Tiffany M. Reiss, Ph.D., Contributing Writer:   Stretching: there is still some debate about how much to do, when to do it, and whether it really helps. In reality, some form of stretching is beneficial, but not in the ways we normally think about it. Most of us have been told to stretch to “warm-up” the muscles prior to activity in order to lessen the risk of injury. Static stretching, contorting our bodies into mildly painful positions and holding those positions for 30 seconds ... [More]

Tiffany M. Reiss, Ph.D., Contributing Writer:    We have all heard the grim statistics. We have seen the brightly colored maps that demonstrate quite effectively the trends in the prevalence of overweight and obesity over the past 30+ years in the United States. Currently, the Centers for Disease Control reports that over 66% of US adults are overweight or obese based on Body Mass Index standards (BMI). Recently there has been a great deal of press that points out that our pets’ w... [More]

Tiffany Reiss, Ph.D., Contributing Writer:   Most of us are used to thinking of excess body fat as something to lose. However, last week scientists announced a new discovery related to a type of body fat you may actually want to have more of. This special fat is called “brown fat” and the new discoveries have raised a lot of interest in potential new obesity treatments. It’s long been known that there are two different kinds of body fat, brown fat and white fat. Brown fat is more ... [More]