Citing Obesity of Children, County Bans Fast-Food Toys
It was not a happy day for the Happy Meal.
In what it described as a blow against the fattening temptations of fast food, the board of supervisors in Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco, voted Tuesday to ban the promotional toys that often accompany child-size portions of cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets if those meals don’t meet certain nutritional standards.
The criteria, which are based on federal standards and recommendations from the nonprofit Institute of Medicine, would apply to all fast-food restaurants giving away toys in meals in-tended for children. Ken Yeager, the board president, said the new law would level “the playing field by taking away the incentive to choose fatty, sugary foods over healthier options.”
Campaigns do little to combat obesity
When I was a teenager, I was walking down the street and a man hollered out of his car window, “When you wear red, people call you Kool-Aid!”
As amusing as it may be to compare a person to a man-sized pitcher of sugar water, at the time, I felt ugly.
I have always been “fat,” but I have never been unhealthy.
Panic Attacks Anxiety Mood Disorders
A panic attack is usually an overpowering fear which occurs for no clear reason. Most people may have one episode or perhaps a couple in their whole lives other people can experience anxiety attacks on an ongoing basis. However frequently they occur they can be alarming plus the actual physical symptoms overwhelming and people have been known to telephone emergency medical services when the very first anxiety attack happens.
The signs and symptoms could seem like a heart attack or other life-threatening emergency with sweating excessively, prickling or pins and needles, along with other symptoms present. One of the toughest things about a panic attack is the fear of having to deal with another anxiety attack.
Previously, anxiety attacks were considered a ‘nervous’ dysfunction or simply stress but now repeated panic attacks are referred to as a medical condition called panic disorder. This is actually an inappropriate flight or fight response.
Study Examines Costs of Neuropathic Pain
Constantly rising U.S. health care costs could be reduced significantly by preventing and treating neuropathic pain conditions associated with diabetes and herpes zoster virus infections, according to research published in The Journal of Pain, the peer review publication of the American Pain Society, http://www.ampainsoc.org and jpain.org.
Researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of Arizona examined databases of medical and pharmacy claims at major national health plans covering some 75 million lives. The objective of the study was to estimate and compare health care costs of two peripheral neuropathic pain conditions, post herpetic neuralgia (PHN) and diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). PHN causes pain following rash healing in herpes zoster, which infects 1 million people in the U.S. every year.
DPN is a painful neuropathy estimated to affect up to 47 percent of diabetes patients. According to one study, some 5 million Americans are afflicted with neuropathic pain conditions, of which PHN and DPN are the most common.
Anemia Tougher to Tackle in Black Children with Kidney Disease
Black children with chronic kidney disease have more severe anemia than white children even when they receive the same treatment, according to a multicenter study led by Johns Hopkins Children’s Center to be published in the May issue of the American Journal of Kidney Disease.
The findings suggest that inherent biological differences, rather than access to care and treatment, may be at play, raising the question whether current guidelines for anemia treatment should be tailored to reflect race, investigators say.
Anemia, marked by abnormally low levels of red blood cells, is a key indicator of disease status. It is diagnosed by measuring levels of the protein hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in and out of red blood cells.
Researchers Develop Technique to Visualize ‘Your Brain on Drugs’
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed an imaging protocol that allows them to visualize the activity of the brain’s reward circuitry in both normal individuals and those addicted to drugs. The technique could lead to better insight into why people take recreational drugs as well as help determine which treatment strategies might be most effective.
Drug addiction is a complex process that involves numerous biological and environmental factors, but a central element is how the drugs affect the activity of dopamine, the chemical that regulates pleasure and reward in the brain.
To get a real-time sense of dopamine activity, Joanna Fowler and her colleague Gene-Jack Wang at Brookhaven, along with Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, combined positron emission tomography (PET), a medical imaging technology useful for identifying brain diseases, with special radioactive tracers that bind to dopamine receptors.
An underlying cause for psychopathic behavior?
Psychopaths are known to be characterized by callousness, diminished capacity for remorse, and lack of empathy. However, the exact cause of these personality traits is an area of scientific debate. The results of a new study, reported in the May 2010 issue of Elsevier’s Cortex (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/cortex), show striking similarities between the mental impairments observed in psychopaths and those seen in patients with frontal lobe damage.
One previous explanation for psychopathic tendencies has been a reduced capacity to make inferences about the mental states of other people, an ability known as Theory of Mind (ToM). On the other hand, psychopaths are also known to be extremely good manipulators and deceivers, which would imply that they have good skills in inferring the knowledge, needs, intentions, and beliefs of other people. Therefore, it has been suggested recently that ToM is made up of different aspects: a cognitive part, which requires inferences about knowledge and beliefs, and another part which requires the understanding of emotions.
Dr Simone Shamay-Tsoory, from the University of Haifa in Israel, along with colleagues from The Shalvata Mental Health Care Center and the Rambam Medical Center, tested the hypothesis that impairment in the emotional aspects of these abilities may account for psychopathic behaviour.
Few Chinese lung diseased workers get redress: report
Over 10,000 workers in China are diagnosed with a deadly lung disease each year from breathing in dust from cutting gemstones and drilling rocks, but only a few manage to get compensation, said a rights organisation.
The China Labour Bulletin (CLB) said some pneumoconiosis victims receive small sums that cover their medical costs for a few years, but many get nothing at all for the incurable disease.
“Pneumoconiosis is the number-one occupational disease in China, accounting for around 90 percent of all cases,” CLB said, adding that many victims cannot even manage to get an official diagnosis.
