Health News Flash

10 Reasons Not to Skimp on Sleep

2008-11-12T06:20:00.000-08:00

Too busy to go to bed? Having trouble getting quality sleep once you do? Your health may be at risk.
By Sarah Baldauf, U.S. News & World Report

You may literally have to add it to your to-do list, but scheduling a good night's sleep could be one of the smartest health priorities you set. It's not just daytime drowsiness you risk when shortchanging yourself on your seven to eight hours. Possible health consequences of getting too little or poor sleep can involve the cardiovascular, endocrine, immune and nervous systems. In addition to letting life get in the way of good sleep, between 50 and 70 million Americans suffer from a chronic sleep disorder—insomnia or sleep apnea, say—that affects daily functioning and impinges on health. Consider the research:

1) Less may mean more. For people who sleep under seven hours a night, the fewer zzzz's they get, the more obese they tend to be, according to a 2006 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report. This may relate to the discovery that insufficient sleep appears to tip hunger hormones out of whack. Leptin, which suppresses appetite, is lowered; ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, gets a boost.

2) You're more apt to make bad food choices. A study published in the October 15, 2008 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that people with obstructive sleep apnea or other severely disordered breathing while asleep ate a diet higher in cholesterol, protein, total fat, and total saturated fat. Women were especially affected.

3) Diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance, its precursor, may become more likely. A 2005 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people getting five or fewer hours of sleep each night were 2.5 times more likely to be diabetic, while those with six hours or fewer were 1.7 times more likely.

4) The ticker is put at risk. A 2003 study found that heart attacks were 45 percent more likely in women who slept for five or fewer hours per night than in those who got more.

5) Blood pressure may increase. Obstructive sleep apnea, for example, has been associated with chronically elevated daytime blood pressure, and the more severe the disorder, the more significant the hypertension, suggests the 2006 IOM report. Obesity plays a role in both disorders, so losing weight can ease associated health risks.

6) Auto accidents rise. As stated in a 2007 report in the New England Journal of Medicine, nearly 20 percent of serious car crash injuries involve a sleepy driver—and that's independent of alcohol use.

7) Balance is off. Older folks who have trouble getting to sleep, who wake up at night, or are drowsy during the day could be 2 to 4.5 times more likely to sustain a fall, found a 2007 study in the Journal of Gerontology.

8) You may be more prone to depression. Adults who chronically operate on fumes report more mental distress, depression, and alcohol use. Adolescents suffer, too: One survey of high school students found similarly high rates of these issues. Middle schoolers, too, report more symptoms of depression and lower self-esteem.

9) Kids may suffer more behavior problems. Research from an April issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that children who are plagued by insomnia, short duration of sleeping, or disordered breathing with obesity, for example, are more likely to have behavioral issues like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

10) Death's doorstep may be nearer. According to three large studies published in the journals Sleep and the Archives of General Psychiatry, people over age 30 who slept five hours or less per night had approximately a 15 percent greater risk of dying—regardless of the cause—over the periods studied, which ranged from six to 14 years.

Book: Fast Food Nation

2008-08-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

Fast Food Nation
The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
By Eric Schlosser

So, What’s in that Happy Meal Besides the Cheap Toy?

2008-08-17T14:21:00.000-07:00

Written by Beth Bader

Published on February 12th, 2008

Ever wonder what’s really in your fast food meal? Here’s the ingredients list for a Happy Meal that contains nuggets, fries and a Hi-C beverage:

White boneless chicken, water, food starch-modified, salt, chicken flavor (autolyzed yeast extract, salt, wheat starch, natural flavoring (botanical source), safflower oil, dextrose, citric acid, rosemary), sodium phosphates, seasoning (canola oil, mono- and diglycerides, natural extractives of rosemary). Battered and breaded with: water, enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, food starch-modified, salt, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium lactate), spices, wheat starch, whey, corn starch. Prepared in vegetable oil ((may contain one of the following: Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, partially hydrogenated corn oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness), dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent). Water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sucrose, citric acid, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), potassium benzoate (to protect taste), modified food starch, natural flavors (vegetable source), glycerol ester of wood rosin, yellow 6, brominated vegetable oil, red 40. Potatoes, vegetable oil (partially hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor (wheat and milk derivatives)*, citric acid (preservative), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), dimethylpolysiloxane (antifoaming agent)), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil ((may contain one of the following: Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, partially hydrogenated corn oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness), dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent).

Wow. Amidst the few recognizable food items and the really-bad-for-you hydrogentated oils, what is all that other stuff? Get the answer after the jump.

Those ingredients are food additives. Additives are chemical compounds that are used to enhance or preserve (enhance being a relative term) color, texture, flavor and shelf life of a manufactured food. Some additives are safe, at least as far as the FDA is concerned, in small quantities. However, there are many that just don’t belong in food despite what the FDA says.

In at least one case, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services contradicts the FDA on the safety of an additive.BHA, BUTYLATED HYDROXYANISOLE , and BHT, or BUTYLATED HYDROXYTOLUENE, are both used to prevent oils from going rancid, oils such as those used in frying. BHA is considered to be “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” Testing of BHT is unclear whether or not it may be a carcinogen as well, and residues of this chemical have been found in human fat stores. Despite the Department of Health and Human Services findings, the FDA continues to allow BHA to be used. You can find both of these substances in the sausage patties of a fast food breakfast sandwich.

TBHQ, or TERT-BUTYLHYDROQUINONE is used as an antioxidant for unsaturated vegetable oils and animal fats. It can be used in combination with BHA. It is added to a wide range of foods, with highest limit permitted for frozen fish. It is used to enhance storage life. For industrial use, TBHQ is used as a stabilizer and is added to varnishes, lacquers, resins, and oil field additives.

In high doses,TBHQ led to stomach tumors and damage to DNA for lab animals . Prolonged exposure to TBHQ may cause cancer. While this is for high doses and lab rats, I have trouble with the idea that something you can only handle with protective clothing, per the Material Safety Data Sheet, is going in my food. You can find TBHQ in a wide variety of fast food menu items, especially anything fried or cooked in oil.

YELLOW 6 is the third most common food coloring. Industry-sponsored tests showed that this dye caused tumors of the adrenal gland and kidney in the lab animals. The dye is often contaminated by carcinogens. The FDA reviewed this information and concluded that there is no risk to humans.

PROPYL GALLATE has not been thoroughly tested. Initial studies suggest a linkage with cancer. It is used as a preservative in meats like sausage, vegetable oil, fried potatoes, chicken soup base and even chewing gum.

Here are a few more “ingredients” in your fast food, and other manufactured food products:

Sodium- and tetrasodium pyrophosphate, a “slightly toxic” food additive used as a thickening agent. You can find this in coffee creamer and other foods like marshmallows and some chicken nuggets. Define “slightly toxic?” Is it just slightly bad for you? Or just not even remotely good for you?

Polydimethylsiloxane is used as an “anti-foaming” agent in fried foods. It is thought to be relatively safe. It is also used in the manufacture of items like Silly Putty, silicone grease, breast implants. It can be used to treat head lice.

Sodium hexametaphosphate is used as an additive to promote stability. It is also used in the manufacture of water softening agents and detergents.

Would you like to learn more about food additives? The Center for Science in the Public Interest has a helpful list of the most concerning food additives. Once you’ve read the list, you can find those same ingredients in these fast food menus; menu, menu, menu (click nutrition guide, then ingredient statement).

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lovejahlive said on February 12th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

That’s why they taste so good!
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Alli said on February 12th, 2008 at 1:42 pm

Your comment on something that “requires protective clothing” as per the MSDS does not impress me. EVERYTHING requires protective clothing according to the MSDS. Even plain distilled water.

That said, it’s shameful that people think that chicken nuggets and other fast food is acceptable to feed their children. For goodness’ sake, feed them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! It’s MUCH more nutritious, and CHEAPER, too!
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Kim said on February 12th, 2008 at 4:05 pm

To Sharon’s comment about the commercial where the kids were trying to pronounce the ingredients- I believe it was a commercial for Breyer’s ice cream, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

I decided to get healthy and lose weight and my whole family got carried along with me- we don’t do fast food anymore. (I’ve lost almost 50 pounds, and so far it’s staying off.) This just reinforces that I made the right choice!
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5
Jane Hersey said on February 12th, 2008 at 8:44 pm

For more than 30 years the non-profit Feingold Association has been helping parents find food their children enjoy, but minus the nasty additives. See http://www.feingold.org
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6
Katy said on February 13th, 2008 at 11:36 am

Back when I was a kid in the 1970s, I remember my sister telling me that my beloved McDonalds shake was made of plastic. I guess she wasn’t that far off.

I haven’t eaten at a McDonalds in over 20 years.
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7
Author photo Beth Bader said on February 13th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

That’s funny. Katy, perhaps you should send your sister a “Thank you!” Around our house, the last bit of fast food we would eat was Taco Bell, no other ones ever. Then, I read Fast Food Nation, and all the fast food went for good.
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8
Kendra Holliday said on February 13th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

OH. MY. GOD. That list is quite the mouthful.

Guess how many times my 7 yr old has had a Happy Meal? Zero.

Yes I’m bragging.
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9
Author photo Lee Welles said on February 13th, 2008 at 4:56 pm

You can put that to music! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDfxHgwkRTE&feature=related (Ignore the transformers video)

If you want to see the original video with audio done by a fan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT9VHA88Fcg&feature=related

Let me know if you end up humming this all day tomorrow!
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10
Alternative Fuels Now » So, What’s in that Happy Meal Besides the Cheap Toy? said on February 15th, 2008 at 1:01 am

[...] original news source Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

MSG (a slow poison)

2008-08-17T13:37:00.000-07:00

MSG
The food additive MSG (Mono-Sodium Glutamate) is a slow poison. MSG
hides behind 25 or more names, such as Natural Flavoring.' MSG is even in
your favorite coffee from Tim Horton's and Starbucks coffee shops!

I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive
obesity epidemic, and so did a friend of mine, John Erb. He was a research
assistant at the University of Waterloo in Ontario , Canada , and spent
years working for the government. He made an amazing discovery while
going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called The Slow
Poisoning of America .

In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating
obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies.
No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so scientists have to create
them. They make these creatures morbidly obese by injecting them with
MSG when they are first born.

The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates, causing rats
(and perhaps humans) to become obese. They even have a name for the
fat rodents they create: 'MSG-Treated Rats.'

When I heard this, I was shocked. I went into my kitchen and checked
the cupboards and the refrigerator. MSG was in everything -- the Campbell 's
soups, the Hostess Doritos, the Lays flavored potato chips, Top Ramen,
Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper, Heinz canned gravy, Swanson frozen
prepared meals, and Kraft salad dressings, especially the 'healthy low-fat' ones.

The items that didn't have MSG marked on the product label had
something called 'Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein,' which is just another
name for Monosodium Glutamate.

It was shocking to see just how many of the foods we feed our
children everyday are filled with this stuff. MSG is hidden under many
different names in order to fool those who read the ingredient list, so that
they don't catch on. (Other names for MSG are 'Accent, 'Aginomoto,'
'Natural Meat Tenderizer,' etc.)

But it didn't stop there.

When our family went out to eat, we started asking at the restaurants
what menu items contained MSG. Many employees, even the managers, swore
they didn't use MSG.

But when we ask for the ingredient list, which they grudgingly
provided, sure enough, MSG and Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein were everywhere.

Burger King, McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell, every restaurant -- even
the sit-down eateries like TGIF, Chili's, Applebee's, and Denny's -- use MSG
in abundance. Kentucky Fried Chicken seemed to be the WORST offender:
MSG was in every chicken dish, salad dressing. and gravy. No wonder I loved
to eat that coating on the skin -- their secret spice was MSG!

So why is MSG in so many of the foods we eat? Is it a preservative,
or a vitamin?

Not according to my friend John Erb. In his book The Slow Poisoning
of America , he said that MSG is added to food for the addictive effect it
has on the human body.

Even the propaganda website sponsored by the food manufacturers lobby
group supporting MSG explains that the reason they add it to food is to
make people eat more.

A study of the elderly showed that older people eat more of the foods
that it is added to. The Glutamate Association lobbying group says eating
more is a benefit to the elderly, but what does it do to the rest of us?

'Betcha can't eat [just] one,' takes on a whole new meaning where MSG
is concerned! And we wonder why the nation is overweight!

MSG manufacturers themselves admit that it addicts people to their
products. It makes people choose their product over others, and makes
people eat more of it than they would if MSG wasn't added.

Not only is MSG scientifically proven to cause obesity, it is an addictive
substance. Since its introduction into the American food supply fifty years ago,
MSG has been added in larger and larger doses to the pre-packaged meals,
soups, snacks, and fast foods we are tempted to eat everyday.

The FDA has set no limits on how much of it can be added to food.
They claim it's safe to eat in any amount. But how can they claim it's safe
when there are hundreds of scientific studies with titles like these:

'The monosodium glutamate (MSG) obese rat as a model for the study of
exercise in obesity.' Gobatto CA, Mello MA, Souza CT , Ribeiro IA. Res
Commun Mol Pathol Pharmacol. 2002.

'Adrenalectomy abolishes the food-induced hypothalamic serotonin
release in both normal and monosodium glutamate-obese rats.' Guimaraes
RB, Telles MM, Coelho VB, Mori C, Nascimento CM, Ribeiro. Brain Res Bull.
2002 Aug.

'Obesity induced by neonatal monosodium glutamate treatment in
spontaneously hypertensive rats: An animal model of multiple risk factors.'
Iwase M, Yamamoto M, Iino K, Ichikawa K, Shinohara N, Yoshinari Fujishima.
Hypertens Res. 1998 Mar.

'Hypothalamic lesion induced by injection of monosodium glutamate in
suckling period and subsequent development of obesity.' Tanaka K,
Shimada M, Nakao K Kusunoki. Exp Neurol. 1978 Oct.

No, the date of that last study was not a typo; it was published in
1978. Both the 'medical research community' and 'food manufacturers' have
known about the side effects of MSG for decades.

Many more of the studies mentioned in John Erb's book link MSG to
diabetes, migraines and headaches, autism, ADHD, and even Alzheimer's.

So what can we do to stop the food manufactures from dumping this
fattening and addictive MSG into our food supply and causing the obesity
epidemic we now see?

Several months ago, John Erb took his book and his concerns to one of
the highest government health officials in Canada .
While he was sitting in the government office, the official told him,
'Sure, I know how bad MSG is. I wouldn't touch the stuff.' But this
top-level government official refuses to tell the public what he knows.

The big media doesn't want to tell the public either, fearing issues
with their advertisers. It seems that the fallout on the fast food industry
may hurt their profit margin. The food producers and restaurants have
been addicting us to their products for years, and now we are paying
the price for it. Our children should not be cursed with obesity caused
by an addictive food additive.

But what can I do about it? I'm just one voice! What can I do to
stop the poisoning of our children, while our governments are insuring
financial protection for the industry that is poisoning us?

This message is going out to everyone I know in an attempt to tell
you the truth that the corporate-owned politicians and media won't tell you.

The best way you can help to save yourself and your children from
this drug-induced epidemic is to forward this article to everyone.
With any luck, it will circle the globe before politicians can pass the legislation
protecting those who are poisoning us.

The food industry learned a lot from the tobacco industry. Imagine if
big tobacco had a bill like this in place before someone blew the whistle
on nicotine?

If you are one of the few who can still believe that MSG is good for
us and you don't believe what John Erb has to say, see for yourself. Go
to the National Library of Medicine at www.pubmed.com Type in the
words 'MSG Obese' and read a few of the 115 medical studies that appear.

We the public do not want to be rats in one giant experiment, and we
do not approve of food that makes us into a nation of obese, lethargic,
addicted sheep, feeding the food industry's bottom line while waiting for
the heart transplant, the diabetic-induced amputation, blindness, or other
obesity-induced, life-threatening disorders.

With your help we can put an end to this poison. Do your part in
sending this message out by word of mouth, e-mail, or by distribution of
this printout to your friends all over the world and stop this 'Slow
Poisoning of Mankind' by the packaged food industry.

Blowing the whistle on MSG is our responsibility, so get the word out.

Association of Monosodium Glutamate Intake With Overweight in Chinese Adults: The INTERMAP Study.

KFC INGREDIENT LIST

TACO BELL® Ingredient Statement

McDonald's USA Ingredients Listing for Popular Menu Items

The truth about the cell-phone–cancer link

2008-08-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

The Cell Tolls for Thee
The truth about the cell-phone–cancer link and what it means for you and your kids
By Julie A. Evans, Best Life

When Vini Khurana, PhD, an Australian (and Mayo Clinic–trained) neurosurgeon, announced that the link between cell-phone use and cancer was irrefutable--the result of his analysis of more than 100 studies--it set off alarm bells around the world. Use a cell phone, he said, and you increase your risk of developing a malignant brain tumor by two to four times. Until recently, the majority of research indicated little or no link between cell phones and cancer (the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society maintain that cell phones pose no threat), but several new long-term studies have cast doubt about their safety. Given that cell phones and PDAs serve as lifelines for so many people--24 percent of 10- and 11-year-olds carry them--it raises urgent questions. To find out what precautions you should take when using your cell phone, we dialed the nation's leading experts.

Do cell phones cause cancer?

Maybe…with extended use. Mobile-phone users are twice as likely to develop malignant, difficult-to-treat brain tumors called gilomas, according to a first-of-its-kind study that analyzed the effects of cell-phone use over 10 years or more and was published last year in the journal Occupational Environmental Medicine. The Bioinitiative Working Group, an international coalition of scientists and public-health experts, recently published a hefty report detailing the link between the nonionizing radiation caused by a cell phone's electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and cancer, DNA damage, Alzheimer's, and other diseases. "The cells in the body react to EMFs in cell phones just like they do to other environmental toxins, including heavy metals and chemicals," says Martin Blank, PhD, a professor in bioelectromagnetics at Columbia University and one of the report's authors. The study found that risk from cell-phone use starts at 260 lifetime hours.

Do cell phones emit radiation only when you are talking?

No. "Cell phones give off radiation any time they're turned on so that they can communicate with base stations," says Lou Bloomfield, PhD, professor of physics at the University of Virginia and author of How Everything Works: Making Physics Out of the Ordinary. "The radiation emitted, however, is stronger and more frequent when you're talking or messaging." Also, the greater distance you are from a base station, the more radiation your phone must emit in order to get a signal, which is why your phone feels hot when you have low reception. That heat you feel is radiation. The Bioinitiative study found that adverse effects to DNA can also occur before the phone heats up. To reduce your exposure, make calls only when you have strong reception, hang up before your phone heats up, and store your phone away from your body when it's not in use.

What is a phone's SAR value and why does it matter?

SAR stands for specific absorption rate, and it refers to the rate of radiation exposure from radio frequency and microwaves measured in watts per kilogram of tissue, says Bloomfield. The FCC limit on any cell phone sold in this country is 1.6 watts per kilogram. To find the SAR value for your phone, go to fcc.gov/cgb/sar/. At press time, the phone with the lowest radiation was the LG KG800, at 0.135 w/kg. The highest: Motorola V195s, at 1.6 w/kg. The Apple iPhone is in the middle, at 0.974 w/kg.

What is the range of the radiation?

Exposure to radiation from your cell phone drops off slowly for the first three to four inches from your body, and then it falls dramatically, says Bloomfield. To reduce your exposure, invest in a hands-free headset and limit the amount of time you spend talking on the phone. Khurana recommends using the speaker mode and holding the phone about eight inches away from you. Also, limit your use of Bluetooth devices. While it's true that they emit the least amount of radiation (one study found they can operate as low as 0.001 watts per kilogram), even that can add up fast.

Is it risky to carry a cell phone in your pants pocket?

Maybe. One 2006 study found no link to testicular cancer, but other researchers suspect a link to male infertility. Ashok Agarwal, PhD, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, recently completed a study in which cell phones were set down for one hour in talk mode, next to sperm samples in test tubes. He found that the sperm's motility and viability were significantly reduced, and levels of harmful free radicals increased after exposure. Agarwal suggests storing the phone in your jacket pocket to reduce exposure to cell-phone radiation. Pregnant women need to take precautions too, because a recent study found that cell-phone use while pregnant is linked to behavioral problems in children.

Are kids more at risk?

"Yes, since children's nervous systems are still developing, and they have thinner scalps and skulls than adults, they should use cell phones only in emergencies," says Gene Barnett, MD, professor and director of the Brain Tumor and Neuro-Oncology Center at the Cleveland Clinic. The association between childhood leukemia and exposure to EMFs like those from cell phones has led the International Agency for Research on Cancer to classify them as a "possible human carcinogen." The medical establishments in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all recommend severe restrictions on children's cell-phone use, with some experts going so far as to say that children under 16 shouldn't use cell phones at all. Make sure your kids opt for landlines when they're at home, and if you must buy them a cell phone for emergencies, get one with a low SAR number.

What about texting?

It's actually a safer way to communicate, says David O. Carpenter, MD, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany. Since kids hold phones away from their bodies when texting, they're exposed to less radiation than when they have the phones to their ears. "We are very concerned about teen cell-phone use, fearing that we face an epidemic of brain tumors 10 to 20 years from now, and there are so few who are raising warning flags," says Dr. Carpenter. Make sure your teen keeps his cell phone turned off and stored in his backpack when it isn't in use, which will dramatically reduce exposure.

7 Tips for Better Sleep

2008-07-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

By eDiets Staff

Wednesday, May, 14, 2008

Poor sleep hampers your overall health, including how well you fare in your weight-loss endeavors. From premature aging to a compromised immune system, the side-effects of sleepless nights can add up, says Barbara Harris, author of Shape Your Life: 4 Weeks to a Better Body -- and a Better Life!.

Getting a good night's sleep is high on the list of things you can do to boost your health and fitness levels. Sleep is crucial for optimum immunity, Harris says. When you don't get enough shuteye, your workouts may be less effective and you're more likely to store fat.

But that's not all. Your ability to manage stress throughout the day is also compromised. Studies reveal women frequently turn to food to soothe themselves in times of stress. It's also a fact that many women also eat more to raise their energy level.
In this eDiets exclusive, we offer Harris' seven tips for a good night's snooze.

1. Get regular exposure to daylight, especially in the afternoon. Research shows that night-shift workers can improve daytime sleep by working under bright lights.

2. Prior to bedtime, use dimmer switches or turn off a few lamps to lower the lighting in your home or apartment.

3. Don't allow yourself to nod off on the sofa. When you start feeling drowsy, get up and go to bed.

4. Use your bedroom only for sleep and sex. Don't make it a satellite office, study hall or entertainment center.

5. When you can't sleep, try using imagery and thoughts to relax. Deep-breathing techniques also work.

6. If you haven't dropped off within about 20 minutes, get out of bed and read or engage in some other quiet activity. Go back to bed when you get sleepy.

7. Put the alarm clock out of sight. Clock watching doesn't help you sleep -- it may even keep you awake!

Pro Tips for a Tight, Flat Tummy

2008-07-26T00:12:00.000-07:00

By Raphael Calzadilla, BA, CPT, ACE, RTS1
eDiets Chief Fitness Pro
Friday, February, 29, 2008

"Endless abdominal machines, crunch boards, sit-up devices and tortuous torso routines promise flat bellies and chiseled abs. Hardly a one of them works worth a damn, mainly because their makers show little understanding of human anatomy."
-- Dr. Michael Colgan
Renowned Fitness Expert and author of The New Power Program

How does one achieve a tight and flat stomach? Is there a human being on the planet who doesn't want to know the answer to this question? I see articles all the time that discuss abdominal exercises, infomercials that make false promises about a machine that will give you abs to die for and 10,000 other diet aids and gadgets that never tell you the truth.

Want tighter, sexy abs? If you have two minutes, we can show you how!
Click here to watch our easy "Two Minutes to Tight Abs" video!

Having studied human anatomy, nothing disgusts me more than watching one of those dumb ab machine infomercials make promises that their product will give a person a flat stomach. A lying abdominal machine will not give you a flat stomach, a seated abdominal machine will not give you a flat stomach and 1,000 crunches per day will not give you a flat stomach.

I'm here to tell you the truth.

There will be work to do on your part, but I'll provide the basic formula for achieving the look you've always thought was reserved for other people. It doesn't matter if you're 20 or 70. This formula works for everyone.

Here then is my eight-point plan to get tight abs and a flat mid-section:

1. NUTRITION: This is the most important component to achieving a flat stomach.Nothing is more important than food.

First, you'll need to control blood sugar levels in order to lose body fat. This is best accomplished by consuming four to six meals per day. Don't mistake the definition of a meal for a six-course extravaganza. A meal might be an egg white omelet (with vegetables) and oatmeal with some blueberries in it, chicken with one-half cup of rice and a large salad with some oil and vinegar, an apple with a scoop of protein powder or cottage cheese with some fruit.

Get the picture? I'm referring to them as meals, but they're actually feedings. Each of the meals is comprised of protein, a little carbohydrate and a little fat. In some cases, the fat is built into the protein. In other cases, it's added to the meal. For eDiets members, this is already accomplished in your meal plan.

2. RATIOS: It's unlikely that you'll get tight abs and a flat stomach by consuming 80 percent of your calories from carbohydrates. Ratios can vary quite a bit, but consuming more than 55 percent of your calories from carbohydrate will not be optimal for fat loss. Many people do quite well on extremely low carbohydrate plans and others on more moderate plans. As long as you follow the no more than 55 percent of calories from carbohydrate rule, you'll be at a good starting point.

3. TIMING: I realize four to six meals sounds like a lot, but you must keep in mind that the body is always seeking to store body fat. It (the body) doesn't care if you want to lose fat. In fact, your body would prefer to keep fat in order to accomplish its number one goal of keeping you alive in case of a future famine or drought.

Always consider the body from the inside out and not the other way around. In order to control blood sugar, eat every two to three hours throughout the day. When using the most effective nutrient ratios, this helps to control blood sugar (which, in turn, assists in body fat loss).

4. CALORIES: I've received emails from people telling me they do all of the above, but they still can't lose body fat in order to flatten the stomach. In every case, they are still consuming too many calories.It doesn't matter how healthy your nutrition program is if you're eating too much.

It's important that you find maintenance calories first. Maintenance represents the amount of food you consume without any change in your weight. This will take some experimentation and some effort. You'll also need to document your foods: total calories as well as grams of protein, carbohydrates and fats.

Sounds like a lot of work? Yes, it is! However, you only have to do a few weeks of hard work. After that, you'll have your personal formula for success.

5. SLIGHT CALORIC DEFICIT: After you have found maintenance, simply reduce your calories by 200. Our goal is to have you eating as much as possible and still losing fat and retaining muscle. I don't want you eating as little as possible (thereby slowing the metabolism and losing valuable muscle tissue).

The first week, you may lose 4-6 pounds of water. After the first week, you should only lose about 1.5 pounds per week. The goal is to preserve muscle and make your body a metabolic inferno. If you're not losing up to 1.5 pounds per week (it will fluctuate week to week), then reduce calories by another 100. Then, monitor your progress after one week. You'll probably be right on track.

6. CONSISTENCY: You'll need to be on this nutrition program six days a week with one day being somewhat of a cheat day. Unlike many, I'm not a big fan of the "cheat" day. I find that people tend to use it as an excuse to gorge themselves.

So, on Sunday for example, you're allowed to have some pizza, a bit of ice cream, etc. But nothing extreme! When you pig out, blood sugar levels can be elevated for seven hours or more. This will absolutely halt your body fat loss and actually backfire.

7. WEIGHT TRAIN: At this point, you should be aware of the importance of resistance training. Just three to four workout sessions lasting no more than 35 minutes to an hour will do the trick. For every pound of muscle on your body, you'll burn 30-50 additional calories per day.

Part of your program should include abdominal exercises to strengthen and build the abs. That way, when you achieve your low body fat level, your abs will be tight.

By the way, there is one great movement to help pull the stomach inwards; however, I'll cover that in a future abdominal exercise article. I have to give you some reason to come back, right?

8. CARDIOVASCULAR EXERCISE: Perform three to five days per week of moderate cardio exercise for approximately 30-40 minutes. During two of the days, you can exercise at a higher intensity level to accelerate fat loss -- but, only if you reach a sticking point. If you're a beginner, then remember to increase gradually.

Do this consistently, keep adjusting calories SLIGHTLY (with the help of our nutrition support staff and the specific nutrition program you selected from the site) and change your routine every three to four weeks. You will get a flatter stomach!

Is this easy? No, it's not easy. That's why so few people have flat and tight abs. Is it fulfilling when you achieve your goal of a flatter stomach? Definitely! As in most cases in life, the things we want and desire usually take some degree of sacrifice. It doesn't matter if you have 10 pounds to lose or 100 pounds, the formula works. So, how bad do you want it?

