On-the-Job Weight Loss: Worksite Programs Work
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Employer-sponsored programs for weight loss are at least partially effective at helping workers take off extra pounds, according to a new review of recent studies.
“For people who participate in them, worksite-based programs do tend to result in weight loss,” said co-author Michael Benedict, M.D. Intensity matters, he found. “The programs that incorporated face-to-face contact more than once a month appeared to be more effective than other programs.”
Since most employed adults spend nearly one-half of their waking hours at work, such programs could have enormous potential in making a dent in the obesity epidemic, according to Benedict, a researcher at the Institute for the Study of Health, Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
The Hazards of Too Much Water
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We’ve all been told it’s important to drink plenty of fluids during exercise. But now it seems too much water can be very dangerous. So which is right? Both. Good hydration is important, but overhydration can be hazardous, even lethal. Common sense and moderation can help protect you from both extremes, reports the July 2008 issue of Harvard Men’s Health Watch.
Dehydration increases the risk of muscle cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke during exercise in warm weather. And even in mild weather, dehydration can leave exercisers groggy for hours afterward. When the hazards of dehydration became apparent, experts began to encourage drinking fluids during exercise. Guidelines were formulated to meet the needs of elite male athletes whose high-intensity exercise produced lots of fluid loss in sweat. As a result, athletes began to increase fluid intake, and some drank too much, leading to water intoxication and hyponatremia (low blood sodium levels). Hundreds of cases and a number of deaths have been recorded in medical journals.
Caution is justified, but it’s not easy to drink enough to get into trouble. The typical victim of water intoxication is a runner who is out on a marathon course for over four hours and who consumes enough fluids to gain weight during the race.
Heavy birthweight babies twice as likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis
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Heavy birthweight female babies are twice as likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis in adulthood as their average birthweight peers, suggests research published ahead of print in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
The results support the fetal origin of disease theory, which argues that certain conditions and diseases in adult life are programmed by factors during the pregnancy.
Diabetes, coronary heart disease, and high blood pressure, for example, have been linked to low birthweight, while an increased risk of breast cancer and leukaemia have been linked to high birthweight.
Limit sucrose as painkiller for newborns
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Using sucrose to reduce pain in newborns undergoing painful procedures should be limited to babies having blood taken (venipuncture) for the newborn screening test but not for intramuscular injections, write Dr. Anna Taddio and co-authors.
In this double-blind, randomized controlled trial of 240 newborns at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, researchers found that “sucrose reduced overall pain in newborns when administered before painful medical procedures during the first 2 days after birth.”
Low-fat diet as heart-healthy as Mediterranean
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After a heart attack, adopting either a low-fat or Mediterranean-style diet similarly and significantly benefits overall and cardiovascular health, research suggests.
The diets provide similar amounts of protein, carbohydrates, cholesterol, and unhealthy saturated fats, but a Mediterranean diet has higher amounts of “healthy” monounsaturated fats, particularly omega-3 fatty acids found in fish.
Either diet, when applied with equal intensity, can be an effective component of post-heart attack lifestyle changes, researchers say. Post-heart attack patients who followed these diets for 4 years significantly reduced their risk for subsequent cardiovascular events, Dr. Katherine R. Tuttle and colleagues found.
Tap water chemicals not linked to penis defect
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Though some research has linked chemicals in chlorinated tap water to the risk of birth defects, a new study finds no strong evidence that the chemicals contribute to a common birth defect of the penis.
The defect, known as hypospadias, occurs when the urinary outlet develops on the underside of the penis rather than at the tip. Genetics are thought to play a large role in hypospadias risk, but the other potential causes are not fully understood.
Some past studies have suggested that certain chemicals in tap water—byproducts of the chlorination process used to kill disease-causing pathogens—may contribute to the risk of birth defects and miscarriage. Other studies, though, have found no such links.
No lasting social problems for kids with migraine
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Kids who suffer migraine headaches may have more difficulty forming friendships in their elementary school years, new research shows, but by middle school they are just as popular as their migraine-free peers—perhaps even more so.
“There’s been a lot of concern that kids with chronic headaches or other pain disorders like migraine are at risk for long term social difficulties or problems in their relationships with peers,” Dr. Kathryn Vannatta of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio told Reuters Health. Yet little research has looked at how well these children function socially.
To investigate, Vannatta and colleagues evaluated social behavior and friendships among 69 children with migraine, including 32 elementary school children and 37 middle school children, and a group of matched control children.
Companies set to gain from obesity boom: analysts
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Merck & Co , Nike Inc and General Mills Inc are among 15 health-care and consumer products companies best positioned to profit from an effort to combat the growing obesity epidemic, Credit Suisse analysts said in a report on Thursday.
Globally, 1.8 billion people were obese or overweight in 2007, and the number of obese and overweight people now exceeds the amount of those who are underfed, the report said.
