Jane Harris

What happened when topical olive oil was pitted against an ibuprofen-type drug for osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis? Fifty million Americans suffer from arthritis, and osteoarthritis of the knee is the most common form, making it a leading cause of disability. There are several inflammatory pathways that underlie the disease’s onset and progression, so various anti-inflammatory foods have been put to the test. Strawberries can decrease circulating blood levels of an inflammatory mediator known as tumor necrosis factor , but that doesn’t necessarily translate into clinical improvement. For example, drinking cherry juice may lower a marker of inflammation known as C-reactive protein , but it failed to help treat pain and other symptoms of knee osteoarthritis. However, researchers claimed it “provided symptom relief.” Yes, it did when comparing symptoms before and after six weeks of drinking cherry juice, but not any better than a placebo, meaning drinking it was essentially no ...

Weight regain after bariatric surgery can have devastating psychological effects. How Sustainable Is the Weight Loss After Bariatric Surgery? I explore that issue in my video of the same name. Most gastric bypass patients end up regaining some of the fat they lose by the third year after surgery, but after seven years, 75% of patients followed at 10 U.S. hospitals maintained at least a 20% weight loss. The typical trajectory for someone who starts out obese at 285 pounds, for example, would be to drop to an overweight 178 pounds two years after bariatric surgery, but then regain weight up to an obese 207 pounds. This has been chalked up to “grazing” behavior, where compulsive eaters may shift from bingeing (which becomes more difficult post-surgery) to eating smaller amounts constantly throughout the day. In a group of women followed for eight years after gastric bypass surgery, about half continued to describe episodes of disordered eating. As one pediatric obesity specialist ...

Losing weight without rearranging your gastrointestinal anatomy carries advantages beyond just the lack of surgical risk. The surgical community objects to the characterization of bariatric surgery as internal jaw wiring and cutting into healthy organs just to discipline people’s behavior. They’ve even renamed it “metabolic surgery,” suggesting the anatomical rearrangements cause changes in digestive hormones that offer unique physiological benefits. As evidence, they point to the remarkable remission rates for type 2 diabetes. After bariatric surgery, about 50% of obese people with diabetes and 75% of “super-obese” diabetics go into remission, meaning they have normal blood sugar levels on a regular diet without any diabetes medication. The normalization of blood sugar can happen within days after the surgery. And 15 years after the surgery, 30% remained free from their diabetes, compared to a 7% remission rate in a nonsurgical control group. Are we sure it was the surgery, thou...

We create more than a hundred new videos every year. They are the culmination of countless hours of research. We comb through tens of thousands of scientific papers from the peer-reviewed medical literature so busy people like you don’t have to. In 2025, I covered a wide variety of hot topics. I released an extensive series on Ozempic , updates on vitamin B12 , and, of course, a lot on aging and anti-aging based on my research for How Not to Age . Which videos floated to the top last year?    #10 How Much Vitamin B12 Do We Need Each Day? How are the recommended daily and weekly doses of vitamin B12 derived?               #9 The Best Way to Boost NAD + : Supplements vs. Diet (webinar recording) This webinar wrapped up the pros and cons of all the NAD + supplements and the ways to naturally boost NAD + with diet and lifestyle. (Did you know we now offer a growing library of on-demand webinars for CME credits? To learn more...

The extent of risk from bariatric weight-loss surgery may depend on the skill of the surgeon. After sleeve gastrectomy and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, the third most common bariatric procedure is a revision to fix a previous bariatric procedure, as you can see below and at 0:16 in my video The Complications of Bariatric Weight-Loss Surgery . Up to 25% of bariatric patients have to go back into the operating room for problems caused by their first bariatric surgery. Reoperations are even riskier, with up to 10 times the mortality rate, and there is “no guarantee of success.” Complications include leaks, fistulas, ulcers, strictures, erosions, obstructions, and severe acid reflux. The extent of risk may depend on the skill of the surgeon. In a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine , bariatric surgeons voluntarily submitted videos of themselves performing surgery to a panel of their peers for evaluation. Technical proficiency varied widely and was related to the ra...

Today, death rates after weight-loss surgery are considered to be “very low,” occurring in perhaps 1 in 300 to 1 in 500 patients on average. The treatment of obesity has long been stained by the snake-oil swindling of profiteers, hustlers, and quacks. Even the modern field of bariatric medicine (derived from the Greek word baros , meaning “weight”) is pervaded by an “insidious image of sleaze.” Beguiled by advertising for fairy tale magic bullets of rapid, effortless weight loss, people blame themselves for failing to manifest the miracle or imagine themselves metabolically broken. On the other end of the spectrum are overly pessimistic practitioners of the opinion that “people who are fat are born fat, and nothing much can be done about it.” The truth lies somewhere in between. The difficulty of curing obesity has been compared to learning a foreign language. It’s an achievement virtually anyone can attain with a sufficient investment of energies, “but it always takes a consider...