Public Health
High fructose corn syrup the cause of obesity epidemic, new study suggests
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Bad news for the high fructose corn syrup industry. A new study led by a Princeton University research team suggests that high fructose corn syrup may be at least partially responsible for the increase in the obesity rate in the United States.
The study published online March 18 by the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior showed consumption of high fructose corn syrup caused more weight gain in lab animals than table sugar when both sweeteners were consumed in equal quantity.
In addition, long term consumption of high fructose corn syrup caused abnormal increases in body fat, particularly in the abdomen, and an increase in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. Both are signs of metabolic syndrome.
Thoughts on health, obesity test readers’ ‘Precious’ beliefs
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LAST WEEK’S column about obesity and Gabourey Sidibe, star of the critically acclaimed, Academy Award-winning movie “Precious,” generated impassioned responses from Daily News readers.
Here’s what several had to say:
Truly disturbed
Just read your column about Sis Sidibe. My disclaimer is that I’m 62, in recovery and have a bucket list. I’ve completed a marathon and have jogged five half-marathons, am currently taking a rigorous self-defense class and either jog or lift four to five times a week.
Risky drinkers less likely to take good care of themselves and seek medical care
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Women and men who engage in frequent heavy drinking report significantly worse health-related practices, according to a Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research study in the journal Addiction Research & Theory.
For the study, researchers surveyed 7,884 members of the Kaiser Permanente Northwest integrated health plan in Oregon and Washington. They found that risky drinkers have attitudes and practices that may adversely affect their long-term health and that people who drink at hazardous levels were less likely than other categories of drinkers to seek routine medical care.
Risky drinking was defined in three different ways to account for both short and long-term alcohol-related risks: 1) those who, on average, drank three or more drinks per day, 2) women who consumed four or more drinks during one sitting, or men who drank five or more drinks during one sitting, or 3) people identified as at-risk drinkers using a commonly used screening tool.
Extreme obesity a growing problem in American children
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More and more cases of extreme obesity are being reported in US children, a slap in the face for a country trying to lose weight.
This news comes following a study conducted by researchers from Kaiser Permanente in Southern California, featuring more than 710,000 children between two and 19 years of age.
Many would say “why spend money on a study like this when we already know what the outcome will be?”
Philadelphia gets $25 million to reduce obesity, smoking
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The city of Philadelphia has been picked for two federal grants that could make residents healthier.
Philadelphia will get $25.4 million in federal money to fight obesity and smoking. Dr. Donald Schwartz is the city’s health commissioner. He says the money will be put to use in education and enforcement campaigns.
“The ability to conduct broad-based campaigns like these to reduce smoking and affect obesity is unprecedented for Philadelphia,” Schwartz said.
Treating Blood Infections Tops Annual Hospital Cost Increases
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The hospital costs for treating septicemia increased by an average of nearly 12 percent each year from 1997 to 2007, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Treating this potentially deadly blood infection increased from $4.1 billion in 1997 to $12.3 billion in 2007.
After adjusting for inflation, the federal agency also found other conditions that saw high annual increases in hospital costs in each of the 11 years between 1997 and 2007:
o Osteoarthritis, up 9.5 percent each year ($4.8 billion to $11.8 billion)
o Back problems, up 9.3 percent each year ($3.5 billion to $8.5 billion)
o Acute kidney failure, up 15.3 percent per year ($1 billion to $4 billion
o Respiratory failure, up 8.8 percent per year ($3.3 billion to $7.8 billion)
Obama wins first convert in healthcare push
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President Barack Obama picked up his first convert in the push for healthcare reform on Wednesday as Democrats in the House of Representatives prepared for a close weekend vote on final passage.
Representative Dennis Kucinich, one of the most liberal members of Congress and an ardent supporter of nationalized healthcare, became the first House Democrat to switch from “no” to “yes” on the overhaul.
“This is a defining moment for whether or not we’ll have any opportunity to move off square one on healthcare,” Kucinich said in announcing his switch two days after Obama lobbied him on an Air Force One flight to Kucinich’s home state of Ohio.
British TB cases at highest since 1980s
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Cases of tuberculosis (TB) in Britain rose by 5.5 percent in the past year and are at their highest levels since the 1980s, health authorities said on Tuesday.
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said there were more than 9,150 cases of TB in 2009, most of them among immigrants.
The main burden of infection was in London with 3,476 cases reported in 2009, accounting for 38 percent of the nationwide total. Nearly three-quarters of all cases were in people born outside Britain, the figures showed.
Bird flu outbreak in Romania, near Ukraine
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Romania has identified an outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm close to Ukraine and enforced a 20 kilometre-wide surveillance zone around it, the European Union’s executive said on Tuesday.
