If you think you're born into mediocrity, and being 'special' is someone else's god-given priviledge, think again:
" And every Master has likewise had the same message: What I am, you are. What I can do, you can do. These things, and more, shall you also do. "
- God, from the bestselling book Conversations with God
These days, just about anything kills. Now, Yahoo News reports that even your LoveHandle kills! - Kelly
WASHINGTON (AFP) - - A thick waist almost doubles the risk of premature death, a major European study has found, showing there's nothing lovely about love handles.
Importantly, the risk is similar even when body mass index (BMI) fell within normal range, according to the authors of the study of 359,000 people aged 51.9 on average, including 65.4 percent women, appearing in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The research found that excess fat stored around the middle of the body was a major health risk even when people are not considered obese or even overweight by statistical BMI standards.
In fact, each five centimetre increase in waist size increased the risk of death by 17 percent in men and 13 percent in women.
"The most important result of our study is the finding that not just being overweight, but also the distribution of body fat, affects the risk of premature death of each individual," said Tobias Pischon, the lead author of the paper from the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam-Rehbr
The data should encourage physicians to routinely measure patients' waists as well as their BMI on routine office visits, according to the study carried out by the Imperial College London (GB), German Institute for Human Nutrition and other European participants.
"The good news is that you don't need to take an expensive test and wait ages for the result to assess this aspect of your health - it costs virtually nothing to measure your waist and hip size," said Elio Riboli, the European coordinator of the EPIC study from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Imperial College London.
"If you have a large waist, you probably need to increase the amount of exercise you do every day, avoid excessive alcohol consumption and improve your diet. This could make a huge difference in reducing your risk of an early death."
Doctors say yes to prescribing statins at age eight.
Children as young as eight should take cholesterol-lowering drugs if diet changes alone fail to work, according to new guidelines by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Stephen Daniels, of the academy’s nutrition committee, says the new advice is based on mounting evidence showing that damage leading to heart disease, America’s leading killer, begins early in life.
About 30 percent of U.S. children are overweight, according to a study that lead to the new guidelines.. Obese or overweight children may have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure as they grow, the report said.
Many physicians are urging caution saying that while cholesterol drugs are generally safe for children, the long-term effects of them are not yet known. What’s more, children may learn the lesson that a pill can be a quick fix for the problem of being overweight. In adults, the drugs can trigger fatigue or aching muscles and joints in about 10 percent of patients taking cholesterol drugs.
Excerpt from Bios Life Newsletter. This is 1 in a 3 part article about child obesity. Parents, keep your child healthy! All kids should be gaining weight as they grow older, but extra pounds—more than what’s needed to support normal growth and development—can lead to childhood obesity. Childhood obesity is particularly troubling because the extra pounds often start kids on the path to health problems that were once confined to adults, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.
What Causes Childhood Obesity?Many factors—usually working in combination—increase your child's risk of becoming overweight:
Diet. Eating high-calorie foods, such as fast foods and vending machine snacks, contribute to weight gain. High-fat foods are dense in calories. Loading up on soft drinks, candy, and desserts also can cause weight gain.
Inactivity. Sedentary kids are more likely to gain weight because they don't burn calories through physical activity. Inactive leisure activities, such as watching television or playing video games, contribute to the problem.
Genetics. If your child comes from a family of overweight people, they may be genetically predisposed to put on excess weight, especially in an environment where high-calorie food is always available and physical activity isn't encouraged.
Psychological factors. Some children overeat to cope with problems or to deal with emotions, such as stress or boredom. Their parents may have similar tendencies. Family factors. Most children don't shop for the family's groceries. Parents are responsible for putting healthy foods in the kitchen at home and leaving unhealthy foods in the store. You can't blame your kids for being attracted to sweet, salty, and fatty foods; after all they taste good. But you can control much of their access to these foods, especially at home.
Socioeconomic factors. Children from low-income backgrounds are at greater risk of becoming obese. Poverty and obesity often go hand in hand because low-income parents may lack the time and resources to make healthy eating and exercise a family priority. ComplicationsObese children can develop serious health problems, such as diabetes and heart disease—often carrying these conditions into an obese adulthood.
Overweight children are at higher risk of developing: - Type 2 diabetes - Metabolic syndrome - High blood pressure - Asthma and other respiratory problems - Sleep disorders - Liver disease - Early puberty - Eating disorders - Skin infections
The social and emotional fallout also can hurt your child. Being overweight can cause:
Low self-esteem and bullying. Children often tease or bully overweight kids, who suffer a loss of self-esteem and an increased risk of depression as a result.
Behavior and learning problems. Overweight children tend to have more anxiety and poorer social skills than normal-weight children have. At one extreme, these problems may lead to acting out and disrupting the classroom. At the other, they may cause social withdrawal. Stress and anxiety also interfere with learning.
Depression. Social isolation and low self-esteem create overwhelming feelings of hopelessness in some overweight children. When children lose hope that their lives will improve, they're well on the way to depression. A depressed child may lose interest in normal activities, sleep more than usual, or cry a lot. Some depressed children hide their sadness and appear emotionally flat instead. Either way, depression is as serious in children as in adults.
Ideas for Treatment and PreventionLife is tough enough, but being a kid and overweight can be crushing. The best solution for you, your child, and your whole family is creating a Bios Life Slim habit before meals, eating healthier (and less) foods, and increasing physical activity—but it’s tough for your child to do it alone.
Success depends largely on your commitment to helping your child make important changes. For example, parents are the ones who buy the food, cook the food and decide when and where the food is eaten. Even small changes can make a big difference in your child's health.
A recent study showed that weight loss is socially contagious. When one person, perhaps a parent, sheds pounds, it has a ripple effect and increases the chances that children, spouse, siblings, and colleagues will slim down.
Keeping a food diary can double a person's weight loss according to a study from Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research. The findings, from one of the largest and longest running weight loss maintenance trials ever conducted, will be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
"The more food records people kept, the more weight they lost," said lead author Jack Hollis Ph.D., a researcher at Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research in Portland, OR. "Those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records. It seems that the simple act of writing down what you eat encourages people to consume fewer calories." In the struggle to lose weight, picking up a pen might be just as useful as putting down the fork. That held true for Julie Satterwhite, 46, a yo-yo dieter in Portland, OR, who previously struggled to lose weight. She credits the food diary with helping her shed 30 pounds during the study and in turn being able to reduce the dosage of her high-cholesterol medication by half.
After the study ended, she continued to lose weight over an additional eight months by using the food diary on her own. All told, she lost 55 pounds, dropping from 205 pounds to her target goal of 150. The weight loss also was good for her joints. Satterwhite has an arthritic knee, so the reduced weight on it felt like “a huge improvement,” she said.
“It had a very big impact,” Satterwhite said of the diary. “If I was walking through the kitchen and wanted to grab a cookie or a brownie, I would think twice because I knew I had to write it down.”
Get Your Free Food Diary The BiosLifeSlim.com website offers an easy-to-use, online food diary. Join the Slim Community and start your food diary today.
Click here for more ideas on keeping a food diary: Taking Inventory.
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