Ice cream illusions: bowls, spoons, and self-served portion sizes
Picking out the perfect bowls and spoons sounds like a concern solely for brides-to-be, but a new study of eating habits suggests that selecting right-sized serving utensils may help dieters avoid unconscious overeating.
Using willing colleagues as guinea pigs, the researchers threw an ice cream social to test whether oversized bowls and extra-large ice-cream scoops caused partygoers to dish up more dessert.
“Just doubling the size of someone’s bowl increased how much people took by 31 percent,” said lead author Brian Wansink, a consumer researcher who studies the psychology of food choice. “We also saw that giving people a scoop that was a little bit larger increased things by about 14.5 percent,” said Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University.
Normal weight gain best for most pregnant teens
Gaining a lot of weight during pregnancy does not help teens have heavier babies, and may also have the unwanted side effect of increasing a mother’s risk of being overweight or obese in the future, research suggests.
Pregnant African American women and adolescents are more likely to have low birth weight babies, and they are often counseled to strive for weight gains at the upper recommended limit in order to ensure that their infants are born at healthier weights.
But there is growing evidence that this advice may do nothing to improve infant health while putting a mother’s health at risk.
Radiation may offer better way to make vaccines
Vaccines made with bacteria killed by gamma rays may be more effective than those made using standard heat or chemical inactivation, U.S. government researchers said on Wednesday.
Such vaccines do not have to be kept cold, the team at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine reported in the journal Immunity.
Dr. Sandip Datta and colleagues made a vaccine from Listeria monocytogenes bacteria, a common cause of food poisoning.
Annan pushes AIDS drug makers to lower prices
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan encouraged executives from nine drug companies on Monday to lower prices of AIDS medicines and step up efforts to develop AIDS drugs and diagnostics for children.
Annan for the first time included generic drug makers in his latest in a series of meetings with top drug makers at U.N. headquarters over the past five years.
The meetings aim to encourage the pharmaceutical firms to broaden access to AIDS drugs, care and support services in low- and middle-income countries.
Nasal rinsing technique eases sinusitis
Nasal irrigation, a traditional therapy that has been shown to help people with chronic sinus problems, can be easily learned with a 30-minute group training session, a new study shows.
Patients in the study also reported a sense of “empowerment” because they could use and adjust the technique effectively on their own rather than requiring multiple doctor visits and prescriptions, Dr. David Rabago of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and colleagues report.
Used for thousands of years in the Ayurvedic and Yogic traditions, nasal irrigation involves rinsing the nasal cavity with a saline solution to get rid of mucus that may contain allergens or infectious agents.
Burgess bill important step toward ensuring seniors get needed health care
Rep. Michael C. Burgess, MD. (R-TX) took an important step toward replacing the flawed Medicare physician payment formula with the introduction of the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Bill and Quality Improvement Act of 2006.
“This bill is a major step toward ensuring health care access for seniors,” said Cecil B. Wilson, MD, American Medical Association (AMA) Board Chair. “The government plans to cut Medicare reimbursements to physicians by 37 percent over the next nine years, forcing physicians to make tough choices about the way they practice medicine.”
“Physicians want to treat seniors, but the flawed Medicare formula that dictates payments that do not keep pace with the rising costs of providing care is making it increasingly difficult to do so,” said Dr. Wilson. “A recent AMA survey found that nearly half, 45 percent, of physicians will decrease or stop taking new Medicare patients if the first projected cut of five percent goes into effect on January 1.”
Attempt to prevent asthma in at-risk kids fails
Efforts to avoid exposure to house dust mites along with dietary changes in the first few years of life do not prevent asthma in children with a family history of the condition, new research shows.
Sensitization to house dust mites, and consumption of diets with low amounts of omega-3 fatty acid (such as found in fish oils) relative to omega-6 fatty acid have been linked to asthma.
In a clinical trial, Dr. Guy B. Marks, from the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in New South Wales, Australia, and colleagues assessed whether attempts to modify these factors could actually prevent asthma and allergic disease in young children.
Early type 2 diabetes ups death risk in middle age
People who develop type 2 diabetes before 20 years of age have higher rates of end-stage renal disease, and higher mortality rates, when they reach middle age than those who develop diabetes later in life, new research shows.
Type 2 diabetes has been increasing among children and adolescents in large part because of rising rates of obesity, according to the report in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association. The impact of early-onset type 2 diabetes on disease outcomes in adulthood, however, is unclear.
To investigate, Dr. Meda E. Pavkov, from the National Institutes of Health in Phoenix, Arizona, and colleagues analyzed data from a 37-year study of Pima Indians. This population is very prone to develop type 2 diabetes, in some cases as early as 3 or 4 years of age.
Most drug OD deaths due to potent painkillers
The most common drugs involved in fatal overdoses listed on death certificates are prescription opioid painkillers, often obtained illicitly, investigators report.
The worsening abuse of potent opioid drugs, such as oxycodone or fentanyl, coincides with an increase in the prescribing of these drugs by doctors, who have been encouraged to treat chronic pain more effectively, Dr. Leonard J. Paulozzi and associates explain in their article in the journal Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety.
However, they say the two trends are not necessarily connected, and they recommend that prevention of opioid abuse should not diminish the quality of care for patients with a legitimate need for pain relief.
