Forget all the others, hormone diets claim to be the secret to fast, easy weight loss. But are they really just preying on our insecurities? Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison finds out.

Can eating for your hormones help you lose weight?

When it comes to weight loss, everyone is looking for the silver bullet. Add in ageing and all of a sudden the tricks you used to lose a couple of kilos when you were 20 years old don't work anymore.

Could hormones be the key? Stacey Morrison finds out if hormone diets are healthy or just a hoax.

Kadambari Raghukumar, host of the RNZ podcast Here/Now, was sent a link to a diet marketed as a 'metabolic renewable programme' and thought she would give it a go.

"It sounds very attractive. I mean, how do you not click on that, right, 'metabolic renewal'? Renew is the most attractive word you can put out there," she says.

Raghukumar was asked a series of questions about her current weight, daily stress levels and how much exercise she does, with the end promise that she would find out how her hormones were working and then be given a diet that would kickstart her metabolism and help her lose weight.

Raghukumar was disappointed in the results, which labelled her a 'Hormone Type 1'.

"It said 'Hormone Type 1' is mixed signal hormones. But hang on a second, isn't everybody mixed signals at some point in their life? Your body's always throwing different things out to you. That just sounds a little too vague. I couldn't make much sense of it."

Raghukumar was told that this hormone type meant she could find it easy to lose weight and gain more energy.

"But it also told me certain things that I, to an extent, already had known," she says.

"It gave me the rundown as to how you can reduce cortisol levels, which is invariably related to stress and I found that quite, just really generic. It doesn't really take a test to know that about anybody's life really, the more stressed you are, the more likely you are to gain weight."

In the end, Raghukumar decided the diet wasn't worth it.

"I stopped before I could even get to the stage where I was going to subscribe to the programme.

"I just thought, 'do I have to sit here and watch an infomercial of this'? A man with a very glamorous name for a doctor talking to me in a very, very heavy American accent telling me what I can do to change my life? I couldn't really follow through with it."

Could a hormone diet work?…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Love them or hate them, could mushrooms be the key to good health. Stacey Morrison focuses on functional fungi in the latest episode of Healthy or Hoax.

Functional fungi are the hot new thing in health and wellness circles. Many would say all fungi are functional, but in this case it refers to mushroom powders and supplements which some believe have a huge variety of benefits.

In this episode of Healthy or Hoax, host Stacey Morrison investigates functional fungi.

There are plenty of New Zealand-based companies getting in on the mushroom supplements game, offering products that claim to boost gut health and immune support, increase oxygen uptake and ease fatigue, and improve heart health and sleeplessness.

To find out more about fungi in general, Healthy or Hoax producer Liz Garton attended the annual fungal foray to talk to some mushroom enthusiasts, including Bevan Weir, research leader in mycology and bacteriology at Maanaki Whenua / Landcare Research.

Weir says there is no strong evidence for many of the claims around fungi supplements having amazing healing powers.

"But there's a lot of active research going on, so yeah, there's there's always the possibility," he says.

Weir says even if you take out the unproven health benefits, mushrooms are good for you, especially if you're using them in place of meat products with high levels of cholesterol and animal fats.

"We really don't know if you're thinking about any sort of like specific activity, but I think mushrooms in general are just a really great thing.

"If you can build it into meals and eat it and if it has some great effects as well, that's just a bonus."

Alexander James Bradshaw from the Natural History Museum of Utah, who was in Aotearoa doing postdoctoral research, also attended the foray.

He says it's likely there are many medicinal compounds in a wide variety of different mushrooms. Lion's Mane mushrooms, for example contain chemical compounds called hericenones and erinacines.

"They are starting to come out in the literature as possibly being neurotropic, so actually having the ability to make healthier brain connections," he says.

But he warns that the research is in its infancy. And although many companies are already capitalising on the early findings, their claims should always be taken with a grain of salt.

"My biggest problem with many of is that they are often sold as panacea."

