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Eating together establishes good habits later in life, researchers at the University of Minnesota say.  In the study, more than 1,500 participants were surveyed once during high school, then again when they were 20 years old.  Participants were asked questions about how often they ate with their families, how much they liked sitting down to dinner with family and friends, if they had a tendency to eat and run, and how often they ate breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The researchers say that those who ate meals with families as adolescents were more likely to eat fruit, dark green and orange vegetables and drank fewer soft drinks as young adults.  The frequency of family meals during adolescence also predicted eating meals more frequently as adults.  Those who experienced more family meals were more likely to have higher intakes of key nutrients, such as potassium, calcium, magnesium and the like.  

The researchers say the results show that structured meal times with family are associated with improved diet quality for young adults.  Families should be encouraged to share meals together as often as is practically possible, they say.

The results were originally published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

Researchers at Rutgers University have found drinking soda which contains high-fructose corn syrup could contribute to the development of diabetes, especially in children.

Scientists tested beverages containing the syrup and found high levels of reactive compounds that previous studies have found have the potential to trigger cell and tissue damage which can cause diabetes.

“People consume too much high-fructose corn syrup in this country,” lead researcher Chi-Tang Ho, professor of food science at Rutgers University, said.  “It’s in way too many food and drink products, and there’s growing evidence that it’s bad for you.”

The findings were first reported at the 234th national meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Researchers have found an explanation for runners who struggle to increase their pace, cyclists who cant pedal any faster and swimmers who cant speed up their strokes. Scientists from the University of Exeter and Kansas State University have discovered the dramatic changes that occur in our muscles when we push ourselves during exercise.

We all have a sustainable level of exercise intensity, known as the critical power. This level can increase as we get fitter, but will always involve us working at around 75-80% of our maximal capacity. Reported in the American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, this research shows why, when we go beyond this level, we have to slow down or stop altogether. This is the first time that researchers have looked at processes taking place inside the muscles when we exceed the critical power.

The study showed that when we exceed our critical power, the normally-stable pH level in our muscles, is quickly pushed to levels typical of exhaustion. Moreover, the level of phosphocreatine in the muscles, a high-energy compound which serves as an energy reserve, is quickly depleted when exercise intensity exceeds the critical power.

Professor Andy Jones of the University of Exeter, lead author on the paper, said: The concept of critical power is well known by sportspeople, but until now we have not known why our bodies react so dramatically when we exceed it. We were astonished by the speed and scale of change in the muscles.

The research team used a magnetic resonance scanner to assess changes in metabolites in the leg muscles of six male volunteers who exercised just below and just above the critical power.

The research offers a physical explanation for the experiences of exercisers of all levels of ability. Professor Jones concludes: The results indicate that the critical power represents the highest exercise intensity that is sustainable aerobically. This means that it is likely to be an important intensity for maximising training gains. Exercising above the critical power cannot be sustained for long because it is linked to changes in the muscle which lead to fatigue.


Posted by: Evelyn    Source

New research from Johns Hopkins specialists suggests that obese kidney disease patients face not only the usual long odds of a tissue match and organ rejection, but also are significantly less likely than normal-weight people to receive a kidney transplant at all.

The Johns Hopkins study results, would be published online this Wednesday in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, reveal that morbidly obese patients (those who on average weigh 100 pounds more than their ideal weight) are on the transplant waiting list for a median of five years - two years more than the median wait time for a patient of normal weight.

Because patients tend to get sicker the longer they wait on dialysis, obese patients are 44 percent less likely than normal-weight patients to ever receive a kidney transplant, the scientists report. Each year, 8 percent of the patients on the list die waiting for a kidney.

Johns Hopkins transplant surgeon Dorry Segev, M.D., who led the study, suggests that obese patients might be turned down, sometimes multiple times, because of the added cost and poorer outcome linked to transplants in overweight patients.

Being overweight should not be a disqualifying and discriminating factor against these patients, Segev says.

He adds that at Johns Hopkins, the rate at which overweight, severely obese, and morbidly obese patients are listed and receive transplants is much higher than the national average. As a result, the waiting times for obese patients are not significantly different.

Patients understandably think that being placed on the transplant waiting list is an implicit promise of fair, unbiased therapy under a transparent allocation scheme, Segev says. Unfortunately, the system that has been established nationally may not be living up to that promise.

