Healthy or Hoax

Healthy or Hoax is a new podcast series from RNZ that looks at the new-fangled fads and tempting new trends and asks if they're really up to much. In short: Do. They. Work? Presented by Carol Hirschfeld, with help from food writer Niki Bezzant and a host of experts, the series will report on the latest things in food, fitness and leisure and ask if they're all hype or if they're actually good for you.Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Kate Pereyra Garcia documents her three weeks eating coconut oil in part one of Healthy or Hoax, a new podcast series looking at the facts behind current health trends. Does it live up to the hype? By Kate Pereyra GarciaThe proponents of coconut oil make a lot of promises.So when someone was needed as a human guinea pig for RNZ's Healthy or Hoax podcast, I volunteered.Lose weight, lower cholesterol and prevent wrinkles? Simply by eating oil?If it works: amazing.The claims around the medical properties of coconut oil have burgeoned in recent times, with bold claims online that it's "one of the healthiest foods on the planet" with "life-saving" properties. Beyond the more superficial claims about weight loss, building muscles and stopping wrinkles, its supporters suggest it may prevent Alzheimer's, heart disease and some cancers.If even half of the claims were true, it would be a miracle cure. So, although some scientists are pretty sceptical, it's not hard to see why more people are buying it.New Zealand supermarkets had a 15 percent year-on-year increase in sales.Countdown spokesperson James Walker said it was part of a trend across the entire supermarket for specialty health foods. For its part, Foodstuffs confirmed New Zealand supermarkets sold more than $7 million worth of coconut oil in the year to March.So I was in good company when I popped into my local New World to purchase a tub for the experiment.It was completely non-scientific, of course, but the idea was to consume at least a tablespoon a day for three weeks. I did a blood test to check cholesterol levels before and after.Consultant Laurence Eyres conducted a major review of studies of coconut oil for the Heart Foundation, which was published last year in the Nutrition Reviews journal. He didn't find one peer-reviewed study showing any benefit of using coconut oil."The claims for curing Alzheimer's or cancer or what have you were based on marketing hype and had no foundation."So on the serious science, there's no evidence to endorse the claims, though one Otago University study showed coconut oil wasn't quite as bad as butter when it came to raising cholesterol levels.Auckland University of Technology Professor of Public Health Grant Schofield said coconut oil was not necessarily bad for you, but there was no evidence it would live up to the more extreme claims.So how did my experiment go?The first week was fine, I mainly used the coconut oil to fry vegetables each night. By the middle of the second week I was sick of stir-fried dinner and over everything tasting like coconut…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Carol Hirschfeld hits the gym for some High Intensity Interval Training and finds it can take you up a notch... If you fit the bill. So is HIIT right for you? By Kate Pereyra GarciaWatch a video segment from the episode hereAnyone who belongs to a gym has probably done it. Even those who don't have probably heard of it.High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has had a lot of media coverage in recent years for being a quick fitness fix for anyone short of time; which is pretty much everyone, right?Even RNZ has discussed its benefits.HIIT is essentially short, intense bouts of exercise interspersed with periods of rest. It's the antithesis of long steady cardio training. Some of the more well-known studies involve participants sprinting on stationary bikes for one minute intervals at a maximum pace versus slow continuous pedaling. As the Healthy or Hoax podcast team, led by host Carol Hirschfeld, found out HIIT definitely has some benefits. The most obvious is that you can finish a workout in 20 minutes instead of an hour... or more.Performance physiologist and AUT adjunct professor Paul Laursen said studies showed participants achieved as much, if not more, in the shorter time."You wind up being able to accumulate a greater amount of hard work than if you were just going to perform that same amount of work continuous. "So by breaking it up you get a longer period total of high intensity work."But, Dr Laursen warned HIIT is not necessarily as good as it sounds."Sometimes it's just interpreted as 'all I need to do is go out and kill myself', and of course we've all got pretty busy lives, we're under a lot of stress, sometimes we're not always on the healthiest diet, so there's loads of different stressors."In that case, adding further stress in the form of high intensity exercise is asking for trouble, he said."You can really speed your way to over training... ultimately you can make yourself sick, or feel run down, and you can injure yourself as well."One to three HIIT workouts a week should be the maximum, Dr Laursen said.Les Mills head of research Bryce Hastings said the gym's HIIT classes were for people who already exercise consistently."You might be up to five days a week.. and when you've got that going and you're pretty comfortable there and people are wanting that next level of improvement - that's where we see HIIT as being really really useful."The most important thing was to be moving consistently, he added.Fitness instructor Chris Richardson is a HIIT convert…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Greens powders are firmly entrenched as part of the smoothie craze, but in episode three of Healthy or Hoax we find out there's one ingredient in there you might not expect. By Adam MacaulayI usually have lots of fresh greens as part of my regular diet and you know what, I rather like eating them. So I volunteered when someone was needed to give greens powder a go for this Healthy or Hoax podcast. The powder was supposed to give me concentrated greens, so I didn't have to eat the real stuff. In other words, it was the vegetable equivalent of a short cut; a cheat sheet.But for me it's a question of palatability. Basically the powder tasted like ... well, it's not good. When you put it in a smoothie it tends to combine with the other vegetables and fruits and produce a colour something like fresh concrete or, let's be honest, the poo of a sick baby. Worse, should you ignore the colour, close your eyes and just drink it, you could only taste the powder. As to the health benefits, I was not convinced - certainly I didn't feel any better than I usually do, given my usual fairly healthy diet.It also costs a lot. Obviously I wasn't partaking in a serious scientific experiment so it's hard to really gauge the benefits, or lack thereof. Using my mother's medical logic (or was it just a con trick): "It tastes awful so it must be doing you an awful lot of good."However, Canterbury University Professor of Toxicology Ian Shaw said that was not necessarily the case. "These plants are being grown in all sorts of different soils in different parts of the world... and they might contain other things that we don't expect them to contain, like arsenic."Studies in the United States have shown greens powders there contained low levels of arsenic - a naturally occurring poison. Dr Shaw said there was no requirement for risk assessment testing on greens powders sold in New Zealand because they're classified as a food, not a medicine. "The risk is incredibly low. "Arsenic is a carcinogen - it causes cancer - but only on long, long, long-term exposure. So what we try to do is keep our arsenic intake as low as possible for that reason, not because it's going to kill us stone dead, but because of the effects it may have in the long term."Auckland University Professor of Nutrition David Cameron-Smith said there had been no research about the effectiveness of greens powders relative to their source ingredients…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

A raft of new dairy substitutes are turning up on supermarket shelves, but in part four of Healthy or Hoax we ask: can they really be called milk? By Kate Pereyra GarciaOn the surface almond milk is a pretty innocuous, even healthy, alternative to dairy milk.But the name - those two words 'almond' and 'milk' - raise all sorts of questions. For example, how do you milk an almond? Even the best Kiwi cockie wouldn't be able to tell you where to put the cups.The fact is, almonds make up less than two percent of the average carton on the supermarket shelf.What's more, technically it can't even be called milk.Liggins Institute chair David Cameron-Smith says almond milk is, instead, a manufactured product."Milks as they're strictly defined as the product of mammalian reproduction and maternal care and so milk should really only apply to the secretions of mammals."Almond milks and the other milks that you can buy on the shelves are just simply white fluids that are given the name milk and they are not technically milks."However, demand for dairy was still rising too, she says.Food writer Niki Bezzant says demand for dairy milk alternatives is a growing international trend, with the global market set to reach $19.5 billion by 2020."is, in a way, more processed than dairy milk, it's got to be because to get milk out of almonds is not a natural thing."Almond milk, and other milk substitutes, were often sweetened and were low in nutrients, unless they're fortified, Bezzant says."If you're lactose intolerant then yes, it's good for you, because it's helping you not to have these unpleasant symptoms that you get from dairy."And if you're not?"It's not bad for you, but you're not necessarily getting the nutrients that you would get out of dairy milk."Consumer food writer Belinda Castles said almond milk was a triumph of marketing - far and away it's biggest ingredient was water."Some people would be quite horrified that some products only contain 2 percent almonds... if you made almond milk yourself, you'd get up around 12 percent, maybe 18 percent."So how do manufacturers get away with calling it 'milk'? Castle says it's because there's no particular food standard covering that. What the Australia-New Zealand food standards do say is that "plant-based milk alternatives" are usually only able to match milk for nutrients by adding vitamins and minerals…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Carol Hirschfeld gives flotation pods a try to see whether they could be an answer for those looking to de-stress. By Kate Pereyra-GarciaWatch a video segment from the episode hereOn the surface, flotation pods sound a bit wacky: enclosed bath tubs with 30 centimetres of water and a lot of Epsom salts.The water and