The outbreak of the H5N1 virus in the commune of Letea near the Ukrainian border is the first detected in Europe since it was found in a wild duck in Germany a year ago.
“Romania’s national laboratory confirmed yesterday that the outbreak concerns the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian influenza,” the European Commission said in a statement.
Fighting Child Obesity: States Lead The Way
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The March issue of Health Affairs is a thematic issue focusing on the child obesity epidemic and supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Two days after the issue and an accompanying series of policy briefs was released at a March 2 Washington DC briefing, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held the first of a planned series of hearings on child obesity. Today, the Health Affairs Blog offers posts from Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), the ranking member of the HELP Committee (below) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), the chairman of the panel.
Our nation faces an epidemic of childhood obesity that threatens the lives, health, and financial independence of our children and grandchildren. As a result of growing rates of obesity, millions of American children and adolescents will develop heart disease, diabetes, and a host of other serious medical conditions. Obesity-related health care costs, particularly for programs like Medicare and Medicaid, will continue to increase—well beyond their already unsustainable levels.
To save lives, improve health, and prevent rising costs, we must work together—federal, state, and local governments; schools and teachers; parents and children—to fight childhood obesity. The problem we face is staggering. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the rate of childhood obesity has tripled in the last thirty years. Today, 20 percent of children struggle with obesity, and in thirty states, childhood obesity rates have topped 30 percent. For most of these children, their struggles with obesity will follow them into adulthood, as 80 percent of severely overweight teenagers remain obese into their late twenties and beyond.
Obesity Prevention is Focus of Global Nutrition Transition Conference
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Physicians and nutrition scientists from around the world gathered today in Orlando for the opening of the Global Nutrition Transition Conference in order to discuss emerging trends and grass roots solutions to the global obesity epidemic employing balanced nutrition and teaching healthy active lifestyles.
The conference is addressing what is termed the Nutrition Transition—the effect of the globalization of the Western diet which is changing dietary patterns and the incidence of overweight and obesity throughout the world. Conference presenters focused on the dramatic increases in the incidence of overweight and obesity in countries where, until recently, obesity was virtually unknown.
Today’s speakers included Dr. Adam Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington, Seattle; Dr. Anoop Misra, director of the Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases department of the Fortis Group of Hospitals in New Delhi, India; Dr. Nataniel Viuniski of Unimed Hospital, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; Dr. Linong Ji of Peking University in China; and Dr. Marion Flechtner-Mors of the University of Ulm, Germany.
U.S. stem cell expert is “hottest” researcher
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Rudolf Jaenisch, whose stem cell lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has consistently broken new barriers in the field, is the world’s “hottest” researcher, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.
The annual hot list from Thomson Reuters’ Science Watch also names four genome experts at MIT and Harvard University’s Broad Institute - Mark Daly, David Altshuler, and Paul I.W. de Bakker and Eric Lander.
Biostatistician Goncalo Abecasis of the University of Michigan, who has worked with the Broad team, also makes the top 12 list, as do Manchester University materials professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who discovered graphene, the two-dimensional form of carbon and who also worked on a new adhesive known commonly as gecko tape.
Childhood Obesity Rates Driven by Snacking
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Childhood obesity rates have increased due to constant snacking by kids, according to a new study.
Today’s kids are a generation of snackers. But, the types of foods they’re choosing is driving childhood obesity rates sky high, according to a new study.
Snacking on junk food accounts for more than 27 percent of the daily calories children take in, an increase of 168 calories per day between 1977 and 2006, according to a new report in the journal Health Affairs.
Obama: Time for talk is over on healthcare bill
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President Barack Obama declared on Wednesday the “time for talk is over” and urged the U.S. Congress to vote on healthcare as his health secretary directly challenged insurers to forgo profits to make coverage more affordable.
Visiting America’s heartland, Obama tried to rally support for his healthcare legislation among wavering Democrats. He urged them to set aside their worries about a political backlash and support the legislation.
“Folks in Washington, they like to talk. So Washington is doing right now what Washington does,” he told a crowd at a high school in St. Charles, Missouri. “They’re speculating breathlessly day or night. Every columnist. Every pundit. Every talking head. Is this proposal going to help the Republicans or is this proposal going to help the Democrats?”
“Personal” study shows gene maps can spot disease
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Two studies published on Wednesday show it is possible to sequence the entire gene maps of families with inherited diseases and pinpoint the offending bit of DNA.
The studies, which would not have been possible a year or two ago, are the first real delivery of the promised transformation of medical science from the Human Genome Project’s mapping of the human genetic code.
One was also made possible by some of the $5 billion that U.S. President Barack Obama directed to the National Institutes of Health in September from the $787 billion economic stimulus package.