A competitive bodybuilder and former Mr. Connecticut, Raphael Calzadilla is a veteran of the health and fitness industry. He specializes in a holistic approach to body transformation, nutrition programs and personal training. He earned his B.A. in Communications from Southern Connecticut State University and is certified as a personal trainer with ACE and APEX. In addition, he successfully completed the RTS1 program based on biomechanics.

Diet reduces heart attacks, strokes

2008-04-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer - Tue Apr 15, 3:05 PM PDT

CHICAGO - A large study offers the strongest evidence yet that a diet the government recommends for lowering blood pressure can save people from heart attack and stroke.

Researchers followed more than 88,000 healthy women for almost 25 years. They examined their food choices and looked at how many had heart attacks and strokes. Those who fared best had eating habits similar to those recommended by the government to stop high blood pressure.

The plan, called the DASH diet, favors fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk and plant-based protein over meat.

Women with those eating habits were 24 percent less likely to have a heart attack and 18 percent less likely to have a stroke than women with more typical American diets.

Those are meaningful reductions since these diseases are so common. About two in five U.S. women at age 50 will eventually develop cardiovascular disease, which includes heart attacks and strokes. Women in the study were in their mid-30s to late 50s when the research began in 1980.

Previous research has shown this kind of diet can help prevent high blood pressure and cholesterol, which both can lead to heart attacks.

The new study appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.

People might think, "I don't have high blood pressure, so I don't have to follow it," said Simmons College researcher Teresa Fung, the study's lead author. However, the results suggest, she said, that "even healthy people should get on it."

About 15,000 women in the study had diets that closely resembled the low blood pressure diet. They ate about twice as many fruits, vegetables and grains as the estimated 18,000 women whose diets more closely resembled typical American eating habits.

Although the study only followed women, Fung said men would probably get similar benefits from the approach.

The study was limited because it merely tracked the women and their habits for 24 years. That's a less rigorous method than randomly assigning equal groups of women different diets and comparing results. But that would be extremely difficult to do for such a long time.

Given that limitation, Dr. Laura Svetkey, director of Duke University's hypertension center, said the study provides the best evidence yet of important long-term benefits from a low blood pressure diet.

"It's nice to see research that really is aimed at helping people with prevention in a very practical way," Svetkey said. She noted that the DASH diet, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, is available free on the National Institutes of Health Web site. The study was funded with NIH grants.

Dr. Nieca Goldberg, medical director of New York University's Women's Heart Program, said many patients would rather take a pill than adjust their eating habits. But, Goldberg said, "I always point out to my patients, if you make these changes in your lives, it could ... keep you off medication" in the long run.

"There has to be a greater emphasis on the way we live our lives," she said.

___

On the Net:

DASH diet: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/hbp/prevent/h_eating/h_e_dash.htm

Archives: http://www.archinternmed.com

Cancer prevention update from Johns Hopkins

2008-03-27T19:36:00.000-07:00

Cancer Update from John Hopkins

YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY (TRY THE KEY WORD) AND ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHN HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY .

Cancer Update from John Hopkins

1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.

2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person's lifetime

3. When the person's immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.

4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.

6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow , gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.

7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.

8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.

9 When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.

11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.

CANCER CELLS FEED ON:

a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in color. Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or sea salt.

b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened Soya milk cancer cells are being starved.

c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.

d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells. To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).

e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties. Water-best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.

12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines become purified and leads to more toxic build up.

13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.

14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Florescence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the bodies own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.

15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor. Anger, unforgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.

16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising daily and deep breathing, helps to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.

CANCER UPDATE FROM JOHN HOPKINS HOSPITAL , U S - PLEASE READ

1. No plastic containers in micro.

2. No water bottles in freezer.

3. No plastic wrap in microwave.

Johns Hopkins has recently sent this out in its newsletters. This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well. Dioxin chemicals cause cancer, especially breast cancer. Dioxins are highly poisonous to the cells of our bodies. Don't freeze your plastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic. Recently, Dr. Ed ward Fujimoto, Wellness Program Manager at Castle Hospital , was on a TV program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad they are for us. He said that we should not be heating our food in the microwave using plastic containers. This especially applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body. Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the same results, only without the dioxin. So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something else. Paper isn't bad but you don't know what is in the paper. It's just safer to use tempered glass, Corning Ware, etc. He reminded us that a while ago some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper. The dioxin problem is one of the reasons.

Also, he pointed out that plastic wrap, such as Saran, is just as dangerous when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave. As the food is nuked, the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food. Cover food with a paper towel instead.

HEADLINE: Email Hoax Regarding Cancer

Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center
Office of Public Affairs
March 2007

EMAIL HOAX REGARDING CANCER

An email falsely attributed to Johns Hopkins describing properties of cancer cells and suggesting prevention strategies has begun circulating the Internet. Johns Hopkins did not publish the email, entitled "Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins," nor do we endorse its contents. For more information about cancer, please read the information on our web site or visit the National Cancer Institute's web site at www.cancer.gov.

Another hoax email that has been circulating since 2004 regarding plastic containers, bottles, wrap claiming that heat releases dioxins which cause cancer also was not published by Johns Hopkins. More information.

-JHM-

Lack Of Deep Sleep May Increase Risk Of Type 2 Diabetes

2008-03-19T07:03:00.000-07:00

ScienceDaily (Jan. 2, 2008) — Suppression of slow-wave sleep in healthy young adults significantly decreases their ability to regulate blood-sugar levels and increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, report researchers at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Deep sleep, also called "slow-wave sleep," is thought to be the most restorative sleep stage, but its significance for physical well-being has not been demonstrated. This study found that after only three nights of selective slow-wave sleep suppression, young healthy subjects became less sensitive to insulin. Although they needed more insulin to dispose of the same amount of glucose, their insulin secretion did not increase to compensate for the reduced sensitivity, resulting in reduced tolerance to glucose and increased risk for type 2 diabetes. The decrease in insulin sensitivity was comparable to that caused by gaining 20 to 30 pounds.

Previous studies have demonstrated that reduced sleep quantity can impair glucose metabolism and appetite regulation resulting in increased risk of obesity and diabetes. This current study provides the first evidence linking poor sleep quality to increased diabetes risk.

"These findings demonstrate a clear role for slow-wave sleep in maintaining normal glucose control," said the study's lead author, Esra Tasali, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago Medical Center. "A profound decrease in slow-wave sleep had an immediate and significant adverse effect on insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance."

"Since reduced amounts of deep sleep are typical of aging and of common obesity-related sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea these results suggest that strategies to improve sleep quality, as well as quantity, may help to prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes in populations at risk," said Eve Van Cauter, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and senior author of the study.

The researchers studied nine lean, healthy volunteers, five men and four women between the ages of 20 and 31. The subjects spent two consecutive nights in the sleep laboratory, where they went to bed at 11 P.M., slept undisturbed but carefully monitored, and got out of bed 8.5 hours later, at 7:30 A.M.

The same subjects were also studied for three consecutive nights during which they followed identical nighttime routines. During this session, however, when their brain waves indicated that they were drifting into slow-wave sleep they were subtly disturbed by sounds administered through speakers beside the bed.

These sounds were loud enough to disrupt deep sleep but not so loud as to cause a full awakening. This technique enabled the researchers to decrease slow-wave sleep by about 90 percent, shifting the subjects from the onset of deep sleep (stage 3 or 4) to a lighter sleep (stage 2) without altering total sleep time.

"Our system proved quite effective," Tasali said. When asked about the sounds the next morning, study subjects vaguely recalled hearing a noise "three or four times," during the night. Some recalled as many as 10 to 15. On average, however, subjects required about 250-300 interventions each night, fewer the first night but more on subsequent nights as "slow-wave pressure," the body's need for deep sleep, accumulated night after night.

"This decrease in slow-wave sleep resembles the changes in sleep patterns caused by 40 years of aging," Tasali said. Young adults spend 80 to 100 minutes per night in slow-wave sleep, while people over age 60 generally have less than 20 minutes. "In this experiment," she said, "we gave people in their 20s the sleep of those in their 60s."

At the end of each study, the researchers gave intravenous glucose (a sugar solution) to each subject, then took blood samples every few minutes to measure the levels of glucose and insulin, the hormone that controls glucose uptake.

They found that when slow-wave sleep was suppressed for only three nights, young healthy subjects became about 25 percent less sensitive to insulin. As insulin sensitivity decreased, subjects needed more insulin to dispose of the same amount of glucose. But for eight of the nine subjects, insulin secretion did not go up to compensate for reduced effects. The result was a 23 percent increase in blood-glucose levels, comparable to older adults with impaired glucose tolerance.

Those with low baseline levels of slow-wave sleep had the lowest levels after having their sleep patterns disrupted and the greatest decrease in insulin sensitivity.

The alarming rise in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes is generally attributed to the epidemic of obesity combined with the aging of the population. "Previous studies from our lab have demonstrated many connections between chronic, partial, sleep deprivation, changes in appetite, metabolic abnormalities, obesity, and diabetes risk," said Van Cauter. "These results solidify those links and add a new wrinkle, the role of poor sleep quality, which is also associated with aging."

"Chronic shallow non-REM sleep, decreased insulin sensitivity and elevated diabetes risk are typical of aging," the authors conclude. "Our findings raise the question of whether age-related changes in sleep quality contribute to the development of these metabolic alterations."

This research was reported in the "Early Edition" of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, available online Dec. 31, 2007.

The National Institutes of Health funded this research. Additional authors include Rachel Leproult and David Ehrmann of the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago Medical Center, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Sleep patterns linked to diabetes risk

2008-03-19T07:01:00.000-07:00

Sleeping for less than six hours or for more than nine hours each night is associated with an increased risk of diabetes and impaired blood sugar (glucose) tolerance, researchers report in this week's issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"There are a lot of people who sleep five or six hours per night who we generally think are not getting enough sleep," lead author Dr Daniel J. Gottlieb told Reuters Health. His group hypothesized that people who do not get enough sleep may be at increased risk of developing diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance.

Gottlieb, of Boston University School of Medicine, and colleagues enrolled 1,486 subjects, ages 53 to 93 years, in their study. The subjects completed questionnaires regarding sleep patterns and underwent fasting glucose and glucose tolerance testing.

Diabetes was present in 20.9 percent of subjects and impaired glucose tolerance was present in another 28.2 percent. A usual sleep time of six hours or less was reported by 27.1 percent, including 8.4 percent who reported five hours or less. A total of 8.6 percent said that they slept for nine hours or more.

Compared with subjects who slept for seven to eight hours each night, the risk of diabetes was increased by 2.5-fold in those sleeping five or less hours, 1.66-fold for those sleeping six hours, and 1.79-fold for those sleeping nine or more hours. The corresponding increased risks of developing impaired glucose tolerance were 1.33-, 1.58-, and 1.88-fold. Blood glucose levels were not significantly affected by insomnia.

"These are strong associations suggesting that voluntary sleep restriction may cause impaired glucose regulation," Gottlieb said. "Probably those sleeping nine hours or more per night are doing so because of some underlying condition that may not be diagnosed but that puts them at increased risk of diabetes," he suggested.

The authors also noted that adequate levels of sleep should be tested as a non-drug treatment strategy in patients with diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance.

Sleeping for at least seven hours a night, Gottlieb concluded, "is a good health practice for a variety of reasons, and this is one more reason."

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, April 25, 2005

Published on this website on Fri, 29 Apr 2005

USDA: Most recalled beef has probably been eaten

2008-02-18T07:56:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- Federal officials are trying to track down the 143 million pounds of beef recalled Sunday, but they say that most of it has probably been eaten.

Keith Williams, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman, said investigators have found no cases of illness related to the recalled meat.

The beef recall came after inspectors said they found "clear violations" of USDA regulations at a California slaughterhouse that has been accused of mistreating cows.

"We do not know how much of this product is out there at this time. We do not feel this product presents a health risk of any significance," said Dick Raymond, the undersecretary of agriculture for food safety. "But the product was produced in noncompliance with our regulations, so therefore we do have to take this action."

Federal officials called the recall by Westland/Hallmark Meat Packing Company the largest beef recall in U.S. history.

Raymond said cattle that had passed pre-slaughter inspections but then lost the ability to walk were slaughtered without being re-examined for chronic illness by an inspector, a practice he said violated federal regulations and had been going on for at least two years. Video » Watch video of cows being abused

In January, the Humane Society of the United States accused Westland/Hallmark of abusing "downed" cattle. The Humane Society released video that showed workers kicking cows, jabbing them near their eyes, ramming them with a forklift and shooting high-pressure water up their noses in an effort to force them to their feet for slaughter.
Don't Miss

* Products affected by recall
* Humane Society of the United States
* Undercover slaughterhouse abuse

The USDA suspended operations at the plant in Chino, California, after the video was released.

California prosecutors on Friday announced animal cruelty charges against two former employees of the plant.

Federal regulations are aimed at preventing the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, popularly known as mad cow disease, and other diseases.

Raymond said the average age of the cattle involved is 5 to 7 years, meaning most of them were probably born long after a 1997 ban on a type of cattle feed suspected to cause the disease. He said the incidence of the disease in U.S. cattle is "extremely rare."

It's important to keep downed cattle out of the food supply because the animals have weaker immune systems and sometimes wallow in feces, raising the risk of contamination, according to The Associated Press.

In a statement issued February 3, Westland Meat President Steve Mendell said that the company was cooperating with the USDA and that the practices depicted in the Humane Society video are "a serious breach of our company's policies and training."

"We have taken swift action regarding the two employees identified on the video and have already implemented aggressive measures to ensure all employees follow our humane handling policies and procedures," Mendell said.

The recall dates back to February 1, 2006, and Raymond said "the great majority" of the meat has probably been eaten.

"A lot of this is fresh, raw product and with ground beef, et cetera, that has a very short shelf life and refrigerator life," he said.

About 37 million pounds of the recalled meat went to school lunch programs and other federal nutrition programs since October 2006, said Ron Vogel of the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service.

Most of the beef was sent to distribution centers in bulk packages. The USDA said it will work with distributors to determine how much meat remains, the AP reported.

The largest U.S. meat recall before Sunday came in 1999, when about 35 million pounds of product possibly contaminated with listeria were ordered off shelves. USDA officials said that was Class I recall, involving a known risk to human health.
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Sunday's action was a Class II recall, under which authorities say there is "a remote probability" the meat could cause illness.

The amount of beef -- 143 million pounds -- is roughly enough for two hamburgers for each man, woman and child in the United States.

"HAPPIEST BABY ON THE BLOCK"

2007-12-28T00:07:00.000-08:00

The New Way to Stop the Daily Battle of Wills and Raise a Secure and Well-Behaved One-to Four-Year-Old

By Dr. Harvey Karp

America’s top doctors are lining up to praise a new book and video that are destined to become classics in the field of parenting!

“You want help? This is r-e-a-l help!
The Happiest Toddler is one of the smartest parenting books of the past decade!”
--Kyle Pruett, MD, Professor of Child Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine,
Past President Zero-to-Three

“Dr. Karp's excellent approach makes raising toddlers a whole lot easier.”
--Steven Shelov, MD, Editor-in-chief, American Academy of Pediatrics’ Caring for Your Baby and Young Child

Anyone living with toddlers knows how quickly they can change. One minute all is bliss -then BAM! – they erupt into a mega-tantrum on aisle 6 at K-mart! No wonder exhausted and time-crunched parents feel trapped in a revolving door of “No!” and “Don’t!”

But all that is about to change. But never again will you be helpless while your toddler screams and screams. Help has arrived!

"The Happiest Toddler is terrific...and fun! It will help parents, grandparents and everyone who cares for toddlers be more effective."
--Martin Stein, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, University of California San Diego

In a breakthrough new book and video, THE HAPPIEST TODDLER ON THE BLOCK (Bantam Books 2004), celebrated pediatrician and child development expert, Dr. Harvey Karp reveals a treasure sought by parents for centuries – the secret to calming tantrums in minutes…or less!

Two years ago, Dr. Karp stunned the medical world (and made parents cheer!) by solving the 3000-year-old mystery of colic with his discovery of the calming reflex – the “off-switch” for crying that can soothe almost any fussy baby in seconds. His extraordinary book and video, The Happiest Baby on the Block, have literally redefined our culture’s understanding of newborns.

And now Dr. Karp is amazing the medical world once more with an innovative view of toddlers that will transform our understanding of this challenging age, forever.

“Dr. Karp has done it again!
The Happiest Toddler is a joyous adventure…with pearls of wisdom on every page.”
--Morris Green, MD, Director, Behavioral Pediatrics, Indiana University, Riley Hospital for Children

"Dr. Karp helps parents turn the "terrible" twos into "terrific" twos. His work will revolutionize the way our culture understands toddlers!"
--Roni Cohen Leiderman, PhD, Associate Dean of Childhood Studies, Nova Southeastern University

Dr. Karp explains that watching toddlers is like traveling back in time. “Toddlers are not so much little children as little…cavemen!” Cavemen were stubborn, opinionated, and not too verbal. They bit and spat when angry, were sloppy eaters, hated to wait in line, and were negative, tenacious, distractible, and impatient…sound familiar? (No wonder, the first chapter of THE HAPPIEST TODDLER is named “Help! There’s a Neanderthal in My Kitchen!”)

It’s a comical image, but comparing little kids to primitives is no joke. Dr. Karp argues that toddlers can only be understood by taking one giant step…backward! During three short years, toddlers zoom through the major achievements of almost 5 million years of human evolution: walking, talking, tool making, and problem solving.

"Parents will be delighted by this clever approach to communicating with toddlers. It allows us to see the world from our children's unique point of view."
--Janet Serwint, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, Director of the Harriet Lane Children’s Clinic, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Dr. Karp says, “We all get more rigid when we’re upset, but frustrated toddlers become absolutely prehistoric!” He tells parents to think of themselves as ambassadors from the 21st Century to the Neanderthal people. “Once we see kids in this revolutionary ‘evolutionary’ light, tantrums, power struggles and even peeing on the carpet all start to make sense…and parents learn to soothe even agitated toddlers quickly.”
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In THE HAPPIEST TODDLER, parents learn:

* The #1 rule of good communication – the “Fast Food Rule.”
* Four easy steps for translating anything into a child’s primitive language - Toddler-ese.
* Foolproof ways to encourage good behavior (time-in, praise, rewards, “gossiping”, etc.).
* How to quickly halt misbehavior (using good communication, ignoring and time outs).
* Smart solutions to the prickliest problems of the toddler years (including sleep issues, toilet training, separation anxiety, biting, picky eating, sibling rivalry, fears, etc).

You can defuse most meltdowns in minutes if you know. In his new book and video, The Happiest Toddler on the Block, child-development expert and pediatrician Harvey Karp, M.D. reveals some revolutionary new solutions for problems from tantrums to picky eating. Here he tells how to soothe your tot's tears and help her feel loved and understood by learning to…speak her language.
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Q. You've gone from teaching about crying babies in your first book and video, The Happiest Baby on the Block, to toddlers having tantrums. What will parents
learn from this second book that they don't already know?

A. In my new book I present a fun and easy approach to raising great toddlers based on a fascinating new concept. As silly as it sounds, the best way to think of children between the ages of 1 and 4 is as little…Neanderthals! Don't get me wrong, I love toddlers. They are sweet and fun, but they can also be wild and impulsive, especially when they’re upset. They grunt, grab, scratch and shriek like uncivilized little cavemen. Yet, when you learn to speak your toddler's primitive language – Toddler-ese - you'll often be able to soothe his outbursts in minutes.

Q. So what's the secret for talking Toddler-ese?

A. When little kids are happy, we speak to them with our normal words, tone of voice, and gestures. After all, that's ultimately how toddlers learn language. But the more angry, frustrated, scared, or sad your child gets, the more fuzzy your words will sound to her. At that point, it helps to translate what you say into Toddler-ese. It’s as easy as 1…2…3!

Here’s how:
First, use very short phrases. Long sentences are tough for stressed out toddlers to comprehend. Stick with one- to three-word phrases (three to five words for verbal toddlers). Second, repeat those phrases over and over. Young children often need five to ten repetitions to get their attention and focus on what you are saying.
Finally, be an actor. How you say your words is even more important than what you say. Match your tone of voice, facial expressions, and body gestures to her level of emotion. Pout, wave your arms, furrow your brow and dramatically echo her complaints to show you understand exactly how your toddler feels.
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Q. Why do toddlers have such a hard time listening?

A. Our little cave-kids have trouble listening because they’re very distractible, especially when they’re upset. That’s why you’ll be much more successful getting your child to focus if you first calm him down by paying attention to him with a minute of your best Toddler-ese. That lets him know you understand and care about his feelings. Once he begins to settle you can offer a distraction ("Hey, look at this book."), logic (“It’s too hot to drink.”) or reassurance ("It’s OK, it’s OK…you’re alright”). Calm kids are better listeners (none of us tune in well when we’re in the middle of a meltdown).

Imagine your 18-month-old is standing at the door, screaming to go outside. Don’t just squash his hopes by telling him why he can't go ("It's raining”). First, acknowledge his feelings …in his own energetic language. Say in Toddler-ese, “You say, ‘Go, Mommy. Go! Go!' You want out, now! Out! Out! Out! You're bored, bored, bored!" With gestures and a dramatic tone repeatedly echo his feelings. Once your irate little caveman realizes that you truly understand his whining and wailing will noticeably diminish. That’s the signal that it’s your turn. That he’s ready to hear your reasons, reassurance, options, etc.

Q. But what if your child is doing something that's clearly wrong? Might echoing her feelings accidentally make her think that you’re agreeing with her?

A. Every day, your prehistoric little toddler experiences a roller coaster of powerful emotions. One of your prime goals during his toddler years will be to encourage him to confidently express his feelings yet teach him to restrain his unacceptable actions.

Of course you should skip echoing and immediately express your message if your child is in danger (she runs into the street), being aggressive, or breaking an important household rule. However, in less urgent situations, take a minute to lovingly show your tot that you sincerely care about his feelings, but that doesn’t mean that you will tolerate misbehavior.

When he yanks a truck out of his friend’s hands, for instance, take a few seconds to repeatedly (and dramatically) describe what he’s doing and how you think he feels- even if you disagree with him. Before teaching him a lesson about sharing, say something like, “You want! You want! You want it now! You say, 'Give me the truck. I want it now!'" Then, after he starts to settle down, add your mini-message, "But, no grab…no grab. It’s Jake’s turn." Learning and emotion are like oil and water…they just don’t mix. Calm children learn much faster and acknowledging their feelings in Toddler-ese is the key to quick calming.
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Q. What are the main secrets to raising "the happiest toddler on the block"?

A. There are three:
1. Play and talk together a lot. Just as feeding dimes into a parking meter all day long protects you from dreaded tickets, many five and ten minute helpings of playtime throughout each day ward off temper outbursts and create a growing relationship of cooperation and caring with your toddler.
2. Establish clear and consistent limits. Toddlers like uncivilized little
cavemen, will push you around if you're wimpy about the rules. But, pick your
battles. Only set limits you know you can enforce and then be prepared to
take a stand.
3. Above all, treat your child with respect. Even when he’s doing something you hate, always show respect with your words and actions. One of the best ways to you’re your respect is to try to speak to him in his own primitive language. Energetically echoing your toddler’s feelings will help you quiet the yelling, lessen the frustration and create a more loving, happy time for both of you.

Experts predict worldwide flu outbreak

2007-12-26T19:27:00.000-08:00

Global pandemic likely, health authorities say

updated 1:30 p.m. PT, Sun., Dec. 14, 2003
NEW YORK - As bad as this year’s flu season is, it hasn’t brought the worldwide outbreak known as a pandemic. But experts warn that a pandemic is coming, it’s just a question of when.

“It’s going to happen,” said Dr. Greg Poland of the Mayo Clinic. “For the American public in particular, I think it will be horrific.”

Many Americans haven’t experienced the overwhelming crush of patients at hospitals and doctors’ offices and the widespread fear a flu pandemic could bring. And by historical pattern, Poland said it’s about time for the next one.

There have been three in the past 100 years, igniting in 1918, 1957 and 1968. There’s no way to predict when the next one will appear, but the pattern does give experts pause.

It’s all up to a virus that is variable and fickle, constantly changing its genetic makeup, and the time when it hits upon a combination that lets it take off worldwide is a “roll of the genetic dice,” said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University.

'It makes us nervous'
So the lack of a pandemic in the past 35 years basically means “the genetic dice haven’t been rolled that way,” Schaffner said. “While we’re grateful for that, it makes us nervous.”

There’s plenty to be nervous about. It’s estimated that in the industrialized nations alone, the next pandemic is likely to send 1 million to 2.3 million people to the hospital and kill 280,000 to 650,000, according to the World Health Organization. Its impact will probably be greatest in developing countries.

As a practical matter, flu shots probably could not be counted on to prevent a pandemic. For one thing, pandemic virus strains emerge unexpectedly, and there would probably not be enough time to recognize the threat and then provide vaccines that target them, Schaffner said. What’s more, many countries outside the United States wouldn’t have the means to give enough flu shots to stop the spread, Poland said.

Dr. Robert Couch of the Baylor College of Medicine noted that health authorities are making major efforts to prepare for controlling a pandemic, including putting an emphasis on developing and manufacturing vaccines faster and in greater quantities.

The pandemic of 1918-19, known as the Spanish flu, sickened an estimated 20 percent to 40 percent of the worldwide population, with a death toll believed to exceed 20 million. In the United States alone, some 500,000 people died. An ordinary flu epidemic kills an average of 36,000 Americans.

The next pandemic, the Asian flu of 1957-58, killed about 70,000 in the United States, while the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu led to about 34,000 deaths in the United States. Scientists suggest several reasons why this rate was lower than in previous pandemics, including that the illness did not gain momentum until near the school holidays in December, when children were home rather than infecting each other at school.

Flu viruses start in rural Asia
New strains of the flu virus, and so potential pandemics, get their start in rural Asia, where the various strains that infect chickens and other birds, pigs and humans can mingle. That gives them a chance to swap genetic information as well as mutate on their own.

The potential spark for a pandemic occurs when that environment produces a new virus that infects people and bears surface proteins that people’s bodies have never seen before. That means people have no natural defense against it.

In contrast, ordinary outbreaks like this year’s come from a virus that has changed only slightly from previous ones, so that the population it enters still has some natural immunity from encounters with the previous germs.

But the genetic shift alone is not enough to launch a pandemic. In addition, the new virus must acquire the ability to pass easily from person to person, either by random genetic change or by picking up genetic material from a previous human flu virus.

The world has had some close calls in the past few years, says Richard Webby of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. In 1997, a bird flu in Hong Kong jumped to people, killing six. But the virus never developed the ability to pass easily from person to person, Webby said. Hong Kong authorities slaughtered 1.4 million chickens to end the threat.

Just this year, authorities became alarmed when a father and son in Hong Kong were hospitalized because of a bird flu virus, and when flu virus infected some workers in the Netherlands who had slaughtered infected chickens. The Netherlands outbreak was contained by anti-flu drugs and fast vaccination, and slaughter of the poultry, Webby said.

Scientists have been noticing a lot of flu virus in chickens and pigs globally, and a lot of variety in the strains, which is worrisome, Webby said. It’s impractical to develop vaccines against all the animal strains in case they jump to humans, and there’s no reliable way to identify the most hazardous ones, he said.

When the next pandemic shows up, experts say, it will find a population with many more vulnerable people like the elderly, infirm and those with weakened natural defenses than were living 35 years ago. It will also find a trimmed-down hospital system with fewer beds to handle a surge of patients. And while today’s anti-flu drugs will probably attack the new strain, that’s not yet clear. Supplies of the drugs and vaccines would be strained.

But still, with the improvements in health care since the last pandemic, might the next one be less serious?

“I want to believe that,” Poland said, “but we won’t know until it happens.”

A history of worldwide Influenza

The origins of influenza are unknown, but the malady is never absent for more than a few decades. The worst pandemic occurred in the early 20th century, when more than 20 million people were killed.

