Snacks Make Up 27% of Kids Calories
March 2, 2010
Reuters
Children snack so often that they are “moving toward constant eating,” Carmen Piernas and Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina reported.
More than 27 percent of calories that American kids take in come from snacks, Piernas and Popkin reported in the journal Health Affairs. The researchers defined snacks as food eaten outside regular meals.
The studies will help fuel President Barack Obama’s initiative to fight obesity in childhood, something Obama’s wife, first lady Michelle Obama, notes could drive up already soaring U.S. healthcare costs.
Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote a commentary calling for taxes on sugary drinks and junk food, zoning restrictions on fast-food outlets around schools and bans on advertising unhealthy food to children.
“Government at national, state, and local levels, spearheaded by public health agencies, must take action,” he wrote.
Piernas and Popkin looked at data on 31,337 children aged 2 to 18 from four different federal surveys on food and eating.
“Childhood snacking trends are moving toward three snacks per day, and more than 27 percent of children’s daily calories are coming from snacks. The largest increases have been in salty snacks and candy. Desserts and sweetened beverages remain the major sources of calories from snacks,” they wrote.
“Children increased their caloric intake by 113 calories per day from 1977 to 2006,” they added.
CONSTANT EATING
“This raises the question of whether the physiological basis for eating is becoming deregulated, as our children are moving toward constant eating.”
In a second study in the journal, Christina Bethell of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland and colleagues analyzed data from the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health to find the rate of obesity for children 10 to 17 rose from 14.8 percent in 2003 to 16.4 percent in 2007.
The percentage of children who are overweight stayed at around 15 percent, they found.
“While combined overweight and obesity rates appear to be leveling off, our findings suggest a possible increase in the severity of the national childhood obesity epidemic,” Bethell said in a statement.
Parents, educators and policymakers all hold responsibility for this, Michelle Obama told the School Nutrition Association conference in Washington on Monday.
“Our kids didn’t do this to themselves,” Obama said.
“From fast food, to vending machines packed with chips and candy, to a la carte lines, we tempt our kids with all kinds of unhealthy choices every day.”
Other studies have shown that obese children are more likely to stay obese as adults, and they develop chronic conditions at younger ages, burdening the healthcare system.
“You see kids who are at higher risk of conditions like diabetes, and cancer, and heart disease — conditions that cost billions of dollars a year to treat,” Michelle Obama said.
The administration has launched an initiative to tackle the issue by improving nutritional standards, getting food companies to voluntarily improve nutrition standards, help kids exercise more and educating parents.
The effects extend beyond health. Bethell’s study found that overweight or obese children were 32 percent more likely to have to repeat a grade in school and 59 percent more likely than normal weight kids to have missed more than two weeks of school.
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One-Third of American Adults Are Obese, but Rate Slows
January 14, 2010
New York Times
By Pam Belluck
Americans, at least as a group, may have reached their peak of obesity, according to data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Wednesday.
The numbers indicate that obesity rates have remained constant for at least five years among men and for closer to 10 years among women and children — long enough for experts to say the percentage of very overweight people has leveled off.
But the percentages have topped out at very high numbers. Nearly 34 percent of adults are obese, more than double the percentage 30 years ago. The share of obese children tripled during that time, to 17 percent.
“Right now we’ve halted the progress of the obesity epidemic,” said Dr. William H. Dietz, director of the division of nutrition, physical activity and obesity at the disease control centers. “The data are really promising.
“That said, I don’t think we have in place the kind of policy or environmental changes needed to reverse this epidemic just yet.”
Dr. Dietz said the data probably reflected increased awareness of the obesity problem, especially among women, “who buy food, prepare it and see it, and they’re making changes for themselves that they’re also making for their kids.” He also cited a reduction in “less healthful foods” at school.
Some experts, though, were not optimistic that the leveling off was a result of improved eating and exercise habits.
“Until we see rates improving, not just staying the same, we can’t have any confidence that our lifestyle has improved,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston.
Dr. Ludwig said the plateau might just suggest that “we’ve reached a biological limit” to how obese people could get. When people eat more, he said, at first they gain weight; then a growing share of the calories go “into maintaining and moving around that excess tissue,” he continued, so that “a population doesn’t keep getting heavier and heavier indefinitely.”
Furthermore, Dr. Ludwig said, “it could be that most of the people who are genetically susceptible, or susceptible for psychological or behavioral reasons, have already become obese.”
