claim to be the secret to fast, easy weight loss. But are they really just preying on our insecurities? Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison finds out.
Can eating for your hormones help you lose weight?
When it comes to weight loss, everyone is looking for the silver bullet. Add in ageing and all of a sudden the tricks you used to lose a couple of kilos when you were 20 years old don't work anymore.
Could hormones be the key? Stacey Morrison finds out if hormone diets are healthy or just a hoax.
Kadambari Raghukumar, host of the RNZ podcast Here/Now, was sent a link to a diet marketed as a 'metabolic renewable programme' and thought she would give it a go.
"It sounds very attractive. I mean, how do you not click on that, right, 'metabolic renewal'? Renew is the most attractive word you can put out there," she says.
Raghukumar was asked a series of questions about her current weight, daily stress levels and how much exercise she does, with the end promise that she would find out how her hormones were working and then be given a diet that would kickstart her metabolism and help her lose weight.
Raghukumar was disappointed in the results, which labelled her a 'Hormone Type 1'.
"It said 'Hormone Type 1' is mixed signal hormones. But hang on a second, isn't everybody mixed signals at some point in their life? Your body's always throwing different things out to you. That just sounds a little too vague. I couldn't make much sense of it."
Raghukumar was told that this hormone type meant she could find it easy to lose weight and gain more energy.
"But it also told me certain things that I, to an extent, already had known," she says.
"It gave me the rundown as to how you can reduce cortisol levels, which is invariably related to stress and I found that quite, just really generic. It doesn't really take a test to know that about anybody's life really, the more stressed you are, the more likely you are to gain weight."
In the end, Raghukumar decided the diet wasn't worth it.
"I stopped before I could even get to the stage where I was going to subscribe to the programme.
"I just thought, 'do I have to sit here and watch an infomercial of this'? A man with a very glamorous name for a doctor talking to me in a very, very heavy American accent telling me what I can do to change my life? I couldn't really follow through with it."
Could a hormone diet work?…
Love them or hate them, could mushrooms be the key to good health. Stacey Morrison focuses on functional fungi in the latest episode of Healthy or Hoax.
Functional fungi are the hot new thing in health and wellness circles. Many would say all fungi are functional, but in this case it refers to mushroom powders and supplements which some believe have a huge variety of benefits.
In this episode of Healthy or Hoax, host Stacey Morrison investigates functional fungi.
There are plenty of New Zealand-based companies getting in on the mushroom supplements game, offering products that claim to boost gut health and immune support, increase oxygen uptake and ease fatigue, and improve heart health and sleeplessness.
To find out more about fungi in general, Healthy or Hoax producer Liz Garton attended the annual fungal foray to talk to some mushroom enthusiasts, including Bevan Weir, research leader in mycology and bacteriology at Maanaki Whenua / Landcare Research.
Weir says there is no strong evidence for many of the claims around fungi supplements having amazing healing powers.
"But there's a lot of active research going on, so yeah, there's there's always the possibility," he says.
Weir says even if you take out the unproven health benefits, mushrooms are good for you, especially if you're using them in place of meat products with high levels of cholesterol and animal fats.
"We really don't know if you're thinking about any sort of like specific activity, but I think mushrooms in general are just a really great thing.
"If you can build it into meals and eat it and if it has some great effects as well, that's just a bonus."
Alexander James Bradshaw from the Natural History Museum of Utah, who was in Aotearoa doing postdoctoral research, also attended the foray.
He says it's likely there are many medicinal compounds in a wide variety of different mushrooms. Lion's Mane mushrooms, for example contain chemical compounds called hericenones and erinacines.
"They are starting to come out in the literature as possibly being neurotropic, so actually having the ability to make healthier brain connections," he says.
But he warns that the research is in its infancy. And although many companies are already capitalising on the early findings, their claims should always be taken with a grain of salt.
"My biggest problem with many of is that they are often sold as panacea."
Dr Michael Howard practices emergency medicine in Northland and has a PhD in microbiology and immunology. He hopes that the folklore around mushrooms will soon be proven by science…
Stacey Morrison puts the spotlight on light therapy for anti-aging and acne in the episode of Healthy or Hoax.
Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison puts the spotlight on the latest in anti-aging skin treatments - light therapy.
The history of light therapy
Denise Ryan, vice president of global brand management for BioPhotas, (the company that manufactures the Celluma light therapy device), says light therapy was "sort of a serendipitous or a accidental discovery".