400 B.C.:
Hippocrates records an outbreak of a cough, followed by pneumonia and other symptoms, at Perinthus in northern Greece (now part of Turkey). Several possible identifications have been suggested, including influenza, whooping cough and diphtheria.
212 B.C.:
The historian Livy describes an infectious disease, perhaps influenza, which strikes the Roman army.
1781-'82:
Considered among the greatest manifestations of disease in history, this pandemic afflicts two-thirds of the people of Rome and three-quarters of the population of Britain. Influenza also spreads widely in North America, the West Indies and Spanish America.
1789:
A widespread epidemic hits New England, New York and Nova Scotia in the fall. Most deaths appear to come from secondary pneumonia.
1829-'32, 1836-'37:
An epidemic begins in Asia late in 1829. From there it spreads to Indonesia by January 1831. The disease also breaks out in Russia in the winter of 1830-'31 and spreads westward. By November it reaches the United States.
1889-'90:
1889-'90:
Named the Russian flu, this worldwide influenza epidemic, the most devastating to that time, begins in Central Asia in the summer of 1889, spreads north into Russia, east to China and west to Europe. It eventually strikes North America, parts of Africa and major Pacific Rim countries. By conservative estimates, 250,000 die in Europe, and the world death total is two to three times that.
1917-'19:
The Spanish flu, the most lethal influenza pandemic ever, kills more than 20 million people. More people die as a result of this flu than die during World War I. Its spread is facilitated by troop movements in the closing months of the war. Mortality rates are unusually high for flu, especially among young, otherwise healthy adults.
1957-'58:
The Asian flu starts in southwest China in February 1957, possibly having originated in 1956 in Vladivostok, Russia, then spreads throughout the Pacific. Globally it affects 10 percent to 35 percent of the population, but overall mortality is much lower than in the 1918 epidemic, about 0.25 percent.
1968-'69:
Hong Kong flu claims 700,000 lives worldwide, 34,000 in the United States.
1976:
The Swine flu, isolated in New Jersey in a young army recruit, instills fear of a new pandemic and leads to a massive influenza-immunization program. The vaccinations lead to Guillain-Barre syndrome, an ascending paralysis, in 100,000 people and kills 5 percent of those afflicted.
1986:
Avian variation of the swine flue in the Netherlands results in one severe case of pneumonia.
1988:
The Swine flu kills a pregnant woman exposed to a sick pig in Wisconsin.
1993:
Strain of the swine flu in the Netherlands sickens two children. The fathers are believed to have come in contact with infected pigs.
1995:
One adult contracts conjunctivitis in the United Kingdom after infection with the duck virus.
1997:
The Hong Kong Poultry virus infects at least 18 people, killing 6 of them.

Breast cancer on the rise in China

2007-10-29T22:13:00.000-07:00

31 minutes ago

BEIJING (AFP) - Increasing numbers of Chinese urban women are suffering from breast cancer due to unhealthy diets and a spike in work stress in the rapidly modernising country, state media said Tuesday.

Breast cancer is up 31 percent in the financial hub of Shanghai over the past decade, and 23 percent in the capital, Beijing, according to data from the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention cited by the China Daily.

"Unhealthy lifestyles are mostly to blame for the growing numbers," the paper quoted Qiao Youlin, a cancer researcher at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, as saying.

"Chinese women, especially those living in cities, should pay extra attention to their health and examine their breasts for any suspicious lumps on a monthly basis," he said.

Breast cancer now affects about 45 women out of every 100,000 in Beijing and about 55 out of 100,000 in Shanghai.

Those numbers still remain far lower than in industrialised countries such as the United States.

Qiao advised women to avoid known risk factors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, using cosmetics that contain estrogen and consumption of oily food, and urged them to get more exercise.

Although nutrition for millions of Chinese has improved as incomes have risen, diet-related health problems also have spiked due to increasingly sedentary lifestyles and growing consumption of western-style fatty foods.

U.S. recalls more China-made products for lead in paint

2007-10-25T22:58:00.000-07:00

Thu Oct 25, 1:45 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A slew of products made in China ranging from children's jewelry to cake decorations were recalled on Thursday because they contain excessive amounts of lead.

The recall of roughly 665,000 items announced by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) includes about 38,000 Go Diego Go Animal Rescue Boats from Mattel Inc's Fisher-Price division.

The boats were sold at retail stores nationwide from June through October, and the CPSC said surface paint contains excessive levels of lead.

Also recalled were about 142,000 Halloween pails sold at Family Dollar Stores Inc from August through October. The CPSC said green paint on the pails contains amounts of lead that violate U.S. standards for lead paint.

More than 20 million toys made in China were recalled worldwide over the past four months due to potentially dangerous levels of lead and hazards posed by small magnets that can be swallowed.

Retailers and manufactures have stepped up product testing, which some companies have said should result in more recalls as they try to clear problematic items off shelves and out of warehouses.

Dollar Tree Stores Inc is recalling about 198,000 units of Beary Cute, Expressions, and Sassy & Chic children's jewelry with item numbers 855589, 873091, 873097, and 903950.

The jewelry, which the CPSC said contains high levels of lead, was sold at Dollar Tree, Dollar Bill$, Dollar Express, Greenbacks and Only $1 stores from December 2005 through July.

High levels of lead have been linked to brain damage in children and other health problems.

Here is a list of other product recalls announced on Thursday by the CPSC:

-- DecoPac Inc is recalling about 80,000 plastic miniature football bobble heads with green bases that were sold to be placed on cakes because of too much lead in paint on the decoration. The items were sold at bakeries and ice cream stores from January 2006 through October.

-- Jo-Ann Stores Inc is expanding the recall of children's toy garden tools because of excessive lead in surface paint. The products were sold at Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores from January through September.

-- WeGlow International is recalling about 110,000 children's flashing rings sold in Shrek the Third and Spider-Man 3 designs. The rings have item number 920422 printed on back of the packaging and were sold at Dollar Tree, Dollar Bill$, Dollar Express, Greenbacks and Only $1 stores nationwide from December 2005 through August.

(Reporting by Nicole Maestri, editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Toni Reinhold)

Ageing boomers warned over sexual secrecy

2007-10-14T19:23:00.001-07:00

Tue Oct 9, 12:33 PM ET

SYDNEY (AFP) - Ageing baby boomers risk seeing their sex lives end with a whimper not a bang if they are not prepared to speak about problems associated with growing older, a conference in Australia heard Tuesday.

Members of the generation famous for spearheading the freedoms of the sexual revolution remained sexually active well into their later years, the Australasian Sexual Health Conference was told.

But a discreet silence around their sexuality was inhibiting discussion of sexual problems, said University of Sydney academic Patricia Weerakoon.

"The risk is that when problems arise, they may develop in secret and be concealed by embarrassment, generating misery and fear and suffering," she said.

The conference at the Gold Coast tourist strip near Brisbane heard that sexual activity rates for Australia's ageing population were estimated to mirror those reported in a recently in the United States.

That study showed that 73 percent of 57-64 year-olds were sexually active, dropping to 53 percent between 65-74 and 26 percent between 75-85.

"Baby boomers should also be encouraged to explore the myriad meanings of sexuality and physical and emotional intimacy, rather than strive for that perfect intercourse experience or the increasingly elusive orgasm," said Weerakoon.

Men who smoke risk erectile dysfunction: study

2007-10-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

Wed Sep 26, 2:22 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Otherwise healthy men who smoke risk developing erectile dysfunction -- and the more cigarettes they smoke, the greater the risk of erectile dysfunction, according to a new study.

Erectile dysfunction is the consistent inability to achieve or maintain an erection sufficient for satisfactory sexual performance. In a study of 4,763 Chinese men aged 35 to 74 years who were free of blood vessel disease and who reported that they had been sexually active within the last 6 months, the researchers found a significant statistical link between the number of cigarettes smoked and the likelihood of erectile dysfunction.

"The association between cigarette smoking and erectile dysfunction was found in earlier studies," said first author Dr. Jiang He of Tulane University School of Public Health, New Orleans. "However, most of those studies were conducted in patients with hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes and cardiovascular disease. What distinguishes this study is that it is the first to find this association among healthy men."

Overall, men who smoked had a 41-percent greater risk of erectile dysfunction than men who did not, the team reports in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

And there was a clear "dose-response" relationship, meaning that the more the men smoked, the higher was their risk of erectile dysfunction. Compared with non-smokers, men who smoked up to 10 cigarettes per day had a 27-percent greater likelihood of erectile dysfunction ; those who smoked 11 to 20 butts a day had a 45-percent greater likelihood of erectile dysfunction; and those who smoked more than 20 cigarettes daily had a-65 percent greater chance of suffering erectile dysfunction.

The investigators estimate that 22.7 percent of erectile all dysfunction cases among healthy Chinese men - or 11.8 million cases -- might be caused by cigarette smoking.

And even when cigarette smokers quit, their risk of developing erectile dysfunction did not decrease. The risk of erectile dysfunction was statistically about the same for former cigarette smokers as for current cigarette smokers, the authors found.

"This study really has a strong message for young men," He said. "It may get their attention if they know that smoking is associated with erectile dysfunction -- even in the healthy population."

"So the message is: Don't start."

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, October 1, 2007.

Look, Ma, no diaper!

2007-09-23T16:21:00.000-07:00

Melinda Rothstein began potty training baby Hannah when she was 4 days old. Now, at 4 months, Hannah almost never wears a diaper. (Globe Staff Photo / Bill Greene)

Some local parents are embracing a technique for potty training infants

By Ricki Morell, Globe Correspondent | July 5, 2005

DOVER -- On a sunny weekday midmorning, Hannah Rothstein,4 months old, coos in her mother's lap at the kitchen table. Her older brother, Samuel, who is almost 3, plays in the backyard with a baby sitter. It's a typical suburban scene, except for one detail. Amid the accouterments of modern parenting -- bouncy seat on the floor, cellphone on the counter -- one kind of baby care basic is conspicuously absent.

This house has no Diaper Genie, no diaper pail, and no stack of diapers next to the changing table.

That's because no one in this house regularly wears diapers.

At the kitchen table, baby Hannah sits bare-bottomed on a tiny plastic potty that her mother holds while cradling her. Hannah is happily taking care of business while Melinda Rothstein talks to a guest.

Hannah was 4 days old when Rothstein first ''caught" her before she actually went to the bathroom, and Hannah has been going in a potty ever since. Rothstein sometimes lays out cloth diapers under her to sop up any ''accidents." And she uses little cloth training pants when they go out. Once in a while, she'll put on a disposable if they go to a restaurant. But, most days, Hannah is dressed in pint-size underwear. ''I wouldn't want to wear my toilet, would you?" says Rothstein, 31.

About a year and a half ago, Rothstein and a friend, Rachel Milgroom, started DiaperFreeBaby and DiaperFreeBaby.org, a nonprofit and a website dedicated to spreading the word about a technique called ''elimination communication," or infant potty training. About 70 people in the Boston area now belong to the group.

''Discover how amazing your baby really is," encourages the DiaperFreeBaby brochure. ''Just as parents learn to read their baby's signs for sleep and hunger, they can also learn to read their baby's signs for needing to eliminate."

Elimination communication has its roots in the traditional cultures of Africa and Asia, where mothers carry their babies close to them and hold them out to let them urinate on the ground. In suburban Boston, parents observe the child closely, taking cues from the child's body language and trying to get him to a potty, a toilet, or even a sink before he eliminates. A baby may start kicking or grimacing, or even stop nursing, just before the big event. And sometimes a parent can give the baby a cue, like holding her over a potty and making a ''sss" sound. Though most people agree it's easiest to start the process before the child is 6 months old, Rothstein says she started her older son at 8 months and it worked. Usually by 18 months children ''graduate," which means they know when they have to go the bathroom and they take themselves there.

Rothstein, like many of the mothers involved in the DiaperFreeBaby group, believes in an ''attachment" parenting style. Rothstein gave birth to Hannah at home. Hannah sleeps in her parents' bed and spends part of the day being carried around in a baby sling by her mother. This close contact allows Rothstein to better pick up on her baby's cues. Others are attracted to elimination communication because they worry about the environmental effects of using disposable diapers, and of washing loads of cloth diapers. Still others are simply trying to save money or avoid diaper rash.

''The first time I heard about it, I thought it was really weird," says Milgroom, who has two sons, Isaiah, 5, and Simon, 2. ''But the more I heard about it, the more I realized they do know when they need to go. How can I ignore that if I know he's telling me?"

Emily Jean Davidson, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital Boston, started elimination communication with her daughter, Betsy Resner, when she was 8 months old. Betsy, who is now 2, started wearing underwear in the daytime at 17 months, but still wears pull-up diapers at night.

''I try to compare it to other developmental tasks, like learning how to eat," says Davidson, who works with children with developmental disabilities. With eating, she says, parents watch for hunger cues and help children slowly develop independent skills over time. Why not do the same with toilet training?

In the first half of the 20th century, early toilet training was considered the norm, but it was regimented, even abusive. Children were strapped into potty chairs, or given soap suppositories when they wouldn't go on schedule. By the 1950s, Dr. Spock's more child-friendly methods became popular. But those old-fashioned cloth diapers were so uncomfortable when wet that most parents still toilet trained their children by 18 months. By the 1960s, pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton was advocating the ''child-led" approach. He advised parents not to pressure children but to let them proceed at their own pace until they could take control of their own toileting needs. Disposable diapers, which are absorbent and not as uncomfortable on the baby's bottom, made this easier. Procter & Gamble, maker of Pampers and Luvs, estimates that 95 to 99 percent of North American parents use disposable diapers.

That means children are taking longer to be toilet trained. According to a 2001 Medical College of Wisconsin study, the average was 35 months for girls and 39 months for boys.

Brazelton, who helped Pampers develop larger diapers for older kids, understands the impulse behind infant potty training but isn't convinced. ''To me, this is parents getting themselves trained and not leaving it to the child at all," said Brazelton, founder of the Brazelton Touchpoints Center at Children's Hospital Boston and one of the authors of ''Toilet Training: The Brazelton Way." Brazelton says he witnessed mothers holding their babies out from their bodies to urinate when he worked with Mayan Indians in southern Mexico. ''It's a regression to an earlier stage in our civilization," he says. ''I don't see it as progression. It seems like an unnecessary hovering of a parent over a child. I think there are more productive ways to interact with a child -- like play."

Laurie Boucke, author of ''Infant Potty Training" and ''Infant Potty Basics," says she understands the approach is not right for every family. ''If it resonates, give it a try," she says. ''And if it doesn't, don't do it."

At a recent meeting of the DiaperFreeBaby group, about 20 mothers, all toting infants and toddlers -- and, in some cases, potties -- gather at Milgroom's Newton home to discuss the basics of infant training.

''He pees like every 20 to 25 minutes," says one mother, Krysia Welin of Brookline, whose son, Kieran Hunter, is 10 weeks old. ''How do you pick it up each time and that quickly?"

Rothstein says, ''It's not all about catching it. It's more about communicating with your baby."

Emily Gelbert, also of Brookline, is expecting twins and hopes to practice elimination communication. Even in this group, people seem taken aback that she would attempt such a task with two children at once. They reassure her that sometimes using diapers -- even disposables -- is OK. Still, for these mothers, diaper-free is the key. Little Hannah Rothstein sits like a queen in the middle of the room on her tiny potty throne. Her mother explains that in the morning she goes every five minutes for about 20 minutes, after that, perhaps once an hour. At night, she usually goes only once.

''It's not more work," says Rothstein. ''Just a different kind of work."
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

Tour de France cyclists have big hearts

2007-09-03T15:05:00.000-07:00

By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer Mon Sep 3, 12:56 PM ET

VIENNA, Austria - Riding the grueling Tour de France bike race takes strength, stamina — and perhaps a heart nearly 40 percent bigger than normal.

Researchers who examined the hearts of former Tour bikers found that the athletes' hearts were from 20 to 40 percent larger than average, said Dr. Francois Carre of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Rennes, France, speaking at a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology.

The difference is attributable largely to rigorous training that expands the cyclists' hearts. But researchers have not yet determined whether the athletes' hearts were larger to begin with.

"They are a special breed," said Dr. Richard Becker, a professor of medicine at Duke University and spokesman for the American Heart Association. Becker was not connected to Carre's study.

Scientists have long noticed the phenomenon of the "athlete's heart." Athletes who train hard in aerobic sports, such as cycling, running or swimming, tend to have a bigger heart that pumps more blood throughout the body.

The heart's walls become thicker to be able to handle the increased blood volume. That gives the athletes an edge by increasing their oxygen levels and improving their endurance.

Carre's study, funded by the Brittany provincial government in France, is perhaps the first to track what happens to athletes' hearts when they stop training.

Medical tests done on all Tour de France cyclists before the race begins showed virtually all have enlarged hearts, Carre said.

"When you see an athlete's heart test, you know right away that it's not a normal person," he said.

In his study, Carre tracked seven former professional cyclists through their final year of competition and three years of retirement.

Once a year, the cyclists took tests to check the size and function of the heart. They were also tested on their fitness levels.

Carre found that the athletes' hearts shrank nearly a quarter in size after they finished riding professionally. Still, the cyclists remained in excellent physical condition.

"Some athletes have a genetic predisposition to perform better," Carre said. "But we found that in these cyclists, their hearts adapted to the hard training conditions by just getting bigger."

The intense training that Tour de France athletes undergo to race in a three-week-long competition cycling up and down mountains is arguably among the toughest in professional sports.

"When you examine Tour de France athletes, they are probably among the best-trained athletes in the world," said Dr. Alfred Bove, a physician for the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team and vice president of the American College of Cardiology. "This study shows us that even in extreme conditions, the body finds a way to adapt."

Bove said that in athletes with bigger hearts, doping could prove potentially more dangerous than for normal people.

Athletes with bigger hearts have more red blood cells, which deliver oxygen around the body. These cells are thicker than normal cells. So if athletes decide to use an illegal agent like the blood-booster EPO, they run the risk of making their blood too thick. That puts them in danger of a clot, stroke, or heart attack.

"These athletes already have hearts that have increased in volume to adapt to their training workload," Bove said. "If they then go and use drugs, that could potentially erase the natural advantage they already have."

Study finds smokers have higher risk of dementia

2007-09-02T23:13:00.000-07:00

1 hour, 33 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who smoke are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia than people who have quit or have never smoked, Dutch researchers reported on Sunday.

Smokers over the age of 55 were 50 percent more likely to develop dementia than similar nonsmokers, Dr. Monique Breteler of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and colleagues found.

Writing in the journal Neurology, Breteler and colleagues said they followed nearly 7,000 people age 55 and older for an average of seven years.

Over that time, 706 of the people developed dementia.

There is a well-known gene that raises the risk of dementia called APOE4 or apolipoprotein E4.

Smoking did not affect the Alzheimer's risk for people who had that gene. But people who did not have the gene had a 70 percent higher risk of Alzheimer's if they smoked.

Smoking could cause small strokes, which in turn damage the brain and cause dementia, Breteler said.

"Smoking increases the risk of cerebrovascular disease (stroke), which is also tied to dementia," Breteler said in a statement.

"Another mechanism could be through oxidative stress, which can damage cells in the blood vessels and lead to hardening of the arteries. Smokers experience greater oxidative stress than nonsmokers, and increased oxidative stress is also seen in Alzheimer's disease."

Oxidative stress is a process akin to rusting, in which chemical reactions damage the DNA.

Miss. ranked fattest state in nation

2007-08-31T11:18:00.001-07:00

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS, Associated Press Writer Tue Aug 28, 5:00 AM ET

JACKSON, Miss. - Experts say Mississippians need to skip the gravy, say no to the fried pickles and start taking brisk walks to fight an epidemic of obesity.

According to a new study, this Deep South state is the fattest in the nation. The Trust for America's Health, a research group that focuses on disease prevention, says Mississippi is the first state where more than 30 percent of adults are considered obese.

Aside from making Mississippi the butt of late-night talk show jokes, the obesity epidemic has serious implications for public policy.

If current trends hold, the state could face enormous increases in the already significant costs of treating diabetes, heart disease and other ailments caused by the extra poundage.

"We've got a long way to go. We love fried chicken and fried anything and all the grease and fatback we can get in Mississippi," said Democratic state Rep. Steve Holland, chairman of the Public Health Committee.

Poverty and obesity often go hand in hand, doctors say, because poor families stretch their budgets by buying cheaper, processed foods that have higher fat content and lower nutritional value.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — a self-described "recovering foodaholic" who lost 110 pounds several years ago — explained during a Southern Governors' Association meeting in Biloxi last weekend that there are historical reasons poor people often fry their foods: It's an inexpensive way to increase the calories and feed a family.

Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the nation, and the Delta is the poorest region of Mississippi.

Dr. Marshall Bouldin, director of the diabetes and metabolism center at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, told the Southern governors that if the Delta counties were excluded, "Mississippi would wind up being about 30th in diabetes problems in the United States."

Mississippi's public schools already are taking steps to prevent obesity.

A new state law enacted this year requires schools to provide at least 150 minutes of physical activity instruction and 45 minutes of health education instruction each week for students in kindergarten through 8th grade. Until now, gym class had been optional.

The state Department of Education also is phasing in restrictions on soft drinks and snacks.

All public schools are currently banned from selling full-calorie soft drinks to students. Next academic year, elementary and middle schools will allow only water, juice and milk, while high schools will allow only water, juice, sports drinks and diet soft drinks.

The state Department of Education publishes lists of snacks that are approved or banned for sale in school vending machines. Last school year, at least 50 percent of the vending offerings had to be from the approved list. That jumped to 75 percent this year and will reach 100 percent next year.

Among the approved snacks are yogurt, sliced fruit and granola bars, while fried pork rinds and marshmallow treats are banned. One middle school favorite — Flamin' Hot Cheetos — are on the approved list if they're baked but banned if they're not.

State Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds said he hopes students will take home the healthful habits they learn at school.

"We only have students 180 days out of the year for seven hours in a school day. The important thing is that we model what good behavior looks like," Bounds said Monday after finishing a lunch of baked chicken.

Bounds ate at a Jackson buffet that's popular with state legislators. On Monday, the buffet included traditional, stick-to-your-ribs Southern fare: fried chicken, grits, fried okra, turnip greens.

Dr. William Rowley, who worked 30 years as a vascular surgeon and now works at the Institute for Alternative Futures, said if current trends continue, more than 50 percent of adult Mississippians will be obese in 2015.

Holland, who helps set the state Medicaid budget, said he worries about the taxpayers' cost of treating obesity.

"If we don't change our ways," he said, "we're going to be in the funeral parlors ... because we're going to be all fat and dead."

Smoking Boosts Risk for Head, Neck Cancers

2007-08-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

Mon Aug 27, 11:45 PM ET

MONDAY, Aug. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Current and past smokers are at significantly increased risk for head and neck cancers such as cancers of the larynx (voice box), nasal passages/nose, oral cavity, and throat, says a U.S. National Cancer Institute study that looked at data collected on more than 476,000 men and women between 1995 and 2000.

The analysis revealed that smoking increased head and neck cancer in both women and men, but appeared to have a greater impact in women. Smoking was attributed to 75 percent of such cancers in women, compared to 45 percent of such cancers in men, the study said.

"Incidence rates of head and neck cancer were higher in men than in women in all categories examined, but smoking was associated with a larger relative increase in head and neck cancer risk in women than in men," the researchers concluded.

The study is published in the Oct. 1 issue of the journal Cancer.

In order to lower head and neck cancer rates, public health efforts should continue to try to eliminate smoking, the study authors said.

Each year, more than 500,000 people worldwide are diagnosed with head and neck cancers. Overall, men are more than three times more likely than women to be diagnosed with such cancers and almost twice as likely to die from them, according to the NCI.

More information

There's more on links between smoking and cancer at the American Academy of Otolaryngology -- Head and Neck Surgery.

Parental Stress Can Keep Kids Obese

2007-08-23T16:32:00.001-07:00

39 minutes ago

THURSDAY, Aug. 23 (HealthDay News) -- Parental stress or bullying by peers can make it even tougher for overweight or obese children to get healthy, a U.S. study finds.

"If a parent is distressed, that seems to impact a child's symptoms of depression, which then impacts quality of life. It's the same with peer victimization. It impacts depression, which then impacts quality of life. And it seems to affect not just the emotional aspect of quality of life, but also their health status," lead author David Janicke, assistant professor of clinical and health psychology in the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions, in Gainesville, said in a prepared statement.

His team surveyed 96 overweight or obese children and their parents.

They found that youngsters whose parents were struggling with stress or depression had more depressive symptoms and a lower overall quality of life. The same was true for children who reported more problems with peers.

"One of the pathways to poor quality of life seems to be childhood depression," Janicke noted. He said parental support is critical in helping children make healthy lifestyle choices.

Parents struggling with stress or depression may not have the energy to provide emotional support, plan healthy meals, or organize exercise activities for their children, the researchers said. Providing support for distressed parents may be an effective way of helping overweight/obese children, Janicke suggested.

Learning more about the factors that affect the well-being of overweight children could help improve methods of treating these children, he added.

The study was published in the journal Obesity.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases outlines what parents can do to help overweight children.

Analyst: iPhone may top sales goals

2007-08-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

Jim Dalrymple - MacCentral 49 minutes ago

UBS analyst Benjamin Reitzes said in a research note on Tuesday that Apple may sell more than 800,000 iPhones in the fourth quarter. That would top Apple’s own estimates of 730,000 units for the quarter.

Citing continued strong demand for the iPhone at Apple and AT&T retail stores, Reitzes said his estimates are conservative.

“Our checks continue to indicate solid demand for the iPhone despite typical moderation in excitement from launch and extremely high expectations,” wrote Reitzes.

Apple reported selling 270,000 iPhones during the first weekend it was available, which was also the last two days of the third quarter. Apple CEO Steve Jobs predicted during the third quarter earnings conference call that the company would sell its one-millionth iPhone by the end of the fourth quarter.

Apple’s goal is to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008.

iPhone sales will get a boost from deals Apple has reportedly made with mobile phone operators in three of Europe’s largest markets. Germany’s T-Mobile Deutschland, France’s Orange SA and Britain’s O2 (UK) are reported to have signed exclusive deals to sell the iPhone in their respective markets.

Reitzes positive outlook for Apple doesn’t stop with the iPhone. He is also expecting good things from the company’s computer line in the future.

“In addition, we believe the Mac story is exciting as demand is strong for notebooks and recently introduced iMacs,” he said.

Enthusiasm for Apple’s notebooks seems to be well founded as market research firm NPD yesterday put Apple’s U.S. retail notebook market share for June 2007 at 17.6 percent. That is an increase of 2.2 percentage points over the same period last year when Apple posted a 15.4 percent market share.

According to data from research firm IDC, Apple’s continued rise in computer sales puts it in third place overall among all computer makers in the U.S. This is the first time since 1996 that Apple finds itself this high on the list of top selling manufacturers.

Investors reacted positively to the news boosting Apple’s stock to $130.95, up $3.38 or 2.65 percent.

Scientists drug-test whole cities

2007-08-22T12:48:00.000-07:00

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Tue Aug 21, 9:05 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city's sewer plant.

The test wouldn't be used to finger any single person as a drug user. But it would help federal law enforcement and other agencies track the spread of dangerous drugs, like methamphetamines, across the country.

Oregon State University scientists tested 10 unnamed American cities for remnants of drugs, both legal and illegal, from wastewater streams. They were able to show that they could get a good snapshot of what people are taking.

"It's a community urinalysis," said Caleb Banta-Green, a University of Washington drug abuse researcher who was part of the Oregon State team. The scientists presented their results Tuesday at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

Two federal agencies have taken samples from U.S. waterways to see if drug testing a whole city is doable, but they haven't gotten as far as the Oregon researchers.

One of the early results of the new study showed big differences in methamphetamine use city to city. One urban area with a gambling industry had meth levels more than five times higher than other cities. Yet methamphetamine levels were virtually nonexistent in some smaller Midwestern locales, said Jennifer Field, the lead researcher and a professor of environmental toxicology at Oregon State.

The ingredient Americans consume and excrete the most was caffeine, Field said.

Cities in the experiment ranged from 17,000 to 600,000 in population, but Field declined to identify them, saying that could harm her relationship with the sewage plant operators.

She plans to start a survey for drugs in the wastewater of at least 40 Oregon communities.

The science behind the testing is simple. Nearly every drug — legal and illicit — that people take leaves the body. That waste goes into toilets and then into wastewater treatment plants.

"Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans consume and excrete," Field said.

In the study presented Tuesday, one teaspoon of untreated sewage water from each of the cities was tested for 15 different drugs. Field said researchers can't calculate how many people in a town are using drugs.

She said that one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week.

Field said her study suggests that a key tool currently used by drug abuse researchers — self-reported drug questionnaires — underestimates drug use.

"We have so few indicators of current use," said Jane Maxwell of the Addiction Research Institute at the University of Texas, who wasn't part of the study. "This could be a very interesting new indicator."

David Murray, chief scientist for U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the idea interests his agency.

Murray said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is testing federal wastewater samples just to see if that's a good method for monitoring drug use. But he didn't know how many tests were conducted or where.