room temperature are set at about 36°C - the average body temperature. You climb in, lie back and shut yourself off from the world, hopefully slipping into a state of mental and physical relaxation. At least, that's the idea.The pods were created by American John Lilly, in the 1950s. He called them sensory deprivation pods.He's a controversial scientist who took LSD and ketamine and also believed humans could speak to dolphins.But Anton Kuznetsov, the owner of Auckland-based Float Culture, said he became hooked after his first float and decided to open his own business.They're doing so well they're looking to expand, despite the $40,000 price tag of the float pods.He said several of their clients have been with them for years."Others just say the weight of the whole world fell off their shoulders, they felt great for days after their float and it's just changed their life."The scientific research on the potential benefits of flotation, however, is limited and, as Discover magazine puts it, "imperfect", given the small size of the studies done and the question over how to create a control group.Do you control, for example, for light, sound, water or temperature? And without proper controls, it's difficult to know whether the benefits claimed come from the floating, or some other factor.Back when Lilly was first experimenting in this area, it was described as the study of "sensory deprivation" and was associated with tales of attempts to brainwash or torture prisoners of war. But in the 1970s a new generation of social scientists renamed the experience REST (Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy).But the conundrum remains. What for some is bliss, for others may be torture.Despite claims of increased creativity, an easing of chronic pain and improved mental health, the research just isn't comprehensive. One study quoted as worthy of attention is a 2005 meta-analysis of 27 studies, which found floating was effective at reducing stress; seemingly more than relaxation exercises or slumping on the couch.Col, a client at Float Culture, said floating had a huge effect on his pain levels and openness to life."It took me quite a few floats to actually get past that baseline anxiety and actually relax…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Would you be better off eating food raw, rather than cooking it. I mean, who needs fire? By Kate Pereyra-GarciaRaw food advocates say food not heated above 40 degrees Celsius is more 'alive'. A raw food diet is a pretty extreme way of eating for those of us used to cooking dinner every night.The key word being cooking.Raw food advocates believe in not heating food above about 40 degrees Celsius. They also tend to be vegan, meaning they don't eat any animal meat or byproducts. It's a diet high in fruit, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.Which certainly sounds healthy.But Auckland University Professor David Cameron-Smith said there was no scientific evidence to support the idea that not cooking food was especially healthy."What current raw food relies upon is technology that's only been introduced in the last few years... so in the context of occasional food, raw food is fantastic; it opens up a whole new level of cuisine, it opens up paradigms around the use of things in completely different formats."It was just another eating fad, he said.Harnessing fire to cook was a "major leap forward for civilisation".Cooking also makes things more digestible, and allows us to eat things we couldn't otherwise, Prof Cameron-Smith said.Food writer Niki Bezzant said just because something was raw, didn't mean it was healthy."You're not going to lose weight by having a raw cheesecake instead of a cooked cheesecake," for example."The sweets and the deserts are the things that seem to get the most pick up... If that's the only thing that people adopt then they're probably not going to end up being that much healthier than if they just start to eat some more vegetables for example."however, raw food advocate, and business owner, Megan May said eating raw helped her to recover her own health after she became burnt out.She said she listened to her body to discover which foods worked for her and which didn't.As a chef, she'd been eating a lot of things she now says she was intolerant to."It was amazing how quickly you could feel a little bit of life coming back into me."Prof Cameron-Smith said an extreme approach to a raw diet could leave people at risk of becoming iron deficient, which affects mood and the ability to think clearly, but eating more fruits and vegetables was undoubtedly a good thing.Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

