Hot MedFax

I admit it, I'm a pushover for a parent. Fortunately, I got a good kid in the lottery (at least, most of the time), so I've rarely had to discipline him (well, unless you call locking him in his room when he was little and misbehaved, but then I went in my room and cried).  Both my husband and I came from families with very harsh parents and now a new study is saying the harsher you are, the more likely your kid will grow up to maybe not be in such great health, and could become obese, as well. New research shows harsh parenting may increase a child’s risk for poor physical health and obesity as they get olde, according to newswise.com. And attempts by one parent to counterbalance the harsh behavior are not always effective in lessening that risk.  Researchers found the link from harsh parenting to physical health is buffered by a warm and nurturing coparent. However, when they measured the effect on body mass index, the health risk of harsh parenting increased as ...

I don't need another reason to overeat but now a new study is saying that I have to be careful what words I read. Certain words can make us eat more.  Great.   Researchers have identified how food word cues influenced by both stress and genetics can be associated with increased food desire and intake, according to newswise.com.   "Food cues" come in many forms including emotions, images, smells, tastes and even food words. Food words could be considered a relatively minimal food cue compared with images or smells; however, because they are ubiquitous in advertising and other contexts, they have significant potential to impact eating behavior. Who doesn't associate bread baking with mom's kitchen?  Well, maybe not mine, but that's the cozy, comforting feeling many of us get when there's that delicious buttery smell wafting around.  Does seeing the word make us hunger for it?  Some, I suppose.  But the image certainly might. In one...

Ah, if only! No more cutting out cakes and cookies.  No more skipping lunch.  No more Weight Watchers. Now all you have to do is find the gene that blocks fat.  Or, at least, scientists do. According to a new study , by blocking the expression (or working) of a certain gene in patients, University of Montreal researchers have been able to isolate and somewhat shut down the production of the triglycerides that cause hypertriglyceridemia, the ones most often associated with frequent health issues, such as obesity or diabetes. “Triglycerides, like cholesterol, are lipids. They come from fats carried by our food or produced by our bodies. Depending on the cause, the accumulation of triglycerides in blood is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular and pancreatic illnesses, and other complications,” explains Dr. Daniel Gaudet, first author of the study.   What all that gobbledygook simply means is that, if the gene that produces this can be ...

Now how's this?  Reading about Donald Trump today can make you fat tomorrow. Well, that's not quite true but it could be.  According to new research , bad news today can influence a country's weight. What’s in the newspaper today can predict how skinny or fat a country’s population will be tomorrow, says new research published in BMC Public Health by Brian Wansink, Professor and Director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, and Brennan Davis, Associate Professor of Marketing from California State University at San Luis Obispo at newswise.com. According to the study, food words trending today will predict a country’s obesity level by 2018 ¬– just three years from now! If you're like me and look forward to Wednesdays and the food section in The New York Times, be very scared.  The study analyzed all the food words mentioned in The Times and The Times of London over the past 50 years and statistically correlated them with each country’s annual Body Mass ...

I live in an area (Fairfield County) where shops display dresses that are the size of dolls.  Yet women in this community fit into them, easily. Not me.  I couldn't get a toe through the leg of some of the slacks.  But a new study has found that where you live matters in the relationship between obesity and satisfaction. A new study suggests that how one compares weight-wise with others in his or her community plays a key role in determining how satisfied the person is with his or her life, according to newswise.com. “The most interesting finding for us was that, in U.S. counties where obesity is particularly prevalent, being obese has very little negative effect on one’s life satisfaction,” said study co-author Philip M. Pendergast, a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder at the Web site. “In addition, we found that being ‘normal weight’ has little benefit in counties where obesity is especially common. This illustrates the im...

Maybe because I've never been obese (overweight, yes, obese, no), but I disagree with the court that found that obesity is a disability. I admit I'm one of those biased people who feels that weight is something you can -- should be able to -- control.  I, of course, know how hard it is.  I've been on a diet (and fought anorexia) most of my life.  But, according to The Wall Street Journal, " A federal district court ruled last week that obesity itself may be a disability, independent of an underlying physiological condition, confirming the rising risk of lawsuits on grounds of obesity discrimination." The man who won sued because his company had “terminated his employment because of his disability and, in retaliation for the charge of discrimination, threatened to terminate business with other entities if those entities employ plaintiff." ”Attorneys for the company had moved to dismiss the case, arguing that obesity was not a disability under the Amer...

Great.  Now I have to worry about my cholesterol medicine making me fat. A new study has found that people who take statins tend to eat more calories and fat than those who do not. According to newswise.com, "p eople who take statin drugs to lower their cholesterol appear to have developed a false sense of security that could lead to heart disease and other obesity-related illnesses." That's because a  new UCLA-led study suggests that people who took statins in 2009–2010 were consuming more calories and fat than those who used statins 10 years earlier. There was no similar increase in caloric and fat intake among non–stain users during that decade, researchers said. In 1999–2000, statin users were consuming fewer calories and less fat than individuals who didn't take these medications, the Web site reports, but that is no longer the case. "Increases in body mass index — a measure of obesity that considers body weight and height — were greater for statin-u...

