New Study Links Obesity, Heart Problems
By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer
Chicago (AP) -- Middle-age people who are overweight but have normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels are kidding themselves if they think their health is just fine.
Northwestern University researchers tracked 17,643 patients for three decades and found that being overweight in mid-life substantially increased the risk of dying of heart disease later in life — even in people who began the study with healthy blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
High blood pressure and cholesterol are strong risk factors for heart disease. Both are common in people who are too fat, and often are thought to explain why overweight people are more prone to heart disease.
The Secret to Keeping New Year's Resolutions
by Laura Rowley
'Tis is the season for New Year's resolutions - the renewed commitment to exercise, stop smoking, save more money, and resist rolling your eyes when your spouse explains for the umpteenth time why football player Tiki Barber is God's gift to the New York Giants.
Resolutions require self-regulation. That's the ability to restrain impulses that tempt us to choose immediate gratification -- chocolate, cigarettes, buying on credit, scornful wisecracks about football's insignificance in the larger scheme of things -- over longer-term goals, such as good health, financial well-being, and stronger interpersonal relationships.
Scientists in food fight over soda
(AP) -- Low -fat, low-cal, low -carb. Atkins, South Beach, The Zone. Food fads may be distracting attention from something more insidiously piling on pounds: beverages.
One of every five calories in the American diet is liquid. The nation's single biggest "food" is soda, and nutrition experts have long demonized it.
Now they are escalating the fight. In reports to be published in science journals this week, two groups of researchers hope to add evidence to the theory that soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks don't just go hand-in -hand with obesity, but actually cause it. Not that these drinks are the only cause -- genetics, exercise and other factors are involved -- but that they are one cause, perhaps the leading cause.
Study: Breakfast Helps Teen Girls Stay Slim
(AP) BALTIMORE
Girls who regularly ate breakfast, particularly one that includes cereal, were slimmer than those who skipped the morning meal, according to a study that tracked nearly 2,400 girls for 10 years.
Girls who ate breakfast of any type had a lower average body mass index, a common obesity gauge, than those who said they didn’t. The index was even lower for girls who said they ate cereal for breakfast, according to findings of the study conducted by the Maryland Medical Research Institute. The study received funding from the National Institutes of Health and cereal-maker General Mills.
“Not eating breakfast is the worst thing you can do, that’s really the take-home message for teenage girls,” said study author Bruce Barton, the Maryland institute’s president and CEO.
The 8 Best habits to change before Christmas
If you live in North America, especially the USA, here is how we are eating ourselves fat.
- Our typical North American wakes up too close to when they've gotta go, leaving little time to prepare, eat, and digest a good meal before work (whether "work" is an office job or it's training for sport). Also, our typical North American complains that they're "not hungry" in the morning. I hear this everyday.
- Our typical North American opts for scarfing down a quick, fast digesting breakfast that's way too low in calories, missing a significant protein portion, low in micronutrients and phytochemicals, low in good fats, and rich in processed, high glycemic index carbohydrates.
