Tag Archives: public-health

Genes May Affect Weight Gain

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A new study indicates that genes may explain about fifty percent of weight gain that begins in middle age. Researchers studied sets of twins who served in the military during the Vietnam War. Some of the twins were identical and shared the same genes, and the others were non-identical twins.After twenty years of follow-up, the study now shows that genes account for about 1/2 of the weight gain among the men. Environmental factors, such as exercise and diet account for the other 1/2. Researchers say the findings may help explain why some people find it hard to lose weight. I Don’t Have Time To Exercise! Your genes and how they effect your weightA new study indicates that genes may explain about fifty percent of weight gain that begins in middle age.  Researchers studied sets of twins who served in the military during the Vietnam War. Some of the twins were identical and shared the same genes, and the others were non-identical twins. After twenty years of follow-up, the study now shows that genes account for about 1/2 of the weight gain among the men. Environmental factors, such as exercise and diet account for the other 1/2.Researchers say the findings may help explain why some people find it hard to lose weight. “We’re not acknowledging the strength of genetic factors in our weight loss strategies,” says James C. Romeis, PhD, professor of health services research at Saint Louis University School of Public Health, in a news release. “You’ve got this genetic thing working against you that helps to explain why you’re so heavy and why you may fail at weight loss programs and diets.” Cancer Patients Must Exercise To Prevent Recurrence In the study, which appeared in a recent issue of the journal Twin Research, researchers studied nearly 8,000 middle-aged, middle-class male twins who enlisted in the U.S. military during the late 1960s.At the time of their enlistment as young men more than 3/4s of them were considered normal weight, 17 percent were overweight, and 2.5 percent were obese or severely obese. Twenty years later, less than half of the men were still considered normal weight. Meanwhile, more than half had become overweight. The study showed that about 50 percent of the weight differences among the men appeared to be caused by genetic factors. Other aspects of their lifestyle and environment accounted for the rest. Although genetics may help to explain why some men gain weight more easily and have a harder time losing it, researchers say it should not stop them from trying to maintain a healthy weight, because weight gain doesn’t just happen overnight.

Genes May Affect Weight Gain

Should 11-Year-Olds Be Allowed To Pick Up Condoms and Get It in?

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The Philadelphia Department of Public Health is giving out a million free condoms, and the recipients are between the ages of 11 and 19 years old! You may be asking yourself, why are they handing out condoms to children and where are their parents? Well, according to the latest statistics from the PDOH, Philadelphia has the highest rate of sexually active teens younger than 13 years old. The website home page of the Take Control Philly campaign asks the question, “Having sex? Protect yourself from chlamydia, gonorrhea, HIV, syphilis. Get free condoms!” The site tells 11 to 19 year olds where they can find free condoms near their homes. It also has a mail order free condom offer along with videos such as the one below that teaches the youngsters how to wear condoms. So the big question is, should condoms should be available to 11 year olds? Or should we teach our children that abstinence is the best choice at their age? Clearly health officials are trying to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. If these children are going to have sex, they have the RIGHT to know how to protect themselves. But some believe that handing out free condoms just do more damage to the situation, promoting a message to teens that it’s cool to have sex, as long as it’s protected. It’s rather disturbing to think that 11 year olds can stop by their nearest health center, pick up some free condoms, and then go have sex in a school yard or public bathroom. Why not just teach these children to value their bodies and avoid taking the risk in the first place? What do you think? Related articles: 5 Steps to Find Closure So You Can Move On 6 Ingredients To Lasting Relationships No Action Today, No Cure Tomorrow-World Health Day 2011

Should 11-Year-Olds Be Allowed To Pick Up Condoms and Get It in?

Halle Berry Is A Biker Babe [PHOTOS]

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Halle Berry and her new boyfriend Olivier Martinez were spotted leaving lunch in Brentwood, CA. Halle looked fab even with a helmet on. Halle picked up the Best Actress award for her work on Frankie and Alice on Friday at the NAACP Image Awards . Take a look: Halle Berry’s 2011 Oscars Dress: Fab Or Fug? [PHOTOS]

Halle Berry Is A Biker Babe [PHOTOS]

Beyonce Joins Workout Video To Fight Childhood Obesity With Michelle Obama

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Beyonce has joined Michelle Obama in her effort to fight childhood obesity. She will be featured in a workout video from the National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation. Beyonce has re-written and re-recorded one of her songs for the “Let’s Move! Flash Workout” campaign and is providing an instructional video demonstrating the dance/exercise routine. The video will be distributed to participating schools. The video will be distributed to middle schools across the country that will all participate in a pre-choreographed “Let’s Move!” dance exercise routine at the same time — Tuesday, May 3, at 1:42 p.m. ET. “I am excited to be part of this effort that addresses a public health crisis,” stated Beyoncé. “First Lady Michelle Obama deserves credit for tackling this issue directly, and I applaud the NAB Education Foundation for trying to make a positive difference in the lives of our schoolchildren.” Beyonce Poses In Blackface For French Magazine: Art Or Idiotic? Beyonce’s New Album Only 1 Song Away From Completion