In the 1960s some scientists who were researching whether laser therapy could reduce cancer tumours in rats found an odd side effect. While it turned out the light was at too low a level to impact the cancer, the rats wounds healed faster than expected and their hair grew faster and shinier.
"They knew they had discovered something and that something turned out to be low level light therapy or as we call it today, photobiomodulation," says Ryan.
Then in the 1980s NASA began experimenting with low light for stimulating cell activity in plants and when they found it helped the plants to grow, they thought they would see what it did to human tissue.
What is it actually doing to us?
What low-level light therapy does to human cells is is similar to photosynthesis, Ryan says.
"When you send specific wavelengths of light into human tissues at very specific, low doses, within a certain range, human cells are capable of absorbing the light and converting that energy into cellular energy."
That energy helps compromised or damaged cells get back on track and when used in, for example, fibroblast cells which generate the collagen and elastin, it helps keep our skin looking plump, she says.
"The NASA research showed us that it helps tissue to heal and repair at about 3 to 6 times the normal rate.
"And that's for the average person. And the healthier you are to begin with, the faster you might see results. But honestly, everybody gets to see your results provided the device they're using has been designed to follow the known scientific parameters for effectiveness."
What are the parameters?
Light wavelengths are actually measured in nanometers and Ryan says it is a very narrow segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that has the ability, when delivered in the correct doses, to be absorbed by human tissue and used to generate this extra energy.
That range is roughly between 400 and 1000 nanometers and includes the colours blue, red and near-infrared.
And to be therapeutic, that low-level light needs to be emitted at a rate of between two to 10 joules per centimetre squared.
What are the risks of light therapy?…
Dreaming of taping a snorer's mouth shut? Struggling to snooze? Stacey Morrison finds out if mouth taping, sleep syncing and the latest apps and technology could be the secret to getting a good night's rest.
We spend a third of our lives sleeping and yet so many of us have trouble with it.
So when we hear about new theories on how we might improve our sleep, it's not surprising that people want to try them out. This week on Healthy or Hoax, Stacey Morrison finds out whether sleep syncing using the latest apps and technology could improve our wellbeing and whether taping your mouth shut will help with the biggest barrier to a good night's sleep - snoring.
What is sleep syncing?
Professor Leigh Signal from the Sleep/Wake Research Centre at Massey University is an expert in fatigue management and sleep health. She says sleep syncing is really just about understanding that you've got a circadian biological clock and then aligning your sleep pattern or your sleep schedule with that clock.
While the term "sleep syncing" may be new to some, sleep scientists have been trying to spread this kind of message for years.
"The crux of it is spot-on scientifically," Signal says.
"There are some slightly off base messages happening as well, though, so I think it's good to explore it a little bit more."
Signal says the human body's amazing circadian biological clock helps to keep us in step with the day/night cycle.
While we are all hardwired to sleep at night and stay awake during the day, that doesn't mean all our clocks are ticking away in time.
"I am slightly more an evening type person, so I like to go to bed a little later," Signal says.
"Most of us are, somewhere kind of in the middle, although there are a few people out there that are extreme morning or evening types."
How do you sync your sleep?
Essentially, it's about having a regular bedtime and a regular waking time.
"In an ideal world, perhaps, so we should be going to bed when we feel sleepy, and we should be waking up, when we naturally wake," Signal says.
"But many of us also have jobs that don't allow us to do that. And then we have teens, for example, who just biologically, their circadian system has shifted during puberty so that they can't go to sleep until later, and then they want to wake up later. But that's not how the school system currently works."
Generally speaking, we tend to sync our sleep with our work/life schedules rather than our circadian rhythms.
Can technology help?…
Could walking backwards be the key to taking your fitness forwards? In this episode of Healthy or Hoax, Stacey Morrison laces up her sneakers to find out.
One of the slightly bizarre new fitness trends doing the rounds is retro walking. Basically, walking backwards.
Stacey Morrison, host of RNZ's Healthy or Hoax podcast, laced up her trainers to find out if the rewards of reverse exercise outweigh the risks.
Why walk backwards?
YouTube experts and fitness gurus suggest walking backwards is a really good way to get fitter faster, to strengthen muscles and even improve brain health. But what does the science tell us?
Professor Winston Byblow, director of the movement neuroscience laboratory, says health scientists are often are looking for ways to help people move better and recover after certain types of injuries or conditions.
"Retro walking is interesting because it is really combining two elements. One is walking, which has well-known benefits. And the other one is that it prevents an additional challenge by demanding more attention. I mean, you can imagine that, if you try walking backwards, the first problem you run into is you can't see where you're going."