The EPA will "flush out the details" on testing, Benjamin Grumbles joked. The EPA assistant administrator said the agency is already looking at the problem of potential harm to rivers and lakes from legal pharmaceuticals.

The idea of testing on a citywide basis for drugs makes sense, as long as it doesn't violate people's privacy, said Tom Angell of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a Washington-based group that wants looser drug laws.

"This seems to be less offensive than individualized testing," he said.

Zero trans fat doesn't always mean zero

2007-08-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

By STEPHANIE NANO, Associated Press Writer Sun Aug 19, 4:57 PM ET

NEW YORK - Stroll the aisles of any grocery store and you're sure to spot labels declaring "zero grams trans fat" on the front of snack foods, cookies and crackers. But does zero really mean there's NO artery-clogging fat inside?

Maybe, maybe not.

Federal regulations allow food labels to say there's zero grams of trans fat as long as there's less than half a gram per serving. And many packages contain more than what's considered one serving.

"The problem is that often people eat a lot more than one serving," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian of Harvard School of Public Health. "In fact, many people eat two to three servings at a time."

Those small amounts of trans fat can add up, said Michael Jacobson of the consumer advocacy Center for Science in the Public Interest. To find out if there might be some trans fat, he said shoppers can check the list of ingredients to see if partially hydrogenated oil — the primary source of trans fat — is included.

"When it says zero grams, that means something different from no trans fat," said Jacobson. His group has urged the government to bar food producers from using any partially hydrogenated oils at all.

The Food and Drug Administration began forcing food companies to list the amount of trans fat on nutrition labels of packaged foods in January 2006. That led many companies to switch to alternative fats.

Trans fat occurs naturally in some dairy and meat products, but the main source is partially hydrogenated oils, formed when hydrogen is added to liquid vegetable oils to harden them.

Consumer groups and health officials have campaigned to get rid of trans fat because it contributes to heart disease by raising levels of LDL or bad cholesterol while lowering HDL or good cholesterol. Fast-food restaurants are switching to trans fat-free oils and New York City and Philadelphia are forcing restaurants to phase out their use of trans fat.

The American Heart Association recommends that people limit trans fats to less than 2 grams per day.

Julie Moss of the FDA's Office of Nutrition, Labeling and Dietary Supplements, said the half-gram threshold for labeling was adopted because it is difficult to measure trans fat at low levels and the same half-gram limit is used for listing saturated fat. She said the FDA would soon be doing consumer research on trans fat labeling, including whether a footnote such as "Keep your intake of trans fat as low as possible" should be added to food labels.

Robert Earl of the Grocery Manufacturers Association said any trans fat in products labeled zero trans fat is likely to be far less than the half-gram threshold. For example, he said, a little partially hydrogenated oil might be used to help seasoning stick.

"I think the industry has been extremely responsive. Most of them were ahead of the curve to either remove or reduce trans fat in most food products," he said.

Earl said shoppers should be looking at the entire food label.

Jacobson is also concerned that people are focusing too much on the trans fat content alone, and not considering other ingredients such as saturated fat, which also raises the risk of heart disease.

"The bigger problem is foods that have no labels at all," Mozaffarian said, citing food served not only at restaurants, but at bakeries, cafeterias and schools.

New York resident Diana Fiorini said she's just recently started paying attention to labels. Holding a box of microwave popcorn at a Manhattan store, she scanned the label and was happy to see that it listed zero grams trans fat.

"I look at the labels. It's still hard to stop yourself when you know you should," she said.

___

On the Net:

American Heart Association: http://www.americanheart.org

Cassidy: Working out with fitness legend Jack LaLanne

2007-08-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

By Mike Cassidy
Mercury News Columnist
Article Launched: 08/17/2007 01:35:03 AM PDT

Fitness pioneer Jack LaLanne interview

Work out with Jack LaLanne?

Sure. How hard could it be? What is he, about 180 years old?

So there I was outside San Jose's Fairmont Hotel at the crack of dawn Thursday, approaching a short man in a chair who was watching the crowd gather for a community exercise class led by the legendary fitness guru himself.

Yes, the Jack LaLanne. The godfather of fitness. The man whose "The Jack LaLanne Show" brought regular workouts to living rooms nationwide from 1951 to 1984. The man we have to blame for all this healthy living.

I stroll over and start to introduce myself.

"Shut up," he barks. "No autographs. Well, except yours. Say, you look pretty good. Can I have your number?"

For a minute I'm trying to remember whether I've come to see Jack LaLanne or Robin Williams. But I learn a lot from LaLanne - quick.

First, he's 92, not 180. And this guy could bench-press me. With one hand. Turns out I'm the proverbial 98-pound weakling, facing down the 92-year-old he-man.

Jack LaLanne is a force of nature, a physical dynamo, a comic, a cut-up, a guy who has so many bromides that it seems he's rattling them off rapid-fire to make sure he doesn't run out of time before he gets to them all.

The reason Americans are obese? "They're exceeding the eat limit." Why avoid sweets? "Ten minutes on the lips; a lifetime on the hips."

LaLanne is in town to promote the U.S. gymnastics national championship at
Advertisement
HP Pavilion this weekend. He's also here to promote fitness. And, well, himself.

"I'm a salesman," says LaLanne, decked out in a blue track suit. "I get them laughing. I get them crying."

I tell LaLanne I've come to work out with him and interview him. Silly me. You don't interview Jack LaLanne. You stand back and listen.

You've got to exercise, he says. Vigorously.

"You can't just be sitting on your big, fat butt and watching TV," he says.

My big, fat butt? And suddenly I wonder whether he notices the doughnut crumbs stuck to my sweat shirt. I ask him what it is with exercise people. Why do they have to exercise so freaking early in the morning?

You're too tired at the end of the day, LaLanne says. Besides, it's good for you. "To leave a hot bed, to leave a hot woman and go into a cold gym," he says, "man, that takes discipline."

There's got to be an easier way, right? Some magic fitness pill?

"You know what the magic pill is, baby? Having goals."

His goal, even since before he opened his first health club in Oakland in the 1930s, was to help people. Sure, along the way he built a lucrative empire of gyms, juicers and videos. But that wasn't the goal. That all happened because of the goal.

"Let me see you get on the floor and do push-ups until you die," LaLanne erupts.

"Where's the fun in that?" I ask. I figure it must be the doughnut crumbs. But no, he's making a point. Exercise won't kill you. Your body knows when to stop. So do what you can.

Eventually, LaLanne takes the stage to fire up the crowd of about 80 early-morning fitness freaks in the Circle of Palms downtown. One thing I notice: LaLanne's buff assistants actually do the working out. LaLanne does a lot of encouraging - "Let me see you squat. Drop your butt down. Way down." - but he doesn't do any exercising. Could that be his secret?

No such luck. He tells me he put in 45 minutes in his hotel room before the 6:30 a.m. event. In fact, LaLanne, who now lives in Morro Bay, says he works out seven days a week. He never drinks coffee or eats anything "that comes from a cow or a pig."

So I ask whether it might be better to live 50 years of a wild life than 100 years of a disciplined one.

Not a chance, LaLanne says. Life is what it's all about. And he's more than willing to do the work to make his an incredibly long one.

"Man ought to live to be 120," he says.

Well, I don't know about me. But I do know one guy who's got a chance.

Read Mike Cassidy's Loose Ends blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/cassidy. Contact him at mcassidy@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5536.

Video: Fitness pioneer Jack LaLanne interview

By koci
Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 1:45 pm

Fitness pioneer Jack LaLanne, was among the celebrities who participated in the activities surrounding the USA Gymnastics’ national championships on August 18, 2007, in San Jose, Calif. Video by Mike Cassidy/Mercury News

Menopause hard on couple's sex lives

2007-08-16T15:57:00.000-07:00

1 hour, 52 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - When a woman enters menopause, her sex life and that of her partner may suffer, according to a survey in which more than half of the women reported a decrease in sex drive and in the amount of sex they were having since entering menopause.

Overall, 46 percent of menopausal women surveyed reported having sex less than once per month and most women felt that this was hurting their relationship.

"Menopausal women are having less sex and it's impacting our relationships," Karen Giblin noted in a telephone interview with Reuters Health. "Frankly, through the Red Hot Mamas menopause education programs, I have heard that a lot of women would rather go shoe shopping than have sex, and that concerns me."

The survey, including more than 1,000 women, 35 years or older, who were just beginning, just ending, or in the middle of menopause, was conducted between June 20 and July 2, 2007.

"We are the baby-boom generation who is now entering menopause; we are the women who lived through the sexual revolution in the 60s and now we are having our own sexual revolution, of a different kind," said Giblin, the founder of the Red Hot Mamas organization (www.redhotmamas.org), which commissioned the Sex and Menopause Survey. The survey was sponsored by Duramed Pharmaceuticals and conducted by Harris Interactive.

Four hundred sixty nine of these women -- about 44 percent -- reported suffering from vaginal symptoms such as vaginal atrophy (vaginal narrowing or shrinkage), which can cause vaginal dryness and painful sex.

Eighty-eight percent of women experiencing vaginal atrophy said it was causing them problems and 47 percent said that they have avoided, made an excuse, or stopped having sex altogether because of physical discomfort during intercourse.

Vaginal dryness, in particular, plagued more than half of menopausal women surveyed and this resulted in two thirds of them having less sex. "Seventy percent of the women did not know that therapies are available to relieve vaginal dryness," Giblin noted.

"There are over-the-counter products to combat dryness and your physician has a treasure chest of prescription medications to relieve vaginal dryness," she added.

Giblin believes men need menopause education just as much as women. "It's not only important that a woman have a thorough understanding of the menopause process." Men should also because the symptoms of menopause "can be very hard on relationships," Giblin said.

"If a partner sees a decrease in sex with their partner, often times the partner becomes resentful and feels that the woman has lost interest and it isn't necessarily true," Giblin said. "It's very critical for women and their significant other to stay really connected during menopause."

Healthy Lifestyle Key To Cancer Prevention

2007-08-16T13:19:00.000-07:00

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter 33 minutes ago

THURSDAY, August 16 (HealthDay News) -- While the number of deaths from cancer have been declining, many malignancies could be prevented by exercising, eating right, maintaining a healthy weight and not smoking, a new federal report finds.

The President's Cancer Panel issues a report every year that focuses on one aspect of what is happening in the United States in terms of cancer.

This year's effort "centers on lifestyle changes, and two issues that are actually quite different," said panel member Margaret L. Kripke, executive vice president and chief academic officer at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston.

One issue is nutrition, exercise and the fight against obesity, and the other is the battle to cut tobacco use, Kripke said.

"We tried to think of what would have the biggest impact on reducing cancer mortality," she said. "If you consider that 15 to 20 percent of cancer deaths are related to obesity and another 30 percent of cancer deaths are due to tobacco use, that's 50 percent of all people with cancer."

And quitting smoking and avoiding obesity are things that people can do themselves, Kripke noted. But, as she and other experts know, it's not easy to get people to make the lifestyle changes they should.

"The most serious lack, in terms of what we know, is what motivates people to live a healthier lifestyle," she said.

The experts call for a move toward a "culture of wellness" in the United States. This culture would embrace healthy living as a goal and promote a healthy lifestyle as a way of achieving wellness.

Despite progress in diagnosis and treatment, cancer continues to account for more than a half million deaths each year in the United States, with almost 1.5 million new cases diagnosed annually. Two-thirds of these deaths, and many thousands of new cases, could be avoided through lifestyle changes, according to the report.

Tobacco is the leading cause of lung cancer, but it's also responsible for most cancers of the larynx, oral cavity and pharynx, esophagus and bladder. In addition, it is a cause of kidney, pancreatic, cervical and stomach cancers, along with acute myeloid leukemia. "We really need to get rid of tobacco," Kripke said.

Obesity has been linked to a variety of cancers, including colon, breast, kidney, ovarian and pancreatic cancer. "There are very definitive studies showing that moderate exercise reduces your risk of breast cancer and colon cancer," Kripke said.

In addition, living a healthy lifestyle lowers a person's risk of cancer recurrence and improves outcomes after cancer, Kripke said.

The causes of the obesity epidemic in the United States are complex, Kripke said. The epidemic started in the 1970s about the time that food makers started using high fructose corn syrup as an additive. In addition, portion sizes in restaurants increased as schools cut back on exercise programs.

The obesity problem has grown steadily over the past 30 years. "I don't think there is going to be a quick fix," she said.

One recommendation the panel made in the report is to have subsidies for corn farmers curtailed. "There doesn't seem to be coordination between agricultural subsidies and public health policy for diet and nutrition," Kripke said.

"Subsidies for corn make corn syrup very cheap and it's not nutritionally what you want in all of your foods," Kripke said. "It might make more sense to make agricultural subsidies for fruits and vegetables that would be more healthy for the population."

Although the White House doesn't usually comment on the report, Kripke hopes that it will spur government officials to develop programs that help people make necessary lifestyle changes.

One expert agreed that societal changes are to blame for ever-heavier Americans.

"Obesity has been brought about by changes in our environment, not by any increase in the number of susceptible people," said Eugenia Calle, director of Analytic Epidemiology at the American Cancer Society.

Calle argues that while once fats and sugars were relatively expensive, they are now cheap. "It used to be impossible to buy a great deal of calories for $2.99, and now it is possible to buy one day's allotment of calories for less than $10," she said. "So now calorie-dense foods are cheap."

In contrast, fruits and vegetables are more expensive than they used to be, Calle said. "So, it becomes economically more difficult to make good food choices, especially if you don't have a lot of income," she said. In addition, people have become more sedentary, she added.

"The best idea in the report is implementing a culture of wellness in the U.S., so that the social and cultural norm is one of health," Calle said.

More information

For more information on cancer and lifestyle, visit the American Cancer Society.

Diet foods might cause kids to overeat

2007-08-13T17:48:00.000-07:00

Mon Aug 13, 12:34 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The diet sodas and snacks so popular with weight-conscious adults may backfire in children, if new animal research is correct.

In experiments with juvenile rats, researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada found that animals that became used to diet foods tended to overeat during meals of regular-calorie animal chow.

This was true for normal-weight and obese rat pups, the researchers found. However, diet foods did not appear to have an overeating effect in adolescent rats.

This suggests that the foods have some unique effect in young animals, and possibly children, the study authors report in the journal Obesity.

They suspect that diet foods disrupted the young animals' ability to learn how various flavors correlate with calories. When they associate tastes, such as sweet or salty, with few calories, even a rich dessert may fail to fill them up as it otherwise would.

It's possible that children given artificially low-calorie snacks and diet sodas might not learn to properly regulate their food intake, according to lead study author Dr. W. David Pierce.

"One thing is clear at this point," he said in a statement. "Young animals and perhaps children can be made to overeat when calorie-wise foods are offered on a daily basis, subverting the body's energy-balance system."

He and his colleagues recommend that parents give their children a well-balanced diet of foods in their natural form, including naturally low-calorie foods like fruits and vegetables.

The findings are based on a series of experiments with young rats, both normal, lean animals and those genetically prone to obesity. Over 16 days, the animals were regularly given gelatin cubes that contained starch, as well as a starch-free "diet" version of the snack.

For some animals, the starchy cubes were flavored with an artificial sweetener and the diet version was flavored with a salty solution. These flavors were reversed for other animals.

After 16 days of this taste training, the researchers gave all the animals a high-calorie snack dipped in either artificial sweetener or a salty solution. They then gave the rats a meal of their regular chow.

Pierce's team found that the animals tended to overeat during the meal if their pre-meal snack had been dipped in a flavor they'd learn to associate with a low-calorie food -- despite the snack's actual high calorie content.

The phenomenon was seen in both lean and obesity-prone rat pups, but the heavier animals generally ate more than their normal-weight counterparts, the researchers point out.

So it's possible, they say, that diet foods could be especially detrimental in the children already at the greatest risk of long-term weight problems.

SOURCE: Obesity, August 2007.

Study: Early diet advice for kids sticks

2007-08-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

By JAMIE STENGLE, Associated Press Writer Mon Aug 13, 5:57 PM ET

DALLAS - Teaching children from a young age to eat a low-fat diet can be effective — even as they reach their teens and begin eating more meals away from home, according to a new study.

The study of children in Finland found that those who were taught to focus on healthy fats — those found in fish, nuts, seeds and oils from plants — had slightly lower cholesterol levels compared to those who ate an unrestricted diet.

The researchers have been following the 1,062 children since the age of 7 months. About half of the children and their families were counseled to shift fat intake from animal-based saturated fats to healthier unsaturated fats. The rest did not get specific diet advice. The new study reported the results on the children at age 14.

Dr. Harri Niinikoski, lead author of the study done at the University of Turku in Finland, said children begin forming their eating and lifestyle habits in childhood.

"We think that this lifestyle change can be started early," he said.

Researchers also note that fears that a low intake of saturated fat might influence growth and brain development in young children are unfounded. At age of 14, there were no differences between the groups in height or weight, they found. An earlier study of the groups found no differences in brain development at age 5.

Dr. Sarah Blumenschein, a pediatric cardiologist with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said the study shows that early intervention is the key to maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

"The earlier you intervene, the more likely you are going to be successful," she said.

For the children in the diet-counseling group, families were told to give them skim milk beginning at age 1, keep daily cholesterol intake at less than 200 mg and aim for a fat intake of 30 to 35 percent of their daily calories.

By the age of 7, the diet information was aimed more toward the children instead of their parents.

Food journals were kept for several days each year to monitor the child's diet. The study, published in online editions Monday of the American Heart Association journal Circulation, showed that the counseled kids had a diet lower in total fat and saturated fat and higher in protein and carbohydrates than the comparison group.

Niinikoski said that they don't have any reason to believe that the families were eating any differently for the rest of the year.

"Our results about the cholesterol values tell the same story, so it must be coming from the diet," he said.

While the group that got specific dietary counseling had lower cholesterol readings than the other group, the difference was statistically significant for boys but not for girls — a difference of about 5 percent in boys and 2-4 percent in girls depending on age, Niinikoski said. He said that the reasons for the difference between boys and girls was not studied, but it might have to do with hormonal differences or exercise habits.

But doctors say that even a small decrease in cholesterol levels can have a big influence.

"If you study large numbers of people, the small increments result in a significant change in heart attacks and cardiac deaths," said Dr. Art Labovitz, cardiology director at Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

Labovitz said that people often don't realize that what they do for the first 40 to 50 years of their life has an effect on their chance of heart attacks and heart disease.

Dr. Stuart Berger, medical director of the Herma Heart Center at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, said there's no reason the same results wouldn't be seen in American children if they adhered to such a diet.

"I think that the biggest challenge in the U.S. would be compliance to the diet," said Berger.

Health Tip: Risk Factors for Prostate Cancer

2007-08-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

Wed Aug 8, 7:01 PM ET

(HealthDay News) -- Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers that affect men. While most cases aren't fatal, it is important to understand the risk factors for the disease to help recognize symptoms and begin treatment early.

The U.S. National Cancer Institute lists these potential risk factors for prostate cancer:

* Aging.
* High levels of testosterone.
* A high-fat diet, which may increase the risk. (A low-fat diet rich in fruits and vegetables may help the risk.)
* Blacks are at much greater risk of prostate cancer, whites are at intermediate risk, and Japanese have the lowest average risk.

Maternal Obesity Heightens Risk of Birth Defects

2007-08-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter 15 minutes ago

TUESDAY, Aug. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Women who were obese before they became pregnant had a higher risk of having babies with certain birth defects, including missing limbs, malformed hearts and underdeveloped spinal cords, a new study found.

But the researchers cautioned that overweight women planning to get pregnant should try to lose weight sensibly and carefully.

"We would advise women who are obese to try to maintain a healthy weight, engage in moderate exercise and follow a healthy daily diet," said study lead author Kim Waller, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas at Houston's School of Public Health. "Multivitamins both before and after a woman becomes pregnant are very important."

In particular, women are advised to take 400 micrograms of folic acid daily both before pregnancy and during pregnancy. A multivitamin will usually satisfy this recommendation.

And women should not try fad diets.

"We don't want women who are thinking of becoming pregnant or who are pregnant to rush out and go on a crash diet," Waller cautioned. "If you become pregnant, then, sure, maybe try to lose some weight, but do so very, very carefully and maintain a healthy diet while you're doing so."

"You have to be of a healthy weight not only for yourself but also for a healthy pregnancy," added Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "You want to try to get down to a healthy weight before you even get pregnant in the first place. Pregnancy is not the time to do a crash diet to try to lose weight."

In 2003 and 2004, 51 percent of U.S. women aged 20 to 39 were overweight or obese, putting them at increased risk for chronic diseases, infertility, irregular menstruation and pregnancy complications, according to background information in the study.

Previous research had shown a strong association between pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI, a ratio of weight to height) and the risk for certain birth defects, particularly anencephaly -- a defect in the closure of the neural tube, which forms the brain and spinal cord of the embryo -- and spina bifida.

The link between overweight and obesity and other birth defects has been less clear.

According to the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, as many as one in 33 babies born in the United States has a birth defect.

For the new study, the largest of its kind, Waller and her colleagues interviewed 10,249 women in eight states whose babies had been born with birth defects between 1997 and 2002. Information on the women came from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study.

These women were then compared to 4,065 women who had given birth to babies without birth defects during the same time period.

Sixteen birth defects were studied. Of those, mothers of babies with the following seven birth defects were more likely to have been obese than mothers of infants without birth defects:

* Spina bifida, or the incomplete development of the brain, spinal cord and/or meninges (the protective covering around the brain and spinal cord). This is the most common neural tube defect in the United States and affects up to 2,000 of the more than 4 million babies born annually, according to the National Institutes of Health.
* Heart defects.
* Anorectal atresia, or malformation of the anal opening.
* Hypospadias, or an abnormally placed urethral opening in males -- on the underside instead of the end of the penis.
* Limb reduction defects, such as small or missing toes, fingers, arms or legs.
* Diaphragmatic hernia, an opening in the diaphragm that allows abdominal organs to move into the chest cavity. This may also cause lungs to be underdeveloped.
* Omphalocele, when the intestines or other abdominal organs protrude through the navel.

The study authors noted that the overall risk of having a child with a birth defect related to obesity is low. And mothers of babies born with gastroschisis (when organs protrude through a defect in the abdominal wall other than the navel) were less likely to be obese than mothers of babies without birth defects.

The findings are published in the August issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

It's not clear why the association between pre-pregnancy obesity and birth defects exists.

"We know that obese women have a higher risk of certain defects, but we don't know if obesity is the direct cause," Waller said. "There could be other explanations, such as different types of diet, different ways of dieting when they're dieting. We were not able to exclude women with diabetes, and that is a very strong risk factor for birth defects, so we think there may be undiagnosed cases of diabetes remaining with the study."

Future research will look at dieting techniques and the risk of birth defects, as well as any links between over-the-counter diuretics and appetite suppressants and birth defects.

More information

Find out more about a healthy pregnancy at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health Tip: Adjusting to a Move

2007-08-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

1 hour, 16 minutes ago

(HealthDay News) -- Changing homes can be a stressful ordeal, particularly for young
The Nemours Foundation offers these suggestions to help young children cope with the stress of a move:

* While explaining details of the move, keep it clear and simple.
* Tell them a story about the move, and use their toys to act it out.
* Let them help pack up their toys, and make sure they understand that the toys will be at the new home, too.
* If you can, take your child to visit the new home several times, and try taking toys over each time you go.
* Try to keep your child's bedroom furniture the same.
* Just before and after the move, don't try to make any other changes in your child's life, like toilet training or moving to a bed from a crib.
* Have your child stay with a babysitter while the furniture and belongings are moved to the new home.

German has pencil in head removed after 55 years

2007-08-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

Mon Aug 6, 5:21 AM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - A 59-year-old German woman has had most of a pencil removed from inside her head after suffering nearly her whole life with the headaches and nosebleeds it caused, Bild newspaper reported on Monday.

Margret Wegner fell over carrying the pencil in her hand when she was four.

"The pencil went right through my skin -- and disappeared into my head," Wegner told the newspaper.

It narrowly missed vital parts of her brain.

At the time no one dared operate, but now technology has improved sufficiently for doctors to be able to remove it.

The majority of the pencil, some 8 cm (3.1 inches) long, was taken out in an operation at a private Berlin clinic, but the 2 cm tip had grown in so firmly that it was impossible to remove.

Fatter corpses cause hazard for mortuaries - super-sized drinks leads to super-sized coffins

2007-08-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

Mon Aug 6, 9:10 AM ET

SYDNEY (Reuters) - More than two-thirds of Australians living outside major cities are overweight or obese, and extremely obese corpses are creating a safety hazard at mortuaries, according to two studies released Sunday.

Nearly three quarters of men and 64 percent of women were overweight in a study of people in rural areas. Just 30 percent of those studied recorded a healthy weight, said research published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

"Urgent action is required at the highest level to change unhealthy lifestyle habits by improving diet, increasing physical activity and making our environments supportive of these objectives," wrote the lead researcher, Professor Edward Janus.

The figures were much higher than for the general population, where statistics show about 3.2 million of Australia's 21 million people are obese.

Meanwhile, pathologists are calling for new "heavy-duty" autopsy facilities to cope with obese corpses that are difficult to move and dangerously heavy for standard-size trolleys and lifting hoists.

The bodies presented "major logistical problems" and "significant occupational health and safety issues," according to a separate study, which found the number of obese and morbidly obese bodies had doubled in the past 20 years.

Specially designed mortuaries would soon be required if the nation failed to curb its fat epidemic, providing "larger storage and dissection rooms, and more robust equipment," said Professor Roger Byard, a pathologist at the University of Adelaide.

"Failure to provide these might compromise the post-mortem evaluation of markedly obese individuals, in addition to potentially jeopardizing the health of mortuary staff."

In the past year, there have also been requests for larger crematorium furnaces, bigger grave plots as well as super-sized ambulances, wheelchairs and hospital beds.

S.C. teen falls 6 stories, walks away - a 'God is real' event,

2007-08-06T15:45:00.000-07:00

Mon Aug 6, 3:55 AM ET

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - A teenager fell six stories from a hotel balcony but walked away with just bruises and scrapes.

Matthew Savage, 17, was reaching up to a balcony one floor above to grab a bathing suit that had fluttered down from the 11th floor when he tumbled over the railing Friday.

The teen, from Gainesville, Ga., hit other balconies on his way down and slammed onto a slanted rooftop, then slid into bushes.

"I just closed my eyes," Savage said, nursing scrapes and bruises on his back and legs.

After landing in the bushes, he got up and started walking back to his room. But paramedics strapped him to a board and flew him to a hospital, where tests showed he was fine.

"This was a 'God is real' event," his sister, Mandy Baker, said.

For Chinese children lead can be inescapable

2007-08-03T18:47:00.001-07:00

By Chris Buckley Fri Aug 3, 6:25 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - Parents around the world may have been shocked this week when 1.5 million Chinese-made Fisher-Price toys were recalled because of excessive lead content, but for mums and dads in China lead poisoning is just a fact of life.

Mattel Inc.'s worldwide recall of dozens of products is the latest in a deluge of safety scares that have rattled international consumer confidence in Chinese-made goods.

High levels of lead from toys, water pipes and industry can cause behavioral problems and slow learning among children.

But if Beijing was worried about Chinese children being affected, that was not reflected in state-run media on Friday, which were silent about Mattel's recall.

And it was business as usual in the toy section of Beijing's Tianyi department store.

"I do not worry so much, if the toy looks fun for my child, it is okay. My child is already so big, he is not going to put the toy in his mouth," said a Mrs. Zhang, who was buying toys for her four-year-old son.

Indeed, for many parents, lead competes with many other toxins in the heavily polluted country as a source of anxiety.

"There are just too many things to worry about," said Li Huijing, mother of a five-year-old girl. "There are some things I just try not to think about. I try to pay more for good toys."

HOUSE PAINT, OLD PIPES

China has responded to rising consumer expectations by setting stricter standards for lead in toys, most recently introducing new labeling rules. But imposing those standards on the country's vast and fragmented toy sector is difficult.

China makes 75 percent of the world's toys, according to the national chamber of light industry, and many of the thousands of producers are small and resistant to regulation.

They make cheap plastic, metal and wooden toys that -- if regular news reports are a guide -- often have a lead content well above government-set limits.

A 2005 report in a Beijing newspaper cited estimates that 60 percent of Chinese-made toys used paint with lead above internationally accepted limits.

The China Toy Association would not answer questions about the problem.

"The worry isn't big toy makers that also export their products. The worry is small factories," said Feng Guoqiang, a childhood development specialist at Peking University's Health Science Centre.

"It's a matter of money and choice. Some parents can't afford better, so they buy the cheapest on the stall."