The numbers, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, are based on national surveys that record heights and weights of a representative sample of Americans. People are considered obese if their body mass index — a ratio of height to weight — is 30 or greater. Someone five and a half feet tall is obese at 186 pounds; a six-foot person is obese at 221 pounds.
Even though the data show an overall plateau for obesity rates, they indicate an increase from 1999 to 2008 in the heaviest boys, ages 6 to 19, primarily whites. Experts speculated that heavy children in environments of unhealthy food and physical inactivity might simply be shifting into the top weight categories because their situation had not improved.
African-American adults have the highest obesity rates — 37 percent among men and nearly 50 percent among women. For Hispanic women, the rate is 43 percent. Hispanic and black children have higher rates than non-Hispanic whites.
Federal health officials had set a goal a decade ago that no more than 15 percent of people would be obese in 2010.
“We aren’t near that, and we haven’t moved in that direction,” said Cynthia L. Ogden, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics and an author of the reports.
In addition, 68 percent of adults and nearly one-third of children are considered at least overweight, with a body mass index of 25 or higher. For a 5-foot-8 person, that would be 164 pounds.
Dr. Dietz said he hoped the obesity data would follow what happened with smoking rates, which leveled off before declining. But he said obesity was difficult to address because while “tobacco is a single source, obesity is both physical activity and diet.”
Experts like Steven Gortmaker, a Harvard public health professor, said obesity would decline only with new policies, like penalties and incentives to promote healthier foods and exercise.
“If you look at the reversal of the smoking epidemic,” Dr. Gortmaker said, “substantial change didn’t really happen until there were bans on advertising and limits on consumption through things like taxation. We have to make some substantial changes.”
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Pomegranate Helping Prevent Breast Cancer
January 13, 2010
Reuters
By Xavier Briand
An acid found in pomegranates appears to block aromatase, an enzyme that converts androgen to estrogen, a hormone that plays a role in the development of breast cancer, the researchers wrote in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
“We identified some of these chemicals in pomegranates that actually have properties that can suppress aromatase,” researcher Shiuan Chen, of the City of Hope cancer research and treatment center in Duarte, California, said in a telephone interview.
Many women who have had breast cancer take medicines called aromatase inhibitors — such as Pfizer’s Aromasin, Novartis’ Femara and AstraZeneca Plc’s Arimidex — to keep estrogen from feeding tumors.
Chen and colleagues studied whether compounds, or phytochemicals, in pomegranates can suppress aromatase and ultimately block cancer growth. They found that 10 natural compounds in the fruit may potentially prevent estrogen-related breast cancer.
Chen said the compounds would not be a replacement for aromatase inhibitors.
“We do not recommend people start taking this as a replacement for the AI’s,” Chen said. “They (pomegranate compounds) are not as potent as the real drugs so we think that the interest probably is more on the prevention end rather than in a therapeutic purpose.”
Other researchers not associated with the study told the journal that the results are promising, and suggested more studies involving animals and humans were needed to confirm the findings.
“It’s not clear that these levels could be achieved in animals or in humans because the (compounds) are not well absorbed into blood when provided in the diet,” said Gary Stoner of Ohio State University.
Dr. Powel Brown, an oncologist at the University of Texas, said in a statement that future studies should focus on testing pomegranate juice for its effect on estrogen levels, menopausal symptoms, breast density or even as a cancer preventive agent.
More than 400,000 women die from breast cancer globally every year. About 75 percent of breast cancers are estrogen-receptor positive, meaning they are fed by estrogen.
Previous research has shown that pomegranate juice is rich in antioxidants — vitamins and other substances — that may help prevent diseases such as cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Quitting Smoking Carries Diabetes Risk
January 06, 2010
Reuters
By Charles Dick
Smoking is well known as a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, but scientists said on Monday that quitting the habit can raise the risk even more in the short term.
A study by U.S. researchers found that people who stop smoking have a 70 percent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the first six years without cigarettes as compared to people who never smoked.
The researchers said they suspected the increased diabetes risk comes from extra weight gain common in people who quit.
But they said no one should use their findings as an excuse to continue smoking — a habit which can also cause lung disease, heart disease, strokes and many types of cancer.
“The message is: Don’t even start to smoke,” said Hsin-Chieh Yeh of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the United States, who led the study.