Beyonce Joins Workout Video To Fight Childhood Obesity With Michelle Obama

Committee From Koch’s Upton Calls Carbon Health Threat A ‘Myth’

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Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) today introduced legislation with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) to block the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing Clean Air Act protections against global warming pollution, rejecting the counsel of America’s public health advocates. A boon to Koch Industries and the other polluters who supported his campaign, Upton’s legislation would nullify the EPA’s Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Think Progress Discovery Date : 04/03/2011 00:51 Number of articles : 2

Committee From Koch’s Upton Calls Carbon Health Threat A ‘Myth’

Us Online News: Yahoo Still Silent On Today’s Layoffs, But Employees Vent

may be tight-lipped about the layoffs that are taking place at once within the company, but that’s not stopping employees who have been handed pink slips from commotion unattended quietly. A Yahoo employee in the Flickr group just Tweeted added by: Nadia_Khan1

The internet is being captured by organised trolls – including covert biotech lobbyists

They are the online equivalent of enclosure riots: the rick-burning, fence-toppling protests by English peasants losing their rights to the land. When MasterCard, Visa, Paypal and Amazon tried to shut WikiLeaks out of the cyber-commons, an army of hackers responded by trying to smash their way into these great estates and pull down their fences. In the Wikileaks punch-up the commoners appear to have the upper hand. But it's just one battle. There's a wider cyberwar being fought, of which you hear much less. And in most cases the landlords, with the help of a mercenary army, are winning. I’m not talking here about threats to net neutrality and the danger of a two-tier internet developing(1,2), though these are real. I’m talking about the daily attempts to control and influence content in the interests of the state and corporations: attempts in which money talks. The weapon used by both state and corporate players is a technique known as astroturfing. An astroturf campaign is one that mimics spontaneous grassroots mobilisations, but which has in reality been organised. Anyone writing a comment piece in Mandarin critical of the Chinese government, for example, is likely to be bombarded with abuse by people purporting to be ordinary citizens, upset by the slurs against their country. But many of them aren't upset: they are members of the 50 Cent Party, so-called because one Chinese government agency pays 5 mao (half a yuan) for every post its tame commenters write(3). Teams of these sock-puppets are hired by party leaders to drown out critical voices and derail intelligent debates. I first came across online astroturfing in 2002, when the investigators Andy Rowell and Jonathan Matthews looked into a series of comments made by two people calling themselves Mary Murphy and Andura Smetacek(4,5). They had launched ferocious attacks, across several internet forums, against a scientist whose research suggested that Mexican corn had been widely contaminated by GM pollen. Rowell and Matthews found that one of the messages Mary Murphy had sent came from a domain owned by the Bivings Group, a PR company specialising in internet lobbying. An article on the Bivings website explained that “there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organization is directly involved … Message boards, chat rooms, and listservs are a great way to anonymously monitor what is being said. Once you are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party.”(6) The Bivings site also quoted a senior executive from the biotech corporation Monsanto, thanking the PR firm for its “outstanding work”(7). When a Bivings executive was challenged by Newsnight, he admitted that the “Mary Murphy” email was sent by someone “working for Bivings” or “clients using our services”(8). Rowell and Matthews then discovered that the IP address on Andura Smetacek’s messages was assigned to Monsanto's headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri(9). There’s a nice twist to this story. AstroTurf TM – real fake grass – was developed and patented by Monsanto. Reading comment threads on the Guardian's sites and elsewhere on the web, two patterns jump out at me. The first is that discussions of issues in which there’s little money at stake tend to be a lot more civilised than debates about issues where companies stand to lose or gain billions: such as climate change, public health and corporate tax avoidance. These are often characterised by amazing levels of abuse and disruption. Articles about the environment are hit harder by such tactics than any others. I love debate, and I often wade into the threads beneath my columns. But it's a depressing experience, as instead of contesting the issues I raise, many of those who disagree bombard me with infantile abuse, or just keep repeating a fiction, however often you discredit it. This ensures that an intelligent discussion is almost impossible – which appears to be the point(10). The second pattern is the strong association between this tactic and a certain set of views: pro-corporate, anti-tax, anti-regulation. Both traditional conservatives and traditional progressives tend be more willing to discuss an issue than these right-wing libertarians, many of whom seek instead to shut down debate. So what's going on? I’m not suggesting that most of the people trying to derail these discussions are paid to do so, though I would be surprised if none were. I’m suggesting that some of the efforts to prevent intelligence from blooming seem to be organised, and that neither website hosts nor other commenters know how to respond. For his film (Astro)Turf Wars, Taki Oldham secretly recorded a training session organised by a rightwing libertarian group called American Majority. The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to “manipulate the medium”(11). This is what he told them: “Here's what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in 'Liberal Books'. I go through and I say 'one star, one star, one star'. The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars. … This is where your kids get information: Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster. These are places where you can rate movies. So when you type in 'Movies on Healthcare', I don’t want Michael Moore's to come up, so I always give it bad ratings. I spend about 30 minutes a day, just click, click, click, click. … If there's a place to comment, a place to rate, a place to share information, you have to do it. That's how you control the online dialogue and give our ideas a fighting chance.” cont. added by: JanforGore

