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Showing posts with the label respiratory

Good News. You Can Be Fat. . . and Healthy!

Sounds like stealing a car and then being invited to join a country club.  But studies are now showing that people who are fat -- and fit -- are no more unhealthy than people who are skinny and fit (well, maybe, thin and fit). The study, done by researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital's Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto, Canada, tracked more than 60,000 participants' weights and metabolic health. In each of the eight studies, participants were followed up after an extended period of time -- ranging from three to 30 years -- to see if they had either died or had a stroke or heart attack during the intervening years, according to Anna Almendraia at the Huffington Post. "Overweight and healthy is not too good to be true in the context of this study," she writes. She points to news reports on major media, including NBC News and NPR, which stated the exact opposite this week and calls them out on it. "NBC's headline -- 'New Research Dispute

Men with Restless Leg Syndrome: You Can Die Early

Men, have you ever been lying in bed when your legs start to do the Harlem Shake, all on their own?  If you have, you could be at risk for dying early. A new long-term study  has found that men with restless leg sydrome (RLS) do seem to die younger.  Over 18,000 healthy men around the age of 67 were followed for eight years, 3.7% of whom had RLS, characterized as "an irresistible urge to move the legs and often causes leg sensations of burning, creeping, and tugging, which are usually worse at night," according to a story at  newswise.com. During the study, more than 2,700 of the men died, and of the people with RLS, "171, or 25 percent, died during the study, compared to 2,594, or 15 percent, of those who did not have RLS," newswise com reports. The stats are even scarier.  The study found that men with RLS had a nearly 40 percent increased risk of death compared to men without RLS.  And differences in body mass index, lifestyle, chronic conditions, lack