It's been a long time coming, but the long-awaited second season of Healthy or Hoax is on its way with new host Stacey Morrison.Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Stacey Morrison puts her body on the line to find out if coolsculpting - a non-surgical fat removal technique - can help you get the perfect figure. By Liz GartonSaddlebags, mummy tummies, bra pockets, double chins, hips, jibbly jobbly bits.There are so many terrible names for the fatty bits that hang over the top of our pants or wobble when we wave.Coolsculpting is a new(ish), non-invasive surgical technique which claims to remove these pockets of fat for good. Coolsculpting is the brand name given to cryolipolysis, the process of cooling fat cells which was invented by Rox Anderson and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, US, in 2009.Anderson, who is also a professor in dermatology at Harvard Medical School, said he was one of the first test subjects."I'm missing one of my love handles from having treated myself 10 years ago, and it's still really obvious."Cryolipolysis works by cooling fat tissue down to a temperature near zero degrees celsius. This causes the lipids (kind of like fat molecules) in the tissue to start to crystallize - they go from liquid to solid state - but the water does not. That produces stress on the cells that contain a lot of those fats and it induces the cells to die. Then the body naturally metabolises them away."So cryolipolysis as a treatment is very simple," said Anderson, "There's no drugs, there's no radiation, you just carefully cool tissue down to a temperature for a period of time that the cells that have a lot of fats in them are induced to die."Freezing your fat away sounds pretty cool, so we sent the new host of Healthy or Hoax - Stacey Morrison - off to give it a try at Prescription Skin Care in Ponsonby Road, Auckland.Asia Chylek has been working in appearance medicine for nearly a decade and is a registered nurse. She's done thousands of coolsculpting cycles."We say that you'll get about a 20 percent decrease in fat cells permanently," said Chylek.But it's not without it's downsides. She warns that post-treatment you can be slightly bruised, swollen and numb. The bruising and the swelling goes down after about a week but the numbness can stick around for about three weeks.There's also a 2 percent chance of nerve pain which can last about a week. Or you could be what Chylek calls a 'non responder'. Asia Chylek has only had one non-responder in five years.And then there's a very, very small chance of paradoxical hyperplasia. This is where the pocket of fat actually grows. Asia has never had a case of paradoxical hyperplasia…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Charcoal is credited with getting rid of gas, bloating, hangovers and generally helping us cleanse and detox. Healthy or Hoax finds out if the claims are backed up by science. By Liz GartonExperts say we're witnessing a hijacking with the current trend of putting activated charcoal in our foods, drinks and beauty and dental products.Activated charcoal is made by heating unactivated charcoal to a very high temperature in the presence of an inert gas.Professor Ian Shaw, Director of Biochemistry and Professor of Toxicology at the University of Canterbury, said this process creates lots of pores in the charcoal, which makes it have a very, very high surface area."The chemistry of the charcoal enables it to bind to many, many different sorts of molecules and with this huge surface area, it can bind a very large amount of chemical material. So if you put some charcoal into a liquid, for example, that might have some chemicals in it, then the chemicals will bind to the charcoal and remove them from that liquid."Which is one reason activated charcoal has long been used as a detoxifier."It looks like the Phoenicians in around about 400 BC actually made activated charcoal by heating charcoal in a fire to very high temperatures. And they use that powdered activated charcoal to purify their water," said Professor Shaw.And for many years toxicologists have used charcoal as a treatment for poisoning."So, the whole trend around this whole activated charcoal movement is basically it stems from the fact that in medical settings, activated charcoal has been used to treat overdose of drugs and poisoning and things like that," he said.But Dr Rajshri Roy says the idea of charcoal as a detoxifier has been hijacked by the food and beauty industry."So our body has organs that take care of the detoxing process. No particular food helps with detoxing. Your kidneys are going to do that, your lungs are going to do that, and your liver is going to do that," she said.And Professor Shaw goes even further."I'm really unhappy about just adding something that indiscriminately binds to so many things on the grounds that it will stop you getting exposed to toxic chemicals in your food," he said…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Studies show fasting could improve outcomes for a huge range of medical conditions... in mice. Do those benefits cross over to humans too? By Liz GartonAssociate Professor Alexander Tups from the Neuroendocrinology and Brain Health Centre at Otago University said fasting looks promising for treating certain autoimmune conditions, reducing rates of cancer, improving general gut health and brain function and mental health too."The most recent research suggests the body rejuvenates during fasting and that it increases lifespan," said Dr Tups."Another thing that has been show, is that these intermittent fasting periods can directly affect our brain. So, it can increase neurogenesis," he said, "We need to do more research to confirm this. But that would be really interesting because then it would also improve cognition and it could be beneficial to treat dementia, for example."And Dr Tups' own research suggests timing could be a factor."So we found that if we give food to certain times of the day, we actually have an effect on the hormone that regulates our body weight," he said.The hormone is leptin and it makes us eat less and burn our energy. Tups' research found that in the morning the hormone works