We all know we need to quit smoking .  But now here's a new really good one.  Young male smokers may raise obesity risk in sons they may have in the future. Men who start smoking before the age of 11 risk having sons who are overweight, British researchers have found, adding to evidence that lifestyle factors even in childhood can affect the health of future offspring, writes Kate Kelland at Reuters. "The scientists said the findings, part of ongoing work in a larger 'Children of the 90s' study, could indicate that exposure to tobacco smoke before the start of puberty in men may lead to metabolic changes in the next generation," she reports. Worldwide, almost one billion men smoke - about 35 percent of men in developed countries and 50 percent in developing ones, according to the World Health Organization. While previous studies in animals and in people have found some transgenerational health impacts, the evidence so far is limited. It points, however, to ep...

Are you sick of reading about obesity?  I know I sometimes am.  But a new study has some startling, and frightening, facts about colon cancer and obesity. It says obesity primes the colon for cancer, as demonstrated in the study on mice. Obesity, rather than diet, causes changes in the colon that may lead to colorectal cancer, according to a study in mice, as reported by newswise.com. A large body of scientific literature says people who are obese are predisposed to a number of cancers, particularly colorectal cancer. Like many things, it all comes down to a gene.  “The obese mice exhibited molecular signals in their gut that led to the progression of cancer, but the NAG-1 mice didn’t have those same indicators,” says  Thomas Eling, Ph.D., a scientist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). After a series of experiments, Eling and his team discovered that gene p atterns from obese...

Good news. We're all living longer.  Except for obese teens , it turns out. According to newswise.com, " Although people live longer today than they did 50 years ago, people who were overweight and obese as teenagers aren’t experiencing the same gains as other segments of the population." The life expectancy of the average American born in 2011 was 78.7 years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up from about 50 at the turn of the last century. The average lifespan has increased by more than a decade since 1950, but rising obesity rates threaten to take a toll on this progress. “In studying the rate of death among adults younger than age 50, we found that there was no improvement among men who were overweight or obese as teenagers,” newswise quotes one of the study’s authors, Amir Tirosh, MD, PhD, of the Division of Endocrinology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. “In fact, the mortality rate among overweight and obese t...

Here's another reason for women to have bariatric surgery: it may prevent you from getting uterine cancer. A new study has shown that w omen who had bariatric surgery to lose weight had a 70 percent lower risk of uterine cancer and an even lower risk if they kept the weight off, according to newswise.com. Cancer of the uterus is the fourth most common female reproductive cancer.  If caught early, it's highly treatable. The American Cancer Society (ACS) estimates that half a million women each year survive this cancer. About 50,000 women will be diagnosed with it this year. But here's the thing: a bout half of all cases of endometrial (uterine) cancer can be traced to obesity. Obese women are two to four times more likely to develop endometrial cancer than those of normal weight. “We found that after women had bariatric surgery, their risk of uterine cancer plummeted and became the same or perhaps even a little less than in women who were not obese,” the Web site ...

I remember when I was a new parent being terrified and overwhelmed at all the advice people threw at me. Don't pick him up when he's crying.  Do pick him up.  Don't feed him formula, breast milk is better.  Do feed him formula, it doesn't matter.  And my favorite, let him cry it out at night.  Which, I never did, anyway. (New parents: maybe that's why he's such a poor sleeper now.) Except for the last, I learned what to do over time, as I got to know my infant.  But now researchers are back to scaring parents again.  A new study has found that many parents have infant-feeding TV and activity practices which may promote a risk for obesity in their offspring later in life. According to newswise.com, " Black parents were more likely to put children to bed with a bottle and report TV watching, while Hispanic parents were more likely to encourage children to finish feeding and to report less 'tummy time' – when a baby lies on her belly to play while...

Want to avoid ovarian cancer ?  Stay close to your ideal weight. That's the conclusion of a new study out of two cancer centers, which found that obesity is linked to ovarian cancer.  Several studies have been done on this, but this is the first time the suspicion has been confirmed.  One of the most deadly cancers a woman can get, ovarian cancer is diagnosed in over 22,000 women a year, over 14,000 of whom die. The reason it's such a killer is that it's a hard disease to detect.  No exact diagnosis tool can tell when you might be developing it, like breast, leading to early treatment and cure.  Most often it's found in an advanced stage, because the symptoms  can mimic many other illnesses (bloating, indigestion, nausea, feelings of pressure in the pelvis or lower back, fatigue).  By the time the cancer is diagnosed, it's often too late to treat successfully. So how heavy is too heavy?  Experts say a body mass index (BMI) of over 25 ind...

Isn't this depressing?  According to a new study , obese people get less than one vigorous minute of exercise a day, newswise.com reports. Now, I've had to force myself to exercise and even though I do it religiously -- swimming, jogging and sometimes biking almost every day -- I still hate it.  When we get to the vigorous part of Zumba, I really hate it.  I know it's doing good things for me, but, well, I hate it. So I can completely understand.  When I was 15 pounds heavier, I hated putting on my jogging clothes (they didn't fit) and hugging and puffing around my neighborhood.  I liked the winter because I could wear big bulky pants and sweats -- until someone asked how far along I was.  I wasn't pregnant. I'm still not that crazy about exercise, so I can understand how difficult it can be for a heavy person to want to jump around and sweat for more than a minute.  As for the gym?  I never went there when I was overweight, either. “Conve...

