Study Shows That Junk Food Is Nearly as Addictive as Heroin
March 18, 2010
Natural News
By: David Gutierrez
Junk food appears to be almost as addictive as heroin, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Scripps Research Institute and presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
“This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neuro-biological foundations,” researcher Paul Johnson said.
The researchers fed rats one of three diets: a nutritious diet, a healthy diet with restricted access to junk food, or a diet of unlimited junk food. Junk foods included cheesecake, chocolate, sponge cake and fatty meat. Mice in the third group quickly became obese, while the weight of mice in the first two groups did not change.
To test the effects of junk food on the brain’s pleasure centers — the areas affected by drugs — the researchers electrically stimulated those areas whenever the mice ran on a wheel. The longer a rat ran on the wheel, the more pleasure it would receive.
While rats in the first two groups did not change their wheel-running behavior, the rats eating junk food soon began running on the wheel for longer periods — suggesting that their brain’s pleasure centers had become less sensitive. Consistent with this finding, the rats began eating more and more food, suggesting that their bodies had become desensitized to the pleasure the food was producing.
The researchers then began exposing rats to painful electric shocks whenever they ate junk food. The rats on the restricted junk food diet quickly stopped eating the food, but the binge-eating rats were undeterred.
“You lose control. It’s the hallmark of addiction,” researcher Paul Kenny said.
When the bingeing rats were deprived of junk food and given only healthy food, they refused to eat anything for two weeks.
“It’s almost as if you break these things, it’s very, very hard to go back to the way things were before,” Kenny said. “Their dietary preferences are dramatically shifted.”
“What we have are these core features of addiction, and these animals are hitting each one.”
Click here for the full report.
New Jersey Mom Aspires to be World’s Fattest Woman
March 16, 2010
Fox News
Meet Donna Simpson. She’s going to cost you. A lot.
Simpson, of Old Bridge, N.J., is 42 years old, has two kids and a boyfriend, and she weighs 602 pounds. That’s right … 602 pounds.
She’s on a diet, of course, because she has a goal in mind:
She wants to weigh 1,000 pounds.
That’s right … 1,000 pounds. It’s a nice, extra-round figure — almost as big as what her unhealthy choices will ultimately cost taxpayers.
Simpson claims she is normal and healthy, and she has a right to eat what she wants and weigh what she wants.
“I love eating and people love watching me eat,” she says. “It makes people happy, and I’m not harming anyone.”
But she needs to use a motor scooter when she goes grocery shopping, because she can’t walk more than 20 feet. The human body, after all, is not designed to scarf down 12,000 calories a day in the quest to weigh half a ton.
Simpson is definitely harming someone — herself, says Dr. Carla Wolper, a registered dietitian and research faculty member at the New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York.
And you, the taxpayer, could wind up paying for it.
“We don’t know her medical history, but one of the most dangerous health issues she faces is an increased risk of sudden death from having a heart attack due to electrical problems in the heart,” Wolper said.
Other possible causes of death for Simpson include stroke, immobility, breathing problems, congestive heart failure, diabetes, and inflammation of heart tissue. Each year, nearly 300,000 Americans die from heart failure.
Simpson, experts say, is putting herself at risk for all these medical conditions, and those conditions have a hefty pricetag.
“The baseline cost for someone like to go to the emergency room is $993 for one visit,” Daniel Emmer, public relations manager of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, the largest health insurance provider in New Jersey, told FOXNews.com.
Simpson’s main source of income to support herself financially is by appearing on a Web site where men pay to watch videos of her gorging on food and showing off her hundreds of pounds of extra bulge in a bikini.
But it’s anyone’s guess whether her revenue from Web videos will cover the cost of her inevitable health risks.
“Someone with diabetes costs $11,744 more per year to provide health care, which is twice as much as the average person,” Emmer said.
It is unclear what type of insurance Simpson has, if any. But there is no question that whatever her health care position is, it could come at a high cost.
“Obesity causes a minimum $1,429 increase, or 42 percent in medical costs,” Emmer said. “Research shows lifestyle choices and behaviors drive 87.5 percent of the cost for health care claims.”
“When people are very, very overweight, they are at an increased risk for a condition called prolonged QT syndrome,” Wolper told FoxNews.com.
Prolonged QT syndrome is a heart rhythm disorder that can potentially cause fast, chaotic heartbeats, the Mayo Clinic says on its Web site. In some cases, the heart may beat erratically for so long that it can cause sudden death.
“Another problem this woman faces is related to the circulatory system,” Wolper said. “When people are that big, circulation is often impaired in the legs. This can cause blood to pool in the legs leading to formation of blood clots. This leaves morbidly obese people at an increased risk for a pulmonary embolism.”