Feng said that toys are not the biggest threat. China has phased out leaded petrol, but house paint, old pipes and buildings and belching factories are still big sources of lead.

A study of Chinese cities in 2004 found that 10.5 percent of children had lead levels in their blood of at least 100 microgram's per liter -- a level considered unhealthy by the World Health Organization.

"For us, the problem is the factories. What they make is less important," said Feng.

Search: Advanced

2007-08-02T16:35:00.000-07:00

By The Associated Press Thu Aug 2, 3:24 PM ET

BABY TALK: New research suggests babies start really jabbering after they've mastered enough easy words to tackle more of the harder ones. It's essentially a snowball

OLD IDEA: That explanation is far simpler than scientists' assumptions that some special brain mechanisms must click to trigger the word boom.

NO TECHNOLOGY NEEDED: Simply talking and reading to a child a lot is the key.

Health Tip: When a Pet Dies

2007-07-30T18:03:00.000-07:00

9 minutes ago

(HealthDay News) -- The death of a pet is a significant loss to every member of the family, but it can be particularly difficult for young children.

Here are suggestions to help your child deal with the loss of a pet, courtesy of the Nemours Foundation:

* Explain to her that it's normal to feel sadness, anger, frustration and even guilt.
* Let her see that you are sad and upset too, and that it's OK to cry -- don't hide your emotions from her.
* Let her know that it's OK not to want to talk about it at first, but that you can talk openly about it whenever she is ready.
* When she's ready, share happy memories and funny stories about the pet.
* Encourage her to say goodbye, and offer to have a ceremony to remember the pet.

Overweight women at risk of pregnancy complications

2007-07-30T18:01:00.001-07:00

7 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The heavier a woman is before pregnancy, the greater her risk of a range of pregnancy complications, a large study suggests.

Using data from more than 24,000 UK women who gave birth between 1976 and 2005, researchers found that the risk of problems, such as high blood pressure, pre-eclampsia and premature delivery climbed in tandem with a woman's pre-pregnancy weight.

The findings, published in the online journal BMC Public Health, add to evidence that obesity is a risk for mothers and newborns.

They also support the belief that all pregnancies in obese women should be considered "high risk," and managed accordingly, conclude the study authors, led by Dr. Sohinee Bhattacharya of Aberdeen Maternity Hospital.

The researchers found that compared with normal-weight women, obese women were 50 percent more likely to have post-delivery bleeding and twice as likely to deliver prematurely. They were also more likely to need an emergency C-section or to have labor induced.

Morbidly obese women had the highest risk of suffering pre-eclampsia, a potentially serious pregnancy complication marked by a sudden rise in blood pressure and kidney abnormalities.

In contrast, the study found that women who were underweight before pregnancy tended to have the lowest risk of all these complications. They were, however, more likely than normal-weight women to have an underweight newborn.

The results add to growing evidence of the importance of a mother's weight in pregnancy outcomes, according to Bhattacharya's team.

"The evidence for obesity as an important complication in pregnancy is mounting," the researchers write, it is time for physicians to be aware of these findings and start using them in their practice.

Besides good prenatal care, they note, this means counseling overweight women to lose weight before they become pregnant.

SOURCE: BMC Public Health, online July 24, 2007.

Dietary carbs linked to vision loss

2007-07-30T17:50:00.001-07:00

17 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The carbohydrates present in a diet can influence the risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most common cause of vision loss in older adults, according to a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"AMD appears to share several carbohydrate-related mechanisms and risk factors with diabetes-related diseases, including (eye) and cardiovascular disease," write Dr. Allen Taylor, of Tufts University, Boston, and colleagues. "However, to date, only one small study has addressed this issue."

To investigate further, the researchers conducted a study of 4,099 participants, aged 55 to 80 years, in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study.

The team classified a total of 8,125 eyes into one of five AMD groups based on the severity of the disease and other factors.

Regular consumption of a diet with a high-glycemic index - a diet containing carbs that quickly raise blood sugar levels -- significantly increased the risk of AMD relative to regular consumption of a diet with a low-glycemic index.

The researchers calculate that 20 percent of AMD cases could have been prevented if subjects had consumed diets with a low-glycemic index.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, July 2007.

Smoking now kills more than 400,000 people a year

2007-07-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

Smoking now kills more than 400,000 people a year. It accounts for nearly one in five deaths in the United States.

Poor diet in pregnancy can cause child obesity: study

2007-07-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

Wed Jul 25, 5:54 AM ET

WELLINGTON (AFP) - The diets of pregnant women may have an important role in determining whether their children will be obese later in life, a new study suggests.

The study by New Zealand and British scientists indicates that children born to mothers who ate badly during pregnancy may be more likely to put on weight later in life.

Scientists at the University of Auckland's Liggins centre say the way the foetus adapts to the environment in the womb can determine how it reacts to food later in life.

If the womb is low in nutrients, the foetus may predict food supplies will be low later in life and set its metabolism to store and conserve fat, the researchers led by Professor Peter Gluckman said in a statement Tuesday.

The study says if this early prediction proves false and food -- particularly food high in fat -- is readily available, the child may be programmed for adult obesity and conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.

"The study poses questions of fundamental importance that change the whole way we think about who we are," Gluckman said.

He said the study may be important in explaining why genetically similar individuals can have markedly different metabolisms later in life.

"It changes the way we should think about tackling the obesity epidemic."

The study, based on tests on the metabolisms of rats, was done in collaboration with New Zealand's National Research Centre for Growth and Development and the University of Southhampton in Britain.

Watch out, you may catch obesity

2007-07-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

1 hour, 7 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Like the common cold, obesity can be spread from person to person, new research suggests.

A person's social network can influence their risk of obesity, according to new study findings reported in The New England Journal of Medicine. The results suggest that if you want to stay thin, you may not want to surround yourself with obese friends and relatives.

"It's not that obese or non-obese people simply find other similar people to hang out with," study co-author Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, from Harvard Medical School in Boston, said in a statement. Rather, the one directly causes the other, he explained.

"What appears to be happening is that a person becoming obese most likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate body size. People come to think that it is okay to be bigger since those around them are bigger, and this sensibility spreads," Christakis noted.

The findings stem from a study of 12,067 individuals who were part of densely interconnected social network and were evaluated from 1971 to 2003 as part of the Framingham Heart Study. Body mass index, the ratio of body weight to height, was determined for all subjects and complex statistical tests were used to determine how the weight gain of a friend, sibling, spouse, or neighbor might affect a person's own weight.

The researchers identified clusters of obese people in the social network that were apparent throughout the study period. These clusters extended to three degrees of separation, the authors note.

During a given time period, the likelihood that a person would become obese rose by 57 percent if they had a friend who became obese. If a sibling or a spouse became obese, a person's risk of becoming obese increased 40 and 37 percent, respectively.

The risk of obesity was usually greater if the person's associate was of the same gender, the report indicates.

By contrast, local environmental factors seemed to have little impact on person's risk of becoming obese. For instance, people with obese neighbors who were not in their social network were not at heightened risk for becoming obese themselves.

"Social effects, I think, are much stronger than people before realized," co-author Dr. James H. Fowler, from the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement. "There's been an intensive effort to find genes that are responsible for obesity and physical processes that are responsible for obesity; and what our paper suggests is that you really should spend time looking at the social side of life as well."

SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine, July 26, 2007.

Health Tip: Your Teething Baby

2007-07-24T10:54:00.000-07:00

2 hours, 16 minutes ago

(HealthDay News) -- A baby's first set of teeth usually starts to emerge at about 6 months of age. While discomfort and irritability are common in teething babies, other symptoms may be warning signs of another problem.

Here are some basics that parents should know about teething, courtesy of the American Dental Association:

* Irritability, fussiness, drooling, and loss of appetite are common symptoms of teething.
* Diarrhea, rash, and fever are not caused by teething, and should be evaluated by a doctor.
* Small cysts near erupting teeth are common and harmless.
* Tender gums may be soothed with a teething ring, pacifier, or a cream that helps numb the gums.
* Gums can also be massaged with a clean finger or damp piece of gauze.

Sleep pattern linked with teen's behavior

2007-07-20T16:36:00.001-07:00

By Charnicia Huggins 17 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New study findings suggest that a preference for nighttime over daytime activities may be associated with antisocial behavior in adolescences, even in children as young as 8 years old.

Those who prefer later bedtimes appear to exhibit more antisocial behavior than those who like to wake early and participate in daytime recreational activities, researchers report.

"A preference for evening activities and staying up late is related to problem behavior and is evident even in preteens," study co-author Dr. Elizabeth J. Susman, of Pennsylvania State University, told Reuters Health.

Staying up late "contributes to lack of sleep and this, in turn, causes problems such as lack of control and attention regulation, which are associated with antisocial behavior and substance use," Susman added in a university statement.

Susman and her team investigated the relationship between a preference for morning versus evening activities and antisocial behavior in 111 subjects between 8 to 13 years old. They also correlated morning to afternoon cortisol levels with behavior and noted the age at which the subjects reached puberty.

The researchers found a number of factors were related to antisocial behaviors in the study group, particularly in the boys who tended to exhibit more rule-breaking behaviors than did their peers. The findings are published in the Developmental Psychology journal.

For girls, a preference for evening activities was associated with a higher incidence of relational aggression or aggressive behavior towards their peers.

Boys who experienced prolonged high levels of cortisol -- smaller decreases in cortisol levels from the time of awakening until 4 pm -- tended to have more behavior problems than did their peers, the report indicates. The association was not true for girls, however.

Normally, levels of cortisol, the stress hormone associated with circadian rhythms, peak in the morning upon awakening and plateau during the afternoon and evening hours.

Abnormalities in cortisol secretion, have also been associated with clinical depression and antisocial behavior in earlier studies, the researchers note.

Boys who hit puberty at earlier ages tended to also engage in more rule-breaking and attention behavior problems than did other boys, according to parent reports, and they self-reported more symptoms of conduct disorder.

Girls who were younger at puberty reported more relational aggression compared with their peers, study findings indicate.

Overall, the findings imply that "caregivers should be vigilant to bedtime activities of children and young adolescents," according to Susman.

"Monitoring these activities is essential for making sure that children and adolescents are going to sleep in time to assure enough sleep for good functioning in school and otherwise," she added.

SOURCE: Developmental Psychology, July 2007.

Exercise may help with hard-to-treat depression

2007-07-19T17:20:00.000-07:00

Thu Jul 19, 3:35 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Regular exercise may improve depression symptoms in people who've failed to get better with antidepressant medication, the results of a small study suggest.

The study found that depressed women who started a supervised exercise regimen had significant improvements in their symptoms over the next 8 months. Those who didn't exercise showed only marginal improvements.

Before the study, all of the women had tried taking antidepressant medication for at least two months but had failed to improve.

A number of studies have found that physically active people are less likely than couch potatoes to suffer depression. Some clinical trials have shown regular exercise can help treat the disorder, and perhaps be as effective as antidepressant drugs in some cases.

The new findings suggest that exercise can even help people whose symptoms have been resistant to medication, according to the study authors.

Dr. Alessandra Pilu of the University of Cagliari in Italy and co-investigators report their findings in the online journal of Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health.

The study included 30 women ages 40 to 60 who'd been diagnosed with major depression. The researchers randomly assigned the women to either stick with antidepressants alone or to start an exercise program. All of the patients continued to take their medication.

The exercisers worked out as a group twice a week for 1 hour, using cardio-fitness machines. At the beginning of the study and 8 months later, women in both groups completed standard measures used to assess depression severity.

Pilu's team found that women in the exercise group showed marked improvements in their depression symptoms, while those on medication alone made only modest gains.

The findings suggest that exercise could be an effective additional treatment for depression over the long term, the researchers point out.

There are several theories on why exercise might improve depression. Physical activity seems to affect some key nervous system chemicals -- norepinephrine and serotonin -- that are targets of antidepressant drugs, as well as brain neurotrophins, which help protect nerve cells from injury and transmit signals in brain regions related to mood.

Beyond that, people who take group exercise classes may feel better from simply getting out and being with other people.

SOURCE: Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health, online July 9, 2007.

Natural Cancer-Fighting Protein May Also Slow Aging

2007-07-18T16:03:00.001-07:00

By E.J. Mundell
HealthDay Reporter 20 minutes ago

WEDNESDAY, July 18 (HealthDay News) -- There's no fountain of youth waiting around the corner, but a study of unusually old mice suggests a natural anticancer protein might also put the brakes on aging.

The protein, called p53, along with one of its cellular regulators, called Arf, may boost the body's antioxidant activity to keep cells younger longer, according to research in the July 19 issue of Nature.

In the study, a team of cancer investigators closely examined cells from mice genetically engineered to produce extra amounts of p53 and/or Arf.

"When we examined markers of aging in these mice, we observed that their aging is slower," said senior researcher Manuel Serrano of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid. This extended lifespan wasn't just due to p53's well-known anti-cancer activity, he said, since aging was slowed even when the researchers took cancer suppression into account.

Cancer researchers are certainly no strangers to the p53 protein, which is produced naturally by the body.

"P53 is the undisputed 'star' in cancer research -- scientists know more about p53 than about any other gene or protein," Serrano said. That's because the protein helps target and eliminate what he called "unhappy" cells -- cells with broken DNA, or cells poorly supplied in oxygen -- that have a higher risk of becoming malignant.

"P53 kills the unhappy cells by activating another complex cascade of events (only partly understood) that includes self-digestive proteins that basically destroy the cell," Serrano explained.

P53 is helped in this task by the regulatory chemical Arf, which lets p53 know that a particular cell is in trouble and marked for elimination.

Throughout their years of work with p53/Arf, Serrano's Spanish team has utilized a genetically engineered strain of lab mice that produces extra-high quantities of the two proteins. The Madrid researchers noted t hat these rodents lived longer than other mice, even when the scientists factored out reductions in cancer-related death.

While no one is sure just how p53 keeps cells young, Serrano believes the protein "delays aging for exactly the same reason that it prevents cancer."

"In the aging field, everyone agrees that aging is produced by the accumulation of faulty cells," he said. However, p53/Arf appears to be a kind of "quality control" manager in this regard, eliminating bad cells that cause cancer and speed up the aging process. Therefore, "the expectation is that by having more p53, mice will have more strict quality control for cells, hence less cancer and less aging," Serrano said.

In fact, p53 may be a key to explaining why cancer incidence rises near the end of any mammal's lifespan, the researchers said. This sharp rise in malignancy isn't dependent on how many years the animal lives (for example, mice live about three years, humans close to 80). Instead, it always occurs near the end of a particular animal's expected lifespan.

So, "the fact that we have evolved to be such a long-lived species probably requires that we can fight cancer [longer]," and p53 probably helps humans do that, said Felipe Sierra, director of the Biology of Aging Program at the U.S. National Institute on Aging. He believes p53/Arf plays a key role in keeping cancer at bay throughout youth and middle-age, but this effect may wane in old age.

According to Sierra, the Spanish study helps answer the question of why aging and cancer are so closely intertwined, and p53's role in that relationship. "The fact that there was a connection was suspected for a long time, but it was difficult to prove," he said. "It's perfectly sensible that there's this correlation between these two things."

But don't look for any elixir of eternal life anytime soon, the experts said.

"There are a number of chemical compounds that have been developed by big pharmaceutical companies, and these compounds are able to boost p53 in the organism," Serrano noted. But testing of these compounds is still in its earliest stages and safely "fine-tuning" the p53 cascade will likely be a delicate process. "To achieve this fine-tuning with chemical drugs may not be that easy," he said.

Sierra was similarly cautious.

"We're not really talking here about anything that can manipulate the system," he said. "This is just about basic mechanisms, so we can start looking in different directions. There's no fountain of youth in the near future."

Texas man battles flesh-eating bacteria

2007-07-18T16:02:00.001-07:00

9 minutes ago

HOUSTON - A Nacogdoches man was in critical but stable condition after three surgeries aimed at saving him from a flesh-eating bacteria that infected him during a swim off the coast of Galveston County.

Steve Gilpatrick, 58, was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis, a tissue-destroying disease caused by a bacterium called Vibrio vulnificus, when he took ill three days after swimming during a July 8 fishing trip at Crystal Beach.

Gilpatrick's physician, Dr. David Herndon, the chief of burn services and professor of surgery at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said Tuesday the situation is life-threatening because the infection spread to Gilpatrick's blood. Gilpatrick is suffering from multiple organ failure and doctors are trying to save his leg.

"I've heard of flesh-eating bacteria, but it always seemed so far away," said his wife, Linda Gilpatrick. "It's not. It's here."

The Gilpatricks regularly vacation in Galveston each summer, she said.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the bacterium Vibrio vulnificus thrives during summer months in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Swimmers with weakened immune systems, such as cancer patients or people with liver disease, are most at risk. A point of entry, such as an open wound, allows the bacteria into the body.

Gilpatrick is diabetic and had an ulcer on his lower leg when he went swimming. His wife said he believed the sore was nearly healed. His leg became infected three days later and he began running a high fever.

"We figured he had some type of infection," Linda Gilpatrick said. "But we didn't, of course, realize the extent of it."

The CDC says most cases of Vibrio vulnificus occur along the Gulf Coast, but it's rare. In Texas, there were 22 cases of the infection reported in 2006, with at least seven caused by water contact, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

People can also be infected by eating contaminated seafood. Raw shellfish, particularly oysters, pose the greatest risk, according to CDC. The bacterium causes nearly all seafood-related deaths in the United States, the agency says.

Symptoms of the disease include vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain. When it infects the bloodstream, it can cause fever, decreased blood pressure and blistering skin lesions.

Dr. Robert Atmar, a professor and infectious disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said seafood-eaters should be aware of the infection risk, but healthy swimmers shouldn't worry.

"I wouldn't alter (swimming) activities based on this, if you're otherwise healthy," he said. "People who have chronic illnesses like diabetes or steroids or cancer or chronic liver disease, if they have open wounds or sores, shouldn't go wading in the Gulf during the summer."

Study predicts 75 percent overweight in U.S. by 2015

2007-07-18T15:59:00.000-07:00

13 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If people keep gaining weight at the current rate, fat will be the norm by 2015, with 75 percent of U.S. adults overweight and 41 percent obese, U.S. researchers predicted on Wednesday.

A team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore examined 20 studies published in journals and looked at national surveys of weight and behavior for their analysis, published in the journal Epidemiologic Reviews.

"Obesity is a public health crisis. If the rate of obesity and overweight continues at this pace, by 2015, 75 percent of adults and nearly 24 percent of U.S. children and adolescents will be overweight or obese," Dr. Youfa Wang, who led the study, said in a statement.

They defined adult overweight and obesity using a standard medical definition called body mass index. People with a BMI of 25 or above are considered overweight, while those with BMIs of 30 or above are obese and at serious risk of heart disease, diabetes and some cancers.

Studies show that 66 percent of U.S. adults were overweight or obese in 2003 and 2004. An alarming 80 percent of black women aged 40 or over are overweight and 50 percent are obese.

Sixteen percent of U.S. children and adolescents are overweight and 34 percent are at risk of becoming overweight, according to federal government figures.

Every group is steadily getting heavier, Wang said.

"Our analysis showed patterns of obesity or overweight for various groups of Americans," said May Beydoun, who worked on the study.

"Obesity is likely to continue to increase, and if nothing is done, it will soon become the leading preventable cause of death in the United States."

Overweight kids face widespread stigma

2007-07-12T06:43:00.000-07:00

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN, Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 12, 3:54 AM ET

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Overweight children are stigmatized by their peers as early as age 3 and even face bias from their parents and teachers, giving them a quality of life

Youngsters who report teasing, rejection, bullying and other types of abuse because of their weight are two to three times more likely to report suicidal thoughts as well as to suffer from other health issues such as high blood pressure and eating disorders, researchers said.

"The stigmatization directed at obese children by their peers, parents, educators and others is pervasive and often unrelenting," researchers with Yale University and the University of Hawaii at Manatoa wrote in the July issue of Psychological Bulletin.

The paper was based on a review of all research on youth weight bias over the past 40 years, said lead author Rebecca M. Puhl of Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

It comes amid a growing worldwide epidemic of child obesity. By 2010, almost 50 percent of children in North America and 38 percent of children in the European Union will be overweight, the researchers said.

While programs to prevent childhood obesity are growing, more efforts are needed to protect overweight children from abuse, Puhl said.

"The quality of life for kids who are obese is comparable to the quality of life of kids who have cancer," Puhl said, citing one study. "These kids are facing stigma from everywhere they look in society, whether it's media, school or at home."

Even with a growing percentage of overweight people, the stigma shows no signs of subsiding, according to Puhl. She said television and other media continue to reinforce negative stereotypes.

"This is a form of bias that is very socially acceptable," Puhl said. "It is rarely challenged; it's often ignored."

The stigmatization of overweight children has been documented for decades. When children were asked to rank photos of children as friends in a 1961 study, the overweight child was ranked last.

Children as young as 3 are more likely to consider overweight peers to be mean, stupid, ugly and sloppy.

A growing body of research shows that parents and educators are also biased against heavy children. In a 1999 study of 115 middle and high school teachers, 20 percent said they believed obese people are untidy, less likely to succeed and more emotional.

"Perhaps the most surprising source of weight stigma toward youths is parents," the report says.

Several studies showed that overweight girls got less college financial support from their parents than average weight girls. Other studies showed teasing by parents was common.

"It is possible that parents may take out their frustration, anger and guilt on their overweight child by adopting stigmatizing attitudes and behavior, such as making critical and negative comments toward their child," the authors wrote, suggesting further research is needed.

Lynn McAfee, 58, of Stowe, Pa., said that as an overweight child she faced troubles on all fronts.

"It was constantly impressed upon me that I wasn't going to get anywhere in the world if I was fat," McAfee said. "You hear it so often, it becomes the truth."

Her mother, who also was overweight, offered to buy her a mink coat when she was 8 to try to get her to lose weight even though her family was poor.

"I felt I was letting everybody down," she said.

Other children would try to run her down on bikes to see if she would bounce. She had a hard time getting on teams in the playground.

"Teachers did not stand up for me when I was teased," McAfee said.

A study in 2003 found that obese children had much lower quality of life scores on issues such as health, emotional and social well-being, and school functioning.

"An alarming finding of this research was that obese children had (quality of life) scores comparable with those of children with cancer," the researchers reported.

Sylvia Rimm, author of "Rescuing the Emotional Lives of Overweight Children," said her surveys of more than 5,000 middle school children reached similar conclusions.

"The overweight children felt less intelligent," Rimm said. "They felt less popular. They struggled from early on. They feel they are a different species."

Parents should emphasize a child's strengths, she said, and teachers should pair up students for activities instead of letting children pick their partners.

McAfee, who now works for the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, said her childhood experiences even made her reluctant to see a doctor when she needed one. She recalled one doctor who said she looked like a gorilla and another who gave her painkillers and diet pills for what turned out to be mononucleosis.

"The amount of cruelty I've seen in people has changed me forever," McAfee said.

The Yale-Hawaii research report recommends more research to determine whether negative stereotypes lead to discriminatory behavior, citing evidence that overweight adults face discrimination. It also calls for studying ways to reduce stigma and negative attitudes toward overweight children.

"Weight-based discrimination is as important a problem as racial discrimination or discrimination against children with physical disabilities," the report concludes. "Remedying it needs to be taken equally seriously..."

Newborns tested for genetic disorders

2007-07-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

4 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Good news for the nation's babies: Nearly 90 percent of newborns are getting tested for a host of rare but devastating genetic disorders.

Since 2004, specialists have urged that every U.S. newborn be checked for 29 conditions, to detect the few thousand who will need early treatment to avoid death, retardation or other serious problems.

The federal government hasn't issued national screening guidelines, but more states are following the advice on their own. As of June 1, 40 states required testing for more than 20 of those disorders, says a March of Dimes report issued Wednesday.

Topping the list, 13 states plus Washington, D.C., required testing of every newborn for the entire list of 29 conditions, which range from sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis to lesser known diseases such as the metabolic disorder LCHAD.

New Hampshire also began testing for all 29 conditions on July 1, after the report's deadline.

The report marks steady progress: Just 38 percent of babies were born in states with intensive screening when the March of Dimes counted in 2005, and 64 percent last year. This year, that number rises to 87.5 percent of newborns, or about 3.6 million babies, the child advocacy group calculated.

Still, almost half a million infants are born in states that require testing for 12 or fewer of the conditions, the analysis found. They include Arkansas, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Three more — Kansas, Montana and West Virginia — passed legislation this year requiring checks for all 29 disorders, but that expanded testing hasn't yet begun.

While some states tout testing for even more conditions, the 29 on this "core list" — hearing loss plus 28 genetic diseases that can be diagnosed using a single drop of blood — are those deemed most important for screening by the American College of Medical Genetics.

Meats, Sweets May Boost Breast Cancer Risk

2007-07-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

10 minutes ago

TUESDAY, July 10 (HealthDay News) -- A study of older Chinese women suggests that a move toward a Western-style diet -- heavy on meat and sugary foods -- boosts breast cancer risk.

Postmenopausal Chinese women who ate a diet that included red meat, starches and sweets were twice as likely to develop breast cancer than those who ate the traditional vegetable-soy-fish diet, according to a study in the July issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

In the study, American and Chinese researchers studied women, ages 25 to 64, in Shanghai who were newly diagnosed with breast cancer between August 1996 and March 1998.

The dietary habits of the women with the 1,602 breast cancer cases were compared to those of more than 1,500 women without breast cancer.

The researchers found that overweight, postmenopausal women who ate a western-style diet had a greater than twofold increased risk of estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancers. There was no association between breast cancer risk and a vegetable-soy-fish diet.

The "meat-sweet" western diet relies on various kinds of meats, saltwater fish and shellfish, bread, milk, dessert and candy. The vegetable-soy-fish diet favors various vegetables, soy-based products, and freshwater fish.

"The Shanghai data gave us a unique look at a population of Chinese women who were beginning to adopt more western-style eating habits," researcher Marilyn Tseng, an associate member in the population science division at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, said in a prepared statement.

"Our study suggests the possibility that the 'meat-sweet' pattern interacts with obesity to increase breast cancer risk," Tseng said. "Low consumption of a western dietary pattern plus successful weight control may protect against breast cancer in a traditionally low-risk Asian population that is poised to more broadly adopt foods characteristic of western societies."

More information

Breastcancer.org has more about nutrition and breast cancer.

Portion control dishes aid weight loss: study

2007-06-25T19:02:00.000-07:00

36 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Commercially available portion control plates and bowls can help obese individuals with type 2 diabetes lose weight and reduce their need for blood sugar-controlling medications, according to a Canadian study published today.

Most cases of type 2 diabetes are directly related to obesity, note investigators, and the obesity epidemic is paralleled by increasing portion sizes in the marketplace.

In a study of 130 obese type 2 diabetic adults, Dr. Sue D. Pedersen and colleagues from University of Calgary, Alberta, randomly assigned roughly half of the subjects to use a portion-control dinner plate and a portion-control breakfast bowl for six months. The other half, serving as a control group, received usual care, which consisted of dietary assessment and counseling.

The portion control dinner plate used in the study has clearly marked sections for carbohydrates, proteins, cheese and sauce, and vegetables and provides roughly an 800-calorie meal for a man and a 650-calorie meal for a woman. The cereal bowl provides a 200-calorie meal of cereal and milk.

Pedersen's team found, based on 122 subjects completing the study, that those using portion-control dishes lost an average of 2.1 kg (5.6 lbs), or 1.8 percent of their body weight - significantly more than control subjects who shed an average of just 0.1 kg (0.27 lbs), or 0.1 percent of their body weight.

Moreover, a significantly greater proportion of subjects using portion-control dishes achieved at least 5-percent weight loss (16.9 percent versus 4.6 percent for controls). "This is important," the authors note, because this level of weight loss has been shown to significantly decrease illness and death associated with obesity-linked disorders such as cancer and heart attack.

The weight loss achieved with portion control dishes is comparable to that achieved with drug therapy for weight loss in type 2 diabetic patients.

In addition, after six months, 26.2 percent of subjects using portion control dishes were able to decrease their need for diabetes medications compared with only 10.8 percent of control subjects.

The authors conclude that portion control dishes "hold promise for use in overweight populations with and without diabetes."

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine June 25, 2007.

Health Tip: Sleeping During Pregnancy

2007-06-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

19 minutes ago

(HealthDay News) -- While it's important to get plenty of sleep during a pregnancy, that's often easier said than done. Difficulty getting comfortable, the need to urinate frequently, leg cramps and backaches often make it difficult for pregnant women to get a good night's rest.