“If you smoke, give it up. That’s the right thing to do. But people have to also watch their weight,” she added.
Type 2 diabetes — often called adult-onset diabetes — is a common disease that interferes with the body’s ability to properly use sugar and insulin, a substance produced by the pancreas which normally lowers blood sugar after eating.
Overweight people and those with a family history of the disease have an increased risk of developing it, as do smokers.
Diabetes is reaching epidemic levels, with an estimated 180 million people suffering from it around the world.
Diabetes cases are forecast to triple in the United States in the next 25 years to 44 million with the costs of caring for them rising to $336 billion a year.
Yeh’s study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal, looked at almost 11,000 middle-aged adults who did not yet have diabetes from 1987 to 1989. The patients were followed for up to 17 years and data about diabetes status, glucose levels, weight and more were collected at regular intervals.
The researchers found that people who quit smoking had a 70 percent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the first six years after stopping compared to people who never smoked. The risks were highest in the first three years, and returned to normal after 10 years.
Among those who did not stop smoking the risk was lower, but the chance of developing diabetes was still 30 percent higher compared with those who never smoked.
Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the world, killing more than 5 million people a year. A report by the World Lung Foundation last August said smoking could kill a billion people this century if trends hold.
Swine Flu Vaccine Not Being Purchased
December 18, 2009
Natural News
By Mike Adams
All of a sudden, H1N1 vaccines are available all across America. Walgreens and other pharmacies are pushing the vaccines as if there were an “everything must go” liquidation sale under way. Hurry, get your swine flu vaccine today before everybody figures out they’re useless!
The marketability of vaccines has a strict time limit. They’re only in demand during the fear phase of a pandemic, and that fear phase has long since faded for H1N1. Virtually everyone who wants an H1N1 vaccine has already received one, and the rest of the population is beginning to notice something quite curious: People who got the vaccine are no better off than those who skipped it. In fact, there’s no difference in mortality between those who were vaccinated and those who weren’t, indicating yet again that the swine flu vaccine was a medical hoax to begin with.
If you don’t believe me, just ask the potentially hundreds of thousands of parents who gave their children one of the recently recalled H1N1 children’s vaccines. These vaccines were recalled because they were found to be so weak that they were medically useless. But observant parents are noticing a curious fact: Children who received the “useless” (recalled) vaccine have been no worse off than those who received a full-strength vaccine.
The strength of the vaccine, in fact, appears to be entirely irrelevant to the health outcomes of children. Vaccine or not, strong or weak, children’s reaction to the pandemic has virtually nothing to do with any treatments offered by conventional medicine.
In fact, the greatest determining factor in the health outcomes of children has most likely been their blood levels of vitamin D. But that isn’t tracked by medical professionals… nor even prescribed by them. So we’ll probably never know the exact correlation between vitamin D and H1N1 prevention.
Millions of useless vaccines
So now we have a situation where the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars acquiring H1N1 vaccines that, by the time they were delivered for consumption, were already irrelevant to public health. Does anybody really believe at this point that swine flu is a deadly pandemic that will kill you if you don’t receive a vaccine? You’d have to really look hard to find someone so uninformed (and brainwashed) that they’re making the H1N1 vaccine a priority in their life right now.
So what we’re going to end up with here is a huge stockpile of H1N1 vaccines that nobody wants. Sure, the pharmacies, clinics and hospitals will try to push as many of them as they can (even offering free vaccines sooner or later, just to get people into their stores), but in the end, they’re inevitably going to be sitting on millions of extra doses of vaccine with nowhere to inject them.
Green Tea Prevents and Reverses Brain Disorders
December 17, 2009
Natural News
By Mike Adams
The December issue of Nature Chemical Biology contains a study that reveals the powerful effect of the green tea component EGCG in preventing and treating serious brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s diseases. When combined with another isolated component, the elements therapeutically eliminate the protein amyloids which are thought to cause these brain diseases.
Amyloid plaques are tightly-bound protein sheets that make their way into the brain and occupy nerve cells. Sometimes they literally bind themselves around the brain tissue. Consequently, brain cells lose their oxygen source and begin to die, leading to memory and speech loss, diminished motor skills, and eventually death.
Researchers from Boston Biomedical Research Institute (BBRI) and the University of Pennsylvania discovered that two chemical components, one found in green tea, were able to break up the amyloid plaques and restore normal cell function in samples similar to what would be found in patients with brain disorders. The combination was found to be effective at eradicating all kinds of amyloids.