A pulmonary embolism occurs when one or more arteries in the lungs become blocked. In most cases, pulmonary embolism is caused by blood clots that travel to your lungs from another part of your body — most commonly, your legs, according to the Mayo Clinic. One of the major risk factors is excess weight, which increases the risk of blood clots, especially in women who smoke or have high blood pressure.
“The work of the heart is tremendously increased when someone is that big because there’s so much more blood in the body,” Wolper said. “When this happens, the heart has to pump against the pressure of all that fat that is pressing against the blood vessels, and as a result the heart enlarges, and not in a good way.”
As Simpson’s appetite increases, so will the cost of health care for the severe medical conditions that she is likely to have — conditions that are preventable by healthier lifestyle choices. Whereas her $750-a-week grocery bill is merely gastronomical, her hospital bills will be astronomical — and the taxpayers of New Jersey may well have to pay her tab.
Meanwhile, in her effort to boldly go where no woman has gone before, Simpson says she tries to stay sedentary, so she burns as few calories as necessary.
She consumes five times more than the recommended daily calories for a woman her age.
“My favorite food is sushi. But unlike others I can sit and eat 70 big pieces of sushi in one go,” she told the Daily Mail.
“I do love cakes and sweet things, doughnuts are my favorite.”
The current record for fattest woman is held by a woman also from New Jersey, who weighed an unbelievable 1,800 pounds when she died in 2008. She was 49 years old.
Simpson is proud of the Guinness World Record she holds now for the world’s fattest mother, and her boyfriend is proud of her too.
Philippe, 49, supports her thousand-pound goal, even if that is nearly seven times his own weight of 150 pounds.
“I think he’d like it if I was bigger,” Simpson said. “He’s a real belly man, and completely supports me.”
Someday, the experts say, we all may support her.
Click here for the full report.
The True Price of Health Care Spending
March 15, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
The U.S. healthcare system loses between $505 and $850 billion a year to mistakes, inefficiency and fraud, according to a report by Thomson Reuters. This amounts to one-third of all national healthcare spending.
“America’s healthcare system is indeed hemorrhaging billions of dollars,” the report says.
According to the report, unnecessary medical procedures and treatments — including antibiotic overuse and superfluous tests — account for 37 percent of all wasted spending, $200 to $300 billion per year. Fraud — including false Medicare claims and kickbacks for referrals or prescriptions — accounts for another 22 percent, as much as $200 billion a year. Medical errors are responsible for 11 percent of excess spending, or $50 to $100 billion yearly. Preventable health problems, such as diabetes, cost the healthcare system $30 to $50 billion per year.
One of the easiest areas to repair might be administrative inefficiency, which accounts for a full 18 percent of medical overspending.
“The average U.S. hospital spends one-quarter of its budget on billing and administration, nearly twice the average in Canada,” the report says. “American physicians spend nearly eight hours per week on paperwork and employ 1.66 clerical workers per doctor, far more than in Canada.”
Administrative inefficiency can also lead to other wasteful practices.
“It is waste when caregivers duplicate tests because results recorded in a patient’s record with one provider are not available to another or when medical staff provides inappropriate treatment because relevant history of previous treatment cannot be accessed,” the report says.
Although the United States has the highest per capita healthcare spending and spends a higher proportion of its GDP on healthcare than any other nation in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (a group of predominantly high income Western democracies), it has the highest rates of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and neonatal death in the developed world, as well as the unhealthiest population.
Click here for the full report
Study Claims People Could Lose 5lbs a Year with Junk Food Tax
March 10, 2010
ABC News
By Kristina Fiore
Taxing junk food may help reduce obesity and improve health, researchers have found.
Patients got significantly less of their calories from soda or pizza when there was a 10 percent increase in the price of either, Penny Gordon-Larsen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and colleagues reported in the March 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
“Policies aimed at altering the price of soda or … pizza may be effective mechanisms to steer U.S. adults toward a more healthful diet and help reduce long-term weight gain or insulin levels over time,” the researchers wrote.
Talk of a soda tax has sparked debate across the country, particularly in New York and Philadelphia, where such legislation is currently under consideration. However, not much research has been done to study how price changes would affect health outcomes.
So the researchers looked at data from 5,115 patients enrolled in the longitudinal Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study from 1985 to 2006.
During that time, the inflation-adjusted price of soda and pizza actually decreased, with the largest drop observed for soda, falling from $2.71 to $1.42 for a 2-liter bottle — a 48 percent decline.
In their analyses, the researchers found that changes in the price of soda and pizza were associated with changes in the probability of consuming those foods, as well as in the amounts consumed.