Here are some suggestions, courtesy of the Nemours Foundation:

* Cut out caffeinated drinks. If you have to have them, limit them to the morning or early afternoon.
* Limit all food and drink in the hours before bed. Have bigger meals and drink more fluids earlier in the day.
* Put yourself on a sleep schedule, where you wake up and go to bed at the same time each day.
* Avoid exercise right before bed, but relax yourself with a warm bath.
* Get plenty of calcium to help prevent leg cramps.
* Try taking yoga (with your doctor's permission) or a similar class to help you unwind. Enroll in a childbirth class if you are anxious about becoming a parent.

Ariz. cyclist, 81, to ride 2,000 miles

2007-06-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

YUMA, Ariz. - An 81-year-old man has set off on a 2,000-mile bicycle ride around Arizona's perimeter.

Bill Anderson of Yuma plans to complete the trip in 14 to 16 days. He is riding to raise money for Yuma's Crossroads Mission, which provides shelter, meals, showers and clothing to the homeless.

Last year, Anderson rode from the Mexican border to the Canadian line and back again to raise money. In 2004, he made two trips for the mission: one from Canada to Mexico and another from San Diego to Jacksonville Beach, Fla.

Anderson left Yuma on Tuesday in his most recent ride. He planned to arrive in Page on Saturday before continuing the trip to Eagar, Safford and then along the Mexican border.

"It's so awesome. I'm having a blast," Anderson said over the phone on a stopover. "I'm seeing a lot of new country and taking lots of scenic photographs."

Obesity down in sugar-free schools: Swedish study

2007-04-23T06:01:00.001-07:00

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Stockholm schools that banned sweets, buns and soft drinks saw the number of overweight children drop by six percentage points in four years, a Karolinska Institute study published on Monday showed.

The number of overweight or obese six-to-10-year-olds dropped from 22 to 16 percent in the 10 Stockholm schools that participated in the study by banning sweets and introducing healthier lunches, the Swedish research institute said in a statement.

A control group of schools that did not introduce specific food regulations saw the number of overweight or obese children rise from 18 to 21 percent.

The results of the project were to be presented on Monday in Budapest at an international conference on obesity.

"Our results show that programmes to reduce the increasing rate of obesity can be carried out within the schools' existing budgets," the head of the project, Professor Claude Marcus, said in the statement.

"We also interpret the results to mean that clear regulations in schools can help parents to set standards for their children and improve dietary habits at home," it said.

10 Foods Tough to Digest

2007-04-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

By Sally Wadyka for MSN Health & Fitness

Fried chicken nuggets

Anytime you take a food, dip it in batter and then deep fry it, you turn it into something that can be a bit hard on the gut. Fried foods inevitably are greasy and high in fat, both of which spell trouble for the stomach. If you already suffer from inflammatory bowel disease, greasy foods are especially problematic and can cause symptoms like nausea and diarrhea, says Tara Gidus, a dietitian in Orlando, Fla. To make a healthier version, take frozen chicken nuggets (or use your own breadcrumb batter on chicken breasts) and bake them rather than frying.
The advice to forgo fried for flavorful alternatives is also helpful for other traditionally greasy snacks, like potato chips. To get the crunchy, salty sensation of chips without the unfortunate side effects, look for baked versions of potato chips or switch to low- or no-fat snacks like pretzels, air-popped popcorn or soy crisps.

Spicy food

Hot peppers—such as cayenne or jalapeno—give food a wonderful spicy kick, but they can also irritate the lining of the esophagus on the way down. The result: an unpleasant heartburn-like feeling after you eat. “Even if you try to cool down the heat by adding sour cream, you’re still getting all the spice and the same amount of irritation,” warns Gidus. So rather than trying to mask spice with high-fat cream, opt for milder versions if you routinely suffer side effects.

Chocolate

Most of the unfortunate consequences surrounding this rich delicacy come not from simply eating chocolate, but from overeating it. One small brownie as an occasional treat probably is fine; a triple brownie a la mode probably is not. But anyone who suffers from gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD) can experience problems from even a small portion of chocolate. That’s because chocolate causes the lower esophageal sphincter to relax, allowing stomach acid to come back up.

Citrus juices

These acidic drinks can irritate the esophagus, stimulating the sensory nerves to feel more inflamed. This might feel like acid reflux, but in reality is just irritation. In the stomach, however, the extra acid of the drink can cause other problems. If you haven’t eaten (say, you down a big glass of OJ first thing in the morning), your gut is already full of acid, so adding the extra can give you a stomach ache. And if you’re drinking lemonade that’s sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, watch out: That huge influx of sugar is often a cause of diarrhea.

Mashed potatoes

Nothing seems more benign than a bowl of creamy mashed potatoes. After all, that’s why they rank near the top of the list when it comes to so-called “comfort foods.” But if you happen to be one of approximately 30 to 50 million Americans who are lactose intolerant, you’ll find no comfort in those spuds, since most are loaded with milk or even heavy cream. Make them at home using lactose-free whole milk for the same creaminess minus the after-effects.

Raw onion

Onions and their cousins like garlic, leeks and shallots are filled with a variety of phytonutrient compounds—some of which seem to offer healthy, heart-protective benefits, and some of which cause stomach distress (or it could be the same compounds that do both). Cooking them seems to deactivate some of the problem-causing compounds. But on the chance that you’re also deactivating some of the good stuff, dietician Mary Ryan, suggests using mix of cooked and raw so that you can reap the benefits without suffering the consequences.

Ice cream

There’s no quicker way to determine if you’re lactose intolerant than to sit down with a big bowl of ice cream. The bloating, cramping and gas are clear messages: Your system is trying to tell you to stay away from such rich dairy products. If that’s the case, the only solution is switching to lactose-free frozen treats (such as those made from soy or rice milk). But even if you’re not lactose intolerant, scarfing down a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in one sitting still will give you some stomach trouble. That’s because it’s essentially all fat, and fat lingers in the stomach longer than other foods before getting digested.

Broccoli and raw cabbage

These fiber- and nutrient-rich vegetables are incredibly healthy, but they are also well-known for causing gas buildup in the gut. Fortunately, the solution is simple. “Cooking them—or even just blanching them slightly—will deactivate the sulfur compounds that cause gas,” explains Ryan.

Beans

Beans have such a notorious reputation for causing gastric distress that they even spawned their own rhyme (come on, you all know it! “Beans, beans …”). And there is some truth to it. The enzyme needed to break down beans is found only in our stomach bacteria. And if you don’t routinely eat beans, you might not have enough of this enzyme to comfortably digest them. The result, of course, is gas and bloating. Cooking beans in soup can help—the extra fluid will help digest the large amounts of fiber beans contain, and the extra cooking time will start breaking the beans down even before you eat them. By adding beans to your diet gradually, you will help build up the enzyme necessary to digest them without issue.

Sugar-free gum

Sorbitol, the ingredient found in many sugar-free gums, candies and diet bars and shakes, can cause an uncomfortable buildup of gas in your gut. Check the labels before you buy to see if you can find sugar-free products that use less troublesome sugar substitutes. Amount also is an issue, warns Gidus. Most people can handle two or three grams without any problems, but a product that packs 10 or more grams will undoubtedly be tough on the digestion.

Sally Wadyka is a Boulder, Colo.-based freelance writer who writes regularly for Shape, Runner’s World, Real Simple and The New York Times.

Exercise may fend off arthritis in women

2007-04-03T20:38:00.000-07:00

By MARGIE MASON, AP Medical Writer Tue Apr 3, 11:38 PM ET

Get moving, Grandma! Exercise isn't just about improving your heart and fighting flab that comes with aging. It may also be the answer to preventing stiff, achy joints that can lead to debilitating arthritis. An Australian study suggests the more time older women spend exercising, the better their chances are of staying pain-free from one of the biggest chronic conditions plaguing developed countries.

Even exercising as little as one hour and 15 minutes a week now can make a difference over the next three years, according to findings recently published in the journal Arthritis Research & Therapy.

"I don't think the results are suggesting that you should just become this maniac exerciser," said lead author Kristiann Heesch from the University of Queensland, Australia. "What it does suggest is that just adding some walking and moderate activity to your life can make a big benefit."

Doctors have long encouraged exercise among aging patients to keep joints flexible, muscles strong and to keep off weight, which is a leading risk factor for arthritis. This is the first study that focuses specifically on middle-aged and older women who did not have a history of stiff and painful joints. It looked solely at pain and symptoms reported by more than 8,700 Australian women over a three-year period, and could offer a vital clue about prevention.

Women in their 70s who exercised 75 minutes a week reported fewer symptoms of arthritis than those who did less, while more spry women who were active at least 2 1/2 hours weekly had even less pain in the three years that followed. Although there appeared to be a direct correlation between exercise and lower joint pain, the reasons why were less clear.

"Maybe the exercise directly benefits the joints. Maybe exercise makes you lose weight and the latter benefits the joints. Maybe exercise causes pain sensing receptors to become less sensitive so one feels less pain," said Dr. John Hardin, chief scientific officer at the Atlanta-based Arthritis Foundation, who did not participate in the study.

Conversely, exercise had no effect on arthritis symptoms reported by middle-aged women. Heesch said it's unclear why the results differed among the two age groups.

The findings also contradict some earlier research, which found no direct link between fitness and arthritis. The Australian study, published last week, focused on specific age groups of fairly healthy women predominantly from rural areas who had not been diagnosed with arthritis, which may partially explain the difference, Heesch said.

"If we could put out a pill that would solve a lot of problems, it would be physical activity, but we can't wrap it up into a little pill and give it to people," she said. "Particularly with the baby boomers getting older, there's going to be a lot more griping and need to address this."

She said walking, swimming, yoga, tai chi and even some weight training were all great ways for older women to exercise after getting their doctors' approval. More women than men suffer from arthritis, and the risk increases greatly with age.

"The fact that the study showed change in a short time speaks to the fact that exercise shows benefit quickly and is another reason to encourage people that exercise has a payback sooner than many people think," said Dr. Patience White, chief public health officer at the Arthritis Foundation.

One in five American adults has been diagnosed with arthritis — half of those over age 75 have reported it — costing billions of dollars each year. In both the United States and Australia, it is the No. 1 cause of disability.

____

Margie Mason covers medical issues for The Associated Press across the Asia-Pacific region.

Study: Alcohol, tobacco worse than drugs

2007-03-23T01:41:00.000-07:00

By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer Fri Mar 23, 3:41 AM ET

LONDON - New "landmark" research finds that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy and should be classified as such in legal systems, according to a new British study.

In research published Friday in The Lancet magazine, Professor David Nutt of Britain's Bristol University and colleagues proposed a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks posed to society. Their ranking listed alcohol and tobacco among the top 10 most dangerous substances.

Nutt and colleagues used three factors to determine the harm associated with any drug: the physical harm to the user, the drug's potential for addiction, and the impact on society of drug use. The researchers asked two groups of experts — psychiatrists specializing in addiction and legal or police officials with scientific or medical expertise — to assign scores to 20 different drugs, including heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy, amphetamines, and LSD.

Nutt and his colleagues then calculated the drugs' overall rankings. In the end, the experts agreed with each other — but not with the existing British classification of dangerous substances.

Heroin and cocaine were ranked most dangerous, followed by barbiturates and street methadone. Alcohol was the fifth-most harmful drug and tobacco the ninth most harmful. Cannabis came in 11th, and near the bottom of the list was Ecstasy.

According to existing British and U.S. drug policy, alcohol and tobacco are legal, while cannabis and Ecstasy are both illegal. Previous reports, including a study from a parliamentary committee last year, have questioned the scientific rationale for Britain's drug classification system.

"The current drug system is ill thought-out and arbitrary," said Nutt, referring to the United Kingdom's practice of assigning drugs to three distinct divisions, ostensibly based on the drugs' potential for harm. "The exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from the Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientific perspective, arbitrary," write Nutt and his colleagues in The Lancet.

Tobacco causes 40 percent of all hospital illnesses, while alcohol is blamed for more than half of all visits to hospital emergency rooms. The substances also harm society in other ways, damaging families and occupying police services.

Nutt hopes that the research will provoke debate within the UK and beyond about how drugs — including socially acceptable drugs such as alcohol — should be regulated. While different countries use different markers to classify dangerous drugs, none use a system like the one proposed by Nutt's study, which he hopes could serve as a framework for international authorities.

"This is a landmark paper," said Dr. Leslie Iversen, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University. Iversen was not connected to the research. "It is the first real step towards an evidence-based classification of drugs." He added that based on the paper's results, alcohol and tobacco could not reasonably be excluded.

"The rankings also suggest the need for better regulation of the more harmful drugs that are currently legal, i.e. tobacco and alcohol," wrote Wayne Hall, of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, in an accompanying Lancet commentary. Hall was not involved with Nutt's paper.

While experts agreed that criminalizing alcohol and tobacco would be challenging, they said that governments should review the penalties imposed for drug abuse and try to make them more reflective of the actual risks and damages involved.

Nutt called for more education so that people were aware of the risks of various drugs. "All drugs are dangerous," he said. "Even the ones people know and love and use every day."

Activity Levels Key to Childhood Obesity

2007-03-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

9 minutes ago

WEDNESDAY, March 21 (HealthDay News) -- Low levels of activity -- especially a lack of moderate and vigorous exercise -- play an important role in the development of childhood obesity, says a British study that compared the amount of fat in children to their levels of physical activity.
ADVERTISEMENT

University of Bristol researchers used special techniques to measure the fat mass and activity-related energy expenditure of 5,500 children.

The results showed consistently that the less active children were, the greater their fat mass. This effect was stronger in boys than in girls. The statistical association between fat mass and low activity levels was greater for moderate and vigorous activity than for total activity, the study found.

They acknowledged that their study had certain limitations, but the researchers said encouraging children to be more active should be a major part of efforts to fight the childhood obesity epidemic.

The study is published in the current issue of the journal PLoS Medicine.

More information
The American Heart Association has more about physical activity and children.

http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4596

Diabetes Epidemic Spreading Worldwide: Experts

2007-03-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

By E.J. Mundell
HealthDay Reporter Fri Mar 16, 11:47 PM ET

FRIDAY, March 16 (HealthDay News) -- More than two-thirds of the world's estimated 246 million diabetics come from less-affluent developing nations, and more must be done to curb a disease that now rivals
HIV/
AIDS in terms of suffering and death around the globe.

That sobering assessment was offered by experts gathered at this week's Global Changing Diabetes Leadership Forum in New York City, which included keynote speaker former President
Bill Clinton. The conference is one of the largest such gatherings ever of scientists, health-care advocates and government leaders focused on the issue.

"This truly is an epidemic," warned Dr. Martin Silink, president of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), which represents more than 200 diabetes associations across 158 countries. "Seventy percent of the global burden of diabetes is now in developing countries, even though that seems paradoxical. People think that it should be in the developed world where there is access to fast food and lots of obesity."

But rapid lifestyle changes are affecting the health of people in China, India, South America, and elsewhere, he said. "As their economies develop, diabetes is now subverting the gains of economic development," Silink said.

The issue has gained such urgency that the
United Nations' General Assembly in December passed a global resolution to encourage the prevention, treatment and care of diabetes. The U.N. has only passed one such disease-targeted resolution before, when it vowed to fight HIV/AIDS.

Some statistics from the IDF:

* By 2025, the number of people with diabetes is expected to rise to 380 million worldwide, with 80 percent living in the developing world.
* Each year, another 7 million people develop diabetes, while 3.8 million die of diabetes-linked causes.
* In many countries in Asia, the Middle East and the Caribbean, diabetes already affects 15 percent to 20 percent of the adult population.
* India now has the largest number of diabetics (almost 41 million) in the world, followed by China (nearly 40 million), the United States (19.2 million) and Russia (9.6 million).
* Diabetes increasingly affects the young or middle-aged, with more than half of diabetics in developing countries between the ages of 40 and 59.

According to the experts, a "perfect storm" of genetics and social change is driving the spread of obesity-linked type 2 diabetes in poorer countries. Visitors to today's China quickly notice McDonald's, KFC and other fast-food outlets springing up in major cities. At the same time, the foot and bicycle are making way for the car on urban streets.

Scientists have also long understood that Asians, Hispanics and blacks are more vulnerable, genetically, to develop type 2 disease compared with those of European descent.

"They simply don't have to get as obese as a European to get diabetes," Silink explained. Among non-Europeans, even a relatively modest increase in abdominal fat -- the so-called "spare tire" -- can trigger changes that lead to insulin insensitivity and diabetes.

"The risk of diabetes in a European starts rising after a body mass index (BMI, a ratio of weight to height) of about 25 or 26," the normal threshold for overweight, Silink said. "But for a person coming from Bangladesh or India, that risk curve starts after a BMI of just 22," he said.

A person who is 5-feet, 8-inches tall and weighs 145 pounds has a BMI of 22.

Too often, expensive, pay-as-you-go health-care systems in developing countries mean diabetes isn't even detected until it reaches crisis levels, Silink added. The results -- prolonged disability, amputation, even death -- can destroy a family's income.

Urban stress is another factor driving the epidemic, as the world's poor seek employment in cities, Silink said. For reasons that remain unclear, "we know that simply moving from a rural environment to a city doubles your risk of diabetes without any change in body mass," he said. "And if you have to go to a 'mega-city' -- a population of over 10 million -- the risk probably rises fourfold."

Another expert said it's not too late to put the brakes on this developing crisis, however.

Dr. Alan Moses was the former chief medical officer of Harvard's Joslin Diabetes Center and is now associate vice president of medical affairs at pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, which sponsored the conference.

"We tend to think of the costs associated with diabetes and worry that putting appropriate resources into diabetes is going to cost more," he said. "But diabetes is one of the few conditions where when you improve health, you actually reduce the cost burden on society. It should be viewed as an investment with a real return."

Certain steps taken by governments in the developed world are already helping. For example, Sen. Guy Barnett of Australia, himself a type 1 diabetic, said his government is moving to change what he labeled an "obesinogenic" environment Down Under.

Along with the United States, "we are one of the fattest countries on Earth," Barnett told reporters at a press conference held Wednesday. "But for governments everywhere, (diabetes) is a monster that is getting bigger and bigger."

With one in 10 Australian children now obese, the Australian government has mandated healthy school lunches, boosted funding for after-school physical activity programs and negotiated with fast-food giant McDonald's to make menus healthier. Former U.S.
President Clinton helped broker similar deals with food companies last year to keep unhealthy sodas and snacks out of American schools.

Those and other initiatives can and should be tested in countries worldwide, Silink said. In one sense, he said, developing countries have a real edge on the West, since "they are still in the process of developing their new towns, their urban centers.

"So, in terms of town planning, societal engineering, they have a chance to engineer it for health and not for conditions that are detrimental to human health," Silink said. "It's up to the diabetes world to work with the various organizations to make this happen."

More information

Find out more about diabetes at the American Diabetes Association.

Diabetes and severe depression raise risk of death

2007-03-12T12:41:00.000-07:00

By Karla Gale Fri Mar 9, 2:51 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Heart disease, diabetes, and depression can be a deadly combination, according results of a study that suggest that, in people with coronary artery disease, the presence of diabetes or depression increases the risk of dying from heart disease.

The risk is even higher when both diabetes and severe depression are present, investigators reported today at the annual meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society in Budapest, Hungary.

Dr. Lana L. Watkins and her associates at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina studied 907 patients with coronary artery disease, which occurs when the arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle (coronary arteries) become hardened and narrowed.

A total of 325 of the patients also had type 2 diabetes. All of the study subjects were assessed for depression using a standard 21-item inventory.

During more than four years the patients were followed, 135 patients died.

The researchers found that depression and diabetes were both associated with increased death, independent of age, gender, body weight, and heart function.

Among diabetics with coronary artery disease, having severe symptoms of depression further increased the risk by roughly 25 percent, the investigators report.

However, the investigators were surprised to find that mild depression did not affect survival, Watkins noted.

"The bottom line is that the excess risk is confined to diabetic patients with coronary artery disease and moderate-to-severe depression," Watkins said.

Office workers most at risk from blood clots: study

2007-03-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

Mon Mar 12, 12:09 AM ET

WELLINGTON (AFP) - Office workers who spend long hours at their desk may be more prone to potentially fatal blood clots than passengers on long-haul flights, according to research cited Monday.

A study by Professor Richard Beasley of the Medical Research Institute in Wellington found that a third of patients admitted to hospital with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) were office workers who spent long periods at a computer.

A total of 34 percent of the sample of 62 people admitted with blood clots had been seated at their desks for long periods, compared with 21 percent of patients who had recently travelled on long-distance flights, the New Zealand Herald newspaper reported.

DVT is the formation of a blood clot in a deep vein, most commonly in the legs. The clots can travel to the heart, lungs or brain, causing chest pain, breathlessness or possible death from a heart attack or stroke.

The condition has been dubbed "economy class syndrome" because passengers sitting on long-haul flights without space to stretch out were considered as most at risk.

Studies found clots formed in 10 percent of air travellers at high risk of the condition and one percent of all passengers.

Treatment is through blood thinning drugs which can take months.

Beasley said some office workers who developed clots sat at their screens for 14 hours a day.

"Some of them were going three to four hours at a time without getting up," he said.

The problem was most common in the information technology industry and in call-centres, he added.

The study is to be presented later this month at the annual conference of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand, and will also be published in the New Zealand Medical Journal.

Half ton man continues weight loss

2007-03-08T16:47:00.000-08:00

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 8, 7:47 AM ET

SAN NICOLAS DE LOS GARZA, Mexico - A man who once weighed well over a half ton left his house for the first time in five years Wednesday — wheeled outside on his bed to greet neighbors and see a mariachi band. "The sky is beautiful and blue and what I want is to enjoy the sun," said Manuel Uribe, who had once been certified by doctors as weighing 1,235 pounds. Though still unable to leave his bed, Uribe has lost 395 pounds since he began a high-protein diet a year ago. He now weights about 840 pounds.

To celebrate the milestone, six people pushed Uribe's wheel-equipped iron bed out to the street as a mariachi band played and a crowd gathered. Then, a forklift lifted him onto a truck and the 41-year-old rode through the streets of San Nicolas de los Garza, a Monterrey suburb.

With dozens of reporters and photographers in tow, Uribe traveled along, passing the town's plaza and church and waving at clusters of people eager to get a glimpse of him.

"It fills me with joy to see he's getting better and getting a little sun," Uribe's neighbor Guadalupe Guerra said. "I would go crazy if I had to be inside my house for so many years."

Uribe was a chubby kid and weighed more than 250 pounds as an adolescent. In 1992, he said his weight began ballooning further.

Since the summer of 2002, Uribe has been bedridden, relying on his mother and friends to feed and clean him.

He drew worldwide attention when he pleaded for help on national television in January 2006. Afterward, an Italian and a Spanish doctor both visited and offered gastric bypass surgery.

But Uribe chose to accept help from Mexican nutritionists working with the Zone diet. He says he will stick to that diet until he reaches his goal of 265 pounds.

"My goal is to leave the house on my own but I know that will be a long process," he said. Doctors say it may take between three and four years for Uribe to reach his goal.

Uribe said he plans to start a foundation to help overweight people get medical assistance and teach them about healthy eating habits.

Man, 91, challenges Jack LaLanne, 92

2007-03-08T13:08:00.001-08:00

Wed Mar 7, 10:12 PM ET

LEWISTON, Maine - All of that Florida sun must be getting to Maine snowbird Roland Fortin. The 91-year-old has laid down a challenge to box fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who's 92. Fortin, former "cut man" for retired boxing champ Joey Gamache, said the idea for the four-round bout was hatched at the Tropical Gym in Pompano Beach, where Fortin works out during the winter in Florida.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale ran the challenge in a half-page ad that gym owner Troy Eckonen took out for Super Bowl Sunday. The purpose, he said, was to let seniors know it's not too late to get in great shape like Fortin.

"Florida is like the waiting room to the casket," Ecknonen said.

So far, the publicity stunt is working for the Tropical Gym, where membership is up. But LaLanne hasn't taken Fortin up on the challenge to enter the ring.

LaLanne's spokeswoman learned of the boxing challenge when she was contacted Tuesday by a reporter from the Sun Journal newspaper in Lewiston.

"That's not quite his cup of tea," Liz Cardenas said Wednesday from California. Besides, she said, LaLanne is too busy traveling for public appearances, and he no longer performs athletic feats for which he was known earlier in his career.

Despite the rebuff, Eckonen has not abandoned the idea. He said he plans to deliver the ad to fight promoter Don King to see if he's interested.

"It'd be a gentleman's fight, obviously," Eckonen said.

Fortin, a widower who has wintered in Florida since retiring from the funeral business decades ago, doesn't think either man would get hurt in a brief square-off. "He'd knock me down, I'd knock him down," he said.

Woman awakens after 6 years, slips back

2007-03-07T18:47:00.000-08:00

Wed Mar 7, 9:47 PM ET

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A woman who went into a vegetative state in November of 2000 awoke this week for three days, spoke with her family and a local television station before slipping back on Wednesday. "I'm fine," Christa Lilly told her mother on Sunday — her first words in eight months. She has awakened four other times for briefer periods.

"I think it's wonderful. It makes me so happy," Lilly told television station KKTV-TV. She also got to see youngest daughter, Chelcey, now 12 years old, and three grandchildren.

Her neurologist, Dr. Randall Bjork, said he couldn't explain how or why she awoke.

"I'm just not able to explain this on the basis of what we know about persistent vegetative states," he said.

A vegatative state is much like a coma except her eyes remain open.

"The good Lord let me know she's alright, he brings her back to visit every so often and I'm thankful for that," said Minnie Smith, her mother and caregiver after Christa slipped back into the vegetative state.

Holy Cow! Meat-loving calf eats Indian chickens

2007-03-07T05:47:00.000-08:00

4 minutes ago

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - When dozens of chickens went missing from a remote West Bengal village, everyone blamed the neighbourhood dogs.

But Ajit Ghosh, the owner of the missing chickens, eventually solved the puzzle when he caught his cow -- a sacred animal for the Hindu family -- gobbling up several of them at night.

"We were shocked to see our calf eating chickens alive," Ghosh told Reuters by phone from Chandpur village, about 240 km (150 miles) northwest of capital Kolkata.

The family decided to stand guard at night on Monday at the cow shed which also served as a hen coop, after 48 chickens went missing in a month.

"Instead of the dogs, we watched in horror as the calf, whom we had fondly named Lal, sneak to the coop and grab the little ones with the precision of a jungle cat," Gour Ghosh, his brother, said.

Local television pictures showed the cow grabbing and eating a chicken in seconds and a vet confirmed the case.

"We think lack of vital minerals in the body is causing this behaviour. We have taken a look and have asked doctors to look into the case immediately," Mihir Satpathy, a district veterinary officer, said by phone.

"This strange behaviour is possible in some exceptional cases," Satpathy said.

Hundreds of villagers flocked to Chandpur on Wednesday to catch a glimpse of Lal, enjoying his bundle of green grass for a change.

"The local vets said the cow was probably suffering from a disease but others said Lal was a tiger in his previous birth," Ajit added.

FDA set to approve controversial cow drug: report

2007-03-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

Sat Mar 3, 10:49 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
Food and Drug Administration may be poised to approve a controversial antibiotic for cattle despite fears it could hurt human health, The Washington Post reported in Sunday's edition.

The drug, called cefquinome, is a fourth-generation cephalosporin, a class of antibiotics used for a range of human diseases including serious gastrointestinal diseases in children and meningitis.

The fear is that using such drugs in animals can lead to the emergence of new drug-resistant "superbugs" which will be immune to similar drugs when used in people.

The overuse of antibiotics in both humans and animals has already helped such bacteria evolve, and infectious disease experts have been warning doctors to use them more judiciously.

The FDA's own advisors, the Veterinary Medical Advisory Committee, voiced such concerns when they voted in September to reject approval of cefquinome by InterVet Inc. of Millsboro, Del., which makes it.

Yet the Post quoted experts as saying the FDA was moving toward approval anyway, overriding the advice of the panel, the American Medical Association and other health groups.

The Post said the FDA was being pressured to approve the drug because of an internal guidance document called "Guidance for Industry #152" on how to weigh threats to human health from by proposed new animal drugs.

It quoted experts saying the rule makes it difficult for the FDA to deny a new animal drug unless it is likely to threaten the effectiveness of an antibiotic critical in treating food-borne illness.

Edward Belongia, an epidemiologist at the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation in Wisconsin, said that made it difficult for the FDA to say no to some drugs, according to the newspaper.

"The industry says that 'until you show us a direct link to human mortality from the use of these drugs in animals, we don't think you should preclude their use,"' it quoted Belongia as saying.

"But do we really want to drive more resistance genes into the human population? It's easy to open the barn door, but it's hard to close the door once it's open," he was quoted as saying.