really well."So it was around breakfast time to lunchtime," said Tups.Which would suggest eating over this time and then skipping dinner might be most effective.But again, this is research done in mice - so Dr Tups is unsure if it can be translated to humans.Professor Rachael Taylor, director of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre at Otago University was involved in the SWIFT study, which looked at different ways of sort of assisting people to lose weight.The subjects were able to choose which diet would suit them and many chose fasting."A lot of the people liked the idea of fasting," said Taylor, "They felt that it was going to be much simpler, but in reality, they found that fasting or the fasting days, not surprisingly, really quite difficult because they could only eat less than a quarter of their normal dietary intake."Taylor said generally speaking, a lot of women found fasting difficult to incorporate into their lives."Particularly if they were the main food provider in their households, they found it quite difficult to fast and actually cook for everyone else."Interestingly, the study did not find a lot of difference in the outcomes for the different monitoring systems nor the different diets…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Shakti Mats made a big splash when they arrived in New Zealand a few years ago. But does lying on thousands of tiny spikes improve our health or is it just a painful hoax? By Liz GartonThe Shakti Mat's arrival in New Zealand is a classic yarn.Jonathan Heslop and his university mate George Lill were travelling in Thailand, they were on a particularly yoga retreat style beach, when a man came along with one of these mats. The man explained what it was and although the pair were were skeptical, they gave it a try."It was one of those real 'wow' moments, of going; 'how do people not know about this?'," said Heslop.Two months later, back in Dunedin where they were studying, Lill thought there would be a market in New Zealand."And so about six months later we had 2000 of them arriving on our doorstep and all the money we had spent on them," laughs Heslop.Although Heslop wouldn't say how many mats they've sold since then, he pointed out the company placed 13th on the 2019 Deloitte Fast 50 list, with revenue growth of 340 percent over the last three years.The Shakti Mat looks like a doormat covered in thousands of tiny spikes."It's made from the same plastic that Lego is made from," said Heslop, "So if you've stood on Lego, you know how how hard that is."The idea is to lie or stand on the mat for 20 minutes or so, Heslop uses his mat almost everyday."In general people lie on it the very first time and they go 'ouch'. How is how is this supposed to be relaxing?," he said.But then: "You get this this change in sensation in your body it stops feeling sore and it starts feeling warm and tingly. Relaxing, you kind of feel like you're melting away into it."Heslop reckons it's like exercise - no pain, no gain. "The results, and the benefits are just so worth it. Generally the things that are most worthwhile to do take a little bit of willpower and discipline and some sacrifice."Edwina Nathan and Aggie Boxall have shakti mats at home.Nathan uses hers after work: "I sit at a computer so my arms and shoulders are forward so I'll often go home and take my shirt off and lie on it. It releases a lot of the stiffness."And in the morning. "It's good in the morning to get you going, so you just stand on it with no socks on and then just breathe," she said.Boxall found it "a bit prickly" at first, but now she loves it."After the first five minutes of just lying there, you feel the heat coming through and then you just relax on it," she said…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Turmeric is supposed to help a range of ailments from arthritis to Alzheimer's. But is this spice the real deal or just fool's gold? By Liz GartonIf you google 'health benefits of turmeric' you're going to come up with hundreds of articles proclaiming the spice as a new wonder drug.But that 'cure-all' tag should be a red-flag, according to food and nutrition writer Niki Bezzant.Bezzant told Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison that in the case of turmeric's health benefits "it's a case of the marketing getting way ahead of the research."She said there's ancient wisdom applying to this ingredient, it's been used in Ayurvedic Indian medicine and Chinese medicine for centuries."It's got a lot of history behind it," she said, "But there hasn't been any good, really good evidence come to light to show that it's truly beneficial.""Yet. That doesn't mean it won't."Food and Nutrition writer Niki Bezzant told Stacey Morrison there's a lot of ancient wisdom attached to turmericTurmeric lattes are particularly fashionable. Hannah Sutherland, owner of No Grainer in Mt Albert, describes the taste as: "like a sort of a spicy cinnamonny sweet drink more than a turmeric flavor. But it's kind of got memories of Christmas or something.""It's very popular because we get people who are on the wellness journey," said Sutherland, "So people like the blend we do and we get dedicated customers to the turmeric latte."Sutherland makes her turmeric latte paste from ground up turmeric, cinnamon, ginger and a little bit of black pepper for the curcumin absorption and it's the curcumin that's thought to be the active compound in turmeric.Hannah