Eat breakfast to curb middle-age weight gain
Looking for ways to limit middle-age weight gain? Eat more at breakfast and less later in the day, researchers suggest.
“Shifting a greater proportion of a day’s total calorie intake to breakfast time is potentially beneficial for lower weight gain over time among middle-aged men and women,” Dr. Nita Forouhi told Reuters Health.
Forouhi, of the Institute of Metabolic Science, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge, UK, and colleagues studied 6,764 men and women, 40 to 75 years old, who were assessed at the start of the study and an average of 3.7 years later.
Study gives scientific weight to high-protein diet
New research suggests that high-protein foods may be better at curbing a key “hunger hormone” than either fats or carbohydrates.
In a study of 16 healthy adults, researchers found that a high-protein drink was more effective than either a high-fat or high-carb drink at suppressing an appetite-stimulating hormone called ghrelin.
All three beverages caused blood levels of ghrelin to dip, but the fatty drink was least effective. The high-carb drink, by comparison, was most effective at curbing the hormone in the first three hours after the “meal,” but over the next three hours ghrelin levels shot back up to levels that were higher than before the test meal.
Ovary removal may raise Parkinson’s risk
Women who undergo removal of one or both ovaries prior to menopause appear to be at increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease or similar conditions, investigators report.
Numerous animal studies have indicated that estrogen protects the brain’s neurons and thereby decreases the risk of Parkinson’s disease, Dr. W. A. Rocca and associates note in the medical journal Neurology—but clinical evidence has been inconclusive.
The researchers, at the at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, studied more than 2300 premenopausal women who had undergone single or double ovary removal, and 2368 age-matched “controls” with intact ovaries.
High vitamin C level linked to decreased stroke risk
A person’s level of vitamin C may predict his or her likelihood of having a stroke, according to a long-term study of some 20,000 middle-aged and older residents of Norfolk, United Kingdom.
During an average follow-up of 9.5 years, 448 strokes occurred in the study population. Researchers found that people with the highest vitamin C concentration at the start of the study had a 42 percent lower risk of stroke over 10 years compared to those with the lowest levels of vitamin C.
The protective effect of vitamin C against stroke remained after accounting for factors that could affect the risk, such as age, sex, smoking, alcohol intake, body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol, physical activity, diabetes, prior heart attack, supplement use, and social class.
Meat, diet soda linked to heart disease - US study
People who eat two or more servings of red meat a day are much more likely to develop conditions leading to heart disease and diabetes, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
Eating two or more servings of meat a day increases the risk of suffering from a cluster of risk factors known as metabolic syndrome by 25 percent compared to those who had only two servings of meat a week, the researchers reported in the journal Circulation.
The symptoms of metabolic syndrome include excessive fat around the waist, high cholesterol, high blood sugar and high blood pressure.
Handwashing can reduce diarrhea episodes by about one third
Both in institutions and in communities, interventions that promote hand washing lead to significant reductions in the incidence of diarrhoea.
The WHO* estimates that diarrhoea kills around 2.2 million people annually, mostly young children in middle- or low-income countries. Encouraging children and adults to wash their hands after using the lavatory is one intervention that has potential to reduce the risk.
A team of Cochrane Researchers set out to assess the strength of evidence for the benefits of hand washing. They studied data in 14 randomised controlled trials, eight of which had been conducted in day-care centres and schools mainly in high-income countries; five had been community-based trials in low- and middle-income countries, and one looked at a specific high-risk group of HIV-infected adults living in the USA.
A Good Fight May Keep You and Your Marriage Healthy
A good fight with your spouse may be good for your health, research suggests.
Couples in which both the husband and wife suppress their anger when one attacks the other die earlier than members of couples where one or both partners express their anger and resolve the conflict, according to preliminary results of a University of Michigan study.
Researchers looked at 192 couples over 17 years and placed the couples into one of four categories: both partners communicate their anger; in the second and third groups one spouse expresses while the other suppresses; and both the husband and wife suppress their anger and brood, said Ernest Harburg, professor emeritus with the U-M School of Public Health and the Psychology Department, and lead author. The study is a longitudinal analysis of couples in Tecumseh, Mich.
Anemia Drugs and Stimulants Ease Exhaustion in Some Cancer Patients
Drugs that promote red blood cell production and stimulants typically used to treat attention deficit disorder relieve excessive tiredness in cancer patients, according to a new systematic review of studies.
Undergoing cancer treatment can affect physical, mental and emotional well-being, and a variety of contributing factors — such as treatment regimens, psychological distress and the effects of the cancer itself — can cause cancer-related fatigue.
“Fatigue is difficult to treat as it usually has a number of contributory causes — many of which are not fully understood,” said lead investigator Dr. Oliver Minton. Patients and professionals alike may consider tiredness as an unavoidable part of cancer treatment, Minton said, rather than a problem to recognize and address.
Talk Therapy Can Help Kids With Chronic Stomach Pain
“My tummy hurts” is one of the most common complaints of childhood. Yet for up to 25 percent of school-age children, ongoing abdominal pain is serious enough to interfere with school, playtime and family life. In most of these cases, there are no medical problems— and reassurance and support are all the child needs.
For children whose pain persists, however, a new review of the research suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help.
“The most important finding here is that there seems to be some evidence of benefit of psychosocial interventions in reducing the pain of school-age children with recurrent abdominal pain,” said Angela Heurtas-Ceballos, consultant neonatologist at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in London, and lead review author.