Is walking backwards different to walking forwards?
Pablo Ortega Auriol, a research fellow at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, is an expert in the biomechanics of walking. He says certain aspects of backwards walking, such as how the segments of the body move, look really similar but the actual difference is in the muscle activity.
"Since we have a cognitive load in our muscles activate more with a little bit of a different timing than when we work forward."
Simply put, because you have to think about what you are doing when you walk backwards, your muscles activate more.
While he hasn't seen any long-term studies on retro walking, he says that appears to be what happens in the beginning and it seems that this actually helps to improve balance in certain population.
Retro walking in action
In order to illustrate muscle activation during reverse walking, Stacey hopped on the state-of-the-art treadmill in the movement neuroscience laboratory.
Ortega Auriol points out how when you are walking forwards, the calf muscles, or gastrocnemius, propels you forwards and you do not have to think about it.
"Most of the motor pathways involving walking are present in the spinal cord, not actually in the brain," he says…
To kick Season 4 of Healthy or Hoax off with a bang - or a gong - Stacey Morrison heads off for some sound healing. Can sound really fix what ails you? Let's find out.
The idea of using sound for healing seems to have been around for a very long time. But what does it all mean and what does it do?
Stacey Morrison, host of RNZ's Healthy or Hoax podcast, started by joining sound healing teacher and practitioner Kata Mikecz to have her first sound therapy session.
What happens in a sound therapy session?
Mikecz says she usually assesses a client's body with her instruments before deciding which to use.
"I usually use them intuitively, so there's no set like script," Mikecz says.
"I do whatever I feel drawn to."
She warns that the sounds can sometimes be painful and encourages Stacey to speak up if she's uncomfortable.
"For some people they experience like, you know, a tension in the shoulder or in the muscles. Usually, I recommend to people to stay with the sound, even if it's uncomfortable and feelings coming up, because it means that it started to shift something in your mind or body. So, it's great to stay with the sound, but you don't need to just bear it," Mikecz says.
Before beginning, Mikecz asks Stacey to set an intention or a positive outcome to focus on during the session. Breathing and visualisation exercises come next.
The session lasts 40 minutes and involves Mikecz moving around Stacey with a variety of instruments. These include tuning forks (which have set frequencies), to Himalayan bowls and gongs (which have no precise frequencies or tones), then on to drums and Tingsha cymbals for grounding and dispersing energy.
People can often experience some kind of release, such as crying or having different feelings, during a session. Mikecz says people usually feel relaxed and at ease afterwards.
How much does it cost?
A sound healing session is roughly the same price as a massage.
How does sound therapy work?
Mikecz says sound healing works through sympathetic resonance; everything has a vibration, but sometimes external influences can upset that vibration or frequency. Sound healing helps bring everything back into balance, she says, and sympathetic resonance can also retrain the frequency of brain activity. …
Stacey Morrison takes a look at current health and wellbeing trends and finds out if they're really good for you. In season four Stacey asks the experts about hormone diets, light therapy, sound healing, sleep syncing and mouth taping, reverse walking and functional fungi.
Stacey Morrison find out the best way to increase our collagen and keep our skin looking healthy and radiant.
There's no doubt collagen plays a key role in keeping our bodies healthy. The question is, how do we get more of it?
Dr Louise Reiche, head of the Dermatological Society of New Zealand said it gives support and structure to a lot of the different components of our bodies.
" helps to enable us to move and to have strength," she said, "Otherwise we would be jellylike."
Unfortunately, as we age, we tend to produce less collagen and that makes our skin appear less firm.
There are many different ways of increasing collagen being touted at the moment, from social influencers like Khloe Kardashian joining up with NZ company Dose & Co to promote collagen supplements through to sticking needles in your face.
We sent RNZ reporter Gill Bonnett along to The Cosmetic Clinic in downtown Auckland to give microneedling a go. Her beauty therapist, Sam, explained that microneedling is about creating micro-injuries which send the body into healing mode.
"These amazing little enzymes that grow inside our skin go into overdrive making collagen and elastin. Their main thing they're trying to do is heal the skin tissue, but a byproduct of all those things is rejuvenation, we get skin tightening, you get plumpness."
There are other treatments that do a similar thing, but microneedling is at the less invasive end of the treatment spectrum.
"People literally come in their lunchtime and they can go back to work afterwards," said Sam, "They'll be a bit pink, but there's definitely no extensive downtime."
Dr Angela Hou is a fourth year dermatology resident at George Washington University. In 2017, she reviewed the various microneedling studies available.