Representing the first time a specific set of chemical extracts has successfully destroyed protein amyloids, the research is breakthrough. Because amyloids are highly stable and incredibly complex, there have been no workable solutions to stopping their deadly impact on the central nervous system up until now.
Scientists are encouraged by the fact that such components have proven to be a viable treatment for serious degenerative brain disorders. They anticipate further research that will help to explain the mechanism behind the components that causes them to be so effective.
AIDS Prevention Gel Fails in African Trials
December 15, 2009
Reuters
By Kate Kelland
U.S. drug company Endo Pharmaceuticals’ (ENDP.O) gel designed to prevent infection with the AIDS virus was ineffective in trials in Africa, Britain’s Medical Research Council (MRC) said on Monday.
The large international trial of vaginal microbicide Pro 2000 in more than 9,000 women in four African countries found no evidence that it reduces the risk of HIV infection.
The result is a setback for the specialty drugmaker, whose shares were hit earlier in the month when U.S. health regulators declined to approve its Aveed drug for low testosterone. [ID:nN0387831]
To date, no such gel, known as a microbicide, has been shown to prevent HIV infection and this trial “showed conclusively that Pro 2000 gel was of no added benefit,” the council said in a statement.
“This result is disheartening, particularly in light of the results of a smaller trial sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health which suggested that Pro 2000 could reduce the risk of HIV infection by 30 per cent,” the council’s Sheena McCormack, who led the trial, said in a statement.
“Nevertheless we know this is an important result and it shows clearly the need to undertake trials which are large enough to provide definitive evidence for whether or not a product works.”
The findings also were a setback to researchers trying to find a microbicide — a gel or cream that women and perhaps men can use to protect against the AIDS virus when their partners cannot or will not use a condom.
Studies presented at an AIDS conference in Canada in February suggested the Pro 2000 gel, which ENDO acquired through its purchase of Indevus Pharmaceuticals earlier this year, could cut transmission rates by a third [ID:nN09513969].
Almost 60 million people have been infected with HIV and 25 million people have died of HIV-related causes since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. There is no cure and no vaccine, although drug cocktails can keep patients healthy.
United Nations data have shown that globally that 33.4 million people had HIV in 2008 and 2 million people died.
The latest trial, which took place between September 2005 and September 2009, involved 9,385 women and was carried out by the Microbicides Development Programme (MDP), a not-for-profit partnership of 16 African and European research institutions.
It found that the risk of HIV infection in women who were given PRO 2000 to use was not significantly different than in women supplied with a placebo gel.
Jonathan Weber of the MDP said the result was disappointing but added: “The trial itself was very well designed and undertaken, so we know that the results are definitive.
“It is unfortunate that this microbicide is ineffective at preventing HIV infection but it’s still vital for us as scientists to continue to look for new ways of preventing HIV,” Weber said in a statement.
Dozens of potential microbicides are being tested, including a formulation using Gilead Sciences Inc’s (GILD.O) HIV drug Viread, or tenofovir. (Additional reporting by Ed Cropley in Johannesburg and Maggie Fox in Washington, editing by Karen Foster and Carol Bishopric)
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Corporate Employers Got Scarce Flu Vaccine
December 8, 2009
USA Today
By Alison Young
When the swine flu vaccine was most scarce, health officials gave thousands of doses to corporate clinics at Walt Disney World, Toyota, defense contractors, oil companies and cruise lines, according to a USA TODAY review of vaccine distribution data from three states.
USA TODAY examined how state health departments distributed H1N1 vaccine after public outcry last month over Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs receiving doses while doctors and hospitals encountered shortages. The data show other companies got the vaccine in October and early November. In some cases, early doses went to people not deemed most at risk by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Now we have evidence of what my suspicions were,” said U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., chair of a House health subcommittee. “I’m afraid when you have these corporate initiatives, it’s not primarily needs-based.”
Pallone said he would send the CDC a letter Tuesday asking it to revise guidelines to states on the use of corporate health clinics.
Each state health department must decide how to provide the vaccine to people most at risk, and employers are a legitimate venue, said Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s immunization director. CDC’s priority groups include pregnant women, people with chronic health conditions, health care workers and people ages 6 months to 24 years. “This is much less about what you do for a living and much more about how do you get the vaccine in the path of those target populations,” she said.