Electronic Cigarettes Still Pose Serious Health Risks

Touted as a safe substitute to highly addictive tobacco products, research has shown that electronic cigarettes are unsafe, and might soon be removed from the market. Last week, the University of California, Riverside announced that e-cigarettes are potentially harmful to users' health, and urged regulators to consider removing e-cigarettes from the market until their safety is adequately evaluated. Instead of burning tobacco like normal cigarettes, e-cigarettes vaporize the nicotine, along with other compounds present in the cartridge, in the form of aerosol created by heating. While this eliminates the thousands of chemicals and toxicants created by tobacco combustion, there are still chemicals present in the aerosolized vapors emanating from e-cigarettes. Concerned that e-cigarettes, also called “electronic nicotine delivery systems,” might not be as safe as they appear, UCR researchers evaluated five of the most popular brands on the market. What They Found: 1. Batteries, atomizers, cartridges, cartridge wrappers, packs and instruction manuals lack important information regarding e-cigarette content, use and essential warnings. 2. E-cigarette cartridges leak, which could expose nicotine, an addictive and dangerous chemical, to children, adults, pets and the environment. 3. There are no methods for proper disposal of e-cigarettes products and accessories, which could result in nicotine contamination from discarded cartridges entering water sources and soil, and adversely impacting the environment. “Some people believe that e-cigarettes are a safe substitute for conventional cigarettes,” said Prue Talbot, the director of UC Riverside's Stem Cell Center, whose lab led the research. “However, there are virtually no scientific studies on e-cigarettes and their safety. Our study – one of the first studies to evaluate e-cigarettes – shows that this product has many flaws, which could cause serious public health problems in the future if the flaws go uncorrected.” http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2010/10/22/tc.2010.037259.abstract added by: Radical_Centrist

Who Does Barbara Walters Find Fascinating?

As she does at the conclusion of every year, Barbara Walters has compiled a list of the world’s Most Fascinating People. Really just a rundown of those who have been in the news (seriously, we all love Betty White, but does a single reader find her “fascinating?”), the following celebrities made the cut: Sandra Bullock

Sarah Palin Rips Michelle Obama, Decries First Lady’s Efforts to Curb Childhood Obesity

Sigh. Sarah Palin is back in the news again. For whatever reason, the ex-Alaska Governor took First Lady Michelle Obama and her efforts to improve childhood nutrition to task on Laura Ingraham’s radio show. We know conservatives believe in smaller government, and there are strong cases to be made for that philosophy. Attacking Michelle’s nutrition initiative, though? Sarah Palin is not a fan of Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity efforts . Of the First Lady, Palin told Ingraham that “I think she has got a different worldview and she is not hesitant at all to share what her worldview is.” As for Sarah Palin’s worldview, no one can make sense of it, but she does use big words like “exceptionalism” in the rant against Michelle below: “She encapsulated what her view of America is, I believe, unless she has evolved and things have changed in the last two years, but she said it on the campaign trail twice that it was the first time that she had been proud of her country when finally people were paying attention to Barack Obama.” “I think that’s appalling. We can think of this infinite number of reasons to be proud of American exceptionalism and it baffles me that anybody would have that view and then allow that view to bleed over into policy.” “Take her anti-obesity thing that she is on. She is on this kick, right. What she is telling us is she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat.” “I know I’m going to be again criticized for bringing this up, but instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician’s wife priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track.” Yes … the government needs to “get off our back” for this silly “anti-obesity thing.” Why encourage health when we can be as fat as we want! Freedom rules! Can’t you encourage people to make smarter choices that benefit themselves and the public health system as a whole? How is that an evil federal takeover? Choose your side : [poll id=”1662″ /]

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Sarah Palin Rips Michelle Obama, Decries First Lady’s Efforts to Curb Childhood Obesity