Beware of danger of taking selfies

Lebron James (basketball), Shaun White (snowboarding) and Caroline Wozniacki (tennis) have one thing in common: They’re notorious selfie-takers.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with taking selfies. In fact, as Dr. Oz has pointed out, sometimes they’re downright diagnostic.

If you or a friend notices that you have yellowed eyes, you could uncover hepatitis or another liver disease, and seeing yellowish spots on your eyelids, called xanthelasma, can alert you to fat deposits that may indicate a risk for heart disease. But selfies can be health hazards, too.

From 2011 to 2017, over 250 people worldwide died while taking a selfie.

So let’s stick with selfies that are safe and delightful. Did you know there are a lot of online breastfeeding selfies, called brelfies (on Instagram at #brelfies)? No one’s going to get hurt doing that — as long as you don’t drop the phone on the baby.

Beware big sugar

The music industry is a big fan of added sugar. Ranker lists 97 song titles containing the word: The Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” comes in at No. 1; Beyonce’s “Sugar Mama” is the last on the list.

The sugar industry is equally enthusiastic about its product. There’s added sugar in around 68 percent of processed and packaged foods.

Despite solid scientific info on how damaging added sugars are to your health — they contribute to diabetes, obesity, cardio woes, dementia, a lousy sex life, bodywide inflammation associated with arthritis, wrinkles and more — you still hear about supposedly science-based “reports” that push back against efforts to reduce added sugar consumption in our food chain.

Well, a new study reveals how Big Sugar manages to get these “research findings” into the news. Researchers looked at over 17,000 pages of recent emails between academics at U.S. universities and senior figures at an organization called the International Life Science Institute, or ILSI.

Available through Freedom of Information requests, the correspondence showed that this nonprofit, founded by a former Coca-cola vice president, is actually a tool for Big Sugar. As one email from ILSI leadership put it, the new U.S. guidelines bolstering child and adult education on limiting sugar intake are a “real disaster!”

So, until July 1, 2021, when mandates kick in to disclose added sugars on every nutrition label, be extra careful to avoid sugared-up foods.

Email questions for Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen to youdocsdaily@sharecare. com.