"So we found that microneedling seemed overall to be effective and a fairly safe option for various dermatologic conditions," said Hou, "Most of the studies so far have been fairly small or they haven't been randomized controlled studies, but in the studies that have been done so far, it seems to work well with good results."
The Cosmetic Clinic uses the latest microneedling technology, but it costs nearly $300 dollars a go and Sam recommends at least 6 treatments for the best results.
Many different treatments fall under the microneedling banner, but Sam warned that cheaper options might not necessarily yield the same results.
And Dr Reiche had a few warnings of her own. She said there is some evidence that microneedling might accelerate aging later on…
Stacey Morrison discovers whether a virtual gastric band is as good as the actual physical one.
Imagine if imagining weight loss could make it happen.
Virtual Gastric Banding (VGB) has been around for several years the idea is that you are put in a hypnotic state and convinced that you have a band around your stomach.
Interestingly, the surgical equivalent to this has been deemed ineffective and is no longer recommended here in New Zealand.
Dr Peng Du, who is on the Gastrointestinal Research Group at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, said gastric banding was for a long time perceived as a relatively low risk surgery as it is reversible.
But the surgery is no longer recommended after long term studies showed that patients did not achieve long term weight loss.
"Imagine tying a piece of string around a very slippery balloon that sometimes inflates and sometimes deflates. It's very hard to keep it on the stomach," said Du, "And patients who have these bands tied around their stomach sometimes could have quite severe reflux. So when you weigh the outcome against the cost and complications, I guess the math just doesn't add up."
There are two other types of gastric surgery for weightloss; the gastric sleeve which involves chopping part of the stomach out and the gastric bypass which involves joining the intestine to the top of the stomach. Both of these surgeries are irreversible and hard to get access to.
And Dr Bryan Betty, the Medical Director of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, said patients who are overweight either have to meet very strict criteria for publicly-funded surgery or they can go private, which at a cast of roughly $25,000 dollars isn't cheap.
"Generally we'd start by focusing on things like diet and exercise, the basics of trying to lose weight," said Betty.
Then he said they would look at things like access to other services, such as a dietician, food addicts support networks, health coaches or occasionally a psychologist.
Weight loss medication is an option too, and while it can kick-start weightloss, it's not a long-term solution.
And after all of that, there is bariatric surgery.
"I've had a patient or two who have actually travelled overseas to Thailand or Mexico to get it done and then come back to New Zealand," said Betty.
What is not often recommended as part of this process is virtual gastric banding or hypotherapy for weightloss…
Stacey Morrison finds out just how reliable home-based DNA tests for health and fitness really are.
You can buy just about anything online these days, including the key to living your best life.
Apparently.
Online DNA tests which claim they can give you insights into how best you can stay healthy and keep fit are growing in popularity.
There are dozens of options available and they cost anything from about $80 dollars for a simple health and fitness genetic test, to hundreds of dollars for tests that give more of a medical overview.
Professor Stephen Robertson, the Cure Kids professor of paediatric genetics at the University of Otago, is really passionate about genomics and believes it holds the potential to sharpen medicine.
"I am continually surprised about the reach of genomics and what it can explain in healthcare," said Robertson.
But he's sceptical of how much benefit there is to be had through home-based online DNA testing.
"Because that brings with it the limitations of technology and accuracy," he said.
Robertson is also concerned about the fact the results are coming from an area where there is little regulation. He said there have been cases where DNA has been tested for things like the BRCA gene which is linked with breast cancer.
"And all of a sudden you find yourself with a potentially confronting situation which really hasn't been generated in an environment which we all feel trust in," he said.
"So that's where the rubber hits the road about whether this fascination we have with genetics and what it might hold for us in the future changes, from being recreational into something which can be very impactful and have a sharp edge."
Robertson also said the understanding of our genes comes from testing of people of European extraction.
"So, for those of us in New Zealand with Polynesian or Māori ancestry, the fit is just completely unknown, there is genetic architecture there that we are ignorant of to an extreme degree."
William Ferguson is a GP with several years experience of using genomics to help individualise treatment for some of his patients.
He said the trick is in which genes are most useful. Ones that have common variants, which affect the underlying drivers of disease and that are well-researched, so you know you can alter their expression through diet, exercise and medicine.
"Because there's no point finding out about a gene you can't do a darn thing about," he said.
Dr Ferguson said it is also useful to look at groups of genes as there is almost nothing to gain from looking at a single gene in isolation…
In a classic case of 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger...' Stacey Morrison confronts her serious aversion to the cold and enters a cryotherapy chamber.