Sutherland said she has customers dedicated to her turmeric latte.Keith Singletary, Professor Emeritus of Nutrition from the University of Illinois, reviewed the findings from some of the more recent studies into turmeric's health benefits.His review was funded by McCormick, a US spice retailer, but he said it's 'debatable' that the science backs up claims turmeric is good for us.Singletary said pre-clinical studies - so that's in tissue or cell culture or animal models - over the last two or three decades turmeric has been shown to have a positive impact on oxidative stress and inflamed inflammatory response, which contribute to heart disease, diabetes, cancer and neurological disorders, like Alzheimer's.The problem, he said, is that we just don't take up the compound very well…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Can something make us feel better just by smelling nice? And if it can do that, could we get even more benefits from rubbing it on our skin or even eating it? By Liz GartonEssential oils have been used for thousands of years, but more recently we are seeing them used as home remedies for ailments, as skin care and even in recipes. The latter is a trend that is seriously concerning some experts."It's not something that's really designed to be ingested," food and nutrition writer Niki Bezzant told Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison. "(Even) aroma therapists are quite alarmed about this development."Bezzant said registered aromatherapists would very, very rarely recommend the use of oils to be ingested. And if they did, that would be only for a very short time and for very specific health concern.Niki Bezzant said an investigation in Australia last year resulted in an article warning about the dangers of ingesting essential oils."They quoted the New South Wales Poisons Information Center, who say essential oils should not be consumed even in tiny amounts. And you can cause seizures, nausea, vomiting and chronic exposure can potentially cause organ damage."So a lot of the stuff about putting drops of oil into your water or putting drops of oil into your peppermint slice or whatever, we would be really, really wise to stay away from," said Bezzant.The proliferation of multi-level marketing of essential oils online and through social media is problematic in many ways too."So they recruit people who can work from home and can promote and sell the oils to their friends. We're getting completely unqualified people recommending the use of these oils in ways that is not necessarily safe or in any way healthy.""If someone's trying to sell you something, just really be very, very wary of any kind of health or therapeutic claims that they make."MedSafe New Zealand has some specific warnings and there are some serious complications if you get it wrong.Using essential oilsJo Newsham is a Christchurch-based life coach and mother to three young children. But years (twenty-odd) ago she trained as a massage therapist and aromatherapist."I don't actively sell essential oils, but I do use them in my treatments as a form of therapy," she said.She also uses essential oils in her everyday life."I will use tea tree if we've got a little cut or a graze. If we've got sniffles I will use eucalyptus and peppermint. I know exactly what's in there, there's no synthetic chemicals…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Fermented foods have been around for longer than refrigeration, but recently they have developed a reputation for having numerous health benefits. We find out if that reputation is founded in reality. By Liz GartonThe popularity of kombucha and other fermented foods, like kefir, kimchi and tempeh, has risen on the back of research which shows gut health is closely linked to general, overall health."We carry around about two kilos of bugs, each of us, which is kind of gross, but kind of cool," food and nutrition writer Niki Bezzant told Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison, "Scientists used to think that those bugs were just sitting there benignly. Now what they know is that those bugs are very active and they can do a lot in our bodies and they are actually responsible for a whole lot to do with just about every aspect of our health."Bezzant said as well as a general health halo, probiotic and fermented foods also have this veneer of ancient, exotic wisdom because they've been used in many, many cultures for thousands of years.Food is fermented when bacteria or yeast pre-digest it and there are lots of different types of fermented foods.Dr Megan Rossi is a research fellow at King's College London and the author of Eat Yourself Healthy, a "bit of a bible to gut health."She said there are essentially three different 'mechanisms' for how fermented foods can be beneficial."Some fermented foods actually give us the live microbes, like kombucha," said Rossi, "Some just give off healthy chemicals and some break down other elements of foods we call anti-nutrients, which aren't necessarily dangerous but they reduce our ability to absorb some nutrients."It is not easy to tell if you have a healthy gut, but there are some clues.Dr Rossi has come up with a quick questionnaire which is also available on her website, The Gut Health Doctor, to help predict your gut health."One of the key ones is, are you having regular gut symptoms like constipation, diarrhea, bloating?"But Dr Rossi said just because you don't have those symptoms doesn't mean you have good gut health."So it's things like, how often are you getting sick? Are you really stressed? How much sleep are you having? Are you following a restrictive diet? Do you have family history of a different disease or are you on medications?"All of those factors combined really give us a more holistic idea of your gut health," she said…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