If you l ive in Switzerland, the answer is yes.  According to a story at smartplanet.com, "Residents of Switzerland born in 2011 are expected to live 82.8 years -- as they are generally healthier, and do not have such high rates of obesity-related illnesses, cardiovascular disease, and cerebrovascular disease such as strokes and aneurysms." Here in the U.S., while our average life span has risen from 70.9 years in 1970 to 78.7 years in 2011, not so much.  We only come in 26th on a global list. It used to be thought that spending on healthcare and average household income made for longer lives. But, as smartplanet.com reports, according to the Organizations for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) report Health at a Glance 2013 , this is turning out to no longer be true. Why does Switzerland -- and Italy and Japan and Iceland (Iceland?) -- rate so high?  Probably because their inhabitants are thinner.  In Italy, life expectancy is 82.7 years (must be ...

It seems hard to believe (and sad), but maybe not so when I look at my couch-potato, computer-nerd son: our kids are less fit than we were when we were young. Remember running around your neighbors' yards with your friends, hiking in the woods behind your house, chasing the dog, and, in my neighborhood in the summer, not having to come home until you heard the fire station foghorn, marking 8 p.m.? Today's kids don't seem to have those kinds of pleasures.  Just about every play date when my son was little involved a car, and our busy road is too dangerous to ride a bike.  Sometimes we take a walk in nice weather but that's about all he really wants to do that's physical. (Of course, when a close friend lived nearby, they played soccer endlessly, but then Michael moved away.) A new study has found that, around the world, children don't run as fast or as far as their parents did when they were kids, and today's kids are about 15% less aerobically fit t...

It's hard not to know that obesity is a factor in many cancers, including that of the breast.  But an ominous new study has found that being obese puts you at high risk for a very rare but aggressive subtype of breast cancer. Called "basal-like," it's found in obese women, whose bodies present a favorable environment for the biological mechanisms of this disease to ignite. Breast cancer is not one but many diseases made up of several distinct subtypes, newswise.com reports. "The basal-like subtype, an aggressive form of breast cancer, is found in 15 to 20 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer, with a high percentage of cases found among young and African-American women," according to the Web site. The really bad news is that women diagnosed with the basal-like subtype often have a poor prognosis and cannot be treated with hormonal and targeted therapies. Studying mice, researchers found that obesity "radically alters the cellular micro-en...

What's accomplished what a boatload of doctors, thousands of parents and a sometimes reviled mayor of a very big city couldn't do? We're talking, of course, about stopping kids -- or even adults -- from buying sugary sodas.  And it's the price. Apparently the increase in price s for these drinks has gotten some people to stop.  According to Nancy Hellmich at USA Today, "Raising the cost of high-calorie beverages by a few cents — and highlighting calorie content in places where they are sold — decreases sales, a new study shows." Researchers at Harvard chose the cafeteria of a financial services company to do the study. Hellmich reports they increased the price of high-calorie beverages (those that contained 150 calories or more per container), mostly soda, lemonade, whole chocolate milk, and some juices, by one cent per ounce. She writes that the price of low-calorie beverages (45 to 149 calories) and zero-calorie beverages stayed the same. "So a...

So you thought the only reason to get your kids to bed early was some peace and quiet?  Guess again.  A new study has found that sleep -- or lack thereof -- is tied to obesity. Children who do not sleep enough may be increasing their risk for obesity, a story reported today in The New York Times. In the study children who slept more ate 134 calories fewer each day during the week they were tested than the week when they did not. Their weight averaged a half-pound less the week they slept the most. The bottom line?  Children who sleep more may see their appetites decrease, while, conversely, children who only get five or six hours of sleep a night may just want to eat more. It's also true of adults.  Studies have shown that it happens in adults, too. " Obesity develops when energy intake is greater than expenditure. Diet and physical activity play an important part in this, but an additional factor may be inadequate sleep," Dr Kristen Knutson, from the...

It's no surprise that fast food makers target their ads to kids.  We all know that.  But did you also know that  less than 1 percent of all fast food kids' meal combinations meet the recommended national nutrition standards?  And that only 3 percent of kids' meal combinations met standards set by the fast food industry itself for childhood nutrition? So reports dailyrx.com on a new study just out from Yale that found that kids see two to three fast food ads every day, and that's because in 2012 fast food advertising increased 8 percent from 2009. All in all, $4.6 billion was spent in advertising for fast food restaurants in 2012, according to the Web site. "For context, the biggest advertiser, McDonald’s, spent 2.7 times as much to advertise its products ($972 million) as all fruit, vegetable, bottled water, and milk advertisers combined ($367 million)," the report explained. dailyrx.com notes that, according to the study, the average US preschooler sa...