A 10 percent increase in the price of soda was associated with a 7.12 percent decrease in calories consumed from it, while the same increase in the price of pizza led to an 11.5 percent drop.
Price was also significantly associated with total caloric intake and body weight. A $1.00 increase in soda prices, for example, was tied to a mean of 124 fewer total daily calories, which amounted to an average weight loss of 2.34 pounds.
The researchers noted that similar trends were seen for pizza, adding that a $1.00 increase in the price of both soda and pizza together was associated with even greater changes in total energy intake, body weight, and insulin resistance.
“Our results provide stronger evidence to support the potential health benefits of taxing selected foods and beverages,” they wrote. “Similar taxation policies have proven a successful means of effectively reducing adult and teenage smoking.”
They calculated that an 18 percent tax on junk food would result in a 56-calorie decline in total daily energy intake. At the population level, that would translate to about five pounds per patient per year, along with significant reductions in the risks of most obesity-related chronic diseases, they said.
Since their study looked at only a small number of foods, they called upon researchers to assess more in future studies.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Mitchell H. Katz and Dr. Rajiv Bhatia of the San Francisco Department of Public Health wrote that taxing is “an appropriate method of correcting for health and other social costs not accounted for in the private market cost.”
However, they added, in addition to taxing unhealthy foods, policymakers should consider ways to reward healthy behaviors.
“Sadly, we are currently subsidizing the wrong things, including the production of corn, which makes the corn syrup in sweetened beverages so inexpensive,” they wrote. U.S. agricultural subsidies should instead “be used to make healthful foods such as locally grown vegetables, fruits, and whole grains less expensive.”
“In the end,” Katz and Bhatia concluded, “putting our money where our mouth is means aligning our economic incentives so that we always serve up the healthful choice.”
Click here for the full report.
Sugary Soft Drinks Lead to Diabetes
March 10, 2010
Telegraph.co.uk
By Richard Alleyne
More people now drink soft, sport and fruit drinks daily, and the increase has led to thousands more diabetes and heart disease cases over the past decade, according to research presented to the American Heart Association’s annual conference.
The study estimates the increased consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks between 1990 and 2000 contributed to 130,000 new cases of diabetes, 14,000 new cases of coronary heart disease (CHD), and 50,000 additional life-years burdened by coronary heart disease in the US over the past decade.
The drinks – excluding 100 per cent fruit juice – contain between 120 to 200 calories per drink and play a major role in the rising tide of obesity.
Now researchers are calling for a health tax on soft drinks to pay for the increase costs of treating victims of coronary disease and diabetes.
Dr Litsa Lambrakos, of the University of California, said: “We can demonstrate an association between daily consumption of sugared beverages and diabetes risk. We can then translate this information into estimates of the current diabetes and cardiovascular disease that can be attributed to the rise in consumption of these drinks.”
Over the last decade, at least 6,000 excess deaths from any cause and 21,000 life-years lost can be attributed in the United States to the increase in sugar-sweetened drinks.
Health policy experts suggest curbing the consumption of sugared drinks through an excise tax of one cent per ounce of beverage, which would be expected to decrease consumption by 10 per cent.
Professor Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, senior author of the study at the University of California, said: “If such a tax could curb the consumption of these drinks, the health benefits could be dramatic.”
Dr Lambrakos said: “We want to make the general public more aware of the adverse health outcomes of consuming these drinks over time.
“We want to help support disease prevention and curb consumption of these drinks that lead to poor health outcomes and increased health care costs for the average American.”
Click here for the full report.
Drastic Measures: Tax Soda and Pizza to Cut Obesity
March 10, 2010
Reuters
By Julie Steenhuysen
U.S. researchers estimate that an 18 percent tax on pizza and soda can push down U.S. adults’ calorie intake enough to lower their average weight by 5 pounds (2 kg) per year.
The researchers, writing in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine on Monday, suggested taxing could be used as a weapon in the fight against obesity, which costs the United States an estimated $147 billion a year in health costs.
“While such policies will not solve the obesity epidemic in its entirety and may face considerable opposition from food manufacturers and sellers, they could prove an important strategy to address overconsumption, help reduce energy intake and potentially aid in weight loss and reduced rates of diabetes among U.S. adults,” wrote the team led by Kiyah Duffey of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
With two-thirds of Americans either overweight or obese, policymakers are increasingly looking at taxing as a way to address obesity on a population level.
California and Philadelphia have introduced legislation to tax soft drinks to try to limit consumption.
CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden supports taxes on soft drinks, as does the American Heart Association.
There are early signs that such a policy works.