The new season of Healthy or Hoax is on its way. Stacey Morrison not only hosts the show, but also faces her fears to trial some of the latest health fads.Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Kim Kardashian made waist trainers popular and the recent Bridgerton Netflix series saw a bump in corset sales. Stacey Morrison discovers if squeezing our tummies into shape is healthy or just a very uncomfortable hoax.Waist trainers claim to help you lose weight and tone your tummy, but these corset-like throwbacks might actually be causing more harm than good.Kim Kardashian claims to give a waist trainer to all her friends who have recently had a baby. She loves them because they make her feel "snatched".Both of these comments are seriously flawed.The waist trainer claims to help you lose weight, tone your tummy and give your body an hourglass shape.Physiotherapist Susan Kohut said of the three claims only the last is likely and even that is problematic."Weight loss through heating an area is what they call thermogenesis," said Kohut, but working out with a waist trainer isn't causing thermogenesis."You might be sweating in your waist, but that's generalised body fluid that you're losing, not specifically fat off your middle."And if you think by wearing it you will want to eat less, think again.RNZ's Ellie Jay tried wearing a waist trainer for a week and while it might have improved her posture, it didn't reduce her waist size."It didn't so much change what I wanted to eat or how much I was eating. It did make me sit up a bit straighter. But it also did start to feel quite painful after a couple of hours," she told Stacey Morrison."There were a few days that I just thought, I can't do this at all. I can't bear it."And Kohut said toning is even less likely."Because muscles are toned through activity. All the tiny parts of the muscle have to move to actually get strengthened, so that doesn't happen passively. A garment can't do it for you," she said.While the waist trainer can squeeze your stomach into a trendy shape, the long-term outcome might not be worth it.The evidence on this goes back a long way, because the waist trainer is really just a new take on a much older device. The corset. And studies from a hundred years ago showed us just how good the corset was for our health.Claire Regnault, fashion historian and senior curator at Te Papa, said fainting is a well-known side effect of wearing a corset."There's lots of stories of people fainting at balls and things, because they had to breathe very shallowly and a little bit of exercise would exhaust ," explained Regnault…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

CBD beauty products are being hailed as a 'beauty game-changer' overseas, but they're still illegal here. Stacey Morrison finds out if we're missing a trick.Cannabidiol beauty products are illegal in New Zealand, but overseas they're being described as a 'beauty game-changer'.Lauded for their anti-inflamatory and antioxidant properties, some CBD products even have major celebrity backing, like Lord Jones' Happy Dance range made with Kristen Bell.But Professor Michelle Glass, head of pharmacology and toxicology at The University of Otago, is wary about jumping on this band-wagon."There are properties of CBD that suggest it might be quite good to apply on your skin," she told Stacey Morrison, "But there's very little to say that it actually is useful. So there's very few studies actually being done that are very conclusive.""Most of our beauty products have antioxidants and anti-inflammatory components in them. So it's reasonable to expect that it might be able to have an effect, we just haven't seen it."Glass said the preparation of the product will impact its effect, changing the oil used can make a huge difference."Also, in order to get the anti-inflammatory or antioxidant effects, you actually need to have quite high concentrations and a lot of the stuff that's on the market internationally have very low levels of CBD and is unlikely to have much effect on anything," she said.Had we voted in favour of legalising cannabis in the recent referendum, we might have seen these sorts of products on our shelves"The referendum was about recreational cannabis, but it would have put a lot more products just into the market as legal products and so there would have likely been CBD products as part of that because they would no longer be covered just under the Medicinal Cannabis Act," said Glass.But Professor Glass is much more inclined to hemp-oil based beauty products, which are legal in New Zealand."I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to avoid it," she said, "There's good evidence to suggest there's a lot of good stuff in them."But, at this stage, she would avoid CBD products if they were more readily available."My thinking is; this is an effective anti-epileptic drug, people are testing it in anxiety, psychosis and a range of other disorders and I wouldn't rub the medicines for any of those other things on my face," said Glass."If we want to believe it's a good medicine then you've got to believe it can do harm too."…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

