People hoping to lose weight with exercise often wind up being their own worst enemies, according to the latest, large-scale study of workouts, weight loss and their frustrating interaction. The study, which carefully tracked how much people ate and moved after starting to exercise, found that many of them failed to lose or even gained weight while exercising, because they also reflexively changed their lives in other, subtle ways. But a few people in the study did drop pounds, and their success could have lessons for the rest of us.

In a just and cogent universe, of course, exercise would make us thin. Physical activity consumes calories, and if we burn calories without replacing them or reducing our overall energy expenditure, we enter negative energy balance. In that condition, we utilize our internal energy stores, which most of us would call our flab, and shed weight.

But human metabolisms are not always just and cogent, and multiple past studies have shown that most men and women who begin new exercise routines drop only about 30 percent or 40 percent as much weight as would be expected, given how many additional calories they are expending with exercise.

Current guidelines recommend lowering cholesterol for heart disease risk reduction. New findings indicate that if cholesterol dips too low, it may boost the risk of hemorrhagic stroke, according to researchers.

Over a period of nine years, a Penn State-led study examined the relationship between low-density lipoprotein cholesterol — LDL, commonly known as "bad" cholesterol — and hemorrhagic stroke. This type of stroke occurs when a blood vessel bursts in the brain.

The researchers found that participants with LDL cholesterol levels below 70 mg/dL had a higher risk of hemorrhagic stroke.

There's a lot to be said for veganism. For the thinking eater, it gets around a whole bunch of ethical grey areas. If you care about what you put in your mouth, it is probably the most black and white way to approach the whole meat thing. There are no grey areas about so-called "ethical" meat, or questions over exactly how "free range" are the hens when there are 10,000 chickens to the ­hectare. Not eating meat, not buying products that come from animals — surely that means you're doing better not only for those animals directly affected, but also the environment, and your health? But while veganism is on the rise in Western nations, it's still far from mainstream. Why, then, is it so hard to convince people of its worth if it really is a win all round? The vegan philosophy is, at its heart, quite often about ­reducing suffering. By not eating ­animals, you — by definition — reduce suffering. It's a lovely idea. And I wish it were that simple.

Let's start with peas. Collydean (not its real name, but a real farm) is a 2700ha mixed farm in northern Tasmania. They grow beef cattle, some sheep, do agroforestry, have barley and some years grow peas. A lot of peas: about 400 tonnes a season. And to protect the peas, they have some wildlife fences, but also have to shoot a lot of ­animals. When I was there, they had a licence to kill about 150 deer. They routinely kill about 800-1000 ­possums and 500 wallabies every year, along with a few ducks. (To its credit, Collydean only invites hunters onto its farm who will use the animals they kill — for human food, or for pet food — and not leave them in the paddock, as most ­animals killed for crop protection are.) So, more than 1500 animals die each year to grow about 75ha of peas for our freezers. That's not 1500 rodents, which also die, and which some may see as collateral damage. That's mostly warm-blooded animals of the cute kind, with a few birds thrown in.

Price hikes on prescription drugs are surging in 2019, despite vows from lawmakers and the Trump administration to rein in pharmaceutical costs.

So far in 2019, more than 3,400 drugs have boosted their prices, a 17% increase compared with the roughly 2,900 drug price increases at the same time in 2018, according to a new analysis by Rx Savings Solutions, a consultant to health plans and employers.

The average price hike for those 3,400 drugs stands at 10.5%, or about 5 times the rate of inflation, the study found. About 41 drugs have boosted their prices by more than 100%, including one version of the antidepressant fluoxetine -- also known as Prozac -- whose cost has surged 879%, Rx Savings Solutions said.

An article appeared in this week's New York Times, "My Son Got Lyme Disease. He's Totally Fine. Horror stories about lingering Lyme disease proliferate, but the illness is easily treated." While I am delighted that author Apoorva Mandavilli's son had a good outcome, I feel a need to respond to aspects of the story that I, a Board Certified Infectious Diseases physician who lives in a Lyme endemic area and has had Lyme, found misleading and disturbing.