Dr Michael Howard practices emergency medicine in Northland and has a PhD in microbiology and immunology. He hopes that the folklore around mushrooms will soon be proven by science…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Stacey Morrison puts the spotlight on light therapy for anti-aging and acne in the episode of Healthy or Hoax.

Healthy or Hoax host Stacey Morrison puts the spotlight on the latest in anti-aging skin treatments - light therapy.

The history of light therapy

Denise Ryan, vice president of global brand management for BioPhotas, (the company that manufactures the Celluma light therapy device), says light therapy was "sort of a serendipitous or a accidental discovery".

In the 1960s some scientists who were researching whether laser therapy could reduce cancer tumours in rats found an odd side effect. While it turned out the light was at too low a level to impact the cancer, the rats wounds healed faster than expected and their hair grew faster and shinier.

"They knew they had discovered something and that something turned out to be low level light therapy or as we call it today, photobiomodulation," says Ryan.

Then in the 1980s NASA began experimenting with low light for stimulating cell activity in plants and when they found it helped the plants to grow, they thought they would see what it did to human tissue.

What is it actually doing to us?

What low-level light therapy does to human cells is is similar to photosynthesis, Ryan says.

"When you send specific wavelengths of light into human tissues at very specific, low doses, within a certain range, human cells are capable of absorbing the light and converting that energy into cellular energy."

That energy helps compromised or damaged cells get back on track and when used in, for example, fibroblast cells which generate the collagen and elastin, it helps keep our skin looking plump, she says.

"The NASA research showed us that it helps tissue to heal and repair at about 3 to 6 times the normal rate.

"And that's for the average person. And the healthier you are to begin with, the faster you might see results. But honestly, everybody gets to see your results provided the device they're using has been designed to follow the known scientific parameters for effectiveness."

What are the parameters?

Light wavelengths are actually measured in nanometers and Ryan says it is a very narrow segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that has the ability, when delivered in the correct doses, to be absorbed by human tissue and used to generate this extra energy.

That range is roughly between 400 and 1000 nanometers and includes the colours blue, red and near-infrared.

And to be therapeutic, that low-level light needs to be emitted at a rate of between two to 10 joules per centimetre squared.

What are the risks of light therapy?…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Dreaming of taping a snorer's mouth shut? Struggling to snooze? Stacey Morrison finds out if mouth taping, sleep syncing and the latest apps and technology could be the secret to getting a good night's rest.

We spend a third of our lives sleeping and yet so many of us have trouble with it.

So when we hear about new theories on how we might improve our sleep, it's not surprising that people want to try them out. This week on Healthy or Hoax, Stacey Morrison finds out whether sleep syncing using the latest apps and technology could improve our wellbeing and whether taping your mouth shut will help with the biggest barrier to a good night's sleep - snoring.

What is sleep syncing?

Professor Leigh Signal from the Sleep/Wake Research Centre at Massey University is an expert in fatigue management and sleep health. She says sleep syncing is really just about understanding that you've got a circadian biological clock and then aligning your sleep pattern or your sleep schedule with that clock.

While the term "sleep syncing" may be new to some, sleep scientists have been trying to spread this kind of message for years.

"The crux of it is spot-on scientifically," Signal says.

"There are some slightly off base messages happening as well, though, so I think it's good to explore it a little bit more."

Signal says the human body's amazing circadian biological clock helps to keep us in step with the day/night cycle.

While we are all hardwired to sleep at night and stay awake during the day, that doesn't mean all our clocks are ticking away in time.

"I am slightly more an evening type person, so I like to go to bed a little later," Signal says.

"Most of us are, somewhere kind of in the middle, although there are a few people out there that are extreme morning or evening types."

How do you sync your sleep?

Essentially, it's about having a regular bedtime and a regular waking time.

"In an ideal world, perhaps, so we should be going to bed when we feel sleepy, and we should be waking up, when we naturally wake," Signal says.

"But many of us also have jobs that don't allow us to do that. And then we have teens, for example, who just biologically, their circadian system has shifted during puberty so that they can't go to sleep until later, and then they want to wake up later. But that's not how the school system currently works."