In a classic case of 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger...' Stacey Morrison confronts her serious aversion to the cold and enters a cryotherapy chamber.In a classic case of 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger...' Stacey Morrison confronts her serious aversion to the cold and enters a cryotherapy chamber.Wim Hof is part of the reason cold immersion therapy has become the hottest wellness trend of recent years.His website claims his breathing technique along with daily ice baths can boost your immune system, improve your metabolism, relieve stress and improve mental health as well as a number of more specific claims around certain illnesses.One of his millions of followers is Black Fern Sarah Hirini.As well as doing ice baths for injury recovery, the international rugby player also just does daily cold immersion for general wellbeing."I suppose I fell in love with it straightaway and just the benefits that I felt from it," she told Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison.She said it resets her body to enable her to thrive throughout the day.Part of the charm for Hirini is the challenge."It's like a love/hate relationship," she said, "Every morning I'm like oh yeah, it's so good for me and then as soon as I go to hop in or turn on cold I'm like, oh, do I really want to do this? Is it really worth it?""There's constant questions in your mind but then you do it and get out and you're like, oh yeah, that was amazing."Cryotherapy isn't just one thing. The term encompasses ice baths and ice packs, but the most high-tech treatment involves dry ice and a cryo-therapy chamber.There is only one of these treatment facilities in New Zealand, on Auckland's North Shore.Three minutes in the cryo chamber at Cryo Health Solutions will cost about $70, but owner Jill Somerville recommends a series of visits.She said the freezing temperature causes receptors in the skin to react, creating a fight or flight-type response which results in blood being diverted to the vital organs. While the blood is sitting in your core it is getting pumped full of oxygen, enzymes and nutrients which then circulate back through the body as you warm up.Somerville told Stacey Morrison the treatment is good for people with muscle pain or injuries, sleeping problems or anyone looking for a bit of a general pick-me-up."Honestly almost everybody that has come in and tried it has felt some sort of benefit," said Somerville, "Usually within that first hour, you get that endorphin rush, so people feel very energetic. It's a little bit of a mood booster."…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Stacey Morrison finds out just how reliable home-based DNA tests for health and fitness really are.You can buy just about anything online these days, including the key to living your best life.Apparently.Online DNA tests which claim they can give you insights into how best you can stay healthy and keep fit are growing in popularity.There are dozens of options available and they cost anything from about $80 dollars for a simple health and fitness genetic test, to hundreds of dollars for tests that give more of a medical overview.Professor Stephen Robertson, the Cure Kids professor of paediatric genetics at the University of Otago, is really passionate about genomics and believes it holds the potential to sharpen medicine."I am continually surprised about the reach of genomics and what it can explain in healthcare," said Robertson.But he's sceptical of how much benefit there is to be had through home-based online DNA testing."Because that brings with it the limitations of technology and accuracy," he said.Robertson is also concerned about the fact the results are coming from an area where there is little regulation. He said there have been cases where DNA has been tested for things like the BRCA gene which is linked with breast cancer."And all of a sudden you find yourself with a potentially confronting situation which really hasn't been generated in an environment which we all feel trust in," he said."So that's where the rubber hits the road about whether this fascination we have with genetics and what it might hold for us in the future changes, from being recreational into something which can be very impactful and have a sharp edge."Robertson also said the understanding of our genes comes from testing of people of European extraction."So, for those of us in New Zealand with Polynesian or Māori ancestry, the fit is just completely unknown, there is genetic architecture there that we are ignorant of to an extreme degree."William Ferguson is a GP with several years experience of using genomics to help individualise treatment for some of his patients.He said the trick is in which genes are most useful. Ones that have common variants, which affect the underlying drivers of disease and that are well-researched, so you know you can alter their expression through diet, exercise and medicine."Because there's no point finding out about a gene you can't do a darn thing about," he said.Dr Ferguson said it is also useful to look at groups of genes as there is almost nothing to gain from looking at a single gene in isolation…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details