Healthy Food Availability Could Depend on Where You Live—So Does the Quality of Your Diet
The availability of healthy food choices and your quality of diet is associated with where you live, according to two studies conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Researchers examined healthy food availability and diet quality among Baltimore City and Baltimore County, Md., residents and found that availability of healthy foods was associated with quality of diet and 46 percent of lower-income neighborhoods had a low availability of healthy foods. The results are published in the March 2009 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the December 2008 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“Place of residence plays a larger role in dietary health than previously estimated,” said Manuel Franco, MD, PhD, lead author of the studies and an associate with the Bloomberg School’s Department of Epidemiology. “Our findings show that participants who live in neighborhoods with low healthy food availability are at an increased risk of consuming a lower quality diet. We also found that 24 percent of the black participants lived in neighborhoods with a low availability of healthy food compared with 5 percent of white participants.”
Researchers conducted a cross-sectional study to examine the association between the availability of healthy foods and diet quality among 759 participants of a population-based cardiovascular cohort study, the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA).
Big-Hearted Fish Reveals Genetic Underpinnings of Enigmatic Cardiovascular Condition
Big-Hearted Fish Reveals Genetic Underpinnings of Enigmatic Cardiovascular Condition, According to Penn Study
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have unlocked the mystery of a puzzling human disease and gained insight into cardiovascular development, all thanks to a big-hearted fish.
Mark Kahn, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, graduate student Benjamin Kleaveland, and colleagues report in the February issue of Nature Medicine that a human vascular condition called Cerebral Cavernous Malformation (CCM) is caused by leaky junctions between cells in the lining of blood vessels. By combining studies with zebrafish and mice, the researchers found that the aberrant junctions are the result of mutated or missing proteins in a novel biochemical process, the so-called Heart-of-glass (HEG)-CCM pathway.
The HEG-CCM pathway “is essential to regulate endothelial cell-cell interaction, both during the time that vertebrates make the cardiovascular system and later in life,” says Kahn. “Its loss later in life confers this previously unexplained disease, cerebral cavernous malformation.”
Transcendental Meditation buffers students against college stress: Study
Transcendental Meditation may be an effective non-medicinal tool for students to buffer themselves against the intense stresses of college life, according to a new study to be published in the February 24 issue of the peer-reviewed International Journal of Psychophysiology.
“Effects of Transcendental Meditation practice on brain functioning and stress reactivity in college students” is the first random assignment study of the effects of meditation practice on brain and physiological functioning in college students.
The study was a collaboration between the American University Department of Psychology in Washington, D.C., and the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa.
Obese young men likely to die prematurely: study
People who were obese at the age of 18 are twice as likely to die prematurely compared with those who were normal-weight teenagers, Swedish researchers said on Wednesday.
They also found that men who had been overweight at 18 were one third more likely to die prematurely compared to their normal-weight peers.
The study of 45,920 men over an average 38 years underlines the dangers of being overweight and the need to tackle a growing obesity epidemic.
Americans welcome healthcare reform, but skeptical
Americans greeted President Barack Obama’s pledge to reform healthcare with enthusiasm tinged by skepticism Wednesday, saying changes in the country’s expensive and often inaccessible health system are overdue—but hard to achieve.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing about it with what seems to be little if any reform,” said Steve Kissing, a 45-year-old advertising professional, as he read the morning newspaper at a Cincinnati coffee shop. “I just hope he can muster the support to make some progress.”
In towns and cities across the country, ordinary Americans said they were desperate for some kind of change in the U.S. healthcare system, under which 46 million people have no insurance coverage to pay for medical costs.
China illegal additives still blight food: official
Chinese dairy products, flour, meat and other foods remain dangerously tainted with illegal additives despite a crackdown, the country’s health ministry said Tuesday.
Vice Minister of Health, Chen Xiaohong, told a video conference for officials some food and liquor makers continued to use banned additives, and high-tech lawbreakers were “challenging the oversight and administration capacities of law enforcement agencies,” the Xinhua news agency reported.
“Some food businesses still lack a grasp of the harmfulness and severity of illegal additives,” Chen said. “Their commitment to correcting this is not high.”
Parents of test tube babies seeking out siblings
Parents who conceived with donated sperm or eggs are increasingly seeking other families who used the same genetic material, sometimes locating as many as 55 “siblings” for their offspring, a study found on Tuesday.
The findings published in the journal Human Reproduction raise the issue of reusing a single donor’s sample numerous times - something policy makers may soon need to address, the researchers said.
In some cases, parents found more than 10 donor siblings, and one parent found 55 brothers and sisters for their child, Tabitha Freeman of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge in Britain, who led the study, said.
Growth hormone has benefits after obesity surgery
In morbidly obese patients who undergo weight loss or “bariatric” surgery, subsequent treatment with growth hormone (GH) for 6 months prevents the loss of lean body mass, researchers have found.
Dr. Silvia Savastano from University Federico II of Naples, Italy, and colleagues investigated the potential role of GH treatment in affecting body weight loss in 24 morbidly obese women who had a type of weight loss surgery called gastric banding, in which a large portion of the stomach is tied off, leaving only a small pouch.
The 12 patients treated with GH and those given placebo lost a similar amount of weight, the investigators found, but patients treated with GH had lower loss of lean body mass and higher loss of fat mass at 3 months.
Orthopaedic Surgeon Shortage Predicted Due to Soaring Joint Replacement Procedures
In the near future, there may not be enough orthopaedic surgeons to provide joint replacements to all who need them. According to two new studies presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), the number of patients requiring hip or knee replacement surgery is likely to soon outpace the number of surgeons who can perform the procedure.
According to a study co-authored by Thomas K. Fehring, M.D., if the number of orthopaedic surgeons able to perform total joint replacements continues at its current rate:
• In 2016, 46 percent of needed hip replacements and 72 percent of needed knee replacements will not be able to be completed.
“I was somewhat shocked at the shortfall that we predicted,” says Dr. Fehring, an orthopaedic surgeon at OrthoCarolina Hip and Knee Center in Charlotte. “This is life-changing surgery, offering patients the chance to be mobile, and a very high percentage of patients may not be able to receive it.”
If the Shoe Fits…or Does It?
Many young children are wearing shoes that are too small, according to a new study presented today at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). As a result, these children may be at high risk for developing serious foot deformities.
The study, which took place in Switzerland, included nearly 250 boys and girls from age 5 to age 10. Researchers measured the children’s feet as well as their indoor and outdoor footwear to determine whether the children were wearing properly sized shoes. They also compared the footwear measurements to the sizes given on the manufacturers’ labels to see if the shoes were marked properly. Finally, they measured the angles of the children’s toes to learn whether any of the subjects were developing a foot deformity called hallux valgus.
Hallux valgus is a condition that occurs when the big toe begins to angle sideways, toward the second toe, causing a bump on the side of the foot just below the big toe. This bump is called a bunion, and can become swollen and painful. Shoes that are too tight are believed to be one of the leading causes of this condition.