Generally speaking, we tend to sync our sleep with our work/life schedules rather than our circadian rhythms.

Can technology help?…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Could walking backwards be the key to taking your fitness forwards? In this episode of Healthy or Hoax, Stacey Morrison laces up her sneakers to find out.

One of the slightly bizarre new fitness trends doing the rounds is retro walking. Basically, walking backwards.

Stacey Morrison, host of RNZ's Healthy or Hoax podcast, laced up her trainers to find out if the rewards of reverse exercise outweigh the risks.

Why walk backwards?

YouTube experts and fitness gurus suggest walking backwards is a really good way to get fitter faster, to strengthen muscles and even improve brain health. But what does the science tell us?

Professor Winston Byblow, director of the movement neuroscience laboratory, says health scientists are often are looking for ways to help people move better and recover after certain types of injuries or conditions.

"Retro walking is interesting because it is really combining two elements. One is walking, which has well-known benefits. And the other one is that it prevents an additional challenge by demanding more attention. I mean, you can imagine that, if you try walking backwards, the first problem you run into is you can't see where you're going."

Is walking backwards different to walking forwards?

Pablo Ortega Auriol, a research fellow at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, is an expert in the biomechanics of walking. He says certain aspects of backwards walking, such as how the segments of the body move, look really similar but the actual difference is in the muscle activity.

"Since we have a cognitive load in our muscles activate more with a little bit of a different timing than when we work forward."

Simply put, because you have to think about what you are doing when you walk backwards, your muscles activate more.

While he hasn't seen any long-term studies on retro walking, he says that appears to be what happens in the beginning and it seems that this actually helps to improve balance in certain population.

Retro walking in action

In order to illustrate muscle activation during reverse walking, Stacey hopped on the state-of-the-art treadmill in the movement neuroscience laboratory.

Ortega Auriol points out how when you are walking forwards, the calf muscles, or gastrocnemius, propels you forwards and you do not have to think about it.

"Most of the motor pathways involving walking are present in the spinal cord, not actually in the brain," he says…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

To kick Season 4 of Healthy or Hoax off with a bang - or a gong - Stacey Morrison heads off for some sound healing. Can sound really fix what ails you? Let's find out.

The idea of using sound for healing seems to have been around for a very long time. But what does it all mean and what does it do?

Stacey Morrison, host of RNZ's Healthy or Hoax podcast, started by joining sound healing teacher and practitioner Kata Mikecz to have her first sound therapy session.

What happens in a sound therapy session?

Mikecz says she usually assesses a client's body with her instruments before deciding which to use.

"I usually use them intuitively, so there's no set like script," Mikecz says.

"I do whatever I feel drawn to."

She warns that the sounds can sometimes be painful and encourages Stacey to speak up if she's uncomfortable.

"For some people they experience like, you know, a tension in the shoulder or in the muscles. Usually, I recommend to people to stay with the sound, even if it's uncomfortable and feelings coming up, because it means that it started to shift something in your mind or body. So, it's great to stay with the sound, but you don't need to just bear it," Mikecz says.

Before beginning, Mikecz asks Stacey to set an intention or a positive outcome to focus on during the session. Breathing and visualisation exercises come next.

The session lasts 40 minutes and involves Mikecz moving around Stacey with a variety of instruments. These include tuning forks (which have set frequencies), to Himalayan bowls and gongs (which have no precise frequencies or tones), then on to drums and Tingsha cymbals for grounding and dispersing energy.

People can often experience some kind of release, such as crying or having different feelings, during a session. Mikecz says people usually feel relaxed and at ease afterwards.

How much does it cost?

A sound healing session is roughly the same price as a massage.

How does sound therapy work?

Mikecz says sound healing works through sympathetic resonance; everything has a vibration, but sometimes external influences can upset that vibration or frequency. Sound healing helps bring everything back into balance, she says, and sympathetic resonance can also retrain the frequency of brain activity. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Stacey Morrison takes a look at current health and wellbeing trends and finds out if they're really good for you. In season four Stacey asks the experts about hormone diets, light therapy, sound healing, sleep syncing and mouth taping, reverse walking and functional fungi.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Stacey Morrison find out the best way to increase our collagen and keep our skin looking healthy and radiant.