InterVet developed cefquinome to treat bovine respiratory disease, the most common disease in cattle. But more than a dozen antibiotics are on the market for the respiratory syndrome, and all are still effective.

The disease becomes a problem for cattle raised on intensive farms, and when they are packed into trains for shipment.

In January, New York Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter, a Democrat who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Rules Committee, sent the FDA a letter asking it not to approve the drug. She is a microbiologist.

"Over the past several years, the integrity of the FDA's drug review process has been called into question amid allegations that your agency has put the interests of industry and politics above science," Slaughter wrote at the time.

"Given the recent outbreaks of
E. coli and other food borne illnesses across the nation, it is hardly the time to ignore the advice of scientists, and potentially impair our ability to treat deadly infections," she wrote.

Latin American hearts suffer from obesity, stress

2007-03-06T06:01:00.000-08:00

By Ed Stoddard Tue Mar 6, 9:01 AM ET

DALLAS (Reuters) - Abdominal obesity is a bigger heart attack risk factor in Latin America than elsewhere, partly because of surging consumption of junk foods loaded with sugar and fat, researchers reported on Monday.

Stress and high blood pressure are other risk factors having a disproportionate impact on the region while smoking is also taking a heavy toll on Latin American hearts, according to a study published this week in the journal Circulation.

"Interventions to encourage lifestyle changes that target those risks could have a large impact on heart attacks in the region," said Dr. Fernando Lanas, professor of medicine at the Universidad de la Frontera in Temuco, Chile.

"Compared with other areas of the world ... we were surprised to find how much higher the (risk factors were) for abdominal obesity and stress," Lanas said.

The study was part of INTERHEART, a global analysis of heart attack risk factors compared by region.

It examined 1,237 patients admitted with a first heart attack to a medical facility in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Guatemala and Mexico. They were matched by age and gender and compared to a control group of 1,888 people.

Those in the control group had no history of heart problems or chest pain.

RAPID SHIFT IN DIET

The participants were surveyed about smoking, diet, high blood pressure and psychosocial factors.

Waist-to-hip ratios -- which indicate the amount of fat in the abdomen -- were among the physical measurements taken.

"Latin America differed from other regions studied in INTERHEART by having a larger proportion of heart attack risk due to high blood pressure, abdominal fat and permanent stress," the
American Heart Association, which publishes Circulation, said in a statement.

In an accompanying commentary Sidney C. Smith Jr., director of the Center for Cardiovascular Science and Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, wrote that high energy-dense foods such as highly sugared drinks and fatty fast foods were taking developing regions by storm.

"In Latin American countries and many others with developing economies, there has been a rapid shift in diet to increased consumption of high energy-dense foods and caloric beverages," Smith wrote.

And when people drink calorie-containing beverages, they do not eat less to compensate, Smith said.

Researchers said such observations underscored the need for major lifestyle and behavioral changes in Latin America.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide and is attributable to more than one quarter of all deaths in Latin America, the Heart Association said.

"Risk factors were similar in the various Latin American countries studied, with most of the heart attack risk explained by tobacco use, abnormal lipids, abdominal obesity and high blood pressure," it said.

Health Tip: Take a Nap

2007-03-05T12:41:00.000-08:00

1 hour, 38 minutes ago

(HealthDay News) -- Napping is a great way to help revive yourself if you're sleepy, tired or stressed.

Here are some of the ways napping can improve your physical and emotional well-being, courtesy of the National Sleep Foundation:

* A nap can improve alertness and productivity by reducing chances for accidents and mistakes.
* A nap can make you feel more alert immediately, and may prolong alertness for up to a few extra hours later in the day.
* Because a nap often feels like a luxury, it offers the emotional benefits of helping you feel rejuvenated, relaxed, and less stressed.

Obesity May Trigger Earlier Puberty for Girls

2007-03-05T06:43:00.000-08:00

6 minutes ago

MONDAY, March 5 (HealthDay News) -- Childhood obesity may lead to earlier onset of puberty for girls, a U.S. study concludes.

The study of 354 girls from 10 different regions in the United States found that increased body fat in girls as young as age 3 and large increases in body fat between the age of 3 and the start of first grade were associated with earlier puberty, defined as the presence of breast development by age 9.

"Our finding that increased body fatness is associated with the earlier onset of puberty provides additional evidence that growing rates of obesity among children in this country may be contributing to the trend of early maturation in girls," study lead author Dr. Joyce Lee, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Michigan, said in a prepared statement.

Her team published the findings in the March issue of Pediatrics.

Lee noted that girls in the United States are entering puberty at younger ages than they were 30 years ago. Over that same time, there's been a significant increase in obesity rates among American children.

"Previous studies had found that girls who have earlier puberty tend to have higher body mass index (BMI), but it was unclear whether puberty led to the weight gain or weight gain led to the earlier onset of puberty. Our study offers evidence that it is the latter," said Lee, who is also assistant professor in the department of pediatrics and communicable diseases at the U-M Medical School.

"Beyond identifying how obesity causes early puberty, it's also important to determine whether weight control interventions at an early age have the potential to slow the progression of puberty," she noted.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has more about puberty.

Health Tip: Wear Sunglasses to Protect Your Eyes

2007-02-28T20:46:00.000-08:00

Wed Feb 28, 11:46 PM ET

(HealthDay News) -- Sunglasses can protect the eyes from damage caused by ultraviolet rays. Frequent or prolonged exposure to UV rays may cause cataracts, macular degeneration and skin cancer around the eyes, Prevent Blindness America says.

To get the best protection for your eyes, the organization recommends sunglasses that:

Reduce glare on the eyes.
Filter between 99 and 100 percent of UV rays.
Fully cover and protect your eyes.
Are comfortable to wear.
Do not distort colors.

Study finds kids gain weight over summer

2007-02-28T17:35:00.000-08:00

By RICK CALLAHAN, Associated Press Writer Wed Feb 28, 8:35 PM ET

INDIANAPOLIS - The nation's schools, under fire for unhealthy school lunches, well-stocked vending machines and phys ed cuts, may actually do a better job than parents in keeping children fit and trim. A study found that 5- and 6-year-olds gained more weight over the summer than during the school year, casting doubt on the assumption that kids are more active during summer vacation.

The findings don't reveal what's behind the out-of-school weight gain, but the researchers speculate it's because the summer months lack the structure of the school year with all its activities and daily comings and goings.

Doug Downey, an Ohio State University sociologist who co-authored the study, said that for many youngsters, the lazy days of summer may offer plenty of free time to eat snacks and lounge about watching TV or playing video games.

He said the study seems to point to the need for parents to be more involved, as well as raising the idea of a longer school year and more after-school programs to keep children active.

And schools should continue their efforts to promote good health, he said.

"Trying to improve the quality of school lunches, getting the soda machines out of schools — those are still good approaches. But clearly the source of children's obesity problems lie outside of the school," Downey said.

For the study, Indiana University and Ohio State researchers studied the growth rates of the body-mass indexes of 5,380 kindergartners and first-graders. The data came from a National Center for Education Statistics survey that ran from fall 1998 to spring 2000 in 310 schools across the country.

The university sociologists discovered that the youngsters' BMIs increased on average more than twice as much during summer break compared with the school year. That increase was even greater among black and Hispanic students and kids who were overweight at the start of kindergarten.

Once kids were back in school, however, the monthly growth rate of their BMIs fell, and the growth rate gap between the overall population and the minority and overweight groups shrank, the researchers found.

The study will appear in the April issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

Betsy A. Keller, a professor of exercise and sport sciences at Ithaca College in New York, said the pattern seen in the study's snapshot of the kids' kindergarten year, summer break, and first grade is "irregular" and does not mesh with kids' normal growth in height and weight.

Keller said it clearly points to a summer gain in fat mass, although she said data from later school years is needed to see if that trend continues.

Overall, she said the findings point to the need for parents to become actively involved in encouraging their kids to develop healthy habits even as the push continues for schools to focus more on those same goals.

"The big question in my mind is what are the parents doing with these kids during the summer? Unless they're paying attention to their child's level of activity and diet, with each passing summer they're just adding to the risk of them becoming overweight," she said.

"These are 5- and 6-year-olds, after all. So they're not going to the grocery store — it's their parents who are making these choices."

The study's co-author, Brian Powell, a professor of sociology at Indiana University, said earlier studies have indicated that 5- and 6-year-olds with above average BMI and BMI gains are at increased risk for adult obesity.

Some 17 percent of U.S. youngsters already are obese, and millions more are overweight. Obese adults are at heightened risk of developing diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and other disorders.

In recent years, criticism has been directed at schools for playing a role in that trend, leading nearly 20 states to enact some form of school nutrition legislation or to emphasize exercise goals.

Nancy Chockley, president of the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, said the new research adds to the argument that parents must shoulder more of the responsibility for keeping their children in shape.

Chockley said parents need to make time for regular family bike rides, walks, hikes or other types of exercise during the summer and beyond to help their kids develop good habits.

"I don't think this takes the heat off the schools. I think it spreads the heat around," said Chockley, whose Washington-D.C.-based nonprofit group researches health care issues.

"We ask a lot from the schools, but the fact is that's the easiest environment to reach the most children. Reaching the parents is much harder."

Strong exercise may cut breast cancer risk

2007-02-26T13:18:00.000-08:00

Mon Feb 26, 4:18 PM ET

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Strenuous exercise -- such as lap swimming, aerobics and running -- appears to cut the risk of some breast cancers in women, a study said on Monday.

While it is still not clear how hard or long women need to exercise, the study adds to a growing body of evidence that rigorous activity lowers breast cancer risk.

The team at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles said exercise may reduce cancer risk through changes in metabolism and the immune system, and by reducing weight gain.

The study, appearing in the Archives of Internal Medicine, involved 110,599 women in California whose health histories were tracked from 1995 onward.

Women who said they engaged in strenuous activity for more than five hours a week had a 20 percent lower risk of invasive breast cancer and a 31 percent lower risk of early stage breast cancer, compared to women who participated in less than 30 minutes of such activity every week.

Through 2002, a total of 2,649 of the women were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and 593 with early-stage forms of the disease.

The study is the first to look at the cumulative effect of exercise over time, as opposed to women's reports of whether they had exercised shortly before being diagnosed with breast cancer.

"These results provide additional evidence supporting a protective role for long-term strenuous recreational physical activity on risk of invasive and (early stage) breast cancer, whereas the beneficial effects of moderate activity are less clear," the study concluded.

Man aged 107 forsakes sex for longevity: paper

2007-02-25T06:24:00.000-08:00

Sun Feb 25, 9:24 AM ET

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A 107-year-old Hong Kong villager, who still enjoys an occasional smoke, has attributed his longevity in part to decades of sexual abstinence, a newspaper said on Sunday.

"I don't know why I have lived this long," Chan Chi -- one of Hong Kong's oldest people -- was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post during an annual feast for the city's elders.

"Maybe it has to do with the fact that I have lived a sex-less life for many years -- since I was 30," said Chan, a widower whose youthful bride perished during the Japanese invasion in World War Two.

Chan, from Hong Kong's less built-up New Territories hinterland, was pictured looking sprightly and eating heartily at the banquet.

A former chef, he said a low-fat diet and regular dawn exercises had helped him fight off the ravages of old age.

But the centenarian, who's had no difficulty living a monastic existence for nearly 80 years, admits the pleasures of tobacco have been harder to resist.

"Now I want to quit," he was quoted as saying of his decades-long cigarette addiction. "Maybe the government should ban cigarette sales so I can give it up," he added.

Tests find salmonella in peanut butter

2007-02-23T07:21:00.000-08:00

By ANNA JO BRATTON, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 23, 10:21 AM ET

OMAHA, Neb. — A week after ConAgra Foods Inc. recalled peanut butter from its Georgia plant after a salmonella outbreak, the Center for Disease Control confirmed the presence of the dangerous germ.

No deaths have been confirmed, although a Pennsylvania family filed a lawsuit Wednesday claiming a relative died from eating tainted peanut butter.

Opened jars from people who were sickened in New York, Oklahoma and Iowa tested positive for salmonella, said Dave Daigle, a spokesman for the
CDC in Atlanta.

"Now the question becomes, how did the salmonella get in the jar," Daigle said.

ConAgra Foods Inc. last week recalled all Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter made at its Sylvester, Ga., plant after federal health officials linked the product to a salmonella outbreak that has sickened at least 329 people from 41 states since August.

Leslea Bennett-Webb, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Health, said the state recovered seven peanut butter jars from 11 cases confirmed by the state, and found the strain of salmonella in at least one.

In Iowa, Kevin Teale, spokesman for the state's Department of Health, said the positive match is from one of the state's six confirmed cases.

At least 51 people were hospitalized with symptoms of the disease between Aug. 1 and Feb. 2, with 60 percent of illnesses beginning after Dec. 1, according to the CDC.

Salmonella, which commonly originates from the feces of birds and animals, sickens about 40,000 people a year in the U.S. and kills about 600. It can cause diarrhea, fever, dehydration, abdominal pain and vomiting.

ConAgra learned of the test results Thursday, spokesman Chris Kircher said.

Gary Rodkin, chief executive of Omaha-based ConAgra, said Thursday that the company will take "all reasonable steps to remedy the situation."

"We are truly sorry for any harm that our peanut butter products may have caused," Rodkin said in a news release.

Government and industry officials have said the contamination may have been caused by dirty jars or equipment. Peanuts are usually heated to high, germ-killing temperatures during the manufacturing process. The only known salmonella outbreak in peanut butter — in Australia during the mid-1990s — was blamed on unsanitary plant conditions.

ConAgra has said none of its previous routine testing of plant equipment and peanut butter has tested positive for salmonella. The
Food and Drug Administration last inspected the plant in February 2005 and found no problems.

The Sylvester plant is the sole maker of the nationally distributed Peter Pan brand, and the recall covers all peanut butter produced by the plant since May 2006. Shoppers are being asked to toss out jars having a product code on the lid beginning with "2111," which denotes the plant. The jars or their lids can be returned to the store where they were purchased for a refund.

Great Value peanut butter is a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. house brand made by several manufacturers. Great Value peanut butter that does not have the "2111" code is not included in the recall.

The family of Roberta Barkay alleges in a negligence and wrongful-death lawsuit against ConAgra that salmonella-tainted peanut butter killed Barkay and sickened her husband and daughter.

Barkay, 76, had been hospitalized with gastrointestinal problems, then developed a bacterial infection before she died Jan. 30, said her lawyer, Rob Peirce.

Her husband, William, was sick with similar symptoms late last year, after the Barkays bought the peanut butter, according to the lawyer and the lawsuit. Their daughter also got sick after eating the peanut butter while at her parents' home for her mother's funeral, Peirce said.

Roberta Barkay was not tested for salmonella, but Peirce said the peanut butter the family ate was part of the batch ConAgra recalled last week. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

Kircher, the ConAgra spokesman, said he couldn't comment on the specifics of the lawsuit.

"We're working to get in touch with that plaintiff's attorney to learn all we can," Kircher said Thursday.

Across the country, at least four other lawsuits claim negligence by the company led to the salmonella illnesses.

___

To get a refund, consumers can return the product at the place of purchase or mail in lids with their names and addresses to ConAgra Foods, P.O. Box 3768, Omaha, NE 68103. For more information, call (866) 344-6970 or visit ConAgra's Web site at http://www.conagrafoods.com

No need to diet AND exercise to lose weight?

2007-02-22T18:23:00.000-08:00

Thu Feb 22, 9:23 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study debunks the widely held belief that diet plus exercise is the most effective way to lose weight. Researchers report that dieting alone is just as effective as dieting plus exercise.

"For weight loss to occur, an individual needs to maintain a difference between the number of calories they consume everyday and the number of calories they burn through metabolism and physical activity," Dr. Leanne Redman of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, explains in a press release.

"What we found was that it did not matter whether a reduction in calories was achieved through diet or burned everyday through exercise."

Thirty-five overweight but otherwise healthy adults -- 16 men and 19 women -- completed the 6-month study. Twelve were assigned to a diet-only group; they reduced their calorie intake by 25 percent. Twelve were assigned to diet plus exercise; they reduced their calorie intake by 12.5 percent and increased their exercise by 12.5 percent. The remaining 11 subjects made no significant diet or exercise changes.

Redman and colleagues found that the diet-only group and the diet plus exercise group lost roughly the same amount of weight, albeit by different means. They lost about 10 percent of their body weight, 24 percent of their fat mass and 27 percent of their abdominal "visceral" fat -- the deep internal fat linked to heart disease risk.

Therefore, if the goal is purely shedding pounds, diet or exercise will work, according to this study. However, as the researchers point out, regular exercise can improve aerobic fitness and lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer.

The study also found that exercise did little to tone specific areas of the body. Fat was reduced consistently across the whole body and not more in any one trouble spot.

"Our study then would indicate that weight loss cannot override the way in which any individual stores fat. Perhaps an apple will always be an apple, and a pear, a pear," Redman concludes.

This suggests that people are "genetically programmed for fat storage in a particular pattern and that this programming cannot be easily overcome by weight loss," the authors note in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 2007.

Math anxiety saps working memory needed to do math

2007-02-20T23:28:00.000-08:00

By Julie Steenhuysen Tue Feb 20, 2:29 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Worrying about how you'll perform on a math test may actually contribute to a lower test score, U.S. researchers said on Saturday.

Math anxiety -- feelings of dread and fear and avoiding math -- can sap the brain's limited amount of working capacity, a resource needed to compute difficult math problems, said Mark Ashcraft, a psychologist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas who studies the problem.

"It turns out that math anxiety occupies a person's working memory," said Ashcraft, who spoke on a panel at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

Ashcraft said while easy math tasks such as addition require only a small fraction of a person's working memory, harder computations require much more.

Worrying about math takes up a large chunk of a person's working memory stores as well, spelling disaster for the anxious student who is taking a high-stakes test.

Stress about how one does on tests like college entrance exams can make even good math students choke. "All of a sudden they start looking for the short cuts," said University of Chicago researcher Sian Beilock.

Although test preparation classes can help students overcome this anxiety, they are limited to students whose families can afford them.

Ultimately, she said, "It may not be wise to rely completely on scores to predict who will succeed."

While the causes of math anxiety are unknown, Ashcraft said people who manage to overcome math anxiety have completely normal math proficiency.

Lying to doctor can mean health risks

2007-02-16T14:04:00.000-08:00

By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago, 02/16/2007

CHICAGO - There's an open secret in medicine: Patients lie.

They lie about how much they smoke and whether they're taking their medicine. They understate how much they drink and overstate how much they exercise. They feign symptoms to get appointments quicker and ask doctors to hide the truth from insurance companies.

"Doctors have a rule of thumb. Whatever the patient says they're drinking, multiply it by three," said Dr. Bruce Rowe, a family doctor in suburban Milwaukee. "If they say two drinks a day, assume they have six."

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, is said to have warned his students around 400 B.C. that patients often dissemble when they say they've taken their medicine. TV's fictional Dr. Gregory House repeats the same message to his crack team: "Everybody lies."

But lying can lead to expensive diagnostic procedures and unneeded referrals to specialists. It also can have disastrous results.

"I definitely learned my lesson. I could have ended up in a coma," said Michael Levine, a 28-year-old financial adviser in Los Angeles, who lied to a specialist he saw for a wrist injury. Misguided pride, he said, kept him from mentioning the Xanax he was taking for anxiety. He didn't think the doctor needed to know.

"He wasn't my regular doctor. He was treating my wrist," Levine explained.

The doctor prescribed the pain reliever Vicodin and Levine took it on top of Xanax. The next few days vanished in a cloud of grogginess. Levine slept through ringing phones and alarms and woke up exhausted. His wrist pain was easing, but he could barely function. Eventually, he stopped the Vicodin, returned to the doctor and, under questioning, confessed.

"The doctor said, 'Why didn't you tell me? I never would have prescribed you that,'" said Levine, who now realizes how easily he could have overdosed and died. "For the future, I will always 'fess up."

Why do patients lie? The examination room itself is an environment that discourages honesty, said Los Angeles psychiatrist Dr. Charles Sophy.

"You're naked in a gown and you have a guy standing there clothed, with a coat on and there's all sorts of things in his pocket. And you're sitting there, basically naked ... that makes it hard to come clean," Sophy said. On top of that, the doctor may be rushed.

Researchers say patients often lie to save face. They want to be "good patients" in their doctors' eyes. But that's a misguided and risky practice. For example, a woman who doesn't want to admit she smokes and then is prescribed birth control pills is at greater risk for blood clots.

Some researchers estimate more than half of patients tell their doctors they're taking their medicine exactly as prescribed when they're not. In reality, they don't like the side effects, can't afford the pills or didn't understand the instructions.

A study by researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine found a big gap between what patients said and what they did. Researchers looked at how patients with breathing problems used an inhaler equipped with a device that recorded the date and time of use and compared that with what the patients said.

Seventy-three percent of patients reported using the inhaler on average three times a day, but only 15 percent actually were using it that often. And 14 percent apparently deliberately emptied their inhalers before their appointments to make it look as if they were good patients.

Some doctors are seeking approaches that encourage more honesty. Dr. Zach Rosen, medical director of New York's Montefiore Family Health Center, asks his patients a series of questions to determine whether they're taking their medicine.

"I ask, 'What medications are you taking?' At first, I just want the names," he said. "They say, 'I'm taking X, Y or Z.' Then I'll say, 'That's great. How often are you taking that medication?' ... Then I'll say, 'Are you experiencing any problem in taking your medications?'"

Asking several questions takes more time. But the approach elicits better, more honest responses than a single question, Rosen believes.

Doctors also should avoid phrases that sound judgmental, said Nate Rickles, an assistant professor of pharmacy at Northeastern University. There's a big difference between "Why aren't you taking the medication as prescribed?" and "A number of my patients don't take their medication as prescribed and they do it for a variety of reasons. What do you think might be going on with you?"

When alcoholics seek detox treatment from Dr. Akikur Mohammad, an addiction specialist at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, they must tell him exactly how much they've been drinking so he can give them the right dose of medication to treat withdrawal.

"I tell them, 'You can lie to your friend, you can lie to your family members, but you came here for help and your report will determine the treatment plan. If I undermedicate you, you may have seizures and die,'" Mohammad said. Despite the warnings, patients still sometimes mislead him, he said.

Cyndi Smith, a 45-year-old Weight Watchers leader in suburban Chicago, admits her own lying past when it came to questions about her exercise and eating habits. She says she lied because she was fooling herself.

"You convince yourself of certain things and it becomes true, when in reality it's not," she said. If her doctor had questioned her more thoroughly, she says she might have told the truth.

"I think doctors could be a little more point-blank," she said. "And we need to be a little more honest."

Study: Office desks havens for bacteria

2007-02-14T17:21:00.000-08:00

28 minutes ago, 02/14/2007

TUCSON, Ariz. - Your office desk harbors far more bacteria than your workplace restroom, and if you're a woman, chances are your workspace has more germs than your male co-workers', a new research report shows.

Women have three to four times the number of bacteria in, on and around their desks, phones, computers, keyboards, drawers and personal items as men do, the study by University of Arizona professor Charles Gerba showed. Gerba, a professor of soil, water and environmental sciences, tested more than 100 offices on the UA campus and in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oregon and Washington, D.C. The $40,000 study was commissioned by the Clorox Co.

"I thought for sure men would be germier," Gerba said. "But women have more interactions with small children and keep food in their desks. The other problem is makeup."

Don't get Gerba wrong: Women's desks typically looked cleaner. But the knickknacks are more abundant, and cosmetics and hand lotions make prime germ-transfer agents, Gerba said. Makeup cases also make for fine germ homes, along with phones, purses and desk drawers.

Food in desk drawers also harbors lots of microorganisms, and it is more abundant among female office workers. Gerba found 75 percent of women had munchies in their desks.

"I was really surprised how much food there was in a woman's desk," he said. "If there's ever a famine, that's the first place I'll look for food."

The news isn't all negative for the fairer sex.

Gerba found the worst overall office germ offender is men's wallets.

"It's in your back pocket where it's nice and warm, it's a great incubator for bacteria," Gerba said.

Another hot spot for bacteria in men's offices: the personal digital assistant.

"Men tend to play with their Palm Pilots more," Gerba said. "I think they're playing video games or something."

The average office desktop has 400 times more bacteria than the average office toilet seat, Gerba said.

Gerba said using a hand sanitizer and using a disinfectant on office surfaces helps, with 25 percent fewer bacteria found on surfaces that were regularly disinfected. Once-a-day use should be sufficient.

"You don't have to go crazy with it, but with the key areas, desktops, phones and keyboards probably need to be disinfected once in a while," he said.

Video Games Can Improve Your Vision

2007-02-07T23:11:00.000-08:00

James Niccolai, IDG News Service 1 hour, 32 minutes ago,02/07/2007

Playing high-action video games for a few hours each day can improve your vision, according to researchers in the U.S.

The researchers from the University of Rochester in New York found that people who play video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month can improve certain aspects of their vision by about 20 percent.

Playing the games changes the pathways in the brain responsible for visual processing, as the brain adapts to the additional pressure that playing such games puts on the visual system, they said.

The researchers found a group of students who played little or no video games-- which was a challenge in itself-- and gave them a test that measured how well they could discern the orientation of a letter "T" within a crowd of other, distracting symbols.

They then divided the students into two groups. One group was told to play the shoot-em-up game "Unreal Tournament" for an hour each day for a month, while a control group played "Tetris," a less visually complex game.

After about a month, the students playing the action game could determine the orientation of the "T" much more easily than before, while the Tetris players showed no improvement, the researchers said.

The T test measures visual acuity, or the clarity or clearness of a person's vision. The results suggest that people with visual defects could improve their visual acuity with special software that mimics the need to identify objects quickly in an action game, the researchers said.

The research, by professor of brain and cognitive sciences Daphne Bavelier and graduate student Shawn Green, is due to appear in next week's Psychological Science journal.

Study: Moral beliefs may sway docs' care

2007-02-07T17:50:00.000-08:00

By LINDA A. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
40 minutes ago, 02/07/2007

A disturbing number of doctors do not feel obligated to tell patients about medical options they oppose morally, such as abortion and teen birth control, and believe they have no duty to refer people elsewhere for such treatments, researchers say.

The survey of 1,144 doctors around the country is the first major look at how physicians' religious or moral beliefs might affect patients' care.

The study, conducted by University of Chicago researchers, found 86 percent of those responding believe doctors are obligated to present all treatment options, and 71 percent believe they must refer patients to another doctor for treatments they oppose. Slightly more than half the rest said they had no such obligation; the others were undecided.

"That means that there are a lot of physicians out there who are not, in fact, doing the right thing," said David Magnus, director of Stanford University's Center for Biomedical Ethics.

According to an American Medical Association policy statement, doctors can decline to give a treatment sought by an individual that is "incompatible with the physician's personal, religious or moral beliefs." But the physician should try to ensure the patient has "access to adequate health care."

The survey did not examine whether these doctors act on their beliefs — that is, whether they actually withhold information or refuse to refer patients. But the researchers calculated that tens of millions of Americans might be going to such doctors.

"Conscientious objection is fine ... as long as it doesn't conflict with the rights of the patient," Magnus said. "You can't abandon the patient or essentially coerce the patient by saying you won't do the procedure or refer them to someone else."

The study was published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine and led by Dr. Farr Curlin, a University of Chicago ethicist and internist. The findings were based on a survey mailed to 1,820 practicing U.S. family doctors and specialists, chosen randomly from a national database; 63 percent responded.

Doctors describing themselves as very religious, particularly Protestants and Catholics, were much less likely than others to feel obligated to tell patients about controversial treatments or refer them to other doctors, and were far more likely to tell patients if they had moral objections.

Overall, 52 percent said they oppose abortion, 42 percent opposed prescribing birth control to 14- to 16-year-olds without parental approval, and 17 percent objected to sedating patients near death.

Female doctors were much more likely than male ones to feel obligated to refer patients for treatments they personally oppose, far less likely to present their own objections to a patient and slightly more likely to disclose all treatment options.

Dr. Jeffrey Ecker, chairman of the committee on ethics at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said he was encouraged that most doctors agreed patients deserve to be told about all appropriate medical options and referred to other doctors when needed.

"There is reason to be concerned about those that don't do it," Ecker said. He added that it is possible many doctors in the survey who opposed such disclosures and referrals may be practicing in specialties where they don't face those issues.

He said doctors must let patients explicitly know if they are opposed to particular services.

One big problem area, Magnus said, involves emergency room doctors and emergency contraception for rape victims. He said it is considered standard care to offer the morning-after pill, but that is not done in some Catholic hospitals, according to one small study. Ecker said doctors opposed to emergency contraception should avoid working in an ER for that reason.