In a classic case of 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger...' Stacey Morrison confronts her serious aversion to the cold and enters a cryotherapy chamber.
Wim Hof is part of the reason cold immersion therapy has become the hottest wellness trend of recent years.
His website claims his breathing technique along with daily ice baths can boost your immune system, improve your metabolism, relieve stress and improve mental health as well as a number of more specific claims around certain illnesses.
One of his millions of followers is Black Fern Sarah Hirini.
As well as doing ice baths for injury recovery, the international rugby player also just does daily cold immersion for general wellbeing.
"I suppose I fell in love with it straightaway and just the benefits that I felt from it," she told Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison.
She said it resets her body to enable her to thrive throughout the day.
Part of the charm for Hirini is the challenge.
"It's like a love/hate relationship," she said, "Every morning I'm like oh yeah, it's so good for me and then as soon as I go to hop in or turn on cold I'm like, oh, do I really want to do this? Is it really worth it?"
"There's constant questions in your mind but then you do it and get out and you're like, oh yeah, that was amazing."
Cryotherapy isn't just one thing. The term encompasses ice baths and ice packs, but the most high-tech treatment involves dry ice and a cryo-therapy chamber.
There is only one of these treatment facilities in New Zealand, on Auckland's North Shore.
Three minutes in the cryo chamber at Cryo Health Solutions will cost about $70, but owner Jill Somerville recommends a series of visits.
She said the freezing temperature causes receptors in the skin to react, creating a fight or flight-type response which results in blood being diverted to the vital organs. While the blood is sitting in your core it is getting pumped full of oxygen, enzymes and nutrients which then circulate back through the body as you warm up.
Somerville told Stacey Morrison the treatment is good for people with muscle pain or injuries, sleeping problems or anyone looking for a bit of a general pick-me-up.
"Honestly almost everybody that has come in and tried it has felt some sort of benefit," said Somerville, "Usually within that first hour, you get that endorphin rush, so people feel very energetic. It's a little bit of a mood booster."…
CBD beauty products are being hailed as a 'beauty game-changer' overseas, but they're still illegal here. Stacey Morrison finds out if we're missing a trick.
Cannabidiol beauty products are illegal in New Zealand, but overseas they're being described as a 'beauty game-changer'.
Lauded for their anti-inflamatory and antioxidant properties, some CBD products even have major celebrity backing, like Lord Jones' Happy Dance range made with Kristen Bell.
But Professor Michelle Glass, head of pharmacology and toxicology at The University of Otago, is wary about jumping on this band-wagon.
"There are properties of CBD that suggest it might be quite good to apply on your skin," she told Stacey Morrison, "But there's very little to say that it actually is useful. So there's very few studies actually being done that are very conclusive."
"Most of our beauty products have antioxidants and anti-inflammatory components in them. So it's reasonable to expect that it might be able to have an effect, we just haven't seen it."
Glass said the preparation of the product will impact its effect, changing the oil used can make a huge difference.
"Also, in order to get the anti-inflammatory or antioxidant effects, you actually need to have quite high concentrations and a lot of the stuff that's on the market internationally have very low levels of CBD and is unlikely to have much effect on anything," she said.
Had we voted in favour of legalising cannabis in the recent referendum, we might have seen these sorts of products on our shelves
"The referendum was about recreational cannabis, but it would have put a lot more products just into the market as legal products and so there would have likely been CBD products as part of that because they would no longer be covered just under the Medicinal Cannabis Act," said Glass.
But Professor Glass is much more inclined to hemp-oil based beauty products, which are legal in New Zealand.
"I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to avoid it," she said, "There's good evidence to suggest there's a lot of good stuff in them."
But, at this stage, she would avoid CBD products if they were more readily available.
"My thinking is; this is an effective anti-epileptic drug, people are testing it in anxiety, psychosis and a range of other disorders and I wouldn't rub the medicines for any of those other things on my face," said Glass.
"If we want to believe it's a good medicine then you've got to believe it can do harm too."…
Kim Kardashian made waist trainers popular and the recent Bridgerton Netflix series saw a bump in corset sales. Stacey Morrison discovers if squeezing our tummies into shape is healthy or just a very uncomfortable hoax.
Waist trainers claim to help you lose weight and tone your tummy, but these corset-like throwbacks might actually be causing more harm than good.
Kim Kardashian claims to give a waist trainer to all her friends who have recently had a baby. She loves them because they make her feel "snatched".
Both of these comments are seriously flawed.