Duffey’s team analyzed the diets and health of 5,115 young adults aged age 18 to 30 from 1985 to 2006.
They compared data on food prices during the same time. Over a 20-year period, a 10 percent increase in cost was linked with a 7 percent decrease in the amount of calories consumed from soda and a 12 percent decrease in calories consumed from pizza.
The team estimates that an 18 percent tax on these foods could cut daily intake by 56 calories per person, resulting in a weight loss of 5 pounds (2 kg) per person per year.
“Our findings suggest that national, state or local policies to alter the price of less healthful foods and beverages may be one possible mechanism for steering U.S. adults toward a more healthful diet,” Duffey and colleagues wrote.
In a commentary, Drs. Mitchell Katz and Rajiv Bhatia of the San Francisco Department of Public Health said taxes are an appropriate way to correct a market that favors unhealthy food choices over healthier options.
They argued that the U.S. government should carefully consider food subsidies that contribute to the problem.
“Sadly, we are currently subsidizing the wrong things including the product of corn, which makes the corn syrup in sweetened beverages so inexpensive,” they wrote.
Instead, they argued that agricultural subsidies should be used to make healthful foods such as locally grown vegetables, fruits and whole grains less expensive.
Click here for the full report.
Gut Bacteria & Obesity May Be Linked
March 8, 2010
Reuters
Some of the hundreds of bacteria found in the digestive systems of humans may be linked to specific diseases like cancer, diabetes and obesity, an international team of scientists said in a paper on Thursday.
Researchers, led by Chinese scientist Wang Jun, said in the latest issue of Nature they found more than 1,000 different species of bacteria in the human gut.
They said they had sequenced, or analyzed, the genes of each bacteria, creating the first genetic catalog of the organisms found in the human digestive system. Their research was based on analysis of stool samples from 124 people from Denmark and Spain.
Wang and his fellow researchers found several genes that may be linked to obesity and Crohn’s disease, but he said more validation work was needed.
“Apart from helping you digest, these bacteria may also play a very important role in … diseases like Crohn’s disease, cancer, obesity,” Wang, executive director of the Beijing Genomics Institute, said in an interview with Reuters.
“If you just tackle these bacteria, it is easier than treating the human body itself. If you find that a certain bug is responsible for a certain disease and you kill it, then you kill the disease,” Wang said.
Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory illness of the intestines which some believe may be caused by a variety of bacteria. Other possible causes include genetics and environmental factors.
Wang said creating the genetic catalog of all the bacteria in the human gut was only a beginning.
“There are a lot of unknown bacteria and pathogens that can cause different kinds of diseases,” he said.
“So this is the first step and we have to study further to find concrete associations between these bacteria and human diseases, and then you can start learning how to get diagnosis, prognosis and then treatment,” Wang said.
Wang and colleagues in China are working on a similar 120-sample study in Chinese hospitals.
“There are four groups: obese diabetics, obese non-diabetics, lean diabetics and lean non-diabetics. And we found some interesting bugs related to each type of diabetes,” Wang said.
Click here for the full report.
Strokes Up Among the Young, Down Among the Old
February 26, 2010
WebMD
By Charlene Laino
Strokes are on the rise among younger people, a group not traditionally considered at high risk for the debilitating condition, researchers report.
A total of 7.3% of stroke victims were younger than age 45 in 2005, up from 4.5% in 1993, says Brett M. Kissela, MD, of the University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Institute.
The most likely culprits: rising rates of obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes — the major risk factors for stroke — among younger people, Kissela tells WebMD.
The average age of stroke patients dropped from 71 in 1993 to 68 in 2005, he says.
Even among people under 45, strokes are still a relatively uncommon event, striking 25 of every 100,000 whites and 55 of every 100 blacks in 2005, he says.
The findings were presented at the American Stroke Association’s (ASA) International Stroke Conference 2010.
So why would strokes be increasing in younger people, while decreasing in older people?
Kissela says it’s probably because stroke prevention efforts aimed at controlling high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity have largely been aimed at older people. And they’ve been successful, he says.
Because stroke is thought of as an older person’s disease, younger people fell through the cracks, Kissela says.
“If we don’t reverse this trend, there will be many years of productive life lost. Not just years of work lost; it can be as simple as a young mother no longer being able to hold her baby,” he tells WebMD.
So what’s the answer?
First, younger people need to be aware that they too are at risk, Kissela says.
Also, younger people tend to skip an annual exam if they’re feeling OK, he says. “Everyone should be checked regularly for treatable problems.”
Finally, you’ve heard it before, but Kissela says it’s worth repeating: The best way to ward off strokes, heart attacks, and a host of other diseases is to eat right, exercise, and refrain from smoking.
