Obesity epidemic not tied to drop in smoking rate
Decreasing rates of cigarette smoking are not the reason for rising rates of obesity in the US, a researcher from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, Maryland, has concluded.
Writing in the American Journal of Public Health, Dr. Katherine M. Flegal notes that smoking is associated with lower body weight and smoking cessation with weight gain. Thus, it is reasonable to think that part of the reason more people are overweight is the fact that fewer people are smoking—but that’s not what Flegal found.
Money issues strain marriage after prostate cancer
For men with prostate cancer, lost work income and increased health care costs can have a damaging effect on their marriage, Swedish researchers report.
It’s likely that the expenses involved in treating prostate cancer have an even larger impact on marital quality for men living in countries where health care is much more expensive than it is in Sweden, for example the United States, Gunnar Steineck of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health.
Exercise key in control of type 2 diabetes: study
People with type 2 diabetes may go a long way in managing their condition if they take up regular exercise, a new research review shows.
Researchers found that when they combined the results from 103 studies, there was clear evidence that lifestyle changes helped people with type 2 diabetes gain better control over their blood sugar.
India looking for “Mr. Condom”
India, struggling to promote greater condom use among its population, is looking to hire its own “condom man” to follow the example of a former Thai cabinet minister who successfully pushed for safer sex.
National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) chief Sujatha Rao said that India needed to find someone like Mechai Viravaidya, famous for getting Thais to talk about sex, condoms and AIDS.
Depression may speed bone loss in older women
Depressed older women appear to lose bone at a faster rate than their non-depressed counterparts, new research shows.
In the study, researchers determined depressive symptoms and took two hip bone mineral density (BMD) measurements an average of 4.4 years apart in 4,177 women aged 69 and older participating in the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures.