The waist trainer claims to help you lose weight, tone your tummy and give your body an hourglass shape.
Physiotherapist Susan Kohut said of the three claims only the last is likely and even that is problematic.
"Weight loss through heating an area is what they call thermogenesis," said Kohut, but working out with a waist trainer isn't causing thermogenesis.
"You might be sweating in your waist, but that's generalised body fluid that you're losing, not specifically fat off your middle."
And if you think by wearing it you will want to eat less, think again.
RNZ's Ellie Jay tried wearing a waist trainer for a week and while it might have improved her posture, it didn't reduce her waist size.
"It didn't so much change what I wanted to eat or how much I was eating. It did make me sit up a bit straighter. But it also did start to feel quite painful after a couple of hours," she told Stacey Morrison.
"There were a few days that I just thought, I can't do this at all. I can't bear it."
And Kohut said toning is even less likely.
"Because muscles are toned through activity. All the tiny parts of the muscle have to move to actually get strengthened, so that doesn't happen passively. A garment can't do it for you," she said.
While the waist trainer can squeeze your stomach into a trendy shape, the long-term outcome might not be worth it.
The evidence on this goes back a long way, because the waist trainer is really just a new take on a much older device. The corset. And studies from a hundred years ago showed us just how good the corset was for our health.
Claire Regnault, fashion historian and senior curator at Te Papa, said fainting is a well-known side effect of wearing a corset.
"There's lots of stories of people fainting at balls and things, because they had to breathe very shallowly and a little bit of exercise would exhaust ," explained Regnault…
The new season of Healthy or Hoax is on its way. Stacey Morrison not only hosts the show, but also faces her fears to trial some of the latest health fads.
Fermented foods have been around for longer than refrigeration, but recently they have developed a reputation for having numerous health benefits. We find out if that reputation is founded in reality.
By Liz Garton
The popularity of kombucha and other fermented foods, like kefir, kimchi and tempeh, has risen on the back of research which shows gut health is closely linked to general, overall health.
"We carry around about two kilos of bugs, each of us, which is kind of gross, but kind of cool," food and nutrition writer Niki Bezzant told Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison, "Scientists used to think that those bugs were just sitting there benignly. Now what they know is that those bugs are very active and they can do a lot in our bodies and they are actually responsible for a whole lot to do with just about every aspect of our health."
Bezzant said as well as a general health halo, probiotic and fermented foods also have this veneer of ancient, exotic wisdom because they've been used in many, many cultures for thousands of years.
Food is fermented when bacteria or yeast pre-digest it and there are lots of different types of fermented foods.
Dr Megan Rossi is a research fellow at King's College London and the author of Eat Yourself Healthy, a "bit of a bible to gut health."
She said there are essentially three different 'mechanisms' for how fermented foods can be beneficial.
"Some fermented foods actually give us the live microbes, like kombucha," said Rossi, "Some just give off healthy chemicals and some break down other elements of foods we call anti-nutrients, which aren't necessarily dangerous but they reduce our ability to absorb some nutrients."
It is not easy to tell if you have a healthy gut, but there are some clues.
Dr Rossi has come up with a quick questionnaire which is also available on her website, The Gut Health Doctor, to help predict your gut health.
"One of the key ones is, are you having regular gut symptoms like constipation, diarrhea, bloating?"
But Dr Rossi said just because you don't have those symptoms doesn't mean you have good gut health.
"So it's things like, how often are you getting sick? Are you really stressed? How much sleep are you having? Are you following a restrictive diet? Do you have family history of a different disease or are you on medications?
"All of those factors combined really give us a more holistic idea of your gut health," she said…
Can something make us feel better just by smelling nice? And if it can do that, could we get even more benefits from rubbing it on our skin or even eating it?
By Liz Garton
Essential oils have been used for thousands of years, but more recently we are seeing them used as home remedies for ailments, as skin care and even in recipes.
The latter is a trend that is seriously concerning some experts.
"It's not something that's really designed to be ingested," food and nutrition writer Niki Bezzant told Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison. "(Even) aroma therapists are quite alarmed about this development."
Bezzant said registered aromatherapists would very, very rarely recommend the use of oils to be ingested. And if they did, that would be only for a very short time and for very specific health concern.
Niki Bezzant said an investigation in Australia last year resulted in an article warning about the dangers of ingesting essential oils.
"They quoted the New South Wales Poisons Information Center, who say essential oils should not be consumed even in tiny amounts. And you can cause seizures, nausea, vomiting and chronic exposure can potentially cause organ damage.