The studys findings may be explained, he says, by economic pressures as well as medical ones. He notes that Medicare - the principal insurer for kidney transplants - pays a set amount for the operation regardless of a patients overall health, difficulty of the operation, length of stay, postoperative care and complications, all of which may increase substantially with obese patients. Transplant centers, therefore, may be under pressure to avoid operating on these individuals.

In addition, Segev says, centers with lower surgical survival rates overall risk losing Medicare funding.

The scientists analyzed data from 132,353 men and women with kidney disease who were on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) deceased donor kidney transplantation list from 1995 to 2006 in the United States.

Patients weight was rated using the body mass index (BMI) scale - weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. A normal BMI is 18.5. Overweight is 25 (25 to 30), obese is 30 to 35 severely obese is 35 to 40 and morbidly obese is 40 to 60.

Of the group analyzed, 48,349 were of normal weight, 45,411 were overweight, 25,509 were obese, 9,479 were severely obese and 3,605 were morbidly obese.

After adjusting for additional health factors that might affect a persons eligibility for transplantation (such as blood type, age, type of kidney disease, diabetes and heart disease), the scientists observed that the likelihood of receiving a transplant, when in comparison to patients with a normal weight, decreases by 4 percent for overweight patients, 7 percent for obese patients, 28 percent for severely obese patients and 44 percent for morbidly obese patients.

Segev says the number of overweight patients joining the UNOS waiting list has gone up markedly in the last decade as the rate of obesity has grown in the U.S. population. From 1995 to 2005, the number of severely obese patients added to the list increased by 310 percent, and the number of morbidly obese patients added to the list increased by 247 percent. In contrast, the number of people of normal weight added to the list increased by only 33 percent.

The transplant community needs to develop appropriate guidelines stipulating which patients are appropriate for transplantation and to do our best to treat them equally, says Segev. Similarly, both outcomes evaluation and reimbursement need to reflect the varying difficulty of care for these patients in order to remove the disincentives of taking on challenging cases.

A study by Johns Hopkins surgeon Anne Lidor, M.D., is currently examining whether overweight transplants patients should be recommended for gastric bypass surgery at the time theyre first listed.

This would improve survival while the patient is waiting for a kidney and also improve survival after receiving the kidney, which should eliminate any potential bias for receiving a kidney in a timely fashion, says Segev.


Posted by: Evelyn    Source

Strategies for decreasing a childs risk for obesity often focus on improving eating habits and maintaining a high level of physical activity. While this is one way to address the issue, another way to reduce the risk of childhood obesity could simply come down to positive parenting, as per a Temple University study reported in the recent issue of Child Abuse & Neglect.

This is the first study to show the association between neglect in childhood and childhood obesity. Prior studies looked at maltreatment in childhood and how it affected these individuals in adulthood, said Dr. Robert Whitaker, the studys lead author and a pediatrician and professor of public health at Temple University.

Examples of neglect include a parent not showing enough affection to the child due to preoccupation with his/her own problems, not taking a child to the doctor when he/she needed it, and leaving a child at home without the proper supervision.

Data was obtained from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a birth cohort study of 4,898 children born between 1998 and 2000 in 20 large U.S. cities. At age 3, 2,412 of these children had their height and weight measured, and mothers answered items on the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales about three types of child maltreatment in the previous year: neglect (such as not providing proper supervision for the child), corporal punishment (such as spanking the child on the bottom with a bare hand) and psychological aggression (such as threatening to spank the child but not actually doing it).

Eighteen percent of the children were obese, and the prevalence of any episode of neglect, corporal punishment or psychological aggression was 11 percent, 84 percent and 93 percent, respectively.

The odds of obesity were 50 percent greater in children who had experienced neglect, after controlling for the income and number of children in the household, the mothers race/ethnicity, education, marital status, body mass index, prenatal smoking and age, and the childrens sex and birth weight. Neither the frequency of corporal punishment nor psychological aggression was linked to an increased risk of obesity.

Corporal punishment and psychological aggression are common discipline techniques resulting from a childs misbehavior, and the child may come to anticipate them as consequences of their misbehavior, Whitaker said.

In contrast, the child may not understand the cause of the neglect and the child might mistakenly feel at fault, he added.

These experiences of neglect could translate into a great deal of stress for the child, which might, in turn, influence mood, anxiety, diet and activity. As we know, adults eat in response to stress; the same could be true for children, Whitaker said.

You cant make a childs life stress free, but parents can strive to be more of a buffer against stress, rather than one of the causes of stress, he said.


Posted by: Diana    Source