Getting Answers for Our Readers--Stat!

Booster Shots got mail!

“I have known for many years that ‘stat’ means hurry up, but what does it really mean?” writes Mike A. Dorfman. “Is it an acronym or what?”

At your service, Mr. Dorfman. First, we tried guessing, but neither “Serious! Take Action, Toots” nor “Slowness Terminates: Adieu, Tardiness!” hit the mark. So we turned to a trusty reference book and learned that “stat” comes from the Latin word “statim,” which means “immediately, at once, on the spot.” Maybe the term became “stat” when doctors realized the time-consuming second syllable was losing them patients.

Another Health reader wanted to know whether the dietary supplement chitosan--basically crushed shrimp shells--can cause weight loss. If you swallow chitosan, goes the claim, it will bind to the fat in your food and will help you get slim even if you dine out daily at chez McDonald’s. Hence industry terms and brand names like “fat sponge,” “fat zapper,” “der fettmagnet” (in Germany), and “Inferno-Melt-Down,” our personal favorite.

A pity there’s no evidence that any of these products work.

“In reality, the amount of fat the chitosan is able to bind is minimal in terms of calories,” says Susan Bowerman, registered dietitian at UCLA’s Center for Human Nutrition. What’s more, she adds, it’s not good nutrition to down doughnuts and fries all day and then take a gorging-after pill.

Yummy, but Nightmare for a Nutritionist

While we had UCLA’s Human Nutrition folks on the phone, we asked them how many calories a deep-fried Mars bar contains (a scrumpilicious item we covered last week).

“That’s the most god-awful thing,” commented Bowerman, who suggested we add together numbers for a Mars bar, a pancake and a tablespoon of oil. So we headed off to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “Nutrient Database” (at https://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp).

Wow! What a resource! When it was started in 1891, the database had just 200 items, analyzed for only a few things, like protein, fat, carbohydrates and “refuse,” whatever that is. Now there are more than 7,000 entries--everything from possum to pears--and more than 100 nutrients are analyzed.

Crunching numbers, we learned that the deep-fried Mars bar contains more than 500 calories and more than 30 grams of fat, which is pretty much the entire daily fat dose UCLA recommends for an average-size woman. Then, just for fun, we investigated the vitamin content of frozen, fresh and canned peas, which took a long time since there are 223 pea items on the database.

You wouldn’t think a job could get more excitement-packed--but it did. Read on. . . .

Visualizing an Enhanced You

Was it my imagination or did colleagues look at me quizzically today? If so, perhaps it had something to do with the tape I listened to last night. The “Athena II Breast Beautification System,” says its makers, is “a healthy, natural alternative to breast enlargement surgery.” Listen to the guided imagery/focused visualization tapes, and you can increase breast size and enhance firmness and symmetry. That’s what happened, it’s claimed, in a “national focus group” study, which we somehow overlooked if it ever made it into the medical journals.

Here’s what you get for the $125 (plus shipping and handling): six tapes, a workbook, even a tape measure to help you track your progress. You’re supposed to listen to the tapes each day for 60 days, and once a week thereafter for “maintenance.”

In the first tape, soothing music plays while a soft voice tells us to relax and imagine increased blood flow through the body: Increased blood flow is what’s behind this process, we’re told. But only toward the end of the tape are we guided to imagine increased blood flow to the breasts. This concerns us, since who knows what kind of other girth increases--the hips, say--may have been triggered by that time? And what if pets and other family members overhear the tapes? Or if people don’t stop at 60 days? Someone should look into this.