There's no doubt collagen plays a key role in keeping our bodies healthy. The question is, how do we get more of it?

Dr Louise Reiche, head of the Dermatological Society of New Zealand said it gives support and structure to a lot of the different components of our bodies.

" helps to enable us to move and to have strength," she said, "Otherwise we would be jellylike."

Unfortunately, as we age, we tend to produce less collagen and that makes our skin appear less firm.

There are many different ways of increasing collagen being touted at the moment, from social influencers like Khloe Kardashian joining up with NZ company Dose & Co to promote collagen supplements through to sticking needles in your face.

We sent RNZ reporter Gill Bonnett along to The Cosmetic Clinic in downtown Auckland to give microneedling a go. Her beauty therapist, Sam, explained that microneedling is about creating micro-injuries which send the body into healing mode.

"These amazing little enzymes that grow inside our skin go into overdrive making collagen and elastin. Their main thing they're trying to do is heal the skin tissue, but a byproduct of all those things is rejuvenation, we get skin tightening, you get plumpness."

There are other treatments that do a similar thing, but microneedling is at the less invasive end of the treatment spectrum.

"People literally come in their lunchtime and they can go back to work afterwards," said Sam, "They'll be a bit pink, but there's definitely no extensive downtime."

Dr Angela Hou is a fourth year dermatology resident at George Washington University. In 2017, she reviewed the various microneedling studies available.

"So we found that microneedling seemed overall to be effective and a fairly safe option for various dermatologic conditions," said Hou, "Most of the studies so far have been fairly small or they haven't been randomized controlled studies, but in the studies that have been done so far, it seems to work well with good results."

The Cosmetic Clinic uses the latest microneedling technology, but it costs nearly $300 dollars a go and Sam recommends at least 6 treatments for the best results.

Many different treatments fall under the microneedling banner, but Sam warned that cheaper options might not necessarily yield the same results.

And Dr Reiche had a few warnings of her own. She said there is some evidence that microneedling might accelerate aging later on…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Stacey Morrison discovers whether a virtual gastric band is as good as the actual physical one.

Imagine if imagining weight loss could make it happen.

Virtual Gastric Banding (VGB) has been around for several years the idea is that you are put in a hypnotic state and convinced that you have a band around your stomach.

Interestingly, the surgical equivalent to this has been deemed ineffective and is no longer recommended here in New Zealand.

Dr Peng Du, who is on the Gastrointestinal Research Group at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, said gastric banding was for a long time perceived as a relatively low risk surgery as it is reversible.

But the surgery is no longer recommended after long term studies showed that patients did not achieve long term weight loss.

"Imagine tying a piece of string around a very slippery balloon that sometimes inflates and sometimes deflates. It's very hard to keep it on the stomach," said Du, "And patients who have these bands tied around their stomach sometimes could have quite severe reflux. So when you weigh the outcome against the cost and complications, I guess the math just doesn't add up."

There are two other types of gastric surgery for weightloss; the gastric sleeve which involves chopping part of the stomach out and the gastric bypass which involves joining the intestine to the top of the stomach. Both of these surgeries are irreversible and hard to get access to.

And Dr Bryan Betty, the Medical Director of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, said patients who are overweight either have to meet very strict criteria for publicly-funded surgery or they can go private, which at a cast of roughly $25,000 dollars isn't cheap.

"Generally we'd start by focusing on things like diet and exercise, the basics of trying to lose weight," said Betty.

Then he said they would look at things like access to other services, such as a dietician, food addicts support networks, health coaches or occasionally a psychologist.

Weight loss medication is an option too, and while it can kick-start weightloss, it's not a long-term solution.

And after all of that, there is bariatric surgery.

"I've had a patient or two who have actually travelled overseas to Thailand or Mexico to get it done and then come back to New Zealand," said Betty.

What is not often recommended as part of this process is virtual gastric banding or hypotherapy for weightloss…

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