"So a lot of the stuff about putting drops of oil into your water or putting drops of oil into your peppermint slice or whatever, we would be really, really wise to stay away from," said Bezzant.
The proliferation of multi-level marketing of essential oils online and through social media is problematic in many ways too.
"So they recruit people who can work from home and can promote and sell the oils to their friends. We're getting completely unqualified people recommending the use of these oils in ways that is not necessarily safe or in any way healthy."
"If someone's trying to sell you something, just really be very, very wary of any kind of health or therapeutic claims that they make."
MedSafe New Zealand has some specific warnings and there are some serious complications if you get it wrong.
Using essential oils
Jo Newsham is a Christchurch-based life coach and mother to three young children. But years (twenty-odd) ago she trained as a massage therapist and aromatherapist.
"I don't actively sell essential oils, but I do use them in my treatments as a form of therapy," she said.
She also uses essential oils in her everyday life.
"I will use tea tree if we've got a little cut or a graze. If we've got sniffles I will use eucalyptus and peppermint. I know exactly what's in there, there's no synthetic chemicals…
Turmeric is supposed to help a range of ailments from arthritis to Alzheimer's. But is this spice the real deal or just fool's gold?
By Liz Garton
If you google 'health benefits of turmeric' you're going to come up with hundreds of articles proclaiming the spice as a new wonder drug.
But that 'cure-all' tag should be a red-flag, according to food and nutrition writer Niki Bezzant.
Bezzant told Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison that in the case of turmeric's health benefits "it's a case of the marketing getting way ahead of the research."
She said there's ancient wisdom applying to this ingredient, it's been used in Ayurvedic Indian medicine and Chinese medicine for centuries.
"It's got a lot of history behind it," she said, "But there hasn't been any good, really good evidence come to light to show that it's truly beneficial."
"Yet. That doesn't mean it won't."
Food and Nutrition writer Niki Bezzant told Stacey Morrison there's a lot of ancient wisdom attached to turmeric
Turmeric lattes are particularly fashionable. Hannah Sutherland, owner of No Grainer in Mt Albert, describes the taste as: "like a sort of a spicy cinnamonny sweet drink more than a turmeric flavor. But it's kind of got memories of Christmas or something."
"It's very popular because we get people who are on the wellness journey," said Sutherland, "So people like the blend we do and we get dedicated customers to the turmeric latte."
Sutherland makes her turmeric latte paste from ground up turmeric, cinnamon, ginger and a little bit of black pepper for the curcumin absorption and it's the curcumin that's thought to be the active compound in turmeric.
Hannah Sutherland said she has customers dedicated to her turmeric latte.
Keith Singletary, Professor Emeritus of Nutrition from the University of Illinois, reviewed the findings from some of the more recent studies into turmeric's health benefits.
His review was funded by McCormick, a US spice retailer, but he said it's 'debatable' that the science backs up claims turmeric is good for us.
Singletary said pre-clinical studies - so that's in tissue or cell culture or animal models - over the last two or three decades turmeric has been shown to have a positive impact on oxidative stress and inflamed inflammatory response, which contribute to heart disease, diabetes, cancer and neurological disorders, like Alzheimer's.
The problem, he said, is that we just don't take up the compound very well…
Shakti Mats made a big splash when they arrived in New Zealand a few years ago. But does lying on thousands of tiny spikes improve our health or is it just a painful hoax?
By Liz Garton
The Shakti Mat's arrival in New Zealand is a classic yarn.
Jonathan Heslop and his university mate George Lill were travelling in Thailand, they were on a particularly yoga retreat style beach, when a man came along with one of these mats. The man explained what it was and although the pair were were skeptical, they gave it a try.
"It was one of those real 'wow' moments, of going; 'how do people not know about this?'," said Heslop.
Two months later, back in Dunedin where they were studying, Lill thought there would be a market in New Zealand.
"And so about six months later we had 2000 of them arriving on our doorstep and all the money we had spent on them," laughs Heslop.
Although Heslop wouldn't say how many mats they've sold since then, he pointed out the company placed 13th on the 2019 Deloitte Fast 50 list, with revenue growth of 340 percent over the last three years.
The Shakti Mat looks like a doormat covered in thousands of tiny spikes.
"It's made from the same plastic that Lego is made from," said Heslop, "So if you've stood on Lego, you know how how hard that is."
The idea is to lie or stand on the mat for 20 minutes or so, Heslop uses his mat almost everyday.
"In general people lie on it the very first time and they go 'ouch'. How is how is this supposed to be relaxing?," he said.