“At the same time, companies are capitalizing on the trend toward better health and weight management,” the analysts said in the 188-page report titled, “Obesity and Investment Implications.”
Obese men may have lower hernia risk
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Overweight and obese men may be less likely than their thinner counterparts to develop a hernia in the groin, a long-term study suggests.
Researchers found that among nearly 7,500 Swedish men followed for 34 years, the risk of developing a groin hernia declined as the men’s weight increased.
Overall, men who were obese in middle-age were 43 percent less likely than normal-weight men to be diagnosed with the condition over the next three decades.
Many may ‘trust’ their partner is a low STD risk
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Too many people may consider themselves at low risk of sexually transmitted diseases simply because they trust their partner, a new study suggests.
The study of patients at an STD clinic found that many people relied on subjective measures in judging their partner’s “safety”—such as how long they had known the partner or how intelligent or well-educated he or she was.
The findings suggest that when people feel they “just know” their partner, they may consider their STD risk to be low even in the absence of any STD/HIV testing, the researchers report in the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Early Cardiovascular Detection at the Fin
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The recent tragic death of beloved NBC newsman Tim Russert has reinforced the importance of cardiovascular health. Mr. Russert’s death has raised fear among Americans as to how, in this day and age, a relatively healthy middle-aged person could suffer a fatal heart attack. According to the American Heart Association, however, despite numerous messages over the years on diet and exercise, cardiovascular disease remains the nation’s leading cause of death.
“It is important for Americans to know just how deadly cardiovascular disease is,” says Debbie Williams, RN, VP of Medical Affairs for Meridian Co. Ltd., a company that has developed a new instrument, the Digital Pulse Analyzer (DPA), which provides early detection of arterial wall stiffness and arteriosclerosis. “As a system for measuring the biological aging pattern of arteries rapidly and non-invasively, DPA serves as an early warning system for cardiovascular health throughout a person’s lifetime.”
Early detection of cardiovascular disease will not eliminate heart attacks, but it can help people adopt lifestyle changes and introduce medical intervention that may reduce both the number and severity of serious cardiovascular events.
A Heart Attack Waiting to Happen? How Do You Know Your Risk?
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Cardiac CT and MRI allow experts to see inside the heart and vessels and structures in detail. In addition to constructing a large heart imaging center at the UK Gill Heart Institute, the University of Kentucky is offering more patients access to this technology through a new cardiac CT service that begins in a few days at Rockcastle Hospital in Mount Vernon, in Rockcastle County, Kentucky.
Elevated biomarkers predict risk for prostate cancer recurrence
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A simple blood test screening for a panel of biomarkers can accurately predict whether a patient who has had prostate cancer surgery will have a recurrence or spread of the disease.
Calling their findings a major step forward in prostate cancer care, Texas researchers report in the June 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, that the presence of seven of these biomarkers can predict prostate cancer risk with 86.6 percent reliability. This is at least 15 percentage points higher than standard clinical measures currently in use, the researchers say.
“We have been looking at these biomarkers for the past 10 to 15 years in the laboratory, but now we can translate these findings into progress for the individual patient,” said Shahrokh F. Shariat, M.D., chief resident in urology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Pregnancy may help protect against bladder cancer
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Pregnancy seems to confer some protection against bladder cancer in mice, scientists have found.
Female mice that had never become pregnant had approximately 15 times as much cancer in their bladders as their counterparts that had become pregnant, according to new findings by investigators at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Their work appears online as a rapid communication in the journal Urology.
The researchers led by Jay Reeder, Ph.D., are focusing on a fact that has puzzled doctors and scientists for decades: Why does bladder cancer, the fifth most common malignancy in the nation, affect about three times as many men as women? Scientists long blamed men’s historically higher rates of smoking and greater exposure to dangers in the workplace, but the gap has persisted even as women swelled the workforce and took up smoking in greater numbers.
Treatment for cigarette, alcohol and drug use in pregnancy improves outcomes for mom and baby
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Pregnant women who receive treatment for substance abuse early in their pregnancy can achieve the same health outcomes as pregnant women with no substance abuse, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published online in the Journal of Perinatology.
The study, which is the largest to date, examined 49,985 women in Kaiser Permanente’s prenatal care program and found that integrating substance abuse screening and treatment into routine prenatal care helped pregnant women achieve similar health outcomes as women who were not using cigarettes, alcohol or other drugs. This is also the largest study to examine multiple substances: cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, methamphetamines, cocaine and heroin.
“This program can happen everywhere and should become the gold standard for women who are pregnant and using cigarettes, alcohol or other drugs,” said study lead author Nancy C. Goler, M.D., an OB/GYN and Kaiser Permanente regional medical director of the Early Start Program for the organization’s Northern California operations. “The study’s big finding was that study participants treated in the Early Start program had outcomes similar to our control group, women who had no evidence of substance abuse.”