Neither the author's experience — nor that of the pediatrician she quotes as "never had a complication from Lyme" — matches mine. Mandavilli says, "many people view Lyme — wrongly — as a debilitating, chronic illness instead of what it is: An easily treated infection with no long-term consequences for children, or even the vast majority of adults."

I understand that there are a spectrum of patients with Lyme.

Austria's lower house of parliament passed a bill on Tuesday banning all uses of the weedkiller glyphosate, the first time a European Union country has taken such strong action against the chemical over concerns that it can cause cancer.

Other EU countries have passed partial bans of glyphosate, developed by Bayer-owned Monsanto, although France has lowered its ambitions on a ban, highlighting its usefulness in agriculture. Austria has embraced organic farming more than other EU member state.

"The scientific evidence of the plant poison's carcinogenic effect is increasing. It is our responsibility to ban this poison from our environment," the leader of Austria's Social Democrats, Pamela Rendi-Wagner, said in a statement.

After studies have confirmed that vitamin A, converted from beta carotene, is very low in genetically modified golden rice, new evidence shows that the rice is also unable to hold the biochemical for long after harvest.

Unless preserved in refrigerated condition in vacuum packaging as paddy, golden rice can lose up to 84 per cent of its beta carotene in six months, according to a new Indian government research.

The degradation of beta carotene level gets faster with processing and is the highest in polished golden rice, said the research released two months ago in the British journal Food Chemistry.

A mother-of-two ditched the vegan diet she followed for fifteen years after she claims it caused her immune system to crash - and now only eats meat.

Nicole Carter, 44, of California, went vegan when she was 18, thinking it was the best thing to do for her health and to protect the environment.

Her diet was packed with whole foods, leafy greens, berries and freshly squeezed juices. She grew her own vegetables and cut out sugar and alcohol.

For the first part of this two-part article, see yesterday's post, "Google buries Mercola in their latest search engine update,' Part 1 of 2." In Part 1, I discussed the effects Google's June 2019 broad core algorithm update and updated quality rater guidelines is having on traffic to this site.

As mentioned in Part 1, Google's "quality raters" are now manually lowering the ranking of undesirable content and buries even expert views if they're deemed "harmful" to the public.

Google raters use Wikipedia for 'expertise' and 'trustworthiness'

One of the primary sources Google's quality raters are instructed to use when assessing the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of an author or website is Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia." Excerpts from my Wikipedia page read:¹

"Joseph Michael Mercola (born 1954) is an alternative medicine proponent, osteopathic physician, and Web entrepreneur, who markets a variety of controversial dietary supplements and medical devices through his website, Mercola.com ...

Mercola criticizes many aspects of standard medical practice, such as vaccination and what he views as overuse of prescription drugs and surgery to treat diseases.

On his website mercola.com, Mercola and colleagues advocate a number of unproven alternative health notions including homeopathy, and anti-vaccine positions ... Mercola's medical claims have been criticized by business, regulatory, medical, and scientific communities."

Sleep in teenagers can be improved by just one week of limiting their evening exposure to light-emitting screens on phones, tablets and computers, according to findings to be presented in Lyon, at the European Society of Endocrinology annual meeting, ECE 2019. The study indicates that by simply limiting their exposure to blue-light emitting devices in the evening, adolescents can improve their sleep quality and reduce symptoms of fatigue, lack of concentration and bad mood, after just one week.

Recent studies have indicated that exposure to too much evening light, particularly the blue light emitted from screens on smartphones, tablets and computers can affect the brain's clock and the production of the sleep hormone melatonin, resulting in disrupted sleep time and quality. The lack of sleep doesn't just cause immediate symptoms of tiredness and poor concentration but can also increase the risk of more serious long-term health issues such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Other studies have suggested that sleep deprivation related to screen time may affect children and adolescents more than adults, but no studies have fully investigated how real-life exposure is affecting sleep in adolescents at home and whether it can be reversed.