For the study, the researchers examined data from five counties in the greater Cincinnati and northern Kentucky region, which includes about 1.3 million people.
But the results apply to the entire U.S. population, says American Stroke Association spokesman Brain Silver, MD, a neurologist at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
Silver tells WebMD that he and colleagues nationwide are treating “a lot more patients in their 30s and 40s.”
Plus, rates of obesity and diabetes, the factors fueling the disturbing trend, are increasing throughout the country, Kissela says.
Click here for the full report
Chronic Health Problems in Children Climb
February 24, 2010
Natural News
By S.L. Baker
Researchers from Mass General Hospital for Children in Boston gathered data about US children with health problems. They looked at conditions that limited activities and/or schooling, required medication and/or specialized equipment and health services, and that lasted for at least a year. The results of this study, just published in the February issue of JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association), show an alarming trend. Chronic health conditions in American kids have increased dramatically in recent years — rising from 12.8 percent in 1994 to 26.6 percent in 2006.
Over the six year study period, Jeanne Van Cleave, M.D., and her research team estimated changes in prevalence, incidence, and rates of remission in four categories: obesity (defined as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for age), asthma, learning or behavior problems, and other physical conditions such as diabetes and heart conditions. They compiled data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Cohort, specifically looking at three groups of children who were between the ages of two through eight at the beginning of each study period. These groups were followed for three periods of six years each — from 1988 to 1994, 1994 to 2000 and 2000 to 2006.
The results showed that the prevalence of chronic conditions, including obesity, increased with each subsequent group. Male, Hispanic, and black youth were found to be at the highest risk. Bottom line: as the years pass, more and more American kids appear to have chronic health problems when compared to similar youngsters in previous years.
There seems little doubt that the increasing rate of obesity among children and teens, most likely fueled by junk food and lack of exercise, is one important explanation for the increase in children’s health problems. But in an editorial accompanying the JAMA study, Neal Halfon, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Paul W. Newacheck, Dr.P.H., of the University of California at San Francisco, pointed out that other factors must be at work, too.
“The obesity epidemic seemed to develop at a time when many indicators suggested that children’s health was generally improving. The data presented by Van Cleave et al suggest that the prevalence of other chronic health conditions is also increasing among U.S. children and that obesity is not the only clinical time bomb ticking away in children. There is an urgent need to better understand why this is the case and what can be done about it,” they stated. “Addressing the increasing incidence and prevalence of chronic conditions in children will ultimately require major reforms in the child health system. The child health system needs to do a better job preventing childhood chronic illness. The possibilities for such changes are substantial, as are the implications of not acting.”
NaturalNews has previously covered a host of environmental contaminants and toxins that could well be contributing to an increase in children’s health problems. For example the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is used in many hard plastics and can leach from toys and baby bottles. Widely found in the environment, BPA has been linked to health problems in fetuses, babies and children, including attention deficit disorder and neurological symptoms.
Click here for the full report.
Drug Chemicals Turn Switches on and off at Wrong Times
February 23, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Scientists are increasingly becoming aware of a new mechanism by which pollutants can damage the health of living organisms — epigenetic changes, in which a chemical changes how a gene is expressed.
While some chemicals are toxic (attacking the body’s systems directly) and others are mutagenic (changing the actual code of an organism’s genes), others do not change the way a gene is written, but instead how it acts in the body.
Epigenetic changes “can lead to increased susceptibility to disease,” said Linda S. Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and of the National Toxicology Program. “The susceptibility persists long after the exposure is gone, even decades later. Glands, organs, and systems can be permanently altered.”
Epigenetic changes have been identified that increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, asthma, breast cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, learning disabilities, Parkinson’s disease and more.
One example was recently uncovered by researchers at the University of Cincinnati, who conducted a study on children in New York City who had been exposed to high levels of air pollutants in the womb. These children had higher rates of asthma than children who had not had such exposure.
Upon performing genetic tests, the researchers found that all the exposed, asthmatic children had a methyl group molecule attached to the ACSL3 gene, causing it to be less active than normal. None of the unexposed children had this molecule attached to their ACSL3 gene.
Researchers have also found epigenetic changes in children conceived through in-vitro fertilization. They believe that the chemicals used to incubate the fertilized eggs before implantation might cause epigenetic changes that lead to the higher rates of abdominal wall defects and cancers observed in such children.
Like mutations, epigenetic effects can be passed on to a person’s offspring.
“There is a huge potential impact from these exposures, partly because the changes may be inherited across generations,” Birnbaum said. “You may be affected by what your mother and grandmother were exposed to during pregnancy.”
Click here for the full report.