But then: "You get this this change in sensation in your body it stops feeling sore and it starts feeling warm and tingly. Relaxing, you kind of feel like you're melting away into it."
Heslop reckons it's like exercise - no pain, no gain. "The results, and the benefits are just so worth it. Generally the things that are most worthwhile to do take a little bit of willpower and discipline and some sacrifice."
Edwina Nathan and Aggie Boxall have shakti mats at home.
Nathan uses hers after work: "I sit at a computer so my arms and shoulders are forward so I'll often go home and take my shirt off and lie on it. It releases a lot of the stiffness."
And in the morning. "It's good in the morning to get you going, so you just stand on it with no socks on and then just breathe," she said.
Boxall found it "a bit prickly" at first, but now she loves it.
"After the first five minutes of just lying there, you feel the heat coming through and then you just relax on it," she said…
Studies show fasting could improve outcomes for a huge range of medical conditions... in mice. Do those benefits cross over to humans too?
By Liz Garton
Associate Professor Alexander Tups from the Neuroendocrinology and Brain Health Centre at Otago University said fasting looks promising for treating certain autoimmune conditions, reducing rates of cancer, improving general gut health and brain function and mental health too.
"The most recent research suggests the body rejuvenates during fasting and that it increases lifespan," said Dr Tups.
"Another thing that has been show, is that these intermittent fasting periods can directly affect our brain. So, it can increase neurogenesis," he said, "We need to do more research to confirm this. But that would be really interesting because then it would also improve cognition and it could be beneficial to treat dementia, for example."
And Dr Tups' own research suggests timing could be a factor.
"So we found that if we give food to certain times of the day, we actually have an effect on the hormone that regulates our body weight," he said.
The hormone is leptin and it makes us eat less and burn our energy. Tups' research found that in the morning the hormone works really well.
"So it was around breakfast time to lunchtime," said Tups.
Which would suggest eating over this time and then skipping dinner might be most effective.
But again, this is research done in mice - so Dr Tups is unsure if it can be translated to humans.
Professor Rachael Taylor, director of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre at Otago University was involved in the SWIFT study, which looked at different ways of sort of assisting people to lose weight.
The subjects were able to choose which diet would suit them and many chose fasting.
"A lot of the people liked the idea of fasting," said Taylor, "They felt that it was going to be much simpler, but in reality, they found that fasting or the fasting days, not surprisingly, really quite difficult because they could only eat less than a quarter of their normal dietary intake."
Taylor said generally speaking, a lot of women found fasting difficult to incorporate into their lives.
"Particularly if they were the main food provider in their households, they found it quite difficult to fast and actually cook for everyone else."
Interestingly, the study did not find a lot of difference in the outcomes for the different monitoring systems nor the different diets…
Charcoal is credited with getting rid of gas, bloating, hangovers and generally helping us cleanse and detox. Healthy or Hoax finds out if the claims are backed up by science.
By Liz Garton
Experts say we're witnessing a hijacking with the current trend of putting activated charcoal in our foods, drinks and beauty and dental products.
Activated charcoal is made by heating unactivated charcoal to a very high temperature in the presence of an inert gas.
Professor Ian Shaw, Director of Biochemistry and Professor of Toxicology at the University of Canterbury, said this process creates lots of pores in the charcoal, which makes it have a very, very high surface area.
"The chemistry of the charcoal enables it to bind to many, many different sorts of molecules and with this huge surface area, it can bind a very large amount of chemical material. So if you put some charcoal into a liquid, for example, that might have some chemicals in it, then the chemicals will bind to the charcoal and remove them from that liquid."
Which is one reason activated charcoal has long been used as a detoxifier.
"It looks like the Phoenicians in around about 400 BC actually made activated charcoal by heating charcoal in a fire to very high temperatures. And they use that powdered activated charcoal to purify their water," said Professor Shaw.
And for many years toxicologists have used charcoal as a treatment for poisoning.
"So, the whole trend around this whole activated charcoal movement is basically it stems from the fact that in medical settings, activated charcoal has been used to treat overdose of drugs and poisoning and things like that," he said.
But Dr Rajshri Roy says the idea of charcoal as a detoxifier has been hijacked by the food and beauty industry.
"So our body has organs that take care of the detoxing process. No particular food helps with detoxing. Your kidneys are going to do that, your lungs are going to do that, and your liver is going to do that," she said.
And Professor Shaw goes even further.
"I'm really unhappy about just adding something that indiscriminately binds to so many things on the grounds that it will stop you getting exposed to toxic chemicals in your food," he said…
