America's pediatricians have chosen a puzzling approach to kiddie obesity.

Many of you will have heard of the concepts of: "Chaos Theory" "The Butterfly Effect" or maybe even "Emergence" "Fractals" "Complexity" or "Catastrophe" theories. Each of these is an example of a nonlinear dynamic. My challenge in this blog will be to make nonlinear dynamics understandable and interesting to you. My experience thus far has been that everything in psychology is a part of a nonlinear system. So we will be able to talk about nearly any topic here. That will help to keep things interesting.

Research has found that when human stem cells - which can turn into any type of cell - were exposed to a common virus they turned into fat cells. They didn't just change, they also stored fat. Earlier research showed another common virus causes cells to store more fat.

Some of you are finding that despite proper eating and exercise you simply cannot lose the extra weight. There are a number of metabolic processes contributing to this and when you treat them the weight will often begin to disappear!

Looking at commercials, you would think that we are suffering from an epidemic of excess stomach acid. This is not the case. Natural remedies can heal your digestion, so that you can get off of acid blocker medications effectively and comfortably.

When it comes to long-term weight loss, researchers have finally found a real solution.

Many parents of children with autism choose to restrict their child's diet to eliminate Gluten (wheat protein) and Casein (milk protein). Claims have also been made that once a child has been put on this restrictive diet, their autism has been "cured", so is there any truth to this?

It doesn't take a sociologist to point out that single men who live alone tend to eat more poorly than single women. Stereotypes and beliefs about "real men" are often at odds with conventional wisdom about health.

You’ve heard the advice, “Don’t go food shopping on an empty stomach.” Anyone who’s inclined to overeat or indulge a junk food habit knows this is a good advice. When your stomach’s doing the talking, it’s just too tempting to throw a cheesecake into the shopping cart. Now we know the origins of such temptation.

All eating behavior occurs on a continuum, which you can picture as a horizontal line with perfectly heathy eating habits at one end, and full-blown eating disorders on the other. Every other type of eating falls somewhere in between these two extremes. Where do you fit in?

Looking for any easy way to improve your memory? Try eating more blueberries or other "brain foods" believed to be effective at decreasing the forgetfulness that occurs as we age. Stuffing yourself with blueberry smoothies, pies, and cobblers could be the key to a better memory.

There are two ways to deal with compulsive overeating: Avoid your favorite binge foods, or embrace them.

My pregnant friend has studiously avoided cats (toxoplasmosis), alcohol (fetal alcohol syndrome), tuna (mercury), soft cheese (listeriosis), and sushi (oy gevalt). Recently she sent me this, wondering if she should also give up her daily macchiato habit:

“Too much caffeine during pregnancy may increase the risk of miscarriage, a new study says.”
New York Times, January 21, 2008, “Pregnancy Problems Tied to Caffeine”

 When the editors at Psychology Today approached me a couple of years ago with an assignment to write a book called Breaking the Bonds of Food Addiction, my first (very conservative) thought was, “There’s no such thing as an addiction to food.” How could I possibly write 375 pages of material about a condition that doesn’t exist?  I was wrong.

I spent the weekend reading my friend Jenny Lee's new book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. It's a wonderful account of her journey across 42 states and 23 countries around the world as she uncovers secrets about Chinese food.

Conventional wisdom holds that Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, in their most common forms, are progressive neurodegenerative afflictions of aging, and there's no cure. But at a medical meeting I attended last week, a Massachusetts neuroscientist suggested that they are looking more and more like lifestyle diseases, the cumulative effects of unhealthy eating patterns, and that ridiculously simple dietary changes can reverse some symptoms and slow the disease process. Just as I was digesting that bit of info I stumbled across evidence that the prostate problems men commonly experience as they age may similarly result from years of eating a diet too rich in red meat and fats.

If you don't drink, should you start for health reasons? And if you drink only occasionally, will you be healthier if you start drinking every day?

The New York Times has an article this morning ("Economists Dissect the ‘Yuck’ Factor") about the role that disgust plays in moral intuitions. We've evolved to judge that things are wrong if they feel unnatural somehow.