Curlin noted prior research by his team found doctors may be a bit more religious than others — 46 percent of doctors said they attend religious services at least twice a month, compared with 40 percent of the general public. But he found doctors are less likely to carry their religious beliefs into their daily work, with 58 percent saying they do so, versus 73 percent of the general public.

Curlin said that in light of the new survey findings, if a patient "anticipates wanting a controversial treatment and they don't know already if their physician opposes it, then they should ask."

"I hope it leads to more substantive conversations between doctors and their patients," he said

Breast-feeding enhances kids' eyesight

2007-02-07T13:06:00.000-08:00

By David Douglas Wed Feb 7, 3:06 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Breast-fed children are significantly more likely to do well in measures of stereoscopic vision than are those who received formula during infancy, according to UK researchers.

"Our study," Dr. Atul Singhal of the Institute of Child Health, London, told Reuters Health, "adds to the growing evidence that breast-feeding has long-term benefits for visual development."

A higher concentration of the fatty acid DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) in breast milk than in formula has been proposed as one explanation for this effect, Singhal and colleagues note in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and this has been a rationale for adding DHA to infant formula.

To further investigate, the team studied 78 previously breast-fed and 184 previously formula-fed children ages 4 to 6 years who were followed prospectively from birth. In the first 6 months of life, the formula-fed group was randomly assigned to formula with or without supplementation with DHA or arachidonic acid.

When they were tested, breast-fed children were significantly more likely to have greater stereo-acuity than did children in either formula-fed group. There were no significant differences between children who did or did not receive formula containing DHA.

The researchers conclude that "these findings support the hypothesis that breast-feeding benefits long-term stereoscopic development."

Singhal added, "We don't know the mechanisms involved, but this benefit does not seem to be explained by the presence of certain omega 3 fatty acids -- DHA -- in human milk."

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, January 2007.

Obesity poses larger diabetes risk than inactivity

2007-02-04T21:19:00.001-08:00

By David Douglas Fri Feb 2, 6:22 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Although obesity and lack of physical activity both raise the risk of type 2 diabetes in women, obesity appears to be the more important factor, researchers report in the journal Diabetes Care.

Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues note that the relative contribution of obesity and inactivity to the risk of developing type 2 diabetes remains controversial.

To investigate further, the researchers monitored 68,907 women taking part in the Nurses' Health Study, a large ongoing study that is evaluating women's health over time. The women in the current trial had no history of diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer at study entry. During 16 years of follow-up, there were 4,030 incident cases of type 2 diabetes.

After allowing for age, smoking, and other diabetes-associated factors, the risk of type 2 diabetes increased progressively with increasing body mass index (BMI - the ratio of height to weight often used to determine if someone is overweight or too thin). The risk also increased with waist circumference, and decreased with physical activity levels.

Using women who had a healthy weight (BMI of less than 25) and were physically active as the reference group, the relative risks of type 2 diabetes were 16.75 in women with a BMI of 30 or more and were inactive. The corresponding risk in obese women who were active was 10.74. In women who were lean but inactive, the relative risk was 2.08.

Although both variables were significant predictors of type 2 diabetes, the researchers found that the association for waist circumference was substantially stronger than that for physical inactivity.

They researchers conclude that "the magnitude of risk contributed by obesity is much greater than that imparted by lack of physical activity," and therefore "weight loss and maintenance of healthy weight should be emphasized as an eventual goal to prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes."

SOURCE: Diabetes Care, January 2007.

Texas mandates cervical cancer vaccine for girls

2007-02-02T16:26:00.000-08:00

By Jim Forsyth Fri Feb 2, 7:26 PM ET

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - Texas became the first U.S. state to require that all 11- and 12-year-old girls be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted disease that can cause cervical cancer, the governor's office said on Friday.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry issued an executive order requiring the HPV vaccine be added to the list of vaccines that students must have to be enrolled in the state's public schools.

The issue has generated fierce debate, with some religious organizations and parents' groups arguing such widespread vaccination programs could encourage premarital sex.

Perry said in a statement, "The HPV vaccine provides us with an incredible opportunity to effectively target and prevent cervical cancer." The vaccine is most effective in young women who are not yet sexually active.

He added that parents could opt out of mandatory vaccinations for their children if they objected for reasons including religious beliefs.

The girls will be vaccinated with Merck & Co. Inc.'s Gardasil, which won U.S. approval last June as the first vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, a disease that kills about 300,000 women worldwide each year.

The vaccine, which targets four HPV types believed to cause more than 70 percent of cervical cancer cases and 90 percent of genital warts, is cleared for use in girls and young women aged 9 to 26. In clinical trials, Gardasil was shown to be 100 percent effective against two of the most common HPV strains.

Perry's order comes as state lawmakers across the country are being lobbied by Merck and a national group, Women in Government, made up of female state legislators, to make the Gardasil vaccine required in most school districts.

Merck supports the Women in Government effort with funding and a Merck representative sits on its business council. Legislation is pending in more than a dozen other states to mandate Gardasil vaccinations.

The vaccine will be made available immediately to all girls aged 9 through 18 eligible under the Texas Vaccines for Children Program. Women from 19 to 21 enrolled in Medicaid in Texas also will be eligible immediately, the order said.

Cervical cancer is the fifth most common cancer among women aged 35 to 54, and Texas has the second highest number of women suffering from cervical cancer in the United States, according to the Texas governor's office.

(Additional reporting by Bill Berkrot in New York and Hillary Hylton in Austin)

Big baby causes sensation in Cancun

2007-02-01T04:53:00.000-08:00

Thu Feb 1, 8:53 AM ET

CANCUN, Mexico - He is called "Super Tonio," and at a whopping birth weight of 14.5 pounds, the little fellow is causing a sensation in this Mexican resort city.

Cancun residents have crowded the nursery ward's window to see Antonio Vasconcelos, who was born early Monday by Caesarean section. The baby drinks 5 ounces of milk every three hours, and measures 22 inches in length.

"We haven't found any abnormality in the child, there are some signs of high blood sugar, and a slight blood infection, but that is being controlled so that the child can get on with his normal life in a few more days," Narciso Perez Bravo, the hospital's director, said on Wednesday.

In Brazil, a baby born in January 2005 in the city of Salvador weighed 16 pounds, 11 ounces at birth. According to Guinness World Records, the heaviest baby born to a healthy mother was a boy weighing 22 pounds, 8 ounces, born in Aversa, Italy, in September 1955.

Antonio's mother, Teresa Alejandra Cruz, 23, and father, Luis Vasconcelos, 38, said they were proud of the boy, and noted that Cruz had given birth to a baby girl seven years ago who weighed 11.46 pounds.

Grape juice good for the heart: study

2007-01-31T21:06:00.000-08:00

By Patricia Reaney
Wed Jan 31, 12:06 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Grape juice seems to have the same protective effect against heart disease as red wine, French scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers at the Universite Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg were examining the effect on the heart of Concord grape juice.

"Grape juice can have a similar effect (against heart disease) as red wine but without the alcohol. That is a very important message," said Dr Valerie Schini-Kerth, lead author of the study published in the journal Cardiovascular Research.

Red wine and certain types of grape juice have high levels of polyphenols, which block the production of a protein linked to cardiovascular disease -- the number one killer in many Western countries.

Heart and vascular problems develop when endothelial cells that make up blood vessels do not work properly.

Schini-Kerth and her team found that polyphenols in Concord grape juice activate endothelial cells to produce nitric oxide which helps to protect against cardiovascular disease and to maintain healthy blood vessels and blood pressure.

Polyphenols work the same way in red wine and in grape juice.

"But not every grape juice has the beneficial effect. It has to have a high level of polyphenols," Schini-Kerth said.

The amount of polyphenols in grape juice, as in red wine, depends on the type of grape used and how it is processed.

"We have information on more than 100 different kinds of wine and the amount of polyphenols. What we know is that the most protective ones have the highest levels of polyphenols. That is established," she said.

But Schini-Kerth, whose research was partly funded by Welch Foods Inc which is a leading producer of grape juice, said little information is available on the levels of polyphenols in grape juice.

The scientists were studying cells from pigs, which provide a good model for studying human cells.

They were looking at healthy blood vessels and are planning a further study to see whether grape juice has a similar impact on blood vessels that show signs of cardiovascular disease.

McDonald's selects trans-fat-free oil

2007-01-29T12:38:00.000-08:00

By DAVE CARPENTER, AP Business Writer 9 minutes ago, 01/29/2007

CHICAGO - McDonald's Corp. has finally selected a new trans-fat-free oil for cooking its famous french fries after years of testing, the fast-food chain said Monday.

While it has developed a healthier new oil, the company is still not saying when it will be used in all 13,700 U.S. restaurants. It already trails competitors in committing to a zero-trans fat oil.

Spokesman Walt Riker said the oil is currently in more than 1,200 U.S. restaurants after extensive testing, but declined to provide details on timing or locations.

"We can confirm that we've got the right oil," he said. "We're phasing it in."

The choice of a new oil comes as McDonald's and others facing a July 1 deadline to begin complying with an ordinance passed by New York City last month making it the first U.S. city to ban all restaurants from using artificial trans fats.

Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's has said for months it would comply with such a ban, and said it would introduce any new oil nationwide rather than have a separate oil for its New York restaurants. But it had not confirmed that testing was complete.

Riker said the new oil is canola-based and includes corn and soy oils.

Addressing long-held concerns that changing the oil could jeopardize the popular taste of its fries, he said: "We're very confident in our test and taste results. ... We're very confident in what we're hearing back from our customers."

The Chicago Tribune, which first reported McDonald's decision on a new oil Sunday, said the company has tested 18 varieties of oil in more than 50 blends during the last seven years.

McDonald's had been under pressure for moving more slowly than smaller rivals Wendy's International Inc. and Yum Brands Inc.'s KFC and Taco Bell to rid its oil of the artery-clogging trans fats.

The $22 billion company was especially cautious after reneging within months on a September 2002 pledge to introduce a new oil, citing concerns about changing the taste of its fries.

"It's just taking a little bit of time because as we move forward we don't want to jeopardize the iconic nature of the french fry, which as you know is so very important to our brand," CEO Jim Skinner told an investor conference in New York two months ago.

The company uses a healthier oil blend in some countries overseas but says regional differences in agricultural production require development of different blends.

McDonald's has not identified the test markets the latest oil was used in. Riker denied that Phoenix was among them, as the Tribune report said.

Shares in the company rose 41 cents to $43.34 in afternoon trading on the
New York Stock Exchange.

World's oldest person dies in U.S. at 114

2007-01-29T06:00:00.000-08:00

Mon Jan 29, 9:00 AM ET

BOSTON (Reuters) - A Connecticut woman who just last week set a record as the world's oldest person has died, her great-nephew said on Monday. She was 114.

Emma Faust Tillman died Sunday night in the Hartford, Connecticut nursing home where she had lived for the last four years, said John Stewart Jr.

Tillman was born on November 22, 1892, near Greensboro, North Carolina. The child of former slaves, she was one of 23 children in a long-lived family. Three of her sisters and a brother lived past 100.

But Tillman's longevity topped them all. She lived independently until the age of 110. In the nursing home, she spent much of her time caring for an ailing roommate who was more than 20 years her junior.

"Her comment is always, 'If you want to know about longevity and why I lived so long, ask the man upstairs,"' Stewart said in an interview last week after Guinness World Records confirmed Tillman was the world's oldest person.

Tillman never smoked, drank or wore eyeglasses, Stewart said. For a time, Tillman worked as a servant for American actress Katharine Hepburn, he noted.

She is survived by an 80-year-old daughter, Marjorie, and a large number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Stewart said.

According to the International Committee on Supercentenarians, the world's next oldest person is Yone Minagama, 114, of Japan.

Guinness World Records by Monday had not verified that claim, according to spokeswoman Amarilis Espinoza.

Diet, exercise take off equal pounds, study finds

2007-01-26T19:13:00.000-08:00

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Fri Jan 26, 10:13 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Eating less and exercising more are equally good at helping take off the pounds, U.S. researchers said on Friday in a study that challenges many of the popular tenets of the multibillion dollar diet and fitness industry.

Tests on overweight people show that a calorie is just a calorie, whether lost by dieting or by running, they said.

They found there is no way to selectively lose belly fat, for instance, or trim thighs. And their carefully controlled study added to evidence that adding muscle mass does not somehow boost metabolism and help dieters take off even more weight.

"It's all about the calories," said Dr. Eric Ravussin of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, part of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

"So long as the energy deficit is the same, body weight, fat weight, and abdominal fat will all decrease in the same way."

Ravussin said the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, is one of the few done under controlled conditions that can actually demonstrate what happens to a human body while dieting and exercising.

Ravussin's team has been testing volunteers for another reason -- to see if taking in fewer calories helps people live longer. Strict diets have been shown to help animals from worms to dogs live longer, but it takes longer to study monkeys and humans.

They tested 24 people, 12 who ate a calorie-restricted diet, and 12 who dieted and also exercised five times a week for six months.

The dieters ate 25 percent less than normal, while the exercisers reduced their calorie intake by 12.5 percent and increased their physical activity to lose an extra 12.5 percent in calories.

Another 10 volunteers acted as controls. All food was provided by the university in carefully measured portions for most of the study.

The volunteers in both groups lost about 10 percent of their body weight, 24 percent of their fat mass, and 27 percent of their abdominal visceral fat. Visceral fat is packed in between the internal organs and is considered the most dangerous type of fat, linked with heart disease and diabetes.

The distribution of the fat on the body was not altered by either approach -- helping prove that there is no such thing as "spot reducing," Ravussin said in a telephone interview.

This suggests that "individuals are genetically programmed for fat storage in a particular pattern and that this programming cannot easily be overcome," he added.

Ravussin has published other studies that also dispute the idea that exercise builds muscle that helps people lose weight.

"If anything, highly trained people are highly efficient, so they burn fewer calories at rest," Ravussin said.

Dieting alone also did not appear to cause the volunteers to lose muscle mass along with fat, Ravussin's team found.

"There is a concept that if you exercise, you are going to lose less of your muscle," he said. But his team found no evidence this is true.

Ravussin believes exercise is crucial to health, however.

"For overall health, an appropriate program of diet and exercise is still the best," he said.

His team found some small suggestion that cutting 25 percent of calories by either diet or diet and exercise might extend life.

"We found that 2 of the biomarkers of aging were improved -- core temperature was 0.4 to 0.5 degrees C less," he said. "Insulin, which has been shown to be a biomarker of aging, was reduced," Ravussin said. That finding was published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association last April.

"Normal-weight obese" syndrome may up heart risks

2007-01-26T11:47:00.000-08:00

10 minutes ago, 01/26/2007

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who are normal-weight but carry a good deal of body fat may be at increased risk of heart disease and stroke, a small study suggests.

Most people have by now heard of body mass index (BMI), a measure used to classify people as normal-weight, overweight or obese based on their weight and height.

However, there are people who are technically normal-weight based on their BMI yet have a substantial amount of excess fat, and some researchers say this is its own type of "syndrome."

In research published last year, a group of Italian researchers described what they call "normal-weight obese" or NWO syndrome -- where BMI is normal but body fat makes up more than 30 percent of weight.

The good news for these individuals is that they don't have the metabolic conditions that often mark obesity -- such as high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol levels and high blood sugar.

On the other hand, the bad news, according to this latest study, is that people with NWO syndrome may be prone to high blood levels of certain inflammation-related proteins. That suggests they are at risk of becoming obese or developing cardiovascular disease in the future, the study authors report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Dr. Antonino De Lorenzo of the University of Tor Vergata in Rome led the research team, the same one that first described NWO syndrome.

The study included 20 young women who met the definition of NWO syndrome, along with 20 normal-weight women and 20 who were overweight based on their BMI and had a body fat percentage greater than 30 percent.

Overall, the researchers found, the NWO group had higher levels of several inflammatory proteins than normal-weight women did. The excess body fat in the former group may explain the difference, as research suggests that fat tissue secretes inflammatory substances, De Lorenzo and his colleagues note.

Because inflammation has been implicated in the buildup of artery-clogging plaques, women who have a normal weight but high fat mass may be at increased risk of heart disease and stroke down the road, according to the researchers.

What's more, they point out, these women are likely to have a false sense of security about their heart health because their BMI is normal.]

This means that measuring body fat percentage, and not just BMI, could be an important part of preventing obesity-related ills, the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, January 2007.

U.S. Kids' Health Habits Put Them at Risk

2007-01-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

1 hour, 23 minutes ago, 01/26/2007

FRIDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Most American adolescents have exercise and diet habits that put their health at risk, according to a study in the February issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Researchers analyzed the habits of nearly 900 children ages 11 to 15 and found that about 80 percent of them had multiple physical activity and dietary risk behaviors.

The children were assessed on four behaviors: physical activity, television viewing time, percent of calories from fat, and daily servings of fruits and vegetables.

The study found that 55 percent of the children didn't meet physical activity guidelines (boys 59 percent and girls 33.6 percent); 30 percent watched more than two hours of television a day; just 32 percent met recommendations for fat consumption; and only 11.9 percent ate enough fruits and vegetables.

Overall, only two percent of the children in the study met all four health guidelines.

The researchers also found evidence that parents' health behaviors had an effect on their children. For example, girls with parents who never smoked and ate the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables had fewer health risk behaviors. And the number of risk behaviors in parents was weakly but positively associated with a higher number of risk behaviors in boys.

"These findings contribute to the body of evidence that most adolescents fail to meet multiple diet and physical activity guidelines and continue to be in need of interventions that target multiple behaviors," study author Alvaro Sanchez said in a prepared statement.

"Although health promotion programs frequently target multiple behaviors, little is known about the best approaches to stimulating multiple behavior change. Further research is needed to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of different strategies for promoting multiple behavior change in adolescence," Sanchez added.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases offers health tips for teens.
http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/take_charge.htm

Study: Most diabetics don't exercise

2007-01-26T04:33:00.000-08:00

By CHASE SQUIRES, Associated Press Writer Fri Jan 26, 6:33 AM ET

DENVER - Bad news when it comes to diabetics and exercise: Most people with Type 2 diabetes or at risk for it apparently ignore their doctors' advice to be active.

Fewer than 40 percent get exercise, a new study found, and the more in danger the patients are, the less likely they are to be active.

That's despite an earlier study that found nearly three-quarters of diabetics said their doctors had advised them to exercise. The patients who got the strongest warnings to get moving were the least likely to listen, according to research being released Friday.

"People should exercise more, that story is out," said Dr. Elaine Morrato, who led both studies. "What we're saying is, 'Here's a high-risk population that can benefit from exercise, and they're even less likely to exercise.'"

Without exercise, Type 2 diabetics face complications ranging from nerve damage to high blood pressure.

Morrato, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver with a doctorate in public health and epidemiology, said researchers surveyed more than 22,000 patients for the new survey. Results of the study appear in the February edition of the American Diabetes Association's journal Diabetes Care.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates more than 20 million Americans have diabetes, about 90 percent of them Type 2, which is linked with obesity.

Dr. Larry Deeb, president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association, said by the time patients have Type 2 diabetes or are at risk of getting it, the deck is stacked against them. They may already have problems with mobility as a result of obesity or foot and circulatory disorders that make exercise difficult.

"We have to be careful not to blame the victims," he said. "There's a difference between being unable and being unwilling."

Even for the most disabled, there's hope, said author and fitness expert Charlotte Hayes, but health professionals must do more.

Hayes, who wrote "The I Hate to Exercise Book For People With Diabetes," said telling patients to exercise is different from telling them how.

Every step of exercise is important, she said. For those who can walk, a few steps a day helps. For those who can't, there are alternatives.

"We take a small-steps approach," she said.

The American Diabetes Association recommends people get at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking, five times a week. But the association says for those who can't, there are benefits from even five minutes a day, along with everyday activities such as gardening or walking to work.

Morrato said she doesn't know the answer, only that the results of her study are disappointing.

"It is difficult to be optimistic about addressing the twin epidemics of obesity and diabetes without success in increasing physical activity in the population," her study concludes. "The results of this study provide very pessimistic data."

Deeb, who specializes in pediatrics, said the next generation is off to a better start. Children, he said, are taught nutrition and the benefits of physical activity. Now, families, local governments and school boards need to take action, while doctors need to follow up and find out if at-risk patients know where to get help.

"When you ask a family what they're doing, the answer is all about time. They know what's good for their families, but both parents are working, and sometimes the only time they have is to pick up fast food," he said. "They have to understand, your health depends on it.

"We will not give up," he said. "We can't give up."

___

On the Net: The American Diabetes Association, http://www.diabetes.org/

Mountain lion attacks hiker in Calif.

2007-01-25T23:03:00.000-08:00

By LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer Thu Jan 25, 11:03 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO - Wildlife officials on Thursday credited a woman with saving her husband's life by clubbing a mountain lion that attacked him while the couple were hiking in a California state park.

Jim and Nell Hamm, who will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next month, were hiking in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park when the lion pounced.

"He didn't scream. It was a different, horrible plea for help, and I turned around, and by then the cat had wrestled Jim to the ground," Nell Hamm said in an interview from the hospital where her husband was recovering from a torn scalp, puncture wounds and other injuries.

After the attack, game wardens closed the park about 320 miles north of San Francisco and released hounds to track the lion. They later shot and killed a pair of lions found near the trail where the attack happened.

The carcasses were flown to a state forensics lab to determine if either animal mauled the man.

Although the Hamms are experienced hikers, neither had seen a mountain lion before Jim Hamm was mauled, his wife said. Nell Hamm said she grabbed a four-inch-wide log and beat the animal with it, but it would not release its hold on her husband's head.

"Jim was talking to me all through this, and he said, 'I've got a pen in my pocket and get the pen and jab him in the eye,'" she said. "So I got the pen and tried to put it in his eye, but it didn't want to go in as easy as I thought it would."

When the pen bent and became useless, Nell Hamm went back to using the log. The lion eventually let go and, with blood on its snout, stood staring at the woman. She screamed and waved the log until the animal walked away.

"She saved his life, there is no doubt about it," said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the Department of Fish and Game.

Nell Hamm, 65, said she was scared to leave her dazed, bleeding husband alone, so the couple walked a quarter-mile to a trail head, where she gathered branches to protect them if more lions came around. They waited until a ranger came by and summoned help.

"My concern was to get Jim out of there," she said. "I told him, 'Get up, get up, walk,' and he did."

Jim Hamm, 70, was in fair condition Thursday. He had to have his lips stitched back together and underwent surgery for lacerations on his head and body. He told his wife he still wants to make the trip to New Zealand they planned for their anniversary, she said.

Nell Hamm warned people never to hike in the backcountry alone. Park rangers told the couple if Jim Hamm had been alone, he probably would not have survived.

"We fought harder than we ever have to save his life, and we fought together," she said.

Traffic pollution can stunt lung development, study says

2007-01-25T16:38:00.000-08:00

5 minutes ago, 01/25/2007

LONDON (Reuters) - Traffic pollution can prevent the lungs of children who live near busy roads from developing properly, making them more likely to suffer respiratory and heart problems later in life, U.S. researchers said on Friday.

They found that children who had lived within 500 meters (500 yards) of a highway from the age of 10, had significantly less lung function by the time they reached 18 than youngsters exposed to less traffic pollution.

"Someone suffering a pollution-related deficit in lung function as a child will probably have less than healthy lungs all of his or her life," said James Gauderman, of the University of Southern California.

The lead author of the study, published online by The Lancet medical journal, said reduced lung function in later life was known to be a risk factor for respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

The researchers studied the effects of traffic pollution on 3,600 children living in southern California over an eight-year period.

Each year they carried out tests to measure how much, and how quickly, the children could exhale after taking a deep breath. They also recorded the distance the youngsters lived from freeways and other busy roads.

Children who were otherwise healthy but who lived close to main roads had a significant decrease in lung function.

Weight loss improves heart function in obese

2007-01-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

13 minutes ago, 01/25/2007

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study shows that people who are obese can reverse some early heart and blood vessel dysfunction by adopting a healthy lifestyle and losing weight. But exercise alone, without weight loss, does not appear to be enough to improve cardiovascular function.

Dr. Chiew Y. Wong of the University of Queensland in Australia and colleagues had 106 obese men and women with no cardiovascular disease complete an eight-week lifestyle intervention program. Sixty-two cut their calorie and fat intake and exercised, while 44 exercised but did not change their diet.

Forty-eight of the study participants lost an average of 4.5 percent of their body weight, while the remaining 58 kept their weight stable or gained weight.

Among those who lost weight, the researchers noted improvements in their arteries' response to changes in blood pressure, as well as a 15 percent improvement in peak VO2, a measure of how well the body uses oxygen during exercise.

The more weight people lost, the greater their improvements in blood vessel function and fitness. People who lost weight also showed some improvement in their left ventricular function.

While the men and women who didn't lose weight did show improvements in peak oxygen uptake -- a measure of how well the body uses oxygen -- no significant changes were seen in their heart or blood vessel function.

This study "supports the argument that increasing cardiorespiratory fitness alone is not sufficient to produce the same cardiovascular benefits," the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: American Journal of Cardiology, December 15, 2006.

Traditional scans often miss strokes

2007-01-25T07:35:00.000-08:00

By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer Thu Jan 25, 10:35 PM ET

LONDON - The most common method of diagnosing a stroke in the emergency rooms catches only about one out of every four cases, far fewer than an MRI scan, which also was better at spotting the type of stroke, a U.S. government funded study showed.

The study led some experts, writing in the medical journal The Lancet, to declare that MRI scans should replace CT X-rays as the standard of care. The journal published the stroke study in Friday's issue.

"This mantle should now be passed to magnetic resonance imaging," wrote Dr. Geoffrey A. Donnan and colleagues at the University of Melbourne in Australia in an accompanying commentary.

MRI scans should be adopted as the new standard of care, wrote the doctors, while they also criticized governments and health care systems for their poor track record of assessing new technologies.

However, others argue it's not such a clear-cut choice. MRI results take more time, a delay that can prove deadly to a stroke patient, these doctors contend.

"The time delay between MRI and CT may be around 15 to 20 minutes," said Dr. Joseph Broderick, chairman of neurology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. "And in an emergency, 15 to 20 minutes can make a big difference."

Broderick had no role in the study, which was led by Dr. Julio Chalela, of the Medical University of South Carolina. Chalela was with the U.S.
National Institutes of Health when the study was conducted.

Chalela and colleagues examined 356 patients, of whom 217 were ultimately diagnosed with an acute stroke. Patients were scanned both by CT and MRI machines. CT scans are a type of X-ray, whereas magnetic resonance imaging uses powerful magnets instead of radiation to produce an image.

The scans were independently interpreted by four experts, who had no other patient information. Based only on the MRI scans, experts accurately diagnosed acute strokes 83 percent of the time. Using the CT scans, however, they were right just 26 percent of the time.

MRI scans were also more precise in spotting the cause of the stroke _ a blood clot or bleeding in the brain. The vast majority of strokes are caused by clots. In patients scanned within three hours of symptoms, MRIs detected strokes caused by clots in 41 of 90 patients, while CT scans only picked up 6 of the 90 patients.

The first few hours following a stroke are critical, since clot-busting drugs must be given within three hours to have a real impact. If they are given to the wrong patients, however, death or severe disability can result.

Strokes are the second leading cause of death worldwide, and account for approximately 5.5 million deaths each year.

Though CT scans may lose out to MRI scans on accuracy, on issues such as time and money, CT scans are far ahead. Widely available in emergency rooms in all developed countries, CT machines are compact pieces of equipment that produce images in as little as two minutes. In comparison, MRI machines are large, coffin-like structures that require patients to lie still for up to 30 minutes. They are also unsuitable for patients with pacemakers, metal objects, or who may be pregnant.

MRI scans also cost significantly more than CT scans and require specialized technicians to operate them and to read the scans.

"The superiority of MRI in detecting stroke in ideal conditions is unquestioned," said Dr. Lee Schwamm, an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. Schwamm was not connected to the study. But combined with a consideration of patient symptoms, he says that CT scans are just as effective in diagnosing patients in emergencies.

MRI scans may offer more detailed information, but such information hasn't yet been proven to make a difference in patient outcomes. Experts say studies are needed to determine if MRI scans might save more lives than CT scans in emergencies.

Schwamm likens the comparison between the two techniques to the difference between FM and AM radio. "FM radio is better because it's high-definition, and is great if you're listening to classical music," he said. "But sometimes all you need is the weather and the news, so AM is just fine."

In the same Lancet issue, an all-stroke special, two other studies found that stroke patients treated in a stroke care unit have a better chance of recovery than if they were treated in a conventional hospital ward.