The Toyota Family Health Center in San Antonio, which got 2,120 doses, initially focused on the CDC’s priority groups, but since Nov. 16 has offered the vaccine to any employee, contractor or family member, spokesman Craig Mullenbach said.
NEW CALCULATIONS: H1N1 less severe than previously estimated
SWINE FLU CENTRAL: News, video, interactive map of CDC data
YOUR GUIDE: Getting through the season unscathed
Norwegian Cruise Line in Miami used its 300 doses “to vaccinate critical on-board staff on our ships,” spokeswoman AnneMarie Mathews said. She said recipients included medical staff, youth counselors and “key officers responsible for the safe operation of the vessel” but did not address how the counselors and officers fit into CDC’s priority groups.
Of the 2.42 million doses in Texas and 2 million in Florida distributed through mid-November, fewer than 1% went to employers, according to USA TODAY’s analysis of data obtained under state open-records acts. Thousands of registered providers — doctors, hospitals, schools, pharmacies — in Texas alone got no doses in that period.
Among companies that requested and received early doses and say they administered them to high-risk people:
Click here for the full report
Meditation Helps Reduce Risk of Heart Attack, Stroke, and Death
December 3, 2009
NaturalNews
by S. L. Baker
Transcendental Meditation (TM) first became well-known in the U.S. during the 1960s when the Beatles showed interest in studying the stress-reducing technique. But meditation hasn’t gone the way of love beads and flower power since then. In fact, various techniques, including TM, have received serious scientific scrutiny and researchers have documented many health benefits of meditation.
Now a $3.8 million study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) has reached a first-ever finding: patients with coronary heart disease who practiced TM had a nearly 50 percent lower rate of heart attack, stroke, and death compared to a matched group that didn’t meditate.
The results of the study, which was conducted at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in collaboration with the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, were presented recently at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida. “Previous research on Transcendental Meditation has shown reductions in blood pressure, psychological stress, and other risk factors for heart disease, irrespective of ethnicity,” Robert Schneider, M.D., the study’s lead author and director of the Center for Natural Medicine and Prevention, said in a statement to the media. “But this is the first controlled clinical trial to show that long-term practice of this particular stress reduction program reduces the incidence of clinical cardiovascular events, that is heart attacks, strokes and mortality.”
The randomized controlled trial followed 201 African American men and women for nine years. The research subjects had an average age of 59 and all were diagnosed with narrowing of arteries in their hearts. The study participants continued taking their regular medications and continued other usual medical care during the study. But half were randomly assigned to a group that practiced stress reducing TM and the other half were placed in a non-meditating group that received health education classes covering standard cardiovascular risk factors.
In addition to a dramatic reduction in the risk of death, heart attacks, and strokes in the TM group, the researchers found a clinically significant reduction in blood pressure. Mediation also reduced psychological stress in a sub-group of patients who were experiencing high levels of anxiety and other signs of stress.
Half of ICU Patients Suffer From Infections
December 2, 2009
ABC News
By Maggie Fox
Half of all patients in intensive care units around the world have infections, and more than 70 percent are being given antibiotics — a trend that could help more drug-resistant superbugs emerge, researchers reported on Tuesday.
Patients who had infections were more likely to die, especially of bloodborne infections known as sepsis, the survey of more than 13,000 patients found. They also spent more time in the ICU at greater expense to hospitals and patients.
But one of the biggest concerns was the widespread use of antibiotics in patients who were not infected — a practice that has been shown to lead to antibiotic resistance, when germs defy common drugs.
“Importantly, the incidence of sepsis is increasing, as is the number of consequent infection-related deaths,” Dr. Jean-Louis Vincent of Erasme University Hospital in Brussels, Belgium and colleagues wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
For the study, Vincent’s team surveyed 13,796 adults in 1,300 intensive care units in 75 countries on one day — May 8, 2007.
The analysis took some time and revealed that 51 percent of the patients had infections and 71 percent were receiving antibiotics, either as treatment or to prevent infection.
In 64 percent of cases, the lungs were infected, and infections of the abdomen and bloodstream were also common.
The most common bacteria was Staphylococcus aureus, but E. coli and a family of bacteria called Pseudomonas were also common.
“Infection and related sepsis are the leading cause of death in noncardiac ICUs, with mortality rates that reach 60 percent and account for approximately 40 percent of total